On this live album, Jack White makes an addition to "The Union Forever," his song constructed entirely out of quotes from Citizen Kane, incorporating perhaps the best single line from the film: "It's no trick to make a lot of money if all you want is to make a lot of money." This line rings especially true to me given what I was saying about Jack's solo debut earlier this week, how he managed to make a record people would want to hear without designing it as a record meant to be purely commercial. This guy has clearly always had his mind on more than merely taking from his audience's wallets. If he was just there to collect ticket fees, he probably would play his songs more faithfully to their studio recordings. Here is a live recording that does not merely contain a few rough edges. This live recording is constructed deliberately out of rough edges.
Live, the White Stripes played recklessly, like Jack's guitar was literally on fire and he needed to stamp it out with his fingers. That poor six-string is going to need trauma counseling after the way Jack treats it. In he moment, with the energy of a live presence, Jack finds new places in his songs to make them all raggedy and unconventional. Not only does his guitar wail out in pain, Jack himself screams like a maniac, possessed by the music rather than performing it. This is a double-faced album: it's unpolished, but it goes out of its way to revel in its lack of polish, makes a spectacle out of it.
While some songs are played with breakneck ferocity, others are transformed in other ways, like the abbreviated, altered, organ-based "Ball and Biscuit," arguably preferable to the original studio version. "Blue Orchid" is allowed to come alive in a way it didn't on Get Behind Me Satan, and they really bring the audience into the sinews of "I'm Slowly Turning Into You." Being that this was during the tour to promote Icky Thump, tracks from that album are the most faithful; the blemished twang of "300 MPH Torrential Outpour Blues" is even better live with hardly a moment changed, and "Prickly Thorn, But Sweetly Worn" is gorgeous. Speaking of gorgeous, there's "We're Going To Be Friends" and the always-showstopping cover of "Jolene." The harsher moments make the smoother ones that much better: the slowed-down version of "Fell In Love With a Girl," sounding like Joss Stone's cover, is another highlight. Ultimately, this winds up as a full-bodied performance that explores all the various extremes the band inhabited.
One of my favourite live moments on any album was on Nirvana's Live at Reading set, when they played "Smells Like Teen Spirit" with their disdain for the hit well displayed, intro-ing it with Boston's "More Than A Feeling" and deliberately fumbling through it. Jack tests "Seven Nation Army," arguably his greatest creation (not necessarily his greatest song, but the work that will always loom largest) by taking it to its brink, turning it into a monster and then slaying it. If it were recorded that way in the first place, Elephant would not have been the blockbuster record it was, but to an eager crowd, it's irresistible. You buy a studio album because you like the songs, but you buy a live album because you like the artist.
There's beauty in this set, but not a pretty, precious beauty. A heavy, at times difficult-to-stand type of beauty. Sonically, it has a lot in common with Coldplay, and should theoretically appeal to the same audience, but somehow I can see them being turned off by how much more "real" this band is. They pitch their music on the same grandiose level, but back it up with thrilling, satisfying substance that makes for a compelling set that gets better with each listen as it absorbs you and gradually reveals itself. James' singer, Tim Booth, sings with conviction, maybe even romanticism tempered by realism. Like a grounded, worn out Bono.
The Night Before & The Morning After are a set of complimentary mini-albums. They're consistent enough that they can easily be heard together, but distinct enough that you can see why they are kept separate. The former is fittingly mysterious: a tease, grandiose and confident, shielded by the night. The latter is more subtle, detail-oriented. There's one song on it, "Kaleidoscope," which seems to be about one thing, then reveals its true nature and hits you right in the gut. Morning After ends with a lonely, quiet track called "Fear," which lingers a whole on its way out the door. If you opt to listen to The Morning After second, you will be left a-quiver. But it might be even too jarring to go from that to The Night Before's opening number.
The Night Before begins with a charging, rousing number called "It's Hot," creating a lyrical ballet out of cellular division. Like a lot of songs on Night Before, it goes for the high and fast. Of the two, it's easily the more crowd-pleasing. None of the 15 tracks are bad, but the ones you'll find yourself humming along to are all on Night Before: "Crazy," "Ten Below" and "Shine" all have distinctly catchy qualities, yet don't lack for musical sophistication. "Hero" could be in commercials for medical dramas based on its hook, but still has a lot more to recommend it. And the fact that "Porcupine" sounds like a potential hit to me probably explains why I am not actually working in the music industry.
Then there's the most positively addicting song on the whole experiment, "Dr. Hellier." I don't necessarily mean it's the best, only that those "Ahn-an-ahn-ah-na-na-na" chants get under your skin in that way that happens when a song just fucking grabs you. It's delivered with life, exuberance, and yet also desperation and despair. I've always been a big fan of what's called "non-lexical" lyrics, those nonsense words that imply more than actual words could say, or leave the mood open to interpretation. Lyrically, it's pretty fascinating too, using the Fantastic Voyage (the classic sci-fi about shrinking down into someone's body - like that Magic School Bus episode) to tie into other themes explored on the album, particularly in its second half, where a track like "Dr. Hellier" would disrupt the sombre mood.
The other half begins with the staggering stomp of "Got The Shakes." Built on an ominous slide guitar, and Booth's pleading voice, it makes a good transition between the sounds of the two halves. It's not as huge as the other half, not as dreary as the rest of this one. And I mean dreary in the best way. The piano-based "Dust Motes" is one of my favourite of the 15 songs, and it contains lyrics like "There's a vulture at the end of my bed / It's 5 AM, it thinks I'm dead." Then there's "Tell Her I Said So," which is one of the most distressing songs on here, despite its choral chant of "Here's to a long life," because the "her" in question is death, and we have the still relatively young men of James contemplating euthanasia with off-putting vigor.
