Hostis Hostis
Words matter. Their meanings evolve and they carry less weight than action. But words matter. This is especially true in the practical science of applied songwriting, though perhaps less so in the realm of hitmaking.
There is a particular art to economy of language in a musical setting, communicating as much meaning as possible with the sparest arsenal. Whilst I would like to think this is something I am improving in my own writing, it is certainly not my strongest suit. The closest I have probably come is in a song called The Hard Way, which I like to joke is about Sam Allardyce losing the England job, but more directly addresses a songwriter grappling with the hurt that accompanies mining one’s own interior for material:
I’m gonna do this the hard way/Gonna spend all day thinking of you/I’m gonna do this the hard way/Gonna spend all day just thinking of you
And it hurts to recall/Can’t be worse than feeling nothing at all/Bigger they are, the harder they fall/And I’ve been the biggest fool of them all
I’m gonna do this the right way/Like you say I never do/Yes, I’m gonna do this the right way/And while I try to find it, you’ll find somebody new
And it hurts to recall/Can’t be worse than feeling nothing at all/Bigger they are, the harder they fall/And I’ve been the biggest fool of them all
Musically, it’s quite sparse. Narratively, there’s no optimism. The door is closed, and that’s that. Life is quite often like that, except when it’s not, and you don’t necessarily know the difference even when you’re staring at the door.
This Schrodinger situation offers a useful way of understanding Host, on Josienne Clarke’s album, In All Weather.
📷: Alec Bowman
Sorry
The song opens with a single word and a brief contextual chasm afterward into which questions can flood: Who? To whom? What for?
is the key to a door
This line begins to sketch a realm of possibilities. Someone — it’s still unclear who — owes, or perhaps wields, an apology that can unlock a door. A word to disarm a barrier.
So much of language, and, indeed, so much of music is about implication, expectation, and inference. ‘Sorry’ implies a wrong. ‘Key’ implies a door. ‘Door' implies both an inside and an outside. The music at this point is ambiguous. Hesitant strummings of the guitar to provide a harmonic skeleton upon which to drape the song’s uncertain flesh. We’ve only been given two chords, so we can’t make sense of key or placement within it.
that you will come through
Ah! We now know who carries the apology, as well as the direction of travel, and the position of the song’s narrator. They are inside the door, and the subject of the song is outside the door. ‘Will’ here, instead of ‘would’ eliminates subjunctive scope in favour of the certainty that comes from experience.
Harmonically, with a third chord supplied, and a cultural trope of apologies leading to positive resolutions, we are at this moment of the song’s unfolding able to envisage a positive reunion. Romance is the default setting of song, so it’s only natural to presume the two characters a couple.
Now, before considering the next part of the lyric, let’s take stock of where we’re at: We’ve had three chords; we’ve yet to complete a sentence; we’ve clarified that it is the person being sung to who is outside the door, armed with an apology that can grant them access to the singer.
But wait! There’s more!
We have a title! And there’s also the matter of the seemingly extraneous synth colours which precede “Sorry.” Taken in isolation, the synths don’t communicate much, but Host is not a song in a vacuum. It is part of a carefully organised album, with a trajectory and sonic links between tracks. Those sounds are the residue of If I Didn’t Mind, which is a song illuminating the experience of a coercive and controlling relationship where gaslighting is a central feature.
Bearing this in mind, rational consideration should steer us away from thinking a positive outcome likely, but there is a latent desire for happy endings, and this remains in the air. This psychological hiccup is one of the many factors that can keep someone locked in an abusive relationship, as it were.
The opening chord is B Major, and it’s normal for a song to begin on the tonic chord of the key it’s in, so we might interpret that a positive reading is supported by the brightness of a major key. The next chord is a g-sharp minor chord (after “key to a door" - snicker), and the third is a c-sharp minor chord.
In B Major, that means we have I-vi-ii, which is a perfectly sensible harmonic progression, and one which is well-drilled into many a Western ear. Gershwin’s I Got Rhythm, the changes (harmonies) of which claimed an empire-sized swathe of jazz-inspired tunes, opens with the same three chords. Our aural conditioning might induce us to anticipate that the next chord will be an F-sharp Major/dominant 7th chord, acting as V in the key, and carrying on the Gershwin model. Again, this leaves room for optimism, especially as the chords come slowly, each leaving space in which to wonder. Or worry. A tidy encapsulation of anxiety.
Before we resolve that mystery, the title. Host. It’s a verb. An occupation. An adjective. A noun. With what we know of the song so far, it seems that the notion of hosting a guest (comes from the same root!) might apply here, once an apology has opened the door. As so many of our words do, ‘host' derives from Latin.
Hostis (gen. hostis) is a noun meaning “an enemy of the state” or “a stranger.” In the plural, it means “the enemy.” Now, I realise that we’re not singing in Latin, but that is a much darker spin than the sort of gracious and genteel sense of “hosting” someone offers. Mercifully, there is another Latin word which also became ‘host.’ Hostia (gen. hostiae). Let’s see what softer lexical inspiration this might provide: “sacrifice, offering” or “victim.”
