By Allesandro Rotondi

After nearly twenty years on the radar, Deerhunter is clearly no slouch on the pop/rock playing field. One tune that particularly caught my ears was the bittersweet “What Happens to People,” off their new album Why Hasn’t Everything Already Disappeared. With a colourful sound, bright guitar and piano tones, and harmoniously consonant chords, this tune comes off as lighthearted on the first listen, but quickly turns into a melancholic croon for answers to the immortal question of human existence and purpose. The song is dynamically split between texturally light guitar and piano playing panned left and right, with drums, bass, and vocals as the centre focus. The thrice-recurring bridge section halts the uptempo groove to a half-time shuffle, entirely at the hands of the drummer, who is the driving force behind the song’s rhythms. The later bridges also find the drums split into two separate tracks of individual playing, layering rolls and fills that thicken the dynamic texture that contrasts the rest of the song.

The instrumentation, playing style, sound, smooth vocals, and especially production, all harken back to the retro days of psychedelic pop, but with a modern twist; like The Zombies’ Odessey and Oracle, coupled with a subtle layer of synthesized keyboard parts that drive the vintage sound into the 21st century. This song could be interpretively taken two ways. Like the yearning lyrics and tone of Bradford Cox’s voice, coupled with the backdrop of radiant and almost-smiling instrumentation, the world does not stop for anyone or their concerns. What happens to people? Perhaps like the tone of the music, the world keeps moving forward and eventually forgets all about you. In another light, the instrumentation reassures the curiosity and doubtfulness of the vocals and lyrics, as though the world comes to remind you at times of pending grief that everything will once again be okay in time. The striking piano melodies that tinker between the breaks in the verses’ vocals allude to this possibility. “Take a step back, and figure it out,” Cox sings. It might all be rhetorical, but perhaps eventually we just may figure it out.

Nirvana, “The Man Who Sold the World” (Unplugged, 1994)

By Allesandro Rotondi

And there they were, unplugged and stripped down as most audiences had never heard them before. On the stage of MTV’s Unplugged, Nirvana performed an intimate show for fans that were blatantly unaware that in a few months the band would be no more, due to the tragic and untimely death of frontman Kurt Cobain. With “The Man Who Sold the World,” a David Bowie cover released as a leading single to this posthumous live album, it is easy to assume the death of Cobain had a hand in the song’s popularity. However, it likely something less. Or perhaps more.

This performance, captured live with microphone squeals and guitar booboos intact, allowed an intimate insight into the heart of the band, Kurt, and most of all, the music. Famous for the 90’s grunge sound of distorted crunch guitars, bar chords and angst-driven drum beats, this was a chance for acoustic guitars and bass, drums hit with bamboo sticks, and even a guest cellist.

“The Man Who Sold the World” has nothing to hide. It is a performance with heart on sleeve, and perhaps that was the appeal to heartbroken fans and music lovers crooning for a chance to get inside the head of their fallen hero. Twenty-five years later, with the death of David Bowie still somewhat fresh on the radar, this song and performance is still as relevant as ever. Perhaps even without context, this tune comes off with an airy and almost eerie vibe, as though for three minutes and forty seconds, you have actually come face to face with the man who sold the world. As Cobain sings lines like “I must have died, a long long time ago,” accompanied by a haunting and unwavering three-note guitar melody, it is difficult not to think that Kurt Cobain, a man who sold the world, may actually be singing about himself.

See below to watch the performance, recorded live off the floor: