Song Essays

Teenager by Steven Kidder, Song #5, "Dysfunctional Hell"

Lots of things come to mind when listening to “Dysfunctional Hell”, one of the darkest songs on “Teenager” and one of the most rich in content and emotion.

I’d like to focus on the music rather than the lyrics, though a thorough exploration of the opposing emotions and once again, at times seemingly tongue-in-cheek (in the darkest of ways: “100 species went extinct today”) treatment is definitely necessary at some point.

This is the longest song on the album and one of my favorite songs in its sonics alone. The production reminds me of the best work of Dave Fridmann, particularly some of the later tracks on The Soft Bulletin by the Flaming Lips, with soft synth pads layered smoothly on top of each other like a fuzzy electric blanket of sound. There is a pulsing, almost breath-like quality to the main synth lines as well, taking on a baritone near-vocal quality as the song progresses. The same familiar sonar-like clicks and hums of the album reappear here, but take on an almost late-era Beatles quality. The whistling at 1:11 is reminiscent of Otis Reading, and perhaps even Paul McCartney, but is also decidedly a Steve Kidder moment, an extremely important one that evokes the “prayer for peace and dignity” towards the end of the song.

There is an aquatic nature in the music of this song as well, at times I felt as though I was ascending and descending in some sort of beautiful submarine of noise, guided by a lost voice but one that ends with hope after each verse and perhaps that is a theme and lesson of this record overall: that even in the worst and hellish of circumstances, we can still anchor ourselves to the present of the here and now and pray for another dawn.

-C