Some songs drift through one ear and immediately out the other, leaving no lasting impact whatsoever. Others work their way into your ear canal, drilling right into the gray matter of your brain, forever changing you in some way. These songs are transformative, like some sort of transcendental noise.
In this life, the closest I've ever come to some semblance of transcendence has been through music. There are some songs that, when heard in just the right mood at just the right time, slip me into a trance. In these moments, I am unburdened by life’s baggage, thinking of nothing else but the music. When I find these transcendental noises, I listen to them on repeat, day after day, sometimes for weeks at a time. I sing and dance when no one is around, and in these moments, I am euphoric and free. I have yet to replicate this feeling with anything but music. So when a melody perks my ears, I pay attention. I become highly attuned. I sit back and listen closely, because missing transcendental noise feels like a cosmic injustice of the highest order.
I like to think that I have a special ear for music, even though I can’t play an instrument, mostly because I’m too lazy to learn how, but from a young age, I have been highly attuned to transcendental noise. I would say, if I have any talent at all, it's being able to instantly identify a good tune. And this is not just me saying random shit, others have said this about me as well, that I have an almost supernatural knack for identifying incredible music, especially incredible pop music. I grew up immersed in the noise of my parents, primarily 70s and 80s pop, and this has had a profound impact on me. My mom always tells this story about how, when I was a toddler, instead of singing “Wheels on the Bus” or the Barney theme song or ABCs or whatever, I would sing “Roxanne” by The Police. I would be at the YMCA shouting, “ROXANNE, YOU DON’T HAVE TO PUT ON THE RED LIGHT,” imitating Sting’s weird white-reggae accent and everything, and my mom thought this, a three-year-old boy singing about sex workers without the faintest idea that he was singing about sex workers, was hilarious. Youthful ignorance produces a special kind of funny innocence, I guess. And I like to think that this was when it first started, when I first became attuned to the transcendental noise, because I have been forever searching for more ever since. I like to think of myself as a sort of pop music aficionado. In high school, a few kids looked up to me for my unique taste in music, others thought I was pretentious as hell. My favorite bands back then were My Bloody Valentine, The Smiths, The Pastels, Orange Juice, Felt, and Talk Talk. These bands are well-known today but were pretty obscure for the average early-2000s teenager, which gives you an idea of how pretentious I was about music back then. I would scour the early internet for the most obscure bands, and when I found one that I liked, I would make that band my whole identity, changing my clothing and hairstyle and everything, until I found a new obscure band to listen to, at which point I would morph my identity once again, and so on. I still kind of do this today, but now, in my thirties, my self-esteem is more firmly grounded, so I no longer base my self-worth on the music I listen to, because frankly that shit’s stupid as hell. But regardless of all that, I'm still forever searching for transcendental noise, because there’s just nothing else like it in the world.
So naturally, when I find some piece of transcendental noise, I have to share it with the world, and I want to share it in a more meaningful way than just
some really long list. So, with that being said, today I want to tell you about the UK band Autocamper, composers of one such piece of transcendental noise.
I first heard Autocamper a few months ago when I was sitting in my backyard at night, smoking a Lucky Strike, playing The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening on my little Chinese Game Boy SP knockoff, and listening to NPR on my little handheld radio. NPR was doing one of those music blocks where they play lesser-known bands. The DJ put on a song that sounded like it came straight out of the 80s indiepop underground. This song immediately struck me as belonging somewhere on the transcendental-noise spectrum. But, by the time it was over, I had missed the name of the song, so I had to find it online by reverse-engineering the lyrics and humming into the little Google Song Identifier thing on my phone. But eventually, I found it, it was called “Again,” and I listened to it again and again and again, as the song title suggests. But the problem was, Autocamper didn’t have many songs back then, they had only put out a few short EPs, so I forgot about them until one day, a few weeks ago, when browsing AllMusic, I saw they had released a new album,
What Do You Do All Day?, so I bought the compact disc version without a second thought from their Bandcamp store, which came with an MP3 download, and I put those MP3s on my MP3 player, and I have been listening to this album ever since.
