Sound of the Week

Serious Contenders: Alice Cooper, "Poison"

2012-02-21T23:32:00.004-05:00

Considering it was the late-80's, and this is Alice Cooper, it's remarkable how much less silly it is than its contemporaries. Don't get me wrong, it's still a bit much, but considering it next to Poison or Winger it seems rather subdued and subtle in both its instrumentation and lyrical matter. It's not surprising that this song, with its definitive 80's lead guitar and quintessential vocal hook, was a big hit in 1989. What's a bit more surprising is that it holds up 20-some years later better than most of its contemporaries (aside from Aerosmith's Pump.)

It was the perfect Alice Cooper song, as much as "I'm Eighteen" or "School's Out," love as a game of life and death. Alice, with his knack for theatricality, does a great job wringing out the melodramatic overtones without sacrificing whatever meaning there is in the song. Alice comes off like a vulnerable psycho on the brink of disaster.

It's silly, as hard rock frequently is, but it's not afraid of itself. I dig Alice Cooper because at his best, he is simultaneously highly theatrical and over the top, but very controlled and conscious of his image. That's what makes many of his best songs stand up alongside rock's best: very much of their time, but also standing out from the pack.

Noel Gallagher: High Flying Birds

2012-02-19T23:18:00.005-05:00

No matter what I thought about Oasis, it was a successful rock band that is still talked about today (although much moreso in the UK.) A while back I addressed the fact that although I wasn't a fan of their work by and large, I could still admit when a song of theirs was good. I have their two-disc greatest hits and find myself skipping a lot. Regardless my feelings about those other Oasis songs, Noel Gallagher is someone whose songwriting talents are considerable. He's internalized so much classic pop rock that he seems to compose his records with his eye closed and one hand behind his back. It's easy for him to do, I'm saying.

The sound of High Flying Birds isn't the sound of genius at work, I don't think. It's not innovation in progress. It's the work of a really good songwriter knowing what works and what he wants to play: not only that, but it seems to dovetail well with what his fans want and expect from him. He does it so consistently and with such ease that I don't find myself skipping around much, although I do always let my ears perk up when I know "The Death of You And Me" is coming near. Even the most basic-seeming tracks, like "Dream On" or "(I Wanna Live in a Dream In My) Record Machine" offer anthemic, strummy pleasures. If not all the songs quite stand out, at least they all offer a little ingredient that endears me, like the swaggering "So long, baby, buh-bye" chorus on "(Standing On) The Strong Beach" or the oceanic late-Beatlesness of "Stop The Clocks." Most have really catchy, toe-tapping choruses, the insidious kind you find yourself humming to yourself. "If I Had a Gun..." has some of the best lyrics I've heard the usually-incomprehensible Noel has cranked out.

"The Death Of You And Me," though, is the moment of greatness here. Although I made note of Noel being fine to fall back on his apparently-natural ability, that's the one that feels like it took some doing and it paid off. If it doesn't totally break from his Oasis pattern it certainly feels like a development of its own, a slight development but an effective one. It swirls like gypsy music, swells with horns (which recur throughout the album, along with plenty of other sonic accents) and has a chorus that really commands attention rather than settling in the back of the mind. The whole exercise was worth it if only for that piece.

There's nothing shocking here. It's what you might expect from a solo album from the main creative voice of Oasis, the same basic pop chords and word salad lyrics and vague-feelery. But Noel is no longer the brash, world-beating young man of Oasis' heyday. This sounds like an album by someone who's been there and back, who knows his skillset and has settled in nicely to it. It offers a lot of the same goodies as the Oasis songs I like, like "Wonderwall" or "Lyla," but toned down considerably. Because Noel is handling the vocals, it sounds a good bit more subdued and down-to-Earth. His voice sounds less rock star and more coffee shop than his brother. So the music comes off as an interesting mutation between the arena and the coffee shop: epic yet grounded. Dreamy and Earthy. Familiar yet fresh.

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

Serious Contenders: Stars, "Your Ex-Lover Is Dead"

2012-02-15T00:24:00.002-05:00

Stars, that most theatrical of Canadian indie pop-rock bands, creates a scene and a mood and characters in sound. This is one of the most beautiful, lovely, longing songs I know and it's always a pleasure to stop what I'm doing and let myself get absorbed in it. There are many songs that preach love and devotion, some sincerely, some truthfully. But for me it'll always be songs about the difficulty of ever having been in love.

Happy Valentines Day.

Who is Paul McCartney?: How The Beatles Still Matter

2012-02-13T21:59:00.007-05:00

When all was said and done after the Grammy awards last night, there was one question looming large over the ceremony. It wasn't "What Killed Whitney Houston?" It wasn't "Why do people still pay attention to Chris Brown?" And it wasn't "What's a Bon Iver?"

The question was: "Who is Paul McCartney?"

Pictured: ???

The always-insightful Twitterverse provided a massive bank of tweets questioning exactly who this elderly British gentleman on their TVs was. And I, being the resperctable (sp?) online music journalist I am, or claim to be, was shocked -- shocked! -- that there was anyone out there who did not immediately know the founding bassist for Wings.

Admittedly, it's easy to have missed "Sir" Paul, who has flown under the radar for several decades in obscure bands. Every so often he collaborates with a more established artist, like Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson, or Youth, but mainly it's considered a tax dodge for those superstars. Charity. Cunningly, he's remained underground, cultivating a rabid, vocal, but decidedly minute fanbase, over the past five decades.

Okay. Most people know. If you're reading this blog, it's likely you know me directly and I don't think I would associate myself with you if you couldn't at least pick out three of the four Beatles (George is a bit easy to miss.) However, playing Devil's advocate for a minute, let's acknowledge the audience for the Grammys. For starters, as I mentioned, a disproportionate number of the audience is in favour of abuse. We're not always dealing with the smartest, most aware section of the audience here. It's easy to understand exactly how a musician whose glory days were thirty years before their birth escaped their notice. There's a lot of people, not wrongly, focused on the here-and-now, on the Rihannas and Lady Gagas and LMFAO. This is their world, and the Beatles, that's something old and irrelevant. And honestly, if you're not someone who already knows who Paul McCartney is, you'll probably be perfectly fine continuing to not know. It's not necessary for you.

But even making allowances for how it happens and why it's okay, there's something gnawing at me, sparked by this tweet:

And there's just something not quite right about that. Because although the numbers add up, that seems like a false piece of logic. That seems to preclude any 15-year-olds from caring about Sir Paul, that it's silly to consider they might. But they do. Somehow, the music has survived. I get parents in my store beaming that they're picking up a copy of Abbey Road for their 12-year-old kids, that they asked for The Beatles Rock Band when it came out, that they love Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd too. I don't think a subset modern 30-year-olds, fifteen years ago, would be caught in a new wave of Comomania.

I'm not here to talk about why Paul McCartney still matters: why his accomplishments deserve recognition, why his legacy should stand. I'm here to acknowledge that it does. That the Beatles fans of the world are constantly being replenished, at least partially, by new discovery, in a way that throwaway pop of bygone days doesn't usually.

On the Internet, nothing dies. Everything lingers, waiting to be reborn. The Beatles, conveniently, form the beginning of the narrative of pop music. Although I love earlier music, if you go back further than 1964, it becomes a bit estranged. But they were there at the time, and were largely the catalyst, popular music took a very solid form. Any fan of the Foo Fighters or Arcade Fire or Bon Iver or some band I haven't heard of yet can trace its lineage back to that time, and now that we have the Internet, we can let that continue to be a well-traveled route, for anyone interested in visiting. You don't even have to be 15 to start; I wasn't. Part of that is due to advocates constantly building the narrative of the Beatles as the greatest, myself included. But it wouldn't have taken hold if there weren't enough evidence to support it.

There may come a day, although I doubt I'll be around, when the Beatles legend finally collapses and nobody thinks about them anymore, when the history of music has moved on to where their moment can no longer be marked as the beginning of anything relevant. Where Abbey Road and A Hard Day's Night are as alien as the old-time crooners or depression-era ditties. But I doubt that their significance will dampen soon, because what they started will probably remain part of the narrative for as long as I'm talking about music. The Beatles will be in that same classification as Socrates or Galileo: Their work was before our time, and much has come since, but they will always be known to the anyone who follows them in their field.

Keep on rockin'
-Scotto

Arctic Monkeys/Strokes: Favourite Worst Nightmare/Room on Fire (Two-For-One)

2012-02-13T00:07:00.002-05:00

The key to this blog is that it's not music journalism. I'm not out there to provide commentary on all the latest music and keep up on the scene. This is really a personal blog, documenting my ongoing project to discover and rediscover great music. And given I spent a lot of the 2000s not paying enough attention to current music, that leaves a healthy gap to fill in, since, on my first pass, I largely missed out these bands. I knew of them, but didn't pay any attention. And now I'm here, learning how to talk about them.

In the case of both of these bands, I came around to them specifically for material for this blog. The Arctic Monkeys' debut, Whatever People Say I Am That's What I'm Not, was one of my favourite albums I listened to in the first half of the year. I got around to the Strokes' first album in the fall, but didn't review it because I felt like my comments would be limited to "This is excellent." (Okay, I probably could have done better, but I was more interested in talking about their latest album, Angles.) These two bands are often linked in my mind because they both delivered massive debut albums with a ton of hype, then provided a series of follow-ups with diminishing sales and praise.

Having to write a second album is the worst prospect in rock music, especially if your first one is a smash. There's the possibility you used up all your good stuff on the first go, the insurmountable fan expectations for "the same but more," and the paradoxical concern you'll just end up copying yourself. I think a lot of fans, in the back of their minds, root for the follow-ups to fail, to maintain the purity of the first album. Both of these offerings navigated these pressures simply by being awesome.

The first few tracks of Favourite Worst Nightmare by the Arctic Monkeys are a bit like a hangover from Whatever People Say I Am: Wordy, observational, power-funk, bratty rock. There's the feeling, though, that as good as they are, they don't quite measure up to "I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor," "The View From The Afternoon" or "From The Ritz to the Rubble." But they do have some points in their favour: Their sound is thicker and more powerful, indicating that the band has leveled up some. "Brianstorm" is a whirlwind, "D is for Dangerous" is an explosion and "Balaclava" edges the album toward its greatness with its nimble basswork. The lyrics haven't suffered none either, especially on the latter.

"Fluorescent Adolescent" is where the album really hits its stride, bringing in any easy-riffing shuffle that culminates in a circular, overlapping lyric that marries form and function (tastes great, less fat!) It and even moreso "Only Ones Who Know" provide evidence that the band has a heart on this album. While "Fluorescent" was sort of a new prospect for the group, "Only Ones Who Know" has a shimmering beauty and earnest vocal that was not hinted at on the earlier record. But enough about how this one compares. It takes on a spirit of its own from here on out. The watchword for critics is "maturity," and that's true, it does feel like the songwriting has broadened its eye without quite changing the topic (the dark underside of a good time.) "Do Me A Favour," "This House is a Circus" and "If You Were There, Beware" propel themselves on a basic urgency that never makes the band seem too carefree or lightweight. Things in these songs, all through this album, are not simple. The way the dizzying "Circus" transitions into the ominous "Beware" is a thing of beauty.

"The Bad Thing" is the next great track on the album: it's not that it distinguishes itself from the rest of the songs as much as I feel it is one of the best examples of what Alex Turner & Co do, setting a rhythm-n-shakedown up with a lyric about how taking off one's wedding ring to cheat "Won't make it / That much easier / It might make it worse." Its abrupt end takes you to the mesmerizing funk of "Old Yellow Bricks," with its lyrics suspicious of nostalgia. The closing number, "505," is one of the most outstanding songs on either album, beginning as it does with that whimpering, lonely vocal (reminiscent of "Only Ones Who Know" or the earlier "Riot Van,") but exploding into a driving classic rock number, at last unwinding into an uncoiled bass riff that leaves you hanging just that little bit.

Like Favourite Worst Nightmare, Room On Fire has a number of pleasures of its own. The album doesn't foresake the bleary-eyed Sunday morning hangover sound of its predecessor, but it does pump it up to almost cartoonish proportions, wonderfully, right from the start on "What Ever Happened," with its pulsating guitars and that razor-rasp vocal from Julian Casablancas. Julian has two modes: uninterested mutter and freaked-out howl, and he alternates between them perfectly: some songs are all one or the other, and the ones that are both are perfect. Take "Reptilia," the best cut on the album, with its jigsaw riffs that snap together perfectly and that urgent chorus, set against a rock-solid rhythm of bass and drum. Those first two tracks both provide a listening experience different from that found on the previous album. "You Talk Way Too Much," "Meet Me In The Bathroom," "The Way It Is" and "I Can't Win" bring the straightforward, strummy, glossy garage punk you want from these guys. I'm particularly interested in the way the vocals are mixed, fuzzy and distant, almost desperate not to be heard. On a few key tracks, they monkey around with genres, with ska-like cuts (as Is This It also had) and the nearly doo-wop "Under Control."

Meanwhile, "12:51" features some of the best guitar sound, with its sparkling pedal effect, and the next-to-last track "The End Has No End" combines every element I like about the band into one, serving as an awesome climax for the record ("I Can't Win" is the abrupt aftermath.) It's a really exciting listen, and the band really does benefit from the upsizing of their sound.

I may be the only one who cares or thinks about this sort of thing, years later. But as I've mentioned before, an album does not cease to exist because its timeperiod of release as passed on. Both these bands' discographies are still widely available and perfectly enjoyable. The reason I don't give star ratings, of course, is so I don't have to concede "Well, it's not the first album, so I knocked off half a point." I mean, what is that? Why would "different" mean "worse?" Or for that matter, why would "too similar" also mean "worse?" Both albums to some degree are similar to the previous, and to some degree different, and both provide incredibly enjoyable listening experiences.

Buy Favourite Worst Nightmare Now: iTunes Canada // iTunes USA // Amazon.ca // Amazon.com

Buy Room On Fire now: iTunes Canada // iTunes USA // Amazon.ca // Amazon.com

Serious Contenders: Elton John, "Madman Across the Water"

2012-02-12T00:15:00.000-05:00

Elton John's career with Bernie Taupin is probably one of the most fruitful, rewarding partnerships in pop music history, right up there with Lennon/McCartney and just ahead of Steinman/Loaf. I don't have to love "Your Song" or "Candle In The Wind" but I can respect how ably they and songs like them hit that commercial sweet spot, all while John and Taupin had their other feet on the art-rock side of things. I don't have any goddamn idea what "Madman Across The Water" is supposed to mean or represent, but it gives me a chill, and I think it's pretty boss that this is on the same album as "Tiny Dancer" and the same career as "Rocket Man."

Serious Contenders: Iron Maiden, "Number of the Beast"

2012-02-09T23:46:00.003-05:00

I'm not much of a metalhead. I tend to focus my musical tastes on the middle part of the spectrum, because anything much heavier than what I listen to tends to be hard (for me) to critique. Doesn't make it bad, in fact good genre music is one of the best pleasures of today's market. The genres outside the "rock-pop" spectrum (Metal, punk, hip-hop and, yeah, country) all have their audiences with particular criteria for what's good.

I was watching Doctor Who the other night, an episode called "The Satan Pit," which featured the Doctor encountering a giant horned beast whose appearance I would describe as "metal as fuck." It got me thinking about this song, which nowadays sounds just like a regular fast hard rock song, given it's pretty early in the metal years. It does feature not only excellent guitars (it was one of my favourite songs to play in Guitar Hero) but also wicked metal screaming from Bruce "Not Christopher Walken" Dickinson. Still, metal as fuck.

Cover: Neutral Milk Hotel, "I Love How You Love Me"

2012-02-09T00:33:00.003-05:00

Cleaning off my desk, I found a note written from a former co-worker with this song written on it. The original was one of the early instances of Phil Spector's wall of sound production. I'm posting it not just because I think it's good music, but because it reminds me of the feeling of sharing music with people, discussing it and finding someone something they've never heard before. My hope is always that I've done that for most of the people reading this blog at some point.

Serious Contenders: The Darkness, "I Believe In a Thing Called Love"

2012-02-07T23:50:00.003-05:00

It's funny how oftentimes in music a feminine manner (tight clothes, long hair, high voice) becomes intensely masculine. It remains something of a mystery how one ends up as Justin Hawkins rather than Boy George (or worse, Pete Burns from Dead or Alive) although playing good music is a good start. The glam-rock conceit of the Darkness involves pushing forward into that falsetto voice as far as it'll go at just the absolutely most intense moments of the song, to increase its power tenfold.

It takes a lot of balls, if you'll pardon the expression (or don't, as I used it deliberately) to really sell the glam rock image. Make no mistake, this is cock-rock, but it's amazingly done and not at all ashamed of what it is.

My Morning Jacket: Circuital

2012-02-05T22:45:00.002-05:00

There's a spiritual simpleness to this album. In my past experience with My Morning Jacket, they tend toward the elaborate, the psychedelic, the showy: tracks like "I'm Amazed" and "Evil Urges" that demonstrate unbridled enthusiasm for creation: imagination and technical wizardry. Here the boldness is toned down, but I still think the album carries that inventiveness. They've managed to learn how to get a lot of mileage out of a lot less.

Even the brassier, bolder songs on this album have a modesty to them. Something like "Holdin' On To Black Metal" or "First Light" announces itself as special but still feels grounded. "The Day Is Coming" feels like a hymn or a sermon, but still never needs to puff itself up. Both it and the opening track, "Victory Dance" use their sheared-down sound, standing on towering drums, to sound huge without needing to slap on a bunch of decorations.

The heart of the album is in some of the quieter moments. "Wonderful (The Way I Feel)" is delivered with an earnest vulnerability, really carrying the lyrics of "Going where there ain't no fear, going where the spirit is near... where the living is easy, and the people are kind, with its picked guitars sitting on top of light strings. "Outta My System" is probably the strongest lyric on the album, where songwriter Jim "Yim Yames" James details his growth from a drug-taking, car-stealing thug to a responsible, married adult. He speaks fondly of his former self, not passing judgment, understanding he did what he felt was right at the time but wouldn't behave that way anymore. The way the song is delivered demonstrates the perspective, and manages to engage the issue of growing up without outright saying "Kids are dumb" or "Adults are lame." A lot of the album takes this serene attitude toward the idea of growing and changing, like "Movin' Out," which marvels at the opportunity to create a new life for oneself.

The finest moment of the album is probably the title track, which manages to sustain itself for 7-plus minutes without dragging or needing to be built out of suites (not unprecedented but not common.) It starts un-peeling its rhythmic riff as James croons, building to its apex as the moan becomes a howl.

In general, the album has a relaxed, easygoing vibe to it, perfect for latter-day hippies. "Slow Slow Tune" with its ringing guitars and staggered drums, is an ultimate slow jam. I think it's healthy to have something like this in your musical diet, even with my general preference for exciting, lively tunes. It helps clear the mind a bit, to unwind. It's not one I find myself excitedly pushing on people, because I'm concerned they'll listen to the generally mellow tones and murmured lyrics, and go "So?" But when you sit down with it, given a chance, it'll speak to you. One of those great albums that matches its thoughts with its way of speaking, big and small at once.

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

Does It Rock? Jack White, "Love Interruption"

2012-01-31T22:05:00.002-05:00

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.

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

2012-01-30T01:09:00.002-05:00

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"

2012-01-30T00:46:00.004-05:00

"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.

Harvey Danger: Where Have All The Merrymakers Gone?

2012-01-25T23:35:00.007-05:00

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

Cover: Cuff the Duke, "The Suburbs"

2012-01-24T23:21:00.000-05:00

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.

Serious Contenders: Blind Melon, "No Rain"

2012-01-23T23:05:00.000-05:00

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."

Serious Contenders: Tom Petty, "American Girl"

2012-01-22T22:32:00.001-05:00

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.

Cover: The Ramones, "Baby I Love You"

2012-01-21T23:00:00.001-05:00

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?"

2012-01-21T22:56:00.003-05:00

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"

2012-01-21T22:40:00.003-05:00

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"

2012-01-21T21:56:00.004-05:00

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.

Serious Contenders: Smashing Pumpkins, "1979"

2012-01-17T23:55:00.004-05:00

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.

Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks: Mirror Traffic

2012-01-16T19:20:00.004-05:00

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"

2012-01-16T18:50:00.002-05:00

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"

2012-01-16T01:01:00.004-05:00

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"

2012-01-16T00:36:00.003-05:00

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.

Childish Gambino: Camp

2012-01-08T22:09:00.007-05:00

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)"

2012-01-08T21:08:00.003-05:00

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.

Cover: Paul Anka, "Mr. Brightside"

2012-01-03T22:41:00.002-05:00

"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.

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

2012-01-01T11:20:00.003-05:00

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'

The End of the Year Recap 2011 Spectacular

2011-12-30T15:50:00.004-05:00

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

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

2011-12-28T23:24:00.001-05:00

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"

2011-12-28T21:32:00.003-05:00

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"

2011-12-28T00:20:00.003-05:00

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!

Cover: Dexys Midnight Runners, "Respect"

2011-12-27T23:47:00.002-05:00

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"

2011-12-27T23:31:00.003-05:00

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.

Sloan: The Double Cross

2011-12-26T20:54:00.012-05:00

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 instrumentals. "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

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

2011-12-25T01:54:00.005-05:00

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'.

Sheepdogs: Learn & Burn

2011-12-15T21:36:00.008-05:00

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"

2011-12-15T18:39:00.003-05:00

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"

2011-12-15T00:14:00.004-05:00

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.

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

2011-12-13T19:36:00.005-05:00

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?

Viva Brother: Famous First Words

2011-12-08T18:37:00.003-05:00

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

Serious Contenders: Doors, "People Are Strange"

2011-12-03T14:17:00.003-05:00

"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.

Radiohead: OK Computer

2011-12-01T11:04:00.003-05:00

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.

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

Tuesday Special: NSync, "Pop"

2011-11-29T18:20:00.003-05:00

"Hey now, cut that out, Scotto. Quit posting lame old '90s boy band songs. You love rock, you love Arcade Fire and Nirvana!"

Yes. Absolutely, and I wouldn't be caught dead holding an NSync CD, but y'know, I was not in their market so they probably would've been okay with that. If you had told 14-year-old me in 2001 that in ten years' time I would think Justin Timberlake was a pretty all right guy, that I would look forward to his appearances on Saturday Night Live or that he could go on TV and perform Eminem and Jay Z (and the Digital Underground!!) with utter impunity I would be shocked. Shocked, I tells ya! But here we are, it's 2011, I write about music, and Justin Timberlake seems like a really cool dude.

I don't have to like old Boyband songs, but they were exactly what they needed to be: groups of dudes singing and dancing in unison, to make girls between the ages of ten and 17 scream. And sometimes, it was better than it needed to be.

"Pop" is exactly what it claims: three-odd minutes of undiluted musical candy (plus a tag of weird beat-boxing thing.) But "Did you ever wonder why this music gets you high?" Sometimes, yes. I know now that Timberlake has a sense of humour about himself. What I couldn't have figured was that the whole NSync project had a vague air of self-awareness about itself, that they knew what they were doing was maybe not a stab at great art, but it was effective and fun. They took not taking themselves seriously pretty seriously, and it resulted in, yes, fairly disposable dance pop, but nothing you would look back at ten years later and recoil in disgust.

This type of music will always make up a certain segment of the musical tapestry. At times bigger than others. At the time I was very much of the opinion that none of it could ever be good. That's wrong. As with anything, it absolutely can be good, when you take care over it.

Tuesday Special: Bran Van 3000, "Astounded"

2011-11-29T18:08:00.001-05:00

In 2001, when Bran Van 3000 released their sophomore album, disco hadn't yet enjoyed its brief early-2000's revival under Kylie Minogue, the Mamma Mia stage show, and later Madonna. So Bran Van couldn't be accused of jumping on the bandwagon, but they also weren't in a place to influence anyone else, so it was just an oddity.

There has always been dance pop, of course. It's not usually a subject music critics broach with much enthusiasm. Generally, it's made to order, according to specifications, rhythmic and repetitive. But ten years after this album we have Foster the People, among a host of others, applying rock philosophy to danceable music. So it's not like the entire concept is un-salvageable. Music like this has the capacity to be really fun, and at its best, get away with some weird stuff.

Legend has it, Curtis Mayfield's final recording session was for his part in this song. He had been paralyzed for most of a decade, but still wrote and recorded music, painstakingly line-by-line from his bed. Imagine being unable to move yourself, but still having the power to make others. I dare you to keep your head and feet still during this song.

The xx: XX (in brief)

2011-11-28T20:52:00.004-05:00

Talk about exploring a sound: this band does it very thoroughly on their stark debut album. In the darkness, there could be anything. Love, desire, longing, heartache, wistfulness. Loneliness, togetherness. There are two voices, those of Romy Madley Croft and Oliver Sim. They mutter and hum, moaning and stumbling a little over lyrics. There's nervousness and resignation. Sometimes they are intertwined, sometimes they are separated by a thick, thick barrier.

There's no hiding, and the sound is reduced to mere elements of percussion, a bit of humming, droning instrumentation (usually guitar, but sometimes keyboard,) and those voices in the darkness. Modest, but honest. Two figures trying desperately to find each other blindly. It's remarkable how much is suggested by the music, which is what makes it so effective. They play moods as much as notes. Hypnotic, but knowing and ear-catching all the same.

The few elements split and recombine throughout the 11 tracks, all of which are good and some of which stand out, but which mainly exist as part of a whole. I love albums that work as complete projects. You can't pick this album apart and look at its elements. It's a solid slab. It's a brick. You crack it open, inside is only more brick.

I think what I like about is that it isn't a put on. It's melodic, it's real music, and yet, it isn't showy. It's like a real person, guarded, with a tone matching its contemplative, simple lyrics. It's relaxing and meditative. I like that it's a very artistic statement that remains obscure, capturing that moment where you're still struggling to express something, and ultimately being the best expression of that something, that ineffable something. Half of it is built in your head and the other half was already there waiting to be uncovered. You get out of it what you bring.

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

Cover: Gorillaz, "Crystalised"

2011-11-28T20:47:00.003-05:00

A good cover reveals the compositional strength of one artist and the performance strength of another. Already fairly minimalistic, "Crystalised" by the XX becomes under Damon Albarn's touch an even lonelier, more haunting plea, like something Danny Elfman would write for a suicide scene. Albarn's instruments are lighter than the XX's, but his vocals are also weightier, so he pushes further it in both directions.

Serious Contenders: Rolling Stones, "Miss You"

2011-11-28T20:32:00.004-05:00

You could call it a Disco song, if you need to, but the Rolling Stones have a good enough sense of the veins of musical history that they know where the common root is between rock and Disco. It's pretty funky, but it's also lascivious and worn-out, very urban and dark, in its way bluesy. Like Queen's "Another One Bites the Dust," (another Serious Contender) it creates a context for itself outside of trends and genres. It's more like Michael Jackson than it is ABBA. Mick sounds like a slithering sexual predator, and that bass riff, that harmonica, the whole deal all backs him up. I love songs that seem to come from the fringes, and this one is definitely out there. It's a pretty popular song, and yet, I don't think anyone would call it one of the Stones' very best. But if reminded, they would.

Serious Contenders: Third Eye Blind, "Semi Charmed Life"

2011-11-28T20:17:00.002-05:00

As you might have noticed, I'm in the business of lifting the music of the 90's up amongst the rest of music history, and not just for Nirvana and Radiohead. Half the future installments of "Serious Contenders" are from the 90's, simply because it's been long enough that my relatively impartial memory -- around but unaware during the time -- feels suited to the task of sussing out what should survive, what should be remembered and enshrined.

You never know what's going to sum up a time or place. I thought, when I was a kid, it was just some dumb pop song, but it's actually pretty bang-on for that 90's feeling of sunshine on the outside, turmoil on the inside. It's this feeling of seeming happy but knowing inside something's wrong. So Third Eye Blind married the sunniest goddamn hook you could think of (Doot-doot-doot, doot-do-doot-doot) to wry, lamenting lyrics about addiction and emotional instability, delivered at a pace that indicates how in-touch with hip hop "alt-rock" was or felt at the time (one of many examples, most of which will probably end up here before long.) It even has that eye-of-the-storm middle eight, "I believe in the sand beneath my toes," etc, that seem to indicate the late 90's were just a big ole beach party, but one everyone was ready to leave.

Arcade Fire: Funeral

2011-11-21T23:56:00.011-05:00

Music can be, and in this day and age frequently is, anything. There are no limits to what can be put on a record, not by genre, lyric, or instrument. You're not beholden to any standard or expectation, not in any important way. You've got nothing holding you back except your imagination, and since you've made it that far, that attribute must be particularly strong. See, that's something music reviews seem to disregard. The most amazing thing about some albums is that they happen at all. Someone made this. They made it to say something, they made it to show themselves, they made it to sound this way. Forget what it could be or isn't. Here we are.

The first half of Arcade Fire's debut album, Funeral, seems to be bursting at the seams with anythingness. Of these five tracks, four are numbered "Neighborhoods." #1, #2 and #3 are all manic, tied together by Win Butler's excitable vocal delivery, more expressive than it is melodic. Like there's simply too much going on in his head and heart than can be rationally related. "Tunnels" is accompanied by a twinkling, swelling piano. "Laika" pulses, setting street-accordion and strings against a clanging guitar. "Power Out" is the most agitated, thundering and percussive, but set against sweet baroque strings. Here, Butler screams himself hoarse, seeming to be against the wall and running out of time (or faith in humanity.) The first respite comes between #2 and 3, a much dreamier and romantic power outage, "Une Annee Sans Lumiere," a bilingual duet between Win and wife Regine, delicate and twinkling like a streetlight on newly-fallen snow, warm like an embrace. "Kettles" provides the closing note for the first half of the album, a campfire strumming ballad of patience and timing, with some of the best lyrics to this point of the album. "Power Out" gets all the glory, but "Kettles" and "Crown of Love" get credit from me for their "eyelids" imagery (My eyes are covered by my unborn kids / But my heard keeps watching through the skin of my eyelids in this one.) The piano and guitar click along like pacing footsteps, while the strings swell up like whistling kettles (as do actual kettles.)

The eyelid imagery carries to "Crown of Love" with one of the best lyrics on the whole record: "I carved your name across my eyelids / You pray for rain, I pray for blindness." "Crown of Love" is a work of staggering beauty, climbing directionally, instead of sprawling like three of the neighbourhoods, or settling into itself like "Kettles" or "Une Annee." The second half of Funeral engages in a lot of building up and breaking down, journeys in certain directions. Both the Arcade Fire albums I've tackled here seem, appropriately, like locations as much as sounds. Places you can visit, explore and leave.

While the first half of the album is good-to-great, "Crown of Love" kicks off an excellent streak that may encompass that entire run of five tracks (depending on your opinion of a few of them.) I love the revving guitars and towering choral refrain of "Wake Up," Win Butler as preacher to the youth ("If we don't grow up / Our bodies get bigger but our hearts get torn up... I guess they just have to adjust...") In these five, whether you like them more or less than the first five, certainly seem more planned out and steady in their direction, even as they too chart odd directions. There's the Disco segment at the end of "Crown" and "Wake Up" has a Bo Diddley-like segment. "Haiti" is an area of isolation, like an island of its own, as the strumming guitars create an almost unnaturally calm tide, under which danger lurks in Regine's distant, drowning vocals. Waves lap calmly, but the waters are full of blood.

This drifts into the titanic "Rebellion (Lies,)" the arguable centerpiece of the album, probably both the best song, and biggest showpiece for what the band is capable of when it focuses its energies. I don't mean to belittle the earlier half of the album, I wouldn't have changed a note, but there's simply no touching "Rebellion." I often find that the songs I like best are the ones I can describe least, because my appreciation for them goes beyond my ability to verbalize. And for me, that's saying something. The last track, "In the Backseat" ends the album on a suitably operatic note, going from the quietest moment of the album to, if not the loudest, then certainly among the most intense, climbing slowly and unpeeling Regine's emotional vocal.

Looking back, Funeral is an amazing opening gambit. Arcade Fire introduces themselves by roughly defining their sound, and showing what it can really do. The sound is constantly mutating, depending on what needs to be said and how. Importantly, it always sounds like itself. I think there's a definite validity to liking an album that seems to create a language of its own, especially like this one, that doesn't lose its audience along the way. Great music works off what you've already heard, then shows you something you couldn't have dreamed up. That's probably what I love about this album. Somebody had to dream it up, and I can't even imagine how you would do that, and make it work so well.

I once observed that, if you're meeting new people, just mention that you like Arcade Fire. Either they'll agree, and you'll have a new friend, or they'll disagree and you probably won't want to talk to them anymore. (This also works for the TV show Arrested Development.) In its grand design, it has a very unifying feeling to it, something that brings people together.

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

The Strokes: Angles

2011-11-20T22:03:00.007-05:00

It is, I think, physically impossible to review the latest Strokes album without mentioning how awesome Is This It was. I would love to be reviewing that album, as I think even ten years later it stands as a shining example of rock in the 21st century. But time has passed, the Strokes have released a few albums of varying quality, and returned with their fourth effort, which forges in a different direction. It is different from Is This It, that's for sure. And I, personally, would never see "not being that album" as a flaw that would keep me from enjoying it. While that's a valid approach, it's one that has been done every way possible. I'm too interested in talking about this particular album to drag that one back up.

There are a lot of criteria you can consider when judging an album. Some have a particular statement they want to make in songwriting form. Some have a sound to explore across various tracks. Some just have a few bona fide hits/highlights and the filler is merely not bad. The latter approach, I think, is an underrated way of scoring an album, and it has been the case with a lot of albums I've loved this year. I know where my favourites are, and I'm happy to listen to the tracks in between to get to them. Among Angles' ten tracks, we have four, five, maybe six real highlights, and the in-between tracks never feel tacked on, boring, bland, rote, phoned-in or weak. This is an album of definite craft, which manifests even when a real catchy hook is absent.

It begins as strongly as anything I've heard all year, with "Machu Picchu," crystalline rhythm establish the album's dark dancefloor aesthetic. It builds to one of many great Casablancas choruses on the album, where he shows off he's not just a garage punk screamer, he can do a good Jim Morrison croon, showing a cocky swagger with a poetic distance. This is followed by a crashing guitar echo that reminds me of running lines on the school gym floor. It gets your pulse going. "Under Cover of Darkness" has the band at real top form, with a spiky opening riff unlike anything I can recall (truly "angular,") and swinging like the bigger brother of the earlier "Someday," with its soaring chorus, those scribbling choked-up riffs, and that solo which does as any good solo should, takes the driver's seat and seems to sing the song in microcosm without words. I can't praise the guitars on this album enough, nor the drums, which crash and bang and cut loose when they need to, but also restrain and keep a tight funk beat when called upon.

Speaking of funk, there's "Taken for a Fool," which is an otherworldly, shadowy bass workout, one of the most focused and driving individual tracks on the set. All the pieces seem to come together, and it's a really gripping tune that can easily get people worked into a frenzy. It sits between the buzzing, muttering "You're So Right" and the moaning "Games." There's a definite sound on the album, with the band sounding almost inhuman, disaffected, beaten down, defeated and robotic. It's played out through these tracks between the "highlights," and sometimes within them, since music is often a balance between the two (read: rhythm and melody, doy.) Then sometimes, they switch back to too-human versions of themselves, bristling with life, rage and romance. "Two Kinds of Happiness" is a highlight in this regard, which I could see some disagreeing on. It starts out bouncy, but with a weary vocal, until Julian's voice seems to get completely overtaken by his bandmates sending out a soaring, anthemic, almost U2-like (but in a good way) score. It also has some of the most thoughtful lyrics ("One's devotion, one's just a ring,") even for a band known for being clever and observational.

There's also "Gratisfaction," with its "Never gonna get my love" riff, which is among the more pop moments for a band that has always delighted in blurring the lines between songwriting and pure rock. It's a groove you can take home with you. It's glitzy, and as with many Strokes songs, it seems to be about the darkness lurking beneath. This is preceded by the shimmering, passive aggressive quiet of "Call Me Back" (opening lyric: "Wait time is the worst / I can hardly sit.") which never builds the way you'd hope, but has a really nice moment in its "I don't know why I came down ... I hear a voice..." refrain, in a way romanticizing impatience. It's a fair bit more experimental than even the rest of the album. It's another track that indicates the band's interest in creating moods beyond merely making barnstorming rockers... an interest that was indicated, frankly, by the opening track of their first album. Its gentle conclusion leads perfectly to the crash-and-bang of "Gratisfaction," showing just how key sequencing can be.

The band then lays it all on the table with the ruthless, ominous "Metabolism," whose backing track reminds me of a Bowser battle from a Mario game, and a mean vocal. The song itself is not as great as other tracks as a composition, but like "Call Me Back," and others is a triumph of performance, shows the breadth and strength of their abilities. "Life Is Simple In The Moonlight" ends it on a high note (although even the albums "low notes" are pretty damn good,) playing an damn effective "quit-loud" dynamic for all it's worth, between vulnerability and toughness, freedom and restraint. Most of these songs don't sound like Is This It, but most of them manage to be quite awesome. They go for a setting and mood, and explore the appeal within them: then come the hooks and solos.

The more I listen to it, and the more I think and write about it, the more I like it. The Strokes are magicians, distracting you with songs that seem normal, but hit you in ways similar, lesser ones on the radio don't. They not only know their craft, their strengths and their scope, they're interested in expanding outward. They're a bit like 1970's David Bowie now: you feel like you know what they're up to, but they have hidden reserves, tricks up their sleeves. The point, which I always appreciate in my rock & roll, is that there is a point: they're reaching for something, rather than resting on what's expected, and they do it marvelously.

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

Cover: Patti Smith, "Gloria"

2011-11-19T21:27:00.003-05:00

One of the most famous cases of a cover ever. The Patti Smith version of "Gloria" contains enough new lyrics that it arguably could have been considered a different song from Them's original. But it's important that not only was the basic guitar kept the same, it also included the distinctive chorus. While it takes forever for that big final moment, the preceding minutes are all build and tease, truly seductive and even mystical, from the assertion that "My sins, they belong to me," to her manci chanting of "And her name is! / And her name is! / And her name is! / And her name is!" that, to me, always sounds like "And the nightmares! / And the nightmares!" Which shows you the power of delivery, maybe.

And then at long last, the name is said, the song explodes. Patti seems to take such delight in drawing out the spelling, relishing every moment of that release. This version of the song is truly a piece of work, one that propels itself on intensity and desire.

Serious Contenders: Weezer, "Perfect Situation"

2011-11-19T20:51:00.004-05:00

I have said, repeatedly and obnoxiously, that "Perfect Situation" may in fact be the best song Rivers Cuomo ever wrote. Even above the fun quirk of "Buddy Holly" or the raw confessionality of the Pinkerton tunes, I think this is the one that hits it best. It's specific, yet intimately relatable. The lyrical content is just spot on, from the first verse's baseball metaphor, to the straightforward bitterness in "Can't ya see that she belongs to me? / And I don't appreciate this excess company," it nails that "so close yet so far" romantic-longing that Weezer does so well, not at all undercut by the bouncy piano and wailing guitars, which help emphasize the song's points.

The real star, though, is the "Ohh, ho" chorus. I've long admitted my fondness for non-lexical expressions in songs. Well placed and well delivered, they say more than real words ever can, and this sigh, this cry of resignation, this "What can I do?" feeling is so spot-on it hurts, and yet it sounds so warm. Such is the gift of great pop music.

In championing this as one of the best Weezer songs, I'm fighting what I call (for lack of a snappier name) the "Pinkerton Effect." That time after a career-defining work when releasing music that is merely very good or great is not enough for the fans. The album from which this song comes, Make Believe, is not as good as Pinkerton or The Blue Album, but several of its songs were good enough that it shouldn't matter a whit. Instead, a lot of people hold it against Weezer that something they did was so excellent, they fail to realize they're still releasing music that's better than most of their contemporaries. Even Hurley, which I reviewed early this year, had a lot going for it.

Maybe you really don't like this song, or any other post-Pinkerton releases. That may be fine. My frustration is that oftentimes, backlash prevents people from really giving the songs a listen and appreciating them on their own terms. As time goes by, I grow less and less fond of the idea that every artist's work should be measured strictly against their earlier stuff. I always prefer to listen to a song or album in its own context first, and not holding against it that "it's no Pinkerton."

Foo Fighters: Wasting Light

2011-11-03T00:27:00.008-04:00

I don't expect this to be one of my deeper, more thoughtful reviews. Good hard guitar rock isn't meant to be examined, but felt. It either grabs you or it doesn't, and while there are obvious traits a great rock album should exhibit, it's ultimately that ineffable, visceral feeling that determines whether it has done its job properly. It's funny. Biased as I am, bad rock is as painful to me as a bad example of any genre, and every generation goes through its uninspired radio hits. But a good rock album like this feels like a real achievement. Not because it's groundbreaking -- in fact, there's a surplus of precedent for an album like Wasting Light -- but because it manages to work its influence into something that is both new and classic-sounding. The miracle of Wasting Light isn't that there's a rock album that sounds like this in 2011. It's that just two years ago, Foo Fighters released their greatest hits covering a decade and a half of recording. That seemed like a pretty concise summing up of their career and underlined how consistent they've been, how nicely "I'll Stick Around" (actually omitted from the Greatest Hits) or "Monkey Wrench" sits next to "Best Of You." The miracle is that two years later they release an album of original material that creates an equally enjoyable listening experience in and of itself -- that takes all the best parts of the Foo Fighters sound and works them for all they're worth.

It's perfectly conventional and that's perfectly all right. Awesome, in fact, because when all the gears are in place, the rock machine is an incredible one to behold. Kurt Cobain mused (bluntly and not wrongly) that every song was just "verse, chorus, verse, chorus, solo, bad solo, chorus." Grohl is a fair bit more nuanced about it, knowing exactly what riffs best introduce each songs, how to use a prechorus as a teaser to the chorus, and occasionally, write a really good lyric. The dude seems, on this album to be a veritable fountain of hooks, and they're damn sharp. They hit that center of your brain that makes you want to absorb the song, and keep listening to the album. And then the album performs the enviable feat of never letting up, over 11 songs that never cause the listener's interest to wane, from the opening chunk of "Bridge Burning" to the last note of "Walk." I'm often wary of songwriting that seems to obviously hooky, but to be fair, Grohl & Co. seem to come by it honestly. the stretch of "You got a lotta neee-eeee-eeee-eee-eeeerve" in "Back & Forth" uses the kind of descent (or some musical theory term) you would avoid if you were trying to write a hit, but it grabs exactly how it's supposed to. In fact, I find it interesting that for radio singles, they led with a couple of the less obvious hits. "Rope" is pretty manic, with its skittering guitars, droning verse and panicked chorus. "Walk," the second single, starts off seeming like it might be either a ballad or a rewrite of "Learn to Fly," but instead of rising and falling, it just keeps rising, until everything seems to collapse in on itself due to excessive rockitude, and Grohl's voice becomes a wail to rival Steven Tyler or Axl Rose as the needle gets buried in the red. They were both unlikely commercial singles, but have real character, and in the context of the album, stand out even further than the more hooky, catchy, ones.

The scream, of course, had previously been on display on the breakneck "White Limo," itself sounding largely like an earlier Queens of the Stone Age track. These, with the bluesy "I Should Have Known," provide alternative reference points for the character of the band and the album, beyond "able to produce catchy-as-fuck hard rock songs at the drop of a hat." When these moments come out, they overpower the surrounding tracks, but wind up as accessories to the real story of the album which is, as I've previously mentioned, all those fucking hooks!

Grohl's voice has become one of the great rock vocals. He can sing just enough, he can grumble and scream. He's got both the badass swagger and the vulnerability, and he sounds wiser with age but not jaded or exhausted. Many, maybe even all of the songs, deal with the passage of time, letting go of the past, forgiving, forgetting, regretting, lamenting, and looking toward the future. It's mature, but not stodgy, and would be a great album for a teenager to get his hands on, but an older listener will find it just right too. It carries a weight, and works as a great example of how good rock can sound when you take care over it, when you have a good intuition with your instruments. Grohl the former drummer can structure a song according to its rhythm, and has a great bunch of bandmates carrying it out; Taylor Hawkins may in fact be the best drummer in rock. But I don't know much about drumming. Or guitarring, for that matter. All I know is that certain flourishes in "Dear Rosemary" and "Arlandria" (perhaps the most masterful track on the piece) could probably be traced to that, and as a result give the album a lot of heart and soul to back up the world-beating riffage.

So... why does it work? Or how? How do they escape the morass of post-grunge radio rock lameness, without swerving too hard in the other direction (even on "White Limo")? If you had played me the greatest hits, and said "Sure, this band is good, but what is it they are missing?" I probably would not have said "Another guitarist." And yet, on Wasting Light, you have Grohl, Chris Shiflett, and a returning Pat Smear, all credited with "lead and rhythm guitars." And that definitely seems to make a difference, fleshing out and defining the sound without making it seem crowded, somehow. You can hear three guitars (along with the bass and drums!) at various points on the album, sometimes in harmony, sometimes doing their own thing. It could be a mess. Instead, every guitar knows where to go to keep the song from getting pedestrian, keeping the rock alive and breathing by adding that extra element, creating that unstoppable force of rock.

The thing is, these are all exceptionally talented musicians working on the same page. Smear was in punk bands a decade before his brief tenure in Nirvana. Shiflett also plays in the greatest cover band in the world, Me First & The Gimme Gimmes. They know the steps and they haven't grown tired of playing them. Between the five of them, they've lived the lifetimes of approximately seventeen musicians, and are, in 2011, among the most invigorated bands out there. There are a lot of traps inherent in creating an album like this, and they avoid them all. Each track is a gem and fits perfectly with the next. By the time you get to "A Matter of Time" and "Miss the Misery" you might be too thoroughly absorbed to even notice how long you've been listening.

This is the beauty of a great rock album. All the pieces seem familiar enough, but when you get them all together in the right way, in just unique enough a way to sound fresh, it's a thing of beauty. Guys, this album is pretty much the reason people still learn guitar.

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

Cover: "One Week"

2011-10-31T20:52:00.001-04:00

I don't usually take it on myself to post random YouTube acoustic covers, but my brother and I were musing on whether anyone on YouTube covered this song this song "But, like, did the rap more like a song." I felt it was certain, and found this video among others. Later that same day, on How I Met Your Mother, Katie Holmes performed a comically "seductive" version for Ted, so I felt compelled to send this out there to you as proof of this odd synchronicity.

Keep on rockin'!

Does It Rock? Dan Mangan, "Post War Blues"

2011-10-30T13:02:00.003-04:00

It's been about a year since the germ of an idea started forming in my head, exactly what my "philosophy" would be when I started reviewing music. I hadn't even come up with the idea for this blog yet, but when I did, the approach I ended up taking was rooted in something that happened on the way home from a Halloween party in 2010.

I was on my way home the next morning, and I picked up one of Toronto's free hip indie newspapers. NOW, probably. In it, there was an article on Mangan, whose song "Robots," I was really digging. I hadn't had a chance to pick up the album yet. The article's thrust was that Mangan was an up and comer on the indie scene, with a growing fanbase and a couple of award notices: notably, his album Nice Nice Very Nice was a dark horse candidate for that year's Polaris prize. The article wondered whether this attention was warranted, referencing a review by Alan Cross calling the album "Bland, bland, very bland." This... this irked me.

Alan Cross is an extremely noteworthy Canadian music journalist, a self-described "professional music geek." His work with Corus stations like Edge 102 in Toronto makes him pretty much the lead tastemaker. He seems like a nice guy. But he's also got a gig with the chain of stores I work for, regular segments on the official radio station we listen to, introducing current hits with background information or trivia. He never voices his critical opinion there, or if he does, it's only vaguely, non-committally, and always supportive, even when describing generic radio pop, stuff critics don't usually fawn over, like the Black Eyed Peas or Britney Spears.

It seemed so disingenuous to me, that this titan of music journalism should make it his business to kick an up and comer back down the ladder. That he plays the critic card for someone doing his best to create his own sound and carve out his niche, while giving his tacit stamp of approval to the usual ubiquitous pop you hear everywhere anyway.

I mean, I get it: Britney, the Peas, Rihanna, Coldplay, they're all critic-proof. They're going to get radio play and they're going to sell records no matter what I think about them and no matter what Alan Cross thinks about them. That's fine, in fact it's great. I've often said Justin Bieber and Michael Buble are keeping us in business, even though I'd never buy one of their records for myself. Nothing wrong with that. But why discourage Mangan, especially when people, as the article pointed out, are responding to it? As I said with my Oasis write-up, no matter your own thoughts as a critic, if an act provokes a response from its intended audience, it works, and it's part of your job to figure out why, not merely to tell people they're wrong. Maybe to some ears, that first Mangan album was bland. But to a lot, it wasn't. And that write-up scared me away from buying the first album, since I was a lot more skittish about committing to buying music before this blog, and never came back to it since.

Aaaaaanyway, a year has passed and Mangan has a new album, and this is the single off it, which I personally have been enjoying. It begins with that pulsing verse and builds, much like "Robots," below, but with a bit more muscle, and those trilling U2 guitars. I know there are a lot of people who would like this song and probably the whole album, who wouldn't hear about it otherwise. Until I can get around to hearing the whole set, I'll let you decide for yourself whether it rocks. I think it really does, though.

Belle & Sebastian: Write About Love

2011-10-25T21:15:00.007-04:00

Write about love, they do, but it's strange. If all you wanted was goopy Tin Pan Alley tracks or pop music, there are more conventional routes, more obvious lyrics one could write. A lot of this so-called Write About Love album seems not to be about love at all. At least 5 tracks don't seem to broach the topic directly at all. But the title doesn't seem ill-chosen. It's that sound, that manic-depressiveness, in love with the world one minute, shunning all for the safety of bed the next, it bounces between stripped down and wall of sound, but doesn't seem at odds with each other. It's all a thing, you see. And that thing is the same language we use in love. It's very much multi-sided, but all of a piece, various the angles from the same viewer: nostalgic, quietly optimistic, boisterously enthusiastic and regretful all in turns. It hits you clearly with its intended meaning while being subtle in its exact approach.

After a too-hesitant opening, the wonderfully wistful "I Didn't See It Coming" rolls in on a drumbeat and piano combo that makes me think 90's, but whose "girl, guy and guitar" call & answer vocals are very much of today, at least, today's model of nostalgia. It beats a path right to the heart, with the warm instrumentation of the past and quietly harmonized sighs that "We don't have the money / Money makes the wheels and the world go round / Forget about it honey / Trouble's never far away when you're around." The invocation to "Make me dance, I want to remember" ought to be enough of a thought to send anybody away with. Echoing back to this mood is the sweet balled "The Ghost of Rock School," one of many songs Stuart Murdoch handles solo on vocals, turning in one of his finer moments, and aided easily by a backing of horns and winds that sound like the lifting of dawn after a still night, especially as the song reaches its crescendo. It's fittingly spiritual for a lyric about seeing God.

The best two tracks feature guest vocalists, who bring a different tone from that of usual female vocalist Sarah Martin. "Little Lou, Ugly Jack, Prophet John" is led primarily by Norah Jones, who might send a chill up your back with this "long summer's dreaming." The song lays out its theme in perhaps the finest lyric of the album: "What a waste, I could have been your lover / What a waste, I could have been your friend," which hits like a hammer in its second iteration. Academy Award-nominated actress Carey Mulligan appears for the refrains of the title track, a howling beaut of Spectorian celebration. Murdoch seems just a little sinister as he insists "I know a spell that will make you well: write about love, it can be in any form, hand it to me in the morning," prompting Mulligan to sigh in her buoyant vocal that she hates her job, all while the tune is floated along on electric piano, lightening the mood from the tedious routine into fantastic escapism.

The album is dotted with moments of earnest sweetness, like the overstimulated "I'm Not Living In The Real World," or the twist-worthy "Come On Sister." The real treats, though, are in the shadows. The darkened "I Want The World To Stop," which whirs ominously. Again, there's call and response, but it sounds like someone airing grievances to an unsympathetic reflection, tearing itself apart in its climactic outro. Then there's the sorrowful "Calculating Bimbo," and the gentle, world-weary "Read the Blessed Pages," resting ambivalently on a gentle guitar and recorder.

Stuart Murdoch's vocals have that certain uncertainty, that suspicion that he really ought not to be singing what he's singing, but he's often bolstered by a terrific female vocal, whether it be Martin, Jones, or Mulligan. The interplay and harmony is always great, lifting the material in every instance, but his solo outings have a character of their own,. This is a band that knows where everything goes. Just listen to the sheer number of instruments on the record, and not a one of them seems out of place or ill-used. They thoroughly explore the terrain of every aspect they can use, and they come up with a complete trip. Dig "I Can See Your Future," which begins with mariachi-like horns, and uses a Motown-like beat. And "Sunday's Pretty Icons" rockets home by pulling together many of the album's best aspects in one song: top notch vocals and lyrics, a hummable tune and a jangly beat, all delivered by aplomb.

I referred to the album as "manic-depressive." Love certainly does that to you, and you certainly couldn't take that to mean the album is unfocused. The opposite is true, in fact: the album is single-minded in its pursuit of a complete view of that feeling, if not a narrative than certainly that ineffable experience of love, loss, and love renewed. Every new feeling as an expansion rather than a twist. It's really sincere and direct, which I like. Here we have another album with a debt to the past -- like She & Him, The Coral or Raphael Saddiq, it has many obvious touchpoints in 60's pop -- but this isn't a case of recreation or reference. It takes up the strategies of those records in order to take the same path to the heart as they did: swimming with sweet sounds, but in the way a modern record does, written with knowing smarts. Open and honest, yet guarded and unsure.

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

Serious Contenders: Oasis, "Wonderwall"

2011-10-24T01:09:00.001-04:00

I didn't like Oasis when they were big. I wasn't much for this song's nonsensical lyrics and watery, strummy sound. But in the months since I began this blog, I've radically altered my perspective on why music might be good. Everything I thought about "Wonderwall" is still true, as it remains true for a lot of the Oasis songs I know. But just as not everyone is going to love the music I do (although they should,) people are also going to love music I don't. I don't necessarily have a personal love for Oasis, but as a commentator, as an amateur critic, I give them props.

There's power in this song, a strange, wonderful, otherworldly power. You get it without really knowing why, and the clues aren't in the lyrics but the delivery. There's a reason any twentysomething a-hole can pick up a gutiar at a house party and start strumming this and the girls will flock to him. I see it now that I know it's there, that power to compel listeners. And that's as good a reason as any to acknowledge a song's greatness. Music is a form of communication, so as long as someone receives the message, it's validated, especially if the signal still comes through intact a decade and a half later. A simple pop hit will excite for a while then fade away, but we now know in 2011 the strength of a song like this is evergreen. I don't need to worry too much about how they did it or why they did it that way; they did it and they did it right, so good for them.

Cover: Neil Young, "Mr. Soul"

2011-10-22T23:19:00.004-04:00

"Mr. Soul" was initially a ripper recorded by Young with Buffalo Springfield in the 60's, featuring a riff not totally dissimilar to the Stones' "Satisfaction." By the early 1980's, Young was with Geffen Records and indulging his mercurial side by recording a synth/New Wave/Kraftwerk album, Trans. He processed his vocals through a vocoder until they were utterly unhuman and in many case incomprehensible. He included a cover of "Mr. Soul" with this package, taming and moderating it with the plastic technology at his disposal. The result is so 80's it hurts, and the album was lambasted by critics but... listen.

At the time, Young was very concerned with caring for his son Ben, who was afflicted with cerebral palsy, and having difficulties communicating. The impossibility of communication must be fascinating for any performer, an intriguing and inspiring dilemma. In his own words: "At that time [Ben] was simply trying to find a way to talk, to communicate with other people. That's what Trans is all about. And that's why, on that record, you know I'm saying something but you can't understand what it is. Well, that's exactly the same feeling I was getting from my son."

I'm never one to say you should have to know the backstory of a song in order to enjoy it, but as often as not it doesn't hurt to get that added context. This version of "Mr. Soul," or anything else off Trans, doesn't necessarily stand on its own, but thinking of it in that way, it's quite sweet, and rather poetic.

Care Bears on Fire: Girls Like It Loud

2011-10-20T22:17:00.010-04:00

Raise your expectations. When a band of girls still in their teens - a demographic normally associated with chasing Justin Bieber and drooling over Robert Pattinson than with NOFX concerts -- releases a punk EP that garners serious attention from audiences and critics, you can feel fairly certain this is not a novelty. They are not being humoured. They are proving themselves. These girls know their craft. They play more sophisticated, menacing riffs than many pop punks bands I grew up with. They've got the punk sneer and stance down. And most importantly -- this will be valuable when they're older and still making records, which I hope is the case -- they have a great ear for material. They're writing righteous, ticked off, but also clever and observational songs, with memorable, effective hooks that really highlight the skill and talent in this band. This isn't some cute, precious novelty act. It's a real deal.

The downloadable 5-track EP (retailing for $4.99 -- I could think of worse uses for 5 bucks) comes with three bonus music videos, bringing the track listing to 8 with one repeat. The music videos "Barbie Eat a Sandwich" and "Everybody Else" are straightforward, blunt, and fun pop punk tunes. Odes to non-conformism you'd expect from teenage punk rockers, especially girls who feel the pressure to meet stereotypical beauty standards. The sentiment isn't new. Hell, the idea of underage punk rock girls harkens back to the Runaways (and who could forget Cherie Currie's menacing "Hello Daddy, Hello Mom!"? Or Dakota Fanning's re-enactment, even.) But nothing about these songs seems imitative of that. Just like Punk has moved on from the 70's heyday, CBOF don't need to be compared to the Runaways. This song is also a little less subtle than the similarly-themed "Barbie Girl" by Aqua, which is saying something for its bluntness. It doesn't mince words, and it's effective, spiced up with a new wave buzz. "Everybody Else" has a brief solo that makes me think of the Strokes doing the Clash doing the Bobby Fuller Four. The squeak in Sophie's voice when she sings "Good girl" is an incredible vocal tool, roughing up the prettiness of her vocals in the opposite direction of her raggedy guitar-playing, emphasizing the meaning of the song, which comes along with enough "na-na-na's" to get thep oint across. (I've always been a big fan of well-used nonsense words.)

Those two tracks seem to predate the other five. The production on the new ones is a lot cleaner, the instrumentation a bit more ornate, the vocals more mature. There's still that sarcastic girlishness to them, but it's a difference. These songs also showcase an incredible gift for songwriting, which, if they're that much newer, indicates a crapload of artistic growth. The blistering "What I Could Be," which sets the tone for the set, is about seeking yourself and standing apart from others. The hook in that chorus is strong, and it has that edge of realness... that ineffable "authenticity" sought by most punk acts, and with effortlessness and grace. Again, Sophie's vocals are the key, along with the steady pounding beat and growling guitars, which sound just clean enough for radio but not so clean as to lose their edge.

"Red Lights" gives us a steadier beat, and Sophie delivers the vocals with a note of admiration for the subject, leading to a lovely dreamlike chorus (that again, does not sacrifice a punk stance) making this song a standout here. "ATM" is a cleverly-phrased bitter relationship pissoff, backed by a charging verse and another great hooky chorus. Then "Ask Me How I Am" wonderfully hits the ambivalence of its shrugging "Satisfied and okay" chorus. Best of all may be the cover of Tears for Fears' "Everybody Wants To Rule The World," which shows (as Me First & The Gimme Gimmes have often proved) how any song can be made into a punk song with the right attitude. They bust this one out with such gusto, yet such casualness, it feels completely natural. And the song is of course strong enough that its sentiment is still relevant, even still a little startling from the mouths of young girls.

It could've been even easier and poppier and still been good, like the music from the 2000's Josie & The Pussycats movie (underrated.) Instead, we get reminders that they are not as innocent as they appear: they're punk prodigies with real fire. The concept of these Care Bears on Fire as young girls still learning the world is subverted constantly throughout the album as they prove they've got their eyes open to the world and their fingers on the fretboard. A good punk album is as thrilling as anything you can name, as the past decade has sadly seen the genre tamed on the radio and pushed past extremes in the underground. This EP finds the sweet spot, the same area occupied by another great punk album I reviewed this year, the Exploding Hearts: smart and sweet, with fire and soul. It gives me hope for the future to think these girls are just getting started. Hell, it excites me.

Download this album now: iTunes // Amazon.com

Serious Contenders: Wilson Pickett, "In The Midnight Hour"

2011-10-16T23:52:00.004-04:00

Hey, did you notice there are instruments on this track? Good ones too, huge swaggering horns and a wicked beat. No, no, none of it really matters. That voice. That fucking voice. Dirty-awesome soul R&B on that. So gritty, no-nonsense, letting you know it's business time. Everything else up in there rolls underneath that vocal, that blend of expression, gruffness and sweetness. You know what's happening "in the midnight hour," and it ain't just someone "love tumbling down."

Sam Roberts Band: Collider

2011-10-14T22:38:00.007-04:00

I first heard Sam Roberts on the radio nearly 10 years ago. When I first heard his debut single, "Brother Down," I thought he was more of a hip hop crossover artist. Chalk that up to my young mind's confusion but there was also not as much frame of reference for Roberts' brand of rhythmic delivery. Rhythm, whether an insistent boogie or a laid-back groove, is the backbone of this album, the vehicle from which Roberts delivers his sermonlike tunes. Few of the songs are hooky in a conventional way -- a quality that initially kept me from wanting to revisit it -- but while it's playing you'll find yourself tapping along, and then finally uncovering the wit and poetry of the lyrics. By now of course there wouldn't be any confusing Roberts for an MC, but this is definitely the sound of a singer-songwriter in a post-hiphop world.

Roberts has an old soul, and writes ably about unity and brotherhood, about commonality and understanding, about problems that plague all of us and the search for solutions. But he's observational, not preachy. Ultimately, it's also important to seek solutions for yourself: ("Don't forget where you came from / Don't forget who you are / They're all beating the same drum / You've been playin' guitar," from "Streets of Heaven (Promises Promises)") Community and individuality are of a whole in Robert's nuanced lyrical universe. And there is darkness, but there is also hope (the uncertain point of the great album-closer, "Tractor Beam Blues:" "Is love enough? Yes it is / Is hope enough? / I hope it is.")

Along the way he colours and shifts focus on the strange quirks of the world. It opens with some really great tracks. "The Last Crusade" is tense, feeling like a back against the wall. "Without a Map" is weary from running. "Let it In" is down and dirty, and "Graveyard Shift" is that moment when your exhaustion breaks and you get a second wind, when that mental block that kept you from solving that problem suddenly lifts and it all hits you, what you need to do. I love the end-of-the-rope lyrics of "No Arrows:" "Some days it's hard to give her / What she needs I can't deliver / Got no answers on my tongue, I / Got no arrows in my quiver."

Roberts could've been excused for taking all the credit for this album, but this is his first release credited to "Sam Roberts Band." He's very clearly the star, the leader, the preacher. Everything is in the service of his lyrics, and his lazy-lidded, world-weary vocal delivery is front and center. He's got a folkie's voice and a rocker's tool kit, a bit like Springsteen. The guitars are lush, helping the universalist sound achieve that warm-yet-cool feeling of floating free and occasionally being blinded by bright lights. It takes a stern-yet-spacey tone for the most part that is very enjoyable but not "accessible," so casual listeners might be put off; but put it on your shelf and come back when you have a moment to sit down with it, it'll impress. Sam is generous but right to credit the group as part of the process, they definitely make their contributions. Given what I said earlier about the album's rhythmic quality, the drums are the key ingredient beneath those space-borne guitars and horns.

Toward the end of the set comes the album's triumph, "I Feel You," which towers over all the other very-good-to-great songs, casting a shadow of awesomeness and acting as Roberts' most recent career highlight, with its squinching, fuzz-blasted, churning guitars, poetically obscure lyrics and dramatic chorus, Roberts outdoes any other song I've heard from him on this one, to the point where he namedrops Leonard Cohen and it feels totally deserved. In all it's a great summation of the difficult yet necessary act of understanding and being known -- of "Feeling" someone, or being felt.

I wouldn't say an album is great because the lyrics or the ideas behind them are great They need to be served by an enjoyable sense of musicianship, and that's Robert's strength. He's a songwriter above all else, and he has created some great ones on this piece. It's all material to work into lyrics, into metaphor and turn of phrase and some good choruses, backed by positively liquid instrumentation. He's astute enough to sense the troubles of the world and to put them down in words, but not arrogant enough to presume he knows the answers. And the music flows freely beneath all this, carrying it along on that wave of solidarity yet uncertainty.

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

Cover: Julia Nunes, "Runaround Sue"

2011-10-13T23:46:00.002-04:00

Man, having forgotten why I dug ukelele-playing YouTube singer Julia Nunes, she goes and reminds me by posting this cover of the Serious Contender by Dion & The Belmonts, doing some bitchin' self-backed vocals and even hitting the "YEAH!" pretty great the second time.

Serious Contenders: Beatles, "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)"

2011-10-11T23:05:00.007-04:00

In slightly belated honor of John Lennon's birthday, but also because Fall always brings me back to this song.

As I've said before, when you're dealing with the Beatles, a very special definition has to be applied to "underrated." Pretty much every crumb of the Beatles' discography has been lauded by someone or other, and the few bits that are overlooked are deservedly so. The Rubber Soul period is generally considered a high point, but also as the border between the early pop songs and the later art-psychedelia, sometimes falls behind a bit. Nobody is going to forget it was a great album, but it's also easy to forget in light of what came after. The Beatles were constantly, rapidly mutating, especially after Help, so this is both a creative highwater mark (at the time) and a transitional period. Not a lot of bands have such moments combined as one. There's a lot going on on that record.

I personally have a soft spot for Rubber Soul-era Beatles. Abbey Road may be my favourite album but Rubber Soul is the one I feel can take me back to a specific time and place. There was one fall in high school, grade 10, where I listened to these tracks incessantly. I was just getting my legs as someone who had opinions about music, and these songs really opened my taste up a bit. Especially this one. There's something so warm and welcoming about that acoustic strum and that twanging sitar. And it melds so perfectly with Lennon's lyrical story, where he seems just to be lying back and unloading, pontificating, extemporizing: "I once had a girl / Or should I say she once had me?" Great opening line and the rest of the song doesn't let down. Lennon apes Dylan, admittedly, shoving off choruses for refrains, and it works, because he's got a narrative to tell, and it's a damn good one. The song is as warm yet off-kilter as a song about attempted seduction and arson ought to be.

Raphael Saadiq: Stone Rollin' (in brief)

2011-10-08T22:08:00.008-04:00

At first I was interested in it as a matter of retro. The twinkling piano and twanging guitar of "Day Dreams" sounds awesomely anachronistic in 2011, and Stone Rollin' as a whole seems like a textbook case study for retro music. The call-and-answer guitar of "Radio" sounds very jukebox, and there's something so 70's about the oozing sex appeal of the title track (an ode to Boo-tay.)

But of course, there is no textbook, no standard method, and Saadiq borrows and rearranges and takes and leaves elements of the past like any artist of today: here and there is Chuck Berry or Ben E. King or Marvin Gaye or Prince, but of course it's really all Raphael. Is retro an acknowledgment that the old ideas are better than the newer ones? An attempt to strip music down to basics? Or just dusting off a few tricks and techniques that never lost their effectiveness? Maybe it's an assertion of individuality: there's such a wealth of influence in the past, that you can stand out in the present by mining it. If you're as good as Raphael, buddy, you can work it.

The groove is the thing. I love the break neck opener "Heart Attack," where the man throws himself headlong into the song sparks fly from the guitars. On songs like "Go To Hell" and "Over You," Saadiq sings with pure urgency and immediacy. He's got that rhythm & blues intuition and spirit that makes superstars out of plenty talented singers, (Cee-Lo comes to mind) but his hook is his ability to push his vocals right to the brink, matched thunder-rolling drums, funked-up guitars and, of all damn things, pipes and winds airing the sound out.

It's no wonder to me that so much music has at least some retro aspect to it. Though Stone Rollin' doesn't harken to a specific time, it calls back to a lot of familiar song styles and binds them together excellently based on their common ground, that R&B soul funk that flows in the veins of much music, African-American or otherwise. IT sets something off in the mind: familiar but fresh, inviting and exciting at once. It's got a good hard groove, and it rolls.

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

Serious Contenders: Sam Cooke, "Another Saturday Night"

2011-10-08T21:43:00.003-04:00

Relevant??????

Well, okay. It's certainly no stretch to observe the awesomeness of this breezy anthem. Early rock/R&B was often about the confidence of the singer's delivery, standing his ground against the rhythm and the lyrics. Cooke exhibits this exceptionally, offhandedly sighing "If I could meet 'em I could get 'em / But as yet I haven't met 'em." and positively owning the fact that he "Ain't got nobody." Way more sprightly than a lyric sheet might convey, and even the lyrics themselves are a touch more upbeat than a similarly-themed blues song might be, yet it's that combo of joy and sadness that often makes music from this era work.

Cover: Foo Fighters, "Band on the Run"

2011-10-04T19:40:00.003-04:00

Pretty much a perfect cover: it highlights what's so awesome about the original while also making it comfortably a product of the cover band. A great workout for the Foos' style. Not much more can be said. Well done.

Serious Contenders: Queen, "Another One Bites the Dust"

2011-10-04T19:04:00.004-04:00

The under-appreciated overachiever of Queen's catalogue. It isn't bombastic like "Bohemian Rhapsody," the hard rockitude of "We Will Rock You" or operatic beauty of "We Are The Champions." It doesn't even have David Bowie singing on it! But propelled with little more than an irresistible bass and Freddie Mercury's razor-tinged delivery, it works awesomely. When listening to this song you can't help but feel the groove. John Deacon and Roger Taylor, I salute you.

Freddy, for his part, owns the shit out of this song. It's a testament to his ability as a vocalist: This is the Queen song you figure you could probably do at Karaoke, but you'll still just embarrass yourself. It takes a lot of confidence, an inherent ineffable ballsiness to really nail those verses.

It's too often derided as "the disco song," which is a lame detraction since mixing hard rock with disco pretty much always yields positive results (see above, KISS' "I Was Made For Loving You" and Rolling Stones' "Miss You.") Something about rocking out to a solid beat just makes sense.

Does it Rock? Static Jacks, "Girl Parts"

2011-09-28T21:31:00.003-04:00

Please to enjoy this tune from the Static Jacks, which blends roots rock, power pop and screamo. It skirts being a conventional rock song, but cranks the lead vocal past warm and friendly up to howling mad. Nifty.

Hold Steady: Stay Positive

2011-09-27T22:45:00.012-04:00

Stay Positive comes on like a great structure of brick and mortar. Really solid, really strong, really consistent, but upon closer inspection, full of nuance and structural complexity. A few of these it would be hard to miss on the first pass, but when you pay the album time, I think the respect grows: eventually you really take note of their knack for composition and clever observational lyrics.

Craig Finn's vocals come in like a jet fighter swooping in for a landing. He's bombastic, very Springsteenian, which is either a compliment or an insult depending on your taste. Mainly he talk-sings sermons or anecdotes, sometimes at length often fighting against the melody, giving several the songs a rough-hewn sermon-like edge to them. It's combative, very much in the vein of Springsteen or Elvis Costello or Mark Knopfler... not punk per se, but definitely carrying weight and attitude. More cultural criticism than sound and fury.

The bricks and mortar here are a bunch of solid rocking tracks throughout the album. "Constructive Summer" ignites the blaze in a fury of motivation and inspiration: "Raise a toast to Saint Joe Strummer... / We are are only saviours... / We're gonna build something this summer." The celebration of music-loving crops up throughout the album, like the Led Zeppelin shout-outs in "Joke About Jamaica," which is choked up and tense, and then staggered and weary as it rolls the album toward its close with a brief but blazing wah-wah solo. Earlier, "Navy Sheets" is full of bluster and platinum-bright fuzz guitars. "Yeah Sapphire" is one of many great instances of blended guitars and pianos throughout the album, and the title track froths with the Elvis Costello-like immediacy, helped along with organs and "woah-hos" that recur later. This is rock you can really sink your teeth into. "Magazines," one of various great character studies on here, has an excellent hook in "Magazines and daddy issues / I know you're pretty pissed, I hope you still let me kiss you."

All this is good, and a whole album pitched at this level would be perfectly fine, but as I said there is nuance between the bricks, moments of real architectural greatness. You could quibble with the listening pleasure found in "One For The Cutters" -- the harpsichord is contentious, but the song's mission isn't to be a pop classic, it's to create a nice, eerie, murder mystery vibe, a delicate web of intrigue spun by the testimonial vocals. "Both Crosses" might not win everyone over with its mystical southwestern sound, but provides a context on its own, Finn mumbles, "I been thinking 'bout both crosses..." and the worlds swirl around with those flamenco-like guitars. You feel the hot sun and wonder whether it's Albuquerque or Nazareth. "Baby let's transverberate." Got to love the rhythm section, all through the album, but here they do some really special stuff.

A whole album at this level would be a perfectly good disc, but an album is lucky to have three peaks as high as Stay Positive's. "Sequestered in Memphis" I'd say, is objectively the strongest effort here, marrying Finn's talent for storytelling lyrics and delivery with a rollicking riff and hook. It's the track most obviously meant for radio, but not sounding like other radio hits, with some really graceful horns helping splashing around in the background. It's the best showcase for his hoarse, wearied and skeptical but game-for-anything vocal. "Lord, I'm Discouraged" might be my personal favourite, proving the band can master the ballad as much as the rocker. Ballads are an easy place for a band to get lazy, but a good one is killer. It reminded me of the gut-wrenching "I'm Not The Sun" from the Arkells' Jackson Square album, which I looked at way early in the blog. It begins with shimmering, shuffling of feet and navel-gazing vocals as it attempts to delve into the story of one of those inscrutable females you never can seem to reach. It will ring absolutely true to anyone like me who has known such a character, had her pass through your life and watched sadly as she took a toll on herself. The chorus is deepened with gorgeous harmonies and it's pitched at just the right rhythm: "Excuses and fortified wine... there's a house on the South Side she stays in at days at a time" or even better, "The sutures and bruises are none of my business / She says that she's sick but she won't get specific... this guy from the North Side comes down to visit / His visits they only take five or six minutes," my heart grows cold just hearing it, and it launches into one of those pitch-perfect solos that caps the sentiment excellently, wordlessly. That last chorus does it to me every time. In fact, the sequencing makes it a little harder to appreciate the rollicking intro riff to "Yeah Sapphire." The towering last track, another fave "Slapped Actress," involves some great oblique lyrics, and one of the best summations I've heard on this piece of plastic, "Sometimes actresses get slapped / Sometimes fake fights turn out bad." Finn's lyrics often observe how things get out of control, how far away from understanding many of us are, and he does it deftly. Through this distance, through music, however, we are united.

If you can, pick up the version with three bonus tracks, "Ask Her for Adderall," "Cheyenne Sunrise" and "Two-Handed Handshake." The first of those is an excellent basic punk workout that was probably only left out because it feels less fleshed-out than the proper album tracks. "Two-Handed Handshake" describes a lot of people you probably know, maybe you yourself, and leaves the album with a few words of encouragement and an awesome horn-based hook. Lovely.

This album might not work for everyone (nothing good probably would.) It has that earthy, everyman feel that, as I mentioned, will appeal to fans of Springsteen and Costello. It's rebellious without being angry or showy, catchy without being poppy, and takes risks with its instrumentation. Finn's voice is hardly radio tested standard, but that's the charm, and I consider it my duty to look at what an album wants to be and see if it is that, as much as if it works for me. I do love it, incidentally, but even if I didn't, I'd respect it. In any case, it's important to stay positive: and, in the face of a work like this, not that hard.

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

Serious Contenders: Jeff Buckley, "Lover, You Should Have Come Over"

2011-09-25T01:57:00.006-04:00

While we're thinking of Jeff Buckley, let's do this. From a sweetened set of pipes and a calm rainfall, to a thrashing wildstorm of emotion in 6 searing minutes, this song encapsulates the ruminations of nostalgia, of loss and regret and lovesickness and anger at a missed chance... "Lover, you should have come over." What a lyric, and what a song to hang around it. Everything I said about Buckley's performance of "Hallelujah" goes here, too, from his voice to his guitar to that ineffable quality of "realness" when just the right notes are hit.

Cover: Jeff Buckley, "Hallelujah"

2011-09-25T01:43:00.007-04:00

Not, strictly speaking, one of my favourite songs. I have a problem with it being done to death and with the fact that every cover I ever seem to hear treats it as this precious thing, these meaningless pretty words to trawl out when something sad happens: Vitamin C's "Graduation" for grownups. Blame John Cale for putting an easily-replicated melody to Leonard Cohen's more naturalistic version.

I mean, if you're a competent performer, you can get it down fine. And if fine is good enough for you, it works. The song is strong enough that it'll do most of the heavy lifting and if you've got a good voice, you'll make it really beautiful, sure. But Jeff Buckley was the only one I heard who ever seemed to me to have any personal attachment to the song, any stake in its expression, and his entire soul in his rendition. Maybe it's that strange minor-key noodling that opens the track like an alarm in the back of your skull. Maybe it's just his quivering voice, his staggering pace, his minimalistic guitar... whatever it is, it seems to be genuine, to be raw and naked. This was before the song was encoded enough that every AC artist had to have it in their repertoire. When there was an element of danger and darkness and sex, not just sentimentality. I don't make it my business to insult others in praising something, most of the time, but this happens to be one case where I've really got a bug up my ass.

The other version I really like was Steven Page at Jack Layton's funeral. He knew what he was doing: it was not one of the prettier ones, but it was one of the most real. KD Lang, sometimes, maybe. But not Neil Diamond.

