Sorry about the confusing title. We pick up at Suite III, which has significantly fewer songs (seven as opposed to eleven) and a vibe much more conducive towards chillin'.
1. Suite III Overture
Suite III begins where Suite II left off, beginning with a piano-driven callback to the strings at the end of Suite II closer "Mushrooms & Roses." Like the last overture, this is (slightly more syrupy) film music, featuring the same ghost-in-the-transistor voices at the beginning of The Archandroid (good luck telling what they're saying). The strings are as swooning as ever, for sure, but like its predecessor, this is mostly setup in the larger scheme.
2. Neon Valley Street
The most traditional R&B track, if you'll allow me to be slightly reductive. More heavy (but still quite pretty) string parts, with Monáe taking vocal command of the track just as the bass groove kicks in. More than other songs on this album, "Neon Valley Street" suggests an indebtedness to Lauryn Hill, especially in the way it marries old-school easybeat soul with contemporary hip-hop. The operative word for the vibe here is "sedate." BUT, I should add, there's another cool if brief rap from Monáe that reminded me of Erykah Badu's spaced, easygoing verses.
3. Make The Bus (Feat. Of Montreal)
You'll be forgiven for wondering if The ArchAndroid hadn't suddenly been hijacked by Kevin Barnes and Co., as this is probably the most marked stylistic departure in an album brimming with genre crosses. Whether or not you like this song depends entirely on whether or not you like most of Of Montreal's album tracks, and since I've always been a big fan, the transition was easier for me (can't imagine what a normal hip-hop head would think, though). Monáe claims that she and Kevin Barnes trade off singing lines, and maybe it's because my ears aren't what they once were, but I only hear Barnes for the most part. All of this is a long way of saying that "Make The Bus" is pleasant to listen to and an interesting sequential gambit, but if you were to drop this on an Of Montreal album, you wouldn't have to change a thing.
4. Wondaland
My nomination for single #3. There's a pretty melody that's immediately apparent underneath the layers of hazed synths and bouncy bass, and that plus the disco beat make this already engaging listening. But it's Monáe's vocals, as usual, that elevate this to the level of conceptual and musical brilliance. "Wondaland" has one of her most effective chameleonic performances, affecting some sort of pixie-ish, fairy queen register that I swear is somehow not cloying at all. All of this bounces by prettily, until the chorus, where the voices and instruments switch from spacey to bassy in perfect tandem--it's difficult to explain the mood-shift that goes on, so you'll have to listen to it for yourself. The title, by the way, refers to Monáe's record label and arts collective the Wondaland Arts Society, but the song would feel utopian even without that as a subject matter. But does "Wondaland" have any function within the larger Metropolis narrative? I'll admit that I have really, really lost the plot at this point.
5. 57821 (Feat. Deep Cotton)
How many stylistic shifts can one album make before it starts to get boring? The answer: probably at around the same time said album starts mining Fairport Convention territory. Or at least that's what I think is happening here. Monáe's labelmates Deep Cotton get a chance to harmonize over some "Scarborough Faire"-like Renaissance dramatism, and if you're like me you probably weren't predisposed to that kind of music to begin with. I don't deny the pretty harmonies, and unlike "Make The Bus," this song shows that Monáe can be a background player without relinquishing the spotlight completely. "57821" is kind of long, though. It's here that The ArchAndroid starts taking a turn for the sleepy.
6. Say You'll Go
No idea how to explain this one: it's like a Broadway melody played over a lugubrious, barely-there groove, which features a quotation of Claude Debussy's piano piece "Clair de Lune," which was itself inspired by Paul Verlaine's poem. There's a chance that the Verlaine connection is relevant: it fits in with the romantic vibe of Suite III and matches the tone (if not the plot) of the lyrics. We get a nice reprise from the ghost voices as well. Man, that last minute: Debussy could really crank out a tune, right? So now Monáe can drop "classical" from her genre-geared Punnett Square.
7. BaBopByeYa
Monáe's well-established love for film music takes an appropriately avant-garde turn. "BaBopByeYa" by itself is a discrete and highly engaging symphony of sorts, with Monáe starting out in torch song mode and graduating into something more whispery and percussive. There's a lot of plot to wrap up here, and I'm not sure Monáe does that successfully, but at least it manages to fit the "throw in the kitchen sink" tone of the orchestration. Pay attention to the vocals at the end: Monáe really hits it out of the park, and in an alternate universe I could imagine her being a big Broadway star. It's a good thing for all of us that she took a more interesting route.
We will see when or if Suite IV eventually comes out, or whether The ArchAndroid's success could yield a new generation of sci-fi-oriented hip-hoppers. For now, let's just applaud her considerable talent, drive and ambition. Rarely is it this apparent that we have a classic artist in the making. Even if you aren't the type to buy your albums anymore, you should support her.
Sunday, May 23, 2010
Saturday, May 22, 2010
A Look At Janelle Monáe's Metropolis Cycle, Part 2: The ArchAndroid (Part I)
The saga continues. I will note that The ArchAndroid comes with liner notes that feature a list of influences and inspirations for each track, but I don't have those notes on me so I'm going into this blind.
1. Suite II Overture
Unlike the beginning of the "Chase Suite," Suite II starts out with a proper orchestral overture. Utilizing a motif that resembles the most famous part of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony (aka the Countdown With Keith Olbermann theme), this overture is short but heavy on theatrics and changing moods. It ends with a chorus of ghostly voices, singing as if stuck in an old transistor radio--and then we're immediately transported elsewhere.
2. Dance Or Die (Feat. Saul Williams)Monáe is joined by Niggy Tardust himself for this one, the first of four high-profile guest appearances on the album, and his presence is welcomed. But surprisingly, it's Monáe who does the majority of the spitting on this first track, and Williams is basically relegated to the background, offering his own take on futuristic word association games first heard in "Many Moons." Monáe is a good rapper, and each individual bar, clipped to the length of the song's bass line, is strong, but doesn't necessarily make me want to hear more of her rapping, at least at the expense of her singing.
3. Faster
The album really starts taking off here, as a motif jacked from the breakdown in "Dance Or Die" turns into an orgy of splayed electric guitar and DJ scratches, which then transforms into a go-go, hyperfast take on the Great American Songbook. This is where we first hear Monáe's memorable line "shake it like a schizo," but what really kills me is the way she intones "faster, faster I should run," and the way that guitar part sort of bubbles around her.
4. Locked Inside
Monáe sings about being in an abusive (android-human?) relationship, "where the man is always right." Another example of Monáe counterpointing Metropolis' futuristic, dystopian setting with tales of too-similar woe and injustice taking place in modern America. The track itself is the drum intro from Michael Jackson's "Rock With You," I believe, married to a melody that would have sounded perfectly at home in Songs In The Key Of Life. Big, ringing jazz chords characterize this track, and the "Oh how, oh how I need you baby" part is a killer example of Monáe's epic but not overpowering method of overdubbing vocals. The ending is even kind of Steely Dan.
5. Sir Greendown
"Sir Greendown" is presumably meant to refer to Anthony Greendown, the human male Cyndi Mayweather fell in love with at the beginning of this saga. While the first three songs (plus the intro) sound basically of a piece, easily flowing into one another, "Sir Greendown" is more of a short, ponderous break in the action. I don't know what to call music like this--it definitely has the feeling of an old standard, with Monáe's vocals are comparatively dialed down. Deserves the adjective "lilting," but among the rest of the tracks on Suite II, this sounds like it could be on the slower, more romantic Suite III.
6. Cold WarMonáe must really love the drum track in "B.O.B." (who doesn't?) because it shows up again here, anchoring a slab of apocalyptic electro-punk perfection. That's right, I said perfection, because this is indeed a perfect, immediate classic, and an obvious choice to go to for a second single after "Tightrope." There's something so universally tense and expansive about the melody here and the way Monáe belts out the phrase "this is a cold war/you better know what you're fighting for," singing it slightly different and at a different, higher register each time, it feels like. I find there are two extra-killer parts of this song: a) the way Monáe sings the part "I'm trying to find my peace/I was led to believe there's something wrong with me," and b) the suitably dramatic guitar solo, and it's here that I should point out that Monáe's regular guitarist Kellindo Parker has major chops, and (given that he doesn't have much competition that I'm aware of) he could become known, if they keep up his profile, as the true master of the Moog guitar.
7. Tightrope (Feat. Big Boi)
Will I ever tire of writing about Big Boi? Don't think so. He's more of a concentrated presence here than Saul Williams, if you couldn't have already guessed that. But Big's verse isn't particularly special, as he knows that the big draw here is, as always, Monáe and her titanically-assured vocal stylings. "Tightrope" is the big single, and deserves to bigger than it is (it even has its own dance). Me, I love the ukulele-and-strings bit toward the end the most, and I wish that part would go on forever. The whole thing is one great, Outkastian groove-fest, and it's not a surprise that the two tracks most indebted to Outkast will probably end up being the two big singles. In my world, this is starmaking stuff.
8. Neon Gumbo
This number is Monáe's earlier song "Many Moons" (which I wrote about here), specifically the last 1:30 of that track played backwards. So this is a song that belongs in the category of, like, "Dreams Reoccurring" or the Stone Roses' "Don't Stop," which is to say, surprisingly compelling despite the fact that it's another song played backwards. No idea how this reprise fits into the narrative of Metropolis, but I lost that map a long time ago.
9. Oh, Maker
I read someone online compare this song to a Pink Floyd number, which I can sort of see, as "Oh, Maker" is otherwise completely devoid of convenient vantage points. Beginning with a repetitive but flexible guitar figure, the song morphs into a showcase for Monáe's deft vocalizations (yet another one), and it's hard not to find the way she intones "so much hurt/in this earth" completely killer. It definitely has the feeling of a classic soul number, but there's a ghostly, futuristic quality to the proceedings--probably the only reason why invocations of Pink Floyd even begin to make sense.
10. Come Alive (The War Of The Roses)
The album's most Dead Kennedys-esque song, if you consider that an endorsement. A diabolical, oppressive cabaret-punk burner, "Come Alive" is a lot about the dramatic, swoopingly scratchy guitars but also about Monáe's insane ululations, including a high-pitched shriek between 2:15 and 2:35 that sounds outside the realm of possibility for the human voice. Monáe is a great singer, rapper, and screamer--put that on top of her dancing and songwriting skills, you have what is, at the minimum, an insane quintuple-threat.
11. Mushrooms & RosesI've somehow gone this far without mentioning Prince once, and this song finally provides a perfect outlet to do so. With underwater vocals married to a melody not entirely unlike "Crimson & Clover" (which, you'll remember, Prince happened to record a solo-laden cover of), itself married to more of those cinematic strings, "Mushrooms & Roses" provides a perfect sense of (temporary) finality. It's a slow, creepingly cinematic pop number at first, and when the guitars come in the result is very Gold Experience. Monáe's voice is more unrecognizable here than usual, due to the aforementioned phased vocals, but somehow, the emotion still comes through, switching from a spoken-word part to crooning "Little Mary, Mary, and she's crazy about me." It's one of five specific points of "Mushrooms & Roses" that absolutely kill, and who knows, you might find an additional few others. "Mushrooms & Roses" could easily be dropped into Sign O' The Times, and no one would bat an eye.
CONTINUE.
PART I.
1. Suite II Overture
Unlike the beginning of the "Chase Suite," Suite II starts out with a proper orchestral overture. Utilizing a motif that resembles the most famous part of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony (aka the Countdown With Keith Olbermann theme), this overture is short but heavy on theatrics and changing moods. It ends with a chorus of ghostly voices, singing as if stuck in an old transistor radio--and then we're immediately transported elsewhere.
2. Dance Or Die (Feat. Saul Williams)Monáe is joined by Niggy Tardust himself for this one, the first of four high-profile guest appearances on the album, and his presence is welcomed. But surprisingly, it's Monáe who does the majority of the spitting on this first track, and Williams is basically relegated to the background, offering his own take on futuristic word association games first heard in "Many Moons." Monáe is a good rapper, and each individual bar, clipped to the length of the song's bass line, is strong, but doesn't necessarily make me want to hear more of her rapping, at least at the expense of her singing.
3. Faster
The album really starts taking off here, as a motif jacked from the breakdown in "Dance Or Die" turns into an orgy of splayed electric guitar and DJ scratches, which then transforms into a go-go, hyperfast take on the Great American Songbook. This is where we first hear Monáe's memorable line "shake it like a schizo," but what really kills me is the way she intones "faster, faster I should run," and the way that guitar part sort of bubbles around her.
4. Locked Inside
Monáe sings about being in an abusive (android-human?) relationship, "where the man is always right." Another example of Monáe counterpointing Metropolis' futuristic, dystopian setting with tales of too-similar woe and injustice taking place in modern America. The track itself is the drum intro from Michael Jackson's "Rock With You," I believe, married to a melody that would have sounded perfectly at home in Songs In The Key Of Life. Big, ringing jazz chords characterize this track, and the "Oh how, oh how I need you baby" part is a killer example of Monáe's epic but not overpowering method of overdubbing vocals. The ending is even kind of Steely Dan.
5. Sir Greendown
"Sir Greendown" is presumably meant to refer to Anthony Greendown, the human male Cyndi Mayweather fell in love with at the beginning of this saga. While the first three songs (plus the intro) sound basically of a piece, easily flowing into one another, "Sir Greendown" is more of a short, ponderous break in the action. I don't know what to call music like this--it definitely has the feeling of an old standard, with Monáe's vocals are comparatively dialed down. Deserves the adjective "lilting," but among the rest of the tracks on Suite II, this sounds like it could be on the slower, more romantic Suite III.
6. Cold WarMonáe must really love the drum track in "B.O.B." (who doesn't?) because it shows up again here, anchoring a slab of apocalyptic electro-punk perfection. That's right, I said perfection, because this is indeed a perfect, immediate classic, and an obvious choice to go to for a second single after "Tightrope." There's something so universally tense and expansive about the melody here and the way Monáe belts out the phrase "this is a cold war/you better know what you're fighting for," singing it slightly different and at a different, higher register each time, it feels like. I find there are two extra-killer parts of this song: a) the way Monáe sings the part "I'm trying to find my peace/I was led to believe there's something wrong with me," and b) the suitably dramatic guitar solo, and it's here that I should point out that Monáe's regular guitarist Kellindo Parker has major chops, and (given that he doesn't have much competition that I'm aware of) he could become known, if they keep up his profile, as the true master of the Moog guitar.
7. Tightrope (Feat. Big Boi)
Will I ever tire of writing about Big Boi? Don't think so. He's more of a concentrated presence here than Saul Williams, if you couldn't have already guessed that. But Big's verse isn't particularly special, as he knows that the big draw here is, as always, Monáe and her titanically-assured vocal stylings. "Tightrope" is the big single, and deserves to bigger than it is (it even has its own dance). Me, I love the ukulele-and-strings bit toward the end the most, and I wish that part would go on forever. The whole thing is one great, Outkastian groove-fest, and it's not a surprise that the two tracks most indebted to Outkast will probably end up being the two big singles. In my world, this is starmaking stuff.
8. Neon Gumbo
This number is Monáe's earlier song "Many Moons" (which I wrote about here), specifically the last 1:30 of that track played backwards. So this is a song that belongs in the category of, like, "Dreams Reoccurring" or the Stone Roses' "Don't Stop," which is to say, surprisingly compelling despite the fact that it's another song played backwards. No idea how this reprise fits into the narrative of Metropolis, but I lost that map a long time ago.
9. Oh, Maker
I read someone online compare this song to a Pink Floyd number, which I can sort of see, as "Oh, Maker" is otherwise completely devoid of convenient vantage points. Beginning with a repetitive but flexible guitar figure, the song morphs into a showcase for Monáe's deft vocalizations (yet another one), and it's hard not to find the way she intones "so much hurt/in this earth" completely killer. It definitely has the feeling of a classic soul number, but there's a ghostly, futuristic quality to the proceedings--probably the only reason why invocations of Pink Floyd even begin to make sense.
10. Come Alive (The War Of The Roses)
The album's most Dead Kennedys-esque song, if you consider that an endorsement. A diabolical, oppressive cabaret-punk burner, "Come Alive" is a lot about the dramatic, swoopingly scratchy guitars but also about Monáe's insane ululations, including a high-pitched shriek between 2:15 and 2:35 that sounds outside the realm of possibility for the human voice. Monáe is a great singer, rapper, and screamer--put that on top of her dancing and songwriting skills, you have what is, at the minimum, an insane quintuple-threat.
11. Mushrooms & RosesI've somehow gone this far without mentioning Prince once, and this song finally provides a perfect outlet to do so. With underwater vocals married to a melody not entirely unlike "Crimson & Clover" (which, you'll remember, Prince happened to record a solo-laden cover of), itself married to more of those cinematic strings, "Mushrooms & Roses" provides a perfect sense of (temporary) finality. It's a slow, creepingly cinematic pop number at first, and when the guitars come in the result is very Gold Experience. Monáe's voice is more unrecognizable here than usual, due to the aforementioned phased vocals, but somehow, the emotion still comes through, switching from a spoken-word part to crooning "Little Mary, Mary, and she's crazy about me." It's one of five specific points of "Mushrooms & Roses" that absolutely kill, and who knows, you might find an additional few others. "Mushrooms & Roses" could easily be dropped into Sign O' The Times, and no one would bat an eye.
CONTINUE.
PART I.
Thursday, May 20, 2010
A Look At Janelle Monáe's Metropolis Cycle, Part I: The Chase
Janelle Monáe is an acclaimed and increasingly popular alterna-pop star with an art school pedigree and a penchant for genre-hopping and Octavia Butler. You may have heard her single "Tightrope" already, or known that her first album The ArchAndroid was released on Tuesday to much (deserved) acclaim. You may not have known that The ArchAndroid itself is actually part of a longer album cycle, called Metropolis, that Monáe has been working on since 2007. The album is marketed as parts II and III of what will ultimately be a four-part series; part I came in the form of a 2007 EP subtitled "The Chase." I have no idea when the final suite will be released, nor do I know whether it will be in the form of an EP or a longer album.
Monáe is an artist that you're really going to want to watch in the next few years. I could explain why, or I could link to this performance from The Late Show a few days ago, and let you decide for yourself. Before yesterday I had only heard (and enjoyed) her song "Tightrope," but as of today I think I am obsessed with this woman and her music. For now, I am reasonably confident that The ArchAndroid will be appearing near or at the top of my 2010 best list. As an album, it's as audacious and joyful of an experiment as any of Prince's great 80s albums, and Monáe's vocal abilities are almost supernaturally assured (doubly impressive given that this is her first LP--Prince was never this good starting out).
It's hard to find many artists in contemporary R&B who look to the album as a discrete artistic statement anymore--it would be even harder to find someone whose vision extends beyond one album, someone interested in multi-album conceptual epics. Monáe is pretty much alone on this front. Because of this, however, I consider the (also excellent) EP that preceded The ArchAndroid's release to be just as necessary listening as the album itself (just as I would imagine that the eventual release of Part IV will build naturally upon the themes of the first three chapters). Instead of sticking with Rockaliser's usual album track play-by-plays, I thought I'd instead divide this post into three (eventually four) parts, and evaluate the themes and inspirations behind this very, very good album one suite at a time. So today, I present a track-by-track analysis of Suite I, also known as "The Chase."
Note: A word about the original release--when Metropolis Suite I Of IV: The Chase came out in 2007, Monáe's initial idea was to release each suite online as its own EP. That plan was changed slightly when Diddy signed her to Bad Boy Records. The original independent EP was re-released on Bad Boy with two additional tracks, and her "debut" album became a collection of the next two planned EPs. I have to say, I have to give a lot of credit to Diddy for otherwise not really messing with Monáe's creative vision: this is defiantly weird pop, and as catchy as pop gets, but I imagine it could be a tough sell to a country that tends to be unnerved by pop progressivism, especially when it comes from black female artists.
1. March of the Wolfmasters
For our purposes, this is basically the EP's "intro" piece, and not much of a song. Monáe's narration explains the basic plot of the piece, which so far seems as follows: in the future, Cyndi Mayweather (otherwise known as Android 57821) falls in love, illegally, with a human named Anthony Greendown. Because emotional agency on the part of androids is no longer allowed, Mayweather is "scheduled for disassembly" and is chased by bounty hunters wielding "chainsaws and electro daggers." So that's the chase. Elsewhere, the cinematic backing music points to a trend that will reappear both on this EP and in the next couple suites.
2. Violet Stars Happy Hunting!!!
It's a credit to Monáe's versatility that the first proper song on Suite I sounds, at first, like a Pixies song. Backed by energetically limber guitar and bass lines, Monáe sings from the point of view of the android on the run, living a lifetime of being either chased, threatened or mocked for being different. This is a very prevalent theme through the entire album cycle: though on its surface conceptual level this is a sci-fi epic involving androids in a dystopian future, Metropolis cuts subcutaneously at a number of emotional universals, among them a fear of loneliness and isolation, of how hard it can be to express oneself creatively without being thought of as "different." There's a lot of social commentary packed into lines "I'm a savior without a race," but it never seems hoary, because this is energetic, punky music aided by the tension and sweetness in Monáe's vocals. If only The Love Below started out with a song as good as this.
