Monday, January 28, 2013

Mixed Results: "80s & Beyond" (circa 2003)

A few years ago, a friend of mine, who has always shared my passion for a breadth of musical topics, asked me when I first became aware that there was music out there "that was good." Music that we maybe weren't just hearing because it was on the radio.

I couldn't pin it down... old music always had a ton of currency in my house. My parents were big into the major Oldies station, so I knew a ton of ancient songs that my classmates in grade 5 wouldn't have. By the early 2000s, my dad had nudged the radio dial in his Buick Century over to FM and a station that specialized in "The hits of the 80s, 90s and today." So we got a lot of Tears for Fears and Depeche Mode and Bon Jovi and U2 in high rotation, and I could count on hearing The Police or the Proclaimers or Jesus Jones on almost any car ride, sandwiched between recent hits by Sugar Ray, Goo Goo Dolls, Avril Lavigne or Mary J. Blige (it still blows my mind though that my dad once listened to a station that regularly played "Family Affair.")



Though I no longer consider it the apex of musical innovation, the station painted me a picture of the 80s as a fertile time for esoteric one-hit wonders. The early MTV era was like the wild west when any odd act could somehow emerge with a quirky video or strange hook and briefly conquer the world. This may explain my lifelong devotion to Dexys Midnight Runners. It's clear that's the running theme of this Mix CD, potentially the first one I ever made (around this time but possibly later, I made a CD for a girl, a classic rite of passage for music nerds, but its contents have been lost to time.) The only really surprising thing is that I put on "Roxanne" and "Don't Stand So Close To Me" instead of "Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic," which I considered my personal anthem. Maybe even then I was dismayed by the low production quality.



My career as a musical scavenger begins here, finding stray tunes to call my own: hence, Dokken's theme to the third Nightmare on Elm Street film, Huey Lewis from Back to the Future, and The Buggles, well known to me as the answer to the trivia question "Who had the first video played on MTV?" I genuinely loved that song and thought it was profound. There's also the inferior English-language version of Nena's "99 Luftballoons" and two Combat Rock-era Clash hits, a time period I would soon all but disown. I liked thinking of these artists appearing suddenly on the international stage before I was ever born, then disappearing and leaving behind all these low-quality videos to fill VH1 specials. I was very, very aware that there was music outside my everyday context.



I wrote the phrase "80s and Beyond" on the CD because it included a few 70s tracks (Kinks, AC/DC) and a few 90s ones - Beck's "Loser," and two songs that captivated me in my actual youth, Green Day's "Longview" (which began to appeal to me a lot more once I realized I was living it) and Offspring's "Bad Habit," which maybe wasn't the best track on Smash, but certainly had the most cussing.



None of these are bad songs and some of them (Beck, Dexys, and yeah the Clash) are genuinely great. It's clear from looking at this set that I'm very interested in looking outside my own everyday context for music, but still don't have any discernible taste... a lot of them are songs I found one way or the other and let stick with me.

I just finished reading Rob Sheffield's "Love is a Mixtape," and while I would be deluded to say my life is anything like his (even my devotion to the art of mixing is lacking) it's gotten me thinking about different stages of my life, and what songs I put together, and why. You might see a few more songs like this in the future... you know, when I'm behind on reviews and need something to fill space.



Thursday, January 24, 2013

Serious Contenders: Sting, "Desert Rose"



Profound, mystical moment, or cultural appropriation of a Muslim tradition from the pre-9/11 world? I don't know, maybe neither. I always enjoyed listening to this tune and good for Sting for at least finding a credible way to incorporate something that sounds good, all in the name of making his music interesting (if potentially pretentious.)

Wednesday, January 23, 2013

The Beatles: Revolver (1966)

Between the quality of the music and its legacy of innovation, Revolver is probably the most accurately praised Beatles album of the lot. There's no risk of over-praising it because there was no precedent for what it did, and it delivers on the promise of art pop you can really listen to. There's absolutely no room to overestimate this one, and its pleasures are apparent enough that it doesn't get underestimated either.

