The DC heat must be softening my typically judicious taste. Lots of good things this week, and not a lot of bad. So I've got six in a grabbag for you, but they're mostly up. I'll be back to cranky form next week.
Big Ups
1. Raekwon the Chef, "The New Wu" / Cuban Linx II- Almost two years ago, I stood in the crowd of the Virgin Music Festival at Pimlico race track in Baltimore, watching Wu-Tang Clan absolutely tear down the house. That day, RZA wore a shirt advertising the long-awaited and highly anticipated Raekwon solo album, Only Built for Cuban Linx II. For those not in the know, the original Cuban Linx (1994) was one of the original Wu-Tang solo albums that fortified the Wu empire via a series of groundbreaking platinum albums/satellite republics to include GZA’s Liquid Swords and Method Man’s Tical. Since then, Raekwon albums have come an gone, but when word leaked that Raekwon was harkening back to the spirit of Cuban Linx, heads flipped. Furthermore, early rumors swirled that production of the album would be split between Dr. Dre and RZA. Are you kidding me?
Only problem: two years have passed since RZA promised the crowd at Pimlico a November 2007 release, and we’ve got nothing.
That might be about to change. Raekwon’s Myspace page heralds an August 11th release date—“Witness the Rebirth.”
Me? I’ll believe it when I see it. But in the meantime, we skeptics can bite our tongues and feast on the new Raekwon single, “The New Wu” featuring Method and Ghostface. It's listed as "WU Ooh" on the Myspace playlist, but check the Itunes Link. Like RZA’s 08 single, "You Can't Stop Me Now," it’s smooth, soulful, and ultra-refined. These guys are masters of the hip hop craft. Everything points to rebirth. This could be huge. So huge.
2. Z-Trip at Movement/Paxahau- Was reading up on Summer festivals and came across some press on the Detroit electronic music festival Movement, put on by Paxahau Events. Not exactly my scene, but I have spent some time in the dance tent in my day, and I find the Detroit music scene pretty awesome. For a city widely considered to be down on its luck, it seems to have a massive wellspring of creative energy, not unlike what you find in Baltimore. This article on Z-Trip’s Detroit-flavored mash-up set was especially dig-inspiring. I couldn’t find the audio for it, but I’ve added his “Motown Breakdown” to my mixtape below, an it should give you some of that Detroit flavor. Girl Talk fans take heed.
3. THE BEASTIE BOYS NEW ALBUM IS GOING TO BE CALLED HOT SAUCE COMMITTEE.
3a. Their "impromptu" performance with the Roots on Jimmy Fallon was excellent. Mike D looks so fly. Shout out to And-Rock for the heads-up!
More Big Ups
4. Weezer and Blink 182 on tour -The Summer tour bill to end all Summer tour bills? I'll be there, potentially incognito. And while we're at it...
4a. Weezer Snuggies- "It's a totally legit Snuggie."
5. Email from someone I trust-
Subject: oh my goodness
new grizzly bear album is absolutely incredible
check it here.
Big Down
1. Jay-Z and Def Jam
Jay-Z splits but still owes them an album. Will he record? Do I care? The most interesting thing about Jay-Z at this point is whether he'll be able to fulfill the absurd terms of the contract he signed with Live Nation last year, before Live Nation goes the way of pets.com. Plus, didn't he retire?
Maybe Hov should take a cue from Beastie Boys' Mike D, who levied a nice shot at Def Jam on 2007's To the Five Buroughs: "I see that Def Jam doesn't recognize me/ I'm Mike D: the one that put the satin in your panties."
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Up/Down: Blame it on the Videos
I'm turning last week's up-or-down referendum into a weekly feature on my latest loves and hates. And as promised, no more self-justifying diatribes. This week I've got some music videos for you. The slow transmutation of the music video over the past 15 years has been absolutely fascinating, and at the same time depressing. On the one hand, few are made and now they mostly suck; on the other, MTV has made up for this by making it possible to watch whatever music video you want, whenever...and embed it in my blog (I love you MTV!)...with an obligatory 15 second commercial (I hate you MTV!). It's an unhealthy relationship, me and the MTV.
Big Ups
1. "Blame It"- Jamie Foxx feat. T-Pain: Jamie Foxx's music career has been one long "is he serious?" awkward moment. This song is an excellent balance of the humor and the R&B, umm, talent. "Fill another cup up/feelin' on your butt, what"...I mean, that's a joke, right? Got to be. I get it.
2. "Magnificent"-U2: Someone pointed out to me recently that no U2 member has ever released a solo album, and that this commitment to the core band is what has kept them around. Hard to argue with that, especially watching this latest video. Nothing groundbreaking, but the music is solid, the sound is good, and the shots of the band playing together are a simple way of conveying that power. Also, there's the sheets.
3. "Love Sex Magic"-Ciara feat. Justin Timberlake: As long as Ciara keeps making music and videos like this, I can do without Beyonce. Sexy, sexy song. Video speaks for itself.
Big Downs
1. "Sugar" - Flo Rida: there was a time when Hip-Hop was music's most innovative genre, in no small part because it's protagonists are by nature aggressively competitive (As Boogie Down Productions told it in 1988, the point of rapping is to be #1--it's a battle). If you stole someone else's style--or didn't have your own--you simply wouldn't survive. Unfortunately The borrowing, theft, and outright lack of creativity in rap today says alot about what's happened as a result of the "mainstreaming" of hip hop. Case in point: Flo Rida taking the "remix-a-slightly-obscure-song-that-people-will-drunkenly-recognize-on the-dancefloor-and-rap-blandly-over-that" model to unforeseen lows with a sample from Eiffel 65's willfully forgotten techno hit "Blue." When will it stop? He even butchers the sample...how is that possible?!?!? Hopefully this is what jumping the shark looks like.