It's all a very somber affair, laid out with delicate style, and as I said earlier, beauty. The music is an engaging listen, and if it doesn't exactly tell a story then it's certainly got a through-line you can hold on to while the tunes all swirl around you. It just skirts the line of sentimentality and melodrama without ever getting sucked down into it, keeping a distance from its subject matter while still keeping all the details in crystal clarity. And the music is damn well-done.
I'm still not entirely certain how these two halves are meant to go together. If you buy only one you're getting only half an experience, but to listen to it all at once is almost too much to handle. For what it's worth, it's being sold on iTunes as a single package with the tracks interlaced in a way that will give you a different reading of the album than I'm providing. I, however, like the division. I like the idea that even if there's no prescribed way to listen to these pieces of music, it comes in two big chunks that somehow complement each other, fleshing out feelings and sounds conspicuously absent from the other.
The Night Before and The Morning After comprise a great project of music. They take on that huge Colplay-U2-Fray sound and dig into what's supposed to be beneath the commercial sheen, holding out its guts and bones and confronting you rather than comforting you. This is exactly the kind of project I figured this site was designed for.
I worry it's going to happen: That part of my brain that's up for new things shutting off and leaving me with an appreciation only for classic rock throwbacks and smooth jazz. I'll buy a Michael Buble CD and that'll be the end of it. It would be death for me as a music appreciator if I didn't feel confident in my ability to discern good new stuff from shitty new stuff. While I feel perfectly fine dismissing a lot of what's out there for my own tastes, I need to find something new that I like often enough to make sure my tastes are kept sharp and malleable: to make sure I'm not set in my ways yet.
The Naked & Famous isn't quite unlike anything I've ever heard but I wasn't sure it was a version of it I wanted to deal with. Before sitting down with it, I could've gone either way on it. "Punching In a Dream" has an intense, shrill vibe to it, might not have an incredibly strong hook, is mostly just a pulsing drum beat and a distant vocal and some buzzing noises. Ah, but it got my head bobbing. I bought this album knowing it was either my mind playing tricks on me with baseless doubts, or that the rest of the album wasn't even that good: That their experiments and work might've yielded a couple listenable tracks and a lot more messes. Not everything can be Foster the People.
Oh, but what an awesome mess they turned in. It's thoroughly cacophony, all sounds all the time, but everything fits tightly in place, even when the beats are off kilter and the droning noises pulse weirdly. Dig the chanting in "Frayed," or breathless, urgent tornadoes of sound like "Spank," and the opener "All of This." After "Punching," the other big song off the album is "Young Blood," which skips ahead on a light new romantic synth riff (maybe I'm the only one who is reminded of "The Safety Dance") and Alisa Xayalith's anthemic cry of "E-yeah-ee-yeah-eeyeah-eeyeah." Throughout the album she alternates vocal duties with Thom Powers. Both of their vocals seem distant and spaced-out, buried beneath layer upon layer of sound, fighting for breath. Alisa in particular seems breathless, at the brink of emotional breakdown most of the time. Like The XX, the two voices seem to temper each other, with Thom grounding Alisa, most of the time.
She gets some of her best moments in the slower numbers. "No Way" is quite symphonic and powerful, one of the moments on the album when most of the instrumentation drops out to let Alisa carry it. It reminded me of My Bloody Valentine (always a good thing) the way they can unspool a few of their instrumental layers seemingly ad infinitum, letting them sink deeper and deeper into you until catharsis has been reached. In a lot of places through the album, the band gets their best results by managing those intense moments with subtle ones. "Eyes" is similarly gorgeous. "The Sun" accelerates, charging toward its finish faster and faster like, well, a dawning sun. "A Wolf In Geek's Clothing" marries the spacey, immense harmonies with a squealing, painful, barnstorming garage riff.
"Girls Like You," led by Thom's pleading vocal, is possibly the best song for song's sake on the album. It's the one that feels most "real" and "down to Earth," on casual listening. It harnesses the album's strengths, that scope of softness and intensity, that sense of rough rhythm and emotional frayed wires, and binds it into a really effective pop song.
I don't mean to say, from my opening statements, that you have to be young or even particularly open-minded to enjoy this album. I definitely don't mean to say that disliking this album means you have lost your ability to discern greatness from crap, because although I like it very much I know it can't be for everyone. Everything that made me reluctant about it is true: It's shrill, noisy, obscure and far from pop in formula. Disliking it doesn't signify bad taste any more than liking it signifies good taste. It's important, though, for a guy like me, to happen across an album he can be unsure about, that can be unrelated to most of his daily listening, and still find new pleasures in. This album isn't made of great 3-minute pop songs I'll be humming all day. It's constructed out of moods and moments and moves between them in a way that is musical but not overly songlike. I find that it's more the case when you're young, when you're looking to find your own way and you want something to speak to you, that something like this album will speak to you, that you'll be more open to alternative, non-conventional expressions of music, mixed in happily with the rest, taken as regular as anything. When you get older, sometimes, you feel you have a more firm understanding of what works for you, and something that doesn't fit won't be up your alley. It doesn't mean you're dead inside, but it also might make you miss out on something you'll end up liking.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Better(-informed) critics than I will do a great job of untangling Gemma Ray's influences and musical touchpoints. I'm hesitant to do that lame shtick all reviewers do pointing out "You might expect something like Winehouse or Lily Allen, but (female artist) is a true original!" Everyone who's any good is an original, don't be a maroon. It's just that Gemma Ray's way of being original is more original than other originals. It's not a pastiche or a callback: this album would be out-of-place in any time period, except this one, where time doesn't really exist anymore and you can sound any way you damn well please. It's too lush and wall-of-soundy for nowadays, but too weird and dark for olden times. It's not cafe music and it's not quite psychedelia.