This album runs 34 minutes and 40 seconds. There are entire worlds in the songs on this album. "Eleanor Rigby" is only 2 minutes and 6 seconds and hardly contains enough words to convey its plot, but those few scraps, along with the dynamic strings that propel it, are enough to tell you more than almost any song you can name. The track that follows it is the first clanging, jangly step into John Lennon's dreamworld (well, the second after "Rain.") It has those yawning reversed guitars that perfectly put you in mind of both peaceful relaxation and fearful loss of control to imagination. It has those ghostly back up vocals that ooh and ahh and fade in and out. Many of the songs on this album, like that one, suggest or create entire worlds just for their own duration. Lennon went on to create numerous other ones soon after. Whatever they were on at the time (LSD, mostly,) allowed them to discard precise notions of pop songwriting that had gotten them where they were. They were emboldened to trust their (newly chemically enhanced) instincts, and it was paying off. A song about sleeping could now sound like a dream.

John, on his contributions to the album, is intent on translating the experience of taking LSD into music. Which is thoughtful, since I don't plan on ever taking LSD myself. So "She Said, She Said" will have to do, with its lapping, distant vocals and snarling, ringing guitars that shimmer like the stars themselves. John's songs, dotting the landscape of the disc, are a consistently unsettling yet serene experience, one of a grandiose otherworld where things are huge and distant and foggy yet clear. That song recounts a bizarre encounter with Peter Fonda (transformed into "She" to make the song even more enigmatic, to strange effect.) His love for strangely accurate dialogue comes in: "She said, you don't understand what I said / I said no, no, no, you're wrong." But mysterious all the same: "'Cause you're making me feel like I've never been born." A whole album that sounds like this would be one thing, a very welcome thing, but it's not. John broadcasts intermittently from that dimension, the feed coming in between Paul's next genre experiment. In the Lennonverse, things are familiar yet intimidatingly unusual. The most conventional of the lot is the loopy "Doctor Robert," the ode to the drug dealer that makes him a folk hero. The one that rattles me most, in a good way, is "And Your Bird Can Sing," because it rocks with that spiraling guitar winding through it. It's also completely insane - where "She Said She Said" is a recounting of a conversation that makes no sense, "And Your Bird Can Sing" sounds like one side of a conversation that makes no sense, even to the people having it. The meaning of the metaphor - if there even was one - is completely lost to time. And I think that's fine. It's a nice monument to the way Lennon could pick a stray thought or turn of phrase and make a whole song out of it.

While Lennon was out exploring his own dimension, Paul McCartney was mapping this one. "Yellow Submarine" gave him a bright, vivid palette to work with, and it resulted in some great splashy tunes like "Good Day Sunshine" and "Got To Get You Into My Life." "Sunshine" is built on a rumbling low-key piano riff, paradoxically low and bouncy, like a jovial fat guy. "Got To Get You Into My Life" is a declaration of romantic love and devotion to pot, marked by its indelible horn fanfare. If you ever have to pledge devotion to something, make sure there are trumpets nearby.

But aside from celebrating the simple pleasures of life, Paul was also finding a knack for enunciating its darker moments. I don't know, maybe I'm the only one who sees "Here, There and Everywhere" as a sad song. Not a tragic one, like "Eleanor Rigby," but with its cooing background vocals and minimal instrumentation, it hits on a certain kind of sadness, a fearful vulnerability in being that in love with somebody. I don't think of this as being an "at ease in love" song. It's a song about the pain of need.

But if we're talking about pain, we have to talk about "For No One," one of the best screenshots of a breakup committed to tape. Every element of this song is calculated, or at least moves intuitively, from its lonely staggering waltz tempo, and its mesmerizing piano under the chorus, to its solitary, just off in the distance French Horn solo (motherfucking French Horn solo!) It also has those amazingly pointed lyrics: "Your day breaks / Your mind aches / You find that all her words of kindness linger on when she no longer needs you." ... "And in her eyes you see nothing / No sign of love behind the tears / cried for no one / A love that should have lasted years." It's also written in the second person - accusative and judgmental, daring in its own way for a pop song. It deserves every bit as much accolades as "Eleanor Rigby," but is maybe a bit less beloved because instead of a profound statement, it hits on a very ordinary sort of pain, the kind that was the darkside of the pop music they were already performing for years. But they never captured it like this before.

George gets in on the action with three very good songs. "Taxman" manages to outdo the sardonic tones of "Day Tripper" or "Drive My Car" by airing real grievances and loaded with acidic humour, delivered in a sludgy form of funk that casts an exactly slimy type of character: if psychedelia was about the liberation from Earthly pursuits, here was the villain song. "I Want To Tell You" is about the way the mind sometimes cheats you out of what you want to say (a feeling familiar to me,) built on an inspiredly simple, slithering riff. The other, "Love You To," was George's first full-fledged attempt at an Indian raga. I was never a fan, I think you had to be there, but there's something charming in the clash between the mysticism conjured up by the sitar and the very earthly, very human voice of George Harrison.