2. "Know Your Enemy"- Greenday: Anyone else find it weird that Greenday "discovered their punk roots" and got political right when it paid to be lefty? Go back to Dookie.
3. "I Never Knew You"-Cage: Shia Labouf directed this. Strike 8. Emo+rap=extra big downs.
Big Ups
1. "Blame It"- Jamie Foxx feat. T-Pain: Jamie Foxx's music career has been one long "is he serious?" awkward moment. This song is an excellent balance of the humor and the R&B, umm, talent. "Fill another cup up/feelin' on your butt, what"...I mean, that's a joke, right? Got to be. I get it.
2. "Magnificent"-U2: Someone pointed out to me recently that no U2 member has ever released a solo album, and that this commitment to the core band is what has kept them around. Hard to argue with that, especially watching this latest video. Nothing groundbreaking, but the music is solid, the sound is good, and the shots of the band playing together are a simple way of conveying that power. Also, there's the sheets.
3. "Love Sex Magic"-Ciara feat. Justin Timberlake: As long as Ciara keeps making music and videos like this, I can do without Beyonce. Sexy, sexy song. Video speaks for itself.
Big Downs
1. "Sugar" - Flo Rida: there was a time when Hip-Hop was music's most innovative genre, in no small part because it's protagonists are by nature aggressively competitive (As Boogie Down Productions told it in 1988, the point of rapping is to be #1--it's a battle). If you stole someone else's style--or didn't have your own--you simply wouldn't survive. Unfortunately The borrowing, theft, and outright lack of creativity in rap today says alot about what's happened as a result of the "mainstreaming" of hip hop. Case in point: Flo Rida taking the "remix-a-slightly-obscure-song-that-people-will-drunkenly-recognize-on the-dancefloor-and-rap-blandly-over-that" model to unforeseen lows with a sample from Eiffel 65's willfully forgotten techno hit "Blue." When will it stop? He even butchers the sample...how is that possible?!?!? Hopefully this is what jumping the shark looks like.
2. "Know Your Enemy"- Greenday: Anyone else find it weird that Greenday "discovered their punk roots" and got political right when it paid to be lefty? Go back to Dookie.
3. "I Never Knew You"-Cage: Shia Labouf directed this. Strike 8. Emo+rap=extra big downs.
Sunday, May 10, 2009
Up/Down: Shiny and New
When I unveiled Silversoundz last year, I led with a poetic waxing in defense of music writing that was not fixated on novelty--on being the first to go on record with an opinion on new song X or album Y. It sounded like a crotchety attempt at high-mindedness, but it was also founded in practicality. With the multiplication of music media, and the ease and speed of production, it's inherently futile to try and stay on top of everything at once. Let's face it: for most, the internet has become THE portal for accessing new, if not all, music. Yet the internet has also screwed with our decision making as music consumers by making it easier to publish and access opinions...not necessarily to form them.
As we try desperately to keep up with the volume of music available, we devour more and digest less. Meanwhile, every download comes with stigma--be it an offhand review, blog comments, even the street cred of the site you're pulling music from. These are new shades of old problems, of course. But instead of reviews in a limited number of music mags, what we heard on the radio or from friends, now we have about 5,000 inputs to consider. Not to mention bands' increased ability to promote themselves.
I'm not complaining. After all, you're reading this, right? But what concerns me about the music/information overload is the way we play it off as if the mere access to it is enough to make us, for lack of a better word, cool. The internet tempts us to think less about why we like certain music, and trades us unlimited access to affirmation by knowing what virtually everyone else is listening to. In my view, this has led to a really bizarre set of collective tastes and music fads over the past few years. Not all bad, of course, but bizarre in the sense that for about 4 years running, I can't remember the last time I listened to what was generally considered good music, and thought to myself without any irony: "this is clearly good music." I think we may look back on this period as the digital music equivalent of the early 1970's. We never quite recovered from the free-love days of Napster, but until some of the looming questions about the music industry vs. digital distro get figured out, we are simply saturated in music. We will look back and applaud ourselves for the Led Zeppelins of our times, laugh about the Supertramps, and cry about our version of disco (I'll leave the analogies to you). Put simply, distinguishing the good from the bad has gotten hard.
Of course, we try. What's new is fresh and what's fresh is powerful, and what's powerful bears mentioning. So here's my contribution to the heaping pile of new music opinion.
Big Ups
1. Phoenix- Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix/"1901". This album, due out on the 26th (already leaked on the interweb), has one of the coolest fucking names in recent memory. "1901" is one of the catchiest fucking songs in recent memory. I'm all over this.
2. Iran- Dissolver. I'm not a big TV on the Radio fan, so the hubbub over this band featuring Kyp Malone on guitar nearly deterred me from buying Dissolver. But I went for it and was pleased to find the songwriting of lead singer Aaron Aites is far less consciously serious (but not any less dark) than TVoTR. Most importantly, Iran can rock. AND THEN I find out they're touring with destroyer this Summer? Dig!!!
3. Kidz in the Hall- "I Got it Made 09 (Reebok Classic)". Can you say "summer anthem"? Love the beat, love the flow, love the video, love the vibe, love that they're one letter away from a Canadian Comedy troupe. If anyone knows why I can't download this on Itunes, please explain it to me.
Big Downs
1. Dinosaur Jr.- "I Want you to Know". Not necessarily the song. The song is fine, I guess. But see this pitchfork review for an illustration of my moral dilemma above. "...Even at their most triumphant, Dinosaur Jr. come off as shy and introspective; when Mascis usually lets fly with another rebar-melting guitar solo, it's like an overcompensating apology for his lyrical and vocal sad-sackery." Come on, it's Dinosaur Jr. Isn't it the whole point to say less?