Take the windy Ennio Morricone-style strumming from "100 mph (in 2nd Gear)," which sweeps you up in itself, turns you around, and leaves you wondering where you've been. Or the disquieting Stepford quaintness of "Tough Love," or the wilting wailing guitars of "1952." There's something dark and unseemly laced all throughout this album, like it has buried ill intentions, peeling back the covers on romance and nostalgia and innocent girlhood pledges of love. The meanings of songs like that are obscure, jumbled up lyrics that send a negative vibe with sweetened vocals that seem to be longing for something far beyond reach. Some, like "(You Got Me In A) Death Roll" are more overt, chugging along ominously with those dark male background vocals and quivering harmonicas in the mix, it chants like a chain gang song, but Gemma's breathy vocals seek relief. Then it ends abruptly and leads to the arcane, nervy "Goody Hoo." Later great moments include the spooky, bluesy "Dig Me a River," and the empty-sounding "If You Want To Rock and Roll" provides, if not the most gripping pop musical moment of the disc, an atmospheric break between the ever-swelling tide of sound surrounding it.
The album is consistently good, and plays well with its musical style. All the songs sound distinct without seeming to come from different sources. Despite this consistency, there are two tracks that stand high above the others for me, that if I felt I could leave the rest of the album behind, I'd still want with me. "Fist of a Flower" is the apex of Gemma's darkly orchestrated self-harmony, as she slides some really twisted, unnatural-sounding Beach Boys "oooo-oooos" in under her own chorus, echoes calls and answers herself, and creates this massive, claustrophobic feel like all the music of the world is slowly closing in on you. The other is the sweet, soaring "No Water," which rises above somehow. It's Gemma's best vocal performance on the thing. The thing about her, unlike many female vocalists, is that while she sings extremely well, her voice isn't the attraction itself. It's always part of the larger sonic texture, hence all the harmony, the double-tracking, the studio sorcery. The refrain of "No Water" is a beautiful incantation, obscure like the rest of the lyrics (to my ears anyway,) but never meaningless, thanks to her delivery and the arrangement.
It's hypnosis. It's mind-control. It grabs you on some deep level so that you zone out and don't even completely remember what you've heard. It's not easy-breezy pop, it's full bodies and rather intense. The closing track, "So Do I" is one of the few apparently-affirmative tracks on there, the one that sounds most like the Shirelles, but also has those pounding drums to go with the sweeping strings and the infinite harmonies. I always love albums that feel like they end with a sense of resolution, catharsis, elimination of demons... and this one manages to spend the preceding 35 minutes gathering those demons into one place.
If it were what they call a "retro" act, it would do more to invoke a specific time and place. Gemma borrows freely from wherever, inventing new tactics of using the sounds as she pleases rather than follow orthodoxy of pop. She's not working to recreate someone's ideas, she's looking to take you into her own, and it works. It hangs together amazingly well, and the songs string into one another beautifully.
I like it. Like everything I enjoy, it fit a everyone's pre-arranged notions of what they'd enjoy. It didn't fit mine. But of course the point of this blog has been for me to push against my own boundaries, and of all the albums I've bought that I wouldn't otherwise have glanced at, this one surprised me the most. I came in with zero expectations... a vague remembrance of how "100 mph" sounded and the impression that this was some sort of retro-pop affair... but coming out of it, I found something more satisfying by miles than just a tribute or rehash of old styles. It's moving without being obvious about it, evocative without ever laying out what it's trying to tell you: difficult to truly feel like you've got a handle on it, but not resistant or off-putting in the least. Great music often does that, and leaves you feeling different than you were before.
Is it me, or is there a hidden undertone of sadness in a lot of dance music? The music designed to get people to move their bodies can't quite tear them away from the pain that plagues their very souls or end the turmoil in which they live their lives, numbing themselves to the burdens of life and trying to forget for a stolen instant on a dark, crowded dancefloor, to escape and pretend they are just a glorious carefree being among many submitting to the groove before finally crashing back down to reality at the end of the night? It's not just me, is it?
If I'm hearing sadness and loneliness where I'm not meant to in other dance songs, it's clear that I'm meant to hear it here. This is Robyn, she of late-90's "Show Me Love" fame, who had been relegated to the discount bin alongside Savage Garden and Sky. Incidentally, I find all of these songs to be rather chilling, but this is all harmless fun from the era that brought us Vitamin C. "Show Me Love" was 90's kitsch, lightweight nostalgia, it was a memory, it was gone, and Robyn had presumably left the music biz to become a waitress or something.
Not so. In fact, she spent the ensuing decade destroying whatever career path she had laid out for her in 1998, resurfacing with this album. The strange thing is how it sounds not-that-distant from her late-90's work in many places (the innocence of "In My Eyes" and "Stars 4-Ever") but with the key difference that there's a 3rd dimension of sound and character that brings that sadness I can't help but imagine and works with it. This is a thinking, feeling, breathing album, not that far off from fellow Swede Lykke Li, in some ways. (Very far off, of course, in many ways.) It is, in many places, sad (or angry) music to dance to, a contradiction I wouldn't think anyone would indulge deliberately. But go Robyn. The album's called "Body Talk," and there's a lot your body says without knowing it... most of which is addressed here.
"Dancing On My Own" is the most brilliant composed confessional, emotionally direct and powerfully danceable, that could still qualify as a dance track. While Britney Spears sings about "Dancing 'til the world ends", Robyn can't help it that she's "In the corner, watching you kiss her," wishing she was "Indestructible" and warning that "Love Kills," laying her issues out bare over synth riffs and pounding kick drums.
I'm not sure if this confessional version of dance music works for actual fans of this type of music, but it does it for me. Maybe it's because on the regret-flavoured reflection "Time Machine," Robyn pines for a DeLorean. Maybe it's because it's easier for me to get into the music because the singer is addressing the fact that she is a real person with real problems, rather than an invincible dance machine here to get everybody's body moving. I don't know, maybe I'm nuts. Despite the rushing artificial electro-pop sound of the whole album (and the lampshade-hanging "Fembot") it just feels so much more human than other singers.
