Sunday, February 27, 2005
I'm exhausted and my hearing is shot, but I might as well post some stuff here while I'm still awake. First of all, the review of The Mars Volta's Frances the Mute, which I co-wrote with fellow PopMatters comrade Justin Cober-Lake, appeared on Friday. The piece turned out to be a breeze, and lots of fun to do, and I think the final product is rather good. As for our opinions on the album itself, Justin liked it a lot better than I did, but like I said the other day, I really enjoyed portions of the CD, just not enough of it to fully recommend it.
So why am I so incredibly tired this late Saturday night? Well, a two and a half hour Steve Earle show will do that to you. It had been nearly exactly two years since I last saw the guy, the last time being a frigid night in the surreally cheesy confines of a tacky club in Edmonton. Earle was sick (voice problems), and limited his set to a paltry hour and a half, so this time around, I was looking forward to getting full bang for my buck, and what can I say, the dude delivered.
I've said it before, Saskatoon's Prairieland Park is the worst place to have a concert in the city. Ranking somewhere between a livestock facility and a warehouse, it's an unwelcoming, sterile, concrete cavern with ridiculously awful acoustics. And the setup for the show was really bizarre, with tons of oblong banquet tables set up on the perimeter, where everyone was seated. When Earle came out to introduce Allison Moorer, he said, quite aptly, "What is this, a lodge meeting?" And was I ever out of my element...it was wall to wall old people and rednecks, nothing but grey hair and cowboy hats. That's Saskatchewan for you.
The crowd was pretty awful during Moorer's solo set, and it was hard to concentrate on the lady's music with the din in the background, but she was very solid, highlights for me being a cool verison of "Dying Breed" as well as "All Aboard", from her most recent album, which is a pretty darn good CD, I might add.
So when it came time for Earle to come on, I was faced with a choice, either to hang back amidst the old, cowboy chapeau'd yappers, or to risk losing my hearing (I had forgotten my earplugs), so I easily nabbed a spot right at the front, which turned out to be a great choice. Earle & The Dukes came on, and were brilliant, especially on the louder tracks. Of course, this being Western Canada, one of the first places to really embrace Earle's music in the late 80s, most of the people were clamoring for the oldies, and they all went nuts when he played the ubiquitous "Copperhead Road", the classic "Guitar Town", and "I Ain't Ever Satisfied" (which was a really nice surprise), but for me, I was there to hear the newer stuff, and the performances of those songs were great. The band played The Revolution Starts...Now in its entirety, as well as a good number from his greatest album, Jerusalem. Personal highlights for me were "Amerika Version 2.0" (now my all-yimve fave of his, which really cooks live), "Conspiracy Theory", "Jerusalem", a roaring "Taneytown", "Transcendental Blues" (which I'd never heard live before), and a very cool version of "You're Still Standing There", with Moorer on vocals. Lots of covers were performed, too, including the Beatles' "Revolution", The Stones' "Sweet Virginia", George Harrison's "Isn't it a Pity", and closing the show with "Time Has Come Today" (the last three had Moorer singing as well). The crowd was good, at least those of us on the floor (the 19-35 group), as the sing-along during "Christmas in Washington" was surprisingly well done (as opposed to the apprent dead silence Earle experienced in ultra-right wing Alberta the other night). Earle himself was in fine form, launching into his activist tirades and easygoing storytelling an hour into the set, and his band, always an underrated group, was extremely solid. It was great fun, and yeah, my hearing's ruined for a while now (not so much the music, as the ladies who have to yell "woo" in my ear), but I finally got the marathon show I wanted to see. Here's the full setlist:
The Revolution Starts Now
Home To Houston
Conspiracy Theory (w/ Allison Moorer)
Ashes To Ashes
Taneytown
Amerika v. 6.0
What's a Simple Man To Do?
Warrior
Gringo's Tale
Rich Man's War
Goodbye
Comin' Around (w/ Allison)
You're Still Standin' There (w/ Allison)
Harlan Man
Copperhead Road
Condi Condi
I Thought You Should Know
Christmas In Washington
Jerusalem
The Seeker
Transcendental Blues
F the CC
Revolution (Beatles cover)
The Revolution Starts Now (reprise)
First encore:
I Ain't Ever Satisfied
Guitar Town
Sweet Virginia (Rolling Stones cover)(w/ Allison)
Second encore:
Isn't it a Pity (George Harrison cover)(w/ Allison)
Time Has Come Today(Chambers Brothers cover)(w/ Allison)
Thursday, February 24, 2005
My review of Buried Inside's highly ambitious, and rather good new album Chronoclast is now awaiting your perusal. Like I hinted at a couple weeks ago, this is a fascinating metal release, as the Ottawa boys are completely obsessed with the effect the concept of time has on us all. It's fascinating stuff, which my review goes into a bit more, and the music sounds like Isis, only with the intensity turned up considerably. An admiring thumbs-up for this one. Oh, and yes, I quoted Ginsberg again. I'm trying to stop doing that, but Beat Generation quotes come as natural to me as Simpsons quotes. I promise, no Ginsberg references for the rest of the year. Maybe. We'll see.
Collaborating in a two-person review of the new Mars Volta album over the last few days (won't explain, you'll just have to wait, kiddies), I was struck by how much of the thing has grown on me. When I heard the leaked version back in mid-December, I hated it. Hated it. Thought it was a gigantic mess. Now, after giving the album some time to settle in, it's still a gigantic mess, but certain portions of Frances the Mute have grown on me a fair bit. I think the first half of "The Widow", "Cygnus...Vismund Cygnus", and the half-hour insanity of "Cassandra Gemini" are all pretty darn good, at times even great, but I still can't bring myself to fully recommend the album. I sort of feel bad of giving it a negative review, because there's so much to like about it, but that's the way it goes. A regretful thumbs down. If you're curious, download and burn first, then decide if you want to buy. I'll leave it at that, and let the official review speak for itself, which should appear soon.
It was nearly a year ago when I first sampled tracks from Ash's fourth album Meltdown, and at the time, I didn't think much of it. It was probably because of the jacked-up guitar sound, which was heavily Americanized, with a huge hard rock sound that I found distracting. It took a while, but I've finally had a chance to let the entire album sink in, and it's actually pretty decent. Underneath the heavy production lie some of those great songs Tim Wheeler and company pull off so well...granted, there's nothing quite as great as "Burn Baby Burn" or Shining Light", from their last album, but overall, it's more consistent. Besides, songs like "Meltdown", "Orpheus", "Starcrossed", and "Won't Be Saved" all hold up very well. What I've always liked best about Ash is the talented Charlotte Hatherley, who has always added a great dimension with not only her great backing vocals, but her lead guitar as well (I think she's one of the best female lead guitarists in rock today). As likeable as Meltdown is, though, I still slightly prefer Hatherley's solo album Grey Will Fade, a very fun album in its own right. And speaking of Charlotte, apparently her recent single "Bastardo" is doing quite well on the UK charts. Well earned, I say.
Saw End of the Century: The Story of the Ramones the other day, and thoroughly enjoyed it. It's amazing how a band I've loved for so long wound up hating each other so much, and what starts off as a story of four dirtbags who become one of the greatest rock 'n' roll bands in history, turns into a tale of backstabbing, arguments, grudges, and great sadness. And no one's the good guy...each member contributed to the band's problems, and now, the three main combatants all died at a very early age. As melancholy as the end of the film is, it's still a tremendously uplifting movie, thanks to the great music, which, thanks to the short length of the Ramones' songs, is absolutely loaded with classic tunes. With music that great, all the strife somehow seemed to be worth it, because the songs are what will be remembered, not the squabbles.
Metal MP3 blog Another Perfect Day has another Behemoth track posted. I am serious, even if you normally don't listen to metal, download the song at once, as well as "Conquer All"...Demigod is a spectacular, spectacular album. Trust me on this one, dear reader.
I've been so extremely busy this past week, I've forgotten that the big Steve Earle show is in two days. Should be great...from all accounts, he's sounding as good as always. Allison Moorer probably deserves a lot of the credit for his fired-up performances.
Tuesday, February 22, 2005
So yeah, the news of Hunter S. Thompson's death on Sunday night was especially sad. He'll be missed...he was a huge, huge influence on so many, including myself. I first heard of the guy from Perry Farrell in 1990, actually, as he was talking about Thompson in an interview, how demented a writer he was. I gradually seeked out his books during the early 1990s, from Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas, to Fear & Loathing: On the Campaign Trail, to his early book Hell's Angels, to his classic collection The Great Shark Hunt, and devoured them all. I soon found out how burned-out his post-70s writing had become, but he still had the odd flash of brilliance, namely his classic eulogy for Richard Nixon, "He Was a Crook". His books of correspondence are fascinating, especially the first volume, which I found highly enjoyable. His writing tore off life's facade, displaying how depraved society really was, doing so with such savage humour and brutal, unflinching honesty. He was a true original, and all we can hope for now is that he's finally at peace. (oh, and the quote I posted yesterday is from a broadside that has hung on my all for the past nine years, featuring a defiant open letter HST wrote in October of 1960)
Back in early 1996, a fellow Allen Ginsberg fan e-mailed me, saying that he bought a CD version of Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas, listened to it with headphones after eating some mushrooms of the dicey chemical variety, and was extremely freaked out by the experience, saying that I should drop everything and seek out that CD at once. Now, I'm not the drug-taking kind, but I was intrigued, so a few weeks later, I bought the CD, and it did indeed turn out to be amazing. Presented as a radio play-style dramatization, it features the vocal talents of Harry Dean Stanton, Jim Jarmusch, Maury Chaykin, Dan Castellanete, Harry Shearer, and many others, and although it's heavily abridged, it's a very faithful, 76 minute adaptation of the classic book, and in fact, I've always contended that it's superior to Terry Gilliam's film adaptation, giving you a better feel for the prose than the movie does. Think I'll give it a spin sometime soon here, if I can find the time.
