Instead of a top 10 or 5 or 20 albums of the year, I thought I'd simplify and write about what is far and away, for me, the best album of the year: The National's High Violet.
It's an easy, stand away pick. I loved Arcade Fire's The Suburbs, but have not enjoyed listening to it as much as High Violet. No other record has spent nearly as much timeon my iPod queue. I have returned to it again and again.
I wrote about the record when it first came out in May this year. Since that time, my enjoyment of the record has not waned but I find I have a much broader view.
High Violet is more than a melancholy record of symphonic indie rock. Oh yeah, it has its melanholy moments, but it is also funny, smart and insightful. Like great records it's a snapshot of the times, a contemporary barometer of mood and culture. The album has my favorite lyrical moments on any record this year. Consider the connection to our times:
Sorry I've been away for so long. It's been a busy few weeks (almost a month, now) for me. Launching a new website at the Local has pretty much kept me from this awesome blog.
Of course, I haven't really had any good inspiration. Was toying with a piece about Deerhunter, but couldn't work up much enthusiasm for it. Thought about taking a look at reissues by NIN (Petty Hate Machine) and Weezer (Pinkerton) but didn't have anything worthwhile to say about either.
So, I thought, why not weigh in on Kanye West?
If you read this blog, you're probably not a big fan of hip hop. Chances are you're a rock fan. Well, I'm not a huge fan of hip hop, either. I was 20 years ago, though. There was a time in high school when Public Enemy, Run DMC, Boogie Down Productions, De La Soul and Tribe Called Quest were everything to me.
Not all that long ago, I wondered on this blog about the state of women in rock. When I looked out across the vast expanse of rock, I saw very few women in meaningful roles in bands. My last favorite girl rock group was Elastica, which put out its best album in 1995.... A long time ago.
In the meantime, I'd settled with Best Coast's Bethany Cosentino, a nice songwriter with a record, Crazy for You, that I generally liked. But I wasn't in love. It wasn't her, it was me. Best Coast is, well, nice and all, but there's nothing dangerous or mysterious about the band. You can only get so into a set of Beach Boys inspired tunes about lost boyfriends. Sorry, Bethany. (We're still friends, though.)
My eyes (and ears) had been wandering, looking for something new. And I'm happy to say that I've finally found what I've been looking for: a girl band to really be crazy for. Warpaint, a guitar-driven quartet of ladies from Los Angeles, released its debut record, The Fool, last Tuesday. It was love at first listen.
I think someone at Universal Music might be a fan of this blog. Back in February, I wrote that Taylor Swift's mega stardom had a lot to do with her middle-of-the-road approach to sex appeal. She was an every-girl whose music and persona were scientifically engineered to relate to the maximum number of people possible. Unlike her hyper-sexed singing starlet peers, Swift was a practically virginal teen idol with record sales to prove she was more popular than all the other girls with microphones in the country. (To me it was a persona that I found essentially lame, though I don't find the inverse all that exciting either.)
But hold on! Weeks before Swift's brand new record, Speak Now, hit stores on Tuesday, celebrity news sites snapped, crackled and popped with news of the singer's rebukes to a host of past boyfriends. The most scandalous example -- so said the "news" reports -- was the song "Dear John," a tell-all aimed squarely at her former flame John Mayer (Talk about a pop romance designed by record execs...). There were other actors/singers implicated, too (I don't even know who they are, thank God). The suggestion: Swift had gotten a little wild and loose since her last album. Maybe America's little country singing girl was not so little any more. In the interest of music journalism, I decided to bite. I listened to the record.
The Kings of Leon before their music industry makeover.
On their debut album Youth and Young Manhood, Kings of Leon frontman Caleb Followill screeched the following warning to mothers in the chorus of "Happy Alone":
I'm gonna tangle my face hair. It's gonna tickle your daughter.
3 o'clock in the morning, they all cry to me.
I'll be prancin' around in my high heels and your cherry red lipstick.
Look out your window. I'm on your street.
Followill is part of a four-man clan of Tennessee rednecks (three brothers and a younger cousin) who had spent their youth backing up their revival-tent-preaching father, Leon, and had given up the holy roller life for the sex and danger of conventional rock and roll. In the band's infancy, they sounded every bit like the Appalachian Stooges. They were raw and powerful. They were genuine American minstrel rebel weirdoes.
I could spend time listening to and then commenting on the cultural significance of and/or the musical contributions of two new albums by bands I've come to absolutely loathe. I really could. But why bother? What's the point? Much has already been written elsewhere (I assume, because I haven't bothered reading any of it, to be honest) about Weezer's Hurley and Maroon 5's Hands All Over.
No sense in adding to the public outcry, the weeping and wailing these records must have caused all across the country. There's nothing to gain in subjecting myself to all the layers of gut-wrenching putridness -- the cliched phrases and recycled riffs. I get the spins just thinking about it all...
No need to listen to the records. Just look at them! Both have covers that encapsulate in detail the depth of tacky godawful-ness just beneath the surface. Maybe people don't pay much attention to these things, but if you think about it, both bands have created beacons of badness with these so-called artworks. These records don't just hurt to hear, they're tough to look at.
Several things are striking about the new Superchunk album, Majesty Shredding, the seminal indie band's first in nine years, their 9th in 20 years together (no, they never broke up the band).
First, this record will remind those of us in our 30s (and 40s, too), who came-of age to this sound, just how good that sound is. In the early '90s, guitar-driven bands could fill every cubic inch of aural space with walls of glorious fuzz tones, crashing drums and anthemic choruses.