3. Many Moons
Following a seamless transition, "Many Moons" transfers the previous track's energy and forward momentum into a more macabre, cinematically expansive setting, with a keyboard hook that wouldn't have sounded out of place on an old Doors record (or Michael Jackson's "Thriller," come to think of it). The relentless drum track is indebted to "B.O.B.," but otherwise this song is entirely Monáe's own, and what really stands out this time is the sometimes chameleonic, dramatic nature of her vocals. There's a chorus of Monáes in this song, many of them playing different characters with opposing viewpoints, but the results are never cluttered, and in fact we have in this song a clarity in presentation and performance rarely heard in popular music. The track ends with a spoken-word free-association of American litanies from the last 20 years, followed by a lilting, drum-less denouement, all of it captivating listening.
4. Cybertronic Purgatory
The other half-song on this EP (which, considering it originally had only five songs, seems like one too many), "Cybertronic Purgatory" is a brief but beautiful ballad focused entirely on the interplay between a classical acoustic guitar and Monáe's operatics (I do mean "operatics"--she sounds like she's singing an aria). What she happens to be singing is beyond me, and I think it's at this point that I forgot I was trying to concentrate on the plot.
5. Sincerely, Jane.
As I said earlier, Monáe has a fascination with film music and seems to be an art film buff at heart (it's been suggested that Metropolis draws a lot of its iconography from the original Fritz Lang film, but there are obviously big differences, such as a lack of crypto-fascist anti-union agitprop). Here we get what is basically a big, brassy show number to end the first suite, laden with restless string parts and guttural horn blasts. The tone of the music matches the subject matter, which boils down thusly: "All your dreams go down the drain, girl/are we really living or just walking dead now?" The bleakness of Metropolis and the inhumanity it expresses toward its underclass will sound familiar to anyone who had lived during the Bush era, and so Suite I ends (basically) with a certain level of hopelessness.
6. Mr. President
This is the first of two bonus tracks added to the Bad Boy release. I'm going to guess that neither of them really belong to the Metropolis cycle itself, although they could, but "Mr. President" is very much in the style of socially-conscious R&B, particularly policy directives aimed toward our Commander-In-Chief, ranging from Stevie's "You Haven't Done Nothin'" to Big Boi's "Sumthin's Gotta Give." This is easy, soothing R&B ear candy, nothing nearly as challenging as anything on the actual EP, but while some of Monáe's opinions may seem banal, it's always nice to hear them voiced by a musician with actual opinions and ideas on the matter.
7. Smile
This is a cover of the Charlie Chaplin song that first appeared in The Great Dictator and was later recorded by Nat King Cole, and then more famously Michael Jackson and a bunch of other people. With nothing more than an electric guitar for backup, "Smile" rests entirely on the talents of its vocalist, who contributes a devastating version of the song that in its austerity reminded me of Jeff Buckley's "Hallelujah." It doesn't have anything to do with any sort of sci-fi craziness, but it's a great vocalist doing a good job on a over-covered standard, so that makes it worth listening to at least once.
Tomorrow we'll talk about Suite II, or the first eleven tracks of The ArchAndroid. It would do you some good, maybe, to give those tracks a listen before I come back. You won't regret it.
CONTINUE.
Monáe is an artist that you're really going to want to watch in the next few years. I could explain why, or I could link to this performance from The Late Show a few days ago, and let you decide for yourself. Before yesterday I had only heard (and enjoyed) her song "Tightrope," but as of today I think I am obsessed with this woman and her music. For now, I am reasonably confident that The ArchAndroid will be appearing near or at the top of my 2010 best list. As an album, it's as audacious and joyful of an experiment as any of Prince's great 80s albums, and Monáe's vocal abilities are almost supernaturally assured (doubly impressive given that this is her first LP--Prince was never this good starting out).
It's hard to find many artists in contemporary R&B who look to the album as a discrete artistic statement anymore--it would be even harder to find someone whose vision extends beyond one album, someone interested in multi-album conceptual epics. Monáe is pretty much alone on this front. Because of this, however, I consider the (also excellent) EP that preceded The ArchAndroid's release to be just as necessary listening as the album itself (just as I would imagine that the eventual release of Part IV will build naturally upon the themes of the first three chapters). Instead of sticking with Rockaliser's usual album track play-by-plays, I thought I'd instead divide this post into three (eventually four) parts, and evaluate the themes and inspirations behind this very, very good album one suite at a time. So today, I present a track-by-track analysis of Suite I, also known as "The Chase."
Note: A word about the original release--when Metropolis Suite I Of IV: The Chase came out in 2007, Monáe's initial idea was to release each suite online as its own EP. That plan was changed slightly when Diddy signed her to Bad Boy Records. The original independent EP was re-released on Bad Boy with two additional tracks, and her "debut" album became a collection of the next two planned EPs. I have to say, I have to give a lot of credit to Diddy for otherwise not really messing with Monáe's creative vision: this is defiantly weird pop, and as catchy as pop gets, but I imagine it could be a tough sell to a country that tends to be unnerved by pop progressivism, especially when it comes from black female artists.
1. March of the Wolfmasters
For our purposes, this is basically the EP's "intro" piece, and not much of a song. Monáe's narration explains the basic plot of the piece, which so far seems as follows: in the future, Cyndi Mayweather (otherwise known as Android 57821) falls in love, illegally, with a human named Anthony Greendown. Because emotional agency on the part of androids is no longer allowed, Mayweather is "scheduled for disassembly" and is chased by bounty hunters wielding "chainsaws and electro daggers." So that's the chase. Elsewhere, the cinematic backing music points to a trend that will reappear both on this EP and in the next couple suites.
2. Violet Stars Happy Hunting!!!
It's a credit to Monáe's versatility that the first proper song on Suite I sounds, at first, like a Pixies song. Backed by energetically limber guitar and bass lines, Monáe sings from the point of view of the android on the run, living a lifetime of being either chased, threatened or mocked for being different. This is a very prevalent theme through the entire album cycle: though on its surface conceptual level this is a sci-fi epic involving androids in a dystopian future, Metropolis cuts subcutaneously at a number of emotional universals, among them a fear of loneliness and isolation, of how hard it can be to express oneself creatively without being thought of as "different." There's a lot of social commentary packed into lines "I'm a savior without a race," but it never seems hoary, because this is energetic, punky music aided by the tension and sweetness in Monáe's vocals. If only The Love Below started out with a song as good as this.
3. Many Moons
Following a seamless transition, "Many Moons" transfers the previous track's energy and forward momentum into a more macabre, cinematically expansive setting, with a keyboard hook that wouldn't have sounded out of place on an old Doors record (or Michael Jackson's "Thriller," come to think of it). The relentless drum track is indebted to "B.O.B.," but otherwise this song is entirely Monáe's own, and what really stands out this time is the sometimes chameleonic, dramatic nature of her vocals. There's a chorus of Monáes in this song, many of them playing different characters with opposing viewpoints, but the results are never cluttered, and in fact we have in this song a clarity in presentation and performance rarely heard in popular music. The track ends with a spoken-word free-association of American litanies from the last 20 years, followed by a lilting, drum-less denouement, all of it captivating listening.
4. Cybertronic Purgatory
The other half-song on this EP (which, considering it originally had only five songs, seems like one too many), "Cybertronic Purgatory" is a brief but beautiful ballad focused entirely on the interplay between a classical acoustic guitar and Monáe's operatics (I do mean "operatics"--she sounds like she's singing an aria). What she happens to be singing is beyond me, and I think it's at this point that I forgot I was trying to concentrate on the plot.
5. Sincerely, Jane.
As I said earlier, Monáe has a fascination with film music and seems to be an art film buff at heart (it's been suggested that Metropolis draws a lot of its iconography from the original Fritz Lang film, but there are obviously big differences, such as a lack of crypto-fascist anti-union agitprop). Here we get what is basically a big, brassy show number to end the first suite, laden with restless string parts and guttural horn blasts. The tone of the music matches the subject matter, which boils down thusly: "All your dreams go down the drain, girl/are we really living or just walking dead now?" The bleakness of Metropolis and the inhumanity it expresses toward its underclass will sound familiar to anyone who had lived during the Bush era, and so Suite I ends (basically) with a certain level of hopelessness.
6. Mr. President
This is the first of two bonus tracks added to the Bad Boy release. I'm going to guess that neither of them really belong to the Metropolis cycle itself, although they could, but "Mr. President" is very much in the style of socially-conscious R&B, particularly policy directives aimed toward our Commander-In-Chief, ranging from Stevie's "You Haven't Done Nothin'" to Big Boi's "Sumthin's Gotta Give." This is easy, soothing R&B ear candy, nothing nearly as challenging as anything on the actual EP, but while some of Monáe's opinions may seem banal, it's always nice to hear them voiced by a musician with actual opinions and ideas on the matter.
7. Smile
This is a cover of the Charlie Chaplin song that first appeared in The Great Dictator and was later recorded by Nat King Cole, and then more famously Michael Jackson and a bunch of other people. With nothing more than an electric guitar for backup, "Smile" rests entirely on the talents of its vocalist, who contributes a devastating version of the song that in its austerity reminded me of Jeff Buckley's "Hallelujah." It doesn't have anything to do with any sort of sci-fi craziness, but it's a great vocalist doing a good job on a over-covered standard, so that makes it worth listening to at least once.
Tomorrow we'll talk about Suite II, or the first eleven tracks of The ArchAndroid. It would do you some good, maybe, to give those tracks a listen before I come back. You won't regret it.
CONTINUE.
Thursday, May 13, 2010
Sleigh Bells: A Track-By-Track Analysis
Sleigh Bells are a noise-pop duo from Brooklyn. Already, I can tell you're starting to not pay attention: these days, who isn't in a noise-pop duo from Brooklyn? Especially since they're a male-female duo, you can already guess who sings and who plays all the instruments. The dynamic is typical, as is the story, so why pay attention to this buzzed-about band as opposed to other buzzed-about bands?
The simple reason is this: Sleigh Bells are hard. I'm not talking, like, Mastodon-hard or anything like that. This is pop music, yes, with some of the punchiest, most ear-shattering noises you are likely to hear this year. As a debut album, it has to be compared to something like the Ramones' first release, in that it's often impossible to come up with a comfortable vantage point through which to discuss the toughness of this music. Gnarly guitar noises are a dime a dozen, but Derek Taylor introduces several new tricks to the game. He plays like a novice, but he's always augmented by intense, epic synths, horns played through amplifiers with their speaker cones drilled through, then chomped and compressed in the studio. Meanwhile, singer Alexis Krauss sings normal pop hooks and lyrics. It works more often than it doesn't.
In order to spice up the often staid nature of these track-by-track analyses, I'll provide, in addition to my comments, a list of music that I think resembles corresponding Sleigh Bells tracks in certain, illuminating ways. It will be useful, because in the case of something like Treats, it will often make more sense to link to a track's progenitors than to try to explain it myself. But please feel free to disagree.
