Tuesday, August 31, 2004
My review of the Drive-By Truckers' near-masterful The Dirty South is now up. Very proud of this review, and the album continues to impress me. Now if only they would tour the Canadian prairies. If only...
Neat feature over at PopMatters this week, called The Fate of the Album, where a bunch of us wrote paragraphs explaining why certain albums are best enjoyed listening to all the way through, thereby showing the world that the album as art form is not yet dead. Funny about this feature, I barely remember writing my stuff...it was during my extremely insane June. Reading it now, I'm very, very happy with my blurb about Radiohead's Kid A...
So I was so looking forward to hearing the new album but kings of Pure American Metal, Lamb of God, and while the album isn't really a disappointment, although there are some inspired moments, it still left me thinking, "Is that all there is?" There are some excellent moments on Ashes of the Wake, such as "Ashes of the Wake", "Hourglass" (oh man, does this one ever echo Megadeth, circa 1986), "Now You've Got Something to Die For", and the awesome instrumental title track (with Alex Skolnick and Chris Poland making cameo appearances), but it's missing that one single intangible quality that elevates a 7.5/10 album to a full-fledged 10. Like Mr. Tufnel once said, it needs that extra push over the cliff, but it doesn't arrive. The band does make strides, as the production is a huge improvement over Devin Townsend's lousy guitar sound on As the Palaces Burn, the riffs continue to mesh the muscular sounds of Pantera with the intricacy of European death metal, the drumming is sensational at times, and vocalist Randy Blythe really establishes himself as a truly unique voice in metal, growling ferociously, but remaining surprisingly understandable. Still, I was hoping for something special, and the album gets a bit repetitive past the halfway point. I wanted earth-shattering, and I only got a handful of menacing tremors. A good enough album, but should that be reason enough to buy it? That's what's been bugging me...I have yet to decide.
Sunday, August 29, 2004
While I was continuing my ongoing obsession with Jens Lekman yesterday, I started thinking about how its quieter moments resembled the Australian band The Lucksmiths, and as I reached for my copy of their 2003 album Naturaliste, it hit me that I hadn't yet talked about this little album on this page. After Erin N was so kind enough to send it to me, too. So anyway, in the past couple months, I've slowly grown to like Naturaliste quite a bit. Kind of funny, because this is exactly the kind of music I hated in the late 80s, that gentle, witty, twee indie pop (see my intense, and completely unfounded hatred of the Grapes of Wrath, which I mentioned a couple weeks ago)...now, though, I don't mind that stuff a bit, and the Lucksmiths do it all with such charm on this album. The smooth, upbeat "Camera-Shy" is something many folks (including yours truly) can relate to, as Marty Donald sings, "I have no wish to be reminded of just how awkward I can be/Please don't point that thing at me." Like shoegazer, this kind of music is always boosted by the presence of a pretty female voice, and the entrancing tones of Eva Sommerfeld on "The Sandringham Line" make the song even more gorgeous. "Take This Lying Down" and "Sleep Well" revisit the jangle-pop (I really should cease using the word "jangle") of 80s college rock, while "There is a Boy That Never Goes Out" (dig the cute Smiths joke) preciously combines a love song with, erm, indoor plumbing. It's the utterly charming "Midweek Midmorning" that continues to wow me. The best part about this is that I first heard the song on a sunny Wednesday morning, and the first verse instantly put a smile on my face: "You were never one for sleeping late/But oh! the working week can wait...You might be less than overjoyed/Unimpressed and unemployed/But I refuse to waste this weather." I mean really, the timing of that was just too perfect. If it was a newer release, I would have named this one of my favourite songs of the year, but alas...
A considerable portion of Naturaliste consists of the softer, mellower balladry that you'd expect, and songs like "The Perfect Crime", "What You'll Miss", "Stayaway Stars", and "What Passes For Silence", are all well done. I often prefer the more percussion-driven orch-pop, but the band does the mellow thing too well to ignore. Unlike Lekman's album, which practically explodes with youthful exuberance, the Lucksmiths are much more laid back, as they just settle in a comfy groove for 45 minutes. You'll be hard pressed to find two indie pop albums that are more friendly and unpretentious as Lekman's album and this one.
Oh, and I should mention that the Futureheads' cover of Kate Bush's "Hounds of Love" is astonishing, as they totally make their own, rendering the tune completely indistinguishable from the original (which, in retrospect, is a mighty fine song in itself). Must be heard to be believed. Those background vocal harmonies...how do those guys get away with stuff like that?
Saturday, August 28, 2004
Okay, I got the new Jens Lekman album in the mail yesterday, and to my great relief, it did not disappoint. It's simply wonderful, some of the most charming pop music I've heard in a very long time.
When I Said I Wanted to Be Your Dog is billed as "A Collection of Songs, 2000-2004", and with the incredible amount of material there was to choose from, it's interesting to see that the majority of the songs on the record are of the acoustic variety. You do get a handful of more adventurous, sample-boosted songs, but Lekman keeps things relatively simple here, as you don't get any blasts of ambitious electro-pop like "Rocky Dennis Farewellsong to the Blind Girl". Instead of a crazy hodgepodge that tries to do everything at once (like Badly Drawn Boy's The Hour of Beweilderbeast did, this album is much more low key, and the end result is an incredibly beautiful, understated piece of work.
Earlier this week, I mentioned three songs, the exuberant, shmaltzy "You Are the Light", the ethereal "Tram #7 to Heaven", and the achingly tender "If You Ever Need a Stranger", and those are indeed some of the most memorable songs, but the rest of the cd holds up extremely well. "Happy Birthday, Dear Friend Lisa" is adorable, so shamelessly giddy, with its lilting melody, electronic beats, and calypso-tinged sound, as Lekman delivers his funny lyrics: "Drinking cheap wine to bossanova, you're a supernova in the sky/The Jehovas in their pull-overs are no casanovas like you and I." "Do You Remember the Riots?" is completely a capella, as he tells a story of taking his girlfriend to a public demonstration, only to break up amidst all the rioting ("And I saw my face on a screen, they filmed us from a helicopter/The most frightened face I've seen, red in the face like a lobster"), while "Silvia" has a forlorn mandolin melody that echoes Lekman's voice, concluding with a solemn string arrangement. "The Cold Swedish Winter" is something that most of us Canadians can relate to ("I met her in a snowstorm, I was outdoors plowing"), and goes on to brilliantly depict a tender scene in the dead of winter, singing, "We went home to her place and cooked up some chili/It warmed us from the inside cos the outside was chilly/We had to be quiet and not wake up her family/But I made a high-pitched sound when her cold fingers touched me," as a pair of soft female voices come in during the lovely chorus. "Julie" is a very nice acoustic folk ballad that echoes Bob Dylan's early love songs, the facetious "Psychogirl" has Lekman musing, "They all fall for me, these psychogirls/They're drawn to me mysteriously/I don't know why," and on the title track, he puts a different spin on the innuendo behind the referenced Stooges classic when he says, "When I said I wanted to be your dog, I wasn't coming on to you/I just wanted to lick your face, lick those raindrops from the rainy days/You can take me for a walk in the park, I'll be chasing every single lark/I'll be burying all the skeleton bones, peeing on every cold black stone." "A Higher Power" brings it all to a buoyant conclusion, with its soaring strings and samples.
Lekman sure doesn't hide his influences. You can hear Magnetic Fields in the melancholy love songs, Morrissey in both his voice and his dryly humourous lyrics, Donovan and Nick Drake in his acoustic arrangements, Ron Sexsmith in his classy melodies, Sondre Lerche in his relaxed delivery, Belle & Sebastian in the innocuous moments of twee, chamber pop, and even Wayne Newton in those wonderfully cheesy horns on "You Are the Light". His approach is so fresh, though, so full of heart-on-the-sleeve conviction, that I can't help but love every second of it. A most assured, accomplished, supremely confident debut album. It's out on September 7 in the US, September 20 in the UK, and September 28 here in Canada. Take my word for it, it's one of the year's finest.
Friday, August 27, 2004
My big review of the new Libertines album has appeared today, along with a (slightly) contrasting opinion. The album's good, but not great, but the fact that the band hammered this cd out with all the problems they've been having is indeed admirable. If you're going to buy this next week, a) don't pay too much for it, and b) make sure you've heard another album beforehand. What am I talking about? See the last paragraph in today's entry...