2. Ween- Quebec. I know, it's not new. But I finally got around to buying this 2003 album and resuming my fascination with Ween last week. It's disappointing. Gene & Dean do all the old Ween things, but it's just not doing it for me. This could potentially change based on how many times I listen to the song "Zoloft" so stay tuned.
3. Asher Roth- Despicable. This guy makes Snow look like Talib Kweli. If I read one more magazine article in which this guy advertises his own rap credentials, mark my words I will barf all over the magazine, right there in the store. #1 sign that you don't deserve street cred? Repeated reminders that you want it.
Tell me yours! No more diatribes next time!!!
As we try desperately to keep up with the volume of music available, we devour more and digest less. Meanwhile, every download comes with stigma--be it an offhand review, blog comments, even the street cred of the site you're pulling music from. These are new shades of old problems, of course. But instead of reviews in a limited number of music mags, what we heard on the radio or from friends, now we have about 5,000 inputs to consider. Not to mention bands' increased ability to promote themselves.
I'm not complaining. After all, you're reading this, right? But what concerns me about the music/information overload is the way we play it off as if the mere access to it is enough to make us, for lack of a better word, cool. The internet tempts us to think less about why we like certain music, and trades us unlimited access to affirmation by knowing what virtually everyone else is listening to. In my view, this has led to a really bizarre set of collective tastes and music fads over the past few years. Not all bad, of course, but bizarre in the sense that for about 4 years running, I can't remember the last time I listened to what was generally considered good music, and thought to myself without any irony: "this is clearly good music." I think we may look back on this period as the digital music equivalent of the early 1970's. We never quite recovered from the free-love days of Napster, but until some of the looming questions about the music industry vs. digital distro get figured out, we are simply saturated in music. We will look back and applaud ourselves for the Led Zeppelins of our times, laugh about the Supertramps, and cry about our version of disco (I'll leave the analogies to you). Put simply, distinguishing the good from the bad has gotten hard.
Of course, we try. What's new is fresh and what's fresh is powerful, and what's powerful bears mentioning. So here's my contribution to the heaping pile of new music opinion.
Big Ups
1. Phoenix- Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix/"1901". This album, due out on the 26th (already leaked on the interweb), has one of the coolest fucking names in recent memory. "1901" is one of the catchiest fucking songs in recent memory. I'm all over this.
2. Iran- Dissolver. I'm not a big TV on the Radio fan, so the hubbub over this band featuring Kyp Malone on guitar nearly deterred me from buying Dissolver. But I went for it and was pleased to find the songwriting of lead singer Aaron Aites is far less consciously serious (but not any less dark) than TVoTR. Most importantly, Iran can rock. AND THEN I find out they're touring with destroyer this Summer? Dig!!!
3. Kidz in the Hall- "I Got it Made 09 (Reebok Classic)". Can you say "summer anthem"? Love the beat, love the flow, love the video, love the vibe, love that they're one letter away from a Canadian Comedy troupe. If anyone knows why I can't download this on Itunes, please explain it to me.
Big Downs
1. Dinosaur Jr.- "I Want you to Know". Not necessarily the song. The song is fine, I guess. But see this pitchfork review for an illustration of my moral dilemma above. "...Even at their most triumphant, Dinosaur Jr. come off as shy and introspective; when Mascis usually lets fly with another rebar-melting guitar solo, it's like an overcompensating apology for his lyrical and vocal sad-sackery." Come on, it's Dinosaur Jr. Isn't it the whole point to say less?
2. Ween- Quebec. I know, it's not new. But I finally got around to buying this 2003 album and resuming my fascination with Ween last week. It's disappointing. Gene & Dean do all the old Ween things, but it's just not doing it for me. This could potentially change based on how many times I listen to the song "Zoloft" so stay tuned.
3. Asher Roth- Despicable. This guy makes Snow look like Talib Kweli. If I read one more magazine article in which this guy advertises his own rap credentials, mark my words I will barf all over the magazine, right there in the store. #1 sign that you don't deserve street cred? Repeated reminders that you want it.
Tell me yours! No more diatribes next time!!!
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Egan's Five Albums for Spring
Every good album should correspond to a season. It's an immutable fact of life, and if you don't agree, it's either because you haven't thought about it, or because you're listening to bad albums.
After all, the essence of the album is its expression of a coherent set of ideas, feelings, and powers in a roughly 60-120 minute timeframe. Albums matter. That's why since time immemorial, bands have talked about the writing process in terms of the album; gushed excitedly about "going into the studio"; and mused about "recording cycles." That's why musicians care about cover art and liner notes--because the album is a medium for the message. We often take for granted that musicians (at least the good ones) are real people, and that their music is an expression of the joys and pains (and in many sad pop examples, the vacuity) of life. Well, life happens episodically, and so does music (compare Weezer's Pinkerton to the Blue Album and tell me that doesn't represent two different phases of Rivers Cuomo's career).
If albums didn't matter, then bands would be content releasing disconnected one-off digital singles with no accompanying art. This might be the Brave New World of Music that Apple Corp. and the Obama administration see when it sleeps, but it will never come to pass. Take heart. When the musical Armageddon is upon us, me and the other heretics will strap on armor of old CDs and LPs, arm ourselves with the raw power of Led Zeppelin II, Beck's Midnite Vultures, and some Fugazi Album. And we shall turn back the tide of .99 cent downloads!
Wait, what was I saying?
Ah yes, life is episodic. Music is episodic. And what's more, our connections to albums are subject to the same random tumult of our own lives. When did you first hear an album? Did someone give it to you? Who? Where were you at the time? Did you have reason to revisit it? How did it make you feel? On and on with questions we never consciously ask ourselves, but that abound when we really dig into an album.
