Song of the Day: Zelienople - Ship That Goes Down

It is a simultaneously odd and uplifting thing when one hears a piece of music that not only transports the listener to a certain place in their mind, but transports them to an imagined reality of where and how the music came to be. When I first heard Zelienople, an experimental band who borrow their name from a borough in Pennsylvania but reside in Chicago, Illinois, it was during my most fertile and hungry era of listening to music. The desire to consume and understand music, partially as a need to avoid my responsibilities and realities of being a college student, was an at all time high. The romanticism of unknown sounds from places I'll never visit, coupled with a desire to create my own music, was a recipe for continual search and imagined realities.

I wish to think that I had a kindred spirit with listeners of the past during these times. Hearing countless stories of how one could afford only one or two records, and then would listen to them endlessly and explore every aspect of album art and sound, it seemed similar to buying CDs as a 7th grader from Best Buy (I once saw a copy of Mark Kozelek's Lost Verses Live at my locale, a kind of future specter). This extended even in later years of online sharing, then in the last years before streaming, it seemed that there was still a sense of possession and value in the effort of finding something worthwhile.

So upon hearing Zelinople's 2004 album Sleeper Coach in the middle of this period, it seemed all too perfect a candidate to lose my imagination in. Filled with distant sounds and murky production that shrouds the music in a icy veneer, every second of this record reflects its album art of out-of-focus gray scale nature. But this isn't a depressing record by any means, it's more of a meditative and trance-like one that lets its atmospheric drones and sonic moods sink a listener in until it is near claustrophobic, but paradoxically calming.

The frequencies that shift in the main organ (or is a guitar?) drone in opener "Sea Bastards" sets a wandering mood, one that recalls 70's free jazz in layers of metallic saxophone playing. This directly transitions to the track most indebted to early post-punk in the form of the driving, spaced-out bass in"Softkiller", which then slows to a glacial crawl when it fades in during "Dr. Brilliant", an entirely well-crafted one-two punch of ambient meets slowcore. From there the songs only increase in meditative power and sonic exploration as Zelienople further eschews traditional song structure.

Songs like "Corner Lot" and "Curtains" seemed derived from similar spaces of transcendental searches as those found in Talk Talk's Laughingstock (they would go on to record a version of "The Rainbow" for Spirit of Talk Talk in 2014) and are performed effectively with a sense of emotional urgency. While it may seem easy to overindulge in building opaque after opaque layer, Zelienople never seem capable of doing such a thing; allowing for their travelling soundscapes to be hypnotically alluring.

But the irony is that despite all this powerful and genuine talent in the creation and search of transcendental music, Zeleinople's defining moment on Sleeper Coach is one the simplest and most indebted to pop structure, "Ship That Goes Down". Beginning with some start-up noise/whispers and the warming up of a keyboard, the song immediately has a presence of warmth and cinematic quality that has not been encountered until this moment on the record. Slowly, the bass line enters playing a gentle riff that could be derived from a centuries old lullaby. Then, mournfully, the vocals begin with a survey of the some forgotten moment, a trace memory that isn't fully retrievable:

A dinosaur

After all they did

Over my dead tomb

I will take these shots

All I can’t see and they won’t show me.

Drums and percussion slowly murmur in the background as the vocals continue to recall fading details, details that perhaps need to be remembered in order to prevent some sort of disaster, or a disaster that has already passed but could occur again.

And you called it too

And you starved the woods

By the ship go down

And the lakes are rays
All I can’t see and they won’t show me.

Keyboards and organs now ascend to fever pitch, as if going back in time to witness what was once there, or what may happen if things do not change. Or is it a representation of the ship (the past itself, or the singer himself?) going down, slowly descending into a whirlpool of sound and doomed to being forgotten? As the tones shift and turn, one imagines that this is how such difficult sounds can be so very human and emotive when utilized so expertly.

Finally, the singer reveals (at least in my interpretation) that they were the "dinosaur" returning to some long lost land (in this case, Tennessee) that has changed beyond recognition. It's been so long that these surroundings might as well be a tomb, one where those who stayed behind have walked all over and claimed it as their own. But no one truly owns the surroundings they are a part of, that they grow to be a part of. At the end of the song, the singer realizes the folly and sorrow that for all his past investment, there is no entitlement to be given by the next generation, "All I can't see and they won't show me." Once you leave, you start again just like everyone else.

But there is relief at the end as the song begins to dissolve and erode like the narrator's own memories. A solace generates that even if these experiences cannot be fully translated to the world at large, or even the small world that they inhabited, they will at least live on for the narrator's own comfort and appreciation. All the remains is a sustained drone, the initial spark of remembrance, and then it goes away as quickly as it came to be.

It's a memory

You can count on me.

Afterword:

Despite the fate of many bands that I discovered during my college years, Zelienople not only continues to exist as a unit (their latest full-length released in 2015), but have band members that frequently release albums and musical projects in rapid succession (a favorite being the Greenworks EP). Though as of now, it seems much of the group have grown into their adult lives and will probably never do a tour again. My initial romanticized mystery of this talented group is faded, but the reality of existing in real-time is much more potent and inspiring. A good trade off, I think, and the memories will always be there when needed.