What Makes This Song Rip: Polyphia & "Playing God"
"This is the famous 'Animal Crossing' section" - Tim Henson, "The Making of 'Playing God'"
Last National Poetry Month, we close read some poems. Recently, I’ve been looking at albums I loved in high school. The most recent crop of those turned a little shame-filled and maybe mean. So I thought it might be nice to close-read some songs I really like. Talk about why I think they are cool.
Breaking this into sub-categories—it worked at Cracked, it works for The Line Break (new episode featuring August J. Smith up now), and it’s a good way to organize thoughts. Most chord progressions are four chords, so we’ll do four categories: general vibe, structure, chords, and moments of sublime. Those all make sense at face value right? Thanks, readers, I knew I could trust you.
First up was Chon. Obviously next up is Polyphia.
General Vibe
Spooky! Kinda Spanish! Kinda Brazillian! Nylon strings! I’ve said before that Polyphia is my go-to soundtrack for when I’m writing horror. Honestly, I need more spooky music in my life. I’ve started listening to Fear Before The March Of Flames again. They’re not instrumental tho. The thing about Polyphia is they understand melody, even when “melody” means playing arpeggios demonically. And it’s not one-note spooky, either, thanks to the Animal Crossing section and the fun whistling they got from a guy on Fiverr.
Structure
The opening riff—listen, the reason no one respected Staind or any other nu metal band that played acoustic is because their fingerpicking patterns were fucking boring. This is a fingerpicking pattern that contains 1) multitudinous notes and 2) melody 3) harmonics 4) scale runs. It rules. The verse melody? Are you kidding? Love a diminished chord run! It’s hard to talk about why this is a cool, so let’s listen to Tim make it sound easy.
That harmonized twinkly sliding riff at 1:23? I go nuts for that shit. We put a few of those on weight of an anchor, and eventually Brendan was like “maybe we shouldn’t lean on these as much.” He was right. There aren’t any on the upcoming album. But I like the way those harmonies tickle my brain.
The Animal Crossing section—man, I love bossa. I love playing it on guitar, I love listening to it, I especially love listening to it outside of its original context (no disrespect to João Gilberto or Seu Jorge, of course). And I super love a beat switch. Should we take a Kendrick break? Celebrate beat switches?
Chords
One of Polyphia’s better songs because they lean into playing chords so much. Something like “40OZ” or “Neurotica,” which are excuses for Scottie and Tim to basically solo for a whole song? Those are great, but strumming chords is one of the great pleasures of playing guitar. That first riff is a pretty standard vi - IV - III (if you’re thinking major key, if you’re thinking the minor key, it’s i - VI - V, whatever, it’s E minor - C major7 - B7).
Because I’ve mentioned diminished chords, let’s talk about those. A diminished chord is just four notes that are a minor third apart: B-D-F-Ab in the key of C, or D#-F#-A-C in the key that this song’s in. Playing those in ascending inversions, or just playing an arpeggio? Very fun. In high school, Spencer’s bass instructor called diminished arpeggios “Japanese Pentatonics.” I have no idea if that’s a thing actual people say or if it’s racist (probably the latter, I’m just saying I don’t know, I don’t call diminished arpeggios “Japanese Pentatonics”). That bass teacher was crazy, Spence would come to practice with some wild stories. His impersonation sounded like an old prospector.
When they get to the Animal Crossing section? Ooh baby, we’re playing bossa nova chords! Minor 9ths, minor 6ths, major 7ths, I think they even sneak a 13th in there. I love bossa chords. There are tons of bossa chords on both albums I have coming out this year. They’re like chords within chords, stacking chords. I don’t think humans should be able to sing more than one note at a time but if I could sing bossa chords? It’s like all I would do.
Moments of Sublime
The harmonics in the intro, and the two smacked chords in the intro.
Having both guitars playing the verse line so that there’s a ton of sonic space for both the run down the scale and the ascending diminished chords.
The drums in this song are impeccably tight but still feel human.
Every time the bass plays an octave it feels so controlled and feels like it doesn’t even change the timbre of the music. Clay is a tasteful bass player.
The aforementioned guitar harmonies before the Animal Crossing section.
The Animal Crossing section—any time you get to hear an Em9 (E-G-D-F# in this voicing), it is sublime. A minor 9 chord is just the relative minor root stuck on top of a root chord major 7, and I think that’s neat.
Maybe goes against the idea of moments of sublime—there’s kind of an implied illusion of the sublime, that it happens by accident or because the spirits possess your fingers or something—but the “Making Of” video Tim put up is great.
Maybe the greatest moment of sublime was them deciding to write a whole, full-band song that featured both Scottie and Tim playing nylon the whole time. I hope they do that more on the next album.
WRAP IT UP B
It makes sense that this was the lead single. It’s not my favorite on the album—not even my favorite use of the nylon string on the album—which just tells you how great Remember That You Will Die is. Sentimental about this album, because it came out right around the time I was starting this blog. Wrote a lot of Vine to this album. Hey, put this album on and go read Vine. See if they sync up like Pink Floyd and Dorothy Oz. I bet you’re out of the Pentateuch and learning about witches by the time this song starts.
This song rips.
Sorry you got an email,
Chris