1. Tell 'Em
Sounds Like: Ratatat's pitch-shifted, in-the-red guitar harmonies; air raid sirens (and the Bomb Squad songs that feature them); the industrialized snare-pummeling of Portishead's "Machine Gun"; Faith No More's similarly barnstorming opener "From Out Of Nowhere" (in terms of album agenda-setting).
Treats' opening track establishes the band's sleight of hand rather quickly: elementary guitar riffery filtered through blown-out speakers; stentorian, tension-building beats (at any volume level, it sounds ear-splitting); and off-key lady vocals out in front. "Tell 'Em" isn't one of the album's best songwriting efforts, but as an indicator of Sleigh Bells' ferocious intensity, it's a great statement of headache-inducing purpose.
2. Kids
Sounds Like: At the beginning, Smashing Pumpkins' Adore-era techno-rock; at the 18-second mark, amphetamine-jacked Swizz Beatz horn samples; some of MIA's spacier half-raps.
"Tell "Em" is intense, for sure, but "Kids" is a whole different kind of blunt instrument. Alternating between punched-up horns and a looser, dreamier vocal section, it also has perhaps the most echo-heavy snapping samples in recorded history. "Kids" is clearly pop, in some demented manner, yet I'll be damned if it isn't among the hardest things I've ever heard. This will be a common observation throughout the remainder of Treats.
3. Riot Rhythm
Sounds Like: What the title suggests; guitar work reminiscent of The Fall or PiL's Keith Levene; Neptunes beats (particularly for the Clipse); beat-flipping a la "A Milli."
Like the first track, "Riot Rhythm" sounds at first like more of an abrasive put-on, with a lack of balance between that grinding guitar figure and Alexis Krauss' vocals. But I think I like Krauss as a screamer more than a singer, and it's amazing that Sleigh Bells can keep up this level of energy after three songs.
4. Infinity Guitars
Sounds Like: Dave Davies in chrysalis; the empty space between Led Zeppelin's "Immigrant Song," Nirvana's "Very Ape," and the distorted, chanty vocals of Angus Andrew; rap battles between cheerleaders; No More Tears drums.
A collection of clipped, lo-fi bar chords and full-throated chants, barreling into a stadium rock closer at the end, "Infinity Guitars" is ironically-named--there's only one guitar present that I can hear. Instead, a riff that could have been lifted from Nuggets (or the Eagles of Death Metal!) basically acts as a placeholder between bouts of aforementioned screaming and cooing.
5. Run The Heart
Sounds Like: HEALTH, basically. Plus maybe a little bit of that Timbaland-Crystal Castles accidental connection. Every mash-up artist has a track that sounds like this, at least in theory.
For Sleigh Bells, I guess this counts as more of a mood piece--the percussion is dirty and deep but not penetrative, and Krauss' wordless vocalizations are chopped in a manner that makes them of more use to the rhythm of the piece than the melody. I'm a sucker for the sound of cascading synths (which is why I'm a Timbaland fan), and "Run The Heart" has plenty of that, plus those now unmistakable crunched guitar loops. When the two are in tandem, the results are very weird.
6. Rachel
Sounds Like: Cocteau Twins; If the end of Hot Chip's recent dirge "Slush" had its orchestration replaced with Jock Jams synthesizers.
There's a quality to these ethereal (sorry for the overused buzzword, but it fits) vocals that seems to have a strong precedent in something, but for the life of me, I can't figure out what (such problems were numerous when listening to this album for the first time). A lot of what I said about "Run The Heart" could apply here, except this seems like more of a cool placeholder than the song that preceded it. There's an appealing melody at the center of this maelstrom, but it never changes or develops, and basically just ends after two minutes.
7. Rill Rill
Sounds Like: Funkadelic's "Can You Get To That" (for obvious reasons!) filtered by the Avalanches; a (vague) quotation of T.I. "What You Know"; any song with a lady vocalist seductively chanting "oh, oh" for twenty seconds or more.
A clear highlight, and probably the place to go if you're interested in Sleigh Bells' sonics but can't stand the headphone-busting nature of their other hits. There isn't much to this song other than a liberal quotation of the aforementioned Funkadelic track, plus some church bells or something for dramatic emphasis, but what really makes "Rill Rill" kill is Krauss' criminally alluring vocals, of which I can only repeat what Youtube commenter PowerInAUnion says regarding Krauss' live showcase: "crushing so hard." Do I feel similar, and if so, is that relevant? I'm sorry, but sometimes it can't not be.
The point is that "Rill Rill" lodged itself in my mind after a mere one (1) listen and refused to leave, which doesn't happen very often.
8. Crown On The Ground
Sounds Like: Previous track on the album "Kids"; The Go! Team at their most effervescent; Jack White's squealier guitar moments; the beginning of the Butthole Surfers song "Weber" (pretty sure that last one is unintentional).
Sleigh Bells' big hit--or at least, it would be, if it wasn't so punishing. In a perfect world, I imagine this topping the Billboard charts and signifying the beginning of a newer, more confrontational pop style, because those horns, sampled or screwed or however they were recorded, absolutely kill it. Great pop tracks are always as much about the tension as they are about the release, and "Crown on the Ground" is deadly calibrated in that regard. No other track better illustrates the synergy between the two Sleigh Bells auteurs (whereas many of the other songs are good, but would have been just as good switching out one for the other).
9. Straight A's
Sounds Like: The Liars (with the creepy ambience removed and replaced with more punishing volume); Kap Bambino; what I imagine happy hardcore to resemble, in my dreams.
At 1:30 or so, this bears every hallmark of being a studio goof or filler, but damn if it doesn't prove a cathartic experience even after the onslaught of "Crown On The Ground" before it. Absolutely not a good place to start if you're looking to get into Sleigh Bells, unless you're into one-off punk ditties like Sonic Youth's "Nic Fit" or Blur's "We've Got A File On You." Not a shred of poppiness in this one, either, which makes it unique.
10. A/B Machines
Sounds Like: A Place To Bury Strangers; the beginning of LCD Soundsystem's "Sound Of Silver"; the guitar style of Bryan Gregory (from the Cramps); Outkast's "B.O.B." slowed down to half its original speed.
The problem with most of the songs on Treats (if you choose to think of it as a problem) is that Derek Miller doesn't seem to be interested in developing more than one or two ideas per song, which is why it's good that most of the tracks don't go past the 3-minute mark. This one does, and you can definitely tell when exactly it wears out its welcome. But that's pop, I guess. Not a highlight for me.
11. Treats
Sounds Like: The heavily tremelo'd guitar figure #1 from the Smiths' "How Soon Is Now"; one of Metallica's slow-burners. Other than that, you've got to help me out, dear readers: have you ever heard anything as hard as this?
I should add that the one other exception to the three-minute rule is this killer of a closing track, which hints that Sleigh Bells' sonic palette may be capable of expanding as Derek Miller's songwriting ambitions grow. This is all booming bass and screeching lead lines, anchored by drum samples that couldn't be more leaden and grinding if they tried. It's so hyper-compressed that your head might pop. So I'm giving you fair warning: you will like this track, if you are anything like me, and furthermore you will play the heck out of it and hope the second album sounds more like this. If not, Treats will have a short shelf life, no matter the initial buzz.
The simple reason is this: Sleigh Bells are hard. I'm not talking, like, Mastodon-hard or anything like that. This is pop music, yes, with some of the punchiest, most ear-shattering noises you are likely to hear this year. As a debut album, it has to be compared to something like the Ramones' first release, in that it's often impossible to come up with a comfortable vantage point through which to discuss the toughness of this music. Gnarly guitar noises are a dime a dozen, but Derek Taylor introduces several new tricks to the game. He plays like a novice, but he's always augmented by intense, epic synths, horns played through amplifiers with their speaker cones drilled through, then chomped and compressed in the studio. Meanwhile, singer Alexis Krauss sings normal pop hooks and lyrics. It works more often than it doesn't.
In order to spice up the often staid nature of these track-by-track analyses, I'll provide, in addition to my comments, a list of music that I think resembles corresponding Sleigh Bells tracks in certain, illuminating ways. It will be useful, because in the case of something like Treats, it will often make more sense to link to a track's progenitors than to try to explain it myself. But please feel free to disagree.
1. Tell 'Em
Sounds Like: Ratatat's pitch-shifted, in-the-red guitar harmonies; air raid sirens (and the Bomb Squad songs that feature them); the industrialized snare-pummeling of Portishead's "Machine Gun"; Faith No More's similarly barnstorming opener "From Out Of Nowhere" (in terms of album agenda-setting).
Treats' opening track establishes the band's sleight of hand rather quickly: elementary guitar riffery filtered through blown-out speakers; stentorian, tension-building beats (at any volume level, it sounds ear-splitting); and off-key lady vocals out in front. "Tell 'Em" isn't one of the album's best songwriting efforts, but as an indicator of Sleigh Bells' ferocious intensity, it's a great statement of headache-inducing purpose.
2. Kids
Sounds Like: At the beginning, Smashing Pumpkins' Adore-era techno-rock; at the 18-second mark, amphetamine-jacked Swizz Beatz horn samples; some of MIA's spacier half-raps.
"Tell "Em" is intense, for sure, but "Kids" is a whole different kind of blunt instrument. Alternating between punched-up horns and a looser, dreamier vocal section, it also has perhaps the most echo-heavy snapping samples in recorded history. "Kids" is clearly pop, in some demented manner, yet I'll be damned if it isn't among the hardest things I've ever heard. This will be a common observation throughout the remainder of Treats.
3. Riot Rhythm
Sounds Like: What the title suggests; guitar work reminiscent of The Fall or PiL's Keith Levene; Neptunes beats (particularly for the Clipse); beat-flipping a la "A Milli."
Like the first track, "Riot Rhythm" sounds at first like more of an abrasive put-on, with a lack of balance between that grinding guitar figure and Alexis Krauss' vocals. But I think I like Krauss as a screamer more than a singer, and it's amazing that Sleigh Bells can keep up this level of energy after three songs.
4. Infinity Guitars
Sounds Like: Dave Davies in chrysalis; the empty space between Led Zeppelin's "Immigrant Song," Nirvana's "Very Ape," and the distorted, chanty vocals of Angus Andrew; rap battles between cheerleaders; No More Tears drums.
A collection of clipped, lo-fi bar chords and full-throated chants, barreling into a stadium rock closer at the end, "Infinity Guitars" is ironically-named--there's only one guitar present that I can hear. Instead, a riff that could have been lifted from Nuggets (or the Eagles of Death Metal!) basically acts as a placeholder between bouts of aforementioned screaming and cooing.
5. Run The Heart
Sounds Like: HEALTH, basically. Plus maybe a little bit of that Timbaland-Crystal Castles accidental connection. Every mash-up artist has a track that sounds like this, at least in theory.
