Thursday, July 25, 2013

Smashing Pumpkins: Oceania

I'm impressed. Really. I feel like this is an album, a piece of work, that Billy Corgan has known he had inside of him for years, and that he has tried to coax it to the surface in a lot of different ways, but for some reason it only just came out now. That he always saw his music as being huge and grandiose - even when trends dictated otherwise - with movements rather than verses and choruses, with symbols and ideas as much as emotions and actions. Maybe it doesn't have "the songs" the way Siamese Dream and Mellon Collie did, but I think it might be more the cohesive achievement, the fully realized vision. It's such a strange damn thing. It's recognizably Smashing Pumpkins: Corgan's voice is unmistakable (for better or worse) as is his ear for details, his particular placement of every loop and layer and drumbeat and instrument, and his vocals, (again for better or worse.) Yet it's fresh, not at all an attempt to retread or cash in on the cache that his band name carries. If you told me that in 2012, the Smashing Pumpkins could be a relevant musical force, I would have backed away slowly. Zeitgeist was more than a bit of a compromise between Corgan's vision and what it was believed they needed to provide. Here they are telling you what it is you really need from them. That might be the only condition under which art can be made.

Yeah, art. Corgan is that most arty of rockers, fussily putting everything where he feels it belongs, devouring each new toy, letting his work exist as a growing organism. As with most topics, I wouldn't consider myself to be the final word on the subject, but that seems to be a fair assessment. It was what set him apart in the 90s, when alt-rock either meant slashing and burning or being cutesy. I think that when Corgan has met his best success, he has found that narrow path between singular personal vision and crowd-pleasing populism. Go too far toward the former and the music becomes insufferable, the latter it becomes bland. Oceania walks that line for 60 minutes.

The sound of this album is big, wide-open and full. There is always something going on, usually a lot. Even the soft parts are kind of loud and heavy, and usually build to some huge climactic moment. This is an album loaded with musical instruments played like musical instruments, not as vehicles for hooks and solos. There is beauty in that, genuine sincere beauty. Here is an album by a 90s band in 2012 that doesn't sound like it belongs in either time period. What's more, it's a damn cohesive album: each track feels like it needs to be heard after the last. It's weighty, but never a slog to listen through. This is especially ironic given that Corgan has mulled over the idea of abandoning albums and releasing songs each on their own. As it turns out, he does one of the best justifications for the full album statement in the 2010s.

What's key about this album are the vocals and how they do not override the gorgeous symphonics of the music. If you let them, they become part of the sonic palette, his nasal voice a roughened counterpoint to the immaculate instrumentation. The music isn't there to back up the vocals, the vocals follow along, he seems to be singing along to the sounds in his head, and the actual lyrics in there are just to hit the right rhythm and inflection. On the printed page, the words might seem like clumsy spirituality, or overwordy new age ramblings (philosobabble?) but as delivered they become mantras and keys to another dimension, one that lives inside Corgan's head and far, far out in space. This is real heavy prog stuff, man. Such grandiose music demands such extreme subject matter. No "The world is a vampire" here.

Does it amount to anything? Is it deep or profound? Does it matter? Does it matter if it matter? Because Goddamnit, it sounds good. It sounds probably exactly the way Corgan envisioned it and I have enjoyed listening to it many times over since I acquired it last fall. It could have gone way, way off the rails, but it works too damn well to be ignored. It wants to be a very specific thing: a huge, outsized epic album that sounds like nothing else sharing shelf-space with it (only the recent Queens of the Stone Age album can compete, and that came out nearly a year later.) And it succeeds overwhelmingly at that. It's liberated from the idea that rock just needs to be rock: with titles like "The Celestials" (which I want to believe is a shoutout to Jack Kirby) and "Panopticon," this wasn't going to be a modest item. Its entire attack is on point, validating Corgan's instincts, his impulses, his dreams, his desires. Unlike Nirvana or Pearl Jam, Smashing Pumpkins was never really a band, but a project, and that project was to build albums like this. This might even be a truer realization of that project than the earlier, arguably better SP albums. Back in those days, he was aiming for huge music at a time when it was not cool to do so. Now, with the internet and the splintering of audiences, the conditions have changed so that you can do anything you like, and people will be into it so long as it's good. For SP, this is the uber-album, the mother lode. If you think this is something that might interest you, don't waste any more time reading me talk about it.

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


Thursday, July 18, 2013

Does It Rock? Arctic Monkeys, "Do I Wanna Know?"



As this site will attest, I am a huge, huge admirer of the first two Arctic Monkeys albums. I still enjoy listening to their later stuff, but I get less crazy about it. Whether they lost their way or simply became something that interested me less, I can't say. (And the fact that I'm not willing to say explains why I am not yet being paid for my opinions.) But I believe, fundamentally, they are a good band, and can turn out a good song whenever called upon.

The debut single from their upcoming album hits the spot for me. Again, it's not a return to "I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor." The motormouthed brattiness has aged into contemplative, unwinding statements that seem tempered by recreational pot rather than amphetamines (whether Alex Turner uses drugs, I don't know, but that's my metaphor.) The riff on this reminds me of Elbow's "Grounds For Divorce," which is fine because that song isn't really what Elbow sounds like anyway. This is a good slow groove, and instead of hitting you with a crash bang dynamite chorus, it works its way into your skin insidiously, begs repeat listens, tempts and teases.

