Dangling Conversations

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Such great heights

Posted 21 Apr, 2005 at 23:24 by matt in /Music | Permanent link

I'm trying to figure out what it is that fascinates me about the Postal Service.

My initial exposure to them was a brief story on NPR some months ago, about how the USPS was suing them over their use of the name Postal Service. (This, by the way, apparently went nowhere... and rightly so, too.) Shortly thereafter I was visiting some friends out west and one of them played his copy of their album for me.

The music exerts a strange attraction for me, either in spite of or because of how it irritates the crap out of me after prolonged exposure. (How prolonged? I can't listen to the full album in one sitting... and it's not a long album.) The music itself is that sort of techno that sounds like the bastard child of Casio and Coleco; while I've learned to appreciate some of the finer points of post-human music, I'm not convinced that this is one of its shinier moments.

Ignore the beeps and boops and thin little drum machine sounds, though, and what's left is more often than not a wonderfully constructed pop song. Whoever writes the melodies has a real knack for finding interesting tunes, which are complemented by the singer's delivery. The lyrics generally don't tend to be as well-built; one finds a number of nicely turned phrases, but they don't really carry the songs as a whole.

And yet, despite the banality of the lyrics and the sheer techno-evil of the music, I keep this CD in my car regularly, so I can listen to the first few tracks every few days. The melodies and the vocals are, I guess, just that good.

Comments (2 comments so far)
don't wake me, i'm sleeping in
I'm trying to figure out what it is that fascinates me about the Postal Service. it's that they're awesome. well, from what i hear, the one guy is really awesome (death cab for cutie guy) and the other one is just some guy... of course, i come to this with a certain bias (bleeps, loops and beeps!). despite the banality of the lyrics and the sheer techno-evil of the music i can't help but think you're trying to pick a fight. *grin* bleeps, loops and beeps! bleeps, loops and beeps! bleeps, loops and beeps!
Posted 2005/4/22 07:07:58 by justyna
You may have something there; I think I've only heard a DCFC song once, and I didn't know that was what it was; I was in a café when I heard it, and my thoughts were something along the lines of, "Hey, this is really good. Isn't this that Postal Service guy singing?" This may warrant investigation.

And my objection to the music isn't so much the bleeps, the loops, or the beeps... ok, maybe the bleeps a bit. It's the thinness of the sound; I like my electronica to be a little richer in timbre, I think.
Posted 2005/4/22 10:04:14 by Matt
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