MY review of the new BellRays album has appeared. They've been a personal fave of mine for a long time now, and the new CD (which came out in the UK in 2003, strangely) delivers the same kind of soulful punk that they do so extremely well.
I was a bit surprised to see my big M.I.A. review pop up on Friday, what with the album's release being mysteriously delayed and all, but hey, why not now? It's a fantastic CD, and has only gotten better over the last month. I actually gave a listen to her underground mixtape Piracy Funds Terrorism over the weekend, and while Diplo's mixing and sampling is very impressive, and it's a really fun CD, I still prefer the album versions of the songs as opposed to the remixes. Some people feel the other way. It's a matter of preference.
Back in late April of last year, a fellow cohort of mine, an always reliable source of new music, hooked me up with a new tune by a young San Diego band called Louis XIV. That song, "Finding Out True Love is Blind", blew me away, to the point where I put it on my weekly top five, and finally, their debut EP is finally out, and get this, that song is receiving some healthy radio airplay south of the border. Good for them...it's an incredible single, and now that it's been officially released, it can be a contender for my 2005 singles list. The rest of the EP is just as good, too, as "Louis XIV" mimics the Stooges, "Marc" goes all David Bowie on us, and "Illegal Tender" bears a similarity to The Fall that's so strong, it's uncanny. A fun, albeit frustratingly brief teaser for their first full-length album, whenever that comes out.
Uh, wow. Remember when I said April in Saskatoon is shaping up to be a good one, concertwise? Well, it got about ten times better. DFA 1979, controller.controller, Hot Hot Heat, The Futureheads (!!!), and Louis XIV (!!!) all coming to town. I'm speechless.
Haruki Murakami's The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle was great. Norwegian Wood was even better. I'm now about to tackle his latest, Kafka on the Shore...the book's due on March 10, so I have to get going here. Why hadn't I read this guy sooner? He's a shatteringly good writer.
Questionable Content is a very funny comic strip. The Arcade Fire one had me howling.
Monday, February 21, 2005
Selah.
"No, I will not sell out, I will not give you the best hours of my day and let you use my blood to grease the wheels and cogs of a hundred banking machines, sorry, Jack, but I will take your time and your cigarettes and laugh at you quietly for the questions you ask and know all the time that your guts have dried up and your spine is rubber and you measure me against your contempt for the human race and find a disturbing disparity--how so, prince jellyfish? will you endorse this check for me? many thanks; now I can work against you for another week.and when the money runs out, maybe I will beg then, maybe you can crack me and pinch my smile, but I will never get to work on time, only to take your money and laugh again--and you cannot afford to laugh anymore, you will crack one day too, and that will be the end--for you cannot bounce, and I can."
Hunter Stockton Thompson, 1937-2005
Thursday, February 17, 2005
Okay, how's this for annoying? At practically the last minute, as big, extensive reviews were ready to roll (or in Rolling Stone's case, already published), as the pre-orders at Amazon were steadily increasing (#901 overall the other day), XL has pulled M.I.A.'a Arular and postponed its release indefinitely. The Amazon page has been completely wiped out. Apparently it's because of legal hassles with a certain sample on the album...the track in question has not yet been revealed, but my guess is "Sunshowers", and its sample from the chorus of Dr. Buzzard's 1976 song "Sun Shower", which M.I.A.'s track is built around. The single was never released in the US, so I'm betting that has something to do with this eleventh-hour delay. Whatever track it is, let's hope it's not deleted from the album, because it's so darn great. Hopefully the wait won't be too long, because everyone deserves to hear this fine album...at any rate, folks, Arular MP3s are easy to find online, and who knows, maybe my advance copy of the CD will become a bit of a collectors' item.
Weird day, that's for sure. The M.I.A. news was one thing, but the cancellation of the NHL season was another. This winter has been terrible, as I had dreaded. Hockey Night in Canada has been a ritual for me since early childhood, my Saturdays have always revolved around it (yeah, sad, I know), and the fact that I'm going to have to go at least a year and a half without it is a colossal disappointment. To not do anything for six months, then give us fans a ray of hope on the second to last day, only to pull the rug out from under us is especially devastating. Both sides are at fault, but I still side with the owners...the players have come out of this ordeal looking extremely shallow. The damage that has been made to the game is nearly irreparable, and Wayne Gretzky's expression yesterday on tv said it all. Well, as I said elsewhere yesterday, at least we can all take comfort in the fact that the Toronto Maple Leafs will go another year without winning the Stanley Cup.
Tuesday, February 15, 2005
My review of Behemoth's astounding new album Demigod is up today. I actually got the album in the mail back on Christmas Eve, and since then, it's grown on me steadily. Black metal is a very tough subgenre for people who don't normally listen to it, as hearing such harsh music is extremely overwhelming at first...this is certainly a genre where a band has to be awfully good in order to separate themselves from the rest of the sound-alikes, but if there's one black metal album I'd recommend to beginners, it's Demigod. The musicianship is so crisp, the guitars surprisingly agile, the drumming noose-tight, and the production immaculate. If you're the least bit apprehensive, download their great song "Conquer All" here, and play it every so often over the next few days. You might be surprised just how good this Polish band really is, and how brutally beautiful their music is.
Speaking of black metal, huge, huge thanks to Dave for setting me up with Enslaved's 2003 album Below the Lights, a staggeringly good blend of dense, chaotic sounds and smooth, progressive metal. I hope to have their new album, Isa, in my greedy mitts soon...
Still keeping with the metal, Another Perfect Day is the first strictly metal MP3 blog I've seen. It just started up yesterday, but it's a great idea, and should yield plenty of quality downloads.
Now, I've been enjoying Pitchfork's stuff over the past year or so, but yeesh, yesterday's Arcade Fire interview was an embarrassing, shameless display of sycophancy.
Oh, and the upcoming Juno Awards just got some more indie cred (just a smidge): Feist is performing. So I guess I should watch the show now...
Monday, February 14, 2005
Long time between updates again, I know, but I was doing my darndest to put together two huge CD reviews, both of which should be appearing really, really soon. So stay tuned.
Over the weekend, my review of the Flat Earth Society compilation appeared. Like I said before, it was a nasty one to write about, but the album itself is so much fun. If you buy one new jazz album, make it this one, trust me. Big Band has never sounded so twisted. To these ears, anyway.
Kudos to the Toronto Globe & Mail's Carl Wilson for voicing the frustration of Canadian indie music fans everywhere, launching into a tirade against those embarrassing Juno Award nominations, the fact that our great musical renaissance is appreciated everywhere but here, among other things. His blog is pretty awesome, by the way.
No, I didn't watch the Grammies. After the Scissor Sisters so brilliantly performed "Take Your Mama Out" on the Brit Awards last week, in front of a huge muppet farmyard, including a singing watermelon patch (thank you, CBC, for promptly airing the show as you always do), there was no way a cheesy American awards show could ever top that.
This may sound nuts, and I've only heard three of their songs, but I'm starting to think that Maximo Park is better than Bloc Party.
Wednesday, February 9, 2005
Okay, two big new reviews for y'all. There's the new album by Dalek, a mighty cool mix of hip hop, industrial skronk (I don't think I've ever used that word before now), a healthy amount of shoegazer density, and some of the smartest lyrics I've heard since the last Blackalicious album. Secondly, the new one by Canadian metal heroes Cursed...I got the CD right around Christmas, and over three or four weeks, it grew on me in a very huge way, and now I'm already thinking it'll wind up as one of the best heavy albums of 2005. The hardcore intensity of Converge, the dense sludge of early Mastodon, and again, very smart lyrics by singer C. Colochan. And he enunciates, too, a quality I always admire in a metal vocalist.
Speaking of smart lyrics on metal albums, just wait until I get going on the new Buried Inside album...it reads as if written by a graduate student for a dissertation. A very, very loud dissertation.
Imagine my pleasant surprise when I learned on Sunday that Caribou and Junior Boys are coming through my town in early June. What a combination...I want to see how the Junior Boys pull it off live, and I cannot wait to see Dan Snaith's new show, which should have even more of a live feel, thanks to the prevelance of guitars on The Milk of Human Kindness. But four months...that is such a long time to wait.