Serious Contenders: Gene Vincent, "Be Bop a Lula"

2011-09-25T01:25:00.003-04:00

The early rock and roll standards feel cliche by now, but trying to put a fresh ear to them helps you realize how well they stand up. Listen close to the halting rhythm of the verses: there's your Rock. Listen to the easy flow of the chorus: there's your Roll. Back in the 50's, you couldn't really address the idea of sexual attraction directly, so you had to be creative, and a lot of the time when you get a nonsense word or a grunt or a "hey," that's what it's standing in for. "Be-Bop-A-Lula," manages to come out of nowhere and stand in perfectly for that space between "We're doing it" and "We're in love" -- a place where much teen romance, the type mythologized in early rock and roll, occupies. Rock and roll is often in saying it without saying it.

The Coral: Butterfly House Acoustic (in brief)

2011-09-22T18:42:00.005-04:00

Here's a problematic review. Not long after I set out on this adventure of a blog, I learned that The Coral (a band I much admire) had just released a new album, Butterfly House, and it was getting very positive notices (after a few tepidly-received releases.) So I promptly placed an order at my store, and long, long after, it arrived. Except it wasn't.

The proper version of Butterfly House was not released here. All they had for me was this stripped-down acoustic version. I was skeptical. Even now it's taken me a long time to sitting down to collect my thoughts on the album. The sound of the album, the constant plucked acoustics and mellow crooning, means it fades into the background not only of your life but of your mind. I found myself hard pressed to remember even the songs I liked hearing. I would remember a snippet here or there and have trouble placing it. But when you hit play it starts to come back.

The 13 songs on this album are, from a songwriting standpoint, among the finest the band has served up. I don't mean to denigrate the band's other releases, but there's a striking difference here. The band left a lot of its manic energy behind after the first few albums, but here I finally get a sense of what path they wanted to take out of it. It's sentimental and delicate and very sweet and honest and accessible. The acoustic guitars overlap and melt sweetly into each other.

The acoustic sound is great. It's not bare or stark sounding at all. It's very lush and well-instrumented. It never feels like a demo or an interpretation, or even close to raw like Nick Drake or something. The album's warmth is helped by some beautiful harmony vocals and James Skelley's strongest overall vocal performance. The songs all take a very innocent, doe-eyed tact toward romantic relationships (and memories and moments) that evokes the 60's as strongly (or stronger) than any of their previous albums. Sometimes on their previous release I'd sense something exciting happening and then they'd take a turn that broke the mood for me, but here's probably their first record I can listen to straight through. And I loved those first ones, and the later ones all have highlights too. While they may have better individual songs on every album, I think no set has been as consistently good.

In researching for this review, I did listen, just once, to the full-out proper versions of these songs. A lot of the tracks translate well. Some, like "Sandhills," "She's Comin' Around" and "North Parade," being most electric-driven, lose something, but also take on a new character. "Coney Island" feels totally different.

None of those songs is worse the wear for the acoustic treatment, but there are a lot of songs here that particularly lend themselves to it. "Walking in the Winter," "Falling All Around You" and "Two Faces" are moments of real beauty. I think the thing about an acoustic album is that our brains are wired to interpret those sounds as being honest, from-the-heart and off-the-cuff statements, unfiltered by studio production (even when they are.) Here, being so exquisitely orchestrated only enhances that feeling, that even peeling back the layers of performance, you still have something very showy and glossy, and very personal at the same time.

Buy the Regular version or Acoustic version from Amazon!

And since the proper album is a bit tough to get a hold of, it's all on YouTube. Here's what we're talking about:

Serious Contenders: R.E.M., "Losing My Religion"

2011-09-22T00:20:00.004-04:00

Opening with one of the most -- that is, probably only -- famous mandolin riffs in pop music, "Losing My Religion" is the song R.E.M. is best known for, and rightly so. Its lyrics wind their way around a tale of betrayal and hurt, obscuring feeling and worrying about showing your own self. How very poetic, that phrase, "Losing your religion," Michael Stipe once explained, is a southern expression meaning losing temper or composure. It's not as much a loss of faith as it is a loss in appearance. And we all put up fronts, don't we?

For a band that had previously made its bread with incoherent mumbling, it's incredibly articulate and incredibly effective. And catchy as all hell, which is when alt rock just becomes rock. An alternative way of rocking to be sure, but here we get into those heady waters of what's mainstream and is it even important to make distinctions (for my money, no.) And there's that mandolin, distinctive and holy spiritual in its own way.

It's maybe not exactly my most favourite REM song, but there's a lot more to say about it than "Stand" or even "Orange Crush" and I'm fairly certain I'm the only person who enjoys "Shiny Happy People" totally unironically. Well, that's life.

Serious Contenders: Leonard Cohen, "Everybody Knows"

2011-09-21T22:18:00.005-04:00

A spellbinding, simple statement of insight and honesty. The gift of one of the greatest poet-lyricists of his time or any. Dark and true, with that stark, pulsing backing track and Cohen's characteristic husky song-speech.

It's rather upsetting how cutting the lyrics to this song are. That the world carries this dark underside we all have to confront. "Everybody knows the dice are loaded / Everbody rolls with their fingers crossed / Everybody knows the war is over / Everybody knows the good guys lost." Cryptic, but deep down, you know. You know.

Happy Birthday, Mr. Cohen.

Unironic Rap Monday: Weckx-N-Effect, "Rump Shaker"

2011-09-19T18:52:00.002-04:00

Unironic Rap Monday: Because I'm not sure Pitbull is an improvement over this.

Cake: Showroom of Compassion

2011-09-17T21:59:00.010-04:00

Cake's Showroom of Compassion is, somehow (and perhaps unbelievably) a complete package. On a first pass, it might seem merely shallow and laconic, but by the time you get halfway through, around "Sick of You" or "Easy to Crash," you begin to sense how many levels the band is actually working on. Then the album becomes a grower.

For a start, Cake opens the album by exploring their style. Positive or negative, no reviewer could deny the fact that the band has a distinct sound. On "Federal Funding," the elements drop into place one by one. At a rocking pace, John McCrea sings corporate buzzwords in an uninterested tone, while a sharp guitar lopes along in the background. The horns noddle around. Then at three minutes there's this moment of release where the band explodes out into a jammy outro with a cry of "Go!" It's a rousing start. Even in the nondescript early tracks, like the slinky "Long Time," the band has ideas about its songcraft. The bass is slinky, and a subtle keyboard, which gets its best moments later, whirs underneath. I listen to the album and I hear the band pulling back the curtain slowly, track by track. Take the lyrics of "Long Time," which are loaded with nostalgic references ("It's been a long time since you gave my butterflies / It's been a long time since I saw it burning in your eyes") and neutral ones ("It's been a long time since you wore your pillbox hat / It's been a long time since we drove your Pontiac.") McCrae deserves a lot of credit both for his delivery and (if he's responsible) the lyrics themselves. They say a lot without saying it too obviously. They're guarded. That's the point. Like I said, it might be a bit confusing, but it makes sense in light of what comes later.

The album is largely concerned with the passage of time, with its usage and movement. "Mustache Man (Wasted)" features awesomely impatient breathless motormouth lyrics, and an epiphany of a chorus: "I have wasted / SO much time..." McCrae sings those verses like he can't quite cope with everything that's coming to mind, and the chorus like he's suddenly realized there's no point. There's also a Frank Sinatra cover, "What's Now Is Now." In the original, Frank sang against a swell of strings, declaring forgiveness boldly and ostentatiously. Cake, true to form, is a bit more reserved. The guitars cue up the song like frantic pacing. The vocals come in like "Okay, this is really hard for me to say, but here I go." Harmony vocals in the chorus (I'm not sure if it's double-tracked or what, I think it's self-backed though) choke McCrea's voice up and seems to practically strangle him with his own words, especially his delivery of the title line. Gaudio's words and Cake's instruments sound like gorgeous match. There's such complicated emotion being wrung out of it, but it's all under the surface. "Got To Move" manages to be both critical and sympathetic -- or at least lending the appearance of sympathy. This is, after all, the showroom of compassion. All throughout the album, representations of emotion are called into question: is it real or just a display? Do you mean what you say or is it just pretty words?

The album breaks open in the wordless "Teenage Pregnancy," where the band gets a lot of mileage from its instruments. Beethovenlike pianos give way to spaghetti western horns and plastic, midi keyboards, blending warm and open with cold and difficult and building higher in intensity with dark, growling guitars.

Probably the best track on the album is "Sick of You," where it all comes tumbling out. After half an album of dancing around the idea of emotional honesty, the opening lyrics say it all: "I'm so sick of you, so sick of me, I don't want to be with you... I wanna fly away." This cathartic declaration is set against a cocky rock swagger reminiscent of 70's Stones. It revels in the ability to just fucking air one's grievances. "Easy to Crash" makes for the best one-two punch after this, capturing all the boredom and frustration with the modern world we've all probably considered, and the temptation to just defy the chains of society by doing something reckless. It's pretty clear to see when he observes and sings, "It would be easy, so easy to crash." This is a great song, the way the verses are written underscore how boring the world can be, and the chorus beckons you on. They really hit it as much as they do anywhere else on the album.

With those two tracks as the apex, the album takes a good while to circle the tarmac. Havign gotten a lot off its chest, the band is free to be open without being brutal. "Bound Away" bears out my theory that, whether it's Cake, Lissie, Jack White, Hollerado or Neil Young, the best country songs are often by artists that aren't country artists. "The Winter" is probably the most beautiful song on the album, with terrifically sentimental (yet non-sappy) lyrics, a quivering vocal delivery that echoes as though sung from a foot away from the mic, and a keyboard/horn arrangement as delicate as anything heard on this record. The piano keys sound like falling snowflakes (okay, those don't have a sound, but that's a metaphor.) It just sounds a bit more emotionally invested than other tracks.

It closes out with "Italian Guy," a bit of whimsy that I wasn't sure how to take. At first I thought, "How dumb not to end with 'The Winter,'" but I think there's a logic here. We started on the outside, dove as deep as we could, and now make our way back out again. We've seen the inside of McCrea's vocalist persona, but now he turns it on another subject. "He's making a point and it's very important indeed." Neither we nor McCrea know what the Italian guy is thinking about, but like watching people in real life, you try to figure it out based on the clues they provide. The album is back to avoiding grand statements, instead making small observations and letting them speak for themselves, because there's no firm judgment you could make. We never really do know about others. The horns that fade the album out sound both like an end and a beginning.

"Showroom of Compassion" isn't just a random collection of words slapped together as a title. It sounds to me like a good indication that the band knows what they've got on their hands here. In its music and lyrics, it deals with themes of honesty and feeling, and wondering whether there's anything behind the curtain, or if it's all for show. Maybe your natural inclination is that better music is expressive, but I've often thought there's as much expression in withholding as there is in, y'know, actually expressing. You seem too hard to seem sincere and it sounds fake. You do a good job sounding reserved and you become a mystery. The album does a great job playing hide and seek with feelings and meanings. Say it, but don't be so obvious about it. The music does a perfectly fine job speaking for itself. And of course, the band provides that music with lyrics that evoke those feelings with or without direct meanings, like a great modernist work. The meaning's there for those who seek it. I praise the album because the songs are deeper than they seem, and catchy as hell.

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

Serious Contenders: Pete Townshend, "Let My Love Open The Door"

2011-09-08T01:53:00.004-04:00

Cliche romantic sentiment aside, I think it's significant that Pete "My Generation" Townshend wrote and recorded this chirpy peppy ode to a spiritual kind of love. It's sung, not from the perspective of a lover, but from a kind, loving God, and regardless of your actual religious beliefs, I think that's a nice expression. "I have the only key to your heart / I can keep you from falling apart." It's very sincere, very earnest, and I like the idea of putting material pursuits aside and getting back to that all-encompassing feeling of spiritual love.

I dig it.

Cover: Green Day, "A Quick One, While He's Away"

2011-09-08T01:17:00.004-04:00

Now, if you were a punk band going to cover the Who, you probably wouldn't start with "A Quick One." This seven-minute mini-opera uses multiple passages of folksy hard rock to depict various characters in the story of a longing lonely housewife waiting for her man's return. It is, even amongst the Who's discography, pretty curious. And Green Day, a band that was once known to have a sense of humour, plays it pretty seriously. No, it's not as good as the original, but frankly I commend them that they even did it, and yeah, did it well.

That said, if this was your first exposure to the song, it would seem absolutely nonsensical. Not that the original recording is much less nonsensical. Truth is, this song is so ridiculous it plunges into absurdity and comes out the other side totally unharmed, and while this cover doesn't exploit that, it does take it as a given and do a faithful job with it. Hey, a cover doesn't always have to be a reinvention.

Serious Contenders: Who, "Baba O'Riley"

2011-09-08T00:47:00.005-04:00

Granted, there's little doubt amongst critical circles that this is one of the greatest songs of all time. It isn't really under-appreciated, it doesn't need me pointing out how great it is and few comprehensive Best Of lists would be complete without it. It's practically unassailable, which is a good thing because with all the theatrics and the synths and the obscure lyrics, it seems to come out just this side of silly. But it is, make no mistake, a real contender.

What I love about this video of the Who performing it live is the energy flowing through the band as they perform and can't help but be moved by their own music. Moon's back there bashing away. Townshend shimmies and hops about like an excited child. Daltry marches like a conductor. Only staid Entwistle, like a learned guru, remains in a trance, focused on the task at hand, providing that rock solid basis. Music and motion becomes one.

The lyrics as I mentioned are abstract but they seem to mean a lot. They derive, I'm told, from a similar-but-different composition (actually entitled "Teenage Wasteland") meant for Townshend's "Lifehouse" project. I've heard that version. This is much more enjoyable. Here the context-lacking lyrics provide for great-sounding nonsense you can hang your own interpretations on, take as defiant and determined yet vulnerable and hopeful,resting all one's aspirations on walking triumphantly out of that "Teenage Wasteland." And all the while that burbling synth keeps flittering, providing you an audio recreation of all the continuous interconnected randomness of life. Of everything.

Moon's drums. Not too crazy, but they play well, organically, against the pre-programmed keyboards. Townshend's guitar break, brief, but important, like a distant hailing frequency beckoning you on. And that harmonica, standing in for accelerating violins, represents all the transcendent hopes and dreams.

Sorry, my prose got a little purple there. My point is, this song is a moment of peak expression. It's got everything and it sounds like nothing else.

Rentals: Return of the Rentals

2011-08-28T20:41:00.013-04:00

In between the great first two Weezer albums, bassist Matt Sharp sneaked off to create his own thing on this album. Maybe the work on this album is indicative of what Sharp brought to the band (they were never quite the same after he left post-Pinkerton) but I think this is more an indication that he had his own ideas that happened to occasionally coincide with Weezer. This is far from the propulsive pop rock of the first album, or the reckless garage-punk of the second. It's stitched together with flailing synths that go from excited to empathic, touched up with strings and laid down on a bedrock of fuzzy, solidly rhythmic but generally murky guitars. This album has a specific sound, and that sound does a great job conveying Sharp's lyrics concerning self-doubt and confidence, timidity and action, wanting and denying: ideas that crop up, similarly but differently, on Weezer's albums. This is as good as them. But different.

After a windy, whispery intro, we hear the opening track of this album come to life with some high high voices settling down. Following this is Sharp's flattened vocals singing about machinery breaking down and being unable to find the source of the problem or determine how to proceed. While he sings, the fuzzed-up guitars churn along like clunking machines, and, importantly, a moog synthesizer whirs and hums seemingly on a rhythm of its own. His vocal delivery seems a little flattened, a little thin -- he's not a very experienced vocalist and you can hear him strain a bit, but before long the chorus comes in and Sharp is joined by Cherielynn Westrich and Petra Haden, whose vocals throughout the album sweeten the material and make it really human. This track, "The Love I'm Searching For" suddenly reveals itself in that harmonized chorus: "I tried, you know I tried / I try-ee-i-ied / Hard as it may be / You should be with me." I love that lyric and that delivery, a cooled-off plea or a stand-offish declaration, a mixed message of sorts. There are mixed messages and double-encoded statements all over this thing, from the lyrics often distancing themselves from the object of the singer's desire, to the instrumentation being both harsh with guitars and pretty with violins, to Matt Sharp's worn out yet hopeful delivery.