Fuck.
That’s pretty bleak. But we still reside in a land of musical hope, so let’s return to the song itself for a pick-me-up.
and hurt me some more
The lyric dispels any remaining vestiges of optimism, but what makes this moment of the song so captivating is that the harmony that arrives with ‘more’ is wholly unexpected. To my ear, we have a D-sharp dominant-seventh chord (D-sharp, F-double-sharp, A-sharp, C-sharp; all spelled much easier enharmonically, but nevermind!). As jarring as this chord is (along with the jarring conclusion of the lyrical phrase), it actually makes perfect sense if we reinterpret the key and the preceding chords.
If all our hope has been naïve, and we were not in B Major, as previously supposed, but instead in its relative minor, g-sharp, then this chord is the V, or dominant, which we are conditioned to hear as leading back to i (or I). The sound is also striking because three of the four pitches are reached by descending half-step/diminished-second (G-sharp->F-double-sharp; E->D-sharp; B->A-sharp) and the common-tone held (C-sharp) is the seventh of the chord, which is the weakest in terms of polarity, so does little to contribute any stability.
In this harmonic choice, there is an analogue to a misunderstood romantic relationship, whereby a sunny surface masks a darker undercurrent. It is highly evocative, and this mixed sentiment is not clarified at all by the following material, which promptly returns the B Major, casting us into the supposed sunlit uplands of yore. This return also touches upon the push and pull with one’s own involvement in a relationship that is potentially destructive, as there is tension between whatever good and memories there are to grapple with.
All my good deeds
Of interest perhaps only to me, this is the same melodic line that opens the introduction/verses of Stones, on PicaPica’s album Together & Apart, setting “You bring me stones” at the first offering. That song talks about gifts given without consideration for the obligations — often unwanted — that they create. Musically, nothing has changed.
are dust on your desk — (the absolute AGES between the initial d- and the final -sk)
Shiny stone medals/to hang in your chest (again with a delayed conclusion of the word)
These phrases have reiterated that which we have previously heard, but things begin to change significantly in the next breath.
So, maybe if I meant a thing at all/You’d let me know/But you didn’t know me/I’m just a host
At this point of the song, which is the first sign of rebellion against the wannabe apologista marching ominously toward the door between us, we have our first big sonic change, as the hesitant strumming is met with a forceful crash of a heavily distorted and sustained guitar sound underscoring ‘meant.’
Not only does this mark a massive timbral shift, but it also provides our first moment of harmonic departure. The previous phrase ended on the D-sharp (or E-flat, to give the brain a rest) dominant-seventh chord, and the crunching that arrives on ‘meant' is (again, to my ear) an A major-seventh chord. The C-sharp that linked the previous two chords survives yet again, but all the other voices of the harmony migrate again by semitone, and A is the first pitch that doesn’t “belong" to our established order.
The A major-seventh chord moves to a C-sharp minor chord, retaining three voices, then to B Major as a lower neighbour before returning to the C-sharp minor. In effect, as this burst of sound dissipates, we briefly tonicise the iv of our key, which is a common shift at the chorus/B section of a song, so the unease wrought is not devoid of context to keep us onboard.
A host for your dreams/All that you hate/All that you show(?)/All that you ain’t
On ‘dreams' the massive crunch returns, but this time, there’s additional movement within the fabric of sound and it thickens. The same chords, but with additional grinding against their anchoring. An accretion of sound and density that builds and builds before…poof. All of the sound — all of the air is sucked out of the room in a breathless rush.
As a different songwriter, with different tendencies, my expectation on first hearing was that this would be building to a bigger, higher, louder climax. But Clarke is too skilled to do it the easy way, and instead creates an arresting moment by subverting this course.
Just as there is no air to breathe, we are dropped back in at the start, as if nothing has, or could ever change. The same B Major. The same ‘Sorry.’
Sorry/Is the key to a door/That you would come through/And hurt me some more
The lone change is that the certain ‘will' is replaced by a subjunctive ‘would' perhaps to indicate that our protagonist has begun to view an alternate outcome as being conceivable. It concludes with the half cadence on the D-sharp dominant chord, a lingering and unanswered question hanging in the air. It’s no coincidence, I am sure, that this is the midpoint hinge of the album, with six tracks before, and six tracks after.
The preceding track hangs onto the beginning of Host, the last gasp of control. Then, there is a gap before the radically redirected downbeat of Slender, Sad, and Sentimental.
If you needed a hint about the answer to the half cadence’s question, you surely have it. Our protagonist is going to be fine. Just fine.
Track the turning point through three equally stunning videos made by Alec Bowman:
If I Didn’t Mind:
https://youtu.be/flfNvrPD-84
Host:
https://youtu.be/We8pI2XNxi8
Slender, Sad, and Sentimental:
https://youtu.be/3IeL5fuaeek