Which brings me to seasons. I could probably group albums in an infinite number of ways, but something just feels right about seasons. Not only are they a reasonable size, but like albums they all have their own characteristics that we tend to associate with certain feelings and ideas-- some unique, some abstract--in a very personal, subjective way. Spring for instance is a time of renaissance. We emerge from our winter cocoons charged with energy and ideas; older and wiser but naive and hopeful. We find music that matches this wave of fresh air. But our enthusiasm is ripe to be dampened. As I write this, the skies have unceremoniously opened up to drench Washington, DC. Meanwhile, the temperatures have surged above 60, and the humidity has coaxed the tulips out only to wash their petals into storm drains.
Without further adieu, here are 5 albums that, for me, are forever tied to Spring. In memory, in experience, and in spirit.
1. Zwan- Mary Star of the Sea
A controversial pick, I know. I am a card-carrying disciple of the temple of Corgan, but hear me out: MSotS came out in the first week of February, 2003, almost three years after the Pumpkins broke up. After listening to months of dirty rumors swirl about what Corgan had up his sleeve, he delivered a payoff-pitch curveball. Zwan was a supergroup for musicheads, featuring Matt Sweeney (Skunk, Chavez), Paz Lenchantintin (Babe/bassist from A Perfect Circle), and David Pajo (Papa M, Slint and Tortoise), along with formerly disgraced Pumpkins drummer Jimmy Chamberlin. Billy Corgan tapping someone from Tortoise was a veritable collision of worlds, and it gave currency to Corgan's renaissance.
And that's what Mary Star of the Sea is about: rebirth; both for Corgan, and his listeners. Arguably no living band/musician of my time (90's on basically) has had a more tumultuous and public career than the Pumpkins. Think about it. There's actually some very deep similarities between Corgan and Axl Rose that I won't pursue now, but they're there. In 2003, memories of the Pumpkins' demise was fresh in every fan's mind, along with the band's last album, the grand, dark and narcissisitic opus Machina: the Machines of God. When Zwan unveiled MSoTS in 2003, (I still remember buying it at Newbury Comics) all we wanted was something to believe in.
And that Spring, we got it. Happiness and hope lived in Zwan. The three-guitar ensemble rocked, Chamberlin was in top form, and even Corgan's voice sounded rejuvenated. The first single, "Honestly" was a bouncy, emotive rock love song. When was the last time we were gifted one of those on the radio? Well-known Pumpkins-haters started approaching me to sheepishly admit tht they loved the single. We even found out what Billy looks like when he smiles (strange). Corgan's songwriting was thriving on a sense of spiritual certainty that had been absent in the Pumpkins' final years (though never explicitly religious, Corgan's "spirituality" could not be ignored on MSotS, or in the press surrounding Zwan). The music was fresh and unique--it was hard not to think big. The most direct statement of the album's spirit is first track, "Lyric." Watch the video and you'll see exactly what I mean. Marching through the streets of Chicago behind Billy Corgan? Yes we can!
It seems dubious in retrospect, but at the time, MSotS was a powerful and inspiring album. Even though it was released in Winter, it was a staple in my rotation throughout my final Spring semester of college. It also helped that Zwan came to Boston in April, and played one of the best shows I've ever seen to sold-out Orpheum. What better soundtrack for times of such importance? Listening to this album could literally make make a trip to the grocery store seem like an existential experience. My personal favorite: on "Ride a Black Swan" Corgan preaches the refrain, "Remove my spirit from darkness / love become my hammer" over a cresting tidal wave of guitars and drums. Music can have great power, and Zwan harnessed it, albeit briefly. This album is every promise--realistic and unrealistic--you make to yourself on the first sunny day in April.
2. Richard Hawley- Cole's Corner
It's Spring, 2006, and I've taken up residence in the gothic fortress of solitude that is Yale's graduate dormitory. Richard Hawley is a regular on 2005 year-end top ten lists, so I buy the album on an impulse. I know what to expect: lush sound, emotionalism, and Hawley's throwback crooning. After all, that is his calling card. I listen; I like. Over time, I am slowly conquered by the feeling of the album. Taken in pieces, it's easy to marvel at Hawley's talent for simply writing good love songs. Not songs expressing love per se, but songs inspired by love. Taken together, the songs on this album suggest something far more powerful--a longing that exists in and out of our relationships with loved ones. New Haven thaws and blossoms and I open the window, despite the biblical rains pouring into the concrete gutter outside. We long for the those we have left, and despite ourselves we long for the ones we have at hand. It's a persistent loneliness of society, and a deteremination to defeat it. Hawley's songs weave in and out of physical and emotional confines: wandering the street at Cole's Corner, eager to encounter love or something; inside a Hotel Room, locked in arms with an old friend and lover; down by the ocean; watching the city lights from a car on the hill, trying to forget someone. Hawley seeks and seeks, unable to escape his romantic hex, finding no refuge, and leaving us only with a reassuring lullaby: "Papa's gonna shoe your pretty little feet/ mama's gonna glove your little hand/ I'm gonna kiss your ruby red lips/ mmm hmm hmmm." I walk the streets of New Haven, my own Cole's Corner, and reacquaint myself with the evening.
3. Destroyer- Your Blues
Interestingly, this abstract (some might say inaccessible) album was my first exposure to Destroyer. I still remember listening to the opening song, "Notorious Lightning" for the first time, looking out the back window of a lonely Georgetown apartment in Spring 2004. It was trial by fire--that first track, "Notorious Lightning", is everything audaciously good and bad about Daniel Bejar's music in one 7 minute opus. It starts with graceful acoustic guitars draped in true poetry ("I lay myself down to observe your gilded jeans hit the ground and still haven't grown from this worship"), and then crescendos into a crashing, synthesizer-laden, flamboyant refrain in which Bejar caws "someone has to fall before someone goes free!" It is the beautiful but awkward emotional climax of the album, five minutes into the first song. But it sets the tone.
