Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Does It Rock? Jack White, "Love Interruption"



This afternoon at work, before I knew of this song's existence, I had a brief discussion with my Assistant Manager whether there were any true modern-day Guitar Heroes. I presented Jack White as a candidate. After a moment's thought he admitted, "He plays for the right reasons." Somehow that seemed to sum it all up. Whether you like him, hate him, used to like him but got over him, or feel indifferent, I think rock and roll is better for having Jack White around. His work with the White Stripes brought something new to the table with each outing, while always remaining faithful to the rootsy minimalist ethos, and each of his other projects manages to make a convincing case for itself by venturing a new territory -- if not different from everything else in the world, certainly different from other Jack White projects. He's done abrasive rock, tender acoustic, country, Scottish folk, psychedelia, and a James Bond theme.

After spending a few years focusing on the harder end of the spectrum, here he is with this strummy, campfire-like tune, just between singalong and pop ballad, backed by that keen electric piano and female vocal. It's pretty and simple and not showy, and after I've listened to it I want to hear it again. Whether it sounds like anything else he's done is not that important, and whether it sounds like anything else going today is completely irrelevant. It sounds like itself, and to me, it works. Glad to have you back, Jack.

Monday, January 30, 2012

Cover: Vanilla Fudge, "You Keep Me Hangin' On"



I do love the Supremes' original, a Motown classic with its skittering funk riff and the breakneck pace cut by Diana Ross and the girls. But something about this take on the song just works for me, from the towering, gargantuan organ and guitar crush, to the way Vanilla Fudge vocalist wrenches every drop of sweat out of the song that he can, blowing it all to the stratosphere.

Serious Contenders: Soft Cell, "Tainted Love"



"Tainted Love," as recorded by Soft Cell (a cover of Gloria Jones' 1964 original) is one of those great examples of a song you forget is great until you're listening to it. It's very 80's, but in the best way: the chilly, pulsing synth background underscoring how "tainted" the love is, while the "new romantic"-style vocals go from detached to soulful, with a ghostly rendition of the original's Motown type (actually, Champion,) backing chorus.

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Harvey Danger: Where Have All The Merrymakers Gone?

The great thing about music is that time isn't really much of a thing. A CD is produced in a certain place in time. It may well have represented how we perceived those times, or even defined them. Then the album's time passes and if it isn't one of those rarefied classics of the time, or some kind of kitsch curiosity, it will probably be forgotten. If you still have your copy, you might dig it out and go "I liked this?" More likely, you lost it over the years. The song will crop up one day in a commercial and you'll go "I think I had that one."

But time goes by, and you forget the late-90's (because you were 12 at the time) so your idea of the era is a bit skewed by Sugar Ray and residual Backstreet Boy hate. Out of context, the album may even become something of a gem, because even if it was unremarkable for the time, it seems a lot stronger than a lot of the stuff you're hearing on the radio, and what people are buying in your store. Plus, you have a music blog and you've gotta write about something. Okay, this is getting weirdly specific. Maybe you can't relate.

In the late 90's, albums like Where Have All the Merrymakers Gone were routine. They were cranked out by the barrel, spun out exactly one single for use in every movie trailer that year, then forgotten. I don't want to get too deep into the hows and whys of "one-hit wonderdom." Some bands have it, some don't, and you can't quite put your finger on why. Some bands are one hit wonders despite having numerous. Bush had a ton of songs on the radio but I can't be bothered to remember any of them. Smash Mouth will forever be the beloved lunkheads behind "All Star" even though "Walking On The Sun" is due for a Serious Contenders treatment. And "Flagpole Sitta" was in the credits for that Katie Holmes movie with Cyclops. And you've been humming it every once in a while ever since, even though you can't remember any of the words but "I'm not sick, but I'm not well..." "Flagpole" is in fact an excellent song. Sean Nelson, the singer for this band, can rattle off long-winded, clever (and cleverly-worded) observational lyrics faster than the audience can process, which is probably why this is a song I can listen to 8 times in a row. His anti-establishment rambling is perfect punk, and he's highly literate, seeming to actually know the meanings and proper usages of all the words he uses, being smarter than the room by a half and too smart for his own good, finally summing it up in that infectious chorus.



