256. "Rhiannon" by Fleetwood Mac

The origin of the Rhiannon in this song is both pretty simple and pretty deep. Simply, Stevie Nicks read a novel on a long flight, and it included reference to a character named Rhiannon. She thought the name beautiful and set about writing a song using it, a song that she apparently completed in about ten minutes. She wrote it on her own, months before joining Fleetwood Mac.

She had no real idea that the Rhiannon in the novel was based on the Rhiannon in a world heritage set of stories written in Middle Welsh called The Mabinogion. They are the earliest known works of prose in British literature, and their complexity and character archetypes went on to influence J.R.R. Tolkein in his writing of the impenetrable Silmarillion.

Rhiannon in these tales is a goddess figure, a powerful childless queen archetype associated with swift horses. Daenerys Targaryen seems an apt successor.

There are very few pop radio lyrics that sliver into my brain, but even as a kid, I pondered some of these. The evocative similes used to describe Rhiannon deserve attention:

"Rhiannon rings like a bell through the night"

And oh man, I love this one especially:

"She is like a cat in the dark
And then she is the darkness"

Great language. 

In the music, I don't know how someone ever was just walking around one day and daydreamed up such a combination of vocals, guitar part, and melodic bassline as in this song. It's all so engrossing. By the time of the long vocal harmonies, you are a prisoner.

The voice of Stevie Nicks, prime Stevie Nicks, is elemental. This is what rock stars are for, to make sure we all know that transcendence walks among us.

If my earlier post about "Reelin' In the Years" talked about the freedom-granting power of the major key in that song, "Rhiannon" does everything it can for the shrouding, closure-granting power of the minor key. Be the cat in the dark and then the darkness.

255. "Rental Car" by Beck

If you've ever asked yourself "What kind of music does Beck write?" this is not the song that will give you the answer. 

This is a song without a type, pure whimsy - heavy guitars switching to doo-wop, a verse of almost '60s classical elegance if not for a chugging bass/drum accompaniment, a chorus that is simply dance music with harpsichord going on pure baroque runs. The middle breakdown is brutal shredding metal that pops on a dime into malt-shop vocal harmony, before the two elements meld in a thrilling unholy alliance.

Absolutely essential whimsical Beck bravado, one if his greatest pieces.

And by the way, the metaphor of a rental car is about the impermanence of human life. So there's that.

254. "Reelin' In the Years" by Steely Dan

That compact shuffle beat combined with the flowing piano progression in the verse are completely addicting to me.

But the guitars: The guitar work in this song is some of the best work ever put together. The compressed fuzz tone of the guitar is instantly recognizable. The imagination of the soloing throughout is a little added benefit of life on Earth.

The resplendent harmony everywhere is a monument to this great art: Vocal harmonies in the chorus, guitar harmonies in the instrumentals.

Major keys will be your release.

253. "Redefine" by Incubus

The Incubus album S.C.I.E.N.C.E. accomplished something that very few albums ever have - it created a feeling of leering alienation in me. It was a kind of technical and technological advancement in music that made me feel out of date, missing something. Radiohead's Kid A pulled this off as well. It was a time for reaching into the subconscious for new sounds, creating and releasing things before they were even fully understood, something highly risky and not something I see much of these days, when many musicians seem, paraphrasing Han Solo, to have been told the odds.

"Redefine" is the cooking opening track from that album. Heavy music was still in its renaissance, with groups such as Incubus and 311 taking the rap element to its outer limits before the formula was ultimately dissected and compromised.

The rhythmic complexity in every measure of this song is brain-busting, but the chorus vocal is one of my favorite rhythmic inventions, all over the beat, flourishing in machine-gun runs of singing originality.

The middle break is a bassist's dream. And as a drummer, I can tell you what absolute fun it is to take part in. It's a sequence of locked-in musical trance, just tunnel-visioned, in the zone, ecstatic. 

The most exhausted I ever felt after a show was after seeing Incubus.

252. "Ready to Start" by Arcade Fire

When your mind is open to all possibilities, informed but no longer boxed in by lessons and rote thought, you are ready to start.

The song has its own evidence of this. Most all rock and pop songs will only go through two verses before changing things up in some way. This song goes an audacious extra third consecutive verse before adding a development. It disregards one of the rote lessons of songcraft, in a bold and rewarding way.

This song also has two great instances of two-note combinations that infect the brain in different ways.

First, the song opens with a two-note half-step combo that sounds highly dissonant, considering that an underlying drone note doubles one of the notes in the two-note combo, leaving the other note a half-step up sounding extra strange. Then the full music starts and provides the complete context of where the two-note combo fits. It's a great musical mind trip, playing on the clash of notes to create a unique feel. The part aptly returns in the third verse.

The second combo is far more traditionally harmonic. It's the recurring two-note full-step motif that occurs in the verses as a guitar cue, fitting in as a stylish finish to the verse chord sequence. It occurs again in the chorus as the key vocal line "I would." It's about as strong a two-note cadence as there can be, the seven up to the one, but its deeply serous quality and harmonic conformity make it an exercise in sincere, classical beauty as opposed to the discord of the first example.

Both tactics can be issued forth, the disruptive and the traditional.

In general, the layering and orchestration of instruments in this song are completely outstanding. And the warbly vocalist Win Butler shows why he is one of my favorites currently working.