So, on my MP3 player I have a bunch of albums and a folder of podcasts but I also have a folder called "Other" which contains a bunch of random songs that I don't have the full album of. The contents of this folder change pretty frequently so, in what I will try to remember to make a recurring feature, I'm going to go through the folder and talk about some of the songs and why I like them. This time, I'll discuss all of them but in future installments I'll only cover the new stuff:
Cold Days From The Birdhouse - The Twilight Sad
One of the more unfortunately named bands of the past decade, but no less great for it. Their album, Fourteen Autumns & Fifteen Winters, was one of my favourites of the year it came out but this song, the opening track has an appeal all its own. The way the Twilight Sad combine these seemingly disparate elements (folky slide guitars and accordions, shoegaze guitar swirls, U2-esque hammy choruses and staunchly Scottish vocals) is inspiring and I love the way the song goes from bubbling whisper to strident scream in its four-minute run time. It isn't in a rush, it takes its time going where it needs to and it's all the better for it.
Feel Good Drag - Anberlin
This is one of those songs where you kind of have to ignore the lyrics; which are a jumble of emo narcissism and off-hand sexism with one kind-of clever line ("Everyone in this town is seeing somebody else"). Focus instead on that chunky, heaving guitar riff that makes this whole thing work. It carries this through those lyrics, the overly shiny production and the singer's melodramatic delivery. The bridge is also kind of wonky, but it leans hard on the immortal "quiet verse, loud chorus" formula which will, when done well, never get old for me.
Hot Revolver - Lil Wayne
Already dedicated an entire post to talking about how great this song is.
Ironic - Alanis Morissette
Yeah, yeah, none of those lyrics are truly "ironic" (rain on your wedding day just sucks, for example) but that isn't why this is good. It's essentially a grunge song given a layer of high-pop gloss and while that may sound like the worst idea ever, Alanis cuts through that shininess with that defiantly untrained voice of hers and makes it all great. I also particularly love those little wordless vocal runs at the song's beginning.
You Learn - Alanis Morissette
Once again, the words are kinda iffy; depending on what sort of mood you're in they can seem genuinely inspiring or like motivational speaker crap. But some things here aren't so malleable; that hip-hop-ish drumbeat, the heavy bass groove, Alanis' endearing vocal ticks and the ghostly back vocals are always there.
Like Eating Glass - Bloc Party
The yelping vocals might put a few people off, but this one of those songs that I think almost anyone could get into. The choppy dual-guitar attack, the nervy rhythm section, the gigantic chorus, the abundance of hooks; Bloc Party could have made a million more albums just like Silent Alarm and I would've bought every single one but, unfortunately, they didn't. They went off, discovered electronic music and made one decent album and one terrible one. Oh well, we'll always have a record full of their nervy post-punk-meets-arena-rock anthems. Best part: the moment the second verse kicks in with "I can't eat, I can't sleep" and the second guitar coming in.
Summer Of '69 - Bryan Adams
I propose that this be the new Canadian national anthem: it's made by a Canadian, pretty much everyone knows all the words to it and it's infinitely catchier than "O Canada". Moreover, this thing just explodes with energy and life; yeah, the lyrics are dopey, working in every teenage cliche, but they're also kind of endearing for that dopiness. And that thick guitar riff, Adam's husky vocals and basically every part of the song being a hook should erase that anyways. Whenever this comes on the radio, I crank it up; it's one of those songs.
Boys Of Summer - Don Henley
I fucking hate the Eagles and this is the only song even vaguely associated with them that you'll ever hear me say a positive word about. The sound is, in a lot of ways, the embodiment of 80's cheese, but that's kind of intentional to create a disparity with the nostalgic lyrics. And the song really does sound like summer, too: full of empty space and possibility but also sort of foreboding. Henley's vocals do get a bit whiny on the chorus, but I can forgive that. Bonus points for the really good video. Avoid the pop-punk cover by the Ataris at all costs, as it replaces all that masterful empty space and varied instrumentation with a grinding guitar attack that does the song no favours.
D.O.A (Death Of Auto-Tune) - Jay-Z
Has Jay-Z become hip-hop's grumpy old man? Maybe, as he's dissing the most popular technique in current rap, calling out Lil Wayne and Young Jeezy and making Frank Sinatra references all on the same track. He gets in some good digs, although I think the message is wasted effort, and drops some really good lines ("This ain't a number one record/this is practically assault with a deadly weapon") but the real star here is No I.D's beat. Combining stomping drums with wailing funk guitar and saxophone honks, he's given Jay the perfect base for his rant. And, it might just be me, but I think this is the type of beat (lots of live instruments, rock-influenced) that Jay-Z sounds the best on (think "99 Problems", "Threat", "Pray" or "Success").
When You Were Mine - Prince
Probably my all-time favourite Prince song, and not just for the way the lyrics tie sexual freakiness in with genuine emotion. The herky-jerky new wave rhythm remains oddly funky, the chipping guitars, while paper-thin, are a nice addition, the keyboard that comes in for the chorus just ups the catchiness. It's particularly impressive when you consider that prince himself played all the instruments and did all the vocals (including the masterful backups) on this thing. Best part: When the song drops to just the guitar and Prince's voice after the instrumental bridge. (Sorry about the crappy quality live video, it was all I could find. It's a pretty good performance, though.)
A Change Is Gonna Come - Sam Cooke
I'm not huge on soul music (though, strangely I love when rap songs work in soul samples) but this song is really something special. A million people have written a million times about how good this song is, so, I'll share a personal anecdote. The first time I heard this song was over a crappy portable radio that was half-tuned to the station, in shitty ear bud headphones, while walking knee-deep in a river. It was awesome.
Danger Zone - Kenny Loggins
I think that Top Gun is kind of sucky but it has one of the more amazing soundtracks of its era, full of cheesy 80's goodness, of which "Danger Zone" is the pinnacle. It's basically the perfect "pump you up" song, great for workouts and such; I listen to it every morning to get ready for the day.
Weighty Ghost - Wintersleep
This song hits a lot of big, obvious buttons for. The strummy guitar, the big hand claps, the poetically meaningless lyrics, the softly delivered lead vocals, the massed backups; it's like it it was made specifically for me. Also, they're Canadian group, and they opened for Pearl Jam! I wish all of their songs (most of which are not folky at all) were like this, they might be my favourite band of all time then.
Showing posts with label Music. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Music. Show all posts
Saturday, June 20, 2009
Saturday, May 30, 2009
HOLD UP, LET ME FIX MY HAT
- Lil Wayne's "Hot Revolver" might just be my favourite pop single of 2009, if it continues to be as dull a year for those things as it has so far; at any rate, it's the best one so far. Why, exactly, is a bit hard to say but it comes down this: I really didn't think the guy could pull it off, and he did. When I first heard Wayne was making a "rock album" (which is now looking ever more elusive and nebulous), my first thought was "uh, why?" followed by "it'll probably be awful". And "Prom Queen", the album's first single, seemed to confirm my trepidation: "Prom Queen" is a horrifying car-wreck of a song; a pile-up of Wanye's auto-tuned gurgle, some of the most over-processed mall-rock guitar skronk I've ever heard, a hammering rhythm that plays to none of the guy's strengths as a vocalist, an abysmal attempt at a chorus, some really bad attempted-emo howls and a lyrical conceit that's both over-used (a girl turned you down and then later regretted it? You don't say!) and entirely removed from what Wayne is comfortable with (mostly making typical hip-hop sex/drugs/money talk interesting and funny via clever metaphors/jokes). It would be unlistenable if not for that fact that it's kind of fascinating in its way and speaks to the fact that Wayne, while I don't doubt his sincerity in wanting to make rock music, has a very warped and vague understanding of what he's trying to do. About the only thing I do like about "Prom Queen" is the music video, which gives us the image of nerd Lil Wayne, which is hilarious.
If "Prom Queen" fails because it can't reconcile what it wants to be (a rock song) with who its performer is (a rapper with a shaky understanding of rock, who can't sing that well), "Hot Revolver" succeeds precisely because it does reconcile those things. It does this by taking rap elements and rock elements and stitching them together in an interesting, and, more importantly, sonically tasty, way.
First, the rap stuff: the chorus isn't sung by Wayne, but rather by song producer Dre (not to be confused with Dr. Dre). This is very good because I really don't think Wayne's voice is made for hooks that aren't simple chants/repeated phrases; he's got too oddball of a vocal timbre to do that, but he's perfectly fine in the verses here, bobbing and weaving with the beat (more on that in a sec) in way that reminds you he's a rapper but isn't exactly rapping. The other thing about Dre chorus is how, in typical hip-hop fashion, it provides contrast. When a chorus in a rap song is sung by a person other than the rapper, it's usually because the chorus is a counter-point or a complimentary element, in lyrical terms, to what the rapper is rapping about. Usually, this means that the chorus is taken by a R&B guy or gal to more explicitly express whatever feeling that the rapper is talking about. But, here, its use is very interesting and plays into the lyrical conceit of the song in a more inventive way (the lyrics are something I'll talk about in detail later). The use of auto-tune also keeps this "rap", in a certain manner, as Wayne clearly, and justifiably, doesn't feel enough confidence to sing without it as a rock singer, even one who doesn't have a conventionally good voice, would. Thankfully, though, unlike "Prom Queen", he doesn't overdo the auto-tune to the point where he sounds like a robot , it just provides a slight trailing effect on his voice. In fact, at one point, Wayne does drop the effect entirely; for the second verse, the song dissolves into a a quick drum machine-lead portion, where he raps a quick bit before the guitars come back in and he goes into a semi-croon. It's a neat trick that shows his range in a way that doesn't draw attention to itself. There's some other little elements (e.g. the fact that Wayne's first words on the song are the quick "young moolah, baby" sonic signature he's been saying on every song in the past while, the use of the term "shorty") that remind us of the rap-roots, as well. Finally, the lyrics, which are the pivot point for the rap and rock elements, are pretty standard issue rap braggadocio, at first glance. Summary, Wayne's on tour and a fucks a girl who tries to make it more serious but he just wants a fuck-buddy. Sort of horrible, but nothing too out of the ordinary, right?
Well, here's where things gets interesting: where a rap song would stop there, because this is "rock", it doesn't (let's not get into why that is, exactly, because it could be an entire series of blog posts by itself). In the third verse, Wayne calls his lady friend and she won't pick up, so, he goes to her house only to find that she ended up "cheating" on him, leaving him hurt and angry. And that Dre chorus I mentioned earlier? It's kind of like Wayne's buddy going "dude, this girl's nice and really likes you, what the hell are you doing here? She's not gonna want to be with you at all if you keep being a dick like this". It's kind of boldly self-effacing and that's really cool because it cuts though the macho bullshit that's present in a lot of mainstream rap while not sacrificing swagger or a sense of fun. And Wayne, while not aloud due to format to be quite as zany with his lyrics, does get a little of his trademark zing in there (he calls his mode of transportation a "spaceship", for example).
Sonically, too, this thing just kicks. The beat is a bass-heavy bit of stiffed-legged new-wave-y rock, with little synth swirls puttering around at times and galloping guitar-crunch coming in for the chorus. Importantly, unlike the loudly pounding "Prom Queen", "Hot Revolver" knows how use both sonic space and dynamics for pop effect; the chorus wouldn't be half as catchy as it is if those guitars were there in the entire song.
In short, "Hot Revolver" deserves a much bigger audience than what it's got and I really can't see why it only peaked at #33 on the Billboard charts. Maybe it's excess ill will from "Prom Queen" or something but, still. This could cross Wayne over into even more markets, if promoted properly; it's catchy, brash and fun without being offensive (in fact, there's no cursing in the song other than two barely audible "ass"s and a "damn") and it's danceable without being just club fodder.
If Wayne can stick to material like this and stay away from more "Prom Queen"s then I'm really gonna love Rebirth. Strangely enough, the only other song to come off the album is "Fix My Hat" which is a pretty standard "Lil Wayne spazzing out" song that doesn't have a whole lot to do with rock (in fact, it has an 80's hip-hop feel with its basic, 808-heavy beat) but is still pretty good stuff. I don't claim to understand how that man works but he's capable of great things from time-to-time, so, let's hope he'll bring it all together here.
If "Prom Queen" fails because it can't reconcile what it wants to be (a rock song) with who its performer is (a rapper with a shaky understanding of rock, who can't sing that well), "Hot Revolver" succeeds precisely because it does reconcile those things. It does this by taking rap elements and rock elements and stitching them together in an interesting, and, more importantly, sonically tasty, way.
First, the rap stuff: the chorus isn't sung by Wayne, but rather by song producer Dre (not to be confused with Dr. Dre). This is very good because I really don't think Wayne's voice is made for hooks that aren't simple chants/repeated phrases; he's got too oddball of a vocal timbre to do that, but he's perfectly fine in the verses here, bobbing and weaving with the beat (more on that in a sec) in way that reminds you he's a rapper but isn't exactly rapping. The other thing about Dre chorus is how, in typical hip-hop fashion, it provides contrast. When a chorus in a rap song is sung by a person other than the rapper, it's usually because the chorus is a counter-point or a complimentary element, in lyrical terms, to what the rapper is rapping about. Usually, this means that the chorus is taken by a R&B guy or gal to more explicitly express whatever feeling that the rapper is talking about. But, here, its use is very interesting and plays into the lyrical conceit of the song in a more inventive way (the lyrics are something I'll talk about in detail later). The use of auto-tune also keeps this "rap", in a certain manner, as Wayne clearly, and justifiably, doesn't feel enough confidence to sing without it as a rock singer, even one who doesn't have a conventionally good voice, would. Thankfully, though, unlike "Prom Queen", he doesn't overdo the auto-tune to the point where he sounds like a robot , it just provides a slight trailing effect on his voice. In fact, at one point, Wayne does drop the effect entirely; for the second verse, the song dissolves into a a quick drum machine-lead portion, where he raps a quick bit before the guitars come back in and he goes into a semi-croon. It's a neat trick that shows his range in a way that doesn't draw attention to itself. There's some other little elements (e.g. the fact that Wayne's first words on the song are the quick "young moolah, baby" sonic signature he's been saying on every song in the past while, the use of the term "shorty") that remind us of the rap-roots, as well. Finally, the lyrics, which are the pivot point for the rap and rock elements, are pretty standard issue rap braggadocio, at first glance. Summary, Wayne's on tour and a fucks a girl who tries to make it more serious but he just wants a fuck-buddy. Sort of horrible, but nothing too out of the ordinary, right?
Well, here's where things gets interesting: where a rap song would stop there, because this is "rock", it doesn't (let's not get into why that is, exactly, because it could be an entire series of blog posts by itself). In the third verse, Wayne calls his lady friend and she won't pick up, so, he goes to her house only to find that she ended up "cheating" on him, leaving him hurt and angry. And that Dre chorus I mentioned earlier? It's kind of like Wayne's buddy going "dude, this girl's nice and really likes you, what the hell are you doing here? She's not gonna want to be with you at all if you keep being a dick like this". It's kind of boldly self-effacing and that's really cool because it cuts though the macho bullshit that's present in a lot of mainstream rap while not sacrificing swagger or a sense of fun. And Wayne, while not aloud due to format to be quite as zany with his lyrics, does get a little of his trademark zing in there (he calls his mode of transportation a "spaceship", for example).
Sonically, too, this thing just kicks. The beat is a bass-heavy bit of stiffed-legged new-wave-y rock, with little synth swirls puttering around at times and galloping guitar-crunch coming in for the chorus. Importantly, unlike the loudly pounding "Prom Queen", "Hot Revolver" knows how use both sonic space and dynamics for pop effect; the chorus wouldn't be half as catchy as it is if those guitars were there in the entire song.
