Friday, December 30, 2011

The End of the Year Recap 2011 Spectacular



December is a very special time for critics of all types. The end of the year means it's time to start rounding up all the best albums of the year and rank them based on arbitrary criteria, creating the narrative of what 2011 "was" in music. It's actually very exciting, so long as you don't get knee-deep in the hooplah. My colleague, professional character assassin James Leask wrote a very insightful article about the nature of year-end lists. When I was starting this site, I used some of the 2010 year-end lists as a shopping guide for what I'd cover for this blog.

I won't, obviously, be compiling a year-end list. There's a lot of great stuff I simply did not hear this year. All the albums from 2011 that I loved can be found here, and that list is sure to keep growing. And for a more expansive list of albums that I heard for the first time in 2011, you can click here. I wrote a top four countdown for 2010 because it was a very short list. The reason I started this blog was because I had indulged in so little music enjoyment that year, so it was easy to sort. Then I wrote about them because I wanted to start off with a bit of content for the site.

I can't rank the albums I've listened to this year, just like I can't ascribe them star-ratings. Every single album I talk about on this blog is a recommendation from me, so it's useless to put those on a scale. That's sort of the point. Every album is a new challenge. Sometimes what you already know helps you approach it, sometimes you need to take it as something utterly unknown. To me, they don't compete, there's no reason to try making them.

I spent 2011 listening to music. As a result, I've got about 50 new albums etched in my memory, which invoke feelings and thoughts, that take me back to a time of the year, whether it's shoveling my driveway to Tokyo Police Club, baking in the sun to Foster the People, sitting at work with the Sheepdogs or at the end of a 12-hour bus ride from New York City with the Hold Steady. I spend a lot of time in my head arguing with other critics, and the thing I hate most is when music is not treated as something you listen to: its important qualities are all there in your headphones.

I try to understand and appreciate every album I write about as completely as possible. Usually I fail. I don't want to insult too many of my old reviews, but sometimes I just feel like I didn't quite get it right;... and sometimes I revisit an album after the review is done and something new will occur to me.

I read a fair bit of criticism, as you must. A lot of the albums I've covered this year are acknowledged classics. Some are hidden gems, some true obscurities. Some have been actively dismissed or derided. I think the albums I have the most fun reviewing are the ones that didn't get great notices, because that means all the things that excite me about them haven't been explored by better writers. One of the strangest moments I had was when I realized all the negative things people were saying about White Lies (and later Viva Brother) were true... but I couldn't stop listening to either album anyway, and I needed to talk about them.

I set myself up with a set of loose guidelines at the beginning of the year, and thankfully I haven't found myself constrained by them. They act as a buzzer that goes off in my head whenever I realize I'm writing something I would not like to read, that my review is wandering into territory I'd rather not explore. I'm free to ignore them, but I'm always happier with the results when I keep with them. I never bothered to write them out, and I feel like explaining them might ruin my mojo, but if you go back and read my reviews (and maybe read other critics' takes on the same albums) you might be able to tell what some of them are.

It begins and ends with positivity. I realized, not long after starting (but later than I should have) that there's a difference between some asshole on the internet and a critic, and it isn't intelligence. Leave negativity to every other dickhead. Let them be the ones to tear things down. Let the critic's role be defined by how good we are at building things up. I realize this isn't a reality for critics who don't get to pick and choose their subject matter, but it can't be healthy to decide to go after things you won't like. In general, I'm pleased with myself for keeping the positivity, and never feeling like I have to fake it because I genuinely like everything I write about. Also, the commitment to positivity extends to a certain amount of amnesty to things I don't like: I try not to take cheap shots because I don't believe you do something you like any favours by insulting something you don't. It sounds maybe a bit sanctimonious when I write it out at length, but I want you all to know there are reasons why I do things the way I do, and hopefully you come here because you get it.

I spent the year listening to music, but more importantly, I spent the year enjoying music. I didn't take the music and wrestle with it, try to disarm it and figure out a reason it wasn't as good as my gut felt. I went with that gut feeling and tried to lay it all out on the table, to open it up, pull out the guts and dance around merrily in the blood of the music. And to write metaphors that get off track quickly. And to have fun.