I love, for example, the simplicity of "Don't Fucking Tell Me What To Do," which consists of a very poetic litany of "(x) is killing me" and of course the title phrase. Or the badassery of "U Should Know Better" where Robyn proves her chops as an MC and also does more for Snoop Dogg's cred than anything else he's done in years (because fuck Far East Movement and Big Time Rush.)
A couple of other songs in the middle of the album are at the same level as "Dancing On My Own," the gentle letdown of "Hang With Me" (whose lyrical content is just being friends) and "Call Your Girlfriend." There's a sweet honesty in both of them and they make a good pair, both in that area I mentioned earlier of being weirdly honest lyrical matter for a dance tune. Both of those songs pack huge hooks that draw attention to, rather than obscure, their emotional content.
The album was honestly a very odd pick for me, but it works. It does a great job blending those "ignore everything and move your body" tendencies with that reality that we all have to face every now and again, making it an impressive artistic statement in addition for effective background noise to club orgies.
"Record Collector" clinks and clangs into being modestly as Lissie's voice creeps into the speakers, bobbing rhythmically with a strange peppiness. For a second I think I've been tricked, that I've bought the wrong CD. Make no mistake, though... this is the same woman who recorded stripped-down cover versions of "Bad Romance" and "Pursuit of Happiness," wails 'til she's blue in the face, and swigs tequila freely onstage. She crops up here and there on the record... notably on that first track, when she reaches the bridge and asks of God, "Won't you, won't you fill me up with it, won't you fill me up with it, why don't you fill me up with it?" Building, building until her voice breaks under its own pressure. It's the same woman, but playing a very different tune.
Most of the songs on the album don't reflect the dangerous image of Lissie, which I had inferred from her the videos I've already posted, but they don't conceal her completely, and the way it's worked into these songs, laced subtly with coy desire and a more positive version of rebelliousness ("Hands on the wheel, fuck that" from "Pursuit" gives way to "When you're with us you don't have to be quiet no more," on "Cuckoo.") So here we get a more lush, more nuanced sound, achieved through very pop-oriented instruments and catchy choruses. Well, let's not say that like it's a bad thing.
Take "When I'm Alone," which hits that perfect spot of evocative lyrical vagueness "You make me feel, you make me feel, you are the one you are the one..." wrapped in this ominously pulsing guitar-led wall of sound. There is pure desire, pure longing in this song, and her voice has that quality where when she cuts loose on the lyrics, you know she means them. More subdued and slightly darker is "In Sleep," which seems to me like a very haunted version of the Roy Orbison/Cyndi Lauper/Definitely not Celine Dion song "I Drove All Night," but in this one, the girl can't bring herself, or is unable to, make the drive. Its chorus swings effortlessly, directly, single-mindedly. It builds to a thrilling minute-long guitar attack that reminds of some of the greats of the classic rock era.
"Loosen the Knot," appropriately, is more the breakneck-speed rock, but as far as the poppier compositions go I'll take "Worried About" as the favourite. It bops on at a jilting kilter, creating an almost-unnatural rhythm between the verses and choruses, swaggers breathlessly, near-panicked and certainly frustrated, busy, like anyone with a lot on the mind. It boasts a great refrain of "For the last four years of my life I've thought about you pretty much every 15 seconds." The whole album is loaded with awesomely odd lyrics, including "Stranger," where she reminds a guy she "Asked nicely, please get out of my face."
"Stranger," yes. Sitting in the middle of the album, it's an oddity, because it deliberately invokes a Phil Spector vibe much more than other songs (not in the homicidal sense, you know what I mean,) in lo-fi, seeming like a She & Him song with attitude. It's a treat for the ears, with the early-60's pastiche production brimming with energy.
On iTunes, the album is classified "Country & Folk," which is deceptive. It definitely has a rustic/badass appeal, but to call it "Country & Folk" is to conjure up the image of something corny and nostalgic. Carrie Underwood or Shania Twain, she ain't. The countryness crops up noticeably only on two tracks, "Little Lovin'," with its steel guitar, but it's still far too explosive to be reduced to merely "country" (can you tell I have a hang-up about that genre? Ask me about it sometime.) Her brand of "country" reaches back to the time when Hank Williams I was figuring out how to incorporate the blues into his music despite not being black.
The other major "country" moment is the anthemic "Cuckoo," an ode to individualism, especially in repressive rural places. It's a bit like a Dodge commercial for my taste... especially given the chorus goes "I fell in love with bein' defiant / In a pickup truck that roared like a lion." But take it for what it is, a breezy, hooky tune on an album full of them, loaded with fire and spirit.
There are also ballads, the reflective parental-love tune "Bully," and hymns spiritual ("Everywhere I Go") and secular, ("Oh Mississippi.") These ones are handled more delicately, kept quite a bit raw and direct rather than smoothed over, which helps them reach their intended expressiveness.
In my reviews, I try not to pass judgment based on aspect unrelated to the album itself, so while I came in with a vision of Lissie that was not really explored on this record, it shows a great deal of depth (or at least, multi-facetedness) that she's able to be the "Bad Romance" cover Lissie and the "When I'm Alone" Lissie, and the "Stranger" Lissie and the "Bully" Lissie. The album stands excellently on its own merits, and those are different merits from those videos. Here, her rough edges are very much sanded down and layered with a bit more complexity. The songs showcase her voice very, very well, showing her power and ability to convey honesty and need as well as playing with the listener. Whatever contributions collaborators brought, whichever direction she was pointed, she never sounds like she's compromising to get a hit. She just wants to come up with some awesome songs.
BONUS VIDEO! I usually only post one video per album, but I'm such a fan of Lissie's live videos that I thought I'd post this live rendition of the already-great "In Sleep."
