Talking Paul Simon's Rewrite

If you were to ask me to pick one single song as my favourite, I would choose Paul Simon's 'Rewrite', off his 2011 album 'So Beautiful or So What'. I deeply admire how it deftly packs so many layers of music into 3 minutes and 50 seconds. The way the music matches and interprets the lyrics is astounding. And the song came into my life at a moment when I deeply needed it. It sums up my attitude towards life. 

I’ve long wanted to write about the track and parse out its meanings. Maybe I still will. But when my friends Matthew Linder and Zachary Dear invited me as a guest on their podcast Musicale Imperatives and asked which song I wanted to talk about, I knew the answer immediately. Each episode of Musicale Imperatives takes a song, pairs it to a beer, and analysis the song’s music and lyrics. It was the perfect fit.

The finished episode is a long, leisurely look at this song I so deeply admire. We discuss the music, the lyrics, and the stories of why the song speaks to us. Matthew has expertly edited the audio to include clips from the song and Paul Simon’s discography. I hope you enjoy listening and come to appreciate this song as much as I do. And I hope I get invited on more podcasts!

Learn more about Musicale Imperatives and this episode here, listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts through the button below, or stream it here. You can also get a taste for this episode by watching this short clip Matthew put together. 

Want to hear more of @djmelvill? Subscribe link in bio. #paulsimon @deschutesbeer

A post shared by Musicale Imperatives (@musicaleimperatives) on May 2, 2017 at 9:31am PDT

Album Review: Liz Vice's There's A Light

I met Liz before I had ever heard of her music. I was at a concert hall in Portland at 7:30 am on a Sunday morning to observe a local church music team practice when this tall, African-American woman walked in. She was as sleepy eyed as I was, but exuded a passionate warmth as she eagerly told me about the music tour she had just completed. It was full of disasters; her drummer's grandmother died so he had to be flown home mid-tour, her bass player used every excuse to smoke weed and party, and Liz broke a toe climbing the stairs at a slightly decrepit venue. "Were these Chrsitian venues that booked you?" I asked. "Not at all" she replied. "They just invited me to sing my songs and my songs are about Jesus."

Over that week, I had many chances to interact with Liz. She told me stories of her health traumas and their corresponding miracles, her successful television production career that she was quite happy with, and how her music kept persisting in opening doors for her until a full-time career seemed inevitable. And as I met other local creatives, her voice kept appearing on their projects; in an animated children's music video on entomology, at my favorite hip-hop artist's concert, as a background vocalist for a yet-to-be released blues album.

It was only on my train ride back to Canada that I put on her album, There's A Light, for the first time. I barely listened to anything else for the rest of the month. This is a record that feels classic, like something you would expect to find flipping through the gospel racks of dusty vinyl shop. The music is simple - never too complex, yet full of unexpected flourishes that surprise and hook you in for another listen. The band and production is tight, providing the perfect background to Liz's powerful voice, which effortlessly walks the tightrope of both gentle and expressive. The lyrics have a hymn like quality, expressing robust truths about God and His salvation. But like the most well loved hymns, they convey not merely abstract ideas, but the marks of a life wrestled amongst their implications.

Don't sleep on this record. It's equally at home amongst the wooden pews of a church as it is on the stage of blues bar. I'll be playing it for years to come.

Album: There's A Light

Artist: Liz Vice

Year of Release: 2015

Genre: Soul/ Gospel

Stand Out Track: All Must Be Well

New York Morning

A friend recently introduced me to the English band Elbow, who took the name after hearing a character on a BBC show describe it as the loveliest word in the English language. Imagine if Coldplay didn’t care about radio play, spent their evenings with Irish whiskey and watching black and white films, and dealt with breakups by drinking that whiskey alone in basements and writing poetry. Elbow’s music is dark, profane, poetic, and full of humanity. 

One song off their recent album, The Takeoff and Landing of Everything has me particularly thrilled. Not only is it some of the finest songwriting you will hear this year but it also perfectly illustrates the role of the city in the Christian worldview. Click play on the video and I’ll walk you through what I mean.

The song opens with quiet chords, sneaking in like the first light of morning. The lead singer, Guy Garvey, begins by describing the power of ideas and “how there is a big one round the corner.” Right on cue the drums enter like a beam of sunrise. The city of New York is waking up. It’s towers are described in a rapidly rising crescendo, “each pillar post, and painted line, every batter ladder building in this town” singing “a life of proud endeavour and the best that man can be.” Garvey has just described the ambition that is the heart of New York and every urban Rome.

And his crescendo is not over. He continues, without pausing, describing the “million voices” of people that are “planning, drilling, welding, carrying their fingers to the nub.” “Why?” he asks as the musical line meets its ernest and earned peak. “Because they can, they did and do…” Such is the reason for our endeavouring, our modern babel of enterprise, our kingdom building.

But the line doesn’t end here, for if there was just ambition, we humans would be smothered under our own terror. The city holds something greater than achievement and the climax of this line ends by describing it. “Why? Because they can, they did and do so you and I could live together.” The heart and purpose of the city are right here, in home, in family, in love.

The lyrics in the song break as the bass and the piano wind themselves into a melody represent ing the towers “reaching down into the ground” and “stretching up into the sky.” The song than twists the three ideas it has introduced together as the voices and melodies overlap. “Everybody owns the great ideas”, “the desire of the patchwork symphony”, and the striving that is “for love, having come for me”.

The song opened with the morning light and pinnacled in afternoon ambition. It than winds to a restful end, revealing its foundation. “The way [the day] ends depends on if your home. For every soul a pillow and a window please.” In just over five minutes it has perfectly captures what we love and hate about the city but also why we must cherish our urban centres. Here is humanity. Here is the potential for home. And here is grace, family, and people, where the gospel takes root and proves its worth.

I can think of several examples. My first solo trip to London, were the city large, foreign, and exhausting. Yet I stayed with a group of Christian urban monks and because of their fellowship never felt alone. Or just last night, visiting a young couple who recently moved downtown. A car accident on Sunday left them shaken and debilitated so I went to keep them company and was joined by the her younger siblings. These kids live on an acreage and were visibly awed by the dark hot streets towering with cranes, the apartment, ancient and decrepit, and the stories of crime and homelessness surrounding the building. And yet in that home was warmth and sacrifice, family and protection. The heartbeat of life itself.