Civil War Correspondent vs. Down There Low

I want to spend a few weeks introducing some of my favorite Polish bands. I lived in Poland from the middle of 2002 until the middle of 2004, and I spent a lot of time trying to find good rock bands there. It was a struggle. Polish radio consisted mainly of boring Anglo-American pop and R & B and mainstream American hip hop, with a smattering of weak Polish variations on the same kind of music. (You can listen for yourself.) After years of struggle, though (during which I learned almost to like Justin Timberlake), plus some extra-hard internet work, I’ve managed to find some music that is worth sharing with my American friends.

I’m conflicted, however, about my idea of what constitutes an intriguing Polish band (or, by extension, an interesting German/Argentinian/Moroccan/whatever band). Do I genuinely care about the interplay of indigenous cultural traditions and Americanized mass media, or am I just looking for something familiar? What does it mean, exactly, if a band from a poor formerly Communist state absorbs some influence from the deliberately obscure, generally wealthy, American indie scene? Think how this kind of thing has changed over time! Does it still bear any significance in our globalized, Internet-infused new millennium? These are some of the things on my mind. Man, it is obviously time for me to go to grad school.

Today I am going to look at a classic by England’s greatest rock musician (nope, not Thom Yorke, nor even Lennon/McCartney/Townshend/Page/etc.), and a dead ringer for the same song by a brilliant Polish combo (about whom more in the future).

“Civil War Correspondent” · John Parish and Polly Jean Harvey · Dance Hall at Louse Point, 1996

There isn’t really too much to say about Polly Jean Harvey. She is simply one of the premiere talents, if not the premiere talent, in popular music in our lifetime. And I don’t even mean the “popular” part as any slight on her talent and significance — she is one of the most amazing in the long human history of rock stars, folk musicians, blues singers, and troubadours. Anybody who is unfamiliar with her needs to go buy all of her albums right now.

I don’t know too much about John Parish, though I have seen some of his albums in stores lately. I will give him a listen sometime, it only seems fair, and he seems like he’s a talented chap. I found his bio fairly interesting, but he was clearly outshined by Polly Harvey back in 1996 on their collaboration album. I like Dance Hall quite a bit, but it never made me want to go find more music by John Parish — PJH just made the songs her own.

PJ Harvey / photo by Matthew Sanders

“Civil War Correspondent” is an unusually subtle song for Harvey, and I think that is why it ranks among my favorites of hers. I am down with chicks who can be quiet and introspective one moment and then rock out the next. The lyrics are kind of vague, and it occurs to me now that she could be singing about any civil war, not just “our” American civil war. Being English, she could be going on about their own civil war, or about the Spanish one, or any other one since guns were invented, it doesn’t really matter. It is just melancholy and heartache-y, with a killer organ playing and making everything very very minor-key. That organ part is pretty characteristic of what I guess is mid-career PJ Harvey; maybe it is Parish’s own influence.

Ah, the organ. It is an interesting instrument, not used so much in rock music these days¹. It is an evocative thing, with its creaky heritage of gothic cathedrals, later giving way in part to early gospel music and jazz. In the right hands, it can make music sound old-fashioned, bluesy, creepy, or spiritual. On “Civil War Correspondent” the organ has all of those qualities and carries the song along, with only a spare drumbeat and some great guitar accents. The stripped-down sound sounds great and is so simple that anybody could do it. As we shall see…

“Down There Low” · Ścianka · Statek Kosmiczny, 1998

So I discovered this band Ścianka several months ago, and I started listening to as much of their stuff as I could acquire. I think they are really excellent, the best Polish band that I have discovered, but at the same time they are pretty reminiscent of other bands that I already know. This is not a bad thing. I believe that all non-classical guitar-based music is pretty much the same thing — variations on a theme. We have replaced the old folk tradition of a common canon with a tradition wherein anybody can learn to play guitar and soon start bashing out some “original” songs. I think it is really cool, and I am proud to be part of that tradition, but with thousands and thousands of active rock bands in the world today, your chances of creating something truly new are nonexistant. Instead, rock musicians work creatively within some basic constrictions and add their own take on the music that has influenced them.

What happens, though, as you write music, is you think, “that part is kind of like Band A” and “that riff is basically the same as Song Z” and you have to work actively at not ripping people off. Then occasionally you start writing something and you think, “Hmm, this sound familiar, but I don’t know why… it sounds good though… let me keep working on it and see if I can figure out what it reminds me of…” Then you work out something that is pretty good, and then later you realize (or somebody tells you) “Dude, that is exactly the same song as that Cat Stevens song” or whatever.

This could be what happened to Ścianka with “Down There Low.” They wrote this kind of raucous, bluesy song, and managed to put together some English lyrics that sounded kind of cool (if not exactly luminous), and they were pretty much pleased with it, and then somebody told them the Polish equivalent of “Dudes that sounds exactly like PJ Harvey.”² When I first heard it, that was my reaction (in English, not Polish); the only question I had was which PJ Harvey song in particular it sounded like. I’m still not sure I’ve picked the right one, but there is no doubt that “Down There Low” is very similar in structure to “Civil War Correspondent.”

There are some differences. The Parish/Harvey song uses the chords A and G while Ścianka use G and B flat; the guitar and organ parts are kind of switched. The attitudes of the songs are completely different, as “Civil War Correspondent” is restrained and sensitive while its Polish counterpart is anguished and screaming. And some of the lyrics actually sound more like Sonic Youth than anything else (“Crush the crazy eye / For the things it never saw / Feed me in your well / You’ll never be alone”). Yet you could still easily imagine “Down There Low” as a PJH song. And naturally, when you’re competing with a talent like Harvey, you can easily imagine how much better it would sound if it really were by her.

But that is unfair. I will have some more Ścianka songs in the future so that you can see how great the band really is — this is not nearly their best. Still, “Down There Low” is pretty cool on its own merits, and there is an easy solution for Ścianka and their fans: just call it an “homage”. Ah, the homage. You can get away with anything by calling it an homage. Ripping off some legendary Hitchcock scene in your by-the-books thriller? It’s an homage. Sampling old blues songs and using them in adidas commercials? An homage! Copying an iconic Minor Threat album cover and using it to sell Nikes? The h-bomb again.

Actually, though, musicians really can provide homage to their influences, and mean it sincerely, so I am just going to leave poor Ścianka alone and go listen to their albums. Have I mentioned how awesome they are?

Notes:

1. An aside: I think the Doors ruined organ for most rock bands, as they also ruined semi-coherent peyote-induced poetry. Popular culture only needed one Doors. Nowadays, though, if you hear a Doors song at a bar with the speakers screwed up, and only get the organ part, it sounds like somebody’s phone is ringing incessantly, and it is way annoying.

2. Ok I guess I have to try to say that in Polish. Hmm. Maybe Kumple, to brzmi tak samo jak PJ Harvey.