Today, I can’t stop listening to “Red Light District” by Midi Matilda.
I found out about them when I was checking out some upcoming concerts at local San Francisco venues, specifically the Rickshaw Stop. They’re playing a Popscene night on June 7. Anyway, they have a bunch of their songs available on a “Name Your Own Price” basis on their Bandcamp page, which is how I ended up having “Red Light District” shuffle on this morning.
I’m pretty sure that this is about a prostitute or a metaphor about a woman loving you the way a prostitute does. [Wow, great job at such low-level analysis… Right?]
Anyway, the singer initially sounded like the guy from the Arctic Monkeys, and the sound was very contradictorily simultaneously mellow and upbeat (the singing is slow tempoed and echo-y while the drum beats are are quick but not New Order quick) and layered with instruments’ tempos in between similar to Malbec or “Sweet Disposition” by The Temper Trap.
I was hooked by the tempo and Malbec-indie-electro-rock style, but then I fell in love with the “I can be a lover. Hold me until the next one, at least. Love me when the ___ goes” part. [I hate that my favorite part of the song isn’t even listed in the lyrics.]
Then again, [MEDIA STUDIES GEEK ANALYSIS WARNING] it might be all biased because of what’s currently on my mind right now: rebound flings. And then we end up in this situation where you have to consider your state as a human being (history, knowledge, emotions, life experiences acquired, experiences with other similar media texts, sobriety,etc.) when you “have a conversation with” (as Levina would say) a media text and then how your interpretations would have been different if you had experienced that same exact media text in some other point of your life. I think it might’ve been a Barthes or a Baudrillard text that mentions how you never experience a text the same exact way because of developments and changes in your life – therefore, your interpretations really change between readings and therefore there can be and are almost an infinite number of interpretations and meanings within a text. Please correct me if I’m wrong. That was a very quickly written and basic explanation of what the theorist wrote, so please forgive me fro any inaccuracies.
As my friend Lara (or was it Rochelle???) would say, Sparknotes Version: Listen to Midi Matilda’s “Red Light District” and check them out on June 7 if you’re in the Bay Area because they’re pretty awesome.
5/29/12 – Correction: After checking some sites, I found out from Music is What Feelings Sound Like, that the lyrics I referenced are “I could be your lover; hold me till the next one at least. Love me when the rains come.” THANK YOU FOR CLEARING THAT UP! I’m glad I mostly heard that right and finally know what that blank was. Makes the song even better 🙂
Also – I haven’t been able to read many posts on the Music is What Feelings Sound Like blog yet, but I’m excited to read more because I really think his/her/their (?) mission of “recreating” that “amazing feeling you felt the last time you heard a new song that changed your life” for all their readers is really awesome! I like his/her/their analyses and am excited to find out about a lot of new bands and tracks from their blog!