19 - Blackest Eyes (Porcupine Tree)

Swim with me into your blackest eyes. The perfect intro to the classic "In Absentia" released in 2002. The production is top notch and it's crafted impeccably well. Dive into the musical elements!

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Alright, guys, I'm gonna try incorporating some video into this podcast. So let's get started with Blackest Eyes by Porcupine Tree. Beautiful song, amazing band. Steven Wilson is incredibly talented, and he's always working with the best musicians. I mean, Gavin Harrison is an absolute monster drummer. But for this episode, I'm gonna focus mostly on the harmony, you know, the melody and the guitar parts. So the it's I mean drop D, okay? So drop D, and then so we start with a riff. It's like just octaves, it's just an octave. Now remember this riff because he brings it back later. Like the he'll talk about it, but in the middle of the song, he brings back that rhythm. And then finally, when it explodes, we got so this is a D minor riff, but he instantly breaks like the D minor rule when he goes right, that's the major seven. That's the that's C sharp right though, right there. So he's going down chromatics, right? Just half steps. D the major seven to the minor seven. So love that beautiful riff, and it's in four-four. The timing is crazy. Watch one, two, here we go. Now in the second half of the riff, it goes to five or ten, however you want to count it. When it goes Look at that. Like you could just argue that's in ten-four. Super cool. And during that pause right there, it's in four-four, and then the verse is in four-four. Very cool, but I just love the let me just do Yeah. Oh, I like such clever like placement of notes, but that's just going up like the blues notes, right? Open, that's the root to third to fourth, to flat fifth, which is the tritone, like the blues note, like like we got smoke on the water, right? It's like climbing up the blues, and then it's like going down like a very cool way. And then right here, now we go to the relative major. We go to F, right? But it's like so nice and like mysterious and ethereal sounding. And and I got the lyrics right here. I I thought the lyrics are great. Okay, so these chords are really nice because we got F major seven over C, so and that just means like you could say that's F major seven second inversion. So if you just take F major seven like this, right? Now the fifth of this chord is C. And when you put that in the bottom, that's just called second inversion. Because now we have C in the bottom, it kind of thickens things up more. Mother sings a and then we go to the D minor, really nice. Mother sings a lullaby to a child. Nice lift there with D, but instead of playing D major, he makes a D sus too. Very Steven Wilson, very like Pink Floyd. I mean, so many bands like do do this, but I feel like Steve Stephen Wilson does it a lot. And that just means that you're replacing the third, which is like the happy note, you're replacing that with the second. So that becomes D suspended too. Sounds like very like mystical, right? Okay, so we got back to F major seven over C. Mana sings a lullaby to a child. Sometime in the future the boy goes wild. That's really nice we got, because we got D sus 2, right? To that's like D major seven. Really nice. Sus 2, I guess. Nice chromatic fall, right? The B string, right? Where third fret, second fret, and then back to the first fret for the F major seven over C. And all his nerves are feeling some kind of energy. It's so beautiful. Second half of the verse. And then this line always stuck with me like when I was a teenager, right? It's so erotic when you're makeup run. And there's an interesting vocal layer going on in the verse. If you really listen close, there was like a whisper kind of track going like a mother, there's like a speaking like a mother sings like a to a child. And you really hear it when he goes, Make up run. Really listen for it. It's a nice little like element they added there in their production. Um so he goes, uh, it's so erotic when your makeup runs. And then we jump to the five chord, really nice. We go to A major. I got wiring loose inside my head. That's the minor too. That goes back to E minor, right? I got wiring loose, I got wiring loose inside my head. I got books that I never ever read. I got secrets in my garden shed. I got a scar where all my urges bled. It's so such a nice, catchy, it almost sounds like a nursery rhyme, right? Except the lyrics, right? But it's very, very catchy. It must be the most it must be the catchiest chorus in the album, I'd probably say. I got secrets in my garden shed, I got a scar where all my urges bled. And then it I got people underneath my bed, I got a place where all my dreams are dead. And now here we go to two new chords, okay? We go to the six. Swim with me into your blackest eye. So when anytime you go from the six to the seven, you want so bad to go to D minor, right? To like the minor one. Because it charges up. It's like I can feel it coming in the at night, right? Right? So he's kind of like doing that. He's rising from the second because he goes, swim with me into your blackest eye. And this is why I love the podcast because I can really just dive into like the song instead of like trying to cram everything into three minutes. Um, but right, instead of going back to the which he totally could have done that, but he keeps the acoustic vibe and he does like this one acoustic transition that is only happens once in the song. He goes, swim with me into he probably makes that like a C9 instead of C major, probably does C9 into your blackiest right here. Nice, nice little transition. I love like the movement, the strumming. And then here he goes, a few minutes with me inside my van. I didn't know he said that inside my van. A few minutes with me inside my van should be so beautiful if we can. I'm feeling something taken over me. And then they only do one half, like the the the length of verse two is half of verse one, right? And then back to the second chorus. I got wiring loose inside my head. I got books that I never ever read. I'm gonna fast forward a little bit. Swim with me into your blackest eye. Now we go to the the heavy riff, right? But check it out. Uh I'll uh call back to the intro riff of the And I love how he interrupts the riff, right? And he goes back to the very, very intro riff, the Now that's the intro riff, that's in the beginning of the song, right? He goes. It's so good, it's such a headbanging moment. And then I love that, it's a chromatic rise just now. This the synth chords here, he's just playing the verse chord. So like a verse is like happening right here. And then we go to the chorus, right? But it's stripped down. I got wiring loose inside my head, I got books that I never ever read. I got secrets in my garden shed. I got a scar well on where all my urges bled. I got people, I love I got people underneath my bed. Like, oh, it's such such great, great lyrics. I got people underneath my bed, I got a place where all my dreams are dead, and then like a wall of harmonies, right? Swim with me into your blackest and Gavin Harrison's like snare roll so good. It just flows so naturally. Beautiful ending, too, right? God, the song is so, so great. It's relatively straightforward, apart from all the crazy uh time signatures that are going on, right? Like that change from 4-4 to 10-4 or 5-4 is very, very cool. I should definitely get to some more porcupine tree. But thanks for watching and listening, guys. I'm glad I can start incorporating some more video in this. I just opened up a new program called Private Breakdown Sessions. So if you want to work on your musicianship with me and break down songs together, I offer this music coaching program. So just check out learn.damberakuda.com slash sessions, or you can check the link in my bio. Thanks for listening, guys, and I'll see you guys in the next episode.