Wednesday, April 25, 2012

Serious Contenders: Pixies, "Here Comes Your Man" / "Gouge Away"





As a music geek, I somewhat regret not getting the Pixies sooner. My first pass at deepening my music knowledge beyond "What's on the radio right now" was in 2000-2001, when I would click around Allmusic to find out what bands influenced bands I liked. Somehow, Pixies kept coming up, and the song that was put before me was "Where Is My Mind." That's a great song, but for my little 14-year-old brain, it was just a bit much. A bit too off-kilter.

I went back to them about three years ago after a snippet of "Gouge Away" was used in an episode of LOST. When I heard it I needed to go back and pull them out of the file. The way Black Francis goes from menacing muttering to psychopathic screaming really worked for me and showed exactly why they're considered an influence on Nirvana. It's simple, you just need to do it well. This, I think, is the song you would ideally start with if you want to show somebody "This is what the Pixies are." Then you're open to all this other wonderful stuff, including "Where Is My Mind."

Probably my favourite song by them is "Here Comes Your Man." It's incongruously sweet and poppy, almost a sarcastic take on a radio single, because although there are chiming, peppy guitars, there's a dreary undertone that you can't quite put your finger on why or how... until you do a bit of research and find out the song is about homeless people dying in an earthquake. It's the spiritual ancestor of "Pumped Up Kicks" in that way, and it's a bit sad that people, including the bandmembers themselves, think of the song as an unrepresentative bit of mainstream kitsch. I think it suits them well.

Cover: KoRn, "Another Brick in the Wall" & "Word Up"



Far be it from me to defend anything KoRn ever did. It certainly wouldn't be controversial to slam this cover. It goes about as well as you'd expect Korn covering Pink Floyd to. The angsty metal rasp of Jonathan Davis, the phat bass and churning guitars, the... surprisingly effective rhythm, and a faithful, if by-the-book, reproduction of David Gilmour's solo. Hm, maybe my expectations had better be altered. This wasn't going to convert anyone into a KoRn fan, especially if they were a Pink Floyd fan, but after all, it was a bonus track for their Greatest Hits album so if you heard this you already liked them. And surprisingly, what KoRn does bring to the song services it well. They play all three parts together - music geeks know only the middle part was released as a single, so parts 1 and 3 are often forgotten (and separated by the other material that comprised the Wall concept album.) They play pretty well here, fairly cohesive without the conceptual business (ie the famous "If you don't eat your meat" dialogue) without losing the song's meaning of all the anxieties of a singer's upbringing into an isolated rock star (eg: the bricks in the wall.) And the band shows its usually-forgotten skill with funk (they did do the whole "rap metal" thing) as this song was modeled after then-current disco hits.



Surprisingly more effective is their take on the late-80's hip hop number "Word Up." Again, they bring the metal but show great skill with the funk. Davis sounds like he's having more fun with this one, but it retains a sort of ominous flavour. I like songs that are ostensibly "good time" music but with weight and melodrama pumped up. While I could take or leave the Pink Floyd, I genuinely think this song is one of the best things KoRn recorded... which is a fair statement, again, depending what you think of KoRn.

Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Serious Contenders: Tom Petty, "Mary Jane's Last Dance"



Tom Petty has one of the most incredible Greatest Hits albums in history. A lot of great artists pad theirs out with lesser-known tracks, or singles nobody heard or cares about. But I was listening to his the whole way through the other day, and literally every song on it is incredible. He's one of those artists I rarely think about, but when I do, I realize he's been the background music to my life for a very long time. Any song on that album could be one of my "Serious Contenders" as well as a few he recorded later (I see you there, "You Don't Know How It Feels.")

I just posted about "American Girl" a few weeks ago but I was humming this one to myself, trying to remember the (relevant to my life?) lyrics, "Tired of screwing up / Tired of going down / Tired of myself / Tired of this town / " This song has a lot in common with that earlier one, in that its lyrics seem to tell a story, ostensibly about a girl who gets in with the wrong people, but in a distant, detached way so that you never really worry what the song is supposed to be about. Those carefully-chosen lyrics, combined with the solemn blues-rock stomp, put the whole story in terms you can understand without knowing you're even being told.