I like what I do here, and I hope to get better at it in the coming year. I want to keep bringing people music they might not have found otherwise, or encouraging them on albums they weren't sure they'd like. I get a fairly decent number of hits every month (for a site that is advertised nowhere but Twitter and Google, reviewing albums that aren't generally up-to-the-minute,) so I hope that I've gotten one or two of you to listen to an album you otherwise wouldn't. And never feel bad for liking something. Anyone who tries to do that to you is being an asshole.

In 2012, I just want to keep on rockin'
-Scotto

Wednesday, December 28, 2011

Serious Contenders: Electric Six, "Danger! High Voltage"



It's important to commit to a bit, and I think Electric Six knows that perfectly well. Every song I've ever heard from them, they throw themselves heedlessly into, including this early gem, where you really believe that the passion can be responsible for a power overload of some kind. The song is helped along by a pulsing disco bass, a shockwave guitar, and a manic guest vocal by an uncredited Jack White. You can't help wanting to move when you hear this song. It puts all its energy right through you, at your peril.

Serious Contenders: Big Star, "In The Street"



It just happens to be the theme song to That 70's Show, which makes sense. Like The Wonder Years (and in some ways, Happy Days,) it was a song from the show's era, which sums up its attitude perfectly. "Not a thing to do / But talk to you" says a lot about being young in any era, not to mention "Wish we had / A joint so bad." Alex Chilton's voice drawls out in a whiny, bored way that nonetheless seems to revel in the nothingness of youth. The original here still outdoes the TV version by Cheap Trick for me.

The line on Big Star goes that their jangly-poppy sound was not appreciated (or at least, not properly heard) in its own time, but was taken up by more notable college rock acts like REM, who eclipsed the earlier act and made their qualities sound less impressive. But I think these things come in cycles, and now that history has marched on some, Big Star sounds different enough from the bands they influenced that it sounds fresher than ever. I myself don't quite have another frame of reference for the funk-meets-folk sound they often embody, and I don't hear them too much in the bands they influenced. In any case, I don't believe the question of "influence" properly indicates a band's quality. What they've got on their own is that mixture of innocence and experience that permeates any great music, but the flavour remains their own.

How incredible is life... when this album was released, they couldn't even get it in stores due to a shipping catastrophe. Now, you can download it, like, right now, on iTunes. Music is yours to discover.

Serious Contenders: Aerosmith, "Dream On"



Fantasy and reality collide in Aerosmith's first big song, and in general whenever Steven Tyler is involved. It's in his vocal style, his lyrics, his whole presentation, this blend of the unreal and the down-to-Earth: the haunted past and the hope for the future. The song begins with that mesmerizing piano.guitar harmony, then climbs hand-over-fist as Steven's voice goes from a spaced-out rumination to a yowl of release. After all this time I'm not sure I've heard anything like it.

As anyone who's been paying attention knows, Aerosmith is my favourite band. Sometimes it feels like I have to actively suppress this fact, and I always feel like people confuse what they actually sound like with some of their more generic, less interesting contemporaries. "Dream On" isn't a power ballad: it isn't "Here I Go Again" or "I Can't Fight This Feeling." There's nothing smoothed over or evened-out about it. It's "Stairway To Heaven" in microcosm. It's a trip up and down the spectrum, from the intimate to the gigantic, in pianos and sweeping gutitars. Bitch, this is rock and roll!

Tuesday, December 27, 2011

Cover: Dexys Midnight Runners, "Respect"



As evidence of Dexy's poetential, I submit this blistering take on Aretha Franklin's (definitive version of Otis Redding's) "Respect." Aside from some slight cheese in the spoken-word portion, they really burn it down and, if not topping the originals, sitting comfortable along with them.