I fear I might have been a little too hard on !!!'s latest album, Louden Up Now. Back in June, I said that it disappointed me, because nothing else on the album was able to match the genius of "Me & Giuliani Down By the School Yard (A True Story)". My gripe was, what point was there in buying it, if I already have the 2003 "Giuliani" cd single? Kind of a narrow way to criticize the album, I think, and today, when I give a listen to Louden Up Now, and accept the fact that "Giuliani" is a great, epic centrepiece for the album, and not worry about how the song is over a year old, well, the record winds up sounding quite fine. Sure, none of the other tracks are as mind-bogglingly great as "Giuliani", or even "Feel Good Hit of the Fall" for that matter, it's still a comfortably solid, groovy little disc. The opening trifecta of "When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Get Karazzee", the wonderfully profane "Pardon My Freedom" (which I've been a fan of since early this year), and "Dear Can" are less adventurous, but they do carve themselves a great groove, as that rhythm section dominates, and "Hello? Is This Thing On?" has some very cool blasts of 80s style college rock guitar. The album's still about ten minutes too long, and singer Nic Offer is a total monotone, one-trick pony (man, does he ever pale in comparison to someone like the Scissor Sisters' Jake Shears), but in the end, Louden Up Now is enjoyable enough to warrant a mild recommendation.
Hmm, I'd better mention this crazy Futureheads album that Bill was so kind to send me a short while back. First off, if you're planning on buying the new Libertines album next week, make sure you have this one first, because, in all honesty, this is the superior UK rock record. Like The Libertines, there's a strong Jam influence, but even more prominent is a blatant XTC rip-off/homage (what's with all the XTC adoration all of a sudden? I haven't even gotten to the new Dogs Die in Hot Cars album yet...but I digress). However, Libertines' sloppy performances and drug problems, these kids are so full of energy, and they do the nuttiest harmony vocal arrangements you'll ever hear...it's like sticking a freakin' barbershop quartet in a jittery post punk band (just listen to "Danger on the Water"...the a capella vocals will make your jaw drop in stupefied wonder). So odd, but so instantly charming, with those strong Northeastern accents of theirs. You can really hear they're having tons of fun playing this stuff, with all the kooky stop/start arrangements, tightly-wound guitar licks, and melodic basslines. What stands out after five listens? "Le Garage", the cool single "Decent Days and Nights", the bouncy "Meantime", the ebullient "Carnival Kids", the funny office tale "First Day", and the frantic "Manray" all stick in your head. Quite an awesome debut. Oh, and apparently they do a cover of Kate Bush's "Hounds of Love"...this I have to hear.
Thursday, August 26, 2004
Two new reviews to mention: the one I did of the new For Against re-release of their debut album Echelons, and also that charming little Sahara Hotnights cd. Both are good, solid albums...neither are classics by any stretch, but Echelons hints at the greatness that For Against would achieve on December the following year (which is going to be reissued in the future, I hear), and Kiss & Tell is a good, positive step forward for the ladies in Sahara Hotnights.
Yay for Fluxblog, who has the new Pixies song posted. "Ain't That Pretty at All" is from the forthcoming Enjoy Every Sandwich: A Tribute to Warren Zevon. Along with those ever-lovable Pixies, there are tracks by Bob Dylan (yay), Bruce Springsteen, Pete Yorn, Don Henley (ugh), and puzzlingly, Adam Sandler (ugh). Anyway, the Pixies track is very strong, their second post-reunion song, and the first with Frank Black on vocals. He and Kim Deal do a great duet on the song, and the overall raw feel of the tune brings back memories of the band's more abrasive moments on record. Get the track while you can!
I unloaded a pile of old, mediocre cd's the other day, and found a used copy of Bad Religion's new album, The Empire Strikes First, and I've been really impressed with it so far. The band hasn't sounded this great in years (take a look at theis excellent interview), and the team of Greg Graffin and Brett Gurewitz, like Steve Earle, Al Jourgensen, and Springsteen, have their sights set on the White House. "How can I still avow and depend upon a state that cares nothing for my happiness, welfare, or fate?" muses Graffin on "Another Abyss". I've always thought Bad Religion's music is firmply rooted in not only punk rock, but folk music as well, and Graffin is in great form, reeling off pointed, eloquent lyrics ("We stumbled once in 'Nam, now we're finally glad to say those days have passed/Tell me how long can it last?"). The songs themselves are terrific, sounding vital, impassioned, and very tight, led by Gurewitz's lead guitar and vocal harmonies, and propelled by Brooks Wackerman's drumming. The album is very strong from start to finish, but it's the middle section of "All There Is", the phenomenal "Los Angeles is Burning", "Let Them Eat War", "God's Love", "To Another Abyss", and "The Empire Strikes First" that really comes out and grabs you. Like the new Steve Earle album, a cynic would say that Bad Religion are just preaching to the choir, but it's the young voters that have to be convinced that their votes do make a difference, and if enough kids register this fall, then the days of the Evil Empire might be numbered. Good grief, let's hope so...
Tuesday, August 24, 2004
Beloved be the sanchez ears,
beloved those who sit down,
beloved the stranger and his wife,
the neighbor with sleeves, neck and eyes!
Beloved be the one who has bedbugs,
the one who wears a torn shoe in rain,
the one who keeps vigil over the corpse of bread with two matches,
the one who catches a finger in a door,
the one who doesn't have birthdays,
the one who lost his shadow in a fire,
the animal, the one who seems a parrot,
the one who seems a man, the poor rich,
the pure miserable the poor poor!
Beloved be
the one who is hungry or thirsty, but has no
hunger with which to satisfy his thirst,
no thirst with which to satisfy all his hungers!
Beloved be the one who works daily, nightly, hourly,
the one who sweats from pain or shame,
that one who goes, ordered by his hands, to the movies,
the one who pays with what he lacks,
the one who sleeps on his back,
the one who no longer recalls his childhood; beloved be
the bald one without a hat,
the just one without thorns,
the thief without roses,
the one who wears a watch and has seen God,
the one who has one honor and doesn't fail!
Beloved be the child, who falls and still cries,
and the man who has fallen and no longer cries!
(excerpt from "Stumble Between Two Stairs", by Cesar Vallejo)
After being curious about the Swedish movie Songs From the second Floor for several years, I finally saw the thing last night. It's full of humour so dry, it's like having a mouth full of melba toast, it's disarmingly tragic, and thoroughly baffling, yet the time flies by, and you're left remembering every single surreal, absurd scene in the movie: A man meets with a colleague, who's inside a glowing tanning bed. A fired businessman clings to his boss's leg, dragged down a hallway. A man is beaten up for being a foreigner. A magician accidentally saws an audience member in half. A man named Kalle, covered in soot, rides the train home, as the entire car erupts in a chorus. Kalle admits to setting his furniture store on fire for the insurance money, but as he tries to lie to the adjustors, a massive parade of flagellants interrupts the meeing. Streets are congested with traffic, which moves at the rate of several yards over several hours. Kalle and his taxi driver son meets his other son, a poet who has gone insane. A member of the Joint Chiefs of staff is congratulated for reaching his 100th birthday, and promptly asks to see Goerring, and delivers the Nazi salute. Kalle decides to help his friend sell crucifixes to capitalize on the year 2000 A.D. A young girl is sacrificed in order to save a corporation. The world seems to be ending, as Kalle, who seems to be the last sane person on earth, defiantly repeats throughout the movie, "Beloved those who sit down," and at the end, as he stands next to a pile of discarded crucifixes at a garbage dump, he is surrounded by dead people, who slowly inch their way, surrounding him.
So what does it all mean? I dunno. But based on the fact that excerpts from Peruvian Commiunist poet Cesar Vallejo's 1932 poem "Stumbling Between Two Stairs" is repeated all through the film (in the story, the poem is written by Kalle's son), maybe it's a plea for humankind to reject all society's mores, to live more simply. In addition to the reciting of the poem like a modern version of the beatitudes, director Roy Andersson also has two characters in a mental hospital repeat that Christ was crucified for just "being a nice guy," perhaps meaning that humans as a whole are incapable of practising kindness to each other, which in this story, brings about the end of the world. Andersson has a very bleak worldview in this film, but it's something you will never forget. I'm going to have to watch this one again.
Whew. Heady stuff. Now on to the usual idiocy I post around here...there's a new cd review of mine that appeared yesterday, my piece on the new reissue of the first Constantines album. A great cd, available for the first time ever south of the border.