From pioneering indie/alt rock bands like Sonic Youth and the Pixies to later acts from Pavement to the Afghan Whigs, rock bands were loud and more. They were a jangled and chaotic yet lovely loud. The loud mess was elevated to an art form. Superchunk blasts right into Majesty Shredding like its 1992 all over again. It's a sound we've lost in the last 10 years of bands that have slimmed and simplified in many ways.
Ten years ago, dozens of so-called "garage" rockers and "post-punkers" in black and skinny jeans exploded onto a moribund rock scene. Reviewers breathlessly proclaimed all of them to be saviors of rock.
One such critical favorite was Interpol of New York City. The dour and dapper quartet were never as well known as fellow Manhattanites the Strokes, but their dark and danceable debut Turn On The Bright Lights topped a lot of year-end polls, not to mention placed the band high on a lot of best-of-the-decade retrospectives.
Although it was critically lauded, Bright Lights heaped the band in with a lot of other acts featuring brooding dudes who approached rock with stark guitar lines and late '70s inspired rhythms. It also set a high bar by which the band is incessantly measured. Many bands from that time who worked in the same oeuvre -- from the Strokes to The Killers -- fizzled out by the end of the aughts as freaky folkers from Brooklyn had left post punk in the dust.
I really loved the first two albums by Ray LaMontange: Trouble and Till The Sun Turns Black. Unlike so much that passes for "folk" these days -- someone stroking an acoustic guitar, the kind of stuff you can find in every neighborhood coffee shop and pub in the world -- there was more to LaMontagne, a man who had quit his sneaker factory job in Maine to become a singer/songwriter while in his 30s.
First, the guy has a pretty incredible voice. It's almost hollow and raspy yet big and melodic. Unlike other "folkies," LaMontagne knows how to sing with a certain, for lack of a better term, soul. In early LaMontagne there is an awful lot of the same kind of gutsy singing that made early Van Morrison records -- Astral Weeks, Moondance, Tupelo Honey, etc. so great. You know the singer believes every word.
But a great singing voice is not always enough. LaMontagne was paired with producer Ethan Johns for his first three records and Johns, who has done great by artists ranging from Ryan Adams (Heartbreaker, Gold) to Kings of Leon (Youth and Young Manhood, Aha Shake Heartbreak and Because of the Times), knew how LaMontagne's songs should be recorded. Under Johns' direction, LaMontagne was recorded alone, just guitar and vocals, when it best suited the song (see the remarkable "Burn" from Trouble) or he'd back him with strings when it seemed the right thing to do (The title track on my favorite of LaMontagne's albums, Till the Sun Turns Black). On both albums, the backing was often minimal: drums, bass maybe a bit of extra guitar.
If you can imagine Eliot Smith fronting a trio that swings between Sonic Youth guitar noise and Radiohead knob twiddling, you'll hear in your head the latest from Autolux, an L.A. trio that counts Trent Reznor and Thom Yorke as superfans.
Now that may not sound liker a recipe for success, but Transit Transit is a fun record to listen to. Only those music listeners who never adapted to Sonic Youth's discord and Radiohead's more experimental electro moments will be puzzled. For the rest of us, Autolux manages to pull the diverse elements together into a coherent style.
I'm often late to the party. Particularly when it comes to electronic music. There's always been a high hurdle between me and electronic for some reason. Drum machines and casiotones rarely grab me the way good old-fashioned guitars do.
So I didn't join the legions to the latest LCD Soundsystem record, This is Happening, when it was released in May. I just didn't get around to it. But then I saw the crazy, Clockwork Orange-like video for "Drunk Girls" and I was hooked.
If you've read about this record, you've probably read great things. It's been universally praised, praise that I think is well deserved. The album's 9 tracks bubble and bounce through indie guitar rock ("All I Want") and electro-key jams ("Can Change") in an inspired post punk stew. There's a lot of late '70s sounds here that often recall Eno and Bowie. But all with an unmistakable, contemporary studio polish.
I'm keeping a video page... some interesting stuff I come across. Just added a live video of Arcade Fire playing "We Used to Wait" from The Suburbs. Check it out.
At 36, there are a lot of things that begin to make you feel old. You might find you manage to hurt yourself doing minor yard work. And then you don't heal very quickly. In fact it might take months before that shoulder sprain finally goes away... Yup.
Like learning that your body is beginning what will be a long decline, the anniversaries of landmark records from my 20s are signposts that time is slipping away. This week's release of one of my favorite records, Queens of the Stone Age's Rated R is a perfect example.
It's hard to believe that the Pixies' Doolittle is more than 20 years old. But the Pixies feel like history (they've felt like history for a long time, actually. Very good history, but history nonetheless). That Rated R is 10 years old is altogether different. Queens of the Stone Age do not feel like history. They're still around. Just last year, Queens leader Josh Homme was part of Them Crooked Vultures. The Pixies are the past. The Queens are now.
When I first downloaded Arcade Fire's "The Suburbs"/"Month of May" single earlier this summer, I was underwhelmed by what I heard. I was certain, though, that like most Arcade Fire songs, they needed to be heard in the context of the whole album. Well, I have the whole album now and I'm happy to report that my optimism was rewarded. The Suburbs is a huge, ambitious work that, like most great albums, offers things to discover with every listen.