It's probably not a coincidence that I was thinking of the My Bloody Valentine album when I was looking to review this most recent release by Neil Young. MBV worked so hard to generate its sound you can't help but notice it as much as the songs themselves. Likewise, here Neil Young works with a sound that is more noteworthy than the songs it is attached to. Leave it to him to complicate the idea of simplicity.
Mostly, the album is just a voice and an electric guitar, something that is rarely done. Sure, you can go unplugged with an acoustic and strum away, it'll sound beautiful and delicate, but to plug in and let it roar while you warble echoey, sometimes impenetrable lyrics? That's a new one on me. Oftentimes throughout the album, all you can hear is the lack of anything else, as much as the repeating riffs or the vocals. They're not songs so much as exercises, sonic events. They don't welcome you in.
Sometimes it's vague, sometimes it's heartbreaking. Sometimes he does switch down to the acoustic (as on "Love & War," a self-reflexive meditation on his own songwriting and "Peaceful Valley Boulevard," a largely conventional folk tune about social change and the environment.) Fittingly, some songs like "Hitchhiker" and the unnaturally-moving "Someone's Gonna Rescue You" preach about needing others. Coupled with the rumbling, half-empty sound of the album, underscores how lonely life can seem.
An album like this doesn't need to be loved -- I'm not sure I do, for its difficulty and rawness -- but it does command respect. Unlike a lot of music, but like a lot of art, it doesn't need to be "good" to justify its existence. It's enough that someone, particularly Neil Young, would go and make an album this way, because for whatever reason people forget how multifaceted his music is. In this case, it's as much about the message as how it's being communicated. He's never grown too comfortable with letting people think what a "Neil Young record" should sound like.
Two weekends ago, when I finally sat down to listen to Arcade Fire's The Suburbs, an internet person happened to ask me where I was from and how I felt about it. I told her that I was from a suburb of Toronto, and that living here was like being in an emotionally abusive relationship with a really pretty girl: you feel like you could do better, but if you walk away, you'll have to find one. If that doesn't necessarily sum up my feelings about this album, then it surely sums up my feelings about attempting to sum up my feelings about the type of place being described on it. I stared at that question and re-typed my answer for forty minutes before properly replying, and I still didn't feel satisfied. It's tough to really wrap your head around a place that seems oppressive and dull and yet comfortable and welcoming.
All this recursive uncertainty seems in line with the album's intentions: not to pack the idea of the "Suburbs" away into this or that, but to use it as a backdrop against which many peoples' lives -- quiet ones of opportunity and regret -- play out. It could be anything, and it is a lot of things. Ever since that day I've kept revisiting this album, finding myself unable to keep away. It seems so huge, so ominous, yet so familiar even in its strangeness.
Why does it sound so big? Maybe because at times it's willing to sound pretty small. It begins with this nondescript chung-ka-chung riff on the curtain-raising opening track, so homey and down to Earth it's almost not likable. It isn't until the song dissolves into a mantra of "Sometimes I can't believe it / I'm moving past the feeling" that it really starts to grow, become overwhelmed by increasingly-psychedelic guitars that wash up into the sunny skies of the piano backdrop, growing more and more disorienting with each pass. You're starting to get into some serious shit. In places like these all throughout the album, the lyrical narrative and the sound that goes along seems to come off like a ghost story told by flashlight in a tent in the backyard.
The title track bleeds into the first of a few real rippers on the album, the breathless "Ready to Start." The lyrics are chanted at a regular pace, but the guitar moves are so frantic, you can sense the unrest of a teenager eager to get the hell out, a future dad regretting his choices. The song quickly becomes a tornado, and much of the album seems to exist in relation to gathering storms and gathering darkness. Another earlyish highlight is "Rococo," a wringing out of hipster teens that feel too big for their britches in the 'burbs. It's all swimming, anxious strings and stomping rhythmic refrain with a bite. And on and on with atmospheric scene-setters like "Empty Room" and new instant classics like "City With No Children," with its hummable U2-type riff and its almost-singalong chorus (I can imagine someone at karaoke 10 years from now: "Feel like I've been livin' in / A City with no Children in it / A garden left for ruin, uh, buh... da da da da...!")
The song structure and sequencing on this album is remarkable, and is what indicates it is at least attempting to be a great piece of work. I like the structure of the songs on this album: unconventional yet familiar, generally averting verse-chorus-verse-solo, seeming to add together to create a whole rather than chopped-up discrete pop units. They take you down new routes to familiar territory, rearranging their own riffs and lyrics (note the repetition from "Month of May" in "Wasted Hours" as just one easy example.) Lyrics reappear and reconfigure themselves, like houses built from the same plan in different neighbourhoods. Disquieting in their way, because you recognize it as something else. There probably aren't that many different "riffs" or at any rate tunes on this album, yet they work them into such disparate songs and sounds you'd probably not notice. It's fitting, in a way, since it's hard to avoid conformity in the suburbs, where even the nonconformists rebel in unison (admit it.) But you can look at it this way: most film scores work around the same general theme, and The Suburbs is one of the most cinematic albums I've ever heard. It reminds me a lot of Dark Side of the Moon, and you can take that as a compliment or not, depending on your opinion of that album.
The sequencing is unassailable: it rises and falls at its own agenda, like the gloriously serene "Half Light I" and her wild-eyed brother "Half Life II (No Celebration)." Or the somber, doomsaying "Suburban War" followed by the postapocalyptic garage punk pastiche of "Month of May" and then the sentimental yearning of the Neil Youngish "Wasted Hours." It alternates often between old and young, male and female, hopeful and remorseful. Even though my attention tends to wander during this stretch of the album, this effect causes me to never want to skip ahead, because I don't want to disrupt the continuity. So few albums manage to achieve that, even though it should be the goal of all.