Also, I have a small DVD review of the Alex Proyas rock 'n' roll flick, Garage Days. My first ever movie review...I'm still not too sure how well I did, but go see for yourselves. The movie's not great by any stretch, in fact it's incredibly dumb at times, but it has its moments, and winds up being a strangely charming little movie, with a handful of big laughs. Worth a rental, that's for sure.
Monday, August 23, 2004
"Yeah, I got busted
So I'll use my one phone call to dedicate a song to you on the radio
Yeah, I got busted
In custody I imagined a melody being played on the grand piano
Yeah, I got busted
I painted a dirty word on your old man's Mercedes Benz, cos you told me to do it
Yeah, I got busted
But soon they released me cos the cops they were sad and they didn't know how to prove it"
You're probably wondering why all those Jens Lekman songs in my little weekly top five list over there on the left. Well, I've recently discovered just how talented this young Swedish singer-songwriter is. At a mere 22 years of age, he's quite the prolific dude, having amassed quite a large back catalog of songs, but this year his stuff has really taken off, as two EPs have been huge successes in Sweden, and might I add, very well received by critics over here. Lekman is one of those crazed musical geniuses that comes around once in a long while, as he's simply churned out song after homemade song that wallows in the lovesick melancholy of Stephen Merritt, possesses the wit (and vocal style) of Morrissey, and musically, uses anything and everything, from psychedelic to Las Vegas schmaltz, creating not only some of the coolest independent music you'll hear, but even more importantly, music that wears its pop influence on its sleeve. With Lekman, you can tell that when given the choice between something uber-hip and a glorious pop hook, the hook will always win out. Actually, at times he reminds me of The Hidden Cameras when they're at their best, but without the, erm, controversy.
His new album, the brilliantly titled When I Said I Wanted to Be Your Dog comes out in September, and based on what I've heard so far, I have very high hopes for the thing. "You Are the Light", the lyrics of which I quoted above, is the first single, and boasts a wonderfully cheesy, Vegas style horn section, Lekman's smooth, crooning voice, and his charming story of a guy getting arrested after trying to impress his girlfriend, and not caring because he'll do anything for her. The chorus is euphoric, as the horns crescendo, Lekman singing, "You are the light by which I travel into this and that." "Tram #7 to Heaven" has a lighter, Nick Drake feel (circa Bryter Layter), as he muses goofily like a caricature of Donovan, "Tram #1 is lots of fun/Tram#2 is kootchie-koo/Tram #3 is misery/Tram #4 knocks at your door/Tram #5 I'm still alive/Tram #6 I think I'm fixed/Tram #7 to heaven." "If You Ever Need a Stranger" is gorgeous, as Lekman sings over a simple piano arrangement, offering to sing at a girl's wedding, saying, "I know every song, you name it/By Bacharach or David/Every stupid love song that's ever touched your heart/Ecery power ballad that's ever climbed the charts," adding grimly, "I would cut off my right arm to be someone's lover." I've only heard those three songs so far, but they're so great, that I cannot wait until I hear the other eight tracks...
Lekman's two EPs from earlier this year are a great teaser for the new album. The Rocky Dennis EP reads like both an ode to the real-life kid whom the movie Mask was based on, but also as a weirdly personal record, as Lekman has gone by the name of Rocky Dennis in the past. "Rocky Dennis Farewellsong to the Blind Girl" is achingly beautiful, combining a lovely glockenspiel melody, lush orchestration, gently thrumming bass, and a subtle electronic beat; the song bursts with heartbreaking, heartwarming beauty, as Lekman, or should I say Rocky, sings to the blind girl, "Someday I'll be stuffed in some museum/scaring little kids, with the inscripture, "Carpe Diem"/Something I never did."
The Maple Leaves EP gets a bit more adventurous. The title track has a 60s orchestral pop feel, with two separate bouncy drumbeats overdubbed over one another, as Lekman sings facetiously, "She said it was all make believe/But I thought she said, 'maple leaves.'" "Sky Phenomenon" has Lekman describing the Northern Lights, "It's like someone spilled the beer all over the atmosphere" (very cute, I might add), while "Someone to Share My Life With" is a simple, pretty love song, and he keeps things very simple, which turns out the best thing to do. Best of all, though, is "Black Cab", a stunning combination of harpsichord and Byrds-style jangle pop, as Lekman tells the story of a guy who feels remorseful after ruining a party ("I killed a party again/I ruined it for my friends"), misses the last train home, and is forced to take a shady taxi home, saying, "They might be psycho killers, but tonight I really don't care," adding miserably, "So I said, 'Turn up the music, take me home or take me anywhere.'"
This guy is a world class talent, and I hope that the album delivers. As soon as I hear it, I'll post my thoughts...
Tuesday, August 17, 2004
Got my copy of The Dirty South yesterday, so that gives me all the more reason to obsess about the album on this page. First off, stunning artwork by Wes Freed...the Drive-By Truckers have the most beautifully designed cd's in rock music today, always putting thought into the design of the digipak covers and the booklets. And the artwork on this one has to be the band's snazziest yet.
I was really looking forward to getting the actual cd for a couple of big reasons, to immerse myself in the album's lyrics, and to read Patterson Hood's always great liner notes (thinking just now, Decoration Day didn't have liner notes in the cd, but a separate press release written by Hood instead, but it served the exact same purpose). Hood said that Decoration Day was all about the choices people make in their lives, and on The Dirty South, he says it's about people who have no choice, and you certainly read that in the lyrics: selling moonshine during the Depression to make ends meet...a tornado that rips through a dustbowl town, leaving folks to deal with yet another hardship in their lives...smalltowners, disenfranchised from the Republican government, who see their town die right in front of their eyes...a loving father who resorts to dealing drugs just to feed his kids...an old World War II vet living out the rest of his life on the old homestead...a redneck cop who buys into his own self-made myth, and a resentful criminal the cop put away...a son desperately trying to make his father happy...culminating in the three-song conclusion that reflects the anger, the desperation, and finally, the loneliness of regular, honest, hardworking people who are finding it tougher and tougher to eke out a living in the American South.
The album does serve as a companion piece to Decoration Day, kind of like disc two of a massive double album, but when all is said and done, The Dirty South is the better record, and I just might go as far to say that this could very well be the band's best album ever. Not only does the new album rock very hard, as "The Buford Stick" boasts a wicked Crazy Horse jam sound, "Where the Devil Don't Stay" is ferocious, and "Lookout Mountain" is centred around a very awesome, muscular riff that all three guitars join in on, but there's also a little more variety, as you get the odd Stones-style rocker ("Never Gonna Change"), a beautifully folky ballad that pays homage to The Band in more ways than one ("Danko/Manuel"), as well as cool additions of organ, Hammond B3, and Rhodes piano, which always sounds great in everything. It'll probably be a rather chilly day in hell when the band has a crossover hit, but if they ever do, it'd sound like "Carl Perkins' Cadillac", with its Springsteen-style storytelling and Tom Petty-inspired 12 string (I won't say jangly) guitar.
When I first heard the album last week, I had some minor qualms with a couple of tracks, but after many listens since, every one of the album's fourteen tracks holds up very well. Yeah, there may be one too many Buford T. Pusser ballads on there, and some skeptics might think "Cottonseed" has been done a kazillion times before, that Cooley has a thing about singing songs about "Daddy", and longtime fans will bristle when they learn that "Lookout Mountain", an old live favourite, is rerecorded here, but to be honest, I can't think of a single justifiable complaint at all. The Drive-By Truckers have had a run in the last five years that has not been matched by any other American rock band, yielding Southern Rock Opera, Decoration Day, and now, The Dirty South (hey, you can even throw in 2000's live album Alabama Ass Whuppin'), and with three songwriters as supremely talented as Patterson Hood, Jason Isbell, and Mike Cooley, no other American band has as much songwriting depth as the Truckers do. Right at this very moment, this band is completely without peer, and yet again, they've put out one of the year's finest albums. Picking my 2004 album of the year is going to be extremely difficult...
Oh, and if that wasn't enough DBT ranting for you, here's a really good article, from Blender, of all places.
Monday, August 16, 2004
First update in a few nights...went through an exhausting weekend, slapping together cd reviews at a frantic (heh) pace. Still trying to regain my energy.