I don't talk a lot about lyrics on the blog. Lately I've been wondering whether, most of the time, it's even important to know what a song is about, or if it can be enough to accept that the "meaning" of a song is usually just a premise to create music. I can remember a number of people telling me last year, how much they liked Foster the People's "Pumped Up Kicks,"... "and then I found out it was about a school shooting." Well, the lyrics in the verses are a bit obscure on that, but the chorus does fairly-audibly (not perfectly, of course) say "gun" and "bullets." And you can decide for yourself whether it's important what that song, or this one, is even about.

But good lyrics, whether or not they "mean" anything in context, can utterly make a song. A turn of phrase or line that you like hearing can make you want to re-listen to a song that otherwise isn't as inviting. The music of "Mary Jane's Last Dance" is great, but the lyrics really make the song, despite, or perhaps because, they are so sketchy in details and exact meaning. "Mary Jane's Last Dance" is loaded with great descriptions and implications, but it's up to you to put them together in your head. Incidentally, this great song was recorded specifically for Petty's Greatest Hits, which was prescient.

Sunday, April 8, 2012

Kaiser Chiefs: Off With Their Heads

There didn't used to need to be a reason. When I was a kid grabbing whatever music wandered past me (or did the music grab me?) I didn't think much about why. There wasn't a social or artistic component. There were simply things I wanted to hear over and over, and things I never wanted to hear again. It was only later that I started trying to figure out why, which led at first to listening to nothing, and now to listening to... well, not everything, but a lot.

Once you start trying to look at the big picture, you risk losing a lot of that intuitive joy. There's no way for me to explain the awestruck glee I have when I listen to Kaiser Chiefs' Off With Their Heads. They dive in headfirst and start rocking out and don't let up for 11 tracks. There's simply no accounting for why the "Girls start moving, the boys join in" refrain in "You Want History" is so brilliant, only that it is. With a busy, electric sound, every track on the album as something going on that makes you wanna move, makes you wanna keep going.

The album remains consistent without ever retreating itself. There's a languid flow on the opener "Spanish Metal" and "You Like It Too Much," but the former puts sweet harmonies between rough fuzzy guitar breaks, while the latter is a bit stiffer in its steady beat, with a rolling piano (and strings?) beneath. The band has a humorous way of puffing themselves up on songs like this, leading to a soaring chorus. There's the motor-mouthed "Can't Say What I Mean," and the breathless "Half the Truth," which is a fair bit more tense. "Good Days Bad Days" has a peppy stomp, built on a nearly Beatlesque playground prechorus. There's also the call-and-answer of "Never Miss a Beat," which adds a wicked synth flourish under its title phrase, underscoring the sarcastic celebration of its lyrical subjects (useless teens) lifting it into faux-gospel.

The band is very much working in a retro-80s dance, like post-Franz or Killers, with a bit of Arctic Monkeys (perhaps because they've left the accents in.) Most of the tracks are really busy, but "Tomato in the Rain" is a lovely bit of throwback pop for a lazy afternoon. There's also the earnest closer, "Remember You're a Girl," which nearly seems to be the work of a different band. Well, this was also the band that gave us the marvelous Britpop "Ruby" on their previous album. Nothing here sounds like that, which was ballsy, and since everything works, it pays off. The album is really based around the confidence to keep moving, that their music is so good that all the choices they make are the right ones.

Off With Their Heads is definitely all-conquering rock, and I don't need to tell you why, if you can listen to it and like it. The whole album feels almost intuitive, like as soon as they touched their instruments this was the result. But all the many elements are in place, from wicked danceable rhythms and exuberant guitars, to clever lyrics sung with a commitment to a raucous good time. It must have taken a good deal of work and refinement. Still, the result is so immediate that it defies criticism: it's there for those who like it. An album like this doesn't need to be studied, just enjoyed.

iTunes Canada // iTunes USA // Amazon.ca
// Amazon.com //

Tuesday, April 3, 2012

Serious Contenders: The Smiths, "How Soon Is Now?"



That guitar, that doppler-like shhhhrang hits your heart like a hammer. And like so much 80's music, especially coming out of Britain, it is deadly serious and dryly humorous. It leaves enough gaps to bring you in. When I was 13 or 14, this song used to feel like it came from another world.