Most of the album is nearly as good. The opening track, "Carlotta Valdez" is a motor-mouthed summary of the entire plot of the Aflred Hitchcock classic Vertigo. This entire premise for a song spells out how good the band's songwriters are at writing relationship songs from an unconventional angle (chorus: "Carlotta! Carlotta Valdez! / Carlotta Valdez, I will make you her!") Like most of the album, it has less of an angsty post-grunge vibe and more of a wry jangle-pop feel. They're smart enough to see a lot of problems, not smart enough to be certain of the solutions, and definitely not interested in taking action.

They take the nuanced approach on a lot of the tunes. "Wooly Muffler" has a real one-on-one feel to begin with, before expanding into that good harsh feeling. Again, you get these great, character-laden lines like "Hands can grow together / If you're not careful or grateful or whatever / And I never cared much too much to begin with..." and "If you've got greatness in you / Why don't you do us all a favour and keep it to yourself?" "Private Helicopter" builds on a story of reacquainting with old loves, old friends, and wondering why you lost touch and what went wrong: "I'm on a hovercraft to Paris with my former best friend / We have to get to the cinematheque. / We're not alone but no-one speaks English, so we're free / To look into each other's minds... I miss talkin' to you." "Jack The Lion" is one of the better songs I've heard about sitting by a dying man's bedside.

It goers on. There are a few really good ballads, mostly building on a pop-ready quiet-to-loud formula, like "Problems and Bigger Ones," which goes from a whisper to one of the louder, more cathartic-seeming moments of the album. And because Nelson's vocal character is so clear, that know-it-all nebbish who is nonetheless powerless in his own life, it really comes off as genuine. Their ability to go from one end of the spectrum to the other, like how they take the use Vertigo as a romantic example, shows the range they cover, moving between moods while still playing within the same genre all the time. Even the lesser songs at least produce interesting lyrics set to catchy tunes: "Old Hat" has "Disembodies ringlets of hair that looks like yours," while "Terminal Annex" sings of feeling "Like a zero drowning in a sea of higher numbers." There are some albums where I completely skip talking about the lyrics, and here I've quoted half the tracks.

Not every album is tied to its time and place. Harvey still sounds comfortably late-90's, I'm not trying to claim they were ahead of their time, or even exactly that it "totally holds up, bro." If the trappings of the day irked you, they still will, although I don't know what's not to like. I can't even say if this was a good album from 1997, but I can definitely say, reviewing this 1997 album in 2012, I find it an incredibly welcoming listen. Its nuances hold up, its character shine through, and its musicianship is really strong, finding a way, as all great rock albums must, to adhere to a certain format while injecting something personal, something different. What you get here isn't just late-90's angst, but some real charm, something to keep you interested the whole way through.

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


Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Cover: Cuff the Duke, "The Suburbs"



I love Arcade Fire, and I feel like their music lends itself particularly well to interpretation. They do a great job creating total packages with their music, but the songs often lend themselves to reinterpretation, so another band can puts its stamp on there.

On the surface, this isn't all that different from the original, but it seems much homier, more Earthbound than the original. Rather than the yearning for the world beyond the picket fence, of Win Butler's vocal, you get the sense of being stuck in place no matter what.

Monday, January 23, 2012

Serious Contenders: Blind Melon, "No Rain"



This is pretty much the exact reason I started doing "Serious Contenders," my feature dedicated to well-liked songs that aren't always thought of in best-song-ever lists. I have this song on a Mix CD I sometimes play in the store, and whenever it comes on everyone in the place seems to take notice and soak in the good vibes in puts out. It could be the retroactive memory of getting high while listening to it. More likely, though, its jangly guitars and Shannon Hoon's new age 90's hippie vocals just hit that sweet spot between "dark and grungy" and "hopelessly sunny." Music is great for acknowledging, then combating, the darkness in the world, and it all seems to be summed up by the feeling of "watching the puddles gather rain."