Serious Contenders: Dexys Midnight Runners, "Come On Eileen"



Kevin Rowland was a man with a vision. A very specific, almost incomprehensible vision. And that vision involved horns, country fiddles, banjos and hurdy-gurdys, denim overalls, armpit hair, and hats with poofy balls on top. It all resulted in something where, you're really not sure how anyone would come up with the idea, let alone why they'd think it would work, but the truth is "Come On Eileen" is a completely irresistible song. While even some of the best 80's songs sound dated due to the inevitable aging of their then-new techniques and equipment, Rowland bet the house on the timeless qualities of bluegrass, Celtic folk, and soul, all wrapped around an ultimate pop song with its barely-understandable lyrics and impossible-to-ignore singalong chorus. On paper the band's premise sounds dumb (this was after all during a time when it was impossible to be cool without having a keytarist in your band) but in execution it sounds incredibly obvious.

Of course, lightning of that kind rarely strikes twice. "Come On Eileen" being such a potent song due to its uniqueness meant that it was also something of a novelty (not a rare commodity in the early 80s) meaning the public attention span had room for exactly one song by them. They had other songs, but none of them had that star quality that this one did.

Monday, December 26, 2011

Sloan: The Double Cross

I have a soft-spot for power pop. I'm a sucker for a good, bouncy yet forceful guitar. It's not a type of music that is going to be lauded often for its artistic potential, but it's the sort of thing I keep going back for more of, as you might note when taking a glance at this blog. There's a lot of guitar rock here, and a lot of it isn't the ornate, extreme kind, nor the straightforward, macho kind. Sloan blends sensitive prettiness with an action-packed excitability. This is the kind of record that might slip through the cracks, but is very rewarding for those who listen.

There's a lot of joy in the making of music on this record, from the motor-mouthed, foot-stompers like "Follow the Leader," and "Shadow of Love," to precious beauties like "The Answer Was You" and "Green Gardens, Cold Montreal." "Unkind" is the archetypal stadium rocker. It's very much like a Canadian band, not to mention the clever lyrics of Sloan, to hook a blockbuster like that, with its purely archetypal riff, around the ambivalent phrase "Don't know why you've got to cross that line ... You can be so kind sometimes / And you can be unkind sometimes."

A number of true highlights like that one are buffered by ear candy. "The Answer Way You" has a sincerity that offsets the sarcasm of the opening track, with its cooing vocals (all the members take the mic at some point, but I sadly don't know who's who) and majestic instrument work. "Green Gardens, Cold Montreal" is built on a warm acoustic guitar and a shivering vocal. It comes across like warm breath on an icy day. "Your Daddy Will Do" is even impressive amongst this company, with its clevery story-and-message setting a twangy guitar against a pitch-perfect funk-rock backbeat, including a strangely dreamy Beach Boys like middle eight.

"Beverly Terrace" is a song with a lot going on it, from great lyrics like "She wears sunscreen in the middle of winter / To remind herself of summers that were kind" to its quote/repurposing of "Shadow of Love," redoing it as a duel between vocalists: "I know, I know / But knowing doesn't make it untrue," one of those wonderful contradictions Sloan's lyrics often touch on. In general, the album is concerned with the way one feeling or situation transforms into another, whjether through betrayal, redemption, or realization. "Traces" revs up like a hot rod, and gets liftoff on those fucking organs, I love it, with a "Life goes on and on / Appreciate it" chorus that's hard not to dig. It sets the stage for the delicate closer, "Laying So Low," which staggers into bed and says goodnight. Love it.

Even less notable tracks are goosed up with gorgeous harmonies, instrumental skills, clever lyrics, and/or any of a dozen tools in the band's kit. Like the Sheepdogs' album I reviewed last week, it's meant to be listened to from front to back, and makes for a rewarding listen without playing any unfair tricks. More or less the tracks stand on their own, but are sequenced so terrifically, especially at transitional points, you can't help but want to keep going. Dan Mangan, in response to my post about his song "Post-War Blues," (#humblebrag) told me I should keep paying attention to whole albums, so that the format doesn't die. It's always great to see a whole piece laid out and put together with care.