In the aughts, Arcade Fire managed to secure a position as perhaps the most important indie rock band in this hemisphere on the strength of of its first two albums -- Funeral and Neon Bible. Each album was a treatise on social decline and modern alienation told in a series of rock songs. While most bands write albums that are collections of tunes, Arcade Fire compose song novels. Each song is little more than a chapter of the larger work. It might contain greatness, but it lacks outside the whole.
This is especially true of The Suburbs, which finds Arcade Fire without its usual bombast. Arrangements are not grandiose. Tempos shift, but never break into that end-of-the-universe groove of Funeral. Lead singer Wim Butler's voice is as melodic as usual, but never hits the hell-is-coming pitchof Neon Bible. The initial listen will likely leave the experienced Arcade Fire fan puzzled. The songs are catchy, well done, but unlike Arcade Fire songs of the past, they don't seem to sound like a whole lot.
So I reconsidered a lot of what I posted as "Best of 2000s" at the end of last year. Came up with 40 records I'm a lot more comfortable with. I'll blame the original list on my rush to get the post up. Some great records I just forgot. Others, I've more recently discovered are better than I originally thought. So, I just changed my mind.
The new permanent page is listed in the right sidebar. Lazy people can click here.
Last month, my band, Winston's Dog, played the Khyber. It was a great room for a rock band: good crowd, cheap beer, nice location, fantastic sound. Everyone in the band was eager to get back
We called to get booked again and we were told the Khyber wasn't booking in August. It didn't make much sense... Why would a rock club close for August?
This week, the answer is detailed in a thorough story and oral history by City Paper editor, Brian Howard. Turns out owner Stephen Simons has permanently put an end to a generation of rock shows at the club. The Khyber, Simons told Howard, just can't compete with Johnny Brenda's in Northern Liberties. Brenda's has been attracting all the touring rock acts that used to play the Khyber.
So, so long Khyber. It was nice knowing you. I'll always remember seeing Mike Watt there and talking to him at the bar while he updated his "Hoot Page" blog on one of those original, candy-colored iBooks.
There just aren't enough cool girls with guitars anymore.
In the glory days of '90 to '94, girl (or girl-led) bands were everywhere. In the dawn of New England indie rock in the '80s into the '90s, we had Juliana Hatfield and Blake Babies, Kristin Hersh and Tanya Donnelly of Throwing Muses and, of course, Kim Deal of the Pixies and then The Breeders.
But there were more: from Babes in Toyland to L7 to Liz Phair and later Hole we had authentic female rock bands. In the UK we had Elastica (ironically the rockingest brit pop outfit of the time), The Sundays and the Cranberries. Women were everywhere in rock.
The same can't be said today. Indie rock is a man's world with only a few rare exceptions. We had Sleater Kinney for a while. And Karen O of The Yeah Yeah Yeahs. There are a few big lady-led hard rock hits, from Paramore to The Dead Weather, but the strongest female voices migrated to pop, electronic or folk en masse. The best we had were Neko Case and Jenny Lewis -- both are great, but not "rock" in the dirty, guitar sense.
Chestnut Hill resident, musician, filmmaker and all-around great guy, Jason Fifield will host a benefit concert this Sunday for his wife, Daphne, who is battling Breast cancer. The concert will include Sifield's own trio, Mischa Machez and local jazz luminaries Orrin Evans and Odean Pope.
The show is at La Rose, 5531 Germantown Ave. 7 to 11 p.m.
Here's an e-mail Jason sent out earlier this week (we got it too late for the print edition).
Many of you already know that my wife Daphne is battling breast cancer, and as a result we are also battling our insurance company and huge out-of-pocket medical expenses. This Sunday, August 1st, 2010, Jazz Bridge is hosting a benefit at La Rose social club 5531 Germantown Ave. for "The Daphne Fund" - a fund which has been established to help us, but will also remain open to assist women jazz performers and women from musical families. The jazz jam Sunday will feature some internationally renowned performers including Orrin Evans, Odean Pope and Trudy Pitts, as well as my trio Mischa Machez, so please plan to stop in between 7p-11p if you can, $15 at the door.
Lots of press buzz this weekend, so please help spread the word - Shaun Brady has listed the benefit as the lead jazz pick this weekend and a byline will appear in Friday's Philadelphia Daily News. Also Friday, Mischa Machez will be performing original material on 90.1 WRTI at 10pm as part of J. Michael Harrison's "The Bridge." Finally, on Sunday at 1pm, WRTI's Bob Perkins will be helping to promote the event by broadcasting a Slife and Turtle Studios co-produced recording of the Tony Williams Quartet Live at La Rose. Hope to see you at La Rose on Sunday night, Daphne and my mom will be there, so good times are assured. If you can't make it, please check out one of the radio shows and stop by http://jazzbridge.org to make a donation.
It's been a long time since Outkast took the hip-hop and pop worlds by storm with the double album Speakerboxxx/The Love Below. The Atlanta duo was able to do something that few artists ever accomplish: They recorded a serious album that was wildly inventive, pushed the boundaries of the form in which they worked and did so in a way that was wildly popular. "Hey Ya!" and "The Way You Move" were mega hits. "Hey Ya!" might have been one of the greatest so-called crossover singles of the last decade (perhaps second only to Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy").
Maybe 2003 doesn't seem that long ago, but popular music can experience what seems like generational turnover every six to 12 months. And despite the impermanence of the contemporary pop/hip hop record, the legacy of Speakerboxxx/The Love Below feels as enduring as any of other record of the time. It is in that album's long shadow that Big Boi, the "grounded" half of Outkast, released his solo album Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty a few weeks ago to nearly universal acclaim.