In short, "Hot Revolver" deserves a much bigger audience than what it's got and I really can't see why it only peaked at #33 on the Billboard charts. Maybe it's excess ill will from "Prom Queen" or something but, still. This could cross Wayne over into even more markets, if promoted properly; it's catchy, brash and fun without being offensive (in fact, there's no cursing in the song other than two barely audible "ass"s and a "damn") and it's danceable without being just club fodder.
If Wayne can stick to material like this and stay away from more "Prom Queen"s then I'm really gonna love Rebirth. Strangely enough, the only other song to come off the album is "Fix My Hat" which is a pretty standard "Lil Wayne spazzing out" song that doesn't have a whole lot to do with rock (in fact, it has an 80's hip-hop feel with its basic, 808-heavy beat) but is still pretty good stuff. I don't claim to understand how that man works but he's capable of great things from time-to-time, so, let's hope he'll bring it all together here.
Sunday, May 24, 2009
ONCE I THOUGHT I KNEW, EVERYTHING I NEEDED TO KNOW, ABOUT YOU
- I don't have a whole lot to say about the movie of Angels & Demons except that it's a decent, semi-grown up summer thriller that's a lot better than the Da Vinci Code movie. Basically, it captures the book very well (despite a few minor additions and omissions), for better or worse. This means that all the pros (the fun, connect-the-dots plotting, the enjoyably twisty narrative, the genuine suspense, the good pacing) and all the cons (the barely-there characters, the illogical situations, the hackneyed attempts at social commentary, the flat self-seriousness) from the book are present. Though, in the movie's favour, you don't have to deal with Dan Brown's clunky prose style while watching it. Tom Hanks (with a much, much better haircut and a thankful lack of double chin) is a good fit for Langdon, even if his academic asshole routine gets grating at a certain point, and Ewan McGregor is nicely hammy as the interim pope. All of the other actors really make no impression one way or the other, staying out of the way of the plot; that's a good thing. Ron Howard's direction is his usual clean-but-sterile craftsmanship (he does do a lot of spin-the-camera-around-the-actors shots, though, for some reason) but that's not really a negative; flashy direction wouldn't benefit here (see the sequences in Da Vinci which attempted to illustrate Langdon's claustrophobia for proof). It is a bit long (and there's some besides-the-point padding in the middle) but not so much so that I was actively annoyed. All in all, it's worth seeing once but I wouldn't (and didn't) pay full price for a ticket.
- I'll keep my thoughts on Relapse, the new Eminem album, to point form, as it doesn't deserve much more:
- Production, mostly by Dr. Dre, is fine but leans really hard on those cold-steel percussion figures and chunky synth runs that he's been dealing in since "In Da Club" hit it big. It works on "Old Time's Sake", possibly because that song features Dre, but nowhere else. The big departures from this formula do work: "Bagpipes From Baghdad" is mediocre but through no fault of its snake-charmer beat, "Underground" has a clumsy rhythm but a moody ambiance and "Deja Vu" has a dusty guitar-and-drums musical makeup that feels very 90's New York rap.
- Em sounds really tired and bored, for the most part. There's no joy to his voice; when he makes the jokes that should be gleefully offensive pranksterism, they sound like he's just going through the motions because people expect it of him.
- Evidence of this; there are two songs on here where the whole joke is "I am a rapist" and neither are remotely funny or even really offensive in a way other than, "man, that sucks".
- However, when he does get fired up, he proves that he can still rap. "Insane" hearkens back to his Slim Shady LP days, in both rapping and lyrics, "Deja Vu" (the best song on the album) is a brilliantly self-effacing account of his troubles in the past four years, "3 A.M." is a lame horrorcore throwback that's redeemed only though delivery and "Must Be The Ganja" grinds a tired lyrical concept but Em, surprisingly, makes it work.
- The skits are, predictably, awful.
- "Beautiful" samples a goddamn Queen + Paul Rodgers track; that's all I have to say about that.
- Overall, better than Encore but nowhere near as good as it needs to be to get me to truly care about Eminem again
I'll post later in the week about the new Green Day album, the 24 and Lost season finales and Terminator Salvation. But, for now, in order, here's my thoughts: Pretty good, weird/confusing in a bad way, weird/confusing in a good way and overly grim but still well-done.
- I'll keep my thoughts on Relapse, the new Eminem album, to point form, as it doesn't deserve much more:
- Production, mostly by Dr. Dre, is fine but leans really hard on those cold-steel percussion figures and chunky synth runs that he's been dealing in since "In Da Club" hit it big. It works on "Old Time's Sake", possibly because that song features Dre, but nowhere else. The big departures from this formula do work: "Bagpipes From Baghdad" is mediocre but through no fault of its snake-charmer beat, "Underground" has a clumsy rhythm but a moody ambiance and "Deja Vu" has a dusty guitar-and-drums musical makeup that feels very 90's New York rap.
- Em sounds really tired and bored, for the most part. There's no joy to his voice; when he makes the jokes that should be gleefully offensive pranksterism, they sound like he's just going through the motions because people expect it of him.
- Evidence of this; there are two songs on here where the whole joke is "I am a rapist" and neither are remotely funny or even really offensive in a way other than, "man, that sucks".
- However, when he does get fired up, he proves that he can still rap. "Insane" hearkens back to his Slim Shady LP days, in both rapping and lyrics, "Deja Vu" (the best song on the album) is a brilliantly self-effacing account of his troubles in the past four years, "3 A.M." is a lame horrorcore throwback that's redeemed only though delivery and "Must Be The Ganja" grinds a tired lyrical concept but Em, surprisingly, makes it work.
- The skits are, predictably, awful.
- "Beautiful" samples a goddamn Queen + Paul Rodgers track; that's all I have to say about that.
- Overall, better than Encore but nowhere near as good as it needs to be to get me to truly care about Eminem again
I'll post later in the week about the new Green Day album, the 24 and Lost season finales and Terminator Salvation. But, for now, in order, here's my thoughts: Pretty good, weird/confusing in a bad way, weird/confusing in a good way and overly grim but still well-done.
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
WE ARE THE HEART OF SATURDAY NIGHT
- I would talk about Star Trek here but I don't think that I have enough to say about it to warrant an entire post to itself (general summary: it's great), so, I'll wait until after the Lost season finale airs on Wednesday and talk about both of those things in one post. I've decided to make this post about something I promised to cover a while ago: My other favourite album of 2008, besides 808's & Heartbreak, namely, The Gaslight Anthem's The '59 Sound:
In a certain way, it's odd that 808's and '59 could be my two favourite albums of last year because, both thematically and sonically, they couldn't be more diametrically opposed. 808's is all depressive, paranoid truths, delivered with appropriately alien and synthetic musical backdrop; it's harsh at points but altogether necessary and, despite its frigidness, it finds pockets of warmth within heartache that make it all, ultimately, life-affirming. The '59 Sound, by contrast, feels like a musical postcard from a time that, if it ever existed at all, is long gone and, as such, it's all warm, mushy nostalgia and heart-on-sleeve working class sentiments backed up by fittingly scrappy, but never mean or overly aggressive, guitar rock.
The obvious start point for The Gaslight Anthem is Bruce Springsteen (more specifically, the Springsteen of Born To Run and prior, before the cynicism set in and he was creating grand lyrical mosaics out of everyday life) and, certainly, it checks out (hell, "Meet Me By The River's Edge" includes the lyric "no surrender/my Bobby Jean") but there seems to be a slowly developing genre of bands like this and I couldn't be happier. I haven't heard it termed yet but all these groups share a general aesthetic: Soulful, grown-man vocals, alternately twinkling or clacking guitars, working class subject matter, at least two of the band members looking like auto mechanics, punkish energy/enthusiasm, an affinity for cleaned-up 50's nostalgia, slight nods to old-school country (these bands are the first people you call in when putting together a Johnny Cash tribute record) and lead singer having a penchant for hair grease and sleeve tattoos. Examples of this "movement": The Loved Ones, Bad Religion (sometimes), Social Distortion (at their least emo), The Lawrence Arms, This Charming Man, Against Me!' (at their least shout-y) and Polar Bear Club.
The Gaslight Anthem, while certainly not the first band to do this sort of thing, are, in my mind, the best at it for a couple of reasons. Firstly, they're the band who has most fully stripped away the harshness and meanness of their punk rock roots, while not abandoning the energy. If one were to term The '59 Sound as a "punk " record, it would be more in the Ramones sense (stripped-down, speedy musicality with an appreciation for pre-Beatles rock & roll) than in the Sex Pistols sense (outright rage/nihilism, with confrontational singing and lyrics) but even that isn't really accurate; it's far too cleanly produced (but, thankfully, retains grit and energy) and has a bit greater tonal range. Secondly, they're the band with the most naked heartland-rock fixation. Not just Springsteen, but Dylan and Petty (who gets a chorus name check in "Even Cowgirls Get The Blues") too. The guitar sounds, often interlocking in patterns which alternately jangle brightly or clatter like those beat-up car engines they love to sing about, are the biggest give away in that regard but check out the rock-solid, but deceptively complex, rhythm section and the clever use of non-rock sounds (the cabaret stand-up bass on "Film Noir", the clanging church bells on the title track, the brief scat-singing (!) interlude on "Great Expectations") for further evidence.
There's also the issue of those lyrics, which are my third factor putting the band above their competition. If you're not like me, and don't have a sort of unreasonable nostalgia for an era you've never lived in, you probably won't go quite as ga-ga over the band's shameless appropriation of 50's motifs as I did. But, for me, this is mana from heaven: They sing about sleeping on beaches and using pay phones, one chorus references "high-top sneakers", "sailor tattoos" and an "old '55", another contains a wish about looking "like Elvis", they speak in grand declarations like "I'll love you forever/if I ever love at all", they reference Audrey Hepburn and Marylin Monroe, the phrase "twist the night away" is used with no irony, they think Ferris Wheels and carnivals are the coolest things ever. I could go on and on but you get the idea. To be fair, the band does, on occasion, try to bring a bit of edge to this fuzzy-dice nostalgia trip (there's a semi-hardcore punk backup shout on "The Patient Ferris Wheel" and "High Lonesome" contains a line about "the powder on the bar") but those ultimately feel sort of hollow, perhaps the last fleeting vestige of traditional punk being molted away. Of course, none of this would mean anything if the band didn't believe it; if they were winking or being ironic. But, as far as I can tell, they seem to be 100% serious about this stuff, which is pretty commendable. In an era where being whiny/angry is almost a guarantee of success (whether in standard radio-rock or more MTV-friendly emo), it's great to hear a band with this much zest and enthusiasm (even if they have to reach back nearly 60 years to find it). Heck, even the ex-girlfriend ballad "Here's Looking At You, Kid" and the dead friend-tribute title track are delivered with faint smiles of fondness than agonized cries of pain and are much better for it.
Of course, even if you aren't convinced by the words here, these songs are impeccably written and performed and should convince by themselves. Ebbing and flowing at just the right points, tracks like "Film Noir" and "Old White Lincoln" have both breezy calms and swirling storms. "The Patient Ferris Wheel" and album-closer "The Backseat" are the most closely-allied with basic punk and, thus, have a tinge more aggression but still drip with warm romance. Slower numbers like the blues-tinged "Even Cowgirls Get The Blues" and the sparkling "Here's Looking At You, Kid" show the band's range. For me, the record's biggest stunner is "Casanova, Baby!" a rockabilly-ish, night-on-the-town number with great guitar work (dig that bridge!) and the album's best set of words ("every slow, mad song/is a night I'd like to spend with you"? Genuis, to these ears).
In the end, The '59 Sound is very much a regressive album; it doesn't try to advance any sort of music at all, it's almost stubbornly stuck in the past lyrically. But that's cool because the band has written a great set of tunes which live up to their influences and because the lyrical sentiments, as overly sentimental as they might be, are fun to get lost in. This album creates a world of beat-up classic cars, beaches at sunset, hotly anticipated county fairs, dancehalls filled with the sounds of 50's rock, charming, swooning boys in leather jackets and the beautiful, sundress-wearing girls who love them. It's a world where there's nothing that can't be fixed by a good, long drive or a dance with your sweetheart, where the only violence is when your friend knocks you out for making a pass at his girl (but you're still best buds after the ambulance arrives), where you can wash way all your problems with a dip in the river and where the daily grind of your job just gets you more ready for a late night of cruising and dancing. It's a world that's pretty damned far in the past, if it ever even existed at all, but wouldn't it be nice if our world was a bit more like it?
In a certain way, it's odd that 808's and '59 could be my two favourite albums of last year because, both thematically and sonically, they couldn't be more diametrically opposed. 808's is all depressive, paranoid truths, delivered with appropriately alien and synthetic musical backdrop; it's harsh at points but altogether necessary and, despite its frigidness, it finds pockets of warmth within heartache that make it all, ultimately, life-affirming. The '59 Sound, by contrast, feels like a musical postcard from a time that, if it ever existed at all, is long gone and, as such, it's all warm, mushy nostalgia and heart-on-sleeve working class sentiments backed up by fittingly scrappy, but never mean or overly aggressive, guitar rock.
The obvious start point for The Gaslight Anthem is Bruce Springsteen (more specifically, the Springsteen of Born To Run and prior, before the cynicism set in and he was creating grand lyrical mosaics out of everyday life) and, certainly, it checks out (hell, "Meet Me By The River's Edge" includes the lyric "no surrender/my Bobby Jean") but there seems to be a slowly developing genre of bands like this and I couldn't be happier. I haven't heard it termed yet but all these groups share a general aesthetic: Soulful, grown-man vocals, alternately twinkling or clacking guitars, working class subject matter, at least two of the band members looking like auto mechanics, punkish energy/enthusiasm, an affinity for cleaned-up 50's nostalgia, slight nods to old-school country (these bands are the first people you call in when putting together a Johnny Cash tribute record) and lead singer having a penchant for hair grease and sleeve tattoos. Examples of this "movement": The Loved Ones, Bad Religion (sometimes), Social Distortion (at their least emo), The Lawrence Arms, This Charming Man, Against Me!' (at their least shout-y) and Polar Bear Club.
The Gaslight Anthem, while certainly not the first band to do this sort of thing, are, in my mind, the best at it for a couple of reasons. Firstly, they're the band who has most fully stripped away the harshness and meanness of their punk rock roots, while not abandoning the energy. If one were to term The '59 Sound as a "punk " record, it would be more in the Ramones sense (stripped-down, speedy musicality with an appreciation for pre-Beatles rock & roll) than in the Sex Pistols sense (outright rage/nihilism, with confrontational singing and lyrics) but even that isn't really accurate; it's far too cleanly produced (but, thankfully, retains grit and energy) and has a bit greater tonal range. Secondly, they're the band with the most naked heartland-rock fixation. Not just Springsteen, but Dylan and Petty (who gets a chorus name check in "Even Cowgirls Get The Blues") too. The guitar sounds, often interlocking in patterns which alternately jangle brightly or clatter like those beat-up car engines they love to sing about, are the biggest give away in that regard but check out the rock-solid, but deceptively complex, rhythm section and the clever use of non-rock sounds (the cabaret stand-up bass on "Film Noir", the clanging church bells on the title track, the brief scat-singing (!) interlude on "Great Expectations") for further evidence.