After repeated listens to the Drive-By Truckers' stupendous The Dirty South, I realised I made a goof in my initial review of it last week (which I corrected just now). It's Jason Isbell who sings "The Day John Henry Died", not Patterson Hood. So that means Isbell is responsible for my four favourite songs on the album. What a talent that kid is, I tell you.
Back in 2001, I mentioned an innocuous little album by former Grapes of Wrath leader Kevin Kane in my best albums of the year list. His album of acoustic covers, called Timmy Loved Judas Priest, was lent to me by Mr. Steve, and I was subsequently very impressed. I suck it in my top ten, but I never had a copy of the album of my own. Well, after three years, I have a copy of the thing (thanks to the dude), and yeah, it still holds up. The duet with Neko Case on The Go-Go's Our Lips Are Sealed is quite sublime, and his hushed version of Guided by Voices' "Motoraway" adds another dimension to the song. He does a great job on all the tracks, but stuff like Pavement's "Here" and a neat cover of Kraftwerk's "Neon Lights" really stands out. Great cd. Well worth seeking out.
This past Friday, I got the new Sub Pop reissue of the Constantines' blistering debut album, which was a nice addition, seeing that I only had a burned copy of that one. And what a cd this is...it's one of those albums that sounds better the louder you play it. Highlights include "Arizona", "Some Party", the incredible "Young Offenders", and best of all, "Hyacinth Blues", which plays like an epic, but is only three and a half minutes long (and does the band ever do a fiery version of that song live). I still think the album climaxes a little too early, but it's still a very, very, very good debut. I have a big review of this one coming soon...
While I'm here, I might as well mention the new album by Venomous Concept, the collaboration between Melvins guitarist King Buzzo, the bassist and drummer from Napalm Death, and kevin Sharp, former vocalist for Brutal Truth. As awesome as that lineup sounds, though, the music they managed to produce just falls well short of expectations. The band sounds pretty awesome, delivering a real sludgefest, with Shane Embury's bass sounding fan-tazzgreat, but it's so loosey-goosey, so musically monochromatic (does that make sense?), that nearly every track blends into one another. Only does the last cut, "Braincrash", manage to stand out amidst all the churning riffs and hardcore drumming. The lyrics are the album's real downfall, as the band shows no originality whatsoever, complaining like a bunch of grumpy old men, but coming off as inarticulate teens in the process...not only that, but attempts at satire fall flat. The cd also comes with a rather creepy video montage featuring graphic images of war casualties and a filmed autopsy over a screechy soundtrack, accompanied by captions that try to be anti-war, but end up sounding as eloquent as, "Uh, war is bad." So in the end, it's alright, I suppose, but only if you don't listen to the lyrics.
Oh, on a side note, I recently revisited to Savatage's song "Strange Wings", from their much-heralded 1987 album Hall of the Mountain King. I liked the album back in that year, but was a bit wishy-washy about certain elements (I seem to remember complaining that it dragged a bit on side two). And if I'm not mistaken, in a fit of madness in the early 90s, I got rid of my cassette of it, so I hadn't listened to anything from that album in quite a while. Anyway, "Strange Wings" was my favourite track from that album, and listening to it today, I still think that, as it's a beautiful, progressive, Queensryche style (think Rage For Order) ballad. It's made all the more touching by the fact that two key performers have long since passed away, that being stalwart guitarist Criss Oliva, and the late singer Ray Gillen, who duets with Jon Oliva on this track, providing some stunning backing vocals. The production is kind of average at best, but the song is still very moving. Seek out the mp3, and hear for yourselves.
Thursday, August 12, 2004
Well, Jess came through, big time, hooking me up with the rest of the Drive-By Truckers' The Dirty South late yesterday afternoon (thanks for your extraordinary patience!). And now that I have the entire thing, I can truly say, what an album. It's going to take some time for me to get through the more subtle moments in the album's lyrics, which are always the band's strength, but egads, judging by the music alone, honestly, this sucker's better than Decoration Day, which just happened to place at #3 on my year-end list last December.
The main difference? Cohesiveness. Well, that, and an overall irritable, bur-in-the-britches feeling. Decoration Day was a much more varied effort, veering from screaming guitars, gentle acoustic love songs, tragic ballads, and not to mention some dark, dark lyrical themes, such as incest, murder, and suicide. Here, lyrical themes are often just as gloomy, but there's a gentleness, a tenderness that's a bit more prominent on this record. Kind of odd, when you consider that this is one loud album. I love it when the Truckers rock, and do they ever on this CD. The three guitars roar at full volume, and when things momentarily slow down, the distorted chords still rumble in the background, like prairie thunder twenty miles away. The band has a real fire in their collective guts, and they simply never let up.
Of course, this CD's all about the three fine singer-songwriters in this band. The prolific Patterson Hood, as usual, dominates the album, with six compositions. You've got the touching "Tornadoes", the terrific working class ballad "Puttin' People on the Moon", the World War II vet tribute "The Sands of Iwo Jima", the two fiery ballads about Tennessee sherriff Buford T. Pusser "The Boys From Alabama" and "The Buford Stick", and the extremely cool "Lookout Mountain" is a ferocious rocker that boasts a nasty beast of a guitar riff the sounds like it was written with Rick Rubin in mind (definitely the heaviest DBT song I have ever heard).
Mike Cooley contributing four tunes of his own: the ferocious stomp of "Where the Devil Don't Stay", which comes complete with plenty of killer slide guitar licks, the gentle country rock of "Carl Perkins' Cadillac" (a great tune about Sam Phillips), the Southern gothic epic "Cottonseed", and "Daddy's Cup", a genuine tribute to that most ridiculed redneck osession: NASCAR.
Like on Decoration Day, it's Jason Isbell who emerges with the album's four finest moments. His "Danko/Manuel" is a tearjerker of the highest order, reminding me of two of my favourite moments from The Band's The Last Waltz, Richard Manuel's self-effacing "The Shape I'm In" and Rick Danko's utterly gorgeous "It Makes No Difference", as Isbell sings, "Can you hear that singing? Sounds like gold/Maybe I can only hear it in my head/Fifteen years ago they owned that road/Now it's rolling over us instead." It's both a touching tribute and an autobiographical tale from a young kid who's living on the road just like his heroes did...when Isbell sings in his wavering tenor, "Then they say Danko would have sounded just like me/Is that the man I want to be?", it's gutwrenching, as Isbell wonders aloud if this kind of life is truly worth it. "Never Gonna Change" is a very fun departure, with its Stones-ish riffs and groove-laced bassline and backing vocals by new member Shonna Tucker, the flat-out euphoric hard-driving rock of "The Day John Henry Died" is one of my faves on the album, and the ballad "Goddamn Lonely Love", which closes the album, is achingly beautiful. The dude doesn't sing many songs in this band, but the ones he does sing are always of the stunning variety.
The production by David Barbe is excellent, as always...the band is almost always playing at maximum volume, and Barbe reins it all in nicely, creating a raw, abrasive wall of sound when all three guitars are cranked. It's an excellent, excellent album, as even the two slightly weaker tracks ("Iwo Jima", "Daddy's Cup") hold up rather well. I've said it before, the Drive-By Truckers are the best independent rock band in America, and they prove it once again with The Dirty South. "We ain't never gonna change," insists Isbell at one point on the album. With a band this great, let's hope they never, ever change...we'll take this kind of earnest, sincere, soulful rock & roll anytime, and nobody does it as well as these guys (and gal). Easily one of the year's best.
Wednesday, August 11, 2004
Thanks to Jess, who's been so helpful with the mp3 hookups lately, I've heard the first five tracks from The Dirty South, the new album by the great Drive-By Truckers, and based on what I've heard, this album sounds very promising. These five tracks are simply ferocious, as the band sounds more aggressive than on Decoration Day. Mike Cooley's "Where the Devil Don't Stay" rocks very hard, while his "Carl Perkins' Cadillac" is more upbeat in tone, with a real poppy tinge to it. Patterson Hood is in his usual fine storytelling form on the tragic "Tornadoes", the propulsive "The Day John Henry Died" (my favourite so far), and the gritty, grimy "Puttin' People on the Moon". One thing that has me a little bit trepidatious is that there are a whopping fourteen tracks on the album, which sounds like an awful lot...but then again, Decoration Day was longer, and still sounded great, and this band is so good, I'm confiden;t the rest of the music will hold up. Hey, I haven't even gotten to any of the songs by Jason Isbell...after all, that dude is a huge songwriting talent. On Decoration Day, Hood and Cooley set the kid up, and he stepped up and knocked the album out of the park, and if his stunning "Danko/Manuel" is any indication (I heard the band do this one on a radio station webcast a long while back), he'll probably do the same. I cannot wait to hear the rest of this, I tell you.