Sunday, January 22, 2012

Serious Contenders: Tom Petty, "American Girl"



Whenever anybody talks about Tom Petty, they always seem to think of "Free Fallin'," but for some reason my mind goes right to "American Girl." He's one of those artists who has so many great songs that even some of the better ones get lost in the shuffle. This seems to be the case even though this song really does stand out, cutting a faster pace than most of his later stuff, and just being so balls-to-the-wall awesome.

There's a lot to talk about with this song. There's the way the intro riff just rings out while the bass drops in delicately. There's the lyrics, which don't go into much detail at all but seem to come together to paint a full picture. There's Petty's ultimate rock and roll delivery, especially "God it's so painful / How somethin' can be so close / And still so far out of reeeeeeeeeee-eeeeach!" And that grunting, "Oh yeah, all right / Take it easy baby, make it last all night." And that funky middle section that leads into the climactic outro. It's all fairly unconventional, but not too showy about it, and it comes together so wonderfully. And it was, like, his first go.

Saturday, January 21, 2012

Cover: The Ramones, "Baby I Love You"



For whatever reason, I always find myself defending this Phil Spector-produced stab at Sixties pop from the Ramones, probably because I have a place in my heart for the utterly ridiculous, and I don't really care about "punk authenticity." There's something so goddamn ridiculous about Joey Ramone muttering, in his best doo wop voice, "Bay-beh Ah Luh Yew" while those awkward-ass violins hum in the background, it seems to illustrate a whole bunch of things at once: sometimes it's idiotic being in love, and sometimes you need to go with it. Really, though, the violins are the only thing keeping this song from being the same as the Ramones' earlier "I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend." So don't judge.

Cover: The Ramones, "Do You Wanna Dance?"



On that note, there's the Ramones, the band that brought simplicity back to rock, playing the simplest and most effective song of the early rock & roll era.

Cover: The Clash, "I Fought The Law"



I've mentioned before how punk rock, as initially presented by The Clash, was not all that different from classic 1950's rock and roll, in its straightforward execution. The main differences between earlier versions of this song was the fact that the Clash were louder about it, and they had Joe Strummer, the ultimate punk voice. They played this song with the benefit of two extra decades of knowledge on how to kick rock and roll ass, but also the wisdom to know that what worked about rock and roll way-back-when would still work in the 1970's, just like it does today.

Serious Contenders: Rolling Stones, "The Last Time"



We don't often see changes as they are happening. From 1963 to 1965, the Stones morphed from a bunch of skinny, messy-haired dudes covering Chuck Berry to generators of their own material, masters of their own destiny. It started with this one, the first Jagger/Richards song to be released as a single. While the Stones were cultivating their stage presence as a "dangerous" alternative to the Beatles, they needed songs to go along with it. "Satisfaction" was the ultimate realization of that pursuit, but "The Last Time" was a great first try. The guitar riff, played by Brian Jones, is as impossible to ignore as a Chuck Berry intro, but it continues under the verses as well, electrifying them. Jagger's vocals are in fine form, really starting to his his stride with his trademark yowl, and lyrics that carry an undercurrent of non-specific gloom ("May be the last time, I don't know.") and Keith Richards brings a damn fine solo to the table.

"Satisfaction" is the better song, of course. It's better than most songs. But this features is decidedly not called "Obvious Choices." So there's that.

Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Serious Contenders: Smashing Pumpkins, "1979"



I always felt the Pumpkins were at their best when less was more. Although some of their better and best-known songs are abrasive guitar workouts like "Bullet with Butterfly Wings," and "Zero," (or their gothy, electro-type phase like "Ava Adore.") I felt like the softer palette of "Today," "Tonight Tonight," "Rhinoceros" and this song especially, were where Corgan did his best work. A lot of their harder, louder, more showy work hasn't aged as well. "1979" remains a sweet, yet darkly somber, statement, carried on those guitar loops that rush by like streetlights passing overhead.

The song itself goes a long way without having to work too hard. It's beautifully simple yet simultaneously sophisticated. It doesn't need complex lyrical imagery or even a showy hook, but it's instantly recognizable and memorable. I have a complicated feeling for the Pumpkins beyond this one, but this song absolutely gets it right. It conveys a certain ineffable something in a way that only music can.