There's also the issue of those lyrics, which are my third factor putting the band above their competition. If you're not like me, and don't have a sort of unreasonable nostalgia for an era you've never lived in, you probably won't go quite as ga-ga over the band's shameless appropriation of 50's motifs as I did. But, for me, this is mana from heaven: They sing about sleeping on beaches and using pay phones, one chorus references "high-top sneakers", "sailor tattoos" and an "old '55", another contains a wish about looking "like Elvis", they speak in grand declarations like "I'll love you forever/if I ever love at all", they reference Audrey Hepburn and Marylin Monroe, the phrase "twist the night away" is used with no irony, they think Ferris Wheels and carnivals are the coolest things ever. I could go on and on but you get the idea. To be fair, the band does, on occasion, try to bring a bit of edge to this fuzzy-dice nostalgia trip (there's a semi-hardcore punk backup shout on "The Patient Ferris Wheel" and "High Lonesome" contains a line about "the powder on the bar") but those ultimately feel sort of hollow, perhaps the last fleeting vestige of traditional punk being molted away. Of course, none of this would mean anything if the band didn't believe it; if they were winking or being ironic. But, as far as I can tell, they seem to be 100% serious about this stuff, which is pretty commendable. In an era where being whiny/angry is almost a guarantee of success (whether in standard radio-rock or more MTV-friendly emo), it's great to hear a band with this much zest and enthusiasm (even if they have to reach back nearly 60 years to find it). Heck, even the ex-girlfriend ballad "Here's Looking At You, Kid" and the dead friend-tribute title track are delivered with faint smiles of fondness than agonized cries of pain and are much better for it.
Of course, even if you aren't convinced by the words here, these songs are impeccably written and performed and should convince by themselves. Ebbing and flowing at just the right points, tracks like "Film Noir" and "Old White Lincoln" have both breezy calms and swirling storms. "The Patient Ferris Wheel" and album-closer "The Backseat" are the most closely-allied with basic punk and, thus, have a tinge more aggression but still drip with warm romance. Slower numbers like the blues-tinged "Even Cowgirls Get The Blues" and the sparkling "Here's Looking At You, Kid" show the band's range. For me, the record's biggest stunner is "Casanova, Baby!" a rockabilly-ish, night-on-the-town number with great guitar work (dig that bridge!) and the album's best set of words ("every slow, mad song/is a night I'd like to spend with you"? Genuis, to these ears).
In the end, The '59 Sound is very much a regressive album; it doesn't try to advance any sort of music at all, it's almost stubbornly stuck in the past lyrically. But that's cool because the band has written a great set of tunes which live up to their influences and because the lyrical sentiments, as overly sentimental as they might be, are fun to get lost in. This album creates a world of beat-up classic cars, beaches at sunset, hotly anticipated county fairs, dancehalls filled with the sounds of 50's rock, charming, swooning boys in leather jackets and the beautiful, sundress-wearing girls who love them. It's a world where there's nothing that can't be fixed by a good, long drive or a dance with your sweetheart, where the only violence is when your friend knocks you out for making a pass at his girl (but you're still best buds after the ambulance arrives), where you can wash way all your problems with a dip in the river and where the daily grind of your job just gets you more ready for a late night of cruising and dancing. It's a world that's pretty damned far in the past, if it ever even existed at all, but wouldn't it be nice if our world was a bit more like it?
Sunday, May 3, 2009
THIS TOWN IS A PRISON, WITH ITS FOUR WALLS CLOSING IN
- This week's Lost was some pretty serious business (in contrast to the relative silliness of the last episode) and it was also probably my favourite episode of Season 5 so far. Really, it's pretty simple: they added lots of background to flesh out a character who's already one of the more interesting members of the cast, they provided some new information (Widmore is Faraday's dad!), they ended with a big cliffhanger that makes you immediately anxious for next week and, most importantly, everything moved at a very snappy pace. In fact, Season 5 just might be the fastest-paced season in the show's history; it's practically warp-speed compared to Seasons 2 & 3, anyway. As much as Lost does sometimes need the side-stories or slower-paced character episodes, it's great to see lots of action and forward momentum as we're heading towards the season finale. And, yeah, that twist at the end was a pretty big shocker.
- Together Through Life is a good Bob Dylan album but it's nowhere near as good as his last few ones. I think that the fact that he co-wrote a lot of the lyrics with Roger Avary has had somewhat of a tone-down effect; there's not nearly as much clever wordplay here and there's a lot of (to be fair, deliberate) use of lyrical love cliches. Not that it's innately a problem to have Dylan make an album of love or break-up songs (and I do dig that the kind of love talked about here is of a distinctly adult variety, rather than the teenage yearning/lust present in most popular music) but I wish there was a bit more of his signature wit at work here. The best song on here is "Forgetful Heart", which brims with an old-school Dylan cynicism but also a bluesman woundedness, and has a smokey, deliberate groove. The addition of accordion to the musical arrangements adds a nice Latin flavour to some of the tunes but it also points to a big problem with later-day Dylan records in general and this one in specific. Namely he won't let the songs change musical shape over time, and that's a real problem when the songs are as long as they are here. "This Dream Of You", for example, rides the exact same violin-led vamp for all of its six-minute run time and it gets a little tiresome. Sometimes, that's a positive, though, as in "Shake Shake Mama" which grinds its rudimentary blues riffs to hypnotic effect (it's also the album's shortest song, which may have something to do with its relative quality). However, the album sounds tired to the point of somnambulance at times; the cumulative effect of these sleepy, whiskey-drenched love songs becoming simply boring rather than calming. The problem, as I see it, is that Dylan doesn't have a unifying thought for this record (well, other than "love" but that's so broad and done to death, it hardly counts). Time Out of Mind, his best album past the 60's, had a dark mortality as its underlying message and all the forms that takes (anger, resignation bitterness, etc.) but Together just sort of drifts without an anchor. You can really tell that it was cut quickly, in a burst of inspiration. Not to say its bad, though. The musicianship is generally excellent and the accordion and additional guitar (courtesy of the Heartbreakers' Mike Campbell) often provide lots of musical spark. And, again, there are very good songs here ("Beyond Here Lies Nothing" and the aforementioned "Forgetful Heart" chief among them) and it's actually better to take the album in bits and pieces rather than as a long form work because its overall slowness isn't as much of a factor that way. So, overall, it's good but a bit disappointing, coming from someone as usually awesome as Dylan, especially given his "recent" hot streak. Also, even though every reviewer had mentioned this, I really feel the need to note that "My Wife's Hometown" is just "I Just Wanna Make Love To You" with different (and, to be fair, much better and funnier) lyrics. It's fine that 'ol Bob Wants to pay tribute to the blues greats but I don't think that ripping their songs off wholesale and not giving them credit is the right way to do it, just saying.
- Together Through Life is a good Bob Dylan album but it's nowhere near as good as his last few ones. I think that the fact that he co-wrote a lot of the lyrics with Roger Avary has had somewhat of a tone-down effect; there's not nearly as much clever wordplay here and there's a lot of (to be fair, deliberate) use of lyrical love cliches. Not that it's innately a problem to have Dylan make an album of love or break-up songs (and I do dig that the kind of love talked about here is of a distinctly adult variety, rather than the teenage yearning/lust present in most popular music) but I wish there was a bit more of his signature wit at work here. The best song on here is "Forgetful Heart", which brims with an old-school Dylan cynicism but also a bluesman woundedness, and has a smokey, deliberate groove. The addition of accordion to the musical arrangements adds a nice Latin flavour to some of the tunes but it also points to a big problem with later-day Dylan records in general and this one in specific. Namely he won't let the songs change musical shape over time, and that's a real problem when the songs are as long as they are here. "This Dream Of You", for example, rides the exact same violin-led vamp for all of its six-minute run time and it gets a little tiresome. Sometimes, that's a positive, though, as in "Shake Shake Mama" which grinds its rudimentary blues riffs to hypnotic effect (it's also the album's shortest song, which may have something to do with its relative quality). However, the album sounds tired to the point of somnambulance at times; the cumulative effect of these sleepy, whiskey-drenched love songs becoming simply boring rather than calming. The problem, as I see it, is that Dylan doesn't have a unifying thought for this record (well, other than "love" but that's so broad and done to death, it hardly counts). Time Out of Mind, his best album past the 60's, had a dark mortality as its underlying message and all the forms that takes (anger, resignation bitterness, etc.) but Together just sort of drifts without an anchor. You can really tell that it was cut quickly, in a burst of inspiration. Not to say its bad, though. The musicianship is generally excellent and the accordion and additional guitar (courtesy of the Heartbreakers' Mike Campbell) often provide lots of musical spark. And, again, there are very good songs here ("Beyond Here Lies Nothing" and the aforementioned "Forgetful Heart" chief among them) and it's actually better to take the album in bits and pieces rather than as a long form work because its overall slowness isn't as much of a factor that way. So, overall, it's good but a bit disappointing, coming from someone as usually awesome as Dylan, especially given his "recent" hot streak. Also, even though every reviewer had mentioned this, I really feel the need to note that "My Wife's Hometown" is just "I Just Wanna Make Love To You" with different (and, to be fair, much better and funnier) lyrics. It's fine that 'ol Bob Wants to pay tribute to the blues greats but I don't think that ripping their songs off wholesale and not giving them credit is the right way to do it, just saying.
Saturday, April 18, 2009
Old Posts #5: My Favourite Albums Of The First Half Of 2008
Well, it's halfway through the year and that means that all music critics are assessing the past six months' worth of records and determining which were the best; and since I like to think of myself as a music critic here's my picks, in order from last to first, from 10 to 1.
#10: Nouns by No Age
No Age are the total critical darlings of the year so far, which made me wary as I've been tricked into listening to some terrible stuff via the power of a Pitchfork recommendation. Furthermore, I thought that the band's highly regarded 2007 EP collection Weirdo Rippers was a mess that contained a few good songs and a lot of aimless, annoying noise jams. "How much could have changed with the band in just a few months?", I thought. However, I eventually caved in and gave the album a listen; in retrospect, I'm quite glad I did. The parts of the band's previous material that I didn't like (namely, the diffuse noise passages) are, on Nouns, fully enveloped into the context of their songwriting, which is memorable without being bombastic or overbearing with its hooks. No Age also utilise a fairly interesting noise/beauty contrast; they use loud, heavily distorted guitars and jagged percussion rumbles frequently but these are almost always offset by the tranquility of elements like the subdued keyboard shimmers on "Things I Did When I Was Dead" or moments like the gorgeous synth coda on "Teen Creeps". That the band keeps these elements in perfect balance so that the album is both soothing and invigorating, never too riotous but never too pillowy, is a tribute both their clever production abilities and their deft songwriting, which No Age most certainly have both of in spades.
#9: For Emma, Forever Ago by Bon Iver
I find that personal histories of recording artists, when given by critics, are usually either stupid attempts to justify their worth as artists or unnecessary baseball trivia to pad out magazine space but, in this case, the story behind the record deserves repeating. Basically, Bon Iver is one Justin Vernon's newest recording project, after the breakup of his band DeYarmond Edison in 2006, which was mostly written and recorded as he spent a winter by himself in a Wisconsin cabin. The reason I tell you this is that For Emma... bears the marks of a lonely, solitary time where complex emotions were developed and never quite resolved. Consisting mostly of Vernon's high, lonesome voice and his basic guitar strums (along with a few overdubs of various other acoustic accompaniments) the album has a timeworn quality to it (some of which must be attributed to the album's recording on very basic equipment), suggesting turn-of-the-century folk recordings without actively pursuing the same effect. Granted, Bon Iver might not be doing much new here (the sensitive-guy-with-a-guitar genre is as old as indie itself) but songs like "Re: Stacks" have a warmly inviting melancholy provided by the touch of a strong songwriter and the more truly sad moments pack a grand emotional punch befitting Bon Iver's folk and sadcore influences.
#8: Live The Storm by Disfear
Many people talk about how metal has lost its sense of fun in pursuit of more complex forms of the genre, which typically prize emotional ruination and compositional complexity over a good, old-fashioned shout-along chorus. Although I don't necessarily agree with the assessment that this automatically makes the music worse (not at least while I've got Nachtmystium's new album here with me), I often wish that metal were more upbeat while listening to Live The Storm. All I know about Disfear is that they're Swedish D-Beat veterans who recruited a new singer and a second guitarist for this record; I've never heard any of their other material but if Live The Storm is any indication Disfear might be the greatest torchbearers for Motorhead-style biker metal that are still going today. None of the material on this record bears the influence of any of the innovations in atmosphere or composition brought on by death or black metal, and that's just fine with me. Disfear make loud, angry metallic stompers powered by storming hardcore rhythms and corroded, grinding guitar textures with occasional speedy arpeggios thrown in for flavour. The songs balance their ferocity with a genuine catchiness, mostly provided by the occasional gang-chant chorus, that is altogether rare in metal today (clearly, these guys like their Iron Maiden). Singer Tomas Lindberg might decry society's ills in his lyrics (not that you could tell from his gurgle-shout vocals) but this album just makes me hyped up to punch walls and mosh, like any good classic metal record should.
#7: Hercules & Love Affair by Hercules & Love Affair
Confession time: I don't like disco, pretty much, at all. For my money, Giorgio Moroder's best work came in his new wave dance-pop era, when he started making soundtracks for movies like Scarface and Flashdance, and Gamble & Huff-style disco has always been too deliriously campy for me to take it seriously on any level. Then again, I've never really been one for dancing so I'm probably not the best judge in the world as to disco's merits. Anyway, I gave Hercules & Love Affair's debut a listen mostly out of curiosity due to its high critical standing, expecting that I wouldn't like it at all; how wrong I was. The thing that keeps pulling me back to this album, despite its lovely, breezy production and strong dramatic vocals, is the masterful songwriting on display; from the disco-fied torch song opener "Time Will" to the swirling funk of the title track to the restrained bounce of "Raise Me Up", everything here is memorable as both a set of production tones and styles (and the album is nicely varied, in this respect) and, more importantly, as good, well-written songs. It's also interesting to me how this project has seemingly brought out the best in all of its collaborators: !!!'s Tyler Pope brings funky bass to a non-obnoxious setting, Antony uses his formidable vocal chops in service of something other than the formless chamber music of his solo records, and so on. Ultimately, this record, with its airy string swoops, rattling congas, insistent bass kicks and pulsing synths, made me question whether I actually don't like disco, and it's a rare album indeed that could do that (for the record, though, "Stayin' Alive" still sucks).
#6: Rising Down by The Roots
I've always really wanted to like The Roots (they have positive social messages, they're strong instrumentalists and they just seem like really nice guys) but there's been various barriers-to-entry for me at different points in their career: at times, it was their tendency to get noodly with their instrumentation, in some cases, their pedantic "we're the saviours of rap" posturing was too overbearing, and, at certain points, main rapper Black Thought came off as an utter dead fish, devoid of all charisma. Thus, I only really liked the band in short doses, on the songs where everything came together just right ("Adrenaline", for example). All of that changed with 2006's Game Theory, an album of cold propulsion and stark sadness that cut away the fat of previous Roots albums for a record made entirely of high points (well, with the exception of the closer "Can't Stop This" but, whatever). Rising Down, although more explicitly angry and political, continues in much the same vein with songs propelled by drummer and bandleader ?uestlove's hard break beats and the icy, rotted synth tones of keyboardist Kamal Grey. Black Thought's lyrics rarely slide into political grandstanding but, whether he's voicing inner fears and concerns (as on "I Can't Help It"), offering specified stories (as on "Singing Man") or simply boasting (as on "75 Bars"), there's a dark cloud hanging over this record. Throughout, both Black Thought and the guest rappers utilize cold, near-monotone voices in giving their deconstructions of social and political ills while the drums slam and bang hard and the sythns blurt and cast ghostly trails behind them. Even the Philly-pride posse cut "Get Busy" devolves into descriptions of the dangers of city life within about eight bars. There are a few change-ups to this formula ("I Will Not Apologize" is a mid-tempo afrobeat exercise driven by guitars, "Criminal" has an unexpected blues/country tone to it and album closer "Rising Up", the record's only hopeful song, is a pretty great go-go workout) but overall this is probably going to be the darkest, angriest hip-hop release all year and I wouldn't have my Roots any other way.