I keep coming back to guitar rock, a format that is sometimes considered passe and dumb, because the most popular acts in the genre tend to be lame. But it's what I grew up on, and it'll never go away, because without even rewriting the rules there are always rewarding possibilities. It's an extremely rich, expressive way of making music, and it is a language that is not hard for a listener to understand and appreciate. If there's one thing the guys in Sloan probably hate, it's a cliche: it's the one thing I don't think they're good at doing.

The guys in Sloan have been hanging around as a band for twenty years now, and have proven themselves masters of their craft ever since "Underwhelmed" many years ago. Their love for their craft shines through, and you can sense that they're still, at heart, teenage music nerds. You see from these 12 tracks what eight capable hands, with a working knowledge of the ins and outs of pop music history, can do with the basic elements. It's a no frills album that is secretly pretty showy.

Buy this album now: iTunes // Amazon.com // Amazon.ca



Sunday, December 25, 2011

Serious Contenders: Darlene Love, "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)"



Phil Spector fired his own wife Ronnie from the session for this gem, because she was supposedly unable to convey the same depth of emotion that Darlene Love brings here. It's hard to argue with the result. This is possibly the only Christmas song you can listen to any time of year without being some kind of Christmas nut. It doesn't sentimentalize Christmas too much, but uses it as a backdrop, calling up the emotional connections we have to the Holidays without dipping too deep into cliche. In the end, like any Phil Spector song, it's about an innocent enough type of love and longing. Terrific.

Merry Christmas, kids. Keep on rockin'.

Thursday, December 15, 2011

Sheepdogs: Learn & Burn

The thing I like about my generation, and its attitude toward music, is that the music of decades past is no longer "our parents' music," the stuff they make us listen to when we're young until we come into our own and embrace the current. Thanks to the internet and Classic Rock radio, we're free to explore at our own pace and keep going. That's why so many of my classmates in high school had Zeppelin fixations, and why the winners of Rolling Stone's first-ever "Choose the Cover" contest wasn't a quirky indie rock band making a stab for the groundbreaking (and there were a few good ones in the lot,) but the Sheepdogs, on the strength of "I Don't Know," which stands as a pinnacle, but hardly the lone peak, of this set. I've spent a lot of time on this blog trying to figure out why we (I) love throwback music so much. It can't simply be because music from the 60's was empirically "better." What I've figured is that at the least, it represents a choice: a conscious effort not to "go with the flow," to pick out the best of the past and breathe life into it. What the discourse of classic rock does is sift through the everything of the past, pick out what still resonates, and allows us to pick it up and go again. To hone and refine the past for the present.

I don't think its enough, though, to merely be a good Zeppelin/Creedence/Skynyrd/Allmans/Guess Who cover group. Learn & Burn is the southern rock counterpoint to Raphael Saadiq's triumphant R&B pastiche Stone Rollin', in that it mixes and matches in ways that wouldn't have been done in the day. You can see the lines of reference, but only as shadows in the present. So we get rollicking guitars, easygoing lap steels, fiery solos, foggy organs, even a splash of horns, on an album that covers an impressive range of moods and moments, all while being consistently skillful, inventive, and awesome-sounding.

Exhibit A for their extreme listenability is, of course, "I Don't Know," the song that won them the hearts of the contest voters. That easy-breezy see-saw riff just wraps you up and holds you tight like so many riffs of old. It lays out their sonic blueprint, easygoing, intuitive rock laid out over a solid, propulsive rhythm. They do a great job playing in this sandbox. The first two tracks and "I Don't Get By" are just awesome. "Southern Dreaming" is pure relaxation, a sunny day on the porch. In a lot of tracks, they really cut loose, like "Soldier Boy" and "Catfish 2 Boogaloo," where they really reach critical mass on sheer rockitude. Other times, they clamp down their focus, like the grinding funk of "Right On."

