H. Jon Benjamin's I Can't Play Piano, Pt. 1

Little secret: I decide the songs of the week ahead of time. Sometimes I improvise, but largely it stays the same.

I just discovered the 2015 album "Well, I Should Have..." by H. Jon Benjamin, a comedian most known for being the voice of Bojack Horseman, Bob Belcher, Sterling Archer, lots of animated stuff. I really want to talk about this album. I love this album. This may be my favorite album of 2015. What did I initially put?... High Risk's "High Risk"?, OK, that's a strong contender, so I'll have to think about it.

Here's the thing: Benjamin can't play piano. That's not me judging him: he literally states he cannot play piano. The album is subtitled: "Learned How To Play Piano". He doesn't even like jazz.

"I Can't Play Piano, Pt. 1" is swinging as hell. These musicians are really good. But your guts are tense because you're waiting for Benjamin's piano. You are laughing more and more the longer the song goes without him. When it comes, in the most pathetic, half-stutter, you just die. You can't recover.

Here's the thing though: he's not bad. As others have pointed out, he's not half assing it, and he understands the sense of music, or how music should harmonize.

The weird part is that he should fail completely. This is where we come to the weird conversation of jazz, where a large part of its development comes from artists deliberately making music that doesn't swing, doesn't flow. The artists display to you the physical struggle of making the music, thus showing the struggles of being human in these modern times. Coltrane's "Ascension" is one of the pinnacles of this. Sun Ra's Arkestra use disharmony to show the sinister side of the human mind in "Magic City". Peter Brötzmann renders sheer violence in "Machine Gun". We have arrived at a time in human society where some artists felt it wasn't appropriate to dance, or, rather, to stop grooving to our indulgences and to start dancing to our better, bigger sides, as virtue and beauty. In my opinion, this is why jazz is one of the great musical art forms, as the audience finds pleasure less in its danceability - though it is very danceable! - and more in engaging in its meaning. This can only be accomplished by jazz's ability to bring the listener, and the artist, closer to meaning than a great number of other genres.

Thus, though Benjamin can't play, he...sounds right. I don't know whether he understands this. I don't think he knew about this side of jazz before. But he somehow, unintentionally, made kinda great art.

Well, okay, you probably have to give more credit to the band. In the aforementioned NPR interview, the interviewer notes the saxophonist is particularly good. The rest of the band sounds right, only Benjamin sounds slightly off. You can choose to ignore him, and still be able to see what the rest of the band is thinking. But when the instrumentals clear up so as to allow you to focus on Benjamin, it is so. Goddamn. Funny. His piano actually comes off as a character, like his Bob Belcher, someone who is slightly out of step with the rest of the characters, only to prove, every once in a while, he has his charms and even enhances the rest of the cast. The effect is so bizarre and so astounding I can't help but admire the fuck out of it.

Anyway, that's all I'll be writing for now, as I need to write the song of the week. I also need some time to understand and contextualize this album.