#5: Vampire Weekend by Vampire Weekend
Vampire Weekend were hyped from almost the moment that they formed and this wave of praise (with its inevitable backlash) crested around the time of the January release of their debut album. People who heard the record were, for the most part, sharply divided into two camps: those who loved it and those who hated it with a passion. The people who hated it made some good points (the band's preppy image can be annoying/cloying, the ideas they were getting critical praise for were done previously, their music is, in essence, low-impact pop, etc.) but I ultimately felt that the naysayers here were either backlashing on the record simply because it had critical clout or were bothered by the band's persona, which does, admittedly, leak into their lyrics, more than their music. But, either way, I hope that were far enough out from this album's initial flurry to appreciate it for what it is: neither some saviour of music or an overrated blog-rock travesty but simply a collection of sunny, catchy, and ultimately great pop songs. Vampire Weekend specialize in a very particular kind of music that's gone out of vogue in indie land, as bands go for epic sweeps and generational anthems, and the verve with which they approach their uncomplicated pop is refreshing. Every song on this album is intensely catchy and memorable in the way that sunny 60's pop or twee 80's collage indie are; which is to say, in the way which hits the human pleasure centres for enjoyment in the quickest and most obvious ways. That said, Vampire Weekend have a lot of interesting things going on in their sound as well; the hype built up around them was, in large part, due to their use of afropop sounds but, while their circular, cleanly-toned guitars do sound distinctly African, I think that keyboardist Rostam Batmanglij's classical tones inform the music, mostly by making it sound a little more prim and proper than it already did. That's not to say that the music here is boring, just controlled, and drummer Chris Tomson adds all sorts of interesting percussion tricks to these songs to push them along, sometimes even fighting against the song's melody line with an out of place cymbal hit just to add slight conflict. Like many albums, Vampire Weekend comes off more as a collection of songs than as a fully realized statement but when those songs are as good as those contain here, I'm not going to complain.
#4: April by Sun Kil Moon
Mark Kozelek has made a career out of downtrodden sensitive guy indie-folk and April, his newest album under the Sun Kil Moon moniker, is no exception; the album is made up almost entirely of long, languid songs of introspection powered by Kozelek's weary voice and lightly strummed acoustic guitar with the occasional gleaming country guitar lick or lightly ticking drumbeat. In lesser hands, this sort of thing would be utterly insufferable but Kozelek has absolutely mastered this sort of sonic warm milk and, for the first time in a while, he shows a willingness to play with the form a little. The ghostly backup harmonies on "Lost Verses" add welcome detail to Kozelek's country-toned musings and the lights plucks of banjo on "Unlit Hallway" perk up what would otherwise be a standard melancholic folk jam but the biggest surprises on April are "The Light" and "Tonight The Sky", two songs which use ragged, Neil Young-esque electric guitars in place of the acoustics and add new dimensions to the Kozelek's words and vocals. Even with these relative experiments, the album is still dominated by songs like the light folk closer "Blue Orchids"; and that's just fine with me, Kozelek's voice always resonates with tangible sadness and his lyrics and songwriting are as good as ever. Sometimes, it's okay to stick with what you know.
#3: All I Intended To Be by Emmylou Harris
Stumble Into Grace, Harris' previous album, was produced by Malcolm Burn who created a modern ambiance, some of which was created by odd studio effects, for Ms. Harris to stretch her songwriting legs and, perhaps, connect with a younger alt-country audience. Well, the record certainly succeeded in the second area, it landed at #6 on the Billboard album charts, but, despite it's critical acclaim, I thought it uneven and somewhat awkward, Emmylou just didn't sound right in the atmosphere Burn created for her. All I Intended To Be, then, seems to be her attempt to reconnect with her roots as she hired Brian Ahern, who produced her classic mid-70's albums, to produce and chose a set of mostly covers to sing (she writes or co-writes only four songs out of the thirteen here). But 70's Harris isn't Harris as she is now and the album confirms this. A glowing set of melancholy folk with only slight country accents, All I Intended To Be draws its power from both Harris' powerfully emotive singing and Ahern's atmospheric, intimate production. The sonic detailing at work here is impeccable; from the tangle of guitar chimes which opens "Shores Of White Sand" to the country slide running throughout "Not Enough", the album sparkles with the skill of a master arranger. However, despite the beautiful production, it's Harris' voice which truly makes the record; it's true that she's lost some of her range over the years (her vocal cracks on "Kern River" don't sound intentional) but there's still a power and a warmth to that voice that just kills me, whether she's powering along "Hold On" or being more subdued on "Gold". Ultimately, All I Intended To Be is just masterful: an old pro, still at the top of her game, rediscovering what she does best with intimate, lush production to match.
#2: In Ghost Colours by Cut Copy
A lot of the records on my list have been rather downbeat in nature, which is odd given that I'm creating this list during the summer, but In Ghost Colours bucks this trend with abloom. Cut Copy were previously known to me for their 2004 album Bright Like Neon Love which I thought was an average, inconsistent dance-rock record made by a band with obvious roots in guitar-fuzz indie pop. I filed the band away and thought that I would probably never think of them again, that was, until In Ghost Colours came along. Cut Copy remind me a lot of New Order in their cross-breading of rock instrumentation and electronics but there's something more going on here. Where New Order tended towards icy and robotic with their dancefloor jams (understandable as they were all originally members goth-rock pioneers Joy Division), Cut Copy are all overflowing exuberance and effervescence, happy indie summer-pop given a dance makeover. Lead singer Dan Whitford might not have a whole lot to say but his casual delivery just adds to the swirling delirium here and his band's songwriting could stand alone as well-crafted indie-pop without the electronics if it needed to. But the dancefloor ready production, by DFA house guy Tim Goldsworthy, adds the delicious icing to the cake making compulsively danceable material out of these songs. Furthurmore, the synths and martial drumbeats just add to the warmth of the songs, setting them awash with hazy, near-psychedelic atmosphere, even seemingly cold elements like the pumped-up bass on "Lights and Music" or the vocoder on "Feel The Love" feel just right. One of the best things about In Ghost Colours is that, unlike many albums, it works as a whole as well as it does in individual pieces. It flows like a perfectly sequenced DJ set: starting off with the most uptempo stuff, moving into a cool down period (with the gorgeous instrumental "We Fight For Diamonds"), starting up again and changing things up periodically from there (including with a strange-but-invigorating country-influenced ballad called "Strangers In The Wind"). As far as summer music, you could find little that would equal this in terms of both pure enjoyment and craftsmanship, proving that sometimes details are what makes the record.
#1: Third by Portishead
People who don't like to hear electronic instruments in music often claim that, because of its ability to carefully sequence and select tones and styles, music which uses electronics heavily tends to "all sound the same". While I agree that a certain fire and grit that comes with analog recording is gone when an artist heavily uses electronic methods, the top two albums on this list prove that electronics are a musical resource as strong and legitimate as any other, mostly by sounding totally different from one another . Where Cut Copy used synths and computerized effects as a way to enhance the sunny fun of their indie-pop, Portishead create an apocalyptic atmosphere of darkness and danger on Third. For a band previously known (over ten years ago, it should be noted) for making a languid and relaxing, if slightly morose, mutation of electronica known as "trip-hop" (a label which the band despises), Third comes as a shock: it cuts away the warmth of the grooves in their previous material, mostly by removing the dusty, crackling soul samples that provided the drumbeats, letting only the darkest elements of Portishead's sound come through. What were once slightly unnerving background synth shimmers are now fully upfront attacks of jet-black electronic tone. Guitarist Adrian Utley once injected warm twangs into the songs, but now his guitar either pings unsettlingly ("Nylon Smile"), growls furiously ("Hunter") or crunches with bludgeoning effect ("Threads"). About the only thing that remains from the band's previous albums is Beth Gibbons' heavenly quavering vocals, but even those become much more darkly-tinged in these atmospheres, she sounds like she's fighting for dear life in this dark sonic maelstrom, and just barely hanging on. Furthermore, her lyrics have grown much darker; she once sang of love's redemptive power (on the 1994 song "Sour Times") but the only time she addresses a relationship here, she feels unworthy of it ("I don't know what I've done to deserve you", she sings on "Nylon Smile") and otherwise she sings of depression and mental instability with devastating effect. In fact, the only time a glimpse of light is let into her worldview is on "Deep Water", where she sings of overcoming fear, but that song (a minute-and-a-half ukulele interlude with barbershop vocal backups) is such a blatant anomaly that it hardly breaks the darkness contained here. Third is not an easy album to listen to, and I have no idea why it was released in the spring when it's clearly a dead-of-winter record, but it has a powerful emotional pull created by both Gibbons' singing and the band's musical dexterity. The songs here range from clattering garage-kraut ("We Carry On") to high-wire cabaret ("Hunter") to martial electronic stomp ("Machine Gun"), but all fit the central aesthetic: a deeply cold and unsettling combination of Black Sabbath death-gurgle guitars, eerie horror-movie synths and rattling percussion figures. Third is an album made pretty much for one, deeply depressed, mood but there's no better album for that mood this year and its moments of hard-won beauty (the free-jazz horn bridge on "Magic Doors", the shining guitar coda of "Small") feel all the sweeter when surrounded but such darkness. Third is a masterpiece in its chosen idiom; I suggest that you spend $15 and 5o minutes on it and I promise you won't be disappointed if you do.
#10: Nouns by No Age
No Age are the total critical darlings of the year so far, which made me wary as I've been tricked into listening to some terrible stuff via the power of a Pitchfork recommendation. Furthermore, I thought that the band's highly regarded 2007 EP collection Weirdo Rippers was a mess that contained a few good songs and a lot of aimless, annoying noise jams. "How much could have changed with the band in just a few months?", I thought. However, I eventually caved in and gave the album a listen; in retrospect, I'm quite glad I did. The parts of the band's previous material that I didn't like (namely, the diffuse noise passages) are, on Nouns, fully enveloped into the context of their songwriting, which is memorable without being bombastic or overbearing with its hooks. No Age also utilise a fairly interesting noise/beauty contrast; they use loud, heavily distorted guitars and jagged percussion rumbles frequently but these are almost always offset by the tranquility of elements like the subdued keyboard shimmers on "Things I Did When I Was Dead" or moments like the gorgeous synth coda on "Teen Creeps". That the band keeps these elements in perfect balance so that the album is both soothing and invigorating, never too riotous but never too pillowy, is a tribute both their clever production abilities and their deft songwriting, which No Age most certainly have both of in spades.
#9: For Emma, Forever Ago by Bon Iver
I find that personal histories of recording artists, when given by critics, are usually either stupid attempts to justify their worth as artists or unnecessary baseball trivia to pad out magazine space but, in this case, the story behind the record deserves repeating. Basically, Bon Iver is one Justin Vernon's newest recording project, after the breakup of his band DeYarmond Edison in 2006, which was mostly written and recorded as he spent a winter by himself in a Wisconsin cabin. The reason I tell you this is that For Emma... bears the marks of a lonely, solitary time where complex emotions were developed and never quite resolved. Consisting mostly of Vernon's high, lonesome voice and his basic guitar strums (along with a few overdubs of various other acoustic accompaniments) the album has a timeworn quality to it (some of which must be attributed to the album's recording on very basic equipment), suggesting turn-of-the-century folk recordings without actively pursuing the same effect. Granted, Bon Iver might not be doing much new here (the sensitive-guy-with-a-guitar genre is as old as indie itself) but songs like "Re: Stacks" have a warmly inviting melancholy provided by the touch of a strong songwriter and the more truly sad moments pack a grand emotional punch befitting Bon Iver's folk and sadcore influences.
#8: Live The Storm by Disfear
Many people talk about how metal has lost its sense of fun in pursuit of more complex forms of the genre, which typically prize emotional ruination and compositional complexity over a good, old-fashioned shout-along chorus. Although I don't necessarily agree with the assessment that this automatically makes the music worse (not at least while I've got Nachtmystium's new album here with me), I often wish that metal were more upbeat while listening to Live The Storm. All I know about Disfear is that they're Swedish D-Beat veterans who recruited a new singer and a second guitarist for this record; I've never heard any of their other material but if Live The Storm is any indication Disfear might be the greatest torchbearers for Motorhead-style biker metal that are still going today. None of the material on this record bears the influence of any of the innovations in atmosphere or composition brought on by death or black metal, and that's just fine with me. Disfear make loud, angry metallic stompers powered by storming hardcore rhythms and corroded, grinding guitar textures with occasional speedy arpeggios thrown in for flavour. The songs balance their ferocity with a genuine catchiness, mostly provided by the occasional gang-chant chorus, that is altogether rare in metal today (clearly, these guys like their Iron Maiden). Singer Tomas Lindberg might decry society's ills in his lyrics (not that you could tell from his gurgle-shout vocals) but this album just makes me hyped up to punch walls and mosh, like any good classic metal record should.
#7: Hercules & Love Affair by Hercules & Love Affair
Confession time: I don't like disco, pretty much, at all. For my money, Giorgio Moroder's best work came in his new wave dance-pop era, when he started making soundtracks for movies like Scarface and Flashdance, and Gamble & Huff-style disco has always been too deliriously campy for me to take it seriously on any level. Then again, I've never really been one for dancing so I'm probably not the best judge in the world as to disco's merits. Anyway, I gave Hercules & Love Affair's debut a listen mostly out of curiosity due to its high critical standing, expecting that I wouldn't like it at all; how wrong I was. The thing that keeps pulling me back to this album, despite its lovely, breezy production and strong dramatic vocals, is the masterful songwriting on display; from the disco-fied torch song opener "Time Will" to the swirling funk of the title track to the restrained bounce of "Raise Me Up", everything here is memorable as both a set of production tones and styles (and the album is nicely varied, in this respect) and, more importantly, as good, well-written songs. It's also interesting to me how this project has seemingly brought out the best in all of its collaborators: !!!'s Tyler Pope brings funky bass to a non-obnoxious setting, Antony uses his formidable vocal chops in service of something other than the formless chamber music of his solo records, and so on. Ultimately, this record, with its airy string swoops, rattling congas, insistent bass kicks and pulsing synths, made me question whether I actually don't like disco, and it's a rare album indeed that could do that (for the record, though, "Stayin' Alive" still sucks).
#6: Rising Down by The Roots
I've always really wanted to like The Roots (they have positive social messages, they're strong instrumentalists and they just seem like really nice guys) but there's been various barriers-to-entry for me at different points in their career: at times, it was their tendency to get noodly with their instrumentation, in some cases, their pedantic "we're the saviours of rap" posturing was too overbearing, and, at certain points, main rapper Black Thought came off as an utter dead fish, devoid of all charisma. Thus, I only really liked the band in short doses, on the songs where everything came together just right ("Adrenaline", for example). All of that changed with 2006's Game Theory, an album of cold propulsion and stark sadness that cut away the fat of previous Roots albums for a record made entirely of high points (well, with the exception of the closer "Can't Stop This" but, whatever). Rising Down, although more explicitly angry and political, continues in much the same vein with songs propelled by drummer and bandleader ?uestlove's hard break beats and the icy, rotted synth tones of keyboardist Kamal Grey. Black Thought's lyrics rarely slide into political grandstanding but, whether he's voicing inner fears and concerns (as on "I Can't Help It"), offering specified stories (as on "Singing Man") or simply boasting (as on "75 Bars"), there's a dark cloud hanging over this record. Throughout, both Black Thought and the guest rappers utilize cold, near-monotone voices in giving their deconstructions of social and political ills while the drums slam and bang hard and the sythns blurt and cast ghostly trails behind them. Even the Philly-pride posse cut "Get Busy" devolves into descriptions of the dangers of city life within about eight bars. There are a few change-ups to this formula ("I Will Not Apologize" is a mid-tempo afrobeat exercise driven by guitars, "Criminal" has an unexpected blues/country tone to it and album closer "Rising Up", the record's only hopeful song, is a pretty great go-go workout) but overall this is probably going to be the darkest, angriest hip-hop release all year and I wouldn't have my Roots any other way.
