“Deceptacon” – Le Tigre
(Words/music: Sadie Benning, Johanna Fateman, and Kathleen Hanna, available on Le Tigre, Mr. Lady 1999)
Rock music thrives on repetition to the point that much of the terminology relates to how certain elements repeat. “Groove” describes the repetition of a rhythm (or in more complex cases the stressed parts of the measure) and “riff” describes a repeated instrumental figure. Then there’s the verse/chorus/bridge/coda “road map” that indicates when certain harmonies and chord changes return. Even the term “hook” refers to a melody that repeats and therefore “hooks” the listener back into the song. While variety has a role (fans of improvisation can exhale), repetition anchors the music more than we often realize.
Targeting in to the repetition in “Deceptacon” feels natural. Whether keying on the dance rhythms, the garage rock riff, or Kathleen Hanna’s do-wop quotes, many parts of the song return several times over the track’s three minutes. However, a less obvious repetition flows through the rest of Hanna’s lyrics. While she sometimes repeats lines and phrases, Hanna repeats certain words scattered through a couple lines. For example, at the end of the second verse, Hanna uses “want” three times in a single line (“You want what you want but you don’t want to be”). She does this with “I’m” in the first verse and, to a lesser extent, “walk” in the third verse (not to mention the constant peppering of “you” and “your”). It gives her vocals, already aggressively delivered, and added rhythmic edge – the “want” line in verse two in particular creates a polyrhythm with the rest of the track. Hanna also uses rhyme (particularly internal rhymes rather than end of line “couplet” rhymes) to create this rhythmic disruption, but it’s her repeated words that cut right to the song’s rhythmic core.More on Le Tigre: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm
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hypem: somesongsconsidered: “Deceptacon” – Le Tigre...
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