How does music move us? (feat. Sylvan Esso's Amelia Meath)

Noam Hassenfeld (0:01)

Anyone who listens to Unexplainable knows that music is really important to me. So I want an amazing sound system, but I also want something that's easy. It just works. Sonos delivers on all fronts. The sound is incredible, and my Sonos system follows me wherever I go. I can mix and match speakers in any room in my apartment, louder in the living room, quieter in the kitchen, and the Sonos app makes it all super easy. Visit sonos.com and build your system. Sonos, love the sound, feel the system.

One of my favorite bands, Sylvan Esso, just released this new album, Au Infinity, and there's one particular track I just can't stop listening to. It's called Back Again.

It starts with this repeated synth line, and the first time I heard it, I started counting with the first note. One, two, three, four. This goes on for a while. The bass and the singer come in.

It seems like it's just this normal groove. But then.

All of a sudden, it's like that synth line is totally out of whack.

The first time I heard this, I honestly got goosebumps. Something weird and awesome was clearly happening here. The more I listened to it, I started realizing that the beat itself had suddenly shifted forward, which changed up the whole way I was hearing the song. So this is going to get a little music nerdy for a second, but just stick with me. It's all about which notes are emphasized and where they sit with the beat. It's not always easy to hear this, so I'm going to use a trick from a drum teacher I once had and translate the music into words. So this is the way that I was listening intuitively. This is the way that I was listening intuitively. But that's not how Sylvan Esso wants you to feel the rhythm. They want you to feel it more like this. This is the way that I was listening intuitively. This is the way that I was listening intuitively. Yes, I know that was weird. But that weirdness is what happens when you shift the emphasis of a whole line one syllable over. That's exactly what Sylvan Esso is doing here. They're using a downbeat. The first note in that synth line, it doesn't come in on the downbeat like you'd expect. It comes right before it. One, two, three, four. It almost leans into it. That's how you get something that sounds like, this is the way that I was listening to it.

The drum beat just pulls the rug out.

Amelia Meath (3:07)

Yeah, because it changes up where you think the one is.

Noam Hassenfeld (3:10)

That's Amelia Meath from Sylvan Esso.

Amelia Meath (3:12)

All of a sudden, you realize you're pulled from where you thought you were into a different place and it focuses everything and makes you go like, whoa, so it drags you into the song. You were in the sky and then you're brought down into the ground.

Noam Hassenfeld (3:32)

Every time I listen to the drums hit, I get this physical charge up my spine. At one point when I was listening to the song for the 20th time, I was just like, what is going on here?

How are these beeps and boops making me have this primal nervous system reaction?

Elizabeth Margulis (3:53)

I think about that a lot.

Noam Hassenfeld (3:56)

I called up Elizabeth Margulis, who heads up the Music Cognition Lab at Princeton.

Elizabeth Margulis (4:01)

I think it's a question that can seem superficial or something like that. But as I've gone through my career, it's come to seem more and more like if we could answer it, there are a lot of things we would understand that we don't right now.

Noam Hassenfeld (4:21)

Today on Unexplainable, I talked to someone who makes music, and I talked to a scientist who studies it to try and figure out, how does music do this to us? Before she was in Sylvan Esso, before she was in Mountain Man for the real Meath heads out there, before she even got too big for a car seat, Amelia would sit and listen to the radio.

Amelia Meath (4:57)

I was in the back of my father's purple minivan, and the Hoos behind Blue Eyes came on.

And I was like three. But I remember the weird feeling of music felt like a magical spell.

SPEAKER_4 (5:19)

No one knows what it's like to be the bad man.

Noam Hassenfeld (5:25)

Does music still kind of feel magical or mysterious to you? Why it works? Why it makes us feel things?

Amelia Meath (5:32)

Absolutely. I mean, I write music in a really strange way, in that I don't have an instrument that I play with. I like write in the air primarily, and then work with other people to make arrangement.