Impressively, they don't just get by on charm and talent, any more than they're good because they sound "just like" Classic Rock Band-X. This is a band with a good sense of composition and direction. They dabble a bit in acoustic-picking segments ("You Discover") and the soulful "Rollo Tomasi," which rolls in on militaristic drums, a blast of horns and tense pianos, but settles into a dreamy slow jam ("Givin' my love away to you / Is hard for me to do...") There's also the title track, which blends the southern rock stylings with a sixties-type call-and-answer lyric, and a lounge act delivery. At that point, they're really showing off.

Consider the titanic, staggering opener, "The One You Belong To," with sweeping riffs and wistful lyrics, and how it cuts, absolutely fucking seamlessly into the more nimble, sheepish "Please Don't Lead Me On," with its tapping ivory piano. Someone in the band must really like the Abbey Road medley, because the album both begins and ends with one. The last four tracks brings us from the cool, breezy "Suddenly," up through the ramped-up rhythm-rock of "Baby, I Won't Do You No Harm," the soaring "We'll Get There" and the epic conclusion, "I Should Know" (which brings the album more or less full circle, given the earlier track.) They lay out the parameters, and then explore them to their utmost.

They do a good job coming up with lyrical matter that suits their style: they don't know, and they need help, but it's all very casual and shrugging in its way. Like they have confidence they'll find their way somehow. Ewan Currie's vocals are as easygoing as the guitar-playing, as rhythmic as the drums. The harmonies lend the whole affair the feeling of unity and togetherness that rock often brings at its best. Some of the best albums in the classic rock canon don't seem like they had to be created, but simply happened, and this set definitely has that quality.

I don't look at is as having a gimmick or a niche appeal. I look at it as being very good at what you do, as bringing something unique to the table: it isn't a tribute to old music, something you need to be a music lover to appreciate, but a resurrection of that type (as if it needed it) by virtue of quality. I don't think any band playing the throwback card would have won a contest, but a band that does anything this well deserves attention, for sure.

Buy this album now! iTunes // Amazon.com // Amazon.ca



Serious Contenders: Monkees, "Pleasant Valley Sunday"



If you were casting for a fake TV rock band, you should be so lucky as to cast four guys who were as entertaining as The Monkees. If you were selecting music for a marketable product, you should be so lucky as you find material as great as the stuff that was presented to them/recorded under their name. The Monkees were a real band in every sense except one: the technical sense.

I love the Monkees. Around 2000, their show was on every weekend and I'd watch it anytime I could, and I had their two-disc Anthology best-of, which I listened to constantly over the winter that year. The set came with a booklet that, in tiny print, detailed the story of their transition from manufactured boyband to genuine(-ish) artists. The fact of the matter was that their way of doing things was ridiculously common in pre-Beatles America (and even post-Beatles. Go count how many Beach Boys play on "Good Vibrations.") But I'm not here to give a primer on notions of authenticity. I'm here talk about music.

The Monkees were more nakedly a product for consumption than even the Beatles, whose consumer appeal was by chance rather than design. The Monkees was a project designed to sell records. And a lot of their music sounds just like that: The kind of songs you'd write if you were a pop songwriter hired to write "American Beatles" music. But of course, these were top sognwriters writing great songs: "Last Train to Clarksville," "Not Your Steppin' Stone," "I'm a Believer" are all that. Remember, Elvis' "Hound Dog" (originally Big Mama Thornton) was written by the same types of people. When a song grabs you, as it's designed to do, you don't need to think about its origins.

What I like about "Pleasant Valley Sunday," why it, and not one of those other tunes, is the "Serious Contender," is that it shows the freedom to play around that the songwriters had. Gerry Goffin and Carole King wrote this song, seemingly as an American version of Paul McCartney's "Penny Lane," but while that is a dreamy fantasy that celebrates suburban comforts, "Pleasant Valley" is sarcastic and critical. Micky Dolenz is underrated as a vocalist, and I think possibly his acting chops helped him express the meanings of lyrics better than other singers of the time did. Mike Nesmith does indeed play that insane, tangled lead guitar (double-tracked and linked with Chip Douglas' bass, which Davy Jones enthusiastically pretends to play.) Peter Tork is indeed banging on that piano and "Fast" Eddie Hoh handled the drums. At the end, it explodes indo a wonderful psychedelic flourish, injecting some unreality, some escapism, under the skin of the dull suburbanite scene.