Well, it's that time of year again, the 2004 Village Voice Pazz & Jop poll is now out. True, it's become a bit (to say the least) slow with the rise of webzine year-end lists, but I've been reading the poll for many years now, and it's something I always look forward to...it's always very well put together, and the comments and essays are alway really good. No surprises with the list, lots of love for Kanye (the album is good, I will admit that), and Smile was a big time geezer pleaser.
Bit of a different twist, though, as this year's poll marks my debut as a voter. That's right, the P & J poll has some Saskatchewan content at long last! I'd been keeping the fact that I was asked to be part of the electorate close to the vest (I wanted to wait until I saw my name on there), and although the poll has become a bit passe, not to mention very predictable, it's still a massive thrill for me. Reading the poll a decade ago, or even starting this page four years ago, I would never have imagined I'd actually be participating in it someday, so getting the ballot in the mail was kind of special. Here's my ballot...
Saturday, February 5, 2005
Sorry for the lack of posts, but thanks to tons of new CD arrivals, a really cool big band album that's just impossible to write about, Haruki Murakami's enthralling The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, and what has to be quite simply the greatest distraction in the history of the internet, I just haven't been able to squeeze in any updates lately.
My review of Stereo Total's new album, Do the Bambi, appeared on Thursday. The first lead review I've written in a really long time...one month? Two? Anyway, I hadn't gotten around to this nifty little CD yet. I've become a bit of a Stereo Total Fan over the last two and a half years, and it's not only great to see Francoise and Brezel back, but even better to have a new album that ranks as one of their best yet. It's just loads of fun. Read my review, and give the album a try. Download "Babystrich", "Hungry!", "Mars Rendez-vous", and their excellent cover of Lou Reed's (by way of Nico) "Chelsea Girls".
Well, if my April wasn't looking insane enough, Into Eternity are coming to town on the 8th, making it Strapping Young Lad, Into Eternity, and Stars/Apostle of Hustle on three consecutive nights. What is this, Toronna? Unfortunately, Amorphis aren't continuing their tour with the Regina band, but hey, one world-class metal band will do just fine. One of these days, I'll write something about their most recent album, which is all kinds of brilliant.
Wednesday, February 2, 2005
Details on the upcoming Exclaim tour appeared today...opening for Stars out here in Western Canada, none other than Apostle of Hustle and Montag. Not too shabby, especially when you consider that Eastern Canada gets stuck with (yawn) The Organ. April 9, two nights after Strapping Young Lad...
My review of the new High on Fire CD is up today, so that's great. Nice and timely. It's a great album.
Static has an MP3 of System of a Down's new song "Cigaro" posted on the site. Their two upcoming albums are probably my two most hotly anticipated CDs of 2005, and I'm happy to say that SOAD have not lost any of their aggressive qualities, nor that trademark weirdness of theirs. So go download it at once.
For the past few weeks, article after article has been popping up, profiling M.I.A., but nowhere has there been as good a piece on the lady as on Aaron Wherry's blog. Basically, he just posted the transcript from his interview with her, and the result has her speaking in her own words, instead of subjecting the reader to ridiculous hyperbole and exaggeration. The fact that she admits to not being overtly political, as opposed as to how some people are portraying her, speaks volumes, and actually makes me appreciate the album more, since I was a bit curious as to why her lyrics weren't as politically charged as many had taken them to be. Excellent stuff.
Two years ago, I was a big fan of Fischerspooner's debut album, digging their over-the-top electroclash shtick enough to plunk it in my year-end top 20 list. As much as I enjoyed tracks like "Emerge" and "Tone Poem", I was pretty much resigned to the fact that they'd probably wind up fading away, becoming less relevant with each subsequent release. Man, was I wrong. In what is easily the biggest surprise of this young year, Fischerspooner's new album Odyssey is good. Really good. Shockingly so. Sure, the same vintage early 80s synth-pop sound is still there, but there's so much more growth this time around, more depth to the production. Part of the credit goes to co-producer Mirwais, who adds neat little touches, like guitars, an overall punk feel, much more aggressive beats, and more septh to the synth arrangements. It's Warren Fischer's songwriting, though, that emerges (ugh) as the most noticeable improvement, as he has more of a sense of what makes a good pop song, best exemplified by first single "Just Let Go" and the funky "Never Win". Fans might cringe at the prospect of Linda Perry offering songwriting assistance, but she only co-wrote three songs, the best of which is the catchy, very pretty "A Kick in the Teeth". "We need a War" features lyrics written by the late Susan Sontag, and there's even a cover of a Boredoms tune ("Circle (Vision Creation New Sun)"). Casey Spooner's his usual self, not as flamboyant as he is visually, but a very solid, and vastly underrated, lead singer. It's always great when a band lives up to expectations, but sometimes, it's better when a band completely defies expectations. Odyssey is, dare I say, a modest triumph, and Fischerspooner has proven to the world that they are indeed for real. It's out on April 5, but for now, if you want some more detailed info on the album, read the track by track analysis.
Over the past couple weeks, you might have seen television ads for a lame looking movie called Alone in the Dark, a videogame adaptation starring Christian Slater, Stephen Dorff, and get this, Tara Reid as an archaeologist. If you thought the movie looked terrible, it appears you were correct, judging by the film's extremely low Metacritic score. On the other hand, the soundtrack is absolutely killer...in fact, it's the best soundtrack I've seen since the Me Without You soundtrack three years ago. Released by Nuclear Blast, Alone in the Dark is less a movie soundtrack than an extensive collection of the finest heavy metal from the past three years. A two-disc set with a staggering 36 tracks, you will not find a better metal compilation anywhere. Impressively, metal labels Nuclear Blast, Century Media, Relapse, and Roadrunner have all co-operated nicely to produce this CD, and the result is spectacular. You get the popular bands like Shadows Fall, Lacuna Coil, Nightwish, and Mastodon; veteran bands like Fear Factory, In Flames, Strapping Young Lad, Soilwork, Samael, Exodus, Death Angel, and Dark Tranquillity; young phenoms like Chimaira and Mnemic; progressive kings Meshuggah and The Dillinger Escape Plan; black metal kings Dimmu Borgir and Cradle of Filth; and even a bit of grindcore, courtesy Dying Fetus. And that's barely half the album! Amazing. An absolute wealth of great music (it kind of needs songs by Lamb of God and Behemoth, but that's just nitpicking). It's out next Tuesday...if you're curious about metal, but have no idea where to look first, seek this album out. It's easily the finest introduction to contemporary metal out there, and Nuclear Blast should be congratulated. For what it's worth, at least the movie gave us a cool album cover...
Another new CD that's gotten into my head is the latest by symphonic metal co-progenitors Samael. Reign of Light is their first album in nearly six years, and it's a fascinating one, a very cool combination of symphonic, electronic, and metal music. An easy comparison would be a strangely compelling combination of the orchestral black metal of Dimmu Borgir, Middle Eastern musical influences, and the brutal, industrial-tinged, midtempo stomp of Rammstein (makes sense, since a guy from Rammstein mixed the album). I still need to hear it a few more times to get a clearer picture of it ("Moongate", "Inch'Allah", "Telepath", and "Heliopolis" are early faves), but my initial reaction is very positive.
Monday, January 31, 2005
Spring is closing in on us, which means the concert scene here on the prairies is really going to pick up. Here in Toon Town, April is shaping up to be a great month, as we're getting shows by Strapping Young Lad, a cool double bill with the Constantines and the Weakerthans, and the annual Exclaim tour, headlined this year by Stars (I'm looking forward to hearing who the co-headliners will be). Not only that, but the Edmonton Sun reported yesterday that there's an excellent chance Judas Priest is coming to the city, as well as a decent chance Iron Maiden would, too. Maiden, I doubt it, they only play big cities now, and they're going to headline Ozzfest, which doesn't come to Canada. Priest, though, I'm counting on, and I would not miss that one for the world.
Speaking of Yoodas Priest, I managed to get the rest of their new album on MP3 late Thursday night, and yeah, it's an impressive return to form. The five tracks I'd heard earlier were from the album's first half, and on the latter half, it's a little bit more inconsistent. "Angel" and "Eulogy" are okay-ish ballads (actually, "Angel" hearkens back to Stained Class, impressively), but nothing to get very excited about, and the 13 minute exercise in cheesy bombast, "Lochness", is about eight minutes too long. Still, like I said last week, I really enjoy how they've returned to the sound from their peak years, which combined massive riffs with sing-along melodies, best exemplified by "Wheels of Fire", "Deal With the Devil", "Hellrider" (love that tune), and "Judas Rising". I'm now convinced the best track is the aforementioned "Worth Fighting For"; it's one of the best commercial-sounding songs they've ever done, in fact, revisiting the smooth sounds of "Desert Plains", as opposed to their more goofy attempts at a radio-friendly sound. Of course, Rob Halford is all over this album, displaying is trademark versatility, from his mid-range snarl, to his strong singing voice, to the screech he mastered on Painkiller, and even a few of those ear-piercing cries of his to show us he's not too old to pull it off. It's nothing that will turn the metal world upside down like so many of their classic albums have done, but it's good, solid Judas Priest, the Priest we grew up with and grew to adore. There's nothing at all wrong with a good, seven out of ten album...we're just happy to have the old guys back.