For Sleigh Bells, I guess this counts as more of a mood piece--the percussion is dirty and deep but not penetrative, and Krauss' wordless vocalizations are chopped in a manner that makes them of more use to the rhythm of the piece than the melody. I'm a sucker for the sound of cascading synths (which is why I'm a Timbaland fan), and "Run The Heart" has plenty of that, plus those now unmistakable crunched guitar loops. When the two are in tandem, the results are very weird.
6. Rachel
Sounds Like: Cocteau Twins; If the end of Hot Chip's recent dirge "Slush" had its orchestration replaced with Jock Jams synthesizers.
There's a quality to these ethereal (sorry for the overused buzzword, but it fits) vocals that seems to have a strong precedent in something, but for the life of me, I can't figure out what (such problems were numerous when listening to this album for the first time). A lot of what I said about "Run The Heart" could apply here, except this seems like more of a cool placeholder than the song that preceded it. There's an appealing melody at the center of this maelstrom, but it never changes or develops, and basically just ends after two minutes.
7. Rill Rill
Sounds Like: Funkadelic's "Can You Get To That" (for obvious reasons!) filtered by the Avalanches; a (vague) quotation of T.I. "What You Know"; any song with a lady vocalist seductively chanting "oh, oh" for twenty seconds or more.
A clear highlight, and probably the place to go if you're interested in Sleigh Bells' sonics but can't stand the headphone-busting nature of their other hits. There isn't much to this song other than a liberal quotation of the aforementioned Funkadelic track, plus some church bells or something for dramatic emphasis, but what really makes "Rill Rill" kill is Krauss' criminally alluring vocals, of which I can only repeat what Youtube commenter PowerInAUnion says regarding Krauss' live showcase: "crushing so hard." Do I feel similar, and if so, is that relevant? I'm sorry, but sometimes it can't not be.
The point is that "Rill Rill" lodged itself in my mind after a mere one (1) listen and refused to leave, which doesn't happen very often.
8. Crown On The Ground
Sounds Like: Previous track on the album "Kids"; The Go! Team at their most effervescent; Jack White's squealier guitar moments; the beginning of the Butthole Surfers song "Weber" (pretty sure that last one is unintentional).
Sleigh Bells' big hit--or at least, it would be, if it wasn't so punishing. In a perfect world, I imagine this topping the Billboard charts and signifying the beginning of a newer, more confrontational pop style, because those horns, sampled or screwed or however they were recorded, absolutely kill it. Great pop tracks are always as much about the tension as they are about the release, and "Crown on the Ground" is deadly calibrated in that regard. No other track better illustrates the synergy between the two Sleigh Bells auteurs (whereas many of the other songs are good, but would have been just as good switching out one for the other).
9. Straight A's
Sounds Like: The Liars (with the creepy ambience removed and replaced with more punishing volume); Kap Bambino; what I imagine happy hardcore to resemble, in my dreams.
At 1:30 or so, this bears every hallmark of being a studio goof or filler, but damn if it doesn't prove a cathartic experience even after the onslaught of "Crown On The Ground" before it. Absolutely not a good place to start if you're looking to get into Sleigh Bells, unless you're into one-off punk ditties like Sonic Youth's "Nic Fit" or Blur's "We've Got A File On You." Not a shred of poppiness in this one, either, which makes it unique.
10. A/B Machines
Sounds Like: A Place To Bury Strangers; the beginning of LCD Soundsystem's "Sound Of Silver"; the guitar style of Bryan Gregory (from the Cramps); Outkast's "B.O.B." slowed down to half its original speed.
The problem with most of the songs on Treats (if you choose to think of it as a problem) is that Derek Miller doesn't seem to be interested in developing more than one or two ideas per song, which is why it's good that most of the tracks don't go past the 3-minute mark. This one does, and you can definitely tell when exactly it wears out its welcome. But that's pop, I guess. Not a highlight for me.
11. Treats
Sounds Like: The heavily tremelo'd guitar figure #1 from the Smiths' "How Soon Is Now"; one of Metallica's slow-burners. Other than that, you've got to help me out, dear readers: have you ever heard anything as hard as this?
I should add that the one other exception to the three-minute rule is this killer of a closing track, which hints that Sleigh Bells' sonic palette may be capable of expanding as Derek Miller's songwriting ambitions grow. This is all booming bass and screeching lead lines, anchored by drum samples that couldn't be more leaden and grinding if they tried. It's so hyper-compressed that your head might pop. So I'm giving you fair warning: you will like this track, if you are anything like me, and furthermore you will play the heck out of it and hope the second album sounds more like this. If not, Treats will have a short shelf life, no matter the initial buzz.
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Congratulations to Jim Derogatis, A Critic I Have No Problem With
I've devoted many of my most precious blog hours to the criticism of certain music journalists, which is fine, but uncharacteristic given that I spend just as many hours outside of this blog defending the practice of criticism as a whole. It's perfectly reasonable to ask: well Nathan, who is a critic that you admire/can say mostly good things about?
Let's talk about Jim Derogatis, because it's a perfect time to do so. The long-time Chicago Sun-Times music critic finally left his perch at the newspaper on April 21, much to the rock crit community's disbelief. For many, it seemed that Derogatis was as much a firmly embedded Sun-Times guy as Roger Ebert (of whom the comparisons don't necessarily stop there), and given the state of the industry, I was expecting the Sun-Times to fold long before Derogatis would ever quit. According to their distinguished competition, Derogatis is choosing to split his time between working at Chicago Public Radio (where he has hosted Sound Opinions, the "world's only rock 'n roll talk show," for many years) and teaching at Columbia College. I also believe that part of his reason for leaving is that he no longer has to mediate the racist and verbally abusive comments on his Sun-Times blog, which are among the worst you can find on the Internet.
Jim Derogatis has long been a critic I respected and admired, a guy who refuses to apologize for his counter-cultural leanings in a landscape of too many obsequious and fame-seeking music journalists. Like the two of us at Rockaliser, he is first and foremost an 80's college rock kid, but he was around long enough to actually see the days of Our Band Could Be Your Life in action. Like the musicians he admired in Sonic Youth or the Replacements, Derogatis tried to maintain a level of conviction, honesty and DIY integrity in his writing, choosing to completely ignore the groupthink of the Pazz 'n Jop establishment and the Billboard Hot 100-ites alike.
You may recall that the first notable test of his character as a critic came during his brief tenure as an editor at Rolling Stone in the 90s. I'll briefly recount this story, because it should be told more as lesson to nascent music journalists. It starts with a review Derogatis wrote of Hootie & The Blowfish's album Fairweather Johnson, in 1996. Needless to say, he did not give it the RS-mandated three-star review:
One of my favorite pieces of music criticism ever is a long interview published in the Sun-Times with Stephan Jenkins, the lead singer of Third Eye Blind (it was included in one of the earlier Da Capo Best New Music books, and reprinted elsewhere as well). The article is about as far from a sycophantic celebrity interview as you can get, and it's brilliant. The story began when Derogatis wrote an extremely negative review of Third Eye Blind's stage show, saying about the lead singer: "Rarely has such a mediocre singer, uninspired songwriter, and uninvolving stage presence been lucky enough to be deigned a rock star."
After a few testy exchanges, Derogatis and Jenkins set up a follow-up interview where each party had a chance to defend his view on Third Eye Blind's general quality as musicians. Think about that: when was the last time you have seen, before or since, a critic interviewing a band and asking (or demanding) for them to defend their posturing and childish behavior? Christopher R. Weingarten can go off on Big MP3 Blogging for not saying anything negative about the new Broken Social Scene, but would he even say that to Kevin Drew's face? I'd like to see that, for sure (and I'd particularly like to see him doing that for one of his corporate overlords at Rolling Stone).
The great thing about this piece is that both Derogatis and Jenkins give everything they have to their arguments. They don't pussyfoot about and try to come to some generalized agreement. But neither of them are overtly hostile or insulting, either. In Derogatis' case, he's simply laying out his case as any journalist might. Here's an exchange:
The Jenkins interview was my first real exposure to Derogatis, but the thing that really got me interested in him was a book he edited called Kill Your Idols: A New Generation of Rock Writers Reconsider the Classics, which I bought the day it came out at my local Borders. Now oddly out of print, the book was apparently inspired once again by Rolling Stone, whose recent list of "the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time" was so weighted towards 60's establishment rockers that he conceived this book as a necessary countermeasure. It mainly consists of reappraisals of sacred cow albums, ranging from It Takes A Nation Of Millions to Exile On Main St (Derogatis wrote a fine and convincing piece on Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, Rolling Stone's #1 choice). Some make better arguments than others (the pieces on Led Zeppelin IV and Nevermind are especially unconvincing), but the book itself is invaluable as a rejection of canonicity in a market often driven by focus-grouped lists.
Astute readers may remember that I've railed against needless contrarianism in the past, so how is Kill Your Idols different? It's a matter of perception to some degree, but I don't see Derogatis as someone who says "your band sucks" for the sake of being the only guy who thinks your band sucks. There's always a level of honesty to his writing that is backed up by carefully considered facts. It's one thing to say that Sgt. Pepper's is terrible, but it's another thing to point out (quite rightly) how messy of a concept album it is, how weak tracks like "Getting Better," "Good Morning Good Morning" and "Fixing A Hole" are, and how much better "A Day In The Life" is than anything that preceded it.
Derogatis is surely reacting to an establishment line that puts this album on a pedestal, but he certainly isn't a Beatles hater by any means, and his disembowelment of this album is, at the end, an act of love. And that's something I detect in his writing more than I can with most music critics. In fact, if he resembles anyone, I'm pretty sure it has to be Roger Ebert.
I've gone this far without discussing the "world's only rock 'n roll talk show," Sound Opinions, which was conceived as a Siskel & Ebert for music geeks and features Derogatis and Chicago Tribune critic Greg Kot (another favorite of mine). I miss the days before it was on Chicago Public Radio and it was a three-hour show, but even in its current one-hour form it's still about the best podcast in the world. Again, this might be because Kot and Derogatis' interests are very similar to mine--a few weeks ago, they did a "classic album dissection" of London Calling, and anyone who knows me can tell you, if there's two things I love, it's dissecting classic albums and London Calling. But apart from that, what makes Sound Opinions great is that the two will often rail against the corporate music industry, attacking Clear Channel or Live Nation, defending file-sharing networks from the litigious eye of the Big Five, and in general expressing solidarity with the miserable loners who enjoy music most as the most solitary of pleasures, not as a means for cocktail chatter or making money. They also seem to be the last critics alive who care about music being ruined in car commercials.