This is a great song, the type of which the Monkee catalogue was surprisingly full. The songwriters (occasionally the Monkees themselves) often used their pleasant, plastic boyband appeal to present much more complex, interesting, music than they were required, which I feel holds up very strongly today. It doesn't matter where it comes from or who is behind it: when you've got something that works, it lasts.

Cover: Nirvana, "Lithium"



Not to be missed is this dreamlike cover of Nirvana's "Lithium" as performed by the British psychedelia group of the same name. It's appropriately heavenly and deranged, a really great look at the material that stands on its own while enhancing the original.

Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Serious Contenders: Led Zeppelin, "Fool in the Rain"



Like previous examples of classic rock on this site, "Fool in the Rain" isn't the song you probably think of when someone says Led Zeppelin. No, it's not an epic, medieval hymn to Tolkien, nor is it an explosive psychedelic blues crunch. It's just a simple story set against a neat little looped riff, which curves up then laps down on itself. If it's not the greatest song they did, then it's certainly an excellent example of what they could do with their time. It's one of the bigger ear-worms they ever created (probably a lot easier and more fun to hum than "Stairway to Heaven" or "Babe I'm Gonna Leave You.") It's a really slick jam.

It also features some rad lyrics, a story about standing in the rain waiting for your dream girl, feeling utterly defeated and hopeless, until you realize you were waiting on the wrong damn block. That's what I like about this song's place in the Zeppelin canon. They often took their music to strange places, whether the desert sands of Kashmir, the pastoral past, into hippie fantasies and the inner workings of the mind... and the street corner. This isn't the song you think of when you think Led Zeppelin, but who else could have done it?

Thursday, December 8, 2011

Viva Brother: Famous First Words

The last album I reviewed was Radiohead's very highly regarded OK Computer. I would like very much for every album I review to be a masterwork of that order. It would be nice if every album was as affecting as most people (including myself) find that one. But of course, not everything is on the same level, and so as music critics we have to face the facts that you're going to get a lot more Viva Brothers than Radioheads.

So what is Viva Brother? A very clear throwback to Britpop. It's very un-selfconscious about it, too, dropping away the meaning and depth (or appearance of meaning and depth) and seriousness of Oasis and Blur. That sorta-familiar sound is cleansed of mannerisms unique to either band and boiled down to hooks and rhythms, a twangy accent and some clever lyrics rather than soul-searching or socially-critical ones. There's a lot of soaring choruses and refrains, handclaps and backing vocals, chants, "oooh", "ohs" and "ows," that sort of thing.

It may not be terrifically revolutionary, but it's certainly fun, light-hearted and catchy. This is music that will put a spring in your step, and never drags. The 34-minute running time is just about enough time to enjoy hearing the same song in 11 variations. It's really visceral, and you get the feeling that it was really fun for these guys to work out their riffs and hooks. There's a lot of spirit here. I bet the crowd at a Viva Brother show has more fun than a lot of bands.

Here, they're not aiming for high art. They want to bring a strong, kinetic energy to their record, and they do. It's damned consistent, none of the tracks stands out as better than the others (although the closer, "Time Machine" might boast the best chorus, and "Darling Buds of May" may be the very most fun,) and none of them sounds worse. If you hear one song by them, you can imagine whether you'd like a whole album of it. And that decision will probably say a fair bit about you as a listener and what you expect out of music. Admittedly, it'll be more for the younger set, who haven't had their fill of fun, active power pop yet, and need a reason to move around. It's also perfectly acceptable not to like the album, for those of us who've already had their Britpop, as well as their Weezer, their Sloan, their Arctic Monkeys, or even more recent (and yeah, probably better) acts like Locksley and Hollerado. But still, it's in fused with enthusiasm and excitement, and there's not a moment on this album that doesn't hit the spot for me.