#5: Vampire Weekend by Vampire Weekend
Vampire Weekend were hyped from almost the moment that they formed and this wave of praise (with its inevitable backlash) crested around the time of the January release of their debut album. People who heard the record were, for the most part, sharply divided into two camps: those who loved it and those who hated it with a passion. The people who hated it made some good points (the band's preppy image can be annoying/cloying, the ideas they were getting critical praise for were done previously, their music is, in essence, low-impact pop, etc.) but I ultimately felt that the naysayers here were either backlashing on the record simply because it had critical clout or were bothered by the band's persona, which does, admittedly, leak into their lyrics, more than their music. But, either way, I hope that were far enough out from this album's initial flurry to appreciate it for what it is: neither some saviour of music or an overrated blog-rock travesty but simply a collection of sunny, catchy, and ultimately great pop songs. Vampire Weekend specialize in a very particular kind of music that's gone out of vogue in indie land, as bands go for epic sweeps and generational anthems, and the verve with which they approach their uncomplicated pop is refreshing. Every song on this album is intensely catchy and memorable in the way that sunny 60's pop or twee 80's collage indie are; which is to say, in the way which hits the human pleasure centres for enjoyment in the quickest and most obvious ways. That said, Vampire Weekend have a lot of interesting things going on in their sound as well; the hype built up around them was, in large part, due to their use of afropop sounds but, while their circular, cleanly-toned guitars do sound distinctly African, I think that keyboardist Rostam Batmanglij's classical tones inform the music, mostly by making it sound a little more prim and proper than it already did. That's not to say that the music here is boring, just controlled, and drummer Chris Tomson adds all sorts of interesting percussion tricks to these songs to push them along, sometimes even fighting against the song's melody line with an out of place cymbal hit just to add slight conflict. Like many albums, Vampire Weekend comes off more as a collection of songs than as a fully realized statement but when those songs are as good as those contain here, I'm not going to complain.
#4: April by Sun Kil Moon
Mark Kozelek has made a career out of downtrodden sensitive guy indie-folk and April, his newest album under the Sun Kil Moon moniker, is no exception; the album is made up almost entirely of long, languid songs of introspection powered by Kozelek's weary voice and lightly strummed acoustic guitar with the occasional gleaming country guitar lick or lightly ticking drumbeat. In lesser hands, this sort of thing would be utterly insufferable but Kozelek has absolutely mastered this sort of sonic warm milk and, for the first time in a while, he shows a willingness to play with the form a little. The ghostly backup harmonies on "Lost Verses" add welcome detail to Kozelek's country-toned musings and the lights plucks of banjo on "Unlit Hallway" perk up what would otherwise be a standard melancholic folk jam but the biggest surprises on April are "The Light" and "Tonight The Sky", two songs which use ragged, Neil Young-esque electric guitars in place of the acoustics and add new dimensions to the Kozelek's words and vocals. Even with these relative experiments, the album is still dominated by songs like the light folk closer "Blue Orchids"; and that's just fine with me, Kozelek's voice always resonates with tangible sadness and his lyrics and songwriting are as good as ever. Sometimes, it's okay to stick with what you know.
#3: All I Intended To Be by Emmylou Harris
Stumble Into Grace, Harris' previous album, was produced by Malcolm Burn who created a modern ambiance, some of which was created by odd studio effects, for Ms. Harris to stretch her songwriting legs and, perhaps, connect with a younger alt-country audience. Well, the record certainly succeeded in the second area, it landed at #6 on the Billboard album charts, but, despite it's critical acclaim, I thought it uneven and somewhat awkward, Emmylou just didn't sound right in the atmosphere Burn created for her. All I Intended To Be, then, seems to be her attempt to reconnect with her roots as she hired Brian Ahern, who produced her classic mid-70's albums, to produce and chose a set of mostly covers to sing (she writes or co-writes only four songs out of the thirteen here). But 70's Harris isn't Harris as she is now and the album confirms this. A glowing set of melancholy folk with only slight country accents, All I Intended To Be draws its power from both Harris' powerfully emotive singing and Ahern's atmospheric, intimate production. The sonic detailing at work here is impeccable; from the tangle of guitar chimes which opens "Shores Of White Sand" to the country slide running throughout "Not Enough", the album sparkles with the skill of a master arranger. However, despite the beautiful production, it's Harris' voice which truly makes the record; it's true that she's lost some of her range over the years (her vocal cracks on "Kern River" don't sound intentional) but there's still a power and a warmth to that voice that just kills me, whether she's powering along "Hold On" or being more subdued on "Gold". Ultimately, All I Intended To Be is just masterful: an old pro, still at the top of her game, rediscovering what she does best with intimate, lush production to match.
#2: In Ghost Colours by Cut Copy
A lot of the records on my list have been rather downbeat in nature, which is odd given that I'm creating this list during the summer, but In Ghost Colours bucks this trend with abloom. Cut Copy were previously known to me for their 2004 album Bright Like Neon Love which I thought was an average, inconsistent dance-rock record made by a band with obvious roots in guitar-fuzz indie pop. I filed the band away and thought that I would probably never think of them again, that was, until In Ghost Colours came along. Cut Copy remind me a lot of New Order in their cross-breading of rock instrumentation and electronics but there's something more going on here. Where New Order tended towards icy and robotic with their dancefloor jams (understandable as they were all originally members goth-rock pioneers Joy Division), Cut Copy are all overflowing exuberance and effervescence, happy indie summer-pop given a dance makeover. Lead singer Dan Whitford might not have a whole lot to say but his casual delivery just adds to the swirling delirium here and his band's songwriting could stand alone as well-crafted indie-pop without the electronics if it needed to. But the dancefloor ready production, by DFA house guy Tim Goldsworthy, adds the delicious icing to the cake making compulsively danceable material out of these songs. Furthurmore, the synths and martial drumbeats just add to the warmth of the songs, setting them awash with hazy, near-psychedelic atmosphere, even seemingly cold elements like the pumped-up bass on "Lights and Music" or the vocoder on "Feel The Love" feel just right. One of the best things about In Ghost Colours is that, unlike many albums, it works as a whole as well as it does in individual pieces. It flows like a perfectly sequenced DJ set: starting off with the most uptempo stuff, moving into a cool down period (with the gorgeous instrumental "We Fight For Diamonds"), starting up again and changing things up periodically from there (including with a strange-but-invigorating country-influenced ballad called "Strangers In The Wind"). As far as summer music, you could find little that would equal this in terms of both pure enjoyment and craftsmanship, proving that sometimes details are what makes the record.
#1: Third by Portishead
People who don't like to hear electronic instruments in music often claim that, because of its ability to carefully sequence and select tones and styles, music which uses electronics heavily tends to "all sound the same". While I agree that a certain fire and grit that comes with analog recording is gone when an artist heavily uses electronic methods, the top two albums on this list prove that electronics are a musical resource as strong and legitimate as any other, mostly by sounding totally different from one another . Where Cut Copy used synths and computerized effects as a way to enhance the sunny fun of their indie-pop, Portishead create an apocalyptic atmosphere of darkness and danger on Third. For a band previously known (over ten years ago, it should be noted) for making a languid and relaxing, if slightly morose, mutation of electronica known as "trip-hop" (a label which the band despises), Third comes as a shock: it cuts away the warmth of the grooves in their previous material, mostly by removing the dusty, crackling soul samples that provided the drumbeats, letting only the darkest elements of Portishead's sound come through. What were once slightly unnerving background synth shimmers are now fully upfront attacks of jet-black electronic tone. Guitarist Adrian Utley once injected warm twangs into the songs, but now his guitar either pings unsettlingly ("Nylon Smile"), growls furiously ("Hunter") or crunches with bludgeoning effect ("Threads"). About the only thing that remains from the band's previous albums is Beth Gibbons' heavenly quavering vocals, but even those become much more darkly-tinged in these atmospheres, she sounds like she's fighting for dear life in this dark sonic maelstrom, and just barely hanging on. Furthermore, her lyrics have grown much darker; she once sang of love's redemptive power (on the 1994 song "Sour Times") but the only time she addresses a relationship here, she feels unworthy of it ("I don't know what I've done to deserve you", she sings on "Nylon Smile") and otherwise she sings of depression and mental instability with devastating effect. In fact, the only time a glimpse of light is let into her worldview is on "Deep Water", where she sings of overcoming fear, but that song (a minute-and-a-half ukulele interlude with barbershop vocal backups) is such a blatant anomaly that it hardly breaks the darkness contained here. Third is not an easy album to listen to, and I have no idea why it was released in the spring when it's clearly a dead-of-winter record, but it has a powerful emotional pull created by both Gibbons' singing and the band's musical dexterity. The songs here range from clattering garage-kraut ("We Carry On") to high-wire cabaret ("Hunter") to martial electronic stomp ("Machine Gun"), but all fit the central aesthetic: a deeply cold and unsettling combination of Black Sabbath death-gurgle guitars, eerie horror-movie synths and rattling percussion figures. Third is an album made pretty much for one, deeply depressed, mood but there's no better album for that mood this year and its moments of hard-won beauty (the free-jazz horn bridge on "Magic Doors", the shining guitar coda of "Small") feel all the sweeter when surrounded but such darkness. Third is a masterpiece in its chosen idiom; I suggest that you spend $15 and 5o minutes on it and I promise you won't be disappointed if you do.
Old Posts # 4: Rating The Hits
A new concept for this blog (stolen directly from the A.V. Club's dearly departed "This Was Pop" column), I'm going to listen to the top 10 songs on iTunes (as of 11 A.M. on July 1st in the Canadian store) and grade them on a scale of 1-10.
#10: Burnin' Up by The Jonas Brothers
The Jonas Brothers are, if you haven't heard of them, which you most likely have, are Disney's newest band/marketing construct to be pushed onto a receptive public in the wake of the success story of Hanna Montana. They're pretty much pre-ordained to be the biggest thing in music this year and I can see why: the band is composed of teenage-heartthrob guys who appear as charmingly nice doofs in their music videos and public appearances, star in Disney Channel original movies and play low-impact, easily digestible guitar pop. However, the fact that they're going to sell big doesn't necessarily mean that they're good, as evidenced by this single off of their new album, which is coming out sometime in July. The best thing about the song is the 20 second skit at the beginning of its music video ("She was looking at me," "No, she wasn't"), otherwise, I don't get it. The singer, whichever one of the brothers he is, sort of bleats generic unrequited love talk in a nasal, semi-emo tone while the track's drums tick mechanically behind him, there's not even a good harmony bit (which I would kinda expect from a group like this) to lighten the load; the backup vocals just add to the annoyance by swooping around the lead with no sense of timing. Furthermore, the song has these bizarre bits of new-wave in it, such as the synth-blurts in the chorus and the mid-song drum machine breakdown, which seemingly exist only to make it more fluffy and pop. The only thing I like about this is the somewhat crunchy stop-start guitars, but those don't make up for the track's other problems, not even a bit. 3/10
#9: Never Too Late by Hedley
This thing lost points with me immediately by having the same title as a terrible Three Days Grace grunge-ballad that was sorta big last year and, although I'm happy to report that this song is better than that piece of crap, this song isn't that great either. I give Hedley credit for switching up their risible faux-punk for this track, which works a pretty-good lite-reggae groove, with some nicely sliding guitars in the background for texture, but that goodwill is almost immediately erased by singer Jacob Hoggard's whining vocals, which scrape all over the track, doing it no favours. If Hoggard would tone down the histrionics and the band would beef up the backbeat a little (the rhythm section sounds too distant here) this could be a decent white-boy reggae jam (like a lesser Sublime) but as it stands, it's just the least-terrible of Hedley's terrible singles. 5/10
#8: When I Grow Up by The Pussycat Dolls
Alright, here we go with the true pain; I guess it was inevitable that the Dolls and Rodney Jerkins would end up working together as Jerkins was primarily responsible for producing the first wave of sexbot-pop that the Dolls have updated for a new audience. The song is, of course, terrible; a mess of dreaming-to-be-famous cliches sung in auto-tuned-to-hell vocals by the one member of the group who sings with annoying backup "ha, ha"s from the rest. This might play okay in a club, it has Jerkins' standard-issue candy-strobe sythns and mechanized hand claps going on, but it feels too tight and mechanical to allow for a good dance experience. The only thing that's somewhat defensible about the song is that it samples the, totally awesome, descending riff from the Yardbirds' "He's Always There" for its backbeat thrust but there's so much distracting crap thrown on top of that riff that it only functions to remind me that I should listen to the Yarbirds more. So, thank you, Pussycat Dolls, for that, but not for another godawful song. 2/10
#7: Dangerous by Kardinal Offishall feat. Akon
The last time I thought about Kardinal Offishall it was because he was a nobody Canadian rapper who made an appearance as a judge on Much Music's Video On Trial (he yelled "slosh" a lot and was pretty funny). A couple years and an Akon cameo later he's on the iTunes top ten; pretty crazy. Of course, Akon rules pop radio nowadays and hopping on a song with him is the closest thing to guaranteeing yourself a hit that exists. Here, Akon sings about scoping a hot bad girl in the club on the song's chorus and Offishall follows suit by rapping about the same in his verses. It's pretty generic stuff, and the beat is a bit too spartan (all digital high-hats and tinny horn blasts) for my taste, but Offishall has fun with it, rapping in a sorta-Jamaican tone and bending his words all over the place. And how can I really hate a Canadian boy making it to star status? 6.5/10
#6: Take A Bow by Rihanna
The first of this moth's two charting Rihanna songs "Take A Bow", a pretty hard-nosed piece of breakup talk, is the better of them, mostly by virtue of its production. Stargate, who are responsible for production on hits for people like Ne-Yo and Beyonce, work their usual thing here with some nicely crunching electronic drums offsetting the song's stately strings-and-piano construction. Meanwhile, Rihanna shrugs out the song's words, about not wanting to hear an ex-boyfriend's excuses, with a coldly precise tone that only serves to enhance the overall effect. The song could be a bit more lively, I suppose, but it's a well-constructed pop-ballad that moves enough to not be boring and has lyrics that aren't embarrassing, which is more than I can say for a lot of these songs. 7/10
#5: Bleeding Love by Leona Lewis
Leona Lewis is a deeply confusing pop culture figure, to me at least. She won a British talent-show thing called X-Factor and was quickly snatched up by Sony Records who, with one of the most excessive promotional roll outs I have ever seen (a whole Oprah show, for instance), managed to push her album to #1 status and build Lewis up as a sort of neo-Mariah Carey pop-balladeer. All this would lead you to believe that she's some kind of diva type but if you've ever read anything about here (which I have because it was contained in an issue of Rolling Stone) you'd find out that she's a vegetarian who won't wear anything made of leather or fur and that she's something of a nerd who likes sci-fi shows and video games; very strange indeed. All that aside, I like "Bleeding Love" okay (despite the fact that the lyrical sentiment is confusing and gross: "you cut me open and I keep bleeding love", what?); it's got a good tune, a nice, big and hammy, chorus, some interesting production tricks (I especially dig the cooling synth surges and woodblock clinks that are buried in the mix) and Lewis showing off her vocal prowess in ways that don't totally overwhelm the song. I'm not sure if I can endorse a song written by (yikes!) Jeese McCartney and Ryan Tedder, of OneRepublic fame, but they've managed to write a pretty good one and, perhaps more importantly, find the right person to sing it. Then again, I might just like this because Lewis said she liked Resident Evil 4 in that interview I read, so, judge for yourself. 7.5/10
