Soul Asylum - Cartoon
While I will admit that Hang Time is not my favorite album by Soul Asylum (that honor goes to its immediate predecessor, While You Were Out), “Cartoon” is my favorite of their songs. Unlike the great majority of Soul Asylum songs, “Cartoon” is written and sung by rhythm guitarist Dan Murphy, rather than lead guitarist and usual vocalist Dave Pirner. The fact that it was their first moderately successful single was somewhat frustrating to Pirner, or so he said in an MTV interview I remember from right before they blew up. I don’t think he meant it all that seriously, though. Really, if you didn’t know that Murphy was singing lead, you might not even notice the difference. His voice is slightly thinner and higher than Pirner’s, but not really all that distinct from it. Additionally, Pirner sings a lower harmony to Murphy’s vocal that runs through at least 90% of the song. Even though he’s mixed more quietly than Murphy, his voice is still audible. So really, despite songwriting credit, “Cartoon” isn’t notably different in sound from any other Soul Asylum song.
That said, I definitely think it’s better. I like a lot of Soul Asylum’s work, and own several of their albums, but in my experience, even their best work is frustratingly inconsistent. Hang Time locates “Cartoon” and the album’s other single, “Sometime To Return,” right next to each other halfway through side one. I’ve tried lately, while driving around with a copy of the tape in my car, to listen to the entire album, but I’m just not able to do it. Within the first 15 seconds of “Beggars And Choosers,” I’m already reaching for the rewind button. Generally I just play “Sometime To Return” and “Cartoon” over and over about half a dozen times, and then take the tape out. I may be unjustly neglecting other good songs on the album that I’ve either never given a chance or used to like but have forgotten about. However, it’s starting to look like I’ll never find out.
Dan Murphy’s lyrics for “Cartoon” are more emotionally evocative than narratively coherent. It’s a breakup song, but not one written right after the relationship ended. Instead, the narrator of the song is looking back at something that’s ended quite awhile ago that he can’t seem to shake. “Everybody’s looking after me,” Murphy sings in the song’s first line, letting us know that he’s not doing fine on his own these days. This state of being is one that I seem to drift into pretty often. I hate to admit it, because it’s kind of embarrassing, but a lot of the time I do need my friends to check up on me regularly. When I’m left alone for too long, my thoughts fall into unhealthy patterns that have been with me for too long. “If I’m dragging by some coat tail I can’t see, it’s too dark,” Murphy sings next, describing that forlorn condition that occurs when one is too depressed to do more than drift through life. Sometimes when I’m feeling bad I’ll leave the house to go eat or run an errand or something and the next thing I know, I’ve been driving around aimlessly for hours, with not real motivation to complete the task at hand. Murphy knows how that goes, but he hasn’t given up yet. “I’ve got to know what’s got the best of me.”
Murphy is singing all of this over music that sounds much more simple than it is. “Cartoon“‘s verses are complex, intricately structured collections of riffs that vary in terms of notes and amounts of chords used in each one. These riffs proceed in a cyclical fashion, with the members of Soul Asylum moving from one to another and eventually cycling back around to the first one at about the same time that Murphy and Pirner finish singing a four-line verse. The placement of riffs with different complexity and feel underneath each line causes the emotional resonance of each lyric to stand out amongst the words surrounding them. Every line feels slightly different. For example, when Murphy sings “I can’t see, it’s too dark” in the first verse, the notes played by guitars and bass behind him are changing twice as frequently as they have been throughout the rest of the verse, and they are plodding steadily downward. The “dragging by some coat tail” reference from the previous line is echoed musically here, as we hear the singer’s downward spiral echoed in the music over which he sings.
By contrast, the beginning of each new verse gives a momentary uplift. There are two verses for every chorus in “Cartoon,” and as Murphy finishes the line “I’ve got to know what’s got the best of me,” the riff circles back around to the beginning, and he and Pirner harmonize on the next line, “When the circus that you left goes on parade,” with a deceptive lift to their voices. “In those bleacher seats so far in your charade, it’s too far, but I’m feeling like I don’t dare look away.” This verse is not nearly as easy to extract sense from, and while it contains some pretty great imagery, in the end, I’m not sure exactly what it means. The bit at the end about not daring to look away once again evokes a narrator unable to move on, but if it’s the narrator who hasn’t moved on, then why is he part of the circus that’s going on parade, while the unrequited object of his affection is not? I never said it’d make sense 100% of the time, folks.
Regardless, it is time for the chorus, and here Soul Asylum balance out the subtle complexities of the riffing on the verses by carrying the same riffs over into the chorus. From the point of view of a guitar player, the song is a succession of verses, broken up only by the half-speed intro riff which also serves as a bridge at several points in the song. The vocals create a hook that the listener identifies as a chorus, though, not only through the repetition of some of the lyrics in said chorus, but because of the passion that Murphy puts into singing it. “Did it almost make you feel like something’s gotta happen soon?” he sings at the top of his voice. While the phrase “did it almost make you feel” is surely grammatically incorrect in some manner I don’t quite understand, it also hits home emotionally, especially when it’s followed with the line, “…when you wake up feeling lost in your own room.” In fact, I’ve been walking around in the state described here for months. Maybe it’s just me, but there’ve been several times over the course of my life where the rut I was in started to feel like it was coming to an end. I could sense some change right around the corner, and while I couldn’t ever attribute that feeling to any particular source, I somehow knew it was coming. That feeling never failed me until now. I’ve been feeling that way for at least a year now, maybe longer, and yet nothing changes. “Something’s gotta happen soon” sounds like a phrase I’d mumble under my breath while lying in my bed at night with the lights off, staring at the ceiling and wondering why I can’t sleep.