"Tomorrow Never Knows" is shocking, with its thundering drums, skittering sound effects, distant vocals, laughing seagulls, like that whole world Lennon built rushing past you in three minutes. It seems like the culmination of the experiments conducted throughout the recording process, but it was in fact the first song recorded. It cuoldn't have gone anywhere at the end. Its lyrics, ripped from the Tibetan Book of the Dead, give the listener something to chew on, and provide an act that cannot be followed - or so you'd think. Turns out they were really only beginning.

The obvious selling point of Revolver is its eclecticism. They really do get away with a lot of stuff in only a half hour. What unifies it is its problematic relationship to reality. John scatters it with sound effects and scenery. Paul heightens it with judicious usage of genres, whether it's sunny pop, kids songs, classical waltz, or Motown. Paul's songs here show you the logical extension of your feelings. John's become something of an inkblot - you can see anything you want in them. One shows us a world we've never known before, one shows us a world we didn't realize we were already looking at.

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









Monday, January 21, 2013

Gary Clark Jr.: Blak & Blu



Buy This Album Now: iTunes Canada // iTunes USA // Amazon.ca // Amazon.com


Gary Clark Jr.'s major label debut is the easiest recommendation I have made in my entire time selling music to people. I have never felt more comfortable putting a CD into peoples' hands. There have been CDs I liked more, ones that were more forward-thinking and artistically progressive, but few that I've been more sure more people will like. There also haven't been that many CDs I've liked more. In terms of musical recommendations, this is the mother lode.

The basis of the album is Gary Clark's guitar chops. That means huge, walloping riffs that give Auerbach a run for his money, and mind-warping solos in the Hendrixian tradition that seem to last decades in a minute. If Guitar Hero was still a thing, I could see "Numb" appearing somewhere near the climax of the game, or "When My Train Pulls In," both highly gloomy, thundering testaments to modern six-string pyrotechnics. Tracks like these capture the way a psychedelic blues song can pump emotions up way beyond their dimensions, and other ones like "Glitter Ain't Gold" and "Ain't Messin 'Round" remind of the smooth-roughness of a good blues rock song. Comparisons could be made to Cream or ZZ Top, but he isn't a copycat playing by rote: the style is all his. He's also got a good, soulful voice to go along with it, sometimes reminiscent of John Legend as on the swaggering "Bright Lights," where he boasts "You gonna know my name by the end of the night." And by the time of that track, the fourth one on the set, you believe it. The boasts of someone who knows he has something to prove, and the muscle to back it up.

But Clark goes one step further by bringing classic guitar workouts face to face with post-90s Fugees-esque R&B/Rap, "The Life," the Al Green-esque "Things Are Changing" or the smooth, lo-fi title track. He can switch styles between each song, always sound like himself, and not need to blur the lines by forcing his other talents into each piece. He's not a postmodernist mix-and-matcher; when he takes a genre, he takes it for what it is but makes it gold by linking it with common elements to all music, not infusing it with things that don't belong. In this way, he innovates subtly, disguising himself as a throwback while always moving forward. "Travis County" earns praise for being the "Chuck Berry" moment, but he doesn't have to make too much of a detour because he knows how much Chuck Berry there is in everything. Another highlight is the opening raveup, "Ain't Messin 'Round," a horn-tinged triumph of composition, playing, and production. Likewise, an entire history of psychedelia, soul, and hip hop are blended together in a combination of "Third From The Stone" and "If You Love Me Like You Say" that is absolutely seamless.

I will praise this album endlessly. It reveals new things about the potential of each genre it calls up, and of course is a showcase for a dynamite singer/guitarist. It's exactly what a lot of people are looking for every day of their musical lives: Something that sounds like stuff they already like, but surprises with the thrill of the new, shocks them out of their familiar old Hendrix and Clapton albums. It seems like a cheap trick to just do a new version of what others have done, but trust me, if there's one thing I know about music (and there may just be only that) it's this: If it were as easy as it looks, everyone would be doing it.

Friday, January 18, 2013

The Other One: B-52s, "Roam"



"Rock Lobster" remains this band's signature song, and in my mind "Love Shack" looms just as large in their discography, but this song is probably my favourite. As much as I like Fred Schneider's campy vocals on the other hits, I think this song benefits from lacking them. It feels very direct and in-the-middle and kitschy without being "about" it. It's just a fun goddamn pop song.