Is the current permutation of the Arctic Monkeys, which has proven to be the band's lasting creative interest, more mature? More thoughtful, intelligent, savvy? Maybe but maybe not, maybe it's just slower and deeper and that gives it the illusion of learnedness. If so, it's an illusion I can buy into. Which is helpful, because even though this is not the Arctic Monkeys sound I fell for at first, it's one I can come to appreciate.

Wednesday, July 17, 2013

Case Study: Van Halen, "Dance the Night Away"



Fuck, Van Halen had a ton of good songs. Just looking at the hits, you've got the titanic "Jump," the rock solid "Running With the Devil," the gloriously sleazy "Hot For Teacher," cover versions of "Pretty Woman" and "You Really Got Me" that brought them to new frontiers, showy instrumentals like "Eruption"... this band was the glitzy, glamorous synthesis of everything rock was becoming in the late 70's.

But for me, the song that sums up all the pleasures of listening to Van Halen is "Dance the Night Away." Not a little-known song by any stretch, but one that seems to take a backseat to those gems. This song has it all, though, and to the fullest degree: it has one of Roth's best vocals, sexy but charming and playful, beckoning in the lyrics, "But don't skip romance 'cause ya old enough / to dance the night away." Those lyrics are terrifically simple-minded, but they're aptly effortless. They soar and infuse the soul to do just that. It's a perfectly fitted good-time rock and roll song that comes with a genuine sense of wellness.

And that guitar. Oh, boy, that guitar. EVH was a player of immense technical skill and discipline, and sometimes even his best work sounds overly clean and precise for my rock tastes, but that groove, the way it ebbs and flows beneath the vocal, especially the hook under the chorus, the way it walks and pings, oh yeah. That tone is so crisp, and that riff leading into the fadeout just completely sums up the entire mood and movement of the song. You could listen to it for ten more minutes, especially thanks to the fine rhythm work of Alex Van Halen and Michael Anthony. This is the best possible combination of his pristine guitar and Diamond Dave's wild vocal, I tell you, and that's amongst many fine examples. The strange alchemy that was Van Halen (the real Van Halen) is in its best balance here. If it's not their "best song," the one that marks the highwater of their accomplishments, it's the one that shows exactly what this band is like.

Wednesday, July 10, 2013

Now Listening: The Mowgli's

One of the things that has happened, since I've opened this site up a bit, is that I feel free to write about things that I might not otherwise have targeted. I really like the Mowgli's, and I feel like they would be worthy of the site's full length review treatment (if I ever do that again) except there's half a chance that the charm of their frothy, high-energy pop rock approach might wear off this jaded old 20something by then.

This is probably going to appeal most to teens, people who have seen enough to know what they like but still able to be impressed by something novel. It's unrelentingly peppy and positive (even in the acoustic or intimate numbers) and a lot of the songs feel like giant communal singalongs. There are hooks, pounding drums, playful synths... this is music that hasn't been tainted by cynicism or irony. It's also not bland or shrill in its earnestness. It's easy to keep listening as they play through their tricks one at a time, then layer them over each other in different ways. It's sometimes grandiose, sometimes intimate, sometimes tightly assembled and sometimes loose. It's explorational.

This is just really fun to listen to, youthful and vibrant. I can see people who have been around longer than the intended audience, or me, being quite unimpressed, but I think that "been there done that" attitude is death for music criticism because every time is someone's first. There will be people who hear this CD - 15, 16 year olds - and it's the first "good" thing they heard. Nobody is born a Bowie fan, you know?

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


Friday, July 5, 2013

Now Listening: Yeezus

This review slash write-up slash random bullshit comes with a full disclaimer that you have absolutely no reason to take my opinion of any hip hop album seriously ever. Ever. It dominates so much of the musical landscape but it's a form that I have yet to truly adapt my head to. Left to my own devices I'd just listen to David Bowie and Hollerado all day every day, but Yeezy gets people in my store, despite having an audience that should be willing and able to download.

As for the album itself, well, I admire it a bit. I might never even listen to it again, but I like it more than what I heard of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. It's a hardass record and he does some daring shit on it, making abrasive clashing sounds on it, speaking hard truths and making no effort to contrive a hit out of it. It's the testament to his cult of personality that it is allowed to simply be, and to be whatever he wills it, because he wields that power. That cache. He's reached an artistic state of grace, where he wags the dog, and now he has the daunting task of keeping ahead of himself. Which is a good problem to have. The stunts he does attempt, like bringing in a sample of "Strange Fruit" for "Blood on the Leaves," manage to come off successfully. Kanye is many things, but not someone who reaches for the middle, and I respect that wherever it's found.

I mean, look. I'm not the authority. My blind spot for hip hop music is one of the dozens of reasons nobody will ever pay me to write about music for a living, I'm just trying to get better at it. Well, get better, or just get content, since Yeezus is dominating the dialog this week and Magna Carta will be dominating the dialog next week. It has my approval, for whatever that might be worth to you. It's a risky, almost dangerous thing, that really accounts for itself.