At this point in the song, it’s unclear based on the lyrics which party in this deceased relationship is worse off, at least from the point of view of the narrator. Murphy sings lines in the third verse that obfuscate the situation even further: “If you think we’ll rise above you better look around. You’ll see there’s a mountain made of sand crumbling under me.” There are plenty of points in this song where he refers to himself, or to the other person the song is about, but these lines inclde the only use of the word “we” in the entire song. These lines also cast the most doubt on my impression of the song’s overall point. When I hear the narrator speaking of rising above as an activity the couple will do together, it makes me think that this song is actually about a relationship that’s still occurring. But maybe that all fits together too. Relationships that are serious enough to make this sort of strong, lingering impression on the people that were part of them can also hang on in some half-dead form, pulling people who’ve been considering themselves single for months back together for one last hookup. And then another. And these hookups are the ones that can re-ignite a small ember of hope in the hearts of those who didn’t want the relationships to end in the first place, enough to bring a night’s worth of optimism and happy moods. But in the morning, rationality takes over and those hopes are usually dashed. The person walks away from the encounter wondering why they let it happen, even if deep down they know they’d never have been able to resist. This is the mountain made of sand Murphy sings about in “Cartoon”—those lingering hopes that will never support the foundation for a continued relationship; lingering hopes that are surely fading away even as these frustrating conversations about the future and the past take place. Maybe that’s what “Cartoon” ultimately is—one side of a conversation, perhaps over a phone line late at night, or sitting in a darkened room, both partners half dressed in the aftermath of an ill-advised hookup. The headlights of passing cars trace outlines that move slowly through the room. “Maybe I’m chasing shadows on your wall,” Murphy sings. “They loom so large, but make me feel so small, somehow, when you’re chasing your own tail, spinning your own wheels.” While it usually makes sense, the change from first to second person in these lines feels deceptive to me. Maybe the narrator is trying to tell the person he’s talking to that they are the ones who are stuck in a rut, but he knows it’s at least as true of himself.
The half-speed bridge that comes between the end of the fourth verse and the second chorus is not instrumental, like the other bridges have been. Both Murphy and Pirner sing on it, and indeed, it’s the only time in the song that the two of them sing different lyrics. They sing overtop of each other, heedless of the words the other is speaking, and in their clashing voices we hear the echoes of a couple on the outs, trying to talk through their disagreements but so close to the end of their own ropes that they have ceased to listen to each other or even wait for their turns to speak. It’s hard to make out what either Pirner or Murphy is singing here—each steps on the other’s lines, and you may pick up a word here or a phrase there, but putting the words together as a whole, figuring out every word that each of them has said and assigning them to the proper speaker, is nearly impossible. This evocative moment, set to a mournful melody that flows much more slowly than the rest of this relatively uptempo song, is the point at which the problems are clearly delineated. Despite the lack of explanation, despite the song’s use of abstraction and metaphor to continually obscure the points it’s making, everything becomes clear during this bridge. The fact that the chorus that follows it is the emotional climax of the song only makes it more poignant.
As the bridge ends, drummer Grant Young plays a quick fill to bring the rest of the band back up to speed, and the slam into the chorus with both Murphy and Pirner singing with raw emotion in their voices. “Did it almost make you feel like something’s gotta happen soon?” they ask again, but this time follow it with a new line: “You’re in the movies now; I’m in your cartoon.” This is a metaphorical invocation of a very real emotion; the realization has come that the other person in the conversation is taking their own emotions far more seriously than you are. The plot to their personal life story has taken on a deep emotional resonance in their mind, but your emotions have been reduced to flat, two-dimensional images that are crudely drawn and are unable to inspire empathy. When Murphy sings “I’m in your cartoon,” he’s aiming for bitter sarcasm, hoping to draw a reaction from a partner to whom his emotions once meant a lot. She’s never going to feel that way about him again, though, and when his backhanded jab doesn’t connect, he finally realizes this. The song heads into one last verse as he declares, “There’s a ringing in my ears that’s heaven-sent. There’s a beast out on the ruins, some broken-down lover’s lament. It goes on and on but it won’t go away.” Only now, with all of the words spoken, does Murphy take a solo, replicating that lover’s lament that the narrator is hearing, in his mind if not with his actual ears. If he were honest with himself, he’d probably admit that that ruined beast howling his sorrows to the lonely moon is just a projection from inside his own mind. All he’s hearing are the cars rolling by the window.
Once the solo ends, the song starts slowing down, first switching to one last half-speed bridge, then even that riff slowing down and coming apart, as bassist Karl Mueller stops playing, and Dave Pirner lets his guitar feed back rather than continuing to play any more notes. But Murphy is still picking out a skeletal version of the melody, which barely makes itself heard above Pirner’s feedback. And even when all of the rhythm of the song has stopped, Grant Young continues playing a soft fill on his hi-hat, which fades out along with the feedback. The song has an ending, and the band could have played it in a way that makes clear that the song comes to a definite ending. Instead, though, they draw it out, little pieces of it hanging around even as the engineer brings down the faders. We eventually hear nothing but silence, but we know that little pieces of the song lingered on even after we couldn’t hear it anymore. It’s the perfect way to sum up a song about suffering through the extended death pangs of a relationship that refuses to die.