One of my favorite living rock personalities is Noel Gallagher. There are plenty of assholes in show business, but no one is as good or as unashamed of acting like one than Noel.
The infamously quarrelsome Gallagher brothers were, in the mid '90s, the biggest rock band in the UK And they were pretty big here, too. They were rock stars. Still, they were really a couple of working class louts from Manchester. And Noel never pretended to be otherwise. He was always brash and egomaniacal, but never dishonest or pretentious. We would claim Oasis was the greatest band in the world, but never pretended he was doing anything more than he really was.
“All I ever wanted to do was make a record," he told one interviewer at the time. "Here's what you do: you pick up your guitar, you rip a few people's tunes off, you swap them round a bit, get your brother in the band, punch his head in every now and again, and it sells. I'm a lucky bastard. I'm probably the single most lucky man in the world -- apart from our Liam.”
As much as I love Noel for attitude and honesty, I've never liked Oasis very much. When the band's first single "Supersonic" became a modern rock hit here, it sounded like little more than a trippy Brit take on grunge -- a three chord rocker with a singalong chorus. I wasn't only underwhelmed by the song, though. Liam's nasal whine was one of the toughest voices to stomach in rock.
But nothing of the band's mediocrity seemed to stop it. That debut album, Definitely Maybe, became a huge hit in the UK (7x Platinum) and the U.S. (Platinum). Four years ago, the British mega music magazine NME called that album the third best british rock record ever, behind the Stone Roses' self-titled debut and The Smiths' The Queen is Dead.(1)
But that was just a warmup for the band's followup, (What's the Story) Morning Glory would go 14x platinum in the UK (top selling UK album, ever) and a healthy 4x platinum in the States on the strength of the singles "Wonderwall" and "Champagne Supernova," songs that were inescapable in '95 and '96. The band was the biggest rock band in the world. They had managed, even if for a brief period of time, to be as big as the Beatles.
SInce that time, it's been a slow and painful ride from fame to irrelevance and from mediocrity (more on that in a minute) to downright nauseating. The band's brand new 2 CD retrospective Time Flies... 1994 - 2009 is a good document of that decline. The brothers Gallagher were never able to duplicate their prior success or tunefulness on five subsequent LPs (though they continued to top charts in the U.K. the entire time). The final tracks of Time Flies, "I'm Outta Time" and "Falling Down" off the band's 2008 album Dig Out Your Soul, could well describe the state of Oasis at the end of the aughts --- finally out of charms, washed up and split by family feuding for good.(2)
Perhaps if Oasis had followed those records with material that was more ambitious, more adventurous, those early albums might mean more today. Unlike Radiohead, which went on from the same Britpop sound of Oasis to practically reinvent rock at least two times and become arguably the greatest rock band of a generation, Oasis didn't have any other tricks up its leather sleeves. In 1997, Radiohead released OK Computer, the best album of the decade, and Oasis' eternal Britpop rivals, Blur, reinvented themselves on a brilliant self titled album(3) that left the Gallaghers in the dust with Be Here Now, which sounded completely obsolete in comparison. They had won the sales war but lost out on the art contest.
It would be easy to dismiss Oasis as little more than a flash in the pan. A bunch of derivative rockers who lucked into success with a sly blend of Beatles and Stones with some Stone Roses on top. Repackaged classic rock for kids who couldn't remember the originals. But I think it's tough to dismiss a band that managed to connect with so many people so successfully. While Time Flies succeeds in documenting the band's decline, it is also is a reminder of how simple and tuneful the first two records were. "Live Forever," "Roll With It," "Cigarettes and Alcohol" are good rock songs. "Live Forever," might be the band's best. And it's a hell of a song that sounds today like a classic.
Oasis didn't set out to be great artists. They did what they wanted: make good rock songs that would be loved by nearly everyone who heard them. They were able to -- like the working-class craftsmen they were -- connect with people on a populist level. In some ways they, like Nirvana, capitalized on a growing indie rock sound that they were able to make palatable to millions. Just as Nirvana worked the sounds of The Pixies and Dinosaur Jr. into a giant success, Oasis took the Stone Roses sound global. Perhaps it's not high art, but it's hard to argue with so many millions of records sold. They did the right thing at the right time.
Oasis may not live forever, but they'll always have 1995. And for Noel, that seems to be just fine. Immortality was not the goal. As he told an interviewer once during one of too many comparisons of his band with the Beatles, "I'm not like John Lennon who thought he was the great Almighty. I just think I'm John Lennon."
Footnote
1. In a poll run by NME a few years ago, readers voted it the album ever, ahead of The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and Revolver.
2. The Gallaghers split up last year vowing never to reform the band. Each expects to release solo albums in the next year.
3. Blur's Blur produced that band's best known U.S. song, "Song 2" with it's well-known chorus "woo hoo," a send up of silly rock that no one seemed to get because the song was just too cool (or, perhaps, too successful).
I guess it all really started with Bruce Springsteen.
The May 22, 19741 issue of Boston's The Real Paper carried an article by Jon Landau (soon to be Springsteen's manager) who famously wrote: "I saw rock and roll future, and its name is Bruce Springsteen. And on a night when I needed to feel young, he made me feel like I was hearing music for the very first time."