One more thing about the DBT...for the kazillionth time, they're crossing North America, heading from Vancouver to Minneapolis, COMPLETELY skipping over the Canadian Prairies! This is getting infuriating, because if there's one place in Canada that would embrace this band, it would be the prairie provinces. The folks love the down-home rock & roll, and if the Truckers dared to come out here, they'd win a ton of new fans. Come on boys, show some courage, brave the long drives, and bring your marathon shows out here!!!
Okay, time to sort out my thoughts about the new Libertines album.
In March, 2003, I wrote, "You hope to death that The Libertines can just make it through the next year in one piece." With all the trouble that Pete Doherty has gone through, it is an astonishing feat that The Libertines have managed to piece together an album, and even more astonishing when you realise just how impressive it is.
I'm starting to actually prefer this one to Up the Bracket. The new one doesn't have the same moments of observational wit as the first record, like "What a Waster", "Time For Heroes", and "Death on the Stairs", and it doesn't have a killer single like "Up the Bracket", but considering the year this band had, it's understandable how they'd be more focused on themselves than on clever depictions of the world around them. The relationship between Doherty and Carl Barat is the primary focus, as the pair hash it out over forty minutes.
"Have we enough to keep it together/Or do we just keep on pretending/And hope our luck is never ending?' sing Barat on the modestly catchy single "Can't Stand Me Now", beginning a dialogue that seems to centre on the theme of their strained friendship:
Barat: "Oh, I was carried away/Caught up in an affray/They let him away, he sang/We'll meet again some day/And oh my boy, there's a price to pay."
Doherty: "My heart has gone astray/With all these friendships slipped away."
Barat & Doherty: "Well, I'll confess all of my sins/After several large gins/But still I'll hide from you/And hide what's inside from you."
Barat: "We're living in a looking glass/As the beauty of life goes by."
Then, near the album's end, it all builds up to a climax. On "The Saga", Barat spits, "When you lie to your friends/And you lie to your people/And you lie to yourself/And the truth's too harsh to comprehend/You just pretend there isn't a problem." A moment later, he says, "I am a pimp and a slave/And in my bed you dig my bad/I dig my grave/And the truth's too harsh to comprehend." "Road to Ruin" follows, and Doherty sounds forlorn as he croons, "They drive me crazy, I’m climbing the walls/So show me the way, the way to the stall/Cos I’m so sick, so sick of it all," as the song concludes with the funereal strains of an organ.
It's the final track, "What Became of the Likely Lads", that winds up grabbing your heartstrings, refusing to let go, as Barat and Doherty seem to reconcile. Barat sings in a quavering voice, "Please don't get me wrong/See I forgive you in a song," and Doherty whimsically quips, "They sold the rights to all the wrongs/And when they knew you'd give me songs/Welcome back, I said." The pair sing together optimistically, "Just blood runs thicker, oh, we're as thick as thieves," as Barat asks his pal, "If that's important to you," to which Doherty responds, "It's important to me." Awwwww. If that weren't enough, Pete adds, "Please don't get me wrong/See I forgive you in a song/We'll call the Likely Lads." Awwwwwww. Rarely do you hear a band wear their collective hearts on their sleeves like you do here. The bottom line is, these guys are best buds, and neither wants to see that friendship die.
Musically, the album is less abrasive than the previous one, and less sloppy, as you don't get such forgettable filler as "Radio America", "Tell the King", and "Begging" (well, okay, "Don't Be Shy" is borderline, as Doherty sounds like he's struggling to enunciate). "Can't Stand Me Now" is a fun little single, "Last Post on the Bugle", "Arbeit Macht Frei", and "Narcissist" revisit the sound of the first album, but sounds tighter overall, and "Music When the Lights Go Out" is a very lovely ballad that wavers into an upbeat chorus before settling back into the verses' mellow groove. Meanwhile, "What Katie Did" uses do wop vocals that are so ostentatious, you can't help but crack a smile, as Doherty and Barat engage in a pair of sloppy solos as drummer and bassist hold down the fort. And needless to say, the aforementioned final three songs have the band playing surprisingly strongly.
So yeah, I do like this album a lot, and I find that fact most surprising. Usually, I refuse to be sucked into the whole lionization of the rock 'n' roll junkie thing, but this is one of those albums by a band torn apart by drugs that actually manages to evoke pathos in the listener. For the second album in a row, but for completely different reasons, the Libertines are still a band who's only going at half speed, and the fact that this band has been able to put together a good album under such trying circumstances is a small miracle. If Doherty could only straighten out his life for good, then these guys will be unstoppable. If not, then what a waster it would be, indeed.
Tuesday, August 10, 2004
I was completely unaware that Stylus's I Love 1995 kicked off yesterday. It was another good year, and I wrote plenty of quotes, but because of my sudden departure last week, I just wasn't able to contribute as much stuff as I had wanted to. '96 is coming up, and that was a really special year, so I'll be offering many more comments.
I was withholding my opinion on the new Sahara Hotnights album until I got around to hearing the entire thing, and yesterday, Kiss & Tell arrived in the mail. I was a big fan of Jennie Bomb when it came out two years ago (boy, it feels like I wrote that review in another lifetime), believing then that they were the best female rock band currently playing, and today, I still feel that way. The band has tinkered with their sound and image a bit; they're a bit more made-up on the cover, and on a recent TV appearance, they sported nice hairstyles and stylish clothes. There's nothing wrong with an image upgrade, especially if the music holds up, which it certainly does here. Gone are the all-out garage rockers like "Alright Alright", "On Top of Your World", and "Fire Alarm"...in their place is a collection of songs that ease up on the roaring guitars, focus more on tighter riffs and melodies (not to mention the addition of keyboards from time to time), and taking the girl guitarpop of the early 80s (Runaways, Pat Benatar, The Go-Go's), and trying to do their own thing with it. There are several first-rate songs, like "Hot Night Crash", the catchy "Who do You Dance For?", "Empty Heart", "Mind Over Matter", "Stay/Stay Away", and "Keep Calling My Baby", and singer/guitarist Maria Andersson sounds excellent, her vocal harmonies sounding considerably more sophisticated than the previous album. Overall, it's a solid follow-up that is every bit as good as Jennie Bomb. These ladies rock as well as any group of guys...just don't hold it against them for looking good while they do it.
You know, I don't think I've mentioned Queensryche much since starting this blog four and a half years ago. Back in the mid to late-80s, Queensryche was one of my top three favourite bands (Iron Maiden and Metallica being the others), and I followed the band obsessively, enjoying the UK-inspired metal of the first EP, the futuristic power metal of The Warning, the ultraslick, sophisticated pop of Rage For Order, and the timeless Operation: Mindcrime. The last half of the decade is peppered with very fond 'Ryche memories: seeing the live video for "Warning" for the first time in 1984, thinking it was the coolest thing ever, saving my money for an expensive CD copy of The Warning in early 1986, the first CD I ever bought myself, seeing the band open for AC/DC in the summer of 1986, then buying Rage a few weeks later, and that momentous spring afternoon in 1988 when I got Mindcrime the day it was released, and obsessing over plot details with friends over the subsequent weeks. I latched on to that band in a big way, convinced they were one of the best young bands on the face of the earth, and for a while, they certainly were.
So what happened? I'm sitting here with Queensryche's brand new live album The Art of Live, and I'm thinking to myself, "Man, how the mighty have fallen." Since 1990, it's been nothing but a steady decline for this once-great band, and this CD proves just how bland their post-Mindcrime output really is. It opens with seven tracks from their forgettable recent albums, and none of the songs (save for "Sign of the Times", possibly) do anything for me at all, just meandering along at their own turgid pace, with boring riffs and bland melodies. The band, minus Eddie Jackson and key member Chris DeGarmo, sound bored, tired, and above all, old. Scott Rockenfield is nowhere near the powerful drummer he once was, and is reduced to shamelessly plugging his line of drumkits with a ridiculous advertisement hanging right over his head on the cymbal rig, and Geoff Tate just sounds horrendous, his voice straining to be heard above the guitars. Only on thelast four tracks, including two cuts from Mindcrime, and two from Empire, does the band's energy pick up, but the performances are only marginally less limp than the other tracks. The production is just as bland, the drums sounding tinny, the crowd sounding miles away from the stage, virtually no banter from Tate...overall, an annoyingly antiseptic, passionless performance and recording. Not even an acoustic version of The Warning's "Roads to Madness" (when, oh when, will veteran metal bands stop this ridiculous "back to our roots" gimmick?) can save this thing. This is such a depressing album for yours truly.