Oh, and if you happen to find yourself in a record store tomorrow, unable to decide which CD to buy, head on over to the metal section (don't be scared, nobody's watching), and scoop up a copy of the new High on Fire Album, Blessed Black Wings, take it home, set the volume extremely high, and lose yourself in what has to be the greatest drum sound recorded in the last five years or so. It's an album that's really grown on me over the last six weeks...if you still need convincing, give "Devilution" a listen. Hopely, my review will appear soon.
Thursday, January 27, 2005
Got a new review up today over at Static, that being my piece on Marianne Faithfull's great Before the Poison. Funny, I've actually had the album since late last summer, but I never got around to taking about it here. It took a while to warm up to me, but now, I think it might be better than 2002's Kissin' Time, which I was crazy about. Jarvis Cocker on that album, and although his presence is sadly missed on the new cd, Nick Cave follows suit perfectly, collaborating on three fantastic songs, the best one being "Crazy Love". The five PJ Harvey tracks are all very good, but it's "No Child of Mine" that is the most interesting title, in that it's the same song that appeared on Harvey's recent Uh Huh Her, and completely destroys the original.
Phenomenal issue of Eye Weekly this week. They have their annual Canadian critics' poll up...strange how they claim to have ballots from critics from "across the country", but only a tiny few from Western Canada. Harumph. Anyway, it was K-OS who got the most love, which I found interesting...he's a likeable enough hip hop guy. Junior Boys were nowhere to be found (incredibly), the lovely Leslie Feist continues to get the accolades (more than the Arcade Fire, oddly), and Stars continue to be (ever so slightly) overrated.
In addition, Eye has an amazing cover story on M.I.A., and John Sakamoto's last Anti-Hit List, before taking off to continue the long-running (and highly influential, I might add) list over at the Toronto Star.
The new Judas Priest album, Angel of Retribution, is slowly trickling onto the net...I have five tracks so far, and after the half decent "Revoluton", other tracks have definitely picked up the slack, as the great "Judas Rising", "Deal With the Devil", and "Demonizer" all go back to the 1982-84 glory days, which will disappoint many folks, who were hoping the new album would be more like Painkiller. Most interesting is the surprisingly good "Worth Fighting For", which bears a strong similarity to the Point of Entry album, and trust me, I mean that in a good way. The upcoming deluxe edition of the album wassupposed to come with a full concert DVD filmed in Spain last summer, but that's changed a little bit, as the DVD will now have a documentary, and selected live tracks of the more popular songs, highlighted by "Electric Eye" and "Metal Gods". I was really looking forward to seeing them play "Beyond the Realms of Death", but I guess it'll have to do. Remember March 1st...a very big day for us old-time metalheads!
Tuesday, January 24, 2005
Early morning edit: Another one of my hotly anticipated 2005 albums surfaced on the net yesterday...this time, it's the new Doves album, Some Cities, and after one listen, I like it a lot.
It doesn't quite reach the sheer gorgeousness of "Catch the Sun", "There Goes the Fear", "Satellites", "Pounding", and "Caught By the River", but it just might be an overall more consistent-sounding album than The Last Broadcast. The overall sound is less epic, and more cozy, going for more of an introspective, often acoustic feel instead of the pleasant bombast of the previous album. It's more in line with the first album, lots of atmospheric touches. More "Cedar Room" than "Pounding". The songs are all good, no filler, as Jimi Goodwin sings on all but two tracks, and the ones that grabbed me immediately were "Black & White Town" (which I've had for the last month), "Snowden" (okay, on second listen, this song is fabulous), "Walk in Fire" (ditto), "One of These Days", and "Sky Stars Falling". Doves are always a band who seems to get better the more you settle in with their music, and who knows how smitten I'll be with Some Cities in a couple months? In the meantime, it's another quality album by one of the UK's finest rock bands.
That's right, I do not like the new Hot Hot Heat single. I've always been slow to warm to the band and their goofy indie pop, but "Goodnight Goodnight" is just plain dumb. It's an extremely catchy song, catchy in the sense that, given the right placement on a trendy TV show, could become a mainstream hit, but also annoyingly catchy, like nearly every top 40 rock single. If "Bandages" was a silly bit of post punk fun, "Goodnight Goodnight" is nothing but an indie version of mallpunk, a shameless attempt to court mainstream success, and nothing more. Download it, listen to it a couple times, and be done with it.
Okay, enough with the garbage, and on to some better stuff. The new albums continue to leak, and yesterday, the world (at least the crazy ILM world) was abuzz with the news that the new Daft Punk album Human After All was floating around. So whow is it? Pretty good. Very, very good in spots, in fact. It's a much simpler album than their last album Discovery, more synthetic sounding (there are barely any lyrics on it, just primarily vocoder-treated voices reciting the song titles), but also much less sprawling. Instead of going for an epic hour or so like Discovery did, this one's a much more taut 45-ish minutes, and in this album's case, the shorter running time works to its advantage, as the formula of simple, repeated hooks on each of the tracks would get really old if it were to go on longer than it does. As it is, it's a highly enjoyable record. The rock-inspired tracks "Human After All" (an ironic title, considering this album is less "human sounding" than Discovery) and "Robot Rock" are great fun, pretty much what you'd expect from the duo. "Steam Machine" and "The Brainwasher" are darker and more abrasive than anything I've heard them do before, but effectively so, while "Make Love" and "Emotion" are much more tender songs that show there's soul underneath the synthetic sounds. By far the best of the lot is the cheeky, facetious "Technologic", which is built around a pitchshifted voice reciting lines that reflect our technocentric world: "Buy it use it break it fix it trash it change it melt upgrade it/Charge it pawn it zoom it press it snap it work it quick erase it/Write it get it paste it save it load it check it quick rewrite it/Plug it play it burn it rip it track it drop it zip unzip it..." The song gradually becomes a brash funk jam, as that little voice keeps going and going (kind of a sequel to "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger"). Despite the genius of that song, I still think Discovery is the superior album, as nothing on Hman After All comes close to topping the great singles "One More Time" and "Digital Love". It's a fine album, though, one that I'd be tempted to buy come release day.
Monday, January 24, 2005
My Nightwish review has appeared today. It's actually a review of two discs...I've had their recent album Once since early October, but hadn't had time to review the thing, and then a few weeks ago, I got the re-release of their Over the Hills and Far Away EP in the mail, so I thought what the heck, and put together a quick review of both cd's. Nightwish is kind of a funny band, they're either painfully cheesy or brilliant, and on both discs, the good far outweighs the bad. "Nemo" is a great, great single, I quite like their cover of Gary Moore's "Over the Hills and Far Away", a song I've liked since the original came out, around 1989.
Sorry for the lack of updates, but on Thursday, I figured it was as good a time as any to attack my ever-growing pile of 2005 CDs, so I churned out review after review over the weekend. And weirdly, I hadn't even gotten around to mentioning them here. So, I might as well start with a couple...
It's easy to lazily compare Hamilton's Cursed to Converge, as the band's sound does have a huge hardcore influence, but the more you listen to their new album Two, the more you realize there's a very strong sludge metal influence lurking underneath. Brilliantly produced by notable Canadian dude Ian Blurton, Two is actually rife with sweaty, churning guitars, served up in a thunderous, claustrophobic mix that finds a comfortable middle ground between the dense tones of Eyehategod and the grating intensity of Pig Destroyer's great Terrifyer. As a result, you start to detect influences that start to veer away from typical popular hardcore, such as Entombed, Melvins, and Mastodon. "The Void", a tune I'm nuts about right now, plows along like a stoner rock juggernaut, guitarists C. McMaster and R. Moumeneh adding touches of Fugazi-style dissonance in the choruses, as Colochan paints a compassionate portrait of homeless life. "Head of the Baptist" is similar, sounding like Ian Mackaye fronting Black Sabbath, a monstrously heavy track, boasting a great guitar lick that echoes Colochan's vocal delivery of the line, "I've got a one track mind." Then there's the beastly "Clocked In, Punched Out", during which the band makes no attempt to hide the fact they're going to churn out some good, old fashioned, Southern fried sludge. Here's where Blurton's production works so well, as the sustained guitar and bass notes, so warm in tone, rumble in your guts for nearly seven minutes. In fact, it's every bit as good as anything from Mastodon's great debut album Remission. It's an excellent album, one of the best Canadian metal/hardcore/whatever CDs I've heard in a while, and hopefully it'll catch on as well as the Converge album did last fall.