Now don't get me wrong, Bruce Springsteen is cool. He seems like a great guy and his songs are neat. But I don't understand what it is about the E-Street band's sound that ever could have made anyone write those sentences. Perhaps in 1974 as mainstream rock ballooned into an arena-sized monstrosity, Springsteen's intimate and simple classicism and his romantic throwback style really meant something (And to be fair, I've seen footage of the guy from his Born to Run days. The Boss has nearly unrivaled stage presence and the dude could, can, rock). He was a breath of fresh, North Jersey air. But Landau's words are those of a man in love.
Outside of the The Stone Pony in Asbury Park, Springsteen's music does not sound like the future, and it's hard to believe it ever did. Springsteen's thing has always been amped-up traditional roots rock teamed with sprawling, blue collar poetry, the delivery of which always seemed to me to be cribbed from Bob Dylan (who cribbed it from Woody Guthrie). He told neat stories, but he wasn't writing literature. The man didn't do anything to (to borrow a basketball cliche) change the game of rock. Instead he was a perfect blend of all that had come before him. He was the end result of conventional American rock (soon to be made obsolete by the birth of the New York punk rock scene in 1976).
Since that time Springsteen's music career was kick started by a rock critic, other bands have come along that have dabbled in Boss-isms -- Big guitar rock with wordy, rambling lyrical paeans to blue collar life -- often to wide critical acclaim. The Replacements brought the style to punk rock in the '80s (though Paul Westerberg never seemed as literal or cliched as Springsteen). In the last few years bands like Brooklyn's The Hold Steady and The Gaslight Anthem of New Jersey.
Like Landau's original words of hosanna for Springsteen, the heaps of critical praise for The Gaslight Anthem puzzles me. There's nothing terrible about the young, tattooed band, led by singer/songwriter Brian Fallon. But there's nothing memorable. Like Springsteen, the band is a pastiche of conventional rock tropes. Fallon's blue collar lyrics owe much to Springsteen, but his performance and sound are a lot more like the Replacements. The Gaslight Anthem don't have a particularly "big" sound. The Hold Steady's guitars punch you in the ear. TGA sound fine, but they have the kind of sound you might find on a Cars album. All in all, TGA is a decent band, but unremarkable in almost every way.
So why the universal love? The thing TGA and the Boss have in common is something I think they share with a lot of average rock critics: a belief that the road to salvation for a young man is often a good rock record, or maybe a Fender Telecaster. Both the Boss and TGA enjoy drama. There's a lot at stake for the protagonists of these songs. It's not enough for Springsteen or Fallon to be in love, bored, angry or just emotionally conflicted -- these guys sing cinematic scenes. Their songs have plots, character development, etc. While cool as lyrics, they don't hold their own. Like I said, they don't compare to literature. Rock really shouldn't be about lyrics. It's an emotional art to begin with. Good rock is all about the whole performance.
But these are the kind of stories that rock critics fall in love with and for which they often overlook the actual music. So enraptured are critics with the prose, and the supposed smarts of the guy delivering it, they don't realize that the words are papering over pretty standard, throw-back guitar rock. These guys aren't artists, they're romantics. And most critics are romantics as well. They love their own kind. When they, the critics that is, imagine themselves in another life, they see leather jackets and guitars. They want to be Springsteen, Hold Steady's Craig Finn or Fallon.
The result is a perpetual over inflation by rock critics of "artists" who are literally a couple years of guitar lessons ahead of them -- they're guitar-worshiping geeks promoting themselves. They're not great musicians and they're not great poets.The Boss and TGA are not bad at all. In fact they are just fine. But they are not geniuses or voices of our, or any other, generation. They're above average bands who deserved to get out of the bar to a bigger audience, but they are not the Beatles, or R.E.M., Radiohead or even Modest Mouse, though critics will continue to swoon over their wordy words and blue-collar rock guy posturing. They're just romantic rock acts that have managed to make rock critics fall in love like teenage girls.
Not, I guess, that there's anything wrong with that...
Footnote 1. By coincidence, this is the exact date of my birth, meaning I am exactly the same age as the rise of The Boss.
If you had asked me any time between '88 and '92 if I liked The Cure, I probably would have considered it an insult.
The Cure were an identity band.The most popular gothic act ever, they were a lifestyle for suburban kids who thought life was unbearable. You could pick a Cure fan from his or her wardrobe -- black clothes, black nail polish... some were even brave enough to do the white makeup. These were not kids on a fast-track to popularity. For blue collar kids like me, it was not an easy act to identify with.
In those days (I was in high school at the time), I wasn't into mainstream music. I was discovering hip hop and metal. I loved Public Enemy, Boogie Down Productions and Run DMC, Metallica, Slayer and Prong. When Disintegration came out in '89, and the singles climbed the charts in '90, I was learning to love Smashing Pumpkins, Jane's Addiction, Fishbone and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. I liked it all, but by all, I mean all music with an edge. The Cure were mopey, sentimental and throughly a rock band for girls, as far as my high school sensibilities were concerned.
But like other music obsessed kids of that era, I watched a lot of MTV (yes, kids, MTV used to have nothing but music videos). In fact MTV introduced me to a lot of music for the first time, music that you would never hear on the radio. The Cure were an MTV staple that fit that definition. Unlike a lot of their Brit alt rock peers -- Public Image Limitied, Siousxie and the Banshees, The Smiths, etc. -- The Cure seemed to translate better to American audiences and their songs were played more regularly outside of the 120 Minutes ghetto. "Why Can't I Be You" and "Just Like Heaven" from Kiss Me, Miss Me, Kiss Me got regular play. The singles from Disintegration, while not as poppy, were inescapable. And they were irresistible. At home, if no one was watching me, I wouldn't switch channels when videos for "Fascination Street," "Love Song," or "Pieces of You" came on.