Buy this album now: iTunes // Amazon.com // Amazon.ca



Saturday, December 3, 2011

Serious Contenders: Doors, "People Are Strange"



"You really seem more like a crooner, working in the rock milieu, which I like." - Rip Taylor, on Jim Morrison, in Wayne's World 2.

"He's a drunken buffoon, posing as a poet!" - Philip Seymour Hoffman as Lester Bangs, on Jim Morrison, in Almost Famous.

The Doors have a lot of appeal. They combine this level of mysticism with a level of raw street sensibility that, aside from their experimental indulgences, could be considered prototypical punk. They're known for long, drawn out compositions like "Light My Fire," "The End" and "LA Woman," but amongst their Greatest Hits are a lot of nifty, regular-sized, lean, mean tracks like this. I like it because it's sleek and bluesy, and the lyrics retain that Morrisony-spacey level of unreality. This song used to spook me as a child. "Faces come out of the rain / When you're strange / No-one remembers your name."

Morrison obviously thought of himself as strange, and spoke from experience. But instead of "I'm so strange," he wrote "When you're strange," which was a uniting lyric for young people in 1967, and is today. A lot of music lovers would consider themselves strange, and it's that strangeness that drives us to seek out the unseemly cracks in the world where we live, and to make music like that of the Doors.

Thursday, December 1, 2011

Radiohead: OK Computer

You could think of it as a failure for every single music critic in the media that it took me until 2011 to finally sit down with this album. Part of it was my own willful resistance, but it's a review's job to bridge potential listeners to music they might enjoy. And for whatever reason, it never occurred to me until recently, well after I started a music blog, that I might enjoy OK Computer.

I've read about it. It's impossible not to. You sit down with an article about "X Best Albums of X Decades" and you can expect only a little bit of variation as to what's on top, and OK Computer has that impenetrable aura of greatness about it, a dense cloud of high praise. But I could never get a sense of what the album might sound like or why I might enjoy it. You can say that it's great and groundbreaking and important, but I don't know... what do those words sound like? It's intimidating. So you stay away, because not knowing is better than being disappointed. TVTropes calls it Hype Aversion. Overpraising an album is a good way to get people to turn against it. In the past I've been as susceptible to it as anyone, but over the last year I've worked, and worked hard, to keep it straight, exactly how to figure out what I think of an album, and to hopefully never push to hard so as to turn others off something I think they'll like.

Years ago, I heard "Paranoid Android." I probably wasn't ready for it, and my thought was likely "I don't think I could stand a whole album of this." It was too deliberately weird, and I wasn't into it at the time because I didn't see it as being as good as other deliberately weird songs. If I was trying to get someone to buy OK Computer, I don't think I'd play them "Paranoid Android" first. I'd probably play them "Airbag," the opening track. It blurs into focus, the themes and sonic territory of the album, with guitars both distorted and crystal clear, ragged strings and that late-90's beat. Thom Yorke's vocals soar with pure amazement at being alive: amazement at the simple wonder of technology that has saved his life, and at the world in which he finds himself... it's a wonderfully uncertain lyric, with a nice, tense instrumental backing that sets the atmosphere quite beautifully. The album shows a commitment to its whole aesthetic, rock without trying too hard to rock. At times transcendent, at times low. A sort of roundabout attempt to capture the extremes of humanity on record. There's such tension here.

With "Paranoid Android," the album might be showing its hand too early. It's probably the most ambitious composition, as I said, willfully weird, and not most people's idea of pleasure listening. That may be the point, but much of what follows actually is my idea of pleasure listening. I love the spacey yearning of "Subterranean Homesick Alien," that desire for something bigger than yourself, and for escape from day-to-day mundanity. It drifts wonderfully into its "Uptight, uptight" refrain, a word and delivery that seems to say so much about what the album is calling your attention to. Much of the album is spacey and soft-focus, like "Exit Music (For a Film)" a gradually-sharpening postmodernish Romeo & Juliet story (the Baz Luhrmann version being the film in question.) "Let Down" may be one of the most pleasurable songs on the album, using a delightfully somber twinkling instrumentation to lament tiny disappointments that become a big huge thing. That delicate guitar picking really sells it.