The album is capped off by a few more instant classics: the uneasy, raging nostalgia of "We Used To Wait" and the gorgeous, far-beyond-town-limits "Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)," an aria masquerading as a new wave single, with its beautiful Regine Chassigne vocal and gesticulating synths, it builds as close as this album gets to a release. A lot of attention gets paid to what-sounds-like-what on this album, and for the record, the whole thing seems to remind me of anything Eno's ever done, (U2, Bowie, even Talking Heads on moments like "We Used to Wait" and "Modern Man," which also brings to mind Smashing Pumpkins' "1979.") It's lushly orchestrated and highly expressive, and makes me think I may have underestimated Owen "Final Fantasy" Pallett, who helped with the string arrangements (and the strings really make this album.) The whole thing, like I said, sounds humongous, which is fitting since when you're in the Suburbs, your meager little problems seem like the most pressing things in the world. Really, that's what this album seems to capture for me about the suburban experience: blowing every little slight and inconvenience so far out of proportion, way beyond rational thought and revealing your severe detachment from real emotional access. The suburbs have produced many great creators, but their creativity was usually borne out of a desire to get the fuck out of the suburbs: this humble (ch'yeah right) reviewer included.
So if, at times, it seems overly morose, overly joyful, overly serious, overly fantastic, that seems to be the point. This is an exaggerated album, to the point where its quiet moments are moments of exaggerated quietness. If I don't always find it the most pleasurable listening experience, I can at least always appreciate its artistic merit. It may not be something you'd put on at a party, but it's definitely something you can sit down with and contemplate. If you put it on in the background, every now and again you'll hear a stray lyric, working on a metaphor or putting a thought together, that makes you stop and tune in, and soon you'll be carried all the way to the end. If you're up for contemplation you'll dig this record, and if you'd rather not, feel free to don't. "Sprawl II" offers "near release," I say, because the album ends with a creepy reprise of the opening track (and is even title "The Suburbs [Continued]") suggesting an inability to escape, like you've finally circled back to your beginning in town. And in a way, that's sadly true, one of the many sad truths the album deals with: you grow up in the suburbs and hate it, you might leave, but then you're likely also to come back and start your own family there.
Whether The Suburbs is a definitive statement about the suburbs themselves, I won't say. It definitely manages to get a great deal of material out of the setting and feelings associated with it. Whether or not I think it's the best thing ever, I can definitely recognize that it's a damn good piece of work, and at the end of this review, I find myself thinking back to what I said when the album won the Grammy award for Album of the Year: this album was the only deserving winner "not in terms of quality, but in terms of effort, creativity and spirit." Here is music with real value: not just a collection of potential hits, but something that took great care and attention to detail to be itself. And it sounds pretty awesome while doing it. Even if you tune out from the lyrics, half or more of the songs will have you bobbing your head excitedly.
It's good music, and of course it doesn't have to be for everyone. But I will say that, if you've checked out a few tracks and are curious, don't hesitate any longer. With this album getting a bit more attention, we may have a mini-Nevermind on our hands, where something enjoyed by a select group can justifiably find wider attention and convert a lot of people who resisted. Myself included.
I'm not going to commit critical suicide by saying these are great albums. I know we're all open-minded here, but I feel like it might strain my fledgling credibility a bit too much for me to go to bat for these recent Weezer discs, which didn't set the world on fire. However, I'm going to begin with the hopefully-agreeable assertion that Weezer is a very good band.
Note my present-tense wording: Weezer is a good band. It's not that they were a good band when they recorded their first two albums. They're still out there doing a good job making enjoyable music. As recently as the (likewise-maligned) Make Believe, they recorded "Perfect Situation," one of the best singles of its decade. If there wasn't something fundamentally enjoyable about Weezer, I don't think people would be disappointed when they release a new album, they'd be completely apathetic.
So anyway, before I continue, let me issue this disclaimer: I got my copies of Weezer's Hurley and Death to False Metal albums for free from work. They were demo copies nobody else wanted. I probably wouldn't have paid for the privilege of hearing them, which is going to colour my review.
Rest assured, these are not great albums. They're not Pinkerton and there's no "Perfect Situation," but between the two of them, there are more than a couple tracks worth the $0.99 you'd have to pay for it on iTunes.
In fact, Hurley gets off to a nice start. As far as singles go, "Memories" has a better hook than most of their recent singles to. "Ruling Me" has the kind of pop sheen that reminds why early Weezer is often referenced in the same breath as the Cars. "Trainwrecks" and "Run Away" make good classicist midtempo ballads, and "Unspoken" builds into a great encapsulation of indistinct teen rage, and "Hang On" makes for a good emotional release. None of these songs are excellent, and I wouldn't say most of them are worth humming to yourself, but their forgettableness creates a paradoxical situation where you might find yourself listening to a song for the fifth or sixth time, not remembering what it actually sounds like, and thinking "Hey, this isn't bad!" "Brave New World" in particular hits me right in the adolescence.
The album commits two major crimes: one is that there's a pair of really bad songs: "Where's My Sex?" and "Smart Girls," which are lyrical duds. The latter in particular, it feels like from the lyric, "Smart" could be replaced with any other one-syllable adjective. Examples: "Where did all these blonde girls come from?" "Where did all these big girls come from?" "Where did all these French girls come from?" The rest of the song doesn't really say anything about girls that are intelligent, although maybe, maybe that's a comment on Cuomo's narrator's relative dumbness, that he doesn't even know what to say about the smart girls.
The other "crime" is that the album is generally repetitive. The songs don't tend to distinguish themselves, so you've got ballads A B and C and anthems D E and F, all with a sort of impersonal sheen that has been increasingly characteristic of the band since the early 2000's. The album's problem is then that it doesn't distinguish itself from itself.
But there's talent in there. The bandmembers play well, and Rivers Cuomo at his worst still writes consistently enjoyable rock (missteps aside.) Unlike so much radio rock lately -- bands I would never deign to review even in this much depth -- this still sounds like music you'd have fun writing, playing, and listening to. The main issue is that it's better depending how close you are to being a 16-year-old boy, because that's generally the level it hits on. Whereas Weezer's early work reached beyond such boundaries, they've settled in at this level for the past three albums or so. And if it's not for the 20- or 30-something rock critic crowd, don't begrudge it that.