Derogatis opens his biography of Lester Bangs thusly: "Sometimes Lester was full of shit." To be honest, I could say the same thing about Derogatis, occasionally (take his review of the latest Vampire Weekend, for example). But I still think, post Sun-Times, that he's probably the best music critic in America today. Surprisingly, there aren't many people I think who'd agree with me--in doing Internet research for this post, my general conclusion is that Derogatis is one of the most hated and consistently derided music critics working, which makes absolutely no sense to me (seriously, someone explain it). Maybe that's the price you pay for taking on The Man, but that usually should give you props in most critical circles. Theories can be posted in the comments section.
It probably has something to do with the fact that Derogatis is unashamed about what he loves--the earliest days of the 60s psychedelic movement, the late 70s punks and post-punks, the bands of Our Band Could Be Your Life, etc. Like Roger Ebert, he's a critic that tries to be inclusive, genre-wise, but he's open and honest about the fact that, as a human, he has biases--in fact, he confronts them in some fashion in many of his reviews. And, most importantly, he's a dying breed of media type who writes consistently against the corporate media hype and what constitutes modern popular radio. Industry and musical trends have changed dramatically during the last few decades, and it is to our credit as a democracy to have someone out there standing athwart those trends, evaluating them on a case-by-case basis, cautiously skeptical but not needlessly antagonistic. It's why musicians like Billy Corgan, so wounded when given a bad review, come to see that he has a legitimate viewpoint many years later.
So congratulations to Mr. Derogatis on his new job, if he needs it. He's especially needed now that the most basic precepts of music criticism (i.e. the fact that it should continue to exist) are under attack, and there's a lot of flash but very little heat to most of the arguments I hear. The only reason I mourn is because he won't last forever, and there has yet to be anyone who seems to be adequately prepared or willing to take his place.
Let's talk about Jim Derogatis, because it's a perfect time to do so. The long-time Chicago Sun-Times music critic finally left his perch at the newspaper on April 21, much to the rock crit community's disbelief. For many, it seemed that Derogatis was as much a firmly embedded Sun-Times guy as Roger Ebert (of whom the comparisons don't necessarily stop there), and given the state of the industry, I was expecting the Sun-Times to fold long before Derogatis would ever quit. According to their distinguished competition, Derogatis is choosing to split his time between working at Chicago Public Radio (where he has hosted Sound Opinions, the "world's only rock 'n roll talk show," for many years) and teaching at Columbia College. I also believe that part of his reason for leaving is that he no longer has to mediate the racist and verbally abusive comments on his Sun-Times blog, which are among the worst you can find on the Internet.
Jim Derogatis has long been a critic I respected and admired, a guy who refuses to apologize for his counter-cultural leanings in a landscape of too many obsequious and fame-seeking music journalists. Like the two of us at Rockaliser, he is first and foremost an 80's college rock kid, but he was around long enough to actually see the days of Our Band Could Be Your Life in action. Like the musicians he admired in Sonic Youth or the Replacements, Derogatis tried to maintain a level of conviction, honesty and DIY integrity in his writing, choosing to completely ignore the groupthink of the Pazz 'n Jop establishment and the Billboard Hot 100-ites alike.
You may recall that the first notable test of his character as a critic came during his brief tenure as an editor at Rolling Stone in the 90s. I'll briefly recount this story, because it should be told more as lesson to nascent music journalists. It starts with a review Derogatis wrote of Hootie & The Blowfish's album Fairweather Johnson, in 1996. Needless to say, he did not give it the RS-mandated three-star review:
To these ears, Hootie are the blandest extreme of a wave of bands for whom blame can be placed squarely on the Grateful Dead. The Spin Doctors, Dave Matthews Band, Blues Traveler, and most of the other "baby Dead" or "jam" bands try to uphold the Dead’s ideals of exploring diverse musical genres such as jazz, bluegrass, and worldbeat from a rock perspective, as well as transcending the everyday through a combination of hallucinogens, music, and community. Hootie doesn’t even attempt the first (though they do stretch things out a bit live), and they only succeed at the second if you consider Bud Lite a psychedelic drug.That review was killed and replaced with a more favorable one written by Elysa Gardner. A few weeks later, The New York Observer called Derogatis to ask him about a possible conflict of interest between himself and Wenner, with the kicker being the following, printed as a pull quote right next to a picture of Wenner:
But the connection to the Dead is there in a recording style that reduces American Beauty and Workingman’s Dead to their lowest common denominators: a down-home hippie folksiness, a lilting melodic approach, and, of course, that lazy, elastic groove. Hootie music never rocks, and you certainly can’t dance to it; at best, you just sort of do the awkward white-person wiggle so prominent at Dead and baby Dead shows alike. (Remember, too, that David Crosby, the Dead’s secret weapon on American Beauty and Workingman’s Dead, also crafted the harmonies on "Hold My Hand.")
Come hear Uncle Hootie’s band, playing to the crowds. More than 8 million buyers can’t be wrong. Or can they?
IS JANN WENNER A HOOTIE FAN? "NO, I THINK HE'S JUST A FAN OF BANDS WHICH SELL EIGHT AND A HALF MILLION COPIES."--ROLLING STONE WRITER JIM DEROGATISThe very next day, Derogatis came into work only to be fired and immediately escorted out by security. In a way, this reflected a similar RS firing of Derogatis' hero Lester Bangs after he wrote a negative review of Canned Heat in 1971. Can I say how right both of them turned out to be? Darius Rucker, last time I checked, was doing commercials for Burger King, I think.
One of my favorite pieces of music criticism ever is a long interview published in the Sun-Times with Stephan Jenkins, the lead singer of Third Eye Blind (it was included in one of the earlier Da Capo Best New Music books, and reprinted elsewhere as well). The article is about as far from a sycophantic celebrity interview as you can get, and it's brilliant. The story began when Derogatis wrote an extremely negative review of Third Eye Blind's stage show, saying about the lead singer: "Rarely has such a mediocre singer, uninspired songwriter, and uninvolving stage presence been lucky enough to be deigned a rock star."
After a few testy exchanges, Derogatis and Jenkins set up a follow-up interview where each party had a chance to defend his view on Third Eye Blind's general quality as musicians. Think about that: when was the last time you have seen, before or since, a critic interviewing a band and asking (or demanding) for them to defend their posturing and childish behavior? Christopher R. Weingarten can go off on Big MP3 Blogging for not saying anything negative about the new Broken Social Scene, but would he even say that to Kevin Drew's face? I'd like to see that, for sure (and I'd particularly like to see him doing that for one of his corporate overlords at Rolling Stone).
The great thing about this piece is that both Derogatis and Jenkins give everything they have to their arguments. They don't pussyfoot about and try to come to some generalized agreement. But neither of them are overtly hostile or insulting, either. In Derogatis' case, he's simply laying out his case as any journalist might. Here's an exchange:
J.D.: I'm not threatened, and that's not what this is about. This is about me respecting you wanting to have your say. There's not enough meaningful dialogue in rock today; it's all about hype. I don't like your music, but I respect your desire to talk.Though Derogatis' view on Third Eye Blind's music is pretty close to being vindicated, I think both parties come out looking pretty good (phenomenally stupid comparison to Fugazi aside), and there's a refreshing honesty and openness to their exchange that is at an intellectual far above anything I have ever seen in corporate rock mags. It remains an interview that I will often read for pleasure, and for inspiration.
S.J.: Hype is something that our band has certainly eschewed. Our band has been, if not the most DIY next to Fugazi, then number two or three.
J.D.: How can you say that? Third Eye Blind is a creation of MTV and modern rock radio and a major label. And you're taking money from the Hard Rock Cafe to play a festival that has corporate sponsorship up the wazoo.
The Jenkins interview was my first real exposure to Derogatis, but the thing that really got me interested in him was a book he edited called Kill Your Idols: A New Generation of Rock Writers Reconsider the Classics, which I bought the day it came out at my local Borders. Now oddly out of print, the book was apparently inspired once again by Rolling Stone, whose recent list of "the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time" was so weighted towards 60's establishment rockers that he conceived this book as a necessary countermeasure. It mainly consists of reappraisals of sacred cow albums, ranging from It Takes A Nation Of Millions to Exile On Main St (Derogatis wrote a fine and convincing piece on Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, Rolling Stone's #1 choice). Some make better arguments than others (the pieces on Led Zeppelin IV and Nevermind are especially unconvincing), but the book itself is invaluable as a rejection of canonicity in a market often driven by focus-grouped lists.
Astute readers may remember that I've railed against needless contrarianism in the past, so how is Kill Your Idols different? It's a matter of perception to some degree, but I don't see Derogatis as someone who says "your band sucks" for the sake of being the only guy who thinks your band sucks. There's always a level of honesty to his writing that is backed up by carefully considered facts. It's one thing to say that Sgt. Pepper's is terrible, but it's another thing to point out (quite rightly) how messy of a concept album it is, how weak tracks like "Getting Better," "Good Morning Good Morning" and "Fixing A Hole" are, and how much better "A Day In The Life" is than anything that preceded it.
Derogatis is surely reacting to an establishment line that puts this album on a pedestal, but he certainly isn't a Beatles hater by any means, and his disembowelment of this album is, at the end, an act of love. And that's something I detect in his writing more than I can with most music critics. In fact, if he resembles anyone, I'm pretty sure it has to be Roger Ebert.
I've gone this far without discussing the "world's only rock 'n roll talk show," Sound Opinions, which was conceived as a Siskel & Ebert for music geeks and features Derogatis and Chicago Tribune critic Greg Kot (another favorite of mine). I miss the days before it was on Chicago Public Radio and it was a three-hour show, but even in its current one-hour form it's still about the best podcast in the world. Again, this might be because Kot and Derogatis' interests are very similar to mine--a few weeks ago, they did a "classic album dissection" of London Calling, and anyone who knows me can tell you, if there's two things I love, it's dissecting classic albums and London Calling. But apart from that, what makes Sound Opinions great is that the two will often rail against the corporate music industry, attacking Clear Channel or Live Nation, defending file-sharing networks from the litigious eye of the Big Five, and in general expressing solidarity with the miserable loners who enjoy music most as the most solitary of pleasures, not as a means for cocktail chatter or making money. They also seem to be the last critics alive who care about music being ruined in car commercials.
Derogatis opens his biography of Lester Bangs thusly: "Sometimes Lester was full of shit." To be honest, I could say the same thing about Derogatis, occasionally (take his review of the latest Vampire Weekend, for example). But I still think, post Sun-Times, that he's probably the best music critic in America today. Surprisingly, there aren't many people I think who'd agree with me--in doing Internet research for this post, my general conclusion is that Derogatis is one of the most hated and consistently derided music critics working, which makes absolutely no sense to me (seriously, someone explain it). Maybe that's the price you pay for taking on The Man, but that usually should give you props in most critical circles. Theories can be posted in the comments section.