Listening to Disintegration again, which was just reissued in a 3-disc deluxe edition, is like a virtual time warp. After the keyboard-heavy opener, "Plainsong," Robert Smith (I'm guessing here) runs his hand through some small chimes and the swirling guitars of "Pieces of You" bring me right back to high school. The album's sound -- the bubbly keys, the glassy guitars and those flat, dull drums -- sound just like the late '80s. The sound is not dated in the sense that it sounds antique, though. It is evocative of a time and place in music in which bands like The Cure were paving the road to alt and indie rock by making big inroads into the mainstream.
But also interesting is to hear the album in a fresh context, 20 years later. The Cure were never a band I'd call a "juggernaut," but they were big. These songs did a great deal to influence a lot of music that came after it. Smith's mopey shoe-gazing performance would become an early grunge staple of bands from Dinosaur Jr. to Nirvana. And while a lot of later so-called post-punk revivalist bands, from Interpol to The Editors, have a lot more in common aesthetically with The Cure than Joy Division. And a whole lot of emo comes from an unholy alliance of The Cure and Nine Inch Nails influences. (For this, we shouldn't really blame the Cure or Trent Reznor).
Most interesting of all, though, is the familiarity of those singles. They are genuine classics. For a mopey, goth-y band, The Cure enjoyed success in the states that a lot of other bands would have killed for. "Lovesong" actually reached #2 on the Hot 100. It would be the only top 10 hit the band would score in the U.S., but it was enough to cement the band as a rock staple here. Why? The songs are just great songs. Like other alt or modern rock acts in the '80s, R.E.M., U2, the cure prepared us for exciting rock to come with songs that were challenging but still melodic enough, familiar enough, to make it on the radio. The Cure, like U2 and R.E.M., would contribute to modern rock in the '90s with Wish, another popular record that charted several modern rock singles, particularly "Friday I'm in Love."
The new 3-disc reissue is probably more than anyone but the most devoted Cure fan should own. Disc 2 is a bunch of instrumental and vocal tracks from the recording. Disc 3 is a live performance of the album in its entirety. These are neat things to have, sure, but not necessities. Disintegration is a great album. It's a single, coherent statement. It's Smith at his absolute best -- focused and really quite brilliant. It's an album every real rock fan should own. Even if you thought the band was just for girls in high school.
Postscript
Not long after I wrote this, I realized a few things.
1) Take away the walls of distortion, and Billy Corgn and Smashing Pumpkins are direct descendants of the Cure. Corgan even tried to look like Smith during the Adore tour. Of course, hair would have helped.
2) It's now slightly more apparent to me why I barely dated in high school.
It’s been a while since I talked to Roxborough resident Dereck Blackburn -- the songwriter and sole band member of Lostwars. At the time, Blackburn had just finished the Lostwars project, an album called End Of. We had a great conversation about recording, ‘90s bands and the nature of being a recording artist in these times of the digital download.
I haven’t been able to get the interview “written up” and in the meantime, Blackburn’s music has gone unmentioned here. It’s way past time to remedy that omission.
Blackburn, who helped master Fool on the Hill, the live Beatles songbook recordingby local pianist, Chris Marsceill, has put out a pretty terrific album in which he has played all the instruments --guitars, drums, bass, keys and synth -- performed all the recording duties, mixing and mastering. All at his home studio. Talk about DIY, Blackburn is the real deal.
Blackburn grew up in Illinois and has spent time in different corners of the country -- Boston and Denver working in IT -- before moving to Roxborough two years ago with his girlfriend. No longer in the IT biz (it's a rough job market out there) he’s working in music exclusively. His business is called Quiethouse Mastering. So, thanks in part to a slow economy, Blackburn has had time to work on End Of. See?There is some upside to the recession after all.
But just because it’s homemade, don’t mistake End Of as some sort of sleepy, bedroom, 4-track collection a la Lou Barlow. Blackburn’s music could be called dreamy, maybe. But it is a music driven by dynamite layers of guitar (acoustic and electric) and big rhythms over which Blackburn sings (often harmonizing with himself). The most remarkable thing about the album is that Blackburn did it all by himself. It’s hard to imagine this music not being made by a full band.
Sonically, Blackburn pays some homage to his influences -- As a kid who grew up in the Chicago suburbs, he idolize the guitar playing of Billy Corgan. As a songwriter, he looks up to Richard Buckner, a rootsy “alt-country” singer and songwriter. He also told me he likes everything from New Order to Radiohead. On first and second listen, End Of recalls Corgan, The Bends and the Cure for me (but not in a way I’d call derivative at all, there isn’t a musician alive that doesn’t recall his or her influences). Whether it’s in loud guitar rockers like “A Wish” or the spacey “The End Of,” Blackburn covers a lot of rock ground. It’s moody, atmospheric stuff yet still very melodic. All of it enjoyable.
Blackburn’s been playing in bands since high school (he’s 30 now), and that experience shows here. In Illinois, he was in a band called Zimmerman’s Note a “noise rock,” experimental band known, he said, for its live shows. He’s been playing on his own since 2003. He’s had a lot of time to work on the songs (15 on the album +6 bonus tracks) on End Of, and the time shows in accomplished arrangements. These are well crafted, nuanced songs that develop and resolve. They're compositions.