#4: Shake It by Metro Station
Well, here's our second Hanna Montana connection on the chart; Metro Station's lead singer just happens to be Miley Cyrus' older brother, which made me dread listening to this song, especially after the disaster that was the Jonas Brothers' tune. Surprisingly, then, "Shake It" won me over quite handily and partially because it succeeds where the Jonases fail. Where "Burnin' Up" had clumsily-grafted pieces of new-wave in it, "Shake It" is pretty-much a new-wave dance-pop number (albeit with some slightly choked emo vocals) with cleanly spiking guitars, warm synth bubbles and mechanistically ticking (likely electronic) drums. Where the Brothers sang utterly unconvincing unrequited love stuff, Metro Station turn in a surprisingly dirty teen romance number that is endearing, rather than groan-inducing, in its awkwardness. "Shake It" might represent the fullest integration of new-wave into emo since "Here (In Your Arms)" by Hellogoodbye and it's a trend that I hope continues given that it's given us two pretty-great singles so far. There are a few things in the track I could do without (the chorus feels a bit too exuberant for the restrained thump of the verses, the guitars could be a bit more fully-involved with the melody lines) but this thing is probably more likely to inspire shy, Cardigan-clad wallflowers to dance at school functions than any other song I can think of, and who could object to that? 8/10
#3: Just Dance by Lady GaGa feat. Colby O'Donis
Apparently this song was featured on "So You Think You Can Dance" a couple of weeks ago, which explains its rapid ascendancy of the charts, and that makes a lot of sense to me, the song is definitely both made for and about dancing; it's total club-thumper, all pulsing drums and wormy synths, that, like most of this stuff, would probably sound great over a large speaker-system but don't really work on headphones while staring at a computer. Meanwhile, Lady GaGa, whoever she is, sings about losing her phone and not remembering what club she's in (drunk?) in a tone that aspires to disco diva status but doesn't get there, most likely because she doesn't have the range for it. I'm not really sure how to rate this one, given that I'm definitely not in the right context for it, but people on iTunes are, presumably, downloading this for listening over their headphones as well; in that case: 5.5/10
#2: Disturbia by Rihanna
First off; even if you dated Shia Labeouf do not, under any circumstances, name one of your songs after a crappy movie he starred in, okay? Anyway, "Disturbia" is the weaker of the two Rihanna singles on the chart this month and, as with "Take A Bow", it's mostly down to a matter of production. Rihanna's best singles ("Don't Stop The Music" and "Umbrella", for my money) have been songs that are almost entirely optimistic and uplifting in nature but "Disturbia" decides to totally ignore this fact entire with a cold, twitchy beat and nigh-impenitrabloe lyrics about paranoia; it's just bizarre. Furthermore, this track marks the first time, I think, that Rihanna has used a robot-filter, auto-tune thing on her voice and, aside from the fact that it's a totally obvious and played-out T-Pain move, it doesn't work at all, with both her vocal characteristics and the song itself. Still, the beat moves enough that it will likely work just fine in a club and the chorus is satisfyingly hooky but this just feels like playing against one's strengths in the dumbest way possible. 5/10
#1: I Kissed A Girl by Katy Perry
I have to sort of respect the blatant pandering going on here, from the big, stupid synth and drum stomps to the strident, shouty grrl-power vocals to the bi-curious content, but that doesn't mean I have to like it. Firstly, let me say that I can't believe that this song has whipped up as much controversy as it has; c'mon people (aside from the fact that the song was likely released as a single specifically to court that sort of response), I thought that we were, as a society, past that sort of knee-jerk homophobia. Furthermore, the song isn't even about being a lesbian or bi-sexual, it's about making out with some chick in a club and in that light the controversy just seems that much more dumb (setting aside the fact that this means that the people protesting likely haven't even listened to the song). Then again, I listen to Sleater-Kinney and riot-grrl punk so I'm probably not the best person to judge the reactions of most people to a song like this. As for the song itself, I dig the squared-off drum stomp (which reminds me a lot of Gary Glitter's "Rock & Roll, Pt.2") and the titantic synth riffs but Perry's voice grates on me as she seemingly does all she can to fight the track's melody with a strident, howling vocal tone in an attempt to make the words of the song sound less stupid (they don't). Overall, as much as I dig the fact that this song pisses certain people off, the song is probably only viable as a way to get chicks to make out with each other at parties but alcohol also does that and it would probably be less damaging to your brain in the long run. 4/10
#10: Burnin' Up by The Jonas Brothers
The Jonas Brothers are, if you haven't heard of them, which you most likely have, are Disney's newest band/marketing construct to be pushed onto a receptive public in the wake of the success story of Hanna Montana. They're pretty much pre-ordained to be the biggest thing in music this year and I can see why: the band is composed of teenage-heartthrob guys who appear as charmingly nice doofs in their music videos and public appearances, star in Disney Channel original movies and play low-impact, easily digestible guitar pop. However, the fact that they're going to sell big doesn't necessarily mean that they're good, as evidenced by this single off of their new album, which is coming out sometime in July. The best thing about the song is the 20 second skit at the beginning of its music video ("She was looking at me," "No, she wasn't"), otherwise, I don't get it. The singer, whichever one of the brothers he is, sort of bleats generic unrequited love talk in a nasal, semi-emo tone while the track's drums tick mechanically behind him, there's not even a good harmony bit (which I would kinda expect from a group like this) to lighten the load; the backup vocals just add to the annoyance by swooping around the lead with no sense of timing. Furthermore, the song has these bizarre bits of new-wave in it, such as the synth-blurts in the chorus and the mid-song drum machine breakdown, which seemingly exist only to make it more fluffy and pop. The only thing I like about this is the somewhat crunchy stop-start guitars, but those don't make up for the track's other problems, not even a bit. 3/10
#9: Never Too Late by Hedley
This thing lost points with me immediately by having the same title as a terrible Three Days Grace grunge-ballad that was sorta big last year and, although I'm happy to report that this song is better than that piece of crap, this song isn't that great either. I give Hedley credit for switching up their risible faux-punk for this track, which works a pretty-good lite-reggae groove, with some nicely sliding guitars in the background for texture, but that goodwill is almost immediately erased by singer Jacob Hoggard's whining vocals, which scrape all over the track, doing it no favours. If Hoggard would tone down the histrionics and the band would beef up the backbeat a little (the rhythm section sounds too distant here) this could be a decent white-boy reggae jam (like a lesser Sublime) but as it stands, it's just the least-terrible of Hedley's terrible singles. 5/10
#8: When I Grow Up by The Pussycat Dolls
Alright, here we go with the true pain; I guess it was inevitable that the Dolls and Rodney Jerkins would end up working together as Jerkins was primarily responsible for producing the first wave of sexbot-pop that the Dolls have updated for a new audience. The song is, of course, terrible; a mess of dreaming-to-be-famous cliches sung in auto-tuned-to-hell vocals by the one member of the group who sings with annoying backup "ha, ha"s from the rest. This might play okay in a club, it has Jerkins' standard-issue candy-strobe sythns and mechanized hand claps going on, but it feels too tight and mechanical to allow for a good dance experience. The only thing that's somewhat defensible about the song is that it samples the, totally awesome, descending riff from the Yardbirds' "He's Always There" for its backbeat thrust but there's so much distracting crap thrown on top of that riff that it only functions to remind me that I should listen to the Yarbirds more. So, thank you, Pussycat Dolls, for that, but not for another godawful song. 2/10
#7: Dangerous by Kardinal Offishall feat. Akon
The last time I thought about Kardinal Offishall it was because he was a nobody Canadian rapper who made an appearance as a judge on Much Music's Video On Trial (he yelled "slosh" a lot and was pretty funny). A couple years and an Akon cameo later he's on the iTunes top ten; pretty crazy. Of course, Akon rules pop radio nowadays and hopping on a song with him is the closest thing to guaranteeing yourself a hit that exists. Here, Akon sings about scoping a hot bad girl in the club on the song's chorus and Offishall follows suit by rapping about the same in his verses. It's pretty generic stuff, and the beat is a bit too spartan (all digital high-hats and tinny horn blasts) for my taste, but Offishall has fun with it, rapping in a sorta-Jamaican tone and bending his words all over the place. And how can I really hate a Canadian boy making it to star status? 6.5/10
#6: Take A Bow by Rihanna
The first of this moth's two charting Rihanna songs "Take A Bow", a pretty hard-nosed piece of breakup talk, is the better of them, mostly by virtue of its production. Stargate, who are responsible for production on hits for people like Ne-Yo and Beyonce, work their usual thing here with some nicely crunching electronic drums offsetting the song's stately strings-and-piano construction. Meanwhile, Rihanna shrugs out the song's words, about not wanting to hear an ex-boyfriend's excuses, with a coldly precise tone that only serves to enhance the overall effect. The song could be a bit more lively, I suppose, but it's a well-constructed pop-ballad that moves enough to not be boring and has lyrics that aren't embarrassing, which is more than I can say for a lot of these songs. 7/10
#5: Bleeding Love by Leona Lewis
Leona Lewis is a deeply confusing pop culture figure, to me at least. She won a British talent-show thing called X-Factor and was quickly snatched up by Sony Records who, with one of the most excessive promotional roll outs I have ever seen (a whole Oprah show, for instance), managed to push her album to #1 status and build Lewis up as a sort of neo-Mariah Carey pop-balladeer. All this would lead you to believe that she's some kind of diva type but if you've ever read anything about here (which I have because it was contained in an issue of Rolling Stone) you'd find out that she's a vegetarian who won't wear anything made of leather or fur and that she's something of a nerd who likes sci-fi shows and video games; very strange indeed. All that aside, I like "Bleeding Love" okay (despite the fact that the lyrical sentiment is confusing and gross: "you cut me open and I keep bleeding love", what?); it's got a good tune, a nice, big and hammy, chorus, some interesting production tricks (I especially dig the cooling synth surges and woodblock clinks that are buried in the mix) and Lewis showing off her vocal prowess in ways that don't totally overwhelm the song. I'm not sure if I can endorse a song written by (yikes!) Jeese McCartney and Ryan Tedder, of OneRepublic fame, but they've managed to write a pretty good one and, perhaps more importantly, find the right person to sing it. Then again, I might just like this because Lewis said she liked Resident Evil 4 in that interview I read, so, judge for yourself. 7.5/10
#4: Shake It by Metro Station
Well, here's our second Hanna Montana connection on the chart; Metro Station's lead singer just happens to be Miley Cyrus' older brother, which made me dread listening to this song, especially after the disaster that was the Jonas Brothers' tune. Surprisingly, then, "Shake It" won me over quite handily and partially because it succeeds where the Jonases fail. Where "Burnin' Up" had clumsily-grafted pieces of new-wave in it, "Shake It" is pretty-much a new-wave dance-pop number (albeit with some slightly choked emo vocals) with cleanly spiking guitars, warm synth bubbles and mechanistically ticking (likely electronic) drums. Where the Brothers sang utterly unconvincing unrequited love stuff, Metro Station turn in a surprisingly dirty teen romance number that is endearing, rather than groan-inducing, in its awkwardness. "Shake It" might represent the fullest integration of new-wave into emo since "Here (In Your Arms)" by Hellogoodbye and it's a trend that I hope continues given that it's given us two pretty-great singles so far. There are a few things in the track I could do without (the chorus feels a bit too exuberant for the restrained thump of the verses, the guitars could be a bit more fully-involved with the melody lines) but this thing is probably more likely to inspire shy, Cardigan-clad wallflowers to dance at school functions than any other song I can think of, and who could object to that? 8/10
#3: Just Dance by Lady GaGa feat. Colby O'Donis
Apparently this song was featured on "So You Think You Can Dance" a couple of weeks ago, which explains its rapid ascendancy of the charts, and that makes a lot of sense to me, the song is definitely both made for and about dancing; it's total club-thumper, all pulsing drums and wormy synths, that, like most of this stuff, would probably sound great over a large speaker-system but don't really work on headphones while staring at a computer. Meanwhile, Lady GaGa, whoever she is, sings about losing her phone and not remembering what club she's in (drunk?) in a tone that aspires to disco diva status but doesn't get there, most likely because she doesn't have the range for it. I'm not really sure how to rate this one, given that I'm definitely not in the right context for it, but people on iTunes are, presumably, downloading this for listening over their headphones as well; in that case: 5.5/10
#2: Disturbia by Rihanna
First off; even if you dated Shia Labeouf do not, under any circumstances, name one of your songs after a crappy movie he starred in, okay? Anyway, "Disturbia" is the weaker of the two Rihanna singles on the chart this month and, as with "Take A Bow", it's mostly down to a matter of production. Rihanna's best singles ("Don't Stop The Music" and "Umbrella", for my money) have been songs that are almost entirely optimistic and uplifting in nature but "Disturbia" decides to totally ignore this fact entire with a cold, twitchy beat and nigh-impenitrabloe lyrics about paranoia; it's just bizarre. Furthermore, this track marks the first time, I think, that Rihanna has used a robot-filter, auto-tune thing on her voice and, aside from the fact that it's a totally obvious and played-out T-Pain move, it doesn't work at all, with both her vocal characteristics and the song itself. Still, the beat moves enough that it will likely work just fine in a club and the chorus is satisfyingly hooky but this just feels like playing against one's strengths in the dumbest way possible. 5/10
#1: I Kissed A Girl by Katy Perry
I have to sort of respect the blatant pandering going on here, from the big, stupid synth and drum stomps to the strident, shouty grrl-power vocals to the bi-curious content, but that doesn't mean I have to like it. Firstly, let me say that I can't believe that this song has whipped up as much controversy as it has; c'mon people (aside from the fact that the song was likely released as a single specifically to court that sort of response), I thought that we were, as a society, past that sort of knee-jerk homophobia. Furthermore, the song isn't even about being a lesbian or bi-sexual, it's about making out with some chick in a club and in that light the controversy just seems that much more dumb (setting aside the fact that this means that the people protesting likely haven't even listened to the song). Then again, I listen to Sleater-Kinney and riot-grrl punk so I'm probably not the best person to judge the reactions of most people to a song like this. As for the song itself, I dig the squared-off drum stomp (which reminds me a lot of Gary Glitter's "Rock & Roll, Pt.2") and the titantic synth riffs but Perry's voice grates on me as she seemingly does all she can to fight the track's melody with a strident, howling vocal tone in an attempt to make the words of the song sound less stupid (they don't). Overall, as much as I dig the fact that this song pisses certain people off, the song is probably only viable as a way to get chicks to make out with each other at parties but alcohol also does that and it would probably be less damaging to your brain in the long run. 4/10
Old Posts #3: Alkaline Trio
When Alkaline Trio signed to a major label to make Agony & Irony, their new album, and especially when they announced that Josh Abraham (who is most famous for producing Linkin Park, of all things) would be producing the project, I got worried. Not because Alkaline Trio were ever some model of indie cred or integrity, they always made simple, catchy, populist emo-pop-punk that appealed primarily to brokenhearted teenagers, but because part of what made the band as good as they were at their peak (specifically 1998's Goddammit) was the tension between their obvious pop instincts and the relatively lo-fi packaging which they were presented in. This distinction became obvious on their last album, 2005's Crimson, where the band recruited Blink-182 producer Jerry Finn who pasted on pointless keyboard tones and blunted the band's power, resulting in a stiff, boring record with only a few highlights. Luckily, Agony & Irony does away with forced sonic "maturity" and returns the band to it's comfort zone: catchy tunes. However, the record still has some problems that make it not quite up to snuff with the band's best material.
