There are many songs, even great ones, that stay pretty much the same throughout; once the first verse gets going you've got a pretty good handle on the kind of ride you're in for. "The Bleeding Heart Show," by the Canadian multi-artist collective New Pornographers, isn't one of them. Step into the song and by the end of the journey you're staggering out, hair wind-blasted from your face, asking, "What the hell was that?"
And when I say "what the hell was that," I mean it: I have absolutely no idea what the song is about. (If you can make heads or tails of A.C. Newman's lyrics, please let me know.) But it achieves a musical transcendence where words are beside the point.
It starts off building and sustaining minor-key tension: the desultory guitars and stop-and-start drums create an ill-defined mood that could be anything from regret to foreboding to slow-boiling anger. By the time it kicks into higher gear with an anxious-sounding bridge, you sense that the song could go in any number of dark directions.
And then, amazingly, it doesn't. Instead, about halfway through, the song floods with major chords and vocal oohs, like windows being thrown open to air and light. But just as you're getting comfortable with this new state of affairs, the band transforms the song again, as Kurt Dahle's thunderous drums usher in a cascade of "hey-lah" choruses strongly reminiscent of the coda to the Beatles' "Hello Goodbye." And as if this weren't exhilarating enough, we get the cherry on top: Neko Case's exultant refrain (about, er, arriving too late to play a show for some reason, but exultant nonetheless), as Dahle jolts the rhythm into even higher gear with new syncopations and explosive drum fills. The whole effect, to me, is of cathartic release: as if brooding storm clouds had burst open and we're dancing in the rain, filled with wild joy.
I hope you find some measure of joy and catharsis this weekend, and I'll be back with more music on Monday!
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