When recording the songs, what Blackburn did, he told me, is start with what were essentially acoustic guitar compositions (in fact he’s been out playing these tunes unaccompanied) and build around them. Sometimes, all that is added is a shaker, as on the song “Mistrust.” Other times it’s a full rock band sound, like on the opener “1000 Luna Moths.” “I added sonically what each song called for,” he said.
What’s ahead for Blackburn is promoting the album and looking for other musicians to work with, ultimately to put a band together that he can collaborate with. “This is all about me, but I’d really like to work with other people and get a group,” he said. And Philly, he feels like, is a good place to do it. “It’s easy to work in music here. It’s much more organic and easy to work with people,” he said. “Once you meet musicians, they’re interested.”
Hopefully, he puts a band together soon, because I’d love to hear these songs performed live by a full band. In the meantime, listeners will have to “settle for" the recorded version. Oh well. It’s the kind of settlement that’s easy on the ears.
To get a copy of Lostwars, visit Blackburn’s Bandcamp site here.
For Lostwars online, visit here.
I just felt like posting this for no other reason than that it is amazing. A performance of "Chelsea" from when it was brand spanking new. Check out Costello's solo and the breakdown here. Amazing man. Amazing band.
Arcade Fire's new single "The Suburbs" with "Month of May" is out now for a $1.99 download on the band's website. According to the band's site, the album, also called The Suburbs is due out on Aug. 3, which now seems like an impossibly long time to wait.
I've only had the single now for about two hours, so it's hard to say anything definitive about it... And there's a great likelihood that I'll change my mind, but so far, the single feels to be both a hit and a miss.
"Month of May" sounds a little slapdash to me. It's a straightforward rocker, a pulsing, guitar-driven number. There's not much else to it. It's good, but not Arcade Fire good. One thing I do like, though, is the guitar sound. Some of the edge that made Funeral so fantastic is back.
"The Suburbs" is a mid-tempo piano romp that sounds more worthy of the Arcade Fire we've come to love. Yet, like "Month of May," the song is simple and, frankly, a little more conventional than I'd expect. Of course, the thing that Arcade Fire does better than just about any other band is write and perform a whole record. They're not a singles band. These are songs out of context at the moment. And as revolutionary as they've sounded, they are essentially a pop-oriented band.
While I'm not bowled over, there's nothing in these songs to suggest that the new record won't live up to expectations (though one wonders how any band that's done what Arcade Fire has done could possibly live up to expectations). The conventional sound might be part of the overall theme. This is a record called "The Suburbs," after all.
Sometimes, I think we might be in the final days of rock as relevant music.
So much has been done with the form. The possibilities of the basic instruments -- guitars, drums and bass, maybe keys -- have seemingly been exhausted. Thematically, the form has explored everything from the primitive (cars, sex) to the future (robots, apocalypse). We've had garage rock and prog rock -- noise rock and rock operas. We even have post rock (which, ironically is almost 20-years old).
Where's a band to go these days? If there is something new going on, it's the rock band as a chamber orchestra -- a band that uses rock instruments to compose songs that do more than swing between verses and choruses, with a bridge and/or solo thrown in to break up the monotony. The goal is far beyond a swinging beat or a raising a holy guitar howl. It's rock music as cinema score. Songs as mood and scenes. It's serious art, always a dangerous move for music, which is often best when felt, not thought about. Orchestra-like composition is not new to rock, but the emphasis on arrangement and composition has definitely never been more prominent.
Some prominent bands have taken rock down this road recently. The Arcade Fire, Grizzly Bear, Animal Collective are some of the most well received bands in recent years. All are bands that have taken us far from the stripped-down paleorock that was the rage 10 years ago.
Among the most interesting of this sort of rock band is the Ohio-to-Brooklyn band, The National. The National is a band that runs at a different speed than just about any other rock act I've ever listened to that I actually like. The band's music weighs a ton. Even when the tempo rises -- often led by some terrific drumming by Bryan Devendorf -- singer Matt Berninger's moody delivery doesn't waver.
At first, it's tough to get over the dreary weight of The National. Like every other dreary baritone crooner, Berninger is compared to Joy Division's Ian Curtis. Also, like Curtis, Berninger is more than melancholy. He seems, at times, to be absolutely miserable. Comparisons to Joy Division should end there. Berninger may be dark, and he barely ever sounds like he's trying hard, but he can hold a melody very well. He can sing. The band, unlike Joy Division, is terrific at backing him up with lush, evocative layers of sound. It's actually hard to remember that this is supposed to be a rock band.
The band's new album High Violet is more of the same sound the band has perfected for the last 10 years. It's not much of a change at all from Boxer. But for a band like this, I don't think that's a bad thing. The mood is at times subdued, depressed. Other times agonized. A look at the album's song titles says a lot. For example: "Terrible Love," "Sorrow," "Little Faith" and "Afraid of Everyone." In "Conversation 16" Berninger even gets demented. He sings "I was afraid I'd eat your brains/Because I'm evil." He makes Morrisey look like Santa Claus.
The thing that sets The National ahead of some of the other acclaimed Brooklyn bands that I don't particularly like very much -- Animal Collective and Grizzly Bear -- is a strong purpose of vision. These songs are sad. They are slow. But they are also focused. The band is orchestrated -- there are nearly 30 extra musicians credited on the album -- and the songs fussed over, but they are not tinkered into a mushy oblivion of noise and harmonized vocals. Berninger as a vocalist is incredibly compelling, lyrically and melodically. It's more than just cool sounds or some regurgitation of what hipsters think Brian Wilson or The Fairport Convention were about. The National writes real songs. They are every bit as good as Arcade Fire, even if they're not quite as dynamic.