Death to False Metal is a bit more inventive, if minor. Conventional rock like the music-as-release "Turning Up The Radio" the ode to frustration "Blowin' My Stack" and the chugging "The Odd Couple" share album space with the mockingly bouncy piano of "I'm a Robot" and the post-new-wave sheen of "Autopilot." The two songs share a subject in non-conformism, but are different enough to justify their coexistence. Not to mention rage against growing up and calming down is nothing new for rock music. There's also a cover of "Un-Break My Heart" which sounds oddly natural.
False Metal isn't a proper album, the tracks have been accumulating as odds n' ends for years, apparently, so some of the tracks have the added gravitas of originating from those glory days. Aside from "Losing My Mind," which is actually heartaching, again none of the songs are excellent but I've never considered criticism to be done in discrete units: that a failure to be perfect is a complete failure. I mean, that's a goddamned moronic thing to say.
I took these albums on for my review today because I was talking with my friend, musician and former fellow amateur music critic guy Joe, and I noted that real-ass pro music criticism is hard: when it's your job you have to listen to a lot of shit you wouldn't have paid for, and so you get jaded. I wouldn't necessarily have paid for these, but I can't see myself getting to excited about slagging them on the 'net either. It's unfair to treat decent music like failed-art if it didn't want necessarily to be art.
Many songs on both albums work hard for their minimum wage, and if you need something decent to listen to, you could spend that money in worse ways. In Weezer's 2010 incarnation you get, if not artistic advancement, then at least an assurance of quality. Both of these albums feature gloriously inexplicable titles and covers: I suggest we take that as a hint not to think too hard about it.
"Juliette" came roaring into my life one early 2010 day. I was at work, trying not to listen to the radio as usual -- we have a 4-hour loop of current hits that enables each of us employees to get very familiar with the every Justin Bieber song's intricacies. Then over the speakers came roaring this gigantic riff, this vintage garage sound worthy of the Kinks, but with a modern sheen and a great chorus. My ears perked up. I knew this was something I needed in my life.
It arrived later: Record in a Bag. As the title suggests, it is quite literally a record in a bag. The CD case sits in a plastic ziploc bag full of confetti and other goodies. The confetti is appropriate, since the music contained on the CD is a pure celebration, from their bombastic guitars to their pulsing drums to their weary-yet-charming vocals. The title, prosaic and direct, was fitting for the sound of it: Hollerado are stylish, but not afraid to be honest about what they are, this ragged-sounding, classicist rock band. No tricks or games, but everything they do, they do creatively and excellently.
I was skeptical when I first put the disc in and heard the deliberately jokey "Holleradoland" -- yeah, it has character, but I usually like to get down to business with my opening tracks. So for me, the album begins with the second track, "Do the Doot Da Doot Do," which swings gleefully from its nonsensical refrain, with manic energy and squealing guitars. From then, Hollerado makes some of the most full-bodied rock and roll heard in decades, with more rhythm and heart than I'd heard in years. Vocalist Menno Versteeg wails with wild abandon and enthusiasm, and the band plays in kind, with an earnest sense of humour to boot.
See, that's what I like about this day and age. Some of our best bands, writers and performers have mastered the art of being fun and being funny while also being sincere and deep. Because that depth doesn't always come from the extreme-ness of your expression -- your louder yelling, your supposedly more meaningful lyrics -- it can come from a small moment that seems to symbolize everything. On the road-tripping "On My Own," they sing, "There's a sweater in my dresser drawer that I wear when I'm sick / But the winter's finally over so I won't be bringin' it." It's so weird that this little snapshot couplet can cover so much. Hollerado is ultimately about the little things: they throw in great little guitar moments, nifty background vocals, and interstitial moments like whistling and organs and a capella intros. When was the last time you felt like you could describe an album as "clever?" And not even in a way that implies sarcasm, smugness, or terminal irony.
'Cause yes, it rocks. They make that abundantly clear on the now-viral "Americanarama," which eventually occurred to me as a sort of transatlantic "London Calling," as the band marvels at the country's self-destruction by apparently natural means. "Heyyyyy Philadelphiaaaa / Where'd you go?" is a clarion call for the new decade. Other tracks backing the album up run from the sunny, reflective "Riverside," to the country-blues-inflected "Hard Love," and "Got To Lose," which seems to be an ode both to heartbreak and to natural selection: "We came down from the trees, singing / You've got to lose love if you want to find love!" ("You've got to looooose! You've got to looooose!") I didn't like this lyric until I thought about "find" as a verb and realized it wasn't about having love but that thrill of finding it all over again. And somehow that evolution metaphor seems to work. Then there's "Fake Drugs," which is a good bit of plastic funk, and "Walking On The Sea," which sounds like it might've been at home on a late-90's Big Shiny Tunes compilation. The lonely, jaunty, whistling outro bleeds perfectly to the revelry that comprises the final track.
"What's Everybody Running For?" closes the album urgently, breathlessly, as the band observes the chaos that ensues when the only bar in a small town (they hail from Manotick, Ontario) burns to the ground. The album seems to carry a loose narrative about a road trip through post-apocalyptic North America, but maybe that's all in my head, and maybe it's all tongue in cheek. And it ends with a warm, discrete in-studio applause that feels genuine because whether you noticed or not, something has been accomplished.
Not only did 2010 sound like this album for me, but this album sounds quintessentially 2010 -- present and ready for action, joking, half-serious, fun and uncontrollable. Jose Strummer once said he was partial to albums "made by adolescents" (I'm thinking he meant 20-somethings rather than 12-year-olds) and this is exactly what he was talking about.