Out of curiosity, I went and fished out my old cassette of 1990's Empire to hear how it has aged over the past fourteen years. Back when I got it, I thought I liked it, but I was just trying to convince myself that it was great, and basically ignoring the writing on the wall. Hearing it now, this is one awful, awful awful album, as the band completely ignores the prog-metal leanings of Mindcrime, and goes for a more "contemporary" pop feel. Of course, "contemporary" in 1990 means that years later, it'll hardly seem cutting-edge, and believe me, this album has not aged well. Pop metal tunes like "Best I Can", "Jet City Woman", "Hand on Heart", "Anybody Listening?", and "Another Rainy Night" all are catchy enough, but they're completely lacking in substance, and the production, featuring dated blasts of keyboards, grate my ears. The big hit "Silent Lucidity" is still okay, in its sleepy, somnambulistic way (forget the classic rock-pandering, Pink Floyd melody, it's actually a very cool evocation of the lucid dream experience), and the title track is particularly strong, but the rest is too nauseating to bear. The difference between this album and the tragically underrated Rage For Order is that Rage, while possessing loads of dtaed-sounding production gimmicks, was rooted firmly in progressive metal, complete with nimble riffs, solos, and operatic vocals; Empire is nothing more than a shallow sell-out. And to think, the band just got worse throught the nineties and the turn of the century. Yikes.
Listening to Empire got me curiouser and curiouser, if you will, and I dug out that old CD copy of The Warning to hear how that one holds up (oh, the hair on those boys...hair was always a problem with this band). See, these were the good old days...there's really very little original about this album, with plenty of homages to Judas Priest, Dio, and Iron Maiden, but the best tracks, oh, to they ever sound terrific, not to mention super-heavy: "The Warning", the blatantly Maidenesque "En Force", "Before the Storm", the majestic, nine and a half-minute epic "Roads to Madness" (dig that Steve Harris, "Hallowed Be Thy Name" style tempo change!)...this is all tons of goofy fun. Above all else os the great "Take Hold of the Flame", a song that continues to move me with its optimism. It's kind of odd seeing such an ode to positive living plunked right in the middle of a bunch of doom-ridden, apocalyptic fare ("Throw down the chains of oppression that bind you/With the air of freedom the flame grows bright/We are the strong, the youth unitedWe are one, we are children of the light!"...eat your heart out, Rik Emmet), but the song shines like a glinting, broken Coke bottle reflected by the flames of a burning city (how's that for a silly analogy?). Only "NM 156" falters, with its very silly Coleco PET computer sound effects, but it does serve as a preview for the direction the band would take on their next album. Overall, not a bad album at all.
Now there's news that Queensryche is going to record a sequel to Mindcrime, which strikes me as a last-ditch attempt to return to their former glory. It'll be interesting to see where they take the story, but something tells me that this is going to turn out to be another dud. Sixteen years since their last good album...I'd love to see this band return to form, but as each year goes by, hope fades more and more. It's tragic. (I'll write in more detail about Mindcrime and Rage For Order whenever I buy the 2003 remasters...when that'll be, I don't know. I keep looking for copies of Rage, but nobody anywhere stocks the dumb thing. Bah.)
Monday, August 9, 2004
Two huge new reviews have appeared today. First, there's my piece about the album I haven't been able to shut up about yet, The Dillinger Escape Plan's Miss Machine, truly one of the year's best. Even better, though, is my monstrous review of the recent Judas Priest box set. Very, very proud of this one. So go take a look at those two, and then go blow all your money on DEP and the Priest set. Good times are guaranteed.
Of my small handful of acquisitions from my time away last week, the one I'm most excited about is the newest book by the best metal critic around, Martin Popoff. Last year, I wrote about how much I loved his book The Top 500 Heavy Metal Songs of All Time, a book I continually go back to, and in his brand-new book, he's tackling The Top 500 Heavy Metal Albums. What's most pleasing about these books isn't the actual lists, and how the albums and songs are ranked. sure, it's fun to quibble about the good choices (Master of Puppets at #1) and the, erm, not so good (Screaming For Vengeance at #12? Are you freakin' kidding me?!), but what's truly great about the books is that after you go through the lists, they settle in and become reference guides that become absolutely indispenable. Whether I need background info on a particular metal band, album, or song, I go to Popoff's books, as he not only writes his own well-read, often entertaining opinions of the albums and songs, but also supplies quotes from the artists about the title in question. It's all so thoroughly researched and well-organized. So far, the albums book is looking to be even better...after all, metal is a genre more suited for albums than singles, and the variety of bands that you get in this book is much better than the songs book (bands like Voivod, Kreator, Dillinger Escape Plan, Trouble, etc. appear in the albums book, but not in the songs one). Plus, I find myself agreeing more with Popoff's reviews than, say, Ian Christe's, whose picks in his recent book had me disagreeing at nearly every turn (though I will say that Popoff is insane for liking The Tea Party). If you love metal music, you need these two books. They're as essential as rock music books can get.
So, while I'm on the subject, I thought it'd be a good chance to quickly assemble my own top 25 favourite metal albums of all time (I excluded all live albums). Just my own humble opinion...take the fact that I spent my formative metal years in the 80s with a grain of salt. Oh, and those silly rankings could change at any time:
1. Metallica - Master of Puppets
2. Slayer - Reign in Blood
3. Iron Maiden - Piece of Mind
4. Metallica - Ride the Lightning
5. Iron Maiden - The Number of the Beast
6. Mercyful Fate - Don’t Break the Oath
7. Queensryche - Operation: Mindcrime
8. Iron Maiden - Powerslave
9. Rainbow - Rising
10. Judas Priest - Defenders of the Faith
11. Pantera - Vulgar Display of Power
12. Accept - Restless and Wild
13. Sepultura - Arise
14. Accept - Balls to the Wall
15. Megadeth - Peace Sells…But Who’s Buying?
16. Judas Priest - Stained Class
17. Meshuggah - Nothing
18. Voivod - Dimension Hatross
19. Black Sabbath - Master of Reality
20. Ozzy Osbourne - Diary of a Madman
21. Slayer - South of Heaven
22. Turbonegro - Apocalypse Dudes
23. System of a Down - Toxicity
24. W.A.S.P. - W.A.S.P.
25. Stormtroopers of Death - Speak English or Die
Sunday, August 8, 2004
Turns out Ministry is paying my humble little city a visit in early October, and by all accounts, the band has not lost a step live at all, and it's probably something I'd be stupid not to pass up seeing, so I'm going to go. We never get shows like this out here, so it should be fun. There's a real hunger for the heavy stuff out here.
Over the past couple weeks, I have been really getting into For Against. I wrote a little paragraph a few entries below this one about the reissue of their first album Echelons, and while that one has grown on me nicely (You must download "Autocrat" this instant!), I am completely floored by their 1988 album December. As opposed to the tentative Echelons, December is a huge, huge leap forward, as the band dives full-bore into what would ultimately become regarded as dreampop, Harry Dingman's swirling, chiming, all-around versatile guitar flourishes weaving in and around Jeffrey Runnings' melodic basslines and Greg Hill's powerful, yet lithe drumming. The album has that echoey, distant, typically Eighties feel (as opposed to the debut, where the drums are right up front), the sound very similar to Husker Du's great Warehouse: Songs and Stories. Actually, Runnings' compositions bear a very strong similarity to Husker Du circa 1987, more specifically, Bob Mould's mellower moments (not so much the punk influence), and Runnings' voice, a deceptively boyish tenor, masks a sinister, almost menacing quality, something best exemplified by the song "The Last Laugh". The entire album plows along at a quick-paced clip, as tunes like "Sabres", "Stranded in Greenland", "They Said", and "Clandestine High Holy" lure you in, and before you know it, it's a little over a half hour later, and you want to hear the entire album again. It's a remarkablely confident, moody, intense yet understated little album that more people must be told about. Go out and find this one, either in CD or on mp3...you'll be pleasantly surprised.