Then there's Dälek. Their new album Absence is as abrasive as anything you'll ever hear, and some of the spookiest hip hop since Tricky's Maxinquaye and Pre-Millenium Tension. Producers Oktopus and Still create a screeching, dissonant backdrop of layered noise, the origins of which impossible to trace. You hear what sounds like guitar feedback on one track, buzz-saw grinding the next, with the odd appearance of a sampled jazz bassline. The beats, meanwhile, are always slow and lumbering, like a prehistoric beast trying to make its way through tar pits (ugh, sorry), and never waver from the same pace. It's the lyrical skill of Dälek that wins you over ultimately, as he possesses a real knack for rhyming, coming off as a cross between KRS-1 and Saul Williams, a well-read street poet. This verse from "Eyes to Form Shadows" particularly knocked me out: "That pathetic premise of freedom is false/Futility of earthly flesh answers death's solemn call/Within these very words lie my ancestral tongue/I kept breath within collapsed left lung/As I witnessed modern tower of Babel come undone/These bloodshot eyes surmise that most meaning is lost." The album climaxes on "Ever Somber", Still and Oktopus's backing track greatly resembling the swirling, layered, dense majesty of My Bloody Valentine. A brief glimpse of sunlight amidst the gray, it's oddly uplifting, gorgeous even, as Dälek's imagery takes on a powerful quality, providing the album's most visceral wallop. During the song, he sums up this fine album perfectly: "People lose patience with words that sound vacant."
Wednesday, January 19, 2005
Two new reviews up at Static today: Wiley (good album, but I expected it to be better), and Slugnut (somewhat middling metalcore, but with enough European influences to keep things mildly interesting).
Okay, on to the new Manit-- I mean, Caribou album. Up in Flames was my 2003 album of the year, so it was with extremely great interest that I listened to the new record, The Milk of Human Kindness. Anyone who saw Dan Snaith and his little power trio of multi-instrumentalists knows that he's obviously been inching towards more traditional arrangements, involving more live guitar and percussion. What I loved so much about Up in Flames was Snaith's combination of Avalanches style cut & paste laptop assemblage with the "folktronic" elements he and Four Tet had perfected, as well as a hearty dose of psychedelic rock. On The Milk of Human Kindness, some of the same elements are there, but there is decidedly more emphasis this time around on more of a band performance. You're eased into the shift in the style quite nicely with the opening track "Yeti", which seems to continue where Up in Flames left off, with its trilling samples, blissed-out vocals by Snaith, and those thunderous drum fills he loves so much. After that, though, the album start to morph into something different, evinced by the soft rock (?) interlude "Subotnick". The lengthy track "A Final Warning" builds up tidal waves of sound, anchored by a simple guitar/bass/drums arrangement, as various sample whirl and swirl around the mix. "Bees", simply put, is nothing but a laid back garage rocker, Snaith carrying on with a cool, Canned Heat groove (and dig that recorder solo!), offsetting it by his ethereal singing, the guitar and drums sounding like they're coming out of a transistor radio, just a simple, laid back tune with a very catchy guitar hook, climaxing in yet another one of those drum explosions. "Hello Hammerheads" is even more straightforward, a psychedelic-tinged folk tune that reminds me of early Neil Young; some people will probably accuse Snaith of kowtowing to the freak folk crowd, but it's so dreamy and memorable, it'd send Zach Braff into fits of ecstasy, declaring to us all that it would "change our lives!" like "New Slang" did. "Brahminy Kite" veers into electronic territory, but compared to the rpevious record, here, Snaith is much more restrained, the arrangements far less dense, and again, the drumbeats booming (spot a trend here?). Both "Pelican Narrows" and "Lord Leopard" have more of a hip hop influence, percussionwise, and "Barnowl" closes things out, echoing the same mix of organic and electronic heard on "Yeti".
It's not as perfect as Up in Flames, but I'm not jumping off the bandwagon here...I love this album. What The Milk of Human Kindness lacks in sheer, wide-eyed audacity, it makes up for it with an introspective style that manages to be adventurous in its own, low-key way ("Bees" and "Hello Hammerhead" are my two faves right now). More folk than tronic this time around, it's a magnificent album. Oh, and it's cool to see him namecheck two Western Canadian towns in Drumheller and Pelican Narrows...
Tuesday, January 18, 2005
My review of the new Goldfrapp DVD appeared yesterday. As I said a couple weeks ago, it's a great two-disc set, featuring two very different concerts.
And you might or might not have noticed numerical ratings have crept back into record reviews at PopMatters. I don't know if I would have voted for the change, but I'm the kind of guy who detests change of any sort, then gets used to the changes after a short while. Fact is, I've always given numerical grades to albums in my head, so slapping on a numerical rating isn't that big of a stretch.
What a last 24 hours! Three very hotly anticipated albums were leaked simultaneously...an early version of the upcoming Beck album surfaced, to which I said, "Yeah, whatever," giving a token listen to the track "Brazilica", a surprisingly nifty bossa nova tune that left me more impressed than I expected to be. Also leaked was The Milk of Human Kindness, by Canadian laptop genius Dan Snaith, formerly known as Manitoba, and now known as Caribou...I was able to get that one, but I won't talk about that until tomorrow.
Why, you ask? Because, dear reader, Arular is upon us. Yeah, that's right, the much-hyped debut album by UK urban sensation M.I.A.. As I've mentioned in the past, I've been a fan of this young lady since early last summer, when I first heard her singles "Galang", "Sunshowers", and the B-side "Fire Fire", and some seven or so months later, the wait was most definitely worth it. I've heard the album several times over now, and I have to say, it's pretty near flawless. Like the aforementioned trio of songs, the arrangements are rather minimal, with rumbly and dub-style synths, snappy rhythms that seem to echo dancehall, bhangra, and UK garridge at the same time, as Maya Arulpagasam's extremely unique vocals dominate. Like Dizzee Rascal, her delivery is an odd mix of a heavy London accent and a childlike singsong element, her often ebullient ounding voice masking a very dark element to her lyrics, depicting hard-edged urban scenes. As simple as the album is, there are tons of single moments to enjoy: her odd, yet versatile shift from upper register singing to spoken on "Pull Up the People" (not to mention her coquettish inflections at the end of most of the lines), the snappy rap breakdown midway through "Bucky Done Gone" and the sampled trumpet fanfare, the blend of the earthy and the electronic on "Amazon", the heavy dub reggae influence of "Bingo", the seductive "10 Dollar", her dry portrayal of the world today on "MIA". There are two things about this album I was very impressed with; first, it's only 40 minutes long...it's simple, direct, with nary a wasted minute. Second, the two most well-known songs, "Galang" and "Sunshowers", are placed near the end of the record, an audacious move, letting the rest of the tracks prove they're every bit as good. Arular is peppered with three "skits", but they're not as much skits (in the usual hip hop sense), than brief, fleeting musical interludes, helping to make the album more cohesive. This is an incredibly gratifying piece of work, a supremely confident debut, and, dare I say, already destined for a spot on my Best of 2005 list. Outstanding.
Monday, January 17, 2005
Bit of a Western Canadian flavour to last night's episode of The Simpsons:
"Here's your fake Canadian health cards. Now you can get enough drugs to make Regina look like Saskatoon."
"Welcome to Winnipeg...We Were Born Here, What's Your Excuse?"
Sunday, January 16, 2005
The second Friday in January has become a huge, massive day for music geeks in my city. It's a twisted hybrid of Superbowl Sunday, Boxing Day, and garage sale: the annual CD sale at the local community radio station. It's a really unique event, one that has me giddy in anticipation in the days prior to it...you have no idea what's going to be on sale, but you're guaranteed to make some cool discoveries if you spend an hour digging through the stacks of discs. Some years are better than others...in 2003, I found a copy of the first album by The Coral, and last year, I snagged an untouched copy of the underatted gem by Elefant. This year, I headed out in the -35 degree weather, parked the car on the frozen tundra of a parking lot, walked an astonishingly, brutally cold three blocks, and stood fifth in line, ready to pounce on any CD that caught my eye.
This year turned out to be rather unique, as I didn't find any great indie rock gems, but I still managed an impressive haul, nabbing ten cd's, most of them still in the shrinkwrap, for a mere $17 (Canadian). Among them, the Kanye West album (which I'd been meaning to pick up sometime), Lil Jon's Crunk Juice (I'm sorry, I get a kick out of the guy), The soundtrack for the recent Resident Evil sequel (a surprisingly good metal mix cd), the debut album by (a half-decent cd, but definitley worth one dollar), live albums by Pantera (old) and King's X (brand spankin' new), the Funeral For a Friend album, that Jakalope album by Dave Ogilve of Skinny Puppy (mediocre industrial pop, but "Your Pretty Life" has been a guilty pleasure of mine for the last month), and most interestingly, the album of rock covers by Belgium's Scala girls' choir. Their cover of The Divinyls' "I Touch Myself" floored me last May, and this live cd is nearly as impressive...they do a gorgeous rendition of Travis's "Turn", a cute cover of Wheatus's "Teenage Dirtbag", a very bold performance of Muse's "Muscle Museum", and best of all, a shattering version of Radiohead's "Creep". Like on "I Touch Myself", there seems to be so much poignancy to the song when sung by sixty teenage girls...it's devastating, I tell you. In a good way.