Monday, January 16, 2012

Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks: Mirror Traffic

There was a time, before I ever started this blog, when you probably wouldn't have gotten me to listen to this album. Hell, there was a long period after it started when I still wouldn't have known what to think of it. I had this notion that "being weird" and "being good" were entirely separate things, and that while I had a healthy respect for the odds and ends of the alt-rock world, I didn't consider it my thing. Times change and tastes change and your ability to determine what is good hopefully grows and expands. While it will never be a slam dunk recommending an album like this, once your tastes grow to include it, you feel like you and other people that see the appeal have a connection, and you can sense when someone will like this album, and that they'll get a lot out of it.

There's a period after you first hear a piece of music where you have to get used to it. Some hit you immediately and you look forward to the next time you hear it. Some take a while to grow on you. And some sink into the back of your mind so that you know you've heard something but you can't quite call it up, and even if you remember liking it you just don't have any basis to remember why. The next time you hear it is pretty much like the first, but this time you're really listening so you're more likely to retain it. Mirror Traffic stayed in this phase for more re-listens than any album I've picked up since I started. I kept getting to the end of the album and thinking "Okay... what did I hear just now?" I liked it, but there was so much of it that I just couldn't put it all back together in my mind.

It's very much a collage. Songs don't always seem like they belong next to each other. Other songs go off on tangents, jazzy experimental solos or bizarre middle-sections that seem grafted from a totally different songs. It goes from melodic to rough so quickly and so often, that disorientation becomes the norm. Helping this along is Malkmus' ear for jangly alt-pop, like "Stick Figures in Love" or "Forever 28," and his vocals, which constantly sound exasperated, impatient and uncertain, helping the songs into those oddball directions, which he pursues on a whim. And then snaps back. Sometimes he strains at the top of his range, deliberately breaking his voice into a pubescent creep or a wavering wheeze. No, he's not the greatest vocalist ever, but he definitely knows how to write for his voice. Along with other moments, the chorus of "Long Hard Book" hits what sounds like a deliberately sour note. And instead of thinking about how it sounds like he messed up, you wonder what he means by going the other way.

The patchwork definitely works, because even if you don't dig the entire thing, you can be in awe of how it all sits together. That's why the album is my favourite size of musical product to review. There are parts you like and parts you don't, and you could discard the ones you don't, or you can ponder how they all sit together.

At times, it does morph comfortably into pleasure listening: "Senator" is a great raucous affair, as is the garage-moded "Tune Grief." "Brain Gallop" has a hook of "There's not much left inside my tank today," which you might find yourself humming over, and slower tunes like "Fall Away" and "Asking Price" find a real sweet spot, a deep breath in the middle of the chaos. I really am burying the lead, in a way, by not praising the individual songs and musicianship more. It's just so interesting to me the way they all form a whole.

While I'd rather not temper my praise, I still have to note that it won't be for everyone. It does its own thing, and it doesn't need anyone's approval. Someone disliking it doesn't mean they have bad taste, and someone liking it might not even indicate they have good taste. But it does indicate a certain type of listener, one that you might be without even knowing.

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

Serious Contenders: Elvis Costello, "Radio Radio"



I heard this song first thing this morning and as I got out of bed I smiled. It was playing on my iPod, which I use as an alarm clock because I simply cannot stand the radio. Can't stand the top 40, bored of classic rock radio, and every other format is way worse.

Anyway. I love this song. I love the urgent organ riff and the sneering pissed-offedness in Costello's voice, as he articulates (verbosely) the problems he has with radio programmers ("I wanna bite the hand that feeds me / I wanna bite that hand so badly!" being the classic line.) This is one of those great songs where it all comes together.

Serious Contenders: Pavement, "Cut Your Hair"



A classic pop riff, fuzzed up with lo-fi production, jangly guitars, and Stephen Malkmus' thin, mumbly, sometimes histrionic vocal.

Serious Contenders: The Coral, "Liezah"



When I was younger I was weird about music. I like to think I always had my tastes, but my selection was unrefined. It was completely random what I would find and get attached to, leading to a bunch of bands I found out about randomly and took as my own, while they escaped my friends' notice.