Two of my favourite tracks are separated by the anomalous "Fitter Happier." If OK Computer is a new generation's Dark Side of the Moon, then "Fitter Happier" is the disturbing inverse of "Great Gig In The Sky." It chills me: spoken-word piece read by one of those awful computer voices you'd get in the late 90's, with no intonation, deep in the Uncanny Valley (none of the words are unrecognizeable.) It seems at once to be polite encouragement, dictatorial demands, and an expression of disappointment, disapproval. And it's a fucking robot voice.

On one side of it is the probably showpiece of the album, "Karma Police." If "Paranoid Android" is an exhibition of how far they can go, "Karma Police" is a great example of what they can do with it, with a song that sounds like a song. Like most of the time, Yorke's voice seems thin, like it could be knocked over in a stiff breeze, but that's the strength, as the music builds around it and drops away as he declares, "This is what you get." So much of the album can be left to interpretation, but the band knows how to send a signal, like with the distant, melty-sounding "Climbing Up The Walls," which sounds like it was recorded from the next room.

After "Fitter Happier," we get the downright disruptive "Electioneering," one of the few songs on the album that can be said to cut loose. I love that it's this breakneck moment on this otherwise very nervy, restrained album, that it has this pure squealing rock pissed-offness to it and yet doesn't sound out of place. I learn from reading fan opinions that it's not thought of as being one of the better tracks, which is a good explanation why I don't generally concern myself with the opinions of others these days.

"No Surprises" is in its way, as chilling as "Fitter Happier," so serene but so cold, taking us back to the monotony of everyday life, about the horrors of stability. I was thinking today about songs like Springsteen's "Born in the USA" and Mellancamp's "Our Country," and how they're often misinterpreted by marketers. I don't think there's any doing that with this album. Sure, the lyrics "No alarms and no surprises" read very pleasant on the page, but in delivery are just unsettling and dark. Well on second thought, the words don't seem that pleasant written out. But they convey their meaning without saying them, but also without hiding that they're saying them.

"Lucky" could be the end of the album for me. It's suitably climactic, and "The Tourist" is a nice coda. Both are very much great exercises in the album's style. "Lucky," with its utter helplessness, "The Tourist," like the last one left in a lonely room. I'd say that's probably what I like about the album -- and why, after repeated listens, I find "Paranoid Android" is now a rather vital part of the experience. I don't like the album because of what it says to me, but I love it for the way it goes about saying it. You need a really clear view of your music, and of the world around you, to come up with a set of songs like this. It's a real package. I even love the title: A "Computer" seeming like a foreign, monolithic thing that sits in your office and commands you, without ever really understanding what you are, nor you it; and "OK" both being a statement of quality ("good enough") and consent ("go ahead") which seems to relate very directly to the content and themes of the album, its ambivalent attitude. It's a whole thing, and I like it that way. But you can't just love an album because it seems to talk about the world around you, it has to sound good. The album deserves its reputation, but it doesn't need to hide behind it.

What I'm getting at, in an "Oh God Why Is He Still Talking" way, is that there's nothing special or sacred about this album. It's not something you need to keep on your shelf and only listen to on special occasions like Easter and Christmas. Good music should be part of your life always, and the many enjoyable facets of OK Computer are ones shared with other great albums. It's not wrong at all simply to enjoy these songs because they're good songs that happen to tap into my head, about some insecurities I have about the time and place I live, and mold it into musical form. Whatever they're up to on this seems to work. It's an engaging listen, and certainly not an impenetrable one. I didn't need to be afraid to listen to this album. It doesn't sound like the dense work of art the reviews make it out to be. But it's not surprising that this album, with all its character and strangeness, might also appeal to the types of people who can talk about great art (and make "greatest albums" lists) with a straight face, and of course become major music critics. Thankfully, it works for much of the rest of us too.

Then the album ends with a ding, as if awakening you from the trance, and back to the world for better or worse.

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