It took me a few listens to get into it, but that's not an indicator of quality or lack thereof. It indicates that this is a work I had to prepare for, to build up a new way of thinking about, according to its own logic.

The album is built largely around upbeat numbers that play on, rather than attempt to hide or improve, Sharp's vocals. He talk-sings a bit like Mark Knopfler, sometimes in kind of a white boy hip hop without trying to rap. He sounds at once giddy and impatient and irritated on the stomping second track, "Waiting." A big clue is when he says "I'm tryin' / But have nothin' to offer." He's a bit more patient in the easy-rocking pace of "Friends of P." That song, an ode to either Ric Ocasek's wife or the psychic friends network: "Oh yeah / Oh yeah / What's that you see? / Tell me / More of / What's gonna be!" The synthesizer, the key melodic instrument for much of the album, pulses and fluctuates under those lines like little I've ever heard. The chorus is also mindlessly catchy, chantable fun.

In the middle, the album really shows what it has to offer. "Move On" is one of the most affecting songs here, not just for the harmonies or the sweet synth playing or the strings that slowly build. It has a great light touch. The way it drifts on until the guitars kick in is just haunting. As Sharp moves into his falsetto (previously deployed in Weezer,) he does some of his strongest singing on the album, and those parts you just want to crawl up into and get comfortable. My track comes next, "Please Let That Be You" begins at a galloping pace, with an almost timid false opening to the vocals and some synth noodling. About am minute in the first chorus kicks in, along with the girls, and it absolutely bursts: "Please let that be you / Knocking on my door so loud / Just like you do / Bringing a message or two / You know you are my fave / And I love you." I love this chorus so much, it's so hopeful and yet so nervous and so naked: Please let that be you. I couldn't find any online resources that agreed with my assertion that the line is "fave" instead of "faith" or "fate" but I like the idea of being someone's fave. The Moog giddies up and does some of the niftiest work on the album, fidgeting between the vocals and soaring after them.

The same few elements appear throughout the album, but it rarely feels like its repeating itself. Within the parameters of the Rental's defined sound, Sharp explores thoroughly. "My Summer Girl," "Brilliant Boy" and "Naive" are all in their ways self-critical and doubting, suspicious of both the man and his world. "Summer Girl" is a heavy sigh, ultimately realizing "I know I'm not your type / I'll never be your type." "Brilliant Boy" is hooked around a double-accusation: "You're just a stupid girl... I ain't no brilliant boy." It lumbers along, one of the most menacing numbers. "Naive" is the most self-immolating, naturally. It carries along at a waltzing pace, drawn out the way one might pace the floor. "These Days," brings us back to the territory of "Waiting," of being impatient and let down. It stomps along at a marching pace: "These days / I may not be so happy / After all / After all that I have gained / I still feel sad when I'm all alone." Like I said, the lyrics are direct and confessional, yet remain in their way obscure and poetic.

The final track, "Sweetness and Tenderness" manages to be an epic blockbuster while also seeming very personal and direct, a real burst of honesty after the whole album spends time circling around the idea looking for a place to park. It begins quiet, with hushed vocals and delicately-strummed guitar. The first pass at the chorus is modest, and then the strings swell back up to lift Sharp and the backup vocals into the ether and give it a real prettiness. Then, this gem of a line: "I guess it's real simple / It's just like when Gary Numan said / You're just a viewer cold and distant / You are just business, you're worthless." At this point, the guitars drop in like a hammer, and that chorus that gets me a little choked up: "You say you're with me, I know you don't care... sweetness, (oh, sweetness!) I need some tenderness (tenderness...)" this puppy just keeps climbing. The vocals, and therefore the lyrics, are pushed to the forefront of the album, and this one even better than the rest, underscores their quality. This is a really well-written piece of work. This is one of many cases where I would say an album is great not only because of its virtuosity (ie "the musicians are really great!" "They make music that is very distinct!") but because the sound and the meaning works together really well. Matt Sharp had specific thoughts and managed to express them specifically.

The Rentals, what a cool name for this band. Since a rental is something you want but don't want to keep, it really goes along with Sharp's ideas of commitment and loss, of putting yourself out there and needing love, but hating to go through the hassle. Great name for an album too, since in this context it indicates pushing something away rather than embracing it. I guess it's no shocker this album speaks to me, but I think even so it's really well put together. Here's a record you'll want to (yuk yuk) return to over and over.

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

Serious Contenders: Richard Thompson, "Shoot Out The Lights"

2011-08-24T18:06:00.005-04:00

While we're talking about RT, here's one of my comfort videos. I do love the original recording (which I can't find as easily on YouTube as I can a dozen live ones,) but I dig this dark, intense reading with Elvis Costello from his appearance on Elvis' "Spectacle" show. The riffs don't rumble as pointedly as the record, but the solos are absolutely untouchable, intense stuff.

Anyway, this dark fantasy of loneliness and personal violence will always be one of my very favourite songs, and based on any criteria, a serious contender.

Cover: Richard Thompson, "Don't Dream It's Over"

2011-08-24T17:47:00.005-04:00

Last week I posted the Crowded House original as s "Serious Contender," a sort-of overlooked tune from the mid-80's that is well regarded but probably not generally thought of as "one of the greatest songs ever." I love its usage in the film Adventureland particularly, but its startlingly evocative refrain of "Hey now, hey now, don't dream it's over" is great no matter the context.

Richard Thompson, one of the great (and beyond critical assessments, overlooked) guitarists of the 70's, would evidently agree. Apparently, during this "all requests" show, he took one written as "Play a song you wish you had written but didn't," and got one of his stage crew to download the sheet music and lyrics for this sucker. Well done, sir!

Serious Contenders: The Beatles, "I Call Your Name"

2011-08-22T19:07:00.004-04:00

You could easily make the argument that virtually any Beatles song is a "serious contender," other than "Maxwell's Silver Hammer." It's not hard to point out how brilliant the latter-day Beatles were, but sometimes this happens at the expense of their early work. I think that's a shame, because I'm always a champion of direct, simple rock and roll statements, and in the spirit of the times this is some great stuff. The lyrics juxtapose vulnerable, lovable popstar fluff -- the material of the Beatles' early "work songs," -- with a bit of a tough-guy facade, something Lennon was known for. The lyrics, simple and direct, do a great job of conveying loneliness and frustration without saying in so many words, pinpointing the feeling and the exact right way of saying it. For an early Beatles composition, this is one of the many that they got spot-on.

Black Lips: Arabia Mountain

2011-08-21T22:35:00.004-04:00

I feel like I'm going to owe you guys an article that examines, in-depth, the current trend towards retro, nostalgia, or vintage sound in modern-day rock. It's a card that gets played more and more throughout the past decade to the point where much of what I have reviewed already, will be reviewing shortly, or have my eye on for the future, could be classified quite handily as "retro" efforts. I have my own thoughts on what it means, why it might be a good thing, why artists do it, and who it's for, but as this is a review of the Black Lips album, I want desperately to keep my remarks limited to the album in question, as usual.

"Retro" in this case refers to the Black Lips' handiness with the 60s surf rock form, and their ability to infuse it with light touches of psychedelia. So here is an album that is very action-packed, very much in motion.

The bulk of the album is comprised of propulsive rock numbers, the likes of which would get any kid moving in an early 60's beach blanket film, with guitars the chime out and overlap like the waves themselves. That opening riff on "Family Tree" in particular sounds like feet shakily standing up on a board as the big one approaches (I don't know anything more about surfing than could be learned from movies.) The vocals themselves quickly break out into craziness rather than a nice, polite, Jan & Dean reading. And so you are brought into the world of surfpunk. The second track, "Modern Art," features a neat overlapping call and response between the vocals and the guitars, and its raucous harmonies in the chorus set out the tactic for much of the album.

Other great more-or-less straight rock workouts on the album include the circular spinning "Go Out and Get It," "Time," "New Direction," which excitedly sets out for the horizon, and the Bo Diddleyish "Don't Mess Up My Baby." Handclaps keep the mood sunny and beachlike, but the dried out vocals keep the album in dry land, while in other places it spins out toward the stars.

The album often turns for the psychedelic, sometimes in unexpected places. Sometimes it's just by letting a guitar solo get crazier than you'd think at the end of "Go Out And Get It", or by throwing themselves so raggedly into the vocals on a song like "Dumpster Dive" or the the biting saxophone of "Mad Dog." "The Lie" propels itself with breathless paranoia, and "Mr. Driver" gasps and wheezes with exhaustion, with an always ear-catching line about "My sexual Viet Cong." One of my favourites is the dark-tinted, shimmering "Bicentennial Man," which is thankfully way more enjoyable an experience (and far shorter) than the film by that name. Its thundering drums and ringing guitars make it a highlight of the album, and in contrast to the low-key vocals on that track, make it emblematic of the Lips' character. "Bone Marrow" separates all the compositional elements and slowly goes about reuniting them. Elsehwere, like "Raw Meat" or "Noc-A-Homa," they just go nuts. The singalong bits really knock me out because they capture the spirit of unity on this record: everyone at the same party having a kickass time together, but singing in their own voices.

With any retro affair, you're left with the pertinent, yet boring and ultimately irrelevant question of fidelity: does it sound just like the 60's? No, the band really revels in the advancements of what a recording group is allowed to get away with nowadays, from those raucous vocals that straddle the line between carefree and careless, and access to random instruments at a whim. It does, however, carry the spirit of an album from those days, of easygoing good times, married to the kind of free-associating studio expanse that Brian Wilson was starting to dig when he lost his marble.

The album does stumble a couple of times. I'm not personally fond of "Spidey's Lament," the only bona fide ballad on the album, which tries to put the story of Peter Parker in a different context. It doesn't work for me as a Spidey fan or as someone who wants to hear this album get going, although it's a decent enough tune and very vintage to those early 60's Phil Spector records that influence the album. The ringing guitar in it is better than the song itself. The closing track, "You Keep On Running" is the ultimate extension of the album's psychedelic interest, which sacrifices the energy of the surfpunk for spacey weirdness. The best bits of the album feel spontaneous and lively, which probably explains why the best tracks are all under 3 minutes.

In general here's an album with character, even in those weaker moments. That character adds spice to an already fun listen, which will inspire many re-listens because it's so easy to get caught up in the spirit and speed and rhythm of each individual track, and to want to get really familiar with them so that you know what cool, weird thing is coming up around the corner.

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

Cover: Asteroids Galaxy Tour, "The Safety Dance"

2011-08-21T00:09:00.004-04:00

With soul, energy and general fuss, AGT (also known as "That Beer commercial Band") go the opposite route of the below Arcade Fire cover, livening up the most notable of Men Without Hats' many hits, already a pretty goddamned fun song. It was probably wise to replace the synths with horns, which are "in" but timeless.

Cover: Mr. Little Jeans, "The Suburbs"

2011-08-20T22:24:00.004-04:00

The opening title track to Arcade Fire's opus is a dusty, nervous wreck of Neil Young-esque negative nostalgia, with every repetition of the "Sometimes I can't believe it / I'm moving past the feeling" seems to sink deeper into itself.

Here, Mr. Little Jeans gives it the Zero 7 treatment, makes it nice and cold and detached, with the almost Stepford sedation of the vocal matching the humming, distorted strings of the backing tracks. It trads in nervousness about growing up for dismay at having settled. It's different yet close.

Cover: Nirvana, "Here She Comes Now"

2011-08-17T10:01:00.001-04:00

Like pretty much any band that doesn't suck, Nirvana has a bit of a Velvet Underground influence. They do this song honor by making it both rough and pretty, in that Nirvana way. It begins as clean, bright power pop, then escalates into a very characteristic Cobain vocal workout as the guitars pound harder and harder, where the original got jammy and jazzy. The Velvets make for some good cover material, their songs being so deep in the DNA of all that follows that it's easy to pick them up and put them back together in a new style that doesn't damage the original. They're that strong.

Serious Contenders: Adventureland Triple-Feature, Velvet Underground/Crowded House/Replacements

2011-08-16T10:26:00.002-04:00

I have a lot to say about the movie Adventureland, since I'm a sucker for "manic pixie dream girl" movies, particularly those that uncover the flaws in that archetype. What really interests me is the music: all the best MPDG films have awesome soundtracks since the people that make them (and therefore usually the characters) are music aficionados who let their love of tunes guide their feelings and actions. This one begins with this classic Velvet Underground cut, which mellowly slips you into the film's disenfranchised white middle class aesthetic:

Jesse Eisenberg's main character is a bit of a music snob who frequently extols the greatness of Lou Reed, whose music runs throughout the film, but that doesn't stop them from using some great tunes contemporary to the film's late-80's setting. Later during one of the warmest moments of the film, the main characters watch the July 4th fireworks and this gem wells up, crystallizing this moment of yearning, of being with someone and yet somehow separated:

It's funny how context can rescue a song for you, because I never thought much of Crowded House before then, but the thought of those characters in that moment with that song underscoring the moment really does it for me. Of course, the film ends with a song that is truly excellent no matter the context:

"Unsatisfied" features one of those great, dreamy acoustic intros that melts into a powerful electric verse and rough vocal, driving the film toward its climactic scene. All these songs are serious contenders in their own way, and their usage in that one film is spot on.

If you haven't seen it, I recommend it. If you've seen it but wrote it off, well, it's not for everyone. But for me, it does a great job exemplifying what music can mean to a person, to our relationships, to our everyday lives.

Serious Contenders: Sly & The Family Stone, "I Wanna Take You Higher"

2011-08-15T09:31:00.002-04:00

Notably not a song about drugs, but about the spiritual qualities of music. And holy fuck, does it feel like it. All the pieces work together to transcend the boundaries of the song, to uplift the spirit and of course, to rock the fuck out. Sly and the Family always get their due from the critics, but few of us on the lower level -- the mere listeners -- really give them the time they deserve.

Foster the People: Torches

2011-08-11T22:35:00.010-04:00

This is where it's at. Out of utter chaos comes rhythm and soul. This album is made up of a thousand little moments, threads that join together to form a blinding, action-packed blockbuster. This is the culmination of a decade of development in danceable indie-pop, from Phoenix to the last Strokes record. It's all crash and bang but beneath lurks a healthy spirit propelling everything forward to ensure the record never drags.

It achieves liftoff with "Helena Beat," which starts with a soaring synth riff and ends with caramel-sweet "weee-oooohs" and in between is that blazing vocal delivery that defines the band: obscure yet articulate, easy to discern but tough to unpack: close but far, inviting but isolated. Most of these songs feature a chanting chorus that will get stuck in your head at least until the next one. That it constantly, successfully refreshes itself is a gift. If you start to like it, you won't want to stop listening to it.

Mark Foster, the maestro here, has a great sense of songcraft. These aren't a million miles away from conventional pop songs, they're arty enough but not hard to "get." They grab you. "Pumped Up Kicks," as I've mentioned before, has an undeniable appeal, built on that smarter-than-it-looks bassline, a story of a bullied kid coldly seeking revenge. It's both the best example of Foster's songwriting and the singular standout, because though the rest of the album does kick at the same laid-back-yet-tense pace, it tends more toward the hyperactivity. There's the piano groove of "Call It What You Want," an inviting tune and a seething indictment of labels and scene cultures. The grooviness makes the message all the more inviting, because when I listen to this album, it feels like being part of some huge gathering. One nation under a groove, per Funkadelic.