This was my favourite album of 2010. I didn't expect it to be -- for a while about half of the album sat unlistened-to while I found better things to do, until curiosity got the better of me, along with the nagging feeling that I was missing something. Then when I was first making this list up it occurred to me how much more I enjoyed listening to this album all year than anything else. It has so much heart and so much spirit, it feels like it's been with me all along.
Look. It's no great critical statement to say Arcade Fire made a great album in 2010, or Gorillaz or Kanye or LCD Soundsystem. But when even Black Keys' down and dirty brand of blooze-rock gets treated like a novelty, I have to wonder, who is standing up for pure good old fashioned rock and roll? Unassuming, unadorned, raw, fun-ass rock? It may not consider itself a great piece of art, but this album was made to be enjoyed and it's plainly irresistible. It doesn't even sound conventional, going way off the rails at any moment with enthusiasm and life. This is what people are thinking when they think of the power of rock. And from a pure enjoyment standpoint, I don't see things getting much better.
At my job, I have the occasional opportunity to offer recommendations. Sometimes people actually ask me for advice, and sometimes their tastes align closely enough with mine that I feel like I can take a stab, and in those cases, I usually reach for this album. I tell them "Look, I'll play you one song and you don't have to buy it, but I'm positive you will walk out of here with this album in your hands." And they always do. This isn't music you keep behind a velvet rope and dust off every once in a while to do some appreciatin'. This is music you keep with you.
Record in a Bag is the final installment of my 4-part "Favourites of 2010" series. Albums 4-2 were: Broken Social Scene's Forgiveness Rock Record,Locksley's Be In Love, and Zeus' Say Us. The point of this exercise was not to create a pure monolithic ranking of all music from 2010, but to think about what I like and why, both as a means of creating dialogue about music and expressing my tastes, which may help you understand the background of my own reviews. Thanks for indulging me! Here's music:
It begins simply, with the anxious tapping of percussion, the drumsticks against the rim of the snare drum, and ends in a swell of instruments, pianos, slide guitars, gorgeously drenched harmonies and whirling organs. In the twelve tracks it takes to get there, everything happens. Maybe.
At first glance, the debut album by Zeus seems to be easy to put your finger on, but the more I listened to it, the more overtaken I was by its various elements. The songs are too well-constructed to be jammy trips, and yet just a step or two off balance with pop songwriting. The instruments, passed from member to member along with the microphone, are rarely used the same way twice. Albums like Say Us are the reason I like albums: sometimes they add up to a beguiling whole that goes beyond the individual songs on them. And as distinct as those songs are, they still feel unified, propelled from one to the next, broken only by the imaginary, fabricated designation on the package: "Side A / Side B."
"How Does It Feel?" the song that opens the album with those taps (which soon give way to sympathetic pianos and mocking guitars,) unfolds in its 2:49 as a blueprint for the rest of the album: do as much as you can, one thing after the other, as well as possible. So when the guitars and pianos clash back and forth like a duet, the guitars raise the stakes with a blistery solo but the pianos get the last laugh as they climb into the clouds for that last chorus.
Like that song, the album slowly unfolds itself, showing its tricks one after another and never lingering, never repeating. It's like (don't say it, urges a voice inside me,) Abbey Road, where every contributor is given full support and helps build the whole, whether it be the country-blues of "The River By The Garden" or the hazy "Fever Of The Time." None of it feels like a genre exercise, and though the mysterious lyrics often keep the listener at bay, it also never has to reach for sincerity. It's all in the expression.
The second half excites me more than the first, with one of the finest moments coming in the changeover between "You Gotta' Teller" and "I Know." The former track is a monstrous, charged, organ-based thundering rocker that sounds like Vanilla Fudge doing "You Keep Me Hanging On." The latter is a dreamy, galloping plea for sympathy. When the urgent heat of "Teller" is finally brought to its end, there's just a brief moment of quiet, before the cool breath of "I Know" drifts in with its quivering beauty. "Now I know, now I know / How it feels, how it feels..." although what "it" is is never explicitly said. The lyrics throughout this thing as a whole form an exhaustive exploration of communication.
No matter who is writing each individual song, or who is playing what, most of them tend to come back to: thinking, feeling, speaking, hearing, interpreting, understanding, wondering, knowing and telling. The songs encompass this impressive scope by doing their work to convey or obscure feelings. "Marching Through Your Head," with its pulsing pianos, manages to get into sound that feeling of pacing back and forth trying to work out a problem with your lover, "Do you feel it all the time / the way she preys upon your mind? / She's a fiend for your love, and that's all..." combined with the most effective hook on the album, the one that will most likely be marching through your head, but will keep surprising you when you come back to it. Or the loving, longing "The Sound of You," which takes a person's voice as their essence, and wonders, "How could we know, how could we know, how could we know?" The album closer (after the gathering storm of "Heavy On Me") is "At The Risk of Repeating," which is another tune about trying to get at the heart of the matter and still coming up short. But what words can't say, music often does. That music often has enough power, or enough charm, to keep you coming back.
I don't know if it's really the musical variety, or the lyrical mystery that kept me coming back to this album. It's just amazing how good it sounds, how well it does quiet and modest, as well as powerful and anguished. The boys in Zeus attack their tunes like a bunch of seasoned vets taking on excellent new material: the music is in them and it's in their nature to get it out.
Say Us doesn't make a grand statement, it's a rather unassuming record with many great surprises that aren't necessarily obvious the first time you listen. You'll think "This is a pretty good song," once or twice every five minutes and put it away and forget it, but if even a scrap of a tune remains in your brain, you'll want to take it out again and sooner or later it'll get into you. Tellingly, Zeus' debut EP (does anyone buy those or are they just a lark?) was called Sounds like Zeus. And no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't come up with any easier way to explain their sound. I even stooped to a Beatles comparison. But, speaking as a guy who has struggled to express himself once or twice in the past (I know, hard to believe,) this album speaks for itself. It's something you've just gotta feel for yourself.
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