Saturday, August 7, 2004
Listening to "Green Eyed Loco Man" on the recent Fall anthology which I'm so fond of, I gradually became more interested in the band's new album, The Real New Fall LP. I downloaded "Theme From Sparta F.C." when I heard it was their newest single back in June, and was blown away. So, a few days ago, I found myself in Edmonton, faced with a rather odd choice...I found both versions of the album, both for the same price, but oddly enough, I couldn't tell the difference between the UK version and the US version. That's a tough thing about record store shopping, you don't have All Music Guide at your disposal. The different cd's were in different stores, so I couldn't compare the tracklisting...I was determined to get any version of the new Fall album before the end of the afternoon, so while in Blackbyrd Myoozik, I caved, and opted for the digipak version (hey, I'm a sucker for digipaks). Took it back to my sister's, where I was staying, did a quick AMG search, and learned I had bought the US version, which has actually just come out.
In retrospect, I made the right choice...not only does the US version have two more tracks than the UK version (including the b-sides "Portugal" and "Mad Mock Goth"), but also the single mixes of "Sparta 2#" and "Recovery Kit 2#". Especially good, considering how butt-kickingly brilliant "Sparta 2#" is...I was only familiar with the oroginal, and this one simply shatters it. It could very well be the best rock single I've heard this year...that soccer thug chorus is irresistible: "We have to pay for everything/But some things are for free/We live on blood/We are Sparta F.C.!/English Chelsea fan this is your last game/We're not Galatasary, we're Sparta F.C.!!!"
The rest of the album is very, very good. You've got those synth dance beats of "Green Eyed Loco Man", the combination garage stomp/financial rant of "Mountain" (featuring my favourite lyric, "So I went fishing/A note from a fish said:/Dear dope, if you wanna catch us/You need a rod and a line/Signed the fish"), the anti-nature rant of "Contraflow", the smooth guitar licks of "Janet, Johnny, + James", the odd Beach Boys tribute of "Mike's Love Xexagon", the hilarious "Portugal", which seems to consist of a recited letter attacking Mark E. Smith's behaviour during a recent tour, the (dare I say) New Order-esque "Recovery Kit 2#"...it's a fun ride, proof that Mark E. Smith still has plenty of gas left in the tank, plenty of vitriol to spew, as he continues to surround himself with young, energetic musicians who play with enough passion to match Smith's dry wit (typical of the curmudgeonly Smith, he fired a couple more members of his band recently). This album originally came out in the UK last October, but since it's only been in North American stores for a mere couple months, I think it warrants inclusion on my 2004 list.
Friday, August 6, 2004
Back after a week's absence. Got plenty of catching up to do here. First off, my review of the very good new Neurosis album is now up. Go take a look, and give the album a listen.
Thanks to the kindly Jess, I was able to hear the new Steve Earle album, which comes out in three weeks. Coming on the heels of the politically-charged Jerusalem, the new one has a very tough act to follow. The Revolution Starts...Now is one prickly album, my friends. Jerusalem had Earle assessing the state of the world around him at the time back in 2002, and though there was an undercurrent of dissent, it was ultimately a very positive, optimistic record. The Revolution Starts...Now, however, is consideably more direct...you hear it in Earle's lyrics, in his tone of voice, and in the music. You hear it all in the excellent title track, a rough-hewn rocker that only Earle and his Dukes can pull off, and Earle keeps things simple, addressing the listener, imploring that now is not the time for voter apathy, that America desperately needs a change of direction, and it's up to the people to decide: "The revolution starts now/In your own backyard/In your own hometown/So what you doin’ standin’ around?" Michael Moore, in fact, likes the song so much, he's putting it on the upcoming DVD release of Fahrenheit 9-11. I'm rather blown away by the spoken word track, "Warrior", Earle's bitter rant underscored by the Dukes' Crazy Horse style roar. "The Seeker" is a real standout, summing up Earles' career nicely, and "Coming Around" (with Emmylou Harris) and "I Thought You Should Know" are good "chick tunes". Earle, of course, is a genius balladeer, and "Rich Man's War" and "Old Gringo's Tale" rank among his best, as he puts a storyteller's spin on the state America is in these days.
I always love it when he and his band turn up the volume, and "F the CC" is very cool, as Earle snaps back at his detractors ("Been called a traitor and a patriot/Call me anything you want to but/Just don’t forget your history/Dirty Lenny died so we could all be free"), his Dukes jamming away relentlessly like only they can do. That said, I think Jerusalem is a bit better...tunes like "Amerika (Version 6.0)", "John Walker's Blues", "Conspiracy Theory", "Jerusalem", and "I Remember You" are all so powerful, and there's nothing at all like that on Revolution, and the Condoleeza Rice spoof "Condi Condi" wears thin after a few listens. The new one's a bit of a different beast; it's rawer, more urgent, more ominous, and even more impassioned than the last cd, as Earle's primary focus is to get Bush out of office (so much so, that the title track is repeated at the end of the album), but also to serve as a much-needed wake-up call to people everywhere. When Allen Ginsberg was asked in 1987 if the Beatles were right in saying, "Love is all you need," he said no, awareness is all you need. In the end, what matters most is that people start to think for themselves, and Earle delivers this lesson most effectively. Revolution is an imperfect album, not as great as Jerusalem (which I think is Earle's best), but just as passionate, which, in my opinion, makes up for its small handful of musical shortcomings. "You can’t always believe your eyes," Earle sings, "It’s your heart that sees through all the lies." Here's hoping the people keep that in mind; not only the American populace come election day, but all of us, every single day.
I finally saw Metallica: Some Kind of Monster last weekend. As a longtime fan of the band, I found the documentary absolutely enthralling. After seeing it, I like the band even more, and have more respect for the much-maligned St. Anger, which, despite all its flaws, is quite the small miracle considering what the band went through.
The therapist, Bill Towle, really seems creepy, and it was obviously a wise move of the band to cut him loose, because you could just sense the dude trying to become the puppetmaster. I still miss Jason Newsted...he's the only guy in the movie who comes off as being the most mentally healthy, and his comments about the band and Towle are hilarious.
Favourite moment #1: Lars erupting in laughter when he first reads Hammett's "Frantic" lyrics, "My lifestyle determines my deathstyle." What's disturbing is, the line still made it on the album. Were Hetfield and Ulrich merely making a concession to Hammett after years of exclusion?
Favourite moment #2: Seeing a mortified Lars after witnessing Newsted & Echobrain perform in front of a packed club, realising to his horror that Jason was so obviously more together than the rest of his ex-bandmates.
Favourite moment #3: The Ulrich-Mustaine meeting. Been a fan of both Metallica and Megadeth for eighteen years, and seeing the two confront each other was truly chilling. Mustaine wishing he'd have seen more of "his little Danish friend" and less of "Lars From Metallica" spoke volumes about the band's problems. And what about Mustaine...20 years of great music, 15 million albums sold, and he still feels like a failure because he was sent packing way back in 1982. Unbelievable.
I think the entire two-year period knocked Metallica off their collective pedestals, kind of a severe wake-up call, and the band is obviously all the better for it. At the end, they're simply people, as opposed to rock gods, and these days, when you see the entire band do meet & greets with the fans before every show (as opposed to only a couple guys showing up), you can kind of tell they're happier that way.
When I wrote about St. Anger a year ago, I said despite its inconsistencies, its one strong point was that at least the passion was back in their music, and that's what this movie hammers home.
Friday, July 30, 2004
Well, time to head out on out to the highway. Got nothing to lose at all, so to speak. I'm gonna do it my way, take a chance before I fall, if you will.
But first, time to go into a bit more detail about why I'm so nutso about the new Dillinger Escape Plan album. Compared to 1999's landmark Calculating Infinity (and the 2002 collaboration with Mike Patton, Irony is a Dead Scene), Miss Machine is so much more musically rich, as DEP are starting to wrestle out of those hardcore/metal shackles. The difference is obvious, this is a band who's willing to take things even further, no matter what the more hardcore-oriented fans would say. Yeah, the intense, frantic exercises in math metal are there, but when you listen to something like "Panasonic Youth" and "Sunshine the Werewolf" after hearing their older stuff, you're hit by how much more variation there is, not to mention restraint. Calculating Infinity had lots of those nimble, Steve Vai style jazz fusion licks, but here, they're much more concise, as the bend throws even wilder sounds in, the time signatures their playtoy, as Chris Pennie constantly displays how he's one of the best drummers in rock today.