That's the case with The Coral. I remember brandishing their CDs in high school and everyone I knew would go "What does this sound like?" And I'd play it for them and they'd just look at me and go "Uh...? Kay." But hell, they're all into Fleet Foxes and Mumford & Sons now, so maybe they weren't ready.

Each album they released impressed me less and less (although Butterfly House was a real upturn) but those early albums had a real greatness to them that holds up for me. The first was trailblazingly odd, alive with fire and inspiration and confidence in its own uniqueness. Their second, which this comes from, was still quirky, but also loaded with straightforward and earnest moments.

Sunday, January 8, 2012

Childish Gambino: Camp

I'm going to begin 2012 by restating a simple fact that underscored every review I did last year: I don't really know shit about shit. Okay, I have a pretty decent wealth of knowledge of music and I try to apply it properly in determining what music is good and why. It'd still say that's more based in intuition, and there are serious gaps in my knowledge. I admitted early last year that you wouldn't see a lot of hip hop on this site, and that is not because I have something against the genre. I simply don't believe I'm a trustworthy voice in determining when hip hop is good. I like some rap, I hate some rap, at the end of the day I don't feel as comfortable telling people whether to buy the Kanye/Jay-Z album as I am telling them to buy an Arcade Fire. And even then I'm not sure I "know" anything... more reviewers would do well to consider this fact. Anyway.

What's more is the unavoidable fact that it's entirely possible I only bought this album because of Community. I'd like to convince myself otherwise, that I wouldn't spend $10 on a CD just because I like a performers comedic acting. It was definitely the reason I first watched his videos on YouTube, but I'd like to think that if he weren't any good, if I didn't like what I saw, if it was just a novelty, I wouldn't have kept watching and sought out the album when it was released. So cards on the table, there's that.

But I don't listen to anything I don't think is good, and I definitely don't waste time talking about it if I don't think people should buy it. And to my ears, Donald Glover's plastic debut, after years of self-releasing by download, is definitely worthy.

The man puts his considerable skills to work. He builds a complicated persona by exploring one aspect of his life on one track, then turning back to another on the next. There's a lot of great thematic exploration here about sexual politics, identity, the black experience, fame and self-consciousness. Of course, there are also more puns and references than you can possibly account for and more references to body-juices than the entire Aerosmith songbook.

One strategy to review the album would be to go down the lyrics, to see if his words ring true, if he represents and keeps it real or whatever they're saying these days: if it's all a front or if he's really 2 legit to quit (I should stop.) But I'll remind you, I really don't know shit. I don't know shit about where Childish is coming from, about the projects or the black experience or the perils of fame or even getting too much pussy (remember, I write about music on the internet.) What sells it for me is the indomitably-clever (or occasionally so-unclever-it's-clever) lyric sheet, doing a great job of finding multiple ways into an issue, usually the various conflicting ways it might affect him. It would be time-consuming to list all the lyrics that affected me - despite not sharing the background - but you can't help but nod in understanding when you hear "Culture shock at barber shops cause I ain't hood enough / We all look the same to the cops, ain't that good enough?"

Helping things along is the composition, helped by Ludwig Goransson's production, bathing the beats in a pumped-up anything-goes atmosphere, always befitting the tone of the song but never degenerating into abrasive noise or, in the case of the more delicate tracks like "Kids," schmaltz. There is a level of craft in this album that deserves commendation no matter what. And sometimes it feels like it's justly drawing attention to itself, other times it seems perfectly modest and self-effacing. It has a lot of the elements that made me love the Foster the People album last year, which is that music can sound like anything these days. A lot of the tracks, like "Heartbeat" and "Sunrise" are really made by the musical component.

