Pontchartrain

[rahau]

The pre-release buzz said Pontchartrain was going to be something special, Vienna’s most ambitious work to date. Eerie and haunting. The snippet I heard on the six-minute video provided some tantalizing hints. Then, last Friday, I finally heard it in its entirety. Even with the pre-release buildup, I was totally unprepared.

How to describe it? I don’t know. Brilliant. Harshly beautiful. Emotionally draining. More of a tone poem than a song. Billie Holliday’s Strange Fruit. John Tavener’s Alleluia. Picasso’s Guernica, Abel Gance’s J’Accuse …

I vaguely remember Vienna telling an interviewer she would someday like to try her hand at film scoring. Pontchartrain gives a strong suggestion of what she could do with a film score.

Such powerful imagery in the lyrics. I’m probably way off base here – wouldn’t be the first time – but I can imagine this as a quite different sort of music video. Vienna sitting at a piano on an empty stage. Dissolve to and from news footage of Katrina. I’m willing to bet Bigboy could do a world-class job of editing it all together.

Apologies to Dave Eggers … Pontchartrain truly is "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius."

[shawn]

When I first heard about "Pontchartrain", and saw that it was going to be over six minutes long, I was thinking, "uh oh - maybe she bit off more than she could chew here?" Some subjects, in my opinion, are just too big for any artist to properly tackle. Clearly in the hands of a lesser talent, something like that could wind up being a disaster in its own right.

Turns out I needn't have worried. VT handled it admirably, by focusing on the personal level - two people, separated by "the line" between water and land, victim and survivor, dead and living. It felt like it came in at just the right length, too, a very rare thing in a six minute song. I think she's done it as much justice as any mortal could.

[Reileen]

How to describe it? I don’t know. Brilliant. Harshly beautiful. Emotionally draining. More of a tone poem than a song. Billie Holliday’s Strange Fruit. John Tavener’s Alleluia. Picasso’s Guernica, Abel Gance’s J’Accuse …

It also reminded me of "Everything In Its Right Place" by Radiohead. ^_^;;

[murlough23]

Whoa, freaky. I just listened to the song with headphones on, and noticed an accordion or something in the background after the bridge of the song. Some sort of New Orleans band being echoed back there, or whatever it is. It just adds to the haunting memory of what used to be there before the flood.

[dbeattie]

Whoa, freaky. I just listened to the song with headphones on, and noticed an accordion or something in the background after the bridge of the song. Some sort of New Orleans band being echoed back there, or whatever it is. It just adds to the haunting memory of what used to be there before the flood.

Hey! I just noticed this last night too. My car stereo system is really good (factory Honda), but with all the background noise (engine, road), with all the times I'd listened to the album/this song in my car, I'd never heard it. I was listening last night on my computer, where I have a pro-quality external sound box that I use for my little home sound studio (recording my own music), hooked up to some vintage-1980's wooden-box floor speakers. Everything sounds way better on there than in any other equipment I have access to. And I had copied the whole album onto my computer in uncompressed WAV file format... for future use in transcribing... (so now I can listen to it without hearing the CD-ROM drive whirring). And my computer is silent too, and my hard drive nearly so. So with no other noise in the room and a really good sound converter, the accordion was there in the background and really surprised me! Especially because it's not the first time I've listened to the album in my room with that setup either! I've also noticed some really really quiet high-pitched piano parts elsewhere in the song (near the beginning). Seems like there is a lot in that recording and we may only notice everything upon many repeated listens.

[murlough23]

Seems like there is a lot in that recording and we may only notice everything upon many repeated listens.

I guess it's all reflections of the lives of people who lived in New Orleans and are now buried under those murky waters. Or something.

God, that's really morbid.

[Laura]

Such powerful imagery in the lyrics

I've found that almost all of my favorite songs have this quality. The more vivid an image a song can conjure up in my head, the better I like it. Pontchartrain is now in my top Vienna songs for this reason. I wasn't blown away the first time I heard it... but once I had the lyrics in front of me and I really let my mind start coming up with visuals while listening to it, I fell in love. You can feel the water rippling with the music. It's wonderfully chilling.

[Danielle]

For me, the powerful imagery comes from the instrumentals themselves. Throughout the song, there are little bits and pieces of the highest notes of the piano being played, reminding me of looking up from just below the water, powerless to break the surface.

It's creepy, eerie, atonal, has a lot of subtle bits and pieces that go together in an effective mashed-together way, and I can't stop listening to it.

[Laura]

the powerful imagery comes from the instrumentals themselves

Absolutely. Can't you just feel the water rising throughout the song? Totally, totally creepy.

[Jade]

Wow, after listening to this a few times with headphones I have to agree with many of the sentiments expressed here. I have many of the same feelings about Pontchartrain as I did towards Passage, only amplified manyfold. It has the same eerie, haunting beauty, but it's so much more intricate and complex and polished - a real mark of how Vienna has developed as an artist - and of course, whereas Passage glimpsed the ripples left behind by tragedy striking down one life, Pontchartrain is really like a tidal wave that just builds and builds. (Apologies for the obvious use of a water metaphor here, but it's hard to describe any other way.)

Of course, they have their differences too. Passage was haunting because of the unaccompanied vocals, whereas I agree with Danielle that Pontchartrain is haunting more because of the instrumentation (although the lyrics and vocals are incredibly sad and add to the effect too).

It's an emotionally exhausting song. I don't know if I'll listen to it as frequently as other songs on the album, but it makes me respect Vienna as a musician and an artist even more than I did before.

[sheeba]

This song is brilliant...yes, haunting, eerie and beautiful. As a former disaster relief worker, this song hits home...the despair, the politics that surround all disasters. I've added Pontchartrain to the Wikipedia list of Hurricane Katrina tribute songs.

[eustacia42]

Oh man, is this song well-done.

The first time I listened to it all the way through while driving I was overcome with a depression of sorts, despair? i don't know? and the next few times i listened to the album in my car I had to skip over it because I couldn't bear to listen.

An interesting thing to me is that I can handle pontchartrain better if I don't listen to the song immediately before it on the album. For some reason, the mood of THAT song makes pontchartrain even more dark and haunting... maybe in contrast?

The hardest part of the song for me to listen to is the part immediately after the "o lie" part, where after that moment of (false?) hope, the reality of the situation comes rushing back in. The strings are very effective in this part. The entire song just seems like a musical representation of what that horrible diseased water must have been like (I could go into imagery here, but some of us are probably eating... but you know what I mean...)

One thing I wanted to mention in these ramblings was that I think she might be referring to the city itself, and not a person, when she says "lake pontchartrain will cradle ME and all you left behind"?

Anyway, I could ramble more about this song, but I won't. I have made myself listen to it more lately, because i feel that that might dull its effects on me? horrible, i know. i guess on some level we all want to be numb, especially about awful stuff like katrina.

[eustacia42]

And yes, I too noticed the disconnected bits of zydeco accordion in the song.. thought that was VERY well-done.

[siral]

I LOVE this song. There was this part in the middle of the song wherein it sounded like Enya... yet very Vienna. :> How cool!!!!

[WintermoonSnow]

This song always really moves me, ESPECIALLY when I hear it in concert! It's hauntingly beautiful and the chord changes are so unique and amazing!