It probably has something to do with the fact that Derogatis is unashamed about what he loves--the earliest days of the 60s psychedelic movement, the late 70s punks and post-punks, the bands of Our Band Could Be Your Life, etc. Like Roger Ebert, he's a critic that tries to be inclusive, genre-wise, but he's open and honest about the fact that, as a human, he has biases--in fact, he confronts them in some fashion in many of his reviews. And, most importantly, he's a dying breed of media type who writes consistently against the corporate media hype and what constitutes modern popular radio. Industry and musical trends have changed dramatically during the last few decades, and it is to our credit as a democracy to have someone out there standing athwart those trends, evaluating them on a case-by-case basis, cautiously skeptical but not needlessly antagonistic. It's why musicians like Billy Corgan, so wounded when given a bad review, come to see that he has a legitimate viewpoint many years later.
So congratulations to Mr. Derogatis on his new job, if he needs it. He's especially needed now that the most basic precepts of music criticism (i.e. the fact that it should continue to exist) are under attack, and there's a lot of flash but very little heat to most of the arguments I hear. The only reason I mourn is because he won't last forever, and there has yet to be anyone who seems to be adequately prepared or willing to take his place.
Sunday, April 25, 2010
All The Critics Hate You In New York
No one is left to say "the new Broken Social Scene song sucks." The new Broken Social Scene song sucks, everybody.
I just watched Christopher R. Weingarten's music criticism rant at last week's 140 Characters Conference and learned one thing--dude loves to swear!
More seriously, Weingarten covers a lot of ground in 10 minutes, so let's consider five of his strongest statements, as more-or-less accurately transcribed by yours truly:
1. The Hype Machine is the lowest common denominator
One of Weingarten's central arguments. I'm not sure it bears out, and one of the site's staffers has objected strongly. I understand that any aggregator will favor certain MOR elements, which is Weingarten's point. But you have to consider two things I don't believe he did: (1) the pool of people posting and being aggregated, and (2) how people use the website. On the former, the Hype Machine certainly tends toward broadly acceptable indie favorites. This rarely parrots the truly MOR music, and stands a little more left-of-center than Weingarten acknowledges. If there's a complaint to be made about indie blogs, it's the one Lucas Jensen made in 2008, that music blogs have shifted away from discovering unsigned artists, and towards reprinting press releases. On the second point, I don't have that data, and I doubt Weingarten does either. Do Hype Machine users simply listen to the most popular tracks, and ignore the rest? Many do, I'm sure. But surely others have used the site to discover obscure and experimental acts that piss in the face of Vampire Weekend, or whatever it is that CW hates so much.
2. When clicks are your lifeblood it doesn't matter if the writing is any good
I'm not sure how this represents a new development. I don't doubt that the editors of Rolling Stone, long before the internet, covered many shitty artists, and printed all sorts of non-news stories, just to sell issues and gain subscribers.* Indeed, for many publications, the lower-brow fare, along with the readers and advertisers it brings in, subsidizes the more serious journalism and criticism.
Weingarten only had 10 minutes to speak, but with the last two assertions, a few well-chosen examples could have helped illustrate his argument. I'm prepared to believe either, provided he argues them convincingly. In the absence of anything concrete, I'm skeptical.
3. The hardest thing to get someone to click on is the unknown
This is a great point. The internet is an oddly insular place; you're never going to Google a band you've never heard of.
4. We're creating this culture where bands have to fight for blog attention all the time
Also very astute. This online attention isn't necessarily about ego, but about promoting one's music, which, lest we for get, is the livelihood of musicians. How many Jandeks have gotten lost in this shuffle?
5. Don't believe the Hype Machine
This is how the speech ends. Thankfully, Weingarten hasn't used the 10 minutes for the sort of self-promotion that troubles him, concluding on a graceful note that oh fuck wait he just--just as in April 2nd--published a book about Public Enemy's It Takes A Nation of Millions. Thanks for not letting us forget, Chris!
Now, you may enjoy reading Weingarten, and find him insightful. So do I, as it turns out.** But I felt compelled to point the synergy in his last remark, given the asinine thing he said about Broken Social Scene. And I don't like that song either.
*Perhaps with the internet it's become a more exact science, but that's a difference of degree, not kind.
**If you liked his speech, make sure to track down the one he gave last year
I just watched Christopher R. Weingarten's music criticism rant at last week's 140 Characters Conference and learned one thing--dude loves to swear!
More seriously, Weingarten covers a lot of ground in 10 minutes, so let's consider five of his strongest statements, as more-or-less accurately transcribed by yours truly:
1. The Hype Machine is the lowest common denominator
One of Weingarten's central arguments. I'm not sure it bears out, and one of the site's staffers has objected strongly. I understand that any aggregator will favor certain MOR elements, which is Weingarten's point. But you have to consider two things I don't believe he did: (1) the pool of people posting and being aggregated, and (2) how people use the website. On the former, the Hype Machine certainly tends toward broadly acceptable indie favorites. This rarely parrots the truly MOR music, and stands a little more left-of-center than Weingarten acknowledges. If there's a complaint to be made about indie blogs, it's the one Lucas Jensen made in 2008, that music blogs have shifted away from discovering unsigned artists, and towards reprinting press releases. On the second point, I don't have that data, and I doubt Weingarten does either. Do Hype Machine users simply listen to the most popular tracks, and ignore the rest? Many do, I'm sure. But surely others have used the site to discover obscure and experimental acts that piss in the face of Vampire Weekend, or whatever it is that CW hates so much.
2. When clicks are your lifeblood it doesn't matter if the writing is any good
I'm not sure how this represents a new development. I don't doubt that the editors of Rolling Stone, long before the internet, covered many shitty artists, and printed all sorts of non-news stories, just to sell issues and gain subscribers.* Indeed, for many publications, the lower-brow fare, along with the readers and advertisers it brings in, subsidizes the more serious journalism and criticism.
Weingarten only had 10 minutes to speak, but with the last two assertions, a few well-chosen examples could have helped illustrate his argument. I'm prepared to believe either, provided he argues them convincingly. In the absence of anything concrete, I'm skeptical.
3. The hardest thing to get someone to click on is the unknown
This is a great point. The internet is an oddly insular place; you're never going to Google a band you've never heard of.
4. We're creating this culture where bands have to fight for blog attention all the time
Also very astute. This online attention isn't necessarily about ego, but about promoting one's music, which, lest we for get, is the livelihood of musicians. How many Jandeks have gotten lost in this shuffle?
5. Don't believe the Hype Machine
This is how the speech ends. Thankfully, Weingarten hasn't used the 10 minutes for the sort of self-promotion that troubles him, concluding on a graceful note that oh fuck wait he just--just as in April 2nd--published a book about Public Enemy's It Takes A Nation of Millions. Thanks for not letting us forget, Chris!
***
Now, you may enjoy reading Weingarten, and find him insightful. So do I, as it turns out.** But I felt compelled to point the synergy in his last remark, given the asinine thing he said about Broken Social Scene. And I don't like that song either.
*Perhaps with the internet it's become a more exact science, but that's a difference of degree, not kind.
**If you liked his speech, make sure to track down the one he gave last year
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Critical Beatdown: Round 7
Note: This XL Beatdown was (largely) guest-curated by Geoff S., who blogs over at Reading (b)log. Nikki & Rich, "Next Best Thing"
AM: Sanitized retro R&B for the shopping mall crowd. If you find contemporary R&B a little too 'urban' for your tastes, but crave uninsightful lyrics about sex, this should do. 1/5
NS: The product of a jailbait chanteuse/enigmatic DJ duo whose idea of soulful probably begins and ends with Amy Winehouse, "Next Best Thing" at least has the ebullience of its subject matter and a comfortable and commanding lead singer, so it isn't all bad. But if DJ Rich Skillz wants to stay in this business, he might want to consider expanding his palate, and learn more than two piano chords. You know, just in case. 2.5/5
Teenage Fanclub, "Baby Lee"
AM: Shadows was in the can before Chilton died, but "Baby Lee" only highlights what a talent we lost. Even the Big Star obsessives in Fanclub can't fill that void, which isn't to say this isn't a good song. A bit slow, but the the tune churns along winningly, with a sweet chorus. 4/5
NS: Bandwagonesque fan though I am, the rest of Teenage Fanclub's discography remains unknown to me, and this piledriver of a power-pop number proves how mistaken I was to write them off. Their trademark heavy guitar crunch is mostly absent, but they find a worthy replacement via the magic of economically-applied string parts, which fit them well, of course. 5/5
Zola Jesus, "Night"
AM: Bands sure have weird names these days, don't they? It's not a problem, I guess, but this is music that grinds along gloomily. "Night" is just short of quality, without a compelling element to suck listeners into its dark haze. 2.5/5
NS: I like a bit of dreadful, stifling atmosphere in my music, especially stuff like Siouxsie and the Cure (as well as obvious antecedents like Bat For Lashes), but the thicket of keyboards herein would probably sound better soundtracking the next David Lynch movie than it would as a singular album. Zola Jesus certainly seems to have the skills necessary to make transportive music, so why does this feel pre-sequestered for goth club bathroom music? 3/5
MGMT, "Brian Eno"
AM: This would make for good listening on Halloween, if people still care about MGMT come October. Spookier than I'd imagined, which totally befits a tribute to the non-musician. The madcap "Eno" has something of the spirit--much diluted, of course--of Here Comes the Warm Jets, so I won't complain. 4/5
NS: MGMT might think this ultra-prehensile garage number has the requisite blips and bloops to act as a legit tribute to its namesake, but to my ears it sounds more like one of the late Jay Reatard's Nuggets psychedelic goofs, and that's not a bad thing. As an MGMT-agnostic, I find this more exciting than any of their previous chart-toppers, but as a statement of musical allegiance, it's no "Alex Chilton." 3.5/5
UNKLE, "Natural Selection"
AM: The music whirs and buzzes like XTRMNTR-era Primal Scream, but without the same fury. This song seems rather to skip along the precipice, without ever taking that plunge, hiding its tunefulness in some almost Peter Hook-ian bass work. 4.5/5
NS: UNKLE could teach Zola Jesus and MGMT a thing or two about how to do the 80's right (if you absolutely have to). Sounding like a Tears For Fears or Gary Numan song shot full of Hawkwind-amphetamine fuzz bass, "Natural Selection" shows again how often it is that the best post-punk is being made by DJs, especially in England. You also get some of the coolest bass tones in recent memory. 4.5/5
Erykah Badu, "Window Seat"
AM: The sort of thing Nikki & Rich will never be, "Window Seat" hearkens back to the Baduizms of the singer's neo-soul period. I was hoping for "Honey Redux" personally, but the gently lingering keys remind us that we won't need a next best thing while Erykah's still around. 4/5
NS: One of my biggest musical blind spots involves Erykah Badu and the neo-soul movement she comes out of (a very different type of neo-soul than Nikki & Rich), so perhaps not listening to New Amerykah Part One disqualifies me from making negative judgments. This is...not exciting music, to be sure. Badu is a powerful singer, but everything about the track is so quiet and lounge-y, so when something lovely does pop out of the ether, and the instruments get a bit more lively, you can't blame me for not noticing. 2/5
Insane Clown Posse, "Miracles"
AM: The productions sounds like the PS2 beats of Boy In Da Corner, without the sharp edges, and the rapping is barely competent. And yet, in something of a miracle itself, this song doesn't suck. The ICP's dumb wonder sounds so sincere I can't help but share it, and professionalism is never a prerequisite to a good jam. Side note: is there a contemporary American folk movement larger than the Juggalos? They must be doing something right. 3.5/5
NS: Thank you/fuck you Aaron for taking my ICP V-card after years of studiously avoiding this group [you can thank Geoff --Aaron]. But I won't lie: "Miracles" is a strangely powerful experience, less so for the music than for the inspiring conviction with which these two proudly ignorant rappers name off natural phenomena they are easily impressed by (Favorite: "Music is ALL magic/you can't even hold it!"). Their rap skills are non-existent, and the production is sub-Casio, but somehow that's beside the point, so I'm forced to plead the Fifth on this one. RATING: N/A
Caribou, "Odessa"
AM: These spasmodic rhythms recall Remain In Light in the best possible sense. The album cover of the upcoming Swim captures this groove better than my clumsy words could hope to. 4.5/5
NS: This is by far the best thing Caribou has yet produced. Typically inscrutable and distorted for maximum terror, it's also the ultimate amphetamine buzz of this nascent 2010. And at the same time...you can almost dance to it. Hats off to this math professor for using his considerable intellect towards the cause of cramming as many awesome and crazy ideas into a song as he can. 5/5
The-Dream feat. T.I. "F.I.L.A."