So yeah, it was a very good day, living up to expectations yet again. I regret not buying that pristine copy of Nightwish's Once, even though I already have it (it was only a buck!), I should have bought my sister those Lucksmiths and Sekiden CDs, and darnit, why on earth did I put that Thrill Kill Kult compilation back in the bin??? Only 362 days or so until the next sale!
Thursday, January 13, 2005
My review of Amorphis's Far From the Sun is up today. That's another album that needed to grow on me...I was kind of lukewarm towards it initially, but I soon grew to enjoy the cool Deep Purple/Uriah Heep influence that meshes with the whole Nordic folk influence. Plus, the US release has no fewer than six bonus tracks, and they're all good ones. It's not a perfect album, but it's an admirable one.
Two years after I last saw him live, Steve Earle is coming to my city in late February (his first show in Saskatoon in four years, actually), with his purported squeeze, the talented Allison Moorer, in tow. A great double bill, and you can bet I'll be there. Tickets on sale tomorrow. He was sick last time I saw him, playing a mere 90 minutes, so hopefully we can get a good marathon show here in six weeks.
It took eighteen months, but I finally got to see the much-heralded Led Zeppelin DVD this past week. I've been a Zeppelin fan since 1987...it started with The Cult, actually. I lived in a town where classic rock wasn't played much on the one FM radio station, so I was a stranger to all that was Zeppelin, including "Stairway to Heaven"! It amazes me how musically naive I was during my teens. Anyway, I was really into The Cult's Rick Rubin-produced album Electric that year, and hearing a friend compare the music to Zeppelin, I had to plead ignorance. He then did me a huge favour, and forced me to listen to Led Zeppelin Four, and I was hooked for good. I listened to records from the library (again, I can't stress how important that place was for my musical edjamacation), and became hopelessly addicted when the box set (and the subsequent sequel) came out a few years later, and to this day, I consider Houses of the Holy and Physical Graffiti to be their best albums. Best song? Probably "When the Levee Breaks"...
Still, I had no idea just how great Zeppelin could be in concert. I'd only heard and seen the decent, but ultimately tepid The Song Remains the Same, and those great early BBC Sessions, but none of any of the famous bootlegs that were floating around. Well, my eyes have been opened, thanks to this DVD. I was flabbergasted, watching the band's ferocious 1970 set at Royal Albert Hall (highlighted by a brilliant drum solo by John Bonham and the fabulous cover of "Something Else"), impressed by the Song Remains the Same outtakes, impressed by the surprising power of the band in 1979...but what completely knocked me over was the 1975 Earl's Court set, with the gentle acoustic performances of "Going to California" and "That's the Way", leading right ito a spot-on perfect version of "In My Time of Dying", and then a ferocious run-through of "Trampled Under Foot", which turns into an unrelenting jam. Imaculately videotaped (taken from the show's rear-projection screens), intimate, and fun, this is the band at the height of their career, and seeing them do a perfect version of "Stairway" gave me goosebumps. I really like how Jimmy Page arranged the set so it all runs like a continuous concert, with few songs repeated (of the concert footage, only "Whole Lotta Love" appears more than once). The sound is crystalline, the picture quality outstanding (especially considering the primitive nature of some of the footage). I might have taken far too long to see this thing, but I'm glad I did. I have to find the time to listen to Physical Graffiti again...
Tuesday, January 11, 2005
It's been a while since I've talked about my beloved Beat literature...I've been so wrapped up with the music reviews, that I haven't been able to read my favourite Beat Generation books in recent years. It took a lot longer than I wanted, but I finally got around to finishing Windblown World: The Journals of Jack Kerouac 1947-1954 the other day. It had been an excruciatinly long wait for this book...six or seven years, when we found out that Douglas Brinkley was being allowed access to the entire Kerouac archive in New York. So was the long wait worth it? Well, yes...sort of. While it is indeed a fantastic read, completely debunking the myth of the "spontaneously" written scroll of On the Road (many passages in the book were directlly copied from his journals, most notably, the famous "wish I was a Negro" chapter), and offering a look at Kerouac as an ambitious, tragically optimistic, and ultimately doomed writer, the book feels weirdly puzzling at the end. Editor Brinkley, a writer and editor I've respected for ten years (and whose book The Majic Bus remains an all-time fave), just drops the ball at the end. Simply, far too many unanswered questions, and an uncomfortably sloppy editing style, with sections from other journals thrown in with other journal entries, with few clarifications of what comes from where. The fact that Kerouac mentions The Dharma Bums as early as 1954 (he supposedly wrote it after pressure by Viking to publish a sequel to On the Road in 1958), and is completely ignored by Brinkley, is downright infuriating. The volume really did need a well-regarded Kerouac scholar to annotate the text. Biographer Gerald Nicosia has had a long-running feud with the Kerouac estate, and while I've found much of his bluster over the past decade to be more than tiresome, he completely gets it right in his otherwise politely positive review of Windblown World for the SF Chronicle:
Perhaps most unforgivably, he omits to note important offstage events, such as Ginsberg's arrest as an accomplice to burglary, as well as the numerous journal passages that are clearly trial versions of famous passages in Kerouac's published books. Instead, Brinkley gives us mostly Google footnotes such as "The Kwakiutl Indians originated in the forests of western Canada."
I couldn't agree more. It's a very enjoyable book, but in all honesty, it should have been better. I still expect Brinkley's upcoming Kerouac biography to be better, but now, there are a few more people who won't be holding their breath.
All this has me remembering just how crazy, contentious, goofy, extremely generous, and fun the online Beat community was back in 1995-97. The insanity of the late, lamented Beat-L e-mail list was so easy to get wrapped up in. When I first went on the internet in 1995, I was the only person I knew who read Kerouac, Ginsberg, Burroughs, et al, and meeting all those folks online who were so welcoming. And when Ginsberg died eight years ago, what an outpouring of emotion from hundreds of people from all over...it was Beat-L's greatest moment. Then, the in-fighting began, the wars of words between a certain pair of Kerouac biographers, which got so out of control, the list was nixed in 1998 (the demise of Beat-L even made the pages of Wired magazine). Another e-mail list got going, but petered out a few years ago, the sense of community vanished. Today, little remains from that time...a handful of us are still with Beat University, others just gone, doing their own thing. The once great Literary Kicks went in another direction, the fabulous Beat Generation News is no more. To its credit, Mary Sands' Jack Magazine (which I've contributed to in the past) continues to go strong, so there's one website that's still keeps the Beat spirit alive. I'll never, ever forget getting the massive roll of broadsides from Ron Whitehead...they still adorn my wall, and that spontaneous burst of mad generosity is a constant reminder of a memorable, goofy time on this crazy internet.
Friday, January 7, 2005
Yet another metal review up today...hey, it's been a really, really slow couple months as far as new releases go, and I'm catching up with all the metal stuff I've acquired recently. And there's more to come yet. Anyway, my review of Mnemic's very impressive The Audio Injected Soul is up today. It ranked highly on my 2004 list below, and for good reason. Strong Meshuggah, Fear Factory influences, and some excellentproduction. Read the review for more details, but I'll just say here that if you hear two songs from this album, make it "Sane vs. Normal", and their surprisingly effective cover of Duran Duran's "Wild Boys".
You might have noticed there was a last-minute addition to my 2004 metal albums list below, forcing me to bump off The Haunted. Credit the list adjustment to a spectacular album that simply appeared out of the blue yesterday. Until now, I hadn't heard a lick of anything by Israeli progressive power metal band Orphaned Land, but their recent album Mabool was as huge an eye-opener as I've heard in a while. I've been a fan of Max Cavalera's Soulfly project for a long time, but after hearing Orphaned Land, I'm sorry to say that Cavalera has been completely trumped; in fact, I think Mabool is the finest piece of "world metal" since Sepultura's monumental Roots album. Subtitled The Story of the Three Sons of Seven, the band, in Dream Theater fashion, put together an ambitious, old-school concept album, but while there are plenty of musical flourishes that echo Dream Theater, the similarity ends there. The story, involving three brothers who unite to stem the Wrath of God (in the form of a flood), and the way they are depicted visually (snake: Judaism, Eagle: Islam, Lion: Christianity) is an obvious parallel to the religious diversity of their troubled homeland, offering a valuable lesson to people of either faith. Musically, though, the album achieves a comfy ba;ance between melodic power metal, tense death metal, and the distinctive strains of Middle Eastern native music. The album comes to a gorgeous climax on "Mabool", "The Storm Still Rages Inside", and "Rainbow", but I was completely awestruck by "The Kiss of Babylon/A'salk", which incorporates a female vocalist and tradiitonal percussion, before segueing right into the roaring "Halo Dies". This is high quality metal in its most classic form, at its most passionate. Superb.