But I'll tell you what. At the end of my first listen, I hadn't really drank in a lot of the lyrical content, and I couldn't quite separate all the backing tracks to see what was good. As much as a first-listen is ever adequate to draw an opinion, I was really unsure until we got to the end of "That Power," which is the absolute crux of the album, devoting one component to Gambino's flow-and-reference style, which is excellent, and then neatly using Glover's writing talents to neatly sum the album up with a spoken word anecdote that ties together the entire concept of building an identity and determining who you are in the world and how to communicate with others, and growing up and going back and just... the whole damn thing in like a 5 minute story about a bus trip. It's an excellent moment that ended any doubts and made me want to go back.

So who am I when I try to write about this album? Still some white kid from the suburbs, just like most of the people probably buying this disc. But I'm also one of the only (perhaps the only) person to appreciate both the "I want a full house Full House / They said 'You got it dude'" and "It's 400 Blows to these Truffaut Niggas", so there's that. Glover's clearly not making this album for anybody but himself, but he's also using weighty topics like race and identity as potent material for his rhymes. Or perhaps, he's using the attention he would be getting anyway to try desperately to say something important. I don't know, again, I don't know anything at all. All I know is that I listen, and I like it.

It reached me. It did. It's a blast to listen to and it connects despite my lack of a basis in experience to connect with a lot of Childish's material. Music is after all communication, and if he's reached this far, he's done good. I can't say any more than this: you know what I like, you know what you like, and the point of this site is to figure out where they overlap.

Shout out to Rap Genius for helping me attempt to cope with how much I was missing in this album.

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



Cover: Shiny Toy Guns, "Major Tom (Coming Home)"



This is an example of how you can cover a song, not substantially change its sound or feel, and still wind up with something rather improved. Peter Schilling's original was a pretty good song, of course, but it was sort of a basic exercise in early/mid-80's synthpop. Good, if a little on-the-nose. It feels like there's no shortage of songs from that time period that used advanced technology to remark on the advancements of technology, whether "Video Killed the Radio Star," "She Blinded Me With Science," or "99 Luftballoons," a dire warning about rapidly progressing cold war balloon technology. Lyrically, it was also of course a nod to David Bowie's earlier tune, "Space Oddity" (and by extension the also-good "Ashes to Ashes.") And then you could argue whether or not it misses the point of the drug abuse undertone of the song, and whether that matters.

I really dig Shiny Toy Guns' version, which shines up the production without really taking it out of its original context, then of course provides that soothingly detached vocal, which is so sweet and so cold it could be the subject of a William Carlos Williams poem. It truly feels like drifting, falling.

Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Cover: Paul Anka, "Mr. Brightside"



"Mr. Brightside" is the Killers song I really like. I don't dislike the group, but this is the one song of theirs I always found myself enjoying. For whatever reason, the choked-up, motormouth verses translate well to Anka's style, and that moment where it changes to the refrain/chorus really works. I'm beginning to think this Anka kid has chops.

Sunday, January 1, 2012

Serious Contenders: Joel Plaskett, "Through & Through & Through"



Good morning. It's 2012 and this is Sound of the Week.

Something I noticed when thinking back on my first year as a music-talking-blog-guy was the power music has to link us to a place and time. Back in November, I went and saw Joel Plaskett in Hamilton (a big deal, since I am a lazyass who doesn't get out much.) In Summer of 2009, just a few blocks across town from the venue, a friend of mine named Cary directed a play I wrote. It was an amazing experience, not just because it happened at all, but because the audiences really loved it.

To introduce the play, which was about waiting for someone to come back, Cary selected this song from Joel Plaskett's album Three. It was the first time I'd ever heard his music and I instantly decided I needed more of it. In those days I was a musical scavenger, mainly feeding off recommendations from my friends and whatever random bands I would hear about through various means.

At the concert, as soon as the opening chords of this song played, the room exploded. It seemed like everyone in the place felt the same things I did, even though that's not possible. I don't think I've ever talked to anyone about Plaskett who didn't cite this as one of their favourites. It's one of those songs where everything just fits together so perfectly that it can't help but reach people.

I got to meet Joel that night. I fanboyed out a bit and told him about the play, and he was very polite as I rambled. We took a very blurry, awful cell phone picture and I shuffled off on my awkward way. In any case, no matter how many times I go on to embarrass myself in front of a professional musician, I'll always have the music, and so will we all.

Keep on rockin'