For one, the problem that Alkaline Trio has always had is still in full effect here, namely, although their choruses and hooks are top notch, they've never figured out how to make the build to those moments interesting. Thus, their songs are best when they're either really short or all hook, but the songs on Agony average about three and a half minutes when they should run for about two and though most of the songs' verse sections are simply forgettable, some are downright painful to listen to. Specifically, "In Vein" has a leaden faux-ska stomp for a verse that leads into the pretty great gang-chant chorus and "Over & Out", the album's worst song, works turgid suicide-ballad images that are only slightly redeemed by the catharsis of its big hook. Also, although Abraham thankfully doesn't try to add any electronica elements to the band's sound (with the exception of what sounds like a synth on "I Found Away", but it might just be a guitar with effects on it), he does lessen their impact somewhat by pushing the drums to the back of the mix and not letting the guitars buzz like they should. To his credit though, Abraham does crank up some elements that enhance the essential hooks of the songs, such as the hand claps on "Calling All Skeletons" and the extra guitar pings on "Help Me".
I suppose the question of why to listen to this album at all is presented then, given what I've just written, but I doubt I can convey just how great the hooks on these songs are. Alkaline Trio has truly mastered their form, nobody does cathartic, soaring emo-pop better, and all of the songs on Agony & Irony have instant sugar-rush moments whether they're provided the swaying vocal on "Do You Wanna Know?" or the backup shouts on "Live Young, Die Fast". As well, the band can do an interesting bridge when it wants to, as evidenced by the overdubbed guitars and half-heard vocals (which remind me of Bruce Springsteen's "She's The One") on "I Found Away".
However, the biggest problem that I've always had with the Trio is still in full effect here, namely, the fake-goth, tortured poetry aspect. I sort of tune-out the lyrics to their songs when I can but there are some howlers of lines on this record that are made worse by being sung with utter sincerity in the (pretty good, I should add) choked vocals of Matt Skiba and Dan Andriano. I suppose that this kind of frustration is inevitable when listening to anything remotely emo but consider the following: "Help Me", the first single off of the record is, according to Skiba, a song dedicated to Joy Division lead singer Ian Curtis, which is sort of cool, just because the band is showing respect to its elders. But, "Help Me" sounds, with the exception of a slightly less exuberant chorus, like any other Alkaline Trio song. If you're going to pay tribute to Joy Division, an idea which I wholeheartedly support, you should probably make an effort to, at least slightly, emulate Joy Division's cold, caustic creep (which made their sometimes hammy Gothic lyrics much easier to swallow) when you do so. Alkaline Trio's sugar-high pop is pretty damn great, I just wish it didn't come with the extra baggage of po-faced emo sincerity that it does. Then again, I suppose, beggars can't always be choosers, especially in regards to good music.
For one, the problem that Alkaline Trio has always had is still in full effect here, namely, although their choruses and hooks are top notch, they've never figured out how to make the build to those moments interesting. Thus, their songs are best when they're either really short or all hook, but the songs on Agony average about three and a half minutes when they should run for about two and though most of the songs' verse sections are simply forgettable, some are downright painful to listen to. Specifically, "In Vein" has a leaden faux-ska stomp for a verse that leads into the pretty great gang-chant chorus and "Over & Out", the album's worst song, works turgid suicide-ballad images that are only slightly redeemed by the catharsis of its big hook. Also, although Abraham thankfully doesn't try to add any electronica elements to the band's sound (with the exception of what sounds like a synth on "I Found Away", but it might just be a guitar with effects on it), he does lessen their impact somewhat by pushing the drums to the back of the mix and not letting the guitars buzz like they should. To his credit though, Abraham does crank up some elements that enhance the essential hooks of the songs, such as the hand claps on "Calling All Skeletons" and the extra guitar pings on "Help Me".
I suppose the question of why to listen to this album at all is presented then, given what I've just written, but I doubt I can convey just how great the hooks on these songs are. Alkaline Trio has truly mastered their form, nobody does cathartic, soaring emo-pop better, and all of the songs on Agony & Irony have instant sugar-rush moments whether they're provided the swaying vocal on "Do You Wanna Know?" or the backup shouts on "Live Young, Die Fast". As well, the band can do an interesting bridge when it wants to, as evidenced by the overdubbed guitars and half-heard vocals (which remind me of Bruce Springsteen's "She's The One") on "I Found Away".
However, the biggest problem that I've always had with the Trio is still in full effect here, namely, the fake-goth, tortured poetry aspect. I sort of tune-out the lyrics to their songs when I can but there are some howlers of lines on this record that are made worse by being sung with utter sincerity in the (pretty good, I should add) choked vocals of Matt Skiba and Dan Andriano. I suppose that this kind of frustration is inevitable when listening to anything remotely emo but consider the following: "Help Me", the first single off of the record is, according to Skiba, a song dedicated to Joy Division lead singer Ian Curtis, which is sort of cool, just because the band is showing respect to its elders. But, "Help Me" sounds, with the exception of a slightly less exuberant chorus, like any other Alkaline Trio song. If you're going to pay tribute to Joy Division, an idea which I wholeheartedly support, you should probably make an effort to, at least slightly, emulate Joy Division's cold, caustic creep (which made their sometimes hammy Gothic lyrics much easier to swallow) when you do so. Alkaline Trio's sugar-high pop is pretty damn great, I just wish it didn't come with the extra baggage of po-faced emo sincerity that it does. Then again, I suppose, beggars can't always be choosers, especially in regards to good music.
Old Posts #2: Coldplay
As bands become more popular their ideas tend to go one of two directions: either the blandness equation, wherein the band becomes way less interesting as time goes on, repeating their same ideas and tricks over and over (some examples: Elvis Presley, recent U2 and, as much as I love him, Bruce Springsteen) or the ambition equation wherein the band begins to look to weird sources and ideas, most of the time from non-rock music, for inspiration (examples: Radiohead, 90's U2 and Elvis Cotstello). Now, a lot of people tend to assume that the second option is, by default, the best, but that isn't necessarily the case; U2 made two horribly uneven dance-inflected albums in their post-Achtung Baby 90's hangover and Costello made bizarre, nigh-unlistenable, records with classical musicians and Burt Bacharach. Furthermore, people like Springsteen can coast on one sound with not very much in the way of variation partially because they're good songwriters and partially because their core sound is pretty damn great to begin with. I think that the ideal for this is a band like Radiohead, who subsumed many influences over their career but always sounded like Radiohead, no matter what they were doing.
Coldplay seems to have followed this model, as with many other things, the way Radiohead did. Viva La Vida, their new album, expands and redefines their sound to include new instrumentation and ideas but it always sounds like Coldplay, for better or worse.
Now, Coldplay get a lot of shit for being low-impact and overly soft but that's why I've always sort of liked them, they took musical ideas from people like Radiohead and Jeff Buckley and streamlined them into songs that had serious hooks and soothing atmospherics, perfect for spacing out to as well as nice treats when they would turn up on the radio (which they often did). Though this new album does not contain any of the slow-motion ballads that Coldplay have staked their career on (the closest we get to "Scientist" territory is in the intros or codas of the songs, which tend to be piano-and-voice affairs), everything here sounds like a Coldplay song, partially because Chris Martin's cooing falsetto is instantly recognizable (though, on "Yes", he dips into a lower register and still sounds pretty good) and partially because the band seems incapable of writing a song without a big hook (even the instrumental intro "Life In Technicolor" has a memorable guitar line and some wordless shouts to render it pop). These songs all have instant-pleasure moments, whether it's the "if you love me" bit in "Violet Hill", the church bells that introduce the title track's chorus or the "la, la, la"s in "Cemeteries Of London".
As for the sonic details, much was made of the band's decision to hire Brian Eno to produce and he does bring a lot of his signature sonic touch to the record. Particularily, Eno's fascination with non-western musical tones informs a lot of the songs here. "Lost" has burbling Indian percussion, big hand claps and a vaguely eastern organ drone, "Strawberry Swing" has afropop guitars and a winding, semi-Asian melody, parts of "Yes" sound like krautrock if it was made for pop radio and so on. However, Eno doesn't exactly tear down Coldplay's sound and remake it from the ground up, as he did with U2 on Achtung Baby, he simply augments the songs with new musical elements while not changing their core ideas.
And, ultimately, I wouldn't want to hear Coldplay go in an entirely experimental direction, they're too good at doing the big arena-anthems and this is their strongest set of tunes yet. The band might not have abandoned their core sound entirely, as I'm sure many would wish, but they've changed it enough that it might gain them new fans without abandoning the old ones and I can't fault them for that, they're a populist band at heart and if this album gives their concertgoers ten new reasons to cheer, sway and hold their lighters (or cellphones, I suppose) up in a packed stadium, Coldplay have done their job.
Coldplay seems to have followed this model, as with many other things, the way Radiohead did. Viva La Vida, their new album, expands and redefines their sound to include new instrumentation and ideas but it always sounds like Coldplay, for better or worse.
Now, Coldplay get a lot of shit for being low-impact and overly soft but that's why I've always sort of liked them, they took musical ideas from people like Radiohead and Jeff Buckley and streamlined them into songs that had serious hooks and soothing atmospherics, perfect for spacing out to as well as nice treats when they would turn up on the radio (which they often did). Though this new album does not contain any of the slow-motion ballads that Coldplay have staked their career on (the closest we get to "Scientist" territory is in the intros or codas of the songs, which tend to be piano-and-voice affairs), everything here sounds like a Coldplay song, partially because Chris Martin's cooing falsetto is instantly recognizable (though, on "Yes", he dips into a lower register and still sounds pretty good) and partially because the band seems incapable of writing a song without a big hook (even the instrumental intro "Life In Technicolor" has a memorable guitar line and some wordless shouts to render it pop). These songs all have instant-pleasure moments, whether it's the "if you love me" bit in "Violet Hill", the church bells that introduce the title track's chorus or the "la, la, la"s in "Cemeteries Of London".
As for the sonic details, much was made of the band's decision to hire Brian Eno to produce and he does bring a lot of his signature sonic touch to the record. Particularily, Eno's fascination with non-western musical tones informs a lot of the songs here. "Lost" has burbling Indian percussion, big hand claps and a vaguely eastern organ drone, "Strawberry Swing" has afropop guitars and a winding, semi-Asian melody, parts of "Yes" sound like krautrock if it was made for pop radio and so on. However, Eno doesn't exactly tear down Coldplay's sound and remake it from the ground up, as he did with U2 on Achtung Baby, he simply augments the songs with new musical elements while not changing their core ideas.
And, ultimately, I wouldn't want to hear Coldplay go in an entirely experimental direction, they're too good at doing the big arena-anthems and this is their strongest set of tunes yet. The band might not have abandoned their core sound entirely, as I'm sure many would wish, but they've changed it enough that it might gain them new fans without abandoning the old ones and I can't fault them for that, they're a populist band at heart and if this album gives their concertgoers ten new reasons to cheer, sway and hold their lighters (or cellphones, I suppose) up in a packed stadium, Coldplay have done their job.
Old Posts #1: Foals
On paper, U.K. sensations the Foals look like one of the worst ideas ever conceived, a head-on collision of empty indie-rock signifiers (shout-y British vocals, flailing new wave rhythms, chipping, minimal, post-punk guitars) that are, at this point, well-worn to the point of insignificance. Furthermore, Antidotes, their debut, was, kinda, produced by TV On The Radio mastermind and seeming hired-gun producer David Sitek (I'll get to why I say "kinda" in a bit) , a guy who, while I dearly love TV On The Radio, has produced, otherwise, indie rockers that I've never really got the appeal of (The Liars and Celebration, for example) and features the Antibalas horns, another band I've never really understood, on several tracks.
But, somehow, Antidotes has become one of my favourite albums of the, admittedly young, year and I think its due to something that I like to call the "Franz Ferdinand effect". If you'll indulge me; this effect refers to something that I believe several bands, the most prominent of which is Franz Ferdinand, do very well, which is to streamline, and graft strong pop hooks on to, post-punk/new wave musical elements which would otherwise not work for me. The Foals do this supremely well and with weirder musical elements than Franz Ferdinand themselves ever mined. I referred to post-punk and new wave earlier but that's only part of the equation for the Foals whose spastic, busy, rhythms owe quite a bit to math rock, a genre that, with a few exceptions, puts me off with its technically-minded attitude towards music, and whose use of the Antibalas horns allies them, at least slightly, with afrobeat, which I do like, but only in moderation. However, its the way that the Foals digest these influences, much as Franz Ferdinand does with spastic new wave, that makes them work, their rhythms are busy but not especially technical and, critically, they always have swing and movement to them. Furthermore, the horns are deployed sparingly, usually as texture in the songs' codas or as neat stabs of rhythmic attack in a chorus. In fact, the only song on Antidotes which I don't like is its first one, "The French Open", which is both the song where the horns are most fully used and the most math-rock of the album's tunes, it's overly complex and doesn't really go anywhere.
More to the point, though, "The French Open" isn't very catchy which is something the Foals excel at. All of the other tunes on Antidotes have at least one memorable hook or chorus but, importantly, they're never "big" hooks, like an 80's power ballad, but rather slight phrases or guitar lines that stick in your mind. Part of why these songs work so well is that the production on the album isn't overly fussy or bombastic, something that a lot of indie-rock types, in hopes of being the next Arcade Fire, are beginning to indulge in, leading me to my point about David Sitek. Sitek was originally contracted to produce this album, and his name remains in the credits, but the band, unhappy with his production as it "sounded like it was recorded in the Grand Canyon", remixed it before the album shipped and, though I sort of want to hear what Sitek had planned, it seems to have made the album better. There's no detailing, beyond the horns, to these songs, just a bright, in-your-face, guitar-bass-drums set-up that works because of its clear, immediate kick. In fact, the only song here where that isn't the case is, once again, "The French Open", which has overly reverb-laden drums which lessen the song's impact, if that's what Sitek's mixes for the entire album sounded like then the band made the right choice by doing some extra studio muddling.
Antidotes isn't perfect, it runs a little too long, there's no real variety and it comes off more as a collection of songs than an album, but it's the rare album that justifies its pre-release hype with strong songs and I think that's something that everyone can get behind.
But, somehow, Antidotes has become one of my favourite albums of the, admittedly young, year and I think its due to something that I like to call the "Franz Ferdinand effect". If you'll indulge me; this effect refers to something that I believe several bands, the most prominent of which is Franz Ferdinand, do very well, which is to streamline, and graft strong pop hooks on to, post-punk/new wave musical elements which would otherwise not work for me. The Foals do this supremely well and with weirder musical elements than Franz Ferdinand themselves ever mined. I referred to post-punk and new wave earlier but that's only part of the equation for the Foals whose spastic, busy, rhythms owe quite a bit to math rock, a genre that, with a few exceptions, puts me off with its technically-minded attitude towards music, and whose use of the Antibalas horns allies them, at least slightly, with afrobeat, which I do like, but only in moderation. However, its the way that the Foals digest these influences, much as Franz Ferdinand does with spastic new wave, that makes them work, their rhythms are busy but not especially technical and, critically, they always have swing and movement to them. Furthermore, the horns are deployed sparingly, usually as texture in the songs' codas or as neat stabs of rhythmic attack in a chorus. In fact, the only song on Antidotes which I don't like is its first one, "The French Open", which is both the song where the horns are most fully used and the most math-rock of the album's tunes, it's overly complex and doesn't really go anywhere.
More to the point, though, "The French Open" isn't very catchy which is something the Foals excel at. All of the other tunes on Antidotes have at least one memorable hook or chorus but, importantly, they're never "big" hooks, like an 80's power ballad, but rather slight phrases or guitar lines that stick in your mind. Part of why these songs work so well is that the production on the album isn't overly fussy or bombastic, something that a lot of indie-rock types, in hopes of being the next Arcade Fire, are beginning to indulge in, leading me to my point about David Sitek. Sitek was originally contracted to produce this album, and his name remains in the credits, but the band, unhappy with his production as it "sounded like it was recorded in the Grand Canyon", remixed it before the album shipped and, though I sort of want to hear what Sitek had planned, it seems to have made the album better. There's no detailing, beyond the horns, to these songs, just a bright, in-your-face, guitar-bass-drums set-up that works because of its clear, immediate kick. In fact, the only song here where that isn't the case is, once again, "The French Open", which has overly reverb-laden drums which lessen the song's impact, if that's what Sitek's mixes for the entire album sounded like then the band made the right choice by doing some extra studio muddling.