Afterwards, Bejar goes about his business exploring all sorts of unfamiliar people and places: Oakland, Warsaw, fops on the terrace, actors seeking revenge, inviting army sluts, lovers stealing gondolas to sea. All orchestrated around a synth, accoustic guitar, light drums, and that piercing voice. There are moments of light and happiness in this effortlessly imagined world, but all of it is imbued with a vague sense of foreboding, of collapse; of a weight that hangs on even the most mystical images. That unnamed feeling is of course, sadness, and Destroyer's music about that feeling is, by artful definition, the blues. His blues. Your Blues. Think about that for a second.
Your Blues is every rainy day in April that you decide to walk instead of taking the subway. It is, as he sings in "Certain Things You Ought to Know," when we reflect on our "springtime on the barricades/our Springtime charades." And it is the peace of the evening after an April shower, in "What Roads?", when Bejar chants, "Tonight we work large, we aim high, pillars stare at a sky designed to come down upon everyone at once."
4. The Clientele- Suburban Light // Preston School of Industry- All this Sounds Gas-
I'm cheating. These two go together because I bought them together in Spring, 2002 at a 2-for$20 sale at newbury Comics in Boston. These are two niche albums that I can't explain my love for. The former is a collection of Clientele B-Sides (I don't even own any A-Sides!!!) that feels like a Sunday evening with friends (or a lover) outside on a freshly cut lawn. The second--the underrated solo project by Spiral Stairs from Pavement--is just plain good. It's about traveling, and understanding home-neither especially deep subjects but pertinent ones at that time in my life. More importantly, the songwriting and recording embodies a spirit of adventurism and ambition that Spring dutifully renews every year.
5. Modest Mouse- We Were Dead before the Ship Even Sank
Another controversial pick. This one generally goes down like ballast water with most Modest Mouse fans, who decided that the band sold out long, long ago. Longer ago, in fact, than you even realize. So goes the predominant hipster narrative, anyway.
These days, wringing your hands over the fate of Isaac Brock and compatriots is strongly discouraged, if not passé. The mainstream commercial success or 2003’s Good News for People who Love Bad News betrayed the band's trademark gritty esotericism, which now appeared to be bordering on the trite. Even Brock’s trademark guttural screams were starting to sound more like polished growls. As the band picked up legions of new fans (I cannot forget one local homeboy in a Redskins jersey and sideways cap, flailing around to "Float On" like a Kanye West song at Constitution Hall in DC), those more heavily invested in one of the best rock acts of the late millennium began to feel a distance from the band. This is the point at which we generally project on others as "selling out." The seeds had been sewn—many were quick to remind themselves—in 2000, when Modest Mouse left Up Records for Epic. [never mind that the album, LP and side project that followed were blisteringly good]. What came after that was just fait accompli. First there was Good News, with "Float On" in heavy rotation on Clear Channel adult contemporary radio stations [Say it ain't so!]. We Were Dead was just a followup. Same label, same sound...why even bother?
There's just one problem with this revisionist history: it forgets what it means to be involved with a band; to root for them. If you listen to WWDBTSES in search of reasons to dismiss it, you'll find them. There's no denying that Isaac Brock's poetic psychosis has ebbed, and taken his lyrical edge with it. The band has expanded from a 3-piece crew with a larger-than-life sound to a 5+ member well-produced collective. The addition of former Smiths' guitarist Johnny Marr (a major press point leading up to the album's release) produced riffs that hang like repetitive ornamentation on songs throughout the album. And do we really know what that second drummer is for?
On the other hand, if you listen to the album with a forgiving ear, an entirely different experience emerges. From the very first chords and lines of the first song, "March Into the Sea," the album rolls and pitches like a cutter lost in the straits of Magellan, with Isaac Brock as the grizzled, and generally insane, Captain. "March into the Sea" swells like a storm around choruses that featuring Isaac's self-mocking laughter: "Bang your head like a gong/ Because it's filled with all wrong/ A-ha-ha!/ Clang, clang, clang!" It sounds weird--maybe even a little contrived--and no doubt the Modest Mouse longingly cry to themselves,"what have you done with the REAL Isaac Brock?!" Then, in the eye of the storm, we hear a voice that resembles something real: "If you think you know enough/ To know you know we've had enough/ And if you think you don't, you probably will/ Our tails wagged and then fell off/ But we just turned back, marched into the sea." Sounds like he's sending a message... Then the raging sea is back, slamming your eardrums to the climax of the song: "Cut me down like the trees/ Like the lumber or weeds/ Drag me out of the sea and then teach me to breathe/ Give me forced health till I wish death on myself/ Give me forced health till I wish death on myself/ [more maniacal laughter]."
Egan Caufield contrarian opinion here: "March into the Sea" masterfully sets the stage for one of the most poignant inward-looking concept albums I have ever heard. This album is a posthumous death-knell from a watery grave. Isaac Brock doesn't give a fuck that you think he's sold out. In fact, you might be to blame; you and all the other fickle bastards that unceremoniously marked the band for dead the minute it was cool to do so. You know what? He doesn't care about you either, because even death, it turns out, makes for good music. The album is painted on a canvas of perpetual motion--boats, dashboards, marches, rickshaws, even carbon --and Modest Mouse is the hapless band of travelers, always moving, never settled; never arriving. Death is prominent on the album, as are bugs; it's lovely. But it's the marine motif ties the album together (see the brilliant video for Dashboard for more of the marine motif). The sea: that normally hopeful, infinite expanse on which Modest Mouse once sailed, has now swallowed the band and turned them into another one of Indie Rock's coral reefs.