On to some more, erm, tame subject matter, over the past month I've been enjoying the new singles by a couple of Brit rock faves, Delays and Doves. It's not even a year since Delays' likeable Faded Seaside Glamour came out, with its bevy of amazing singles ("Long Time Coming" especially), but they still have a brand-new song out, and it's an interesting shift in direction. If the album owed a lot to the classic Britpop of the mid-90s, "Lost in a Melody" takes off into a more dance-oriented direction, sounding like a cross between the postpunk bands and the more proggy tones of Muse. It boasts a cool keyboard hook (which John Sakamoto aptly described as the sound of rubbing your fingers on a dew-soaked window) and a relentless, pulsating rhythm section that explodes during the chorus. Singer Greg Gilbert still sounds as effeminate as ever, but his girly vocals work well with the rather harsh arrangement.
Hard to believe it's been three years since we've heard new material from my beloved Doves, but thankfully, a new album is on its way this coming March. First single "Black and White Town" is an intriguing choice, as it sounds much more bouncy than any of us would have expected. Drummer Andy Williams pounds out an unwavering 2/4 beat (reminding us of The Thrills, strangely), but the rest of the song is quintessential Doves, as ambient sounds whirl around during the verses, and an electric piano hammers out insistent chords, Jez Williams provides those soaring guitar flourishes he's perfected over the years, and bassist Jimi Goodwin is in fine form vocally, his easygoing, soulful voice the band's best asset. True to form, the song builds up steam, and takes off in grandiose, stadium rock fashion during the choruses. It's not quite as perfect as "There Goes the Fear" was in early 2002, but it's still a strong tune, and bodes well for the rest of the record.
Oh, and Basement Jaxx's new single "Oh My Gosh" is better than most of what's on the Kish Kash album, a fun funk thumper that sort of sounds like Janet Jackson meets Daft Punk. And I really like Kylie's new song "Made of Glass", which is everything you'd want from Kylie: slick, catchy, and charismatic. I read somewhere that Rachel Stevens has recorded the same song. Hmmm...
Thursday, January 6, 2005
New review today. It took a really long time for me to get around to finishing it, but my review of In Flames' much maligned, minor masterwork Soundtrack to Your Escape was finally completed a month ago, and has finally appeared today. Kind of late, but it was good to have seven or eight months for the album to grow on me. Many fans are down on the record, but I think it's one of those releases by a venerable band that manages to have mainstream appeal, yet still take the sound in a creative direction, all the while remaining faithful to the band's trademark sound. "The Quiet Place" is easily one of the best metal singles of 2004.
Well, while I'm at it, I might as well list my favourite metal albums of 2004. In a year in which I decided to pay more atention to the genre I've loved for nigh on twenty years, it was absolutely loaded with superb releases. So here are my choices for the best of the lot:
1. The Dillinger Escape Plan - Miss Machine
2. Meshuggah - I
3. Mastodon - Leviathan
4. Pig Destroyer - Terrifyer
5. Isis - Panopticon
6. Converge - You Fail Me
7. Fantomas - Delirium Cordia
8. Therion - Lemuria/Sirius B
9. Lamb of God - Ashes of the Wake
10. In Flames - Soundtrack to Your Escape
11. Shadows Fall - The War Within
12. Mnemic - The Audio Injected Soul
13. Into Eternity - Buried in Oblivion
14. Nightwish - Once
15. Orphaned Land - Mabool
16. Wolf - Evil Star
17. Death Angel - The Art of Dying
18. Necrophagist – Epitaph
19. Neurosis – The Eye of Every Storm
20. Clutch – Blast Tyrant
20. The Haunted - rEVOLVEr
Honourable mentions to The Haunted, Impious, The Secret, Atreyu, Napalm Death, Amorphis, Cattle Decapitation, Shallow North Dakota, and Agathodaimon...
Wednesday, January 5, 2005
Aw darnit anyway! I reset my blog settings before I archived my year-end list, and what happened, but the dates appeared at the top of my entries. All that work to make the page look neat and tidy, and this garbage happens. My sincerest apologies. I'm not usually this sloppy.
This year, the most popular gift for music geeks, especially those in their thirties, had to have been Rhino's four-disc extravaganza Left of the Dial: Dispatches From the 80s Underground, and being a thirtysomething music geek myself, I was one of them. Like any other era in music, it's next to impossible to produce the absolute, set in stone, definitive retrospective, and while this set is by no means perfect, yikes, is it ever fun.
What a wealth of material on this box set, 82 of the finest college rock songs from 1980 to 1989, ranging from postpunk (Joy Division, Gang of Four), to janglepop (REM, The Rain Parade), to dreampop (Cocteau Twins, Sugarcubes), to hardcore (Minor Threat, Black Flag), to early Madchester (Happy Mondays, Stone Roses), to new romantic (OMD, Prefab Sprout), to goth (Bauhaus, Sisters of Mercy), to the witty mope-rock of The Smiths and The Cure, to early industrial rock (Killing Joke, Ministry), to snarky college bands (Camper Van Beethoven, Dead Milkmen), to the mid-80s Minneapolis scene (Husker Du, Replacements), to everything in between. Looking at the tracklisting for the first time, I was flabbergasted at the range of styles represented, and Left of the Dial veers wildly , no chronological order, no stylistic order, just a crazed mix of lots and lots and lots of classic songs. While the sequencing of the tracks is the set's one big misstep, it didn't bother me much in the end at all. Never has a musical trip back to my tormented high school days sounded so (gasp!) pleasant.
I think the set is absolutely spectacular, but still...my curmudgeonly self secretly wishes for some tiny tracklisting adjustments. Fr'instance, I'd replace Husker Du's "Don't Want to Know if You Are Lonely" with either "Celebrated Summer" or "Powerline". The Smiths' "This Charming Man" with "How Soon is Now?". Public Image Ltd.'s "Rise" with "Death Disco". Jane's Addisction's "jane Says" with "Ted, Just Admit It". Happy Mondays' "24 Hour Party People" with "Wrote For Luck" (though I'm not saying it's a bad song). And I would have nixed Red Hot Chili Peppers (sick of 'em) and Violent Femmes ("Blister in the Sun": too ubiquitous), and stuck in The Fall's "Cruisers' Creek" and Kirsty MacColl's "They Don't Know" (I know, that one's 1979). But other than that, it's all aces.
Highlights? Well, as for my faves from that era, I was glad to see The Replacements' "I Will Dare", Lone Justice's "Ways to Be Wicked", New Order's "Temptation", the full nine and a half minute original single version of Bauhaus's "Bela Lugosi's Dead" (!), Sonic Youth's "Teen Age Riot", Love and Rockets' "Kundalini Express", Stone Roses' "She Bangs the Drums", Kate Bush's "Running Up That Hill", Julian Cope's "World Shut Your Mouth", Billy Bragg's "A New England", Suicidal Tendencies' "Institutionalized", and in an inspired bit of camp, the Sisters of Mercy's cheeseball classic "This Corrosion".
Best of all were the real surprises, the songs I'd either hadn't heard in ages, or ones I hadn't heard at all. I really enjoyed the Hoodoo Gurus way back in the 80s, but had totally forgotten about them, and it was great fun to hear "I Want You Back" again. The same can be said for The Smithereens' "Behind the Wall of Sleep", too. I know nothing about LA's Paisley Underground scene, so the inclusion of the likes of The Dream Syndicate, The Rain Parade, Green on Red, and The Three O'Clock (whose "Jet Fighter" I love) was extremely edjamacational (wait a sec, where's The Bangles' "Going Down to Liverpool"?). I'm still trying to catch up in the postpunk department, and it was great to finally hear The Chameleons UK and Magazine.
I know this isn't a review as much as a list of songs, but Left of the Dial is impossible to review without going, "I liked this one, and this one, and this one..." It's just loads of fun, for those of us who remember the time, and the younger kids who want to learn more, but don't know where to start. The accompanying book is a bit on the skimpy side (especially compared to the amazing book in the Motorhead box set I mentioned a couple days ago), but the music is fabulous. Don't get me wrong (ugh, a bad 80s Pretenders reference), the 80s still sucked, big time (the 90s was where it was at), but the music, both in the college and metal underground, remains timeless. If Rhino wants someone to oversee a definitive, four disc 80s metal retrospective, my e-mail address is over on the right!
Tuesday, January 4, 2005
Anyone who knows me is well aware I've been quite the fanboy of Goldfrapp over the last four years. As is always the case, with a duo as eclectic as Goldfrapp, there's zero chance I'll ever get to see them perform in my neck of the woods, so over the years I've had to make do with whatever television performance I could catch, be it the rather awkward version of "Utopia" on Conan O'Brien, cool performances of "Train" and "Strict Machine" on Top of the Pops, a great rendition of "Twist" on Kimmel, various live MP3s, the full set at the 2003 Montreux Jazz Festival through the fuzzy images of realplayer, or best of all, an hour-long concert recorded in Vancouver by CBC Radio. Really, that's not too shabby, so while I'm far removed from the two Canadian venues Goldfrapp has played recently, I've become rather familiar whith what they have to offer live.