Yeah, it's interesting to muse about rock's relevance, but it's more an intellectual diversion. If rock continues to be relevant and contemporary, The National definitely represent one way of doing it. And as long as melody and musical instruments remain important ways of expressing ourselves, I think rock -- whatever it is at the moment -- will continue to be vital even if its not a top-selling form.
Black Keys: Brothers After the release of the Black Keys' fifth full length studio album, their major label debut Magic Potion, it's clear guitarist/singer Dan Auerbach and drummer Pat Carney realized they had maxed out the garage/blues revival sound they had mastered in the early aughts.
Magic Potion was good, but the studio recording of the duo -- no matter how loud the guitar got, how much depth of tone captured from the drum kit -- was thin. Their primitive sound, so intriguing when recorded in Carney's basement or the old tire factory (where Rubber Factory was made), didn't cut it in a studio setting. Also, the band seemed out of ideas. There was no where to go with the whole project. The band was getting bigger but the sound and the songs were not.
The Black Keys' next album Attack and Release, recorded with Danger Mouse proved the band had learned its lesson. Danger Mouse deepened the band's sound and added other instrumental layers. There was bass, keys, sound effects and even a flute. (A flute!) Suddenly the music had atmosphere that matched the otherworldly quality of Auerbach's soulful howl, which always sounds as if it's being broadcast from 50 years ago. Song ideas were stretched, too. There were still some great soulful rockers, There was less predictability -- less dependence on the pentatonic riff and more melodic compositions.
On the Keys' new release, Brothers (released in Tuesday), the band continues down the same path it began with Attack and Release. The new record is all about branching out and going where the BLack Keys have not gone before.There are no simple guitar/drum duos here. Every song is drenched in layers of sound. Not bound by the confines of the two-man sound of their live shows, The Black Keys have become a formidable recording act -- these guys now know how to use a studio and the result is an expanded sonic palate that may not be completely revitalizing, but it's close.
That sound has also let the band further broaden its composition scope. There is even more more distance back to the bands breakthrough second record Thickfreakness. That material seems a generation ago. The Keys still tick to a fairly familiar soul sound, but where past Keys efforts were soaked in the post-war Chicago sounds of Muddy Waters and Howling Wolf, the new material seems most closely inspired by the most experimental soul and proto-funk of the '60s -- There are moments that recall early Isley Brothers and a good dose of Maggot Brain-era Funkadelic. In a futher twist, Auerbach tackles several songs in a very good falsetto. It's a shock to the ears delivered on the first album Track "Everlasting Light," and several other tracks later on (Including a cover of Jerry Butler's "Never Gonna Give You Up.")
Brothers is certainly not The Black Keys' Yankee Hotel Fox Trot or Kid A. This is a band that still sounds like the same band. They've just added a lot of new tools to the toolkit. In one way, the Keys might be seen as doing to their sound what so many English producers have done to the bevy of "soul divas" who have released records that were made far more interesting by the richness of the recorded sounds than the songs themselves (From Amy Winehouse to Duffy). But the Keys are clearly interested a lot more in song craft than selling records or making postmodern artistic statements. They are a band that gets more interesting with every release. You can't ask for much more than that.
Band of Horses: Infinite Arms
On the other end of the spectrum is the new album by the Band of Horses, Infinite Arms.
Infinite Arms finds Ben Bridwell with a whole new band and a sound that's easily recognizable: driving rockers and quiet, acoustic ballads drenched in Bridwell's unique high-pitched singing. For those unfamiliar, think of My Morning Jacket without the grandiosity.
I wouldn't call the Band of Horses a guilty pleasure for me, but I like them a lot despite the fact that there's nothing amazing about the band. The debut Everything All the Time is one of my favorite records of the last 10 years, and part of it is that the band and Bridwell were able to make a beautiful rock record that is beautiful, dreamy and a joy to listen to in a way that seems almost effortless. It's indie rock composed and performed around a camp fire in the Carolinas or at a windswept beach in Northern California. If I were to suggest a soundtrack for just about anything, I'd try to put a Band of Horses song on it.
So I was not disappointed by the sleepy Infinite Arms. But I was left a bit bored by the ban, which seems to have spent a lot of effort (supposedly 16 months in the studio with major label backing) moving backwards.
There are some good songs on Infinite Arms. I really like the first single, "Compliments" (the hardest-charging number on the album), "Laredo," and "Blue Beard." But the overall pace of the record is quiet and slow. Most of that campfire crowd is asleep and Bridwell's hauled out the acoustic for a few late-night lullabies. Suddenly that terrific voice of Bridwell's is often in harmony (with himself or the band, hard to tell) for a sound that's eerily reminiscent of The Eagles.1The song "Older" is nice, but it's a full-blown country western song, complete with steel guitar.2The band has gotten a little too close to late '70s easy listening for my comfort.
Fans of the band should definitely pick up Infinite Arms. It's not as powerful as the band's other two records, but it has its moments. It's at least a better than average outing. Band of Horses, though, seems ripe for a little bit of reinvention. If not reinvention, reinvigoration. The Magic of songs like "Funeral" and "Great Salt Lake" is gone. Here's hoping Bridwell and crew figure out how to get it back.
Footnotes:
1. To truly appreciate this comparison, the reader should know that I despise the Eagles and Don Henly. I think Joe Walsh is OK, but overrated.