I'll admit, it's dangerous to interpret albums so simply, but here it's impossible to escape the notion that this is an album about the band; marching, wailing, touring, growing, recording more albums in the face of death (perceived) with a healthy sense of cynicism and even some moments of apologetic hope (at the end of the boisterous "Spitting Venom" when Isaac sings reassuringly "Cheer up baby, it wasn't always quite so bad/ for every little venom that came out, the antidote was had," it kills me). It is art mocking life; theatre within film within music. And when it's all over, we are surprised to learn that no one has drowned after all. Modest Mouse is still alive and breathing, though perhaps amphibiously. Now there's a concept album for you.
The fact that so many Modest Mouse fans write this one off will never make sense to me. There's so much depth [no pun intended] to this album, so much of their gritty spirit, but most seem deaf to it. Unfortunately I don't think the new fans totally get it either. But I'll stand down. What does this have to do with Spring, anyway? Everything. This album is a string of April defeats: getting shafted on tax day, rejected from graduate school, betrayed by a best friend...and keeping on. Dig?
After all, the essence of the album is its expression of a coherent set of ideas, feelings, and powers in a roughly 60-120 minute timeframe. Albums matter. That's why since time immemorial, bands have talked about the writing process in terms of the album; gushed excitedly about "going into the studio"; and mused about "recording cycles." That's why musicians care about cover art and liner notes--because the album is a medium for the message. We often take for granted that musicians (at least the good ones) are real people, and that their music is an expression of the joys and pains (and in many sad pop examples, the vacuity) of life. Well, life happens episodically, and so does music (compare Weezer's Pinkerton to the Blue Album and tell me that doesn't represent two different phases of Rivers Cuomo's career).
If albums didn't matter, then bands would be content releasing disconnected one-off digital singles with no accompanying art. This might be the Brave New World of Music that Apple Corp. and the Obama administration see when it sleeps, but it will never come to pass. Take heart. When the musical Armageddon is upon us, me and the other heretics will strap on armor of old CDs and LPs, arm ourselves with the raw power of Led Zeppelin II, Beck's Midnite Vultures, and some Fugazi Album. And we shall turn back the tide of .99 cent downloads!
Wait, what was I saying?
Ah yes, life is episodic. Music is episodic. And what's more, our connections to albums are subject to the same random tumult of our own lives. When did you first hear an album? Did someone give it to you? Who? Where were you at the time? Did you have reason to revisit it? How did it make you feel? On and on with questions we never consciously ask ourselves, but that abound when we really dig into an album.
Which brings me to seasons. I could probably group albums in an infinite number of ways, but something just feels right about seasons. Not only are they a reasonable size, but like albums they all have their own characteristics that we tend to associate with certain feelings and ideas-- some unique, some abstract--in a very personal, subjective way. Spring for instance is a time of renaissance. We emerge from our winter cocoons charged with energy and ideas; older and wiser but naive and hopeful. We find music that matches this wave of fresh air. But our enthusiasm is ripe to be dampened. As I write this, the skies have unceremoniously opened up to drench Washington, DC. Meanwhile, the temperatures have surged above 60, and the humidity has coaxed the tulips out only to wash their petals into storm drains.
Without further adieu, here are 5 albums that, for me, are forever tied to Spring. In memory, in experience, and in spirit.
1. Zwan- Mary Star of the Sea
A controversial pick, I know. I am a card-carrying disciple of the temple of Corgan, but hear me out: MSotS came out in the first week of February, 2003, almost three years after the Pumpkins broke up. After listening to months of dirty rumors swirl about what Corgan had up his sleeve, he delivered a payoff-pitch curveball. Zwan was a supergroup for musicheads, featuring Matt Sweeney (Skunk, Chavez), Paz Lenchantintin (Babe/bassist from A Perfect Circle), and David Pajo (Papa M, Slint and Tortoise), along with formerly disgraced Pumpkins drummer Jimmy Chamberlin. Billy Corgan tapping someone from Tortoise was a veritable collision of worlds, and it gave currency to Corgan's renaissance.
And that's what Mary Star of the Sea is about: rebirth; both for Corgan, and his listeners. Arguably no living band/musician of my time (90's on basically) has had a more tumultuous and public career than the Pumpkins. Think about it. There's actually some very deep similarities between Corgan and Axl Rose that I won't pursue now, but they're there. In 2003, memories of the Pumpkins' demise was fresh in every fan's mind, along with the band's last album, the grand, dark and narcissisitic opus Machina: the Machines of God. When Zwan unveiled MSoTS in 2003, (I still remember buying it at Newbury Comics) all we wanted was something to believe in.
And that Spring, we got it. Happiness and hope lived in Zwan. The three-guitar ensemble rocked, Chamberlin was in top form, and even Corgan's voice sounded rejuvenated. The first single, "Honestly" was a bouncy, emotive rock love song. When was the last time we were gifted one of those on the radio? Well-known Pumpkins-haters started approaching me to sheepishly admit tht they loved the single. We even found out what Billy looks like when he smiles (strange). Corgan's songwriting was thriving on a sense of spiritual certainty that had been absent in the Pumpkins' final years (though never explicitly religious, Corgan's "spirituality" could not be ignored on MSotS, or in the press surrounding Zwan). The music was fresh and unique--it was hard not to think big. The most direct statement of the album's spirit is first track, "Lyric." Watch the video and you'll see exactly what I mean. Marching through the streets of Chicago behind Billy Corgan? Yes we can!
