Word: sounding
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...clapping, snare rolls, and a bassy vocal line (“um bau bau, um bau”) provided by Khan. Floating above is Sultan’s voice, empathetically harmonizing with “ooh-aah” and very simple lyrics about girl troubles. The lighthearted pop sound continues through to the second and title track. It ups the fun notch by incorporating tambourines, seagulls, a distorted, power-chord based guitar backbone behind a melodic, single-line riff, and lyrics addressed to, one can only assume, the mermaid on the album cover...
...Alter the Ending” an often dissatisfying listen is the uniformity of about half the album’s songwriting. Consisting of the same thick guitar lines, intense drumming, and vocal acrobatics of Carrabba’s wobbly tenor, the band’s newest efforts sound like weak facsimiles of “Hands Down” and “Vindicated.” The songs feebly retread old territory rather than covering new ground...
...dialogue becomes grating, however, when the film’s characters stop following normal conversation patterns, and instead begin to communicate with speeches that sound like contrived publicity blurbs for art shows. “Your work pushes the boundaries of modern thought, thrusting past the limitations of human emotion and cognition to create the ultimate expression of human consciousness,” Madeleine enthuses to an artist during a show. These kinds of inflated, preposterous mini-monologues quickly grow tiresome, and instead of humorously mocking the bourgeoisie art world, they come across as simply an irksome staple...
Nevertheless, poetry has an oral component, and though it is underemphasized, there is something awoken in any poem when it is actually spoken out loud. Echoing sounds connect lines that are semantically distinct. An emphasis placed on a key syllable can release meaning in the same way a sound wave can shatter glass. Listening to a poem is to hear language in its most primitive usage: expression of the unapparent. But what happens when no one, save for the most astute listeners, can understand what is being expressed? Does this not defeat the original point of even talking...
...starts with the sound of the poet’s voice. That, after all, is really all one gets at such a performance. I’ve found that poets tend to have beautiful reading voices. It makes sense, given that their vocation requires them to be as intimate with words as a carpenter with wood. It is the most immediate pleasure of a reading, the way the sound of an instrument pleases more immediately than the composer’s melody. I remember, when Simon Armitage read in Houghton Library earlier this semester, sitting in rapt attention...