Wednesday, January 16, 2013

The Beatles, "Eleanor Rigby" & "Yellow Submarine"



In order to represent the scope and inventiveness of the Revolver album, the Beatles chose to release a double-A side single with two of the most diametrically opposed songs they ever bundled together - and since that was a move they often pulled that's saying something. While both tunes are illustrations, one is decidedly escapist and the other grounded in a rather harsh version of reality.

"Eleanor Rigby" is brilliant in just about every way it can be. It begins almost in medias res with the enigmatic chorus phrase "Ah, look at all the lonely people", while a string quartet swirls belligerently around the vocals. It wasn't the first time strings were used on a Beatles songs and not the last, but while "Yesterday" was meant for a languid beauty, "Rigby" has them tensing the situation up, wrenching pity out of the listener for the subject of the song. The details themselves are extremely well chosen, using only a few tableaux to draw Eleanor and Father McKenzie together without saying why they are inhabiting the same song, besides...

All the lonely people,
Where do they all come from?
All the lonely people,
Where do they all belong?


That. That fucking chorus. Man. That's a sentiment you simply would not expect out of the Beatles... ever. They're a Greek chorus, trapped outside the narrative. This is such an economical, load-bearing phrase. It sums up the song but instead of resolving it, deepens it by drawing up more metaphysical questions. Ambiguity was staking more and more of a claim in the Beatles' lyrics and music as of Revolver, as distinguished from vagueness by details and implications like the ones found in this song.



By contrast "Yellow Submarine" is an experiment of its own, and though it's more technicolor kiddie fantasy it's no less worth noticing. For the burgeoning psychedelic era, childhood imagery was a great tease, both an escape and a highlighting of how dire things were in the real world. It's quite tempting to run away and go "Live a life of ease" where "Every one of us has all we need," especially since that turns out to be "Sky of blue and sea of green." For the next while, the Beatles' music represented a passageway to the ordinary turned extraordinary, and the joys of a simpler existence. Real, earnest hippie stuff that doesn't seem so dated today.

As for the song itself, it works. As corny as I may sometimes find it, it hangs together as a kids song for adults, memorable and fun, with a thrown-together-in-the-basement, sound effect-laden, just for laughs feel.

Seriously, the contrast between the artfully baroque, existential craft of "Eleanor Rigby" and the anything-goes family friendly feeling of "Yellow Submarine" must have made for an irresistible teaser for Revolver when it was simultaneously released with this .45 in August 1966. How could you not want to know what else existed between these two signposts of advancing ambition, exploration, and plain old quality? Maybe there were better or more commercial songs on the album, but few paired together would have summed it up so succinctly. The dark and the light.

Thursday, January 10, 2013

Does it Rock? David Bowie, "Where Are We Now?"



Of course it rocks. It's David Bowie, you piece of...

Okay, maybe it's not quite right to take the quality of a David Bowie recording for granted like that. A couple of days ago when this clip was released, I played through the Best of Bowie, and while there's surely a lot not included on that disc, I've never quite heard a song from him as gorgeous, as forthright-sounding and uncloaked in identities and styles as this. It definitely sounds like the work of a 66-year-old artist and it demonstrates why that's not a bad thing. The way it swells toward the end and grows in intensity are not quite notes a younger man could hope to hit so genuinely. His voice lilts tenderly, vulnerably, the music swells, and we wonder if after all these years we're finally getting a real look at this often distant, disguised figure. Not a full picture, but at least a scrap.

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

The Beatles: "Paperback Writer" & "Rain"



The "Paperback Writer" / "Rain" single is pretty notable for a few reasons beyond its pumped up bass sound. It continues the forward momentum of songwriting, and particularly marks an important moment for Paul. John had recently, on the Rubber Soul LP, unlocked the secret to a new kind of writing, bringing to the table a number of songs that finally cast off the obligatory boy-girl narrative that had driven every previous Beatles song to some degree or another. Paul was doing good work, but it was still variations on a theme.

Specifically, this is the first single they wrote that is not even halfway a boy-girl song, it's a song about an an aspiring writer brimming with enthusiasm for his project and trying to sell himself. Does it make it better that it's not about a man pledging his love to a woman? Maybe, maybe not, but I think it was important, especially for that they did in 1966 and 1967, to have new tools in the shed. What's more it does rock. John unfairly slighted this song as being "Son of Day Tripper" which diminishes the things that "Paperback Writer" actually does bring to the table, which apart form its subject matter, also include a neat usage of "Frere Jacques" as a backing vocal, the aforementioned bass (and roaring guitar riff, stinging the refrain) and motormouthed, polysyllabic lyrics. If anything, it might be the bastard offspring of "Day Tripper" and "Help!" If it's a bit of a copy, in that respect, then it's still got its own joys.