It seems dubious in retrospect, but at the time, MSotS was a powerful and inspiring album. Even though it was released in Winter, it was a staple in my rotation throughout my final Spring semester of college. It also helped that Zwan came to Boston in April, and played one of the best shows I've ever seen to sold-out Orpheum. What better soundtrack for times of such importance? Listening to this album could literally make make a trip to the grocery store seem like an existential experience. My personal favorite: on "Ride a Black Swan" Corgan preaches the refrain, "Remove my spirit from darkness / love become my hammer" over a cresting tidal wave of guitars and drums. Music can have great power, and Zwan harnessed it, albeit briefly. This album is every promise--realistic and unrealistic--you make to yourself on the first sunny day in April.
2. Richard Hawley- Cole's Corner
It's Spring, 2006, and I've taken up residence in the gothic fortress of solitude that is Yale's graduate dormitory. Richard Hawley is a regular on 2005 year-end top ten lists, so I buy the album on an impulse. I know what to expect: lush sound, emotionalism, and Hawley's throwback crooning. After all, that is his calling card. I listen; I like. Over time, I am slowly conquered by the feeling of the album. Taken in pieces, it's easy to marvel at Hawley's talent for simply writing good love songs. Not songs expressing love per se, but songs inspired by love. Taken together, the songs on this album suggest something far more powerful--a longing that exists in and out of our relationships with loved ones. New Haven thaws and blossoms and I open the window, despite the biblical rains pouring into the concrete gutter outside. We long for the those we have left, and despite ourselves we long for the ones we have at hand. It's a persistent loneliness of society, and a deteremination to defeat it. Hawley's songs weave in and out of physical and emotional confines: wandering the street at Cole's Corner, eager to encounter love or something; inside a Hotel Room, locked in arms with an old friend and lover; down by the ocean; watching the city lights from a car on the hill, trying to forget someone. Hawley seeks and seeks, unable to escape his romantic hex, finding no refuge, and leaving us only with a reassuring lullaby: "Papa's gonna shoe your pretty little feet/ mama's gonna glove your little hand/ I'm gonna kiss your ruby red lips/ mmm hmm hmmm." I walk the streets of New Haven, my own Cole's Corner, and reacquaint myself with the evening.
3. Destroyer- Your BluesInterestingly, this abstract (some might say inaccessible) album was my first exposure to Destroyer. I still remember listening to the opening song, "Notorious Lightning" for the first time, looking out the back window of a lonely Georgetown apartment in Spring 2004. It was trial by fire--that first track, "Notorious Lightning", is everything audaciously good and bad about Daniel Bejar's music in one 7 minute opus. It starts with graceful acoustic guitars draped in true poetry ("I lay myself down to observe your gilded jeans hit the ground and still haven't grown from this worship"), and then crescendos into a crashing, synthesizer-laden, flamboyant refrain in which Bejar caws "someone has to fall before someone goes free!" It is the beautiful but awkward emotional climax of the album, five minutes into the first song. But it sets the tone.
Afterwards, Bejar goes about his business exploring all sorts of unfamiliar people and places: Oakland, Warsaw, fops on the terrace, actors seeking revenge, inviting army sluts, lovers stealing gondolas to sea. All orchestrated around a synth, accoustic guitar, light drums, and that piercing voice. There are moments of light and happiness in this effortlessly imagined world, but all of it is imbued with a vague sense of foreboding, of collapse; of a weight that hangs on even the most mystical images. That unnamed feeling is of course, sadness, and Destroyer's music about that feeling is, by artful definition, the blues. His blues. Your Blues. Think about that for a second.
Your Blues is every rainy day in April that you decide to walk instead of taking the subway. It is, as he sings in "Certain Things You Ought to Know," when we reflect on our "springtime on the barricades/our Springtime charades." And it is the peace of the evening after an April shower, in "What Roads?", when Bejar chants, "Tonight we work large, we aim high, pillars stare at a sky designed to come down upon everyone at once."
4. The Clientele- Suburban Light // Preston School of Industry- All this Sounds Gas-
I'm cheating. These two go together because I bought them together in Spring, 2002 at a 2-for$20 sale at newbury Comics in Boston. These are two niche albums that I can't explain my love for. The former is a collection of Clientele B-Sides (I don't even own any A-Sides!!!) that feels like a Sunday evening with friends (or a lover) outside on a freshly cut lawn. The second--the underrated solo project by Spiral Stairs from Pavement--is just plain good. It's about traveling, and understanding home-neither especially deep subjects but pertinent ones at that time in my life. More importantly, the songwriting and recording embodies a spirit of adventurism and ambition that Spring dutifully renews every year.
5. Modest Mouse- We Were Dead before the Ship Even Sank
Another controversial pick. This one generally goes down like ballast water with most Modest Mouse fans, who decided that the band sold out long, long ago. Longer ago, in fact, than you even realize. So goes the predominant hipster narrative, anyway.
These days, wringing your hands over the fate of Isaac Brock and compatriots is strongly discouraged, if not passé. The mainstream commercial success or 2003’s Good News for People who Love Bad News betrayed the band's trademark gritty esotericism, which now appeared to be bordering on the trite. Even Brock’s trademark guttural screams were starting to sound more like polished growls. As the band picked up legions of new fans (I cannot forget one local homeboy in a Redskins jersey and sideways cap, flailing around to "Float On" like a Kanye West song at Constitution Hall in DC), those more heavily invested in one of the best rock acts of the late millennium began to feel a distance from the band. This is the point at which we generally project on others as "selling out." The seeds had been sewn—many were quick to remind themselves—in 2000, when Modest Mouse left Up Records for Epic. [never mind that the album, LP and side project that followed were blisteringly good]. What came after that was just fait accompli. First there was Good News, with "Float On" in heavy rotation on Clear Channel adult contemporary radio stations [Say it ain't so!]. We Were Dead was just a followup. Same label, same sound...why even bother?