Ah, but then we all got a cool little treat in the form of the new double-disc DVD Wonderful Electric: Live in London, featuring two concerts in their entirety, and I have to say, it's a very satisfying live document. The concerts were recorded eighteen months apart, and the difference between the two is striking. The Shepherd's Bush Empire show from December 2001 focuses heavily on the wonderful Felt Mountain album, as a seductively clad Alison Goldfrapp and her band weave a hypnotic spell, delivering faithful versions of the album's tracks, as well as a couple b-sides. Ms. Goldfrapp is decidedly stiff onstage, constantly clutching the various mike stands she uses, saying little to the audience. The awkwardness seems to suit the music, with its enigmatic touches of trip hop, cabaret, and John Barry style orchestration, and the sounds the band creates are gorgeous. Most impressive is the voice of Goldfrapp, who croons the verses, switches mikes, and launches into a surreal aria of high-pitched notes, her vocals processed by her songwriting partner/co-producer Will Gregory, who oversees the proceedings like a music professor. Songls like "Utopia" and "Lovely Head" are strikingly beautiful, but most fun are the B-sides "Sartorius" and "UK Girls", the latter of which a longtime fave of mine, as Goldfrapp incorporates the chorus from Olivia Newton John's "Physical".
The July 2003 concert, filmed at the beautiful, ornate London venue Somerset House, is completely different. Garishly clad in a pair of thigh-high patent leather boots and the tiniest of mini-skirts, it's obvious Alison Goldfrapp had by then found her legs as a performer (sorry). While she'll never have the onstage charisma of someone like Kylie, she still holds her own well, strutting and moving a lot more. The more upbeat songs from 2003's Black Cherry album adds to the overall mood of the evening, as songs like "Train" and "Strict Machine" add an artsy, yet garish schaffel influence, while "Twist" and "Slippage" are more blunt and immediate in their themes. Missing from this show is Gregory, who obviously would rather work behind the scenes, and is replaced capably by keyboardist/backing vocalist Angie Pollock. The contrast between the Black Cherry material and the Felt Mountain songs is a fascinating one, the dance-fused newer material lightening the mood after the more ethereal early tracks. The highlight of the show is the stupendous cover of Baccara's 70s disco classic "Yes Sir, I Can Boogie" (check my 2003 songs list), which has Goldfrapp singing with steely Eastern European harshness, bringing the set to a climax with her, erm, suggestive use of a theremin.
The DVD is supplemented by a couple of documentaries, one, a brief clip that offers little real information, and the other, a much superior, 30 minute piece that shows Goldfrapp on tour and in the studio. I do wish all the videos were on the DVDs (there are six or seven of them), but other than that minor complaint, this set is highly enjoyable, the concerts both well-shot, the 2003 disc enhanced for widescreen, which I always like. I keep hearing rumblings of a new Goldfrapp album in 2005, and if that happens, I'll be all over it like I was the last two records, but in the meantime, Wonderful Electric serves as a perfect Goldfrapp fix until the new stuff comes out.
(Oh, and as the DVD humourously shows, those boots are extremely difficult to take off...)
Monday, January 3, 2005
Well, another year, another January, another towering pile of catching up to do, after last month's monstrous undertaking. Hope y'all enjoyed it as much as I did writing it. If you want to revisit it, just take a peek over on the right margin, and click away.
So where to begin? I suppose, just to get it out of the way, there's the individual feature that I did for PopMatters, which appeared just last week. Instead of simply re-hashing my albums list, I thought it would be more fun to go over a bunch of random moments from the year that I found esoecially memorable, trying to make the list as eclectic as I could. I think it turned out quite well, but as you might be able to notice, I tended to run out of adjectives. That's what happens when you write around fifty blurbs, totalling 16,000 words, in one month!
Also, if you haven't seen it, take a peek at the huge PopMatters Top 100 Albums of 2004 list. Pretty darn good, if you ask me, but I still say Kanye West is a bit overrated, and Wilco has no business being in the top ten...
New CD review to mention, the recent album by Necrophagist, called Epitaph. Some expertly-executed progressive death metal, led by Turkish guitar virtuoso Muhammed Suicmez. Heavily influenced by the likes of Chuck Schuldiner and Dave Mustaine, Suicmez creates some of the most technically dizzying music I've heard in quite some time. If there's one problem, it's his vocals, which are the usual cookie monster grunts, devoid of any personality or uniqueness whatsoever. It's a very, very good album, but if Necrophagist is going to be great, they can't have a vocalist who sounds like every other death metal growler out there.
Before I go on here, I should mention some albums that weren't mentioned in my 2004 list, that truly deserved it. Being mr. Music Critic, I had to have my list done in late November, and I always use the same list on this blog, so there are always a handful of titles that I hear during December that make me feel like a right idiot for waiting too long to hear them. First an foremost is Nick Cave's freakin' brilliant double album, Abbatoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus. This one's a very rare case of a double CD possessing the usual epic feel, yet sounding surprisingly economical, both discs no more than 40 minutes long. Both albums are decidedly different; while The Lyre of Orpheus was the kind of Nick Cave material I had been expecting, what completely caught me offguard was the monstrous, immediate rock of Abbatoir Blues. I tell you, when "Get Ready For Love" burst out of the gate, it was as if I'd been winded. I figure that Orpheus will wind up having the most staying power (the oddly buoyant "Breathless", the tender yet lecherous "Babe You Turn Me On", and the bouzouki-driven title track are especially strong), but right now, I'm loving Abbatoir, big time ("There She Goes, My Beautiful World"...wow!). It's interesting that both this album and Leonard Cohen's Dear Heather came out at around the same time...like Cohen, Cave is not only a supreme songwriter, but an immensely talented poet, and his lyrics on his new release are quintessential Cave, resembling blues verses written by an English professor. I remember him saying once in the early 90s that his father taught him that the first page of Lolita contains the finest writing known to man, and I'd like to think Cave's songs, which brim with sensuality, passion, and poetic rhythm, are all heavily influenced by that one passage. I'm such an idiot! This album should have placed in my top ten, easily. But I'm glad I have it now. If you haven't heard it yet, please do soon. It's phenomenal.
Another one that just missed the cut for my top 30 was Feist's beautiful Let it Die. In this case, I was familiar with it, having acquired the MP3s last May. As the weeks and months passed, I was tempted to buy the album many times, but I waffled every time. I finally got the thing for Christmas, and I don't know if it was having the entire package in my hands (I love the art design of every single Arts & Crafts release), but I was hit by just how beautiful the record is. I still say that the A Girl Called Eddy album is slightly superior, but Let it Die really should have placed in the top 30 somewhere.
Other good albums that deserve nods include Ghostface's Pretty Toney Album (many, many thanks to Petey for the hook-up), Morrissey's You Are the Quarry (what a fine return to form), Stars' Set Yourself on Fire (not enough Amy Millan songs, but still very pretty), Patty Griffin's Impossible Dream (I was a huge fan of hers six years ago, but sadly ignored her in recent years), and Nellie McKay's Get Away From Me (alternately cute and annoying, but weirdly entertaining throughout).
Okay, now on to a couple of my big Christmas prezzies. Most coveted was the new Iron Maiden DVD, The Early Days, and may I say, egads! What a wealth of treats on here for us longtime Maiden fans! Previously unreleased performances from 1980, 1982, and 1983, as well as an early 1980 set at the infamous Ruskin Arms pub in London. Portions of those sets were used in the 1987 VHS 12 Wasted Years, but having them in their entirety on DVD is a real thrill. The Ruskin Arms performance, especially, as it's great to see them play the obscurity "Another Life". best of all, though, is the 90 minute documentary covering the band from their 1976 infancy, to the beginning of their world dominance in 1983. Nearly every single bandmember was rounded up and interviewed, offering an extremely detailed look at the band. There are many funny anecdotes (the best involves then-new singer Bruce Dickinsom acuiring an extra-long mike stand to block bassist Steve Harris from jumping alongside him at centre stage), and tons and tons of vintage footage. In addition, there's a 20 minute documentary from 1980 (two minutes of which appearing on 12 Wasted Years), some television performances, videos, photos, Steve Harris's diary entries, tour programs, t-shirt images, a full discography...it's an absolute motherload. No band has treated its fans as well as Iron Maiden does, and this DVD only raises the standard for the rest of the lot. I can't wait for the next installment!
It was also a really nice surprise to get the Motorhead box set Stone Deaf Forever! for Christmas. I've always been an admirer of Motorhead, but weirdly, had previously known the band through their handful of best-of compilations only. So this whopping five-disc set more than makes up for it...at first, I thought this would be a bit too much Motorhead, but after hearing all 99 tracks, I'm glad to say that no, it's all great. Of course, my favourite songs are all on there (though I do wish the originalBill Laswell mix of "Orgasmatron" was included), but what I enjoyed were the new revelations, like "I'll Be Your Sister", "Capricorn", "Stay Clean", "Snaggletooth", "Just Cos You Got the Power", the live covers of "Train Kept A-Rollin'" and "Nadine", and the original Hawkwind version of "Motorhead", which I'd never heard. The booklet is crammed with tons of photos, album details, and a great essay by the always-reliable Mick Wall. It's funny that Lemmy started the band as little more than an MC5 imitation, and over 30 years, went on to become the frontman for one of the most important, influential, and best of all, fun metal bands in history.
Oh, and happy birthday, Steve!