Antidotes isn't perfect, it runs a little too long, there's no real variety and it comes off more as a collection of songs than an album, but it's the rare album that justifies its pre-release hype with strong songs and I think that's something that everyone can get behind.
SILENCE IS THE ENEMY
- I'm starting to import posts from my older blog to here so I can free up that blog for another project, so, you'll probably see, like, seven posts from me today.
- Lost continued with great episodes this week as "Some Like It Hoth" was dramatic, enlightening and, surprisingly, quite funny. The show can tend to get bogged down in a sort of stone-faced seriousness about itself and it's nice to see a bit of humour creep in now and then. Lest we forget, Lost is a show about an island filled with polar bears and smoke monsters that travels through time when a wheel is turned, and that's just a touch absurd. There were a couple small things that annoyed me; mostly, I really think, as I've said before, that every character having daddy issues sort of dilutes the concept and did the writers really feel the need to give them to Miles too? Still, that's a small thing and the classic lines alone ("Ewoks suck, dude", "You owe me a fish taco") were enough to push this one over the edge for me. Also, the final twist was mighty intriguing and makes me hate that we have to wait two weeks for a new episode. I'm not sure if I'll watch that recap/special thingy that's on next week, I may as well, but, who knows.
- So, the new Green Day single is out and it's decent but nothing special. I'm actually very excited for 21st Century Breakdown, if only because the band has been citing Bruce Springsteen as an influence in interviews about the album (and calling it a 21st century Born To Run, which, well, we'll see) and anytime a band does that I'm instantly interested. However, "Know Your Enemy" is basically a stripped-down and punked-up AC/DC tune with big, stomping power chords and a shout-along chorus. As that, it's okay and it does get stuck in your head easily (I predict I'll be humming it under my breath without even realizing it within a few days) and the hammering drums anchor the tune well. Still, the things I like most about the song are the incidental little details like how Armstrong does that little, highly-accented, "right!" after singing the title or the "way-oh-way" background vocals in the verse. Lyrically, too, it feels kind-of flat and listless with its psudo-punk sloganeering ("KNOW YOUR ENEMY", "VIOLENCE IS AN ENERGY", etc.) providing none of the story-telling that the band is capable of, though, to be fair, punk was always more about screaming about authority figures than offering coherent political platforms or depth-filled poetry, so I can't be too angry about it. I feel like I should be disappointed given what the band has promised but then I remember that the first single from American Idiot was the title-track which was also a quick blast of hooky, punky energy (with equally obvious and polemic lyrics) that didn't belie what was actually going on with that album. Now, "American Idiot" is a better song than "Know Your Enemy" (the earlier song has a bit more live-wire energy to it and the latter feels a bit too cleanly-produced and squared-off) but I predict that they'll end up serving the same function: A quick blast of typical Green Day stuff to re-introduce them to the public (remember, it's been 5 years since American Idiot, though it's somewhat misleading to say that as the band has kept in the public eye via side-projects and non-album singles) and prepare radio for the later, less typical, singles. Overall, the song hasn't affected my anticipation for the album one way or the other, though it did remind me that it's coming soon and, in that sense, it's performed its function. So, here's hoping that the whole album will follow through on the band's promises.
- Lost continued with great episodes this week as "Some Like It Hoth" was dramatic, enlightening and, surprisingly, quite funny. The show can tend to get bogged down in a sort of stone-faced seriousness about itself and it's nice to see a bit of humour creep in now and then. Lest we forget, Lost is a show about an island filled with polar bears and smoke monsters that travels through time when a wheel is turned, and that's just a touch absurd. There were a couple small things that annoyed me; mostly, I really think, as I've said before, that every character having daddy issues sort of dilutes the concept and did the writers really feel the need to give them to Miles too? Still, that's a small thing and the classic lines alone ("Ewoks suck, dude", "You owe me a fish taco") were enough to push this one over the edge for me. Also, the final twist was mighty intriguing and makes me hate that we have to wait two weeks for a new episode. I'm not sure if I'll watch that recap/special thingy that's on next week, I may as well, but, who knows.
- So, the new Green Day single is out and it's decent but nothing special. I'm actually very excited for 21st Century Breakdown, if only because the band has been citing Bruce Springsteen as an influence in interviews about the album (and calling it a 21st century Born To Run, which, well, we'll see) and anytime a band does that I'm instantly interested. However, "Know Your Enemy" is basically a stripped-down and punked-up AC/DC tune with big, stomping power chords and a shout-along chorus. As that, it's okay and it does get stuck in your head easily (I predict I'll be humming it under my breath without even realizing it within a few days) and the hammering drums anchor the tune well. Still, the things I like most about the song are the incidental little details like how Armstrong does that little, highly-accented, "right!" after singing the title or the "way-oh-way" background vocals in the verse. Lyrically, too, it feels kind-of flat and listless with its psudo-punk sloganeering ("KNOW YOUR ENEMY", "VIOLENCE IS AN ENERGY", etc.) providing none of the story-telling that the band is capable of, though, to be fair, punk was always more about screaming about authority figures than offering coherent political platforms or depth-filled poetry, so I can't be too angry about it. I feel like I should be disappointed given what the band has promised but then I remember that the first single from American Idiot was the title-track which was also a quick blast of hooky, punky energy (with equally obvious and polemic lyrics) that didn't belie what was actually going on with that album. Now, "American Idiot" is a better song than "Know Your Enemy" (the earlier song has a bit more live-wire energy to it and the latter feels a bit too cleanly-produced and squared-off) but I predict that they'll end up serving the same function: A quick blast of typical Green Day stuff to re-introduce them to the public (remember, it's been 5 years since American Idiot, though it's somewhat misleading to say that as the band has kept in the public eye via side-projects and non-album singles) and prepare radio for the later, less typical, singles. Overall, the song hasn't affected my anticipation for the album one way or the other, though it did remind me that it's coming soon and, in that sense, it's performed its function. So, here's hoping that the whole album will follow through on the band's promises.
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
TWO OCEANS AWAY
- 24 last night managed to strike a good balance between the over-the-top Tom Clancy-esque counterterrorist action that we know and love (list of insanity forthcoming) and the genuine resonance that it can reach at times. I, like all true 24 fans, hate Kim but if they're gonna bring her back into the show this is the way to do it: a brief cameo, a few lines and a cry session with her dad. And she might even be useful this time around! Also, the ending twist did catch me by surprise but I hope the story is more that Tony has his own terrorist thing going on and less that he's working for whatever Hodges is a part of, because the latter would make no sense.
Anyway, the good stuff:
- The president is all like "You're under arrest" and Jon Voight is all like "RAGE!!!".
- Jon Voight and the president's husband should have an old-man rage showdown.
- I guess I would call what Tony did to those guards latino-fu, but I don't know if it even merits that distinction; it was so clumsy and awkward.
- I did like his desperate attempt to grab the trigger device and his brilliant jump away from the explosion, though.
- I do actually like how the show is showing Jack being weak and unable to help for once, it's a change.
- When that black dude whipped out the shotgun, Larry scrambled behind that dumpster right quick.
- I swear to god that the one agent who the black guy shot was in American Pie, can any one confirm that?
- Larry (A.K.A. Agent Douchebag) didn't get a silent clock but he didn't really deserve one, though the way he died was hilarious.
- That whole Ten Redux thing by Pearl Jam? It's interesting but it's not worth re-buying that album for, and I say that as I guy who's top ten albums would likely include Ten. That said, I would say that it's at least different enough from the original that it merits checking out. The main thing that's changed is just that everything, from the instruments to the vocals, is made clearer and hits harder. Ten, while great, is probably the most "90's" album in terms of production that you'll ever hear. By that I mean, the original mixes have this weird gauzy, cotton-y feel to them, as if everything is slightly out of focus, and all the elements tend to blur into one another at a point. Ten Redux cleans the mix up so that everything has its own distinct sonic space and, for most of these songs, that's a plus. "Jeremy", "Even Flow" and "Alive" have been drained of some of their power by constant radio play but these new mixes beef up the punch, giving them at least a slight bit more life. Same story for the other rockers like "Once" and "Why Go". The only time I think that the old mixes were better is when the album slows down: "Oceans" doesn't have the same, excuse the pun, watery, calming drift when that mush of acoustic and electric guitars is pulled apart, "Black" feels a touch too melodramatic when those piano crashes are made clearer and the new mix of "Release" shows a bit more unnecessary torture in Eddie Vedder's vocals that isn't covered by that shimmering guitar line. That said, the rockers outnumber the ballads, so, overall the album is better. Still, it's not better enough to justify buying this new set if you already own Ten (and, really, who doesn't?) and, due to the radical difference in price points between the two, I would still recommend the original album over this for newcomers.
- No Line On The Horizon is a good U2 album (and a lot better than I thought it would be after hearing that "Get On Your Boots" mess, which I shall not speak of again) but it clearly wants to be a great U2 album. It doesn't get there for a couple of reasons but it's a good bit better than their last couple of efforts. I really didn't care for How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb because I thought that it was too straight-forward in its attempt to write anthems and I've always liked U2 the best when they know how to temper their arena-rock impulses with either introspection or atmosphere (and, ideally, both). No Line, in its best moments, is a worthy successor to The Joshua Tree in this way as it balances grand-sway melodies with open-space grandness and heart-bearing romantic ache. The title track starts off a bit awkward but once it gets going it has a lovely, up-down rhythmic bob, "Magnificent" is a worthy entry into U2's canon of arena-shakers with Bono's strong vocal hammering that chorus home (it's the next single, good call) and "I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight" is a bit obvious in its shout-along hook but it's still an effective little rocker. "FEZ-Being Born" is a bit unsure of itself (and the intro goes on far longer than it needs to) but I like the lightly industrial grind of its guitar work and "Unknown Caller" dresses up itself a bit unnecessarily with watery synth tones but it has an open-road drive worthy of a vintage mid-tempo b-side. Somewhat surprisingly, the album's best moments come when it slows down; "White As Snow" is a lovely, sorrowful update of a traditional folktune but the best song here is "Moment Of Surrender" a mid-tempo ballad, which, while a bit overlong, has an open-hearted ache reminiscint of "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" but updated with the lessons that the band has learned since then. The problems with the album come either when the band go too far into their atmospherics (as in the formless "Breathe" and "Cedars Of Lebanon", which, unfortunately, close the record) or try to be nakedly up-tempo (the stumbling white-boy funk of "Stand Up Comedy" and the aforementioned disco-fied tragedy "Get On Your Boots"). Moreover, the album was produced, for the most part, by Daniel Lanois and Brain Eno who are, of course, responsible for the two U2 albums that pretty much everyone loves (Joshua Tree and Achtung Baby) but it's not quite up to snuff with those two albums mostly due to a problem of the band not writing songs that are up to those standards. However, if reports are to be believed U2 will be putting out another album this year titled Songs Of Ascent which will be, apparently, slower and more meditative. Given that the slower tracks were the ones that worked the most here, I'm looking forward to hearing that one.
Anyway, the good stuff:
- The president is all like "You're under arrest" and Jon Voight is all like "RAGE!!!".
- Jon Voight and the president's husband should have an old-man rage showdown.
- I guess I would call what Tony did to those guards latino-fu, but I don't know if it even merits that distinction; it was so clumsy and awkward.
- I did like his desperate attempt to grab the trigger device and his brilliant jump away from the explosion, though.
- I do actually like how the show is showing Jack being weak and unable to help for once, it's a change.
- When that black dude whipped out the shotgun, Larry scrambled behind that dumpster right quick.
- I swear to god that the one agent who the black guy shot was in American Pie, can any one confirm that?
- Larry (A.K.A. Agent Douchebag) didn't get a silent clock but he didn't really deserve one, though the way he died was hilarious.
- That whole Ten Redux thing by Pearl Jam? It's interesting but it's not worth re-buying that album for, and I say that as I guy who's top ten albums would likely include Ten. That said, I would say that it's at least different enough from the original that it merits checking out. The main thing that's changed is just that everything, from the instruments to the vocals, is made clearer and hits harder. Ten, while great, is probably the most "90's" album in terms of production that you'll ever hear. By that I mean, the original mixes have this weird gauzy, cotton-y feel to them, as if everything is slightly out of focus, and all the elements tend to blur into one another at a point. Ten Redux cleans the mix up so that everything has its own distinct sonic space and, for most of these songs, that's a plus. "Jeremy", "Even Flow" and "Alive" have been drained of some of their power by constant radio play but these new mixes beef up the punch, giving them at least a slight bit more life. Same story for the other rockers like "Once" and "Why Go". The only time I think that the old mixes were better is when the album slows down: "Oceans" doesn't have the same, excuse the pun, watery, calming drift when that mush of acoustic and electric guitars is pulled apart, "Black" feels a touch too melodramatic when those piano crashes are made clearer and the new mix of "Release" shows a bit more unnecessary torture in Eddie Vedder's vocals that isn't covered by that shimmering guitar line. That said, the rockers outnumber the ballads, so, overall the album is better. Still, it's not better enough to justify buying this new set if you already own Ten (and, really, who doesn't?) and, due to the radical difference in price points between the two, I would still recommend the original album over this for newcomers.
- No Line On The Horizon is a good U2 album (and a lot better than I thought it would be after hearing that "Get On Your Boots" mess, which I shall not speak of again) but it clearly wants to be a great U2 album. It doesn't get there for a couple of reasons but it's a good bit better than their last couple of efforts. I really didn't care for How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb because I thought that it was too straight-forward in its attempt to write anthems and I've always liked U2 the best when they know how to temper their arena-rock impulses with either introspection or atmosphere (and, ideally, both). No Line, in its best moments, is a worthy successor to The Joshua Tree in this way as it balances grand-sway melodies with open-space grandness and heart-bearing romantic ache. The title track starts off a bit awkward but once it gets going it has a lovely, up-down rhythmic bob, "Magnificent" is a worthy entry into U2's canon of arena-shakers with Bono's strong vocal hammering that chorus home (it's the next single, good call) and "I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight" is a bit obvious in its shout-along hook but it's still an effective little rocker. "FEZ-Being Born" is a bit unsure of itself (and the intro goes on far longer than it needs to) but I like the lightly industrial grind of its guitar work and "Unknown Caller" dresses up itself a bit unnecessarily with watery synth tones but it has an open-road drive worthy of a vintage mid-tempo b-side. Somewhat surprisingly, the album's best moments come when it slows down; "White As Snow" is a lovely, sorrowful update of a traditional folktune but the best song here is "Moment Of Surrender" a mid-tempo ballad, which, while a bit overlong, has an open-hearted ache reminiscint of "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" but updated with the lessons that the band has learned since then. The problems with the album come either when the band go too far into their atmospherics (as in the formless "Breathe" and "Cedars Of Lebanon", which, unfortunately, close the record) or try to be nakedly up-tempo (the stumbling white-boy funk of "Stand Up Comedy" and the aforementioned disco-fied tragedy "Get On Your Boots"). Moreover, the album was produced, for the most part, by Daniel Lanois and Brain Eno who are, of course, responsible for the two U2 albums that pretty much everyone loves (Joshua Tree and Achtung Baby) but it's not quite up to snuff with those two albums mostly due to a problem of the band not writing songs that are up to those standards. However, if reports are to be believed U2 will be putting out another album this year titled Songs Of Ascent which will be, apparently, slower and more meditative. Given that the slower tracks were the ones that worked the most here, I'm looking forward to hearing that one.
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