Some of the better moments of the album are the laid-back ones, though: "Waste" is a pledge of fidelity, and the lush score gives way to a clear-cut vocal in the chorus. That's what I like about the album, it knows when to pile on the sounds, knows when to fade them out. There are a million or so moments, loud, quiet, busy, relaxed, all alternating just at the right spot, giving you exactly what you need to hear. Foster also manages to make me stop worrying and love the male falsetto, which I was prejudiced against simply because I never felt it useful, but the contrast between his Strokes/Cakelike lower register and his Jamiroquai/Prince impression upper register creastes a strong contrast of emotion and expression. The vocals here are definitely part of the sonic strategy all throughout. The man knows his work. "Miss You" is like a whispered declaration of love in a hailstorm, time seems to stop for the chorus.

Not a track on this album is to be missed, but there are a couple of truly excellent culminating tracks. "Houdini" features, again, a great piano groove and clapping-snapping rhythms, the great vocal dichotomy, and the utterly relatable declaration that "Sometimes I wanna disappear!" which he then does, into what else but the music. "Warrant," the longest track by a minute, begins with a choral arrangement (or a synthetic one) before thundering over the horizon and singing about making a getaway. Choruses like these dutifully underscore ideas from the verse, act as constantly thoughts underpinning specific statements, everything coming back to "Got to get away / Yeah the warrant's on my head / Got to get away / They want me alive or dead." It looms over the rest of the album, outdoes the rest of the tracks, and ends abruptly never to be heard from again. Fitting that such a fidgety album would focus so much on escape.

We're in the future now, we're all doing a lot at once. We need new ways of discoursing with each other, of revealing our inner selves. Foster seems like a guy with a lot on his mind, so he makes busy music that doesn't linger on any one idea longer than it needs to to establish a pattern here and there before jettisoning. I like that. It's different, but fits well within the trend, making it possibly the best version of the current sound. It might be the musical version of tabbed browsing. When I listen to it, the tracks, these multi-sided jewels are impossible to keep from singing along, yet when it's over, I just sit stunned and think "Where was I just now?" To drop so deeply into something then be shaken out of it so completely and be able to walk away until next time... it's pretty remarkable. This is a piece of work you'll want to keep revisiting. It has a lot to offer.

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

Serious Contenders: Metric, "Gimme Sympathy"

2011-08-04T23:47:00.001-04:00

I can't think of a single reason why a living breathing heterosexual male wouldn't get a shiver up his spine when Emily Haines sings "I can feel it in my bones!" There's something so sensual, so evocative about the lyrics to this song. When she asks "Come on, play me something like 'Here Comes The Sun,'" you know exactly what she's after. What a great piece of songwriting, possibly the best distillation of Metric's sound. Most bands have to decide whether to favour the guitars or the synths, but they texture the shit out of them and give them both something really interesting to do so that neither has to be left out. Intense, cool and sexy.

"Weird Al" Yankovic: Alpocalypse

2011-07-26T19:34:00.009-04:00

Alpocalypse feels like a crucial release for Weird Al. His last release, Straight Outta Lynwood, had the surprise internet sensation "White & Nerdy," sort of a perfect storm combining Al's newfound knack for Internet marketing (just about every song is now a potential viral video) with a deft parody that reminded us why we liked him so much as kids. But added to the pressure of topping himself is the fact that in the five years between Lynwood and Alpocalypse, Pop Culture itself has gotten, well, weirder. To say nothing of all the Gagas and Ke$has, Disney has been spinning out tween stars at a steady pace for the last half-decade, the Internet now has an even firmer hold on our lives, reality TV is melting our brains and celebrity "journalism" tells us more than we could ever possibly want to hear about Snooki or the Twilight stars' love lives. Simply put, what was once obviously absurd has become normalized, and we need Al, more than ever, to point out exactly how odd it all is. That's a lot of responsibility for a 50-year-old parodist who made his name rhyming off foods and television shows to the tune of 80's hits. Especially when you consider how many comedy musicians have cropped up lately (The Lonely Island, Flight of the Conchords, your idiot friend with a 90's Casio) whose approaches are a bit more contemporary.

Fortunately, inspiration struck. B the time of Born This Way, Gaga was undeniable, and the song itself would've been too obvious not to parody. Al doesn't squander the opportunity, either, using the song as an examination of Gaga's overall persona, much in the way he used Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" to deconstruct them in a good-natured way. That song holds up better than most Yankovic parodies, and this one will too so long as people remember Gaga actually did wear a meat-dress.

Amazingly, it doesn't sound like the rush job it apparently was. The lyrics, like Al's best, are well-observed, suited to the original, and memorable in their own right. ("I'll wear a porcu-pine on my head / On a W-H-I-M...") They provide a neat little insight into their subject and get some laughs out of it. One wicked touch, though, which was not needed but hammers this parody into the stratosphere, is a brief background snippet of a Madonna soundalike attempting to wedge "Express Yourself" in between the lyrics. Cheeky.

Now here's where things get good, because the other four parodies are all pretty much up to the same standard as "Perform This Way." "TMZ," set to the tune of Taylor Swift's "You Belong With Me" skewers both the celebrity journalism nonsense I mentioned above as well as the celebs they care so much about (from the bridge: Everything celebrities do is FASCINATING!!) with many real-life examples alluded to. And "Party in the CIA" takes the starry-eyed enthusiasm for life of Miley's original and applies it to the world of waterboarding and toppling regimes. His same-titled parody of T.I.'s "Whatever You Like" is sold by the sheer confidence of Al's "character." And "Another Tattoo" (a take on B.O.B./Bruno Mars' "Nothin' on You") I think is better than it has any right to be based on the premise, largely because Al has a knack for free-associating absurdity that really explores the limits of a premise like "what's the most ridiculous thing someone could ink on themselves?" A good hip hop parody (or two) is a gift, because rap lends itself to comedy better than other forms of song. Al's comic timing on both of these is impeccable.

All of this top 40 radio madness is summed up quite nicely, as usual, on the stalwart polka medley, always one of the highlights of a Weird Al album: breathing a little life into songs that often have become passe by the time the album rolls around, and usually providing the improvement of being performed with accordion-fueled gusto. Speaking as the guy who's selling these songs on a regular basis, I can tell you in many cases it's the most fun I've had listening to them. for whatever reason, his renditions of "Blame It On The Alcohol," "Replay" and "Tik Tok" bring a smile to my face in particular. They're great for the kids, too, because unlike Mini Pops, they acknowledge the twistedness of performing something like "I Kissed A Girl" for 11-year-olds, reveling in the inappropriateness. I heard a lot of songs for the first time as part of a Weird Al polka, including but not limited to "Closer" by Nine Inch Nails and "The Humpty Dance" by Digital Underground, the greatest rap song of all time.

Truth be told, though, it's the originals that always get my attention. Pop song parodies have certain limitations: find a good subject matter, weld it onto the original, hope for the best. But in his originals, Al has the chance to play around, to mix and match (often indulging in style-parodies,) without being as in debt to any particular concept. He's free to muck around and "Dare to be Stupid," if you will. I may be biased because I have such fond memories of the originals on my first Al album, Bad Hair Day. I still listen to "I Remember Larry" and "Everything You Know is Wrong" and "I'm So Sick Of You" long after I've stopped caring about "Amish Paradise" or "Cavity Search" or "Phony Calls."

Al looks to have embraced tech culture as his permanent muse after dabbling successfully over the past few albums. There's a bit of overlap, but it's nice to get away from the "food and TV" phase of his career. It brands this album as a product of its time, for good or ill. Since so much of our lives is lived on the internet, it's only fair. Most of the trends he uses for material will probably still be relevant for a while. "Craigslist" does a great job exploring the insanity that lurks that website, where cranks complain about their "snotty barristas" and the desperate weirdos of the world post their missed connections. (No comment on whether I've ever posted there... cough cough.) That one is done "in the style of" the Doors, bringing Ray Manzarek in to play some awesome Ray Manzarek keyboards while Al outdoes Jim Morrison's croony screaming. "Ringtone" is a peppy ode to the way an annoying ringtone can affect one's life. It's a bit of a one-note joke saved by a couple good lines and a strong effort at replicating Queen at their most operatic. I also think that as an album closer, "Stop Forwarding That Crap To Me" is not very strong compared to the rest of the album, providing in a lot of cases more general versions of jokes he's already done. But it can't be easy being the Weird one, and thankfully there are some really strong originals here.

"CNR" is Al's response to the Chuck Norris memes (again with the internet!) proving his gift for randomness is still up there wit anybody as he ascribes impossible feats to Charles Nelson Riley. I think it's a lucky thing kids are smarter than most people think. No, most 11-year-olds listening won't know who Charles Nelson Riley is (or what a "Matchgame" was) but inserting overly-obscure old references has always been Al's thing and if the kids are anything like I was (savvier even, I would bet,) it'll just make them want to find out. Besides, the beauty of these memes is that you don't have to know anything about what's being referenced to understand what the joke is. Knowing just makes it better. "CNR" also happens to be a top-notch White Stripes pastiche, authentically recreating in a sly parodic way Jack's crunchy blues guitar and histrionic vocal delivery from tracks like "Icky Thump." "If That Isn't Love" is a cutesy generic pop parody (think Hanson or Train) that pretty much tells you right away what the joke's going to be, and then does it well and manages to be super-catchy, which is the property of parody: to take on the qualities of the originals in excess. All of those originals do that well. But then there's one that sticks out.

"Skipper Dan." Oh, God, "Skipper Dan." This story of dreams gone wrong is, strangely, a perfect fit for this album. The same wit that enables Al to spoof popular artists also grants him a great insight into regular everyday characters like this. It's a triumph of songwriting, even beyond whatever comedic value it may contain -- it's more "dark and depressing" than "funny," but Al gets away with it because he is, after all, the "Weird" one. He manages to make a statement like this, to let this story unfold with a touch and tone any number of "serious" artists would like to have found. In his writing, Al often transplants dark themes onto the typically light and shallow mode of parody songwriting... I was what, ten, when I bought Bad Hair Day and heard "I Remember Larry" and "The Night Santa Went Crazy" as well as a couple of great anti-love songs on that album. The originals on that one (designated as a reference point for me because that was the "current" one when I was a kid and he slowed his output to one every few years) hold up better than the parodies (it was an awkward transitional time for pop music.) "Skipper Dan" being the highlight of an album that would have been great without it indicates the Alpocalypse may be, as a unified effort... Al's best work.

We needed a home run and we got one. Al deftly capitalizes on the strangeness of the moment for music, writes jokes that are either unlike those found on previous albums, or better versions of common ones, has fun, picks all the right targets, and in his originals, has way more hits than misses. He shows he's got as strong a mind as ever, maybe better, for pointing out the weirdness that creeps by in our lives often unnoticed. It feels current, but it also feels like it encapsulates the things about our current times that will still be remembered ten or twenty years on. Maybe. I can only speculate.

The point is, it's a funny album with all its parts working at maximum capacity. The parts that won't make you laugh out loud will at least make you grin. And besides, who among us hasn't considered picking up a trashcan's worth of styrofoam peanuts from some dude on the internet?

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

Cover: Amy Winehouse, "Valerie"

2011-07-24T08:40:00.004-04:00

I first heard this song as performed by Glee, and its original form by the Zutons went on to become one of my faves over the winter. However, it was Winehouse they were covering, and her version signifies her talent for sexy, soulful arrangements that complement her voice: dark and sultry, yet wistful and with no unnecessary embellishments.

I'm not going to pretend I have much to say about her life and death. I'm not a pundit or a preacher. But hey, a talent is gone.

Cover: Cowboy Junkies, "Sweet Jane"

2011-07-23T23:27:00.004-04:00

If Johnny Cash's "Hurt" is the greatest cover anyone ever did of anything... and I'm not one to rank such things, but it has a strong claim to that honor, if it's possible... then here's a notable runner up. It takes the ragged, streetwise character sketch and turns it into a glossy, dreary romance, and sounds gorgeously sad.

Sweet, sweet Jane...

Exploding Hearts: Guitar Romantic

2011-07-22T01:22:00.004-04:00

What an awesome title. Guitar Romantic. Without getting too thinky, the album does have a capital-R Romanticism about it, how even the most twisted situations and hopeless heartbreaks attain a larger-than-life quality. Such is the power of a good-goddamned guitar rock record, to say it without saying it. To be brash and earnest at the same time. But that's not what you're thinking about when you're actually listening to it. That comes later if at all. When the record spins, all you can think is how much it fucking rocks.

With a vintage swing, accented by a very appropriate soundbreaking low-fi loudness, the band pumps up New York Dolls an MC5 punk riffs, and attaches them to the black-and-white teen-dream lyrical motifs of the 50's, with a few small street-level augmentations like glue-sniffing and torn posters. Vocalist Adam Cox sounds a little like Joey Ramone and a little like Buddy Holly. His bandmembers join in when appropriate on call-and-answer lyrics to lend a sympathetic ear to the heartbreak of a song like "Sleeping Aides and Razorblades." Under "Throwaway Style" there's a cute little piano counter-melody beneath the stammering guitar riff.

I can't even really talk about it. It's not worth over-examining because that misses the point of the immediate joy of the loud, crazy killer feeling you get when you're in the midst of it, which of course is what makes good music so goddamned hard to talk about. On "I'm a Pretender," Cox sings "21 but it ain't no fun / Life's going by but it's just begun." The ten tracks manage to maintain this urgent immediacy, the complete and total devotion to the moment and the feeling that whatever's important at that moment -- either romantic pursuit or romantic rejection -- is the most important thing in the world. No time to linger, though, there's another one coming along in two and a half minutes.

The Exploding Hearts are no slouches here. They keep their lyrics uncomplicated because there's nothing that needs to be said more complicated. They paint some great lyrical sketches and fire them off, rattled along by razor sharp riffs and pounding drums. Their brand of punk is sneakily intelligent because it doesn't try to be smarter than it is, and results in a great direct statement. They let a few bits of sophistication sneak in, wisely: those couple piano riffs under some late tracks, the evocative Travis-picked intro to "Jailbird" and the overall harmonies and interplay say more than a better vocabulary ever could. The great thing about music is that if you play it well enough, you don't to string it to overly poetic lyrics, because a good rock chord progression always speaks for itself. That's not even a knock against the lyrics, because I'd rather these guys rhyme "Hard" with "Retard" than try to force some elaborate metaphor that isn't any deeper or more meaningful. "Jailbird" is a particular favourite of mine, but "Sleeping Aides" is the real juggernaut, and every song offers its own thrill.

So it walks this line, skilfully, between artful construction and punk sloppiness. It's not one or the other, it just happens that the chaos falls into place perfectly and so it becomes clean pop wearing the skin of raucous punk. It's both and neither, a beautiful mess of hooks and choruses, with, most importantly, a good goddamned sense of humour and vitality. So they fall back on the old chords, big whup. Better than settling for the new ones everyone else was using at the time.

After "Still Crazy," one of many real rave-ups, the album ends at only 28 minutes. A shame, but appropriate. The album, like youth, like many relationships, and tragically like the band itself, is not meant to last too long. Music like this makes important material out of unimportant heartaches, makes every little thing count, and lets you go in the nick of time.

Buy this album from iTunes now!

Serious Contenders: A-Ha, "Take On Me"

2011-07-18T23:39:00.003-04:00

Presaging the rise of Phoenix and Foster the People, here is your synth pop in its vintage form. This song represents the 80's in every positive sense of the word, with its strange, vaguely romanticist lyrics, high-pitched "hooo" and of course that unstoppable synth riff that you will now be humming to yourself for weeks. This song is notable not only for its slick video, but for being plain old awesome.