There's just one problem with this revisionist history: it forgets what it means to be involved with a band; to root for them. If you listen to WWDBTSES in search of reasons to dismiss it, you'll find them. There's no denying that Isaac Brock's poetic psychosis has ebbed, and taken his lyrical edge with it. The band has expanded from a 3-piece crew with a larger-than-life sound to a 5+ member well-produced collective. The addition of former Smiths' guitarist Johnny Marr (a major press point leading up to the album's release) produced riffs that hang like repetitive ornamentation on songs throughout the album. And do we really know what that second drummer is for?
On the other hand, if you listen to the album with a forgiving ear, an entirely different experience emerges. From the very first chords and lines of the first song, "March Into the Sea," the album rolls and pitches like a cutter lost in the straits of Magellan, with Isaac Brock as the grizzled, and generally insane, Captain. "March into the Sea" swells like a storm around choruses that featuring Isaac's self-mocking laughter: "Bang your head like a gong/ Because it's filled with all wrong/ A-ha-ha!/ Clang, clang, clang!" It sounds weird--maybe even a little contrived--and no doubt the Modest Mouse longingly cry to themselves,"what have you done with the REAL Isaac Brock?!" Then, in the eye of the storm, we hear a voice that resembles something real: "If you think you know enough/ To know you know we've had enough/ And if you think you don't, you probably will/ Our tails wagged and then fell off/ But we just turned back, marched into the sea." Sounds like he's sending a message... Then the raging sea is back, slamming your eardrums to the climax of the song: "Cut me down like the trees/ Like the lumber or weeds/ Drag me out of the sea and then teach me to breathe/ Give me forced health till I wish death on myself/ Give me forced health till I wish death on myself/ [more maniacal laughter]."
Egan Caufield contrarian opinion here: "March into the Sea" masterfully sets the stage for one of the most poignant inward-looking concept albums I have ever heard. This album is a posthumous death-knell from a watery grave. Isaac Brock doesn't give a fuck that you think he's sold out. In fact, you might be to blame; you and all the other fickle bastards that unceremoniously marked the band for dead the minute it was cool to do so. You know what? He doesn't care about you either, because even death, it turns out, makes for good music. The album is painted on a canvas of perpetual motion--boats, dashboards, marches, rickshaws, even carbon --and Modest Mouse is the hapless band of travelers, always moving, never settled; never arriving. Death is prominent on the album, as are bugs; it's lovely. But it's the marine motif ties the album together (see the brilliant video for Dashboard for more of the marine motif). The sea: that normally hopeful, infinite expanse on which Modest Mouse once sailed, has now swallowed the band and turned them into another one of Indie Rock's coral reefs.
I'll admit, it's dangerous to interpret albums so simply, but here it's impossible to escape the notion that this is an album about the band; marching, wailing, touring, growing, recording more albums in the face of death (perceived) with a healthy sense of cynicism and even some moments of apologetic hope (at the end of the boisterous "Spitting Venom" when Isaac sings reassuringly "Cheer up baby, it wasn't always quite so bad/ for every little venom that came out, the antidote was had," it kills me). It is art mocking life; theatre within film within music. And when it's all over, we are surprised to learn that no one has drowned after all. Modest Mouse is still alive and breathing, though perhaps amphibiously. Now there's a concept album for you.
The fact that so many Modest Mouse fans write this one off will never make sense to me. There's so much depth [no pun intended] to this album, so much of their gritty spirit, but most seem deaf to it. Unfortunately I don't think the new fans totally get it either. But I'll stand down. What does this have to do with Spring, anyway? Everything. This album is a string of April defeats: getting shafted on tax day, rejected from graduate school, betrayed by a best friend...and keeping on. Dig?
Sunday, March 22, 2009
"That shit is a science of everything ill."
Last month, XXL Magazine ran two pieces on the making of Nas’ 1994 major label debut, Illmatic. Those of you who know me, aside from knowing that I read XXL magazine religiously, know that I have a serious crush on Illmatic. While you won’t find me singing Nas’ praises in the general sense (he is an excellent rapper, but his body of work is just not consistently great), this album was born a classic. If you don't own it, don't have an opinion on Nas and, oh I don't know, consider Jay-Z's reign over hip-hop to be undisputed, then do yourself a favor and buy the album. From Nas' gravelly voice to the sparingly funky production; his poetic flow to the sinister but dreamlike vibe that runs through all 10 songs...Illmatic is the wormhole 
that connects the violent rap culture ascendant from the mid-80's to the early 90's East Coast hip-hop movement that thrived on lyricism and creativity. It's like the two sides of the force, and Nas balances them like a prophesied Jedi. I just wish there was a word for how awesome this is. Oh wait, there is: Illmatic.
As Nasir tells it: "Illmatic is supreme ill. It’s as ill as ill
gets. That shit is a science of everything ill."
Yeah, what he said.
Anyways, be sure to check out the XXL articles, which recount some of the stories involved in the recording and production of the album. It will make you nostalgic for a time and place that you have no connection to...as all classic albums do.
XXL: Still Ill
XXL: Nas, The Genesis
that connects the violent rap culture ascendant from the mid-80's to the early 90's East Coast hip-hop movement that thrived on lyricism and creativity. It's like the two sides of the force, and Nas balances them like a prophesied Jedi. I just wish there was a word for how awesome this is. Oh wait, there is: Illmatic.As Nasir tells it: "Illmatic is supreme ill. It’s as ill as ill
gets. That shit is a science of everything ill."
Yeah, what he said.
Anyways, be sure to check out the XXL articles, which recount some of the stories involved in the recording and production of the album. It will make you nostalgic for a time and place that you have no connection to...as all classic albums do.
XXL: Still Ill
XXL: Nas, The Genesis
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