didi - Like Memory Foam
didi’s Like Memory Foam
"I'm tired of hearing it said that democracy doesn't work. Of course it doesn't work. We are supposed to work it."
-Alexander Woollcott, eccentric
While panning a Heliosequence record for being “cheese-y”, Pitchfork critic Brian Howe found himself stuck in an unanswerable argument about whether it is possible to define “cheese.” The line between schmaltz and earnest expression, hamming it up vs glamming it up, is completely within the eye of the beholder. Some people love the gooey blues of yuletime Louie Armstrong because its over the top, some see it as a brilliant subversion of white expectations for black people, and some are like, whatever, if I hear “What a Wonderful World” one more goddamn time I’m going to kill myself. Ultimately, Howe admits that he cannot reconcile the site’s numerical rating system with the fact that every seemingly quantifiable grade given is just an arbitrary digit defined by the reviewer’s personal taste: “Numbers are stately and immutable; in their absolute precision, they limn what is, for all intents and purposes, a personal judgment as an objective, universal one.”
For me, the biggest problem with rating systems, whether stars or mics or tomatoes or decimals, is that they imply a piece of art is more worthwhile the more perfect it is. If thats true, why have I watched Independence Day about 1,000 more times than Citizen Kane? Some records are more interesting because they are a hot mess, veering wildly from career peaks to breathtaking lows.
I want records whose seams show proudly, records where artists try and fail, records where the band breaks up multiple times until the final product contains no work from the original members (also known as “the Fleetwood Mac.”) Give me a sloppy 6.9 over a 9.1 any day!
Which brings us to didi’s Like Memory Foam, a loose cannon record from an intentionally uncapitalized band that soars due to its imperfect, obstinate democracy.
The band grew out of mutual admiration. Guitarist Meg Zakany caught shows in Columbus Ohio’s DIY scene and noticed a constalation of (non-binary) stars playing in disconnected bands across the city. She decided to bring them together and sent an email to guitarist Kevin Bilapka Arbelaez, bassist Leslie Shimizu, and drummer Sheena McGrath proposing an unusual union: the band would have no lead singer, no primary songwriter and no end to the hyphens used to describe their many identities.
Each band member found their way to indie rock from different cultural backgrounds. The group is named after Shimizu’s grandmother who was held in an Idaho internment camp for Japanese during WW2. didi members identify as Mexican, Japanese, and Polish-Colombian, a diversity that makes sense when you consider that Columbus is the only major Ohio city experiencing population growth right now.
To respect each person’s voice, the band enforced a strict democracy for group decision making. Each member’s parts were analyzed by all other members, and reworked by committee until the pieces fit. If you’ve never been in a band this might sound unremarkable...but in reality it is probably the most ambitious thing a group of lefty young people can attempt. I’ll put it this way: people don’t start indie bands about identity politics because they have easy-to-change opinions about the way they should be represented on record.
Most band biographies read like Roman history; litanies littered with ego-fueled arguments and authoritarian coups. Axl Rose axed the “Guns N’”. Jeff Tweedy took the “co” out of Wilco each time he fired a drummer or guitarist. Hell even the Pixies, often held as the quietLOUDquiet forebears of the indie rock movement, are essentially the story of Frank Black’s autocratic tendencies birthing the tragic irony that Black’s boys-club suppression of Kim Deal is antithetical to every thought that is philosophically appealing about modern indie. Like, “Oh My Golly” literally ends with Black mocking Deal by yelling “"I'll kill you, you fucking die!” and then explaining that he was “joking” and just “finishing her part for her.”
But didi did it--democracy that is--through a series of non-profit trust building exercises. The band members memorized each other’s sleeping and eating schedules so they could be aware of where each person’s biology was at when conflicts arose. They recorded conversations between band members about what each of them thought their songs meant and listened back to make sure they were really hearing each other (described as a sort of “self-reflexive song exploder” podcast for their own work.)
Guitarist Bilapka Arbelaez said he brought approaches from his day job as a Spanish-language translator for immigrants seeking healthcare to provide perspective. In that role, he had to constantly think about how to represent the needs of his clients to english speaking healthcare workers in a way that was authentic to all involved. It gave him a chance to zoom out and imagine how artists can help each other translate their ideas when working collaboratively. “A lot of these families that don’t speak English will go to the schools and there aren’t Spanish interpreters. These parents have a big difficulty communicating. My job is to ... open up pathways of communication,” he reflected. “The art that I create wouldn’t be as rich to me if it wasn’t infused with the daily interactions I have with other people.”
So if this is what democracy sounds like (™), would you nominate it for a grammy? Honestly, Like Memory Foam is kind of a mess. But the way it spills thrills. Songs tip over when you least expect them, changing mood from pensive to rocking. Some of these transitions are transcendent, like the finger-tapping breakdown of “circles”, but others are disorienting. didi sing songs in english, spanish and gibberish. The album sounds cacophonous, uneven, joyous and elliptical. Remind you of any countries you know?
Three of the four members sing when, at most, 1.5 of the members should ever be singing. And yet, each singer has a clear personality and perspective that hit even as they miss the notes. Bilapka Arbelaez in particular yelps almost-melodies to the embarrassment of choir teachers everywhere. His lyrics though are so heartfelt that he’s easy to forgive. On “dead tongues” he decries “corpses in suits with outdated ideas/who refuse to relinquish their powers,” while his band mates sing a request to “get some new blood in there.” Fuck yeah!
When the two female vocalists sing, the songs really take off. I love the interplay of “ooo-s” on opener “haru”, which revels in a sour harmony that most chemists would never mix until it blasts off like a baking soda volcano. “moon jelly” is the breathtaking centerpiece of the album, building an epic brick by brick out of a simple echo-ing guitar figure.
In each song, I hear compromise and conflict. One band member clearly loves the silly-putty guitar bends of Built to Spill. One band member emotes like a huge Beach House fan. No one in the band seems to like “choruses” or traditional song structures.Its a process-heavy quagmire that appears to build momentum just to break it down. While the group’s collaborative chamber could use a house sub-committee to investigate what makes a hook catchy, I get the sense that all the members are representing their histories and constituencies. By the simple act of being heard, the band’s multicultural milieu yields truly unique results that I’ve listened to countless times more than other streamlined rock products.
Towards the end of the record, the band slows down and finds a stunning synthesis of their collective work. The whole thing ends with “beached” a dreamy ode where didi weaves counter melodies together over light cymbal splashes and seem--finally--to be playing in unison.
Which makes me wonder: was this mess the thesis all along? Could it be that the band’s radical exercise in non-hierarchical decision making and intercultural exchange is designed to falter? That producing imperfect songs made them better communicators and collaborators? Maybe the band wants us, the listeners, to reset expectations so that we recognize meaningful growth can never be tidy and true integration can never happen without screaming matches and compromise?
Basically, what I’m really trying to say here, is that the record made me feel 7.1.
Love,
Anand
Dec, 2018