AM: A slice of Southern triumphalism that falls slightly short of its aspirations. The loud, synthetic horns regrettably overshadow the piano, which tinkles with quiet bite. Dream tosses out hooks like it's his birthday. 4/5
NS: You know from the first "AAAAAYYY" that this is a T.I. song, and then The-Dream intrudes on Tip's territory with his own trademark "Radio KILLLAAAAA," so it's hard to say who the dominant force is on this track. I'm always happy to hear new T.I., particularly when the track in question bears the hallmarks of his King-era music, but with the sweetness of those horns, this could easily be appended to Love Vs Money. And it would be one of the best songs. 4/5
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Chapter Book Revue
Thanks to Hennepin County's libraries, I've managed to read a few books about music in the past month. I thought I'd write them up...
Silence, John Cage
Cage was an important, even pivotal figure in 20th Century music, and this book collects many of the experimental composer's lectures and magazine pieces, up to the early 1960s. He returns to the same subjects over and over--the dichotomy between noise and music, the nature of 'experimental' music, electronic sounds, the influence of chance in composition, and silence, or the impossibility thereof.
Profound questions, and, at its best, inquiries well-handled by Silence. On noise and silence--those false antitheses to music--in particular, the book sparkles with uncommon depth and a sense of intellectual mischief.
But to find the whole of Silence interesting, or even readable, one's interest in music must align perfectly with the composer's. I don't believe the concept of filler existed in Cage's period, but Silence is stuffed with it--uncritical expositions on Eastern philosophy, an unending barrage of unordered vignettes, 'experimental' lectures that were never meant to be read. Parsing the good from the nutty isn't difficult, however--when Cage chooses to write clearly his unorthodox ideas are almost always provocative--and still worth you time.
The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society, Andy Miller
An early entry in Continuum's 33 1/3 series, Andy Miller's take on The Kinks' greatest album features an unimaginative structure, unimaginative prose, and an unimaginative take on 15 of the richest songs every recorded. Miller mostly pulls quotes from Ray Davies' autobiography and articles about the Kinks, and connects with wordy, worshipful sentences; it reads like a lengthy Wikipedia article. The track analyses are OK, but by the time I got to the chapter of analysis about Village Green-era tracks not included on the album, I put down the book. The volume itself is slim, but the whole book seems very slight.
Invisible Republic: Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes, Greil Marcus
Greil Marcus' prose, on the other hand, is sublime. Large parts of Invisible Republic are given over to lengthy, novelistic descriptions--of live performances, Appalachian history, the Anthology of American Folk Music, and above all, the worlds Marcus hears inside songs. Some of these sections are reason to read the book by themselves.
But in a book ostensibly about Bob Dylan & The Band's landmark Basement Tapes, Marcus' stream of consciousness cultural history doesn't always work. The ace writing masks the fact that parts of the book have the cluttered, impenetrable inner logic of, well, a Dylan epic. Like "Desolation Row," Invisible Republic sometimes insinuates very thoughtful points through clouds of poetry and allusion. Other times you get the letter just as the doorknob breaks.
Perhaps you have heard that Greil proposes an "old, weird America"? Why yes, yes he does, and this old and weird America is a shot at poet Kenneth Rexroth, recognition of the centrality of the coo coo bird in American song and mythology, and home to Smithville and Kill Devil Hills, hamlets of the author's own creation. Among thousands of other things.
I won't rule out that large parts of Invisible Republic simply elude me, though I doubt the whole thing does. Dense and twisting thoughts work wonders in "Desolation Row," but as cultural history their power is somewhat diminished; I'd argue style should sometimes take a backseat to decipherable analysis in any history. This is by no means a bad book, however, and I can promise you that Marcus writes beautifully and with great knowledge.
The Replacements: All Over But The Shouting: An Oral History, Jim Walsh
An oral history of rock's greatest fuckups that gives more time to fans, scenesters, critics, and local history than it does to the band. The approach was probably necessary: Paul Westerberg doesn't appear to have talked to Walsh for the book, Bob Stinson sadly cannot, and while Chris Mars and Tommy Stinson participated, they don't play a major role as storytellers here. Walsh relies on folks like Peter Jesperson, Lori Barbero, and Peter Buck to fill in the details.
But the outside looking in angle makes sense for a band that was almost more important to its fans than its own members. There's a wealth of hilarious and heart-wrenching anecdotes, though major aspects of the band go almost unmentioned. Notably, there's very little about the terrible incident, shortly before Bob's dismissal from the band, when Westerberg forced Stinson to drink after having completed a treatment program, and absolutely nothing about Chris Mars' Pappy the Clown alter ego.
Walsh's book has a wonderful sense of place, at least if you're reading it in South Minneapolis. The obsession with street names and local hangouts may explain the mixed reviews Shouting received in 2007--that, or the author's boring articles from the 1980's that he chose to reprint--but it gives a sense of the scene and city that gave rise to the Placemats.
Silence, John Cage
Cage was an important, even pivotal figure in 20th Century music, and this book collects many of the experimental composer's lectures and magazine pieces, up to the early 1960s. He returns to the same subjects over and over--the dichotomy between noise and music, the nature of 'experimental' music, electronic sounds, the influence of chance in composition, and silence, or the impossibility thereof.
Profound questions, and, at its best, inquiries well-handled by Silence. On noise and silence--those false antitheses to music--in particular, the book sparkles with uncommon depth and a sense of intellectual mischief.
But to find the whole of Silence interesting, or even readable, one's interest in music must align perfectly with the composer's. I don't believe the concept of filler existed in Cage's period, but Silence is stuffed with it--uncritical expositions on Eastern philosophy, an unending barrage of unordered vignettes, 'experimental' lectures that were never meant to be read. Parsing the good from the nutty isn't difficult, however--when Cage chooses to write clearly his unorthodox ideas are almost always provocative--and still worth you time.
The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society, Andy Miller
An early entry in Continuum's 33 1/3 series, Andy Miller's take on The Kinks' greatest album features an unimaginative structure, unimaginative prose, and an unimaginative take on 15 of the richest songs every recorded. Miller mostly pulls quotes from Ray Davies' autobiography and articles about the Kinks, and connects with wordy, worshipful sentences; it reads like a lengthy Wikipedia article. The track analyses are OK, but by the time I got to the chapter of analysis about Village Green-era tracks not included on the album, I put down the book. The volume itself is slim, but the whole book seems very slight.
Invisible Republic: Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes, Greil Marcus
Greil Marcus' prose, on the other hand, is sublime. Large parts of Invisible Republic are given over to lengthy, novelistic descriptions--of live performances, Appalachian history, the Anthology of American Folk Music, and above all, the worlds Marcus hears inside songs. Some of these sections are reason to read the book by themselves.
But in a book ostensibly about Bob Dylan & The Band's landmark Basement Tapes, Marcus' stream of consciousness cultural history doesn't always work. The ace writing masks the fact that parts of the book have the cluttered, impenetrable inner logic of, well, a Dylan epic. Like "Desolation Row," Invisible Republic sometimes insinuates very thoughtful points through clouds of poetry and allusion. Other times you get the letter just as the doorknob breaks.
Perhaps you have heard that Greil proposes an "old, weird America"? Why yes, yes he does, and this old and weird America is a shot at poet Kenneth Rexroth, recognition of the centrality of the coo coo bird in American song and mythology, and home to Smithville and Kill Devil Hills, hamlets of the author's own creation. Among thousands of other things.
I won't rule out that large parts of Invisible Republic simply elude me, though I doubt the whole thing does. Dense and twisting thoughts work wonders in "Desolation Row," but as cultural history their power is somewhat diminished; I'd argue style should sometimes take a backseat to decipherable analysis in any history. This is by no means a bad book, however, and I can promise you that Marcus writes beautifully and with great knowledge.
The Replacements: All Over But The Shouting: An Oral History, Jim Walsh
An oral history of rock's greatest fuckups that gives more time to fans, scenesters, critics, and local history than it does to the band. The approach was probably necessary: Paul Westerberg doesn't appear to have talked to Walsh for the book, Bob Stinson sadly cannot, and while Chris Mars and Tommy Stinson participated, they don't play a major role as storytellers here. Walsh relies on folks like Peter Jesperson, Lori Barbero, and Peter Buck to fill in the details.
But the outside looking in angle makes sense for a band that was almost more important to its fans than its own members. There's a wealth of hilarious and heart-wrenching anecdotes, though major aspects of the band go almost unmentioned. Notably, there's very little about the terrible incident, shortly before Bob's dismissal from the band, when Westerberg forced Stinson to drink after having completed a treatment program, and absolutely nothing about Chris Mars' Pappy the Clown alter ego.
Walsh's book has a wonderful sense of place, at least if you're reading it in South Minneapolis. The obsession with street names and local hangouts may explain the mixed reviews Shouting received in 2007--that, or the author's boring articles from the 1980's that he chose to reprint--but it gives a sense of the scene and city that gave rise to the Placemats.
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