At first, I didn’t think the album was all that great. There wasn’t anything quite as good as “Again,” at least not on the first half of the disc, which was kind of disappointing, so I neglected the album for a while. But a few weeks ago, when I was driving in my car, listening to the album again, giving it another chance, I stopped at a red light while the song “Dogsitting” was playing, and this song slipped into one of the most angelic choruses I had ever heard in my life. At that moment, I was hooked. I became highly attuned. I sat back in my seat and paid such close attention that someone honked at me because I had missed the light. Since then, I have probably listened to “Dogsitting” more than a hundred times.
So now, I want to describe this transcendental noise to you, but describing music through written word has always been challenging for me, so please bear with me.
“Dogsitting” starts with a few sloppily strummed chords before switching gears into a frenetic, jangly riff. The bass sneaks in with a tricky lick before settling into a rubbery bounce that perfectly complements the rhythmic jangle. The drums keep time with a simple but highly danceable breakbeat. A squeaky electric organ comes in after the bass settles, functioning as the lead melody in some ways but also kind of doing its own crazy thing. The vocals start at around the 30-second mark, a charming pubescent boy baritone, a mixture of Pastels and Orange Juice, quaint and twee almost. The singer tells us that his old man always told him that “religion was unfounded” and not worth his time, but one day, despite his father’s advice, the singer “gave in to the ringing bells” and ended up “dogsitting for the vicar’s wife,” the latter line being used at the end of the chorus, which is harmonized by female vocals and effortlessly slides in from the verse like some sort of pop ninja, sneaking up on you and kicking your ass. Beginning with the second verse, a delicious ba-ba harmony comes in, complementing the main vocal line and cultivating this sort of heavenly atmosphere that fits perfectly with the subject matter. And the funny thing about “Dogsitting” is that it’s actually full of rhythmic errors. The drummer skips a beat here and there, the bassist misses some notes, almost as if the song was recorded in literally one take, which I'm almost certain it was, but none of this detracts from the song, it actually adds to the charm, makes it feel more heartfelt and alive. Musical wabi-sabi. And like many great pop songs, “Dogsitting” is only two minutes long, literally verse chorus verse chorus stop, which is more than enough time for the song to drill itself into the gray matter of your brain, leaving you wanting more, making you wish the song was an hour long before realizing that you can just make it an hour long yourself by playing it over and over, such is the beauty of recorded music.
All that being said, no amount of flowery language can accurately convey transcendental noise, so maybe you should just listen to the song yourself. And if you like it, which I think you will because it's fucking incredible, then maybe throw the band a few dollars because these guys definitely earned it, as it's not every day that someone just records a piece of transcendental noise in one damn take, and also producing music ain't cheap.
One thing that makes “Dogsitting” extra special to me is that the lyrics seem to have some hidden meaning beyond the words themselves, an almost existential subtext that I can’t quite put my finger on. There’s something here about doubting a religion but then converting to that same religion, as if the narrator is describing some personal transcendence event, a faith-based contact-with-God sort of thing, maybe. But I can't really tell whether the lyrics are telling a story of genuine conversion, offering an ironic commentary on traditional conversion stories, or if the whole “dogsitting for the vicar’s wife” bit is actually just some kind of weird UK sexual innuendo or something. And the singer’s terminally English accent certainly doesn’t help, since I can’t make out all the lyrics, but that’s fine, because I kind of like it that way. The ambiguity only adds to the mystique of the transcendental noise.
Of course, that didn’t stop me from trying to find the lyrics online. But after many failed Google searches, and even checking Autocamper’s Bandcamp page, I came up with nothing. The lyrics simply do not exist online, as far as I can tell.
But I had to know, so you know what I did? I emailed the band.
( email to the band )Maybe they’ll get back to me?
In the meantime, I'll keep an ear out for more transcendental noise.
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reapermum
