Pop Goes the Composer
by Kyle Gann

...Dargel was the most obviously simpatico Beglarian collaborator, for his songs' witty lyrics over sweetly synthesized accompaniments are like hers in texture, though his delivery is more deadpan. A postmodernist looking at the pop song from the outside, he turns irony upside down. Rather than subvert a sincere surface message, he wore all his self-conscious distancing on his sleeve, but underneath you began to suspect he rather heartbreakingly meant what he sang: "The folks down at the plant are lying/they say the smoke won't give you cancer/but all our friends are dying/and this time love is not the answer."...

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Words Belied by Music
by Kyle Gann

Songs of Dargel and Reich Offer a Deceptive Simplicity

I hope I never become an old curmudgeon, reflexively dismissive of the younger generation. The unsettling truth, though, is that I find a lot of twentysomething composers eerily conservative, seemingly unaware of the last 25 years of new music and writing works that could have come from the 1970s or earlier. For one thing, most colleges won't expose them to any music past Boulez and Carter. But that wasn't true at Oberlin, my alma mater, and it's not true either of Corey Dargel and Rob Reich, two composers recently graduated from Oberlin whom I discovered on lecture trips back there, and who teamed up for a May 30 debut at the Knitting Factory.

Reich plays guitar, Dargel plays piano and sings, and their show consisted entirely of songs. Most of these were based on repeated texts so brief that I could take down every wordfor example, "Sometimes I think about leaving"; "I hate myself more than you could imagine"; "Why don't you stay awhile and think about the times we had that weren't as bad as the times we had that were." Reiterated with deadpan insistence (though not unmusically) over upbeat accompaniments in innocent major tonalities, the words ceased to have conventional expressive value and became objects of contemplation. Concentrate on them, though, and you'd miss the subtleties that kept the "repetitions" from ever being the same twice.

In song after song, Reich and Dargel seemed to play phrases of freely different lengths in skewed meters (11/8 was popular) without much listening to each other. But somehow their final phrases ended abruptly together every time, suggesting that some rhythmic sleight of hand was used to keep us from noticing how intricate these seemingly simple songs were. David Garland's early pieces, though more outwardly emotive, have the same rhythmic inventiveness, and those of Frankie Mann (another Oberlin grad, my generation) offer the same deadpan irony. But the more obvious comparison is to the late Arthur Russell, who in the '80s accompanied himself on the cello while singing songs in which cello and voice seemed utterly independent until the unexpectable final note. It's a strong, if rarely celebrated, postminimalist song tradition, and Dargel and Reich bring to it an upbeat yet thoughtful new approach. Let's hope New York hears more of them.

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Corey Dargel and Rob Reich's Debut Recording -- file under popular

by Paul Cox

File under popular, the debut CD by Corey Dargel '01 and Rob Reich '00, is utterly surprising and refreshing. Layers of text, with minimalist accompaniments from synthesizers, harmonium, guitar, and piano, are offered up to the listener on eight tracks of songs, or, to be more precise, poetry music.

Equally minimal is the CD booklet, with its love of the lowercase. Only the song titles (nothing about the composers, little else about the music) and Marianna La Rosa's art bespeaks the musical content. What I find refreshing is the music's eccentric tenor. Imagine two Oberlin Conservatory musicians--one a newly minted graduate, the other nearly-minted--both full of optimism mixed with a sensitivity that reveals an endearing naivet.

Track one, "not about television," opens with a keyboard and vocal ostinato that creates the hypnotic effects of watching too much TV. The text, layered and repeated, is equally mesmerizing: "it wants to make you feel at home/it will hold you/it will love you/it will replace you/it will erase your life." This spinning texture of words has the direct impact of pop music lyrics overlaid with a heady post-minimalist canonic accompaniment. With such a mix of genres, the album title, file under popular, acts as an essential organizational aid for Tower Records employees.

The next track, "two plus two equals four," is a plaintive evocation of the pains of first love. Multiple phrases based on these words, "sometimes you come across a little coldly," constitute the entire song: "a little coldly/sometimes you come/sometimes/you come across/sometimes you come across" The incantation, void of vibrato, adds a tender, bittersweet feel.

Jaded, real-world folks will love "the people around you have nothing to hide" (track three) with its drone, "how to get what you really, really want." And, over this plea, the song provides the ideal answer: "quick apology/to be taken seriously/well meaning friends/loved ones really want a quick/apology/what is it?" These text loops give the work a subconscious logic not at all unlike those repeating self-help tapes intended to make better people out of the people that listen to them. The concluding collage features a smattering of sounds from a wayward accordion, gentle humming, vocalizing, and sampled voices--a fitting coda to the preceding barrage of words.

Track five, "three to six months," brings to the fore the fears of this twenty-something generation: AIDS. The text, "i do not want to get tested/i do not want to know," could not be more straightforward. The inventive intonation between electric guitar and keyboard adds an eerie tension to the horror of these words. The melting whines of the electric guitar depict a surreal sorrow, which abruptly ends the first half of the work. The contrasting second part of "three to six months" is strikingly poetic. It is a story about sexual dynamics, Hollywood, and sexual power issues. The text is one long stream of angst:

we feel so good, so good about ourselves, they, those Hollywood people, think the best way to make someone feel bad about herself is to criticize her sexual performance, tell her, wow, you were so boring compared to other girls and boys ive had, in fact, you make me want to look in a mirror and then, say, wow, you were so lousy in bed, sex must be extremely unimportant to you, and this will hurt her for sure, especially if he attaches an emotional significance to sex, and feels as though her sexual performance is linked in some way to his ability to communicate with other people, but then again, she wouldnt know the first thing about emotions, would he know she wouldnt because hes not in love with herself, in fact, he says, i hate myself more than you could ever imagine, and if you only knew how much in my life, i have loved and lost and given and had taken from me, than maybe you could learn to love me too, but for now, i will just love you and maybe someday that will be enough.

A surreal construction, this is a most interesting combination of psychotherapy and music.

The entire CD is packed with these insightful and direct stories. The voice of the poet is ever present and bolstered by sensitive musical writing. The final four tracks offer static emotional riffs ("anonymous"); a love song that repeats "i think i love you" more than 14 times (I lost count), with each repetition rhythmically augmented until the words phase into one long melismatic line; and a whispered koan written by Yvan Greenberg ("absence").

On a personal note, I met Rob Reich last fall. He expressed an unbridled optimism and energy about the future that was so fresh. Now that I hear this music, which is nothing less than his great optimism distilled into poetic music, I feel lighter and recharged. Thanks.

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