We used to have the radio on to a station that played the "Hits of the 80's, 90's and Today" in my dad's car and often around the house. I used to dread hearing this song. I remember being a very emotional kid, and when you're that age, things get all knotted up inside of you. Anything that stirs something up inside you has to be wrong somehow. Sadness was supposed to sound like a monster ballad, like Poison's "Every Rose Has Its Thorn" or Aerosmith's "What It Takes." It was on display but it wasn't necessarily shared. This song was just upsetting. It seethed with a dire darkness I just couldn't cope with. I needed to shut it out. But there I'd be, in the car, and hearing "I am the son and the heir of a shyness that is criminally vulgar ... I am human and I need to be loved just like everybody else does" made me grit my teeth. And music like this, maybe not even this song specifically, but further exposure to music like this, eventually helped me put the world in better order.

I'd like to say listening to music like this made me deep or something. The truth is more like I was confronted with something I didn't understand and I didn't like how it felt, which is fitting since growing up is pretty much nonstop that. Eventually you change piece by piece, guided by little factors: songs you hear, people you meet, places you go. I wound up as someone prepared to deal with whatever a song like this stirs up. And it's a remarkable piece of music that retains that magic.

Monday, April 2, 2012

Dinosaur Bones: My Divider

I love a good band name. It helps me gain a handle on how to think about their work. Dinosaur Bones evokes something huge, looming, intimidating... yet fragile and raw. Some great albums are made of a bunch of great songs. Other albums are great because they encompass a whole sound that just works together terrifically. Not all the tracks on "My Divider" are individual gems, and yet from track 1 to track 11 it is an engrossing, wonderful listen.

They play that titanic sound for all it's worth. The opening track, "Making Light" is led by Ben Fox's moaning, vulnerable vocals, toughened by a brick wall of guitar/bass and percussion. The band often sounds more like it's writing scores than rock songs: "Sharks in the Sand," "Life in Trees" and "Point of Pride" are all mesmerizingly moody in their own ways, evoking things like hopelessness and despair without ever seeming like a contrived attempt at gloom. This feels less like a deliberate attempt to drive into the melancholy than something huge an inevitable coming up and swallowing you whole. That the music can go from the extreme to the minimal at a turn helps. Their arrangements are tight, but they follow the flow rather than setting down an a-b-a-c-c pop structure. Their solos burrow deep into the brain and chest.

I say Dinosaur Bones is uninterested in conventional structure. That's not to say the songs sound like meandering jams - they sound like songs. And some of them sound are very much real songs. The petulant, punkish "Royalty," sounds a fair bit like Elvis Costello or Tom Petty (okay, neither of them were punk, but let's take a broad interpretation.) "Hunters" is a particularly dynamic moment, one of the most cinematic tracks in scope, culminating in an explosive rock-out. "Bombs in the Night" is like a panic alarm, with its weirdly offbeat drums, air raid strumming guitars, and metal-detector synth. It has my favourite refrain on the disc ("Cell phones keep going off like bombs in the night." which definitely sounds like a phrase worthy of hooking a song around.) For me, the blockbusters are "NYE" and "Ice Hotels." Both are utterly gorgeous, standout compositions. "Ice Hotels" is shimmering and soft, yet crystal clear, like starlight glinting off arctic snow. Fox's voice is such a desperate whimper here, and the instruments bleed in and out behind him. All through the album, the vocals are as much a means to convey lyrics as they are part of the sonic atmosphere of the band. Fox's singing voice isn't technically studied, but it is beautifully real. He has that sort of "perishing indie rock" voice like Thom Yorke or Julian Casablancas, where there's real expression, in where it's restrained and where it cuts loose.

"NYE" lives and dies on its opening drumbeat. Lucas Fredette sometimes sounds like a drum machine set to "John Bonham" - precise, yet intuitive and uncaged. I don't know anything about how any instruments work, but the stuff he does with hi-hats, I think, is just terrific. The song uses the time-honored prog/arena-rock tactic of marrying a low-key, personal verse with an anthemic chorus. It's wistful and evocative but nonspecific in a great way. And all these songs are presented with a larger-than-life, all-consuming wall of sound that nevertheless is made of only a few discernible parts (guitar/bass, drums, synth, vocal.) Dinosaur Bones: You see all the parts, and they're huge.

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