Here's the other thing. John was experimenting with his songwriting in ways that allowed him to turn the spotlight on the world around him and his place within it. "Nowhere Man" is social commentary as well as self-examination, "Norwegian Wood" and "In My Life" were self-mythology. Paul's songs are always less keen to reveal the self, and "Paperback Writer" is far from an autobiographical song, it's just... fiction. In music. It's a story about a storyteller, about a character with wants and desires, set to music. What's more, it's not even a story arc, it's just a scene from his life. Paul was becoming adept at seeing moments in the world and painting pictures of them with his words and music, as much as John was at exploding them outwards. While John's music was becoming more grandiose and ambitious - more art for art's sake - Paul embraced a path that seems easier but is riddled with its own difficulties. "Paperback Writer" is, perhaps too fittingly given its subject, a great example of Hemingway's iceberg theory. And it was a strategy he would use all the more the longer the Beatles kept going. John would build a world of his own, and Paul would reflect the one he saw.



Speaking of social critique, here's John's take on a reflection of modern life, a cutting takedown of the stuffy British upper class. John was getting better and better and articulating his worldview through his words and music. I've always liked this song for the way it sets dull, blase attitude about its subjects against a proto-psychedelic wash of guitars and bass and hammering, rat-a-tat drums, a bit of LSD-flavoured unreality impinging on the everyday norms. The difference between this song and "Paperback Writer" would become the key point for the upcoming Revolver album, and a lot of the Beatles' remaining recording career.

Monday, January 7, 2013

Fang Island: Major

Some bands make it so easy. They are so good and consistent at what they do that I certainly don't need to over-exert my muscles by explaining to you exactly what is so awesome about them. Usually, they are bands with a "sound." Lately on this site, I've been targeting acts like this, whose sound is, for one reason or another, particularly appealing and strong, compared to, say, writing a well-realized and broad scope of songs. Neither approach is guaranteed to produce better results, one is just easier to talk about. Before the New Year's break I wrote about Japandroids. Here's another side of that coin.

Fang Island, man, they really know what to do with their guitars. "Dooney Rock." "Chompers." Come on, guys. I do not need to tell you anything about this band other than I can safely get out of the way, let them find their way to the people who are going to want to hear it. Which should be everybody, or at least everybody I let know about this blog.

What is this sound? This majestic quality that speaks for itself? It's maid with mountains of sharp, clean, orchestral levels of guitars, playing riffs that are exuberant and full of enthusiasm for life and creativity. This is fun, joyful music, not terribly different from that of Japandroids in philosophy but far apart in execution. Instead of ringing, brutalist concrete garage anthems, we have delicate, pinpoint riffs that reach very specific peaks and valleys, cresting and crashing all over each other, almost too shiny and perfect to exist. Also appearing sometimes are pristine, refined pianos, on the curtain-raiser "Kindergarten" and closer "Victorinian," lending some class and dignity to the affair. It's highly managed, far from my own conception of what rock "should be," in its raw and untamed state. Yes, I have my own ideas about that, but I am not closed-minded. There are also propulsive drums and usually cheerful vocals.

It's definitely art-rock, with emphasis on rock, and with more of a classical interpretation of "art." The members of Fang Island are obviously extremely talented players and they are not afraid to show off - there is so much going on on this record it surprises me on listen after listen. But they also manage to avoid the pitfalls many technically skilled players risk when it comes time to create a piece of music. They get out of their own way and let the music do the talking, sometimes obscuring their obvious skills behind a talent for finding the right level of simplicity.

The songs are not quite songs but compositions: there are vocals and sometimes verses and choruses, and definitely some structure, but it's all mostly just there to provide some frame of reference, scenery, a skeleton to hang the absorbing riffs and vibrant, towering solos over. I don't want to dismiss their lyrical acumen (they prove a vital part even when it's as simple as "All I know I learned in / Kindergarten" or "I hope I'll never understand") but it's clear they have their priorities in order. Through their music, Fang Island does what most great bands aspire to, and that's reach someplace nobody's ever explored before. Glad to have them as guides.

Buy this album now: iTunes Canada // iTunes USA