The weird thing about Miss Machine is that when you get the actual cd, not just the downloaded mp3's, you notice that the album's eleven songs are divided up into 99 individual tracks. I have no idea behind the resoning for this, but it certainly makes for some chaotic fun with the "shuffle" setting ("Panasonic Youth", the instrumental "Crutch Field Tongs", and "Baby's First Coffin" are the only songs to be complete single tracks, for some odd reason). What the tactic does do, however, is allow you to pinpoint exactly were the album's many highlights are: a split-second jazz drum solo (track 4), a touch of majestic goth rock (track 11), strings that come in from out of nowhere (track 14), background harmony vocals (track 28), Meshuggah-style grinding and Helloween style staccato picking (track 65), touches of industrial (track 73), a weird blend of Frank Zappa and classic hardcore (track 85), a hint of new wave (track 86), psychotic thrash (track 92), a touch of dissonant Captain Beefheart harmoniies (track 95), and the album's final, crashing, cacophonous conclusion.
The real difference on the cd is made by the new vocalist Greg Puciato, who's kind of a combination of previous singer Dimitri and temprary dude Mike Patton. He brings some great vocal range to the table, as he screams with the best of them, then on a dime, he delivers melodic verses that sometimes possess the craziness of Patton, the misery of Trent Reznor, and even an unmistakeable hint of Jarvis Cocker, circa This is Hardcore in "We Are the Storm" (track 68). "Setting Fire to Sleeping Giants" is a real standout, combining a funky, Patton-esque verse (track 75) with a very catchy chorus that trumps every screamo song that has been recorded in the past two years (track 78), and what I just love, a blast of rhythmic guitar screeches, much like what you hear on Meshuggah's classic "Future Breed Machine" (track 83). Most shocking is "Unretrofied", which is not only a very cool respite from all the frenzy, but also a tune that just might break the band with its strange, but undeniable mainstream potential. On this album, DEP aren't afraid to slow things down, and as a result, they followed up a very good album with a great one.
I actually fell asleep during the last half of the album yesterday (because I was tired, not because the cd is boring!), and afterthe music faded, the "repeat" setting kicked in, and the loud, shocking opening bars of "Panasonic Youth" kicked in: "WE WROTE THESE PLANS/TOOK THE ORDER/THE ARCHITECTURE/AND FOLLOWED THEM TO THE END!!!" Quite the wake-up call, I tells you.
Wednesday, July 28, 2004
Huzzah, the new Charlotte Hatherley album leaked yesterday. I mentioned the glorious pop gem "Kim Wilde" a while back, and after spending a couple months completely floored by the Ash lead guitarist's surprising flair for writing a tune so much better than anything Ash has done in ages, and at how great a voice the lady has, I've finally heard the rest of her solo debut, Grey Will Fade. I'm pleased to say, I'm quite impressed by it, but I should point out that as good as the rest of the album is, nothing quite beats the mad genius of "Kim Wilde"...okay, "Bastardo", a cute song about a Spanish "two-faced lothario" who steals her favourite guitar, comes very close. But the rest of this album is definitely above average..."Summer" (the album's second single), "Paragon", and "Why You Wanna?" are all great, fun, buoyant guitar pop tunes, while "Rescue Plan", "Down", "Where I'm Calling From", and the pretty title track are very likeable, slightly mellower songs. Grey Will Fade is something every summer needs: fun, happy indie pop. Last year, we had The New Pornographers, this year, it's Charlotte Hatherley. The album is out in the UK in late August, but since we here in North America don't know when it'll come out over here, and we lucky Canadians can download to our hearts' content, go and seek the mp3's out. They're out there. Just make sure you do buy the cd when it comes out here. It's too good to deserve less. Oh, and I will go out on a limb and predict that this will be my sister's favourite album of the year.
So I'm sitting at home on a cool, rainy day, listening to the new reissue of For Against's 1986 debut album Echelons, and I thought, "Man, those American college rock bands gave their hi-hats a workout." That decade, it was all about sixteenth beats played furiously on hi-hats, adding a dose of jittery, caffeinated energy to the dreamy, dark tunes of the time. It actually reminds me of wimpy Canadian bands that bugged me back in the mid-80s, like The Northern Pikes, Chalk Circle, and (sorry Steve) The Grapes of Wrath. As a metalhead in 1986, I wanted power chords and screams, not limp-wristed Anglophiles whining all the time. But I changed over the years...that girly stuff actually turned out to be pretty good. For Against, on this album, embody every college rock cliche in the book: those frenetic rhythms, a thin-voiced skiny dude spouting faux-poetry, a dark, almost goth-like undercurrent, chiming guitars, basslines that are played in the upper register more often than not, a tinny, echoing snare sound. It's nothing that Joy Division, Echo & the Bunnymen, and early REM had done before, but despite its wealth of cliches, this is a pretty enjoyable album, one that, along with Echo & the Bunnymen, bridges the gap between early 80s post punk and early 90s dreampop. "Shine" (dig the Peter-Buck-on-speed hi-hat action!) and "Autocrat" are a couple of highlights, as is "Broke My Back", which brings things to a majestic close. This is actually the very first time the album has been released on cd, and the packaging is very snazzy (something that the good folks at Words On Music excel at)...I've never heard the original album, so I have no idea how improved the sound is, but I'm guessing that it's a lot better than the old cassettes. Fans of obscure 80s college rock will get a kick out of this; as for the rest of us, it's an interesting diversion, but because on this first album the band wears their influences like merit badges on a Cub Scout uniform, it all wears a bit thin when heard 18 years later. Echelons isn't horrible, it's just the sound of a band feeling its way around.
Tuesday, July 27, 2004
So it's twenty years since the release of Purple Rain, and all this time, I have yet to see the movie. Maybe I should go rent the thing.
Well, Miss Machine continues to blow me away. Now it's "Panasonic Youth" and "Setting Fire to Sleeping Giants" that have really caught my attention. I'm going to put up a proper review, but probably not for a week or so, as I'm going to be out in Edmonton through the weekend.
Dizzee Rascal's new single "Stand Up Tall" has leaked, and it sounds pretty darn great. Production-wise, it sounds a bit richer than the previous album with hints of strings underneath the synths and garage beats, and the tune is extremely catchy, to boot. The video pretty much stinks, however...
Have I mentioned the new Otep album yet? That's Otep, not Opeth. Anyway, Otep Shamaya is quite the bitter little singer...she hates her life, she hates her government, she hates her upbringing, she hates, hates, hates. Of course, there's never anything wrong with such resentment, especially in the metal genre, which often feeds off negative energy, but if the music doesn't hold up its end of the bargain, the results are often catastrophic. "I speak in verses, prophecies and curses," she claims on House of Secrets. The lady, whose notoriety as being a rather, erm, difficult artist to work with is exemplified by the constantly rotating lineup in her band; she's only two albums in, yet Otep is already going through band members at a rate prodigious enough to impress Mark E. Smith. Unfortunately, not even the presence of gifted Slipknot drummer Joey Jordison can save this exercise in nu-metal cliches, as the entire album is a shameless Slipknot clone, and nothing more, but even worse is that there are none of the vocal melodies that separate Slipknot from their whiny peers. As for Otep's much-vaunted lyrical talents, she's far from articulate...the anti-Bush rant "Warhead" is mildly impressive, but once you hear her screaming, "I HATE MY LIFE!" over and over, you just tune her out like you do to a whining child. Maggots will get a bit of a charge out of it, but for the rest of us, House of Secrets is merely a tale of sound and fury, signifying zilch. Go buy an Opeth cd instead of this silly stuff.
I should also mention Quebec's own A Perfect Murder. While Hatebreed continues to be a perennial mosh pit favorite at Ozzfest, there's another band lurking in the shadows who, quite frankly, do it a whole lot better. A Perfect Murder specialize in the same kind of metalcore as Hatebreed, heavily influenced by the likes of Cro-Mags and Agnostic Front, as well as utilizing the same kind of ferocious, barked-out vocal style, but what this band brings to the table is a healthy dose of old-school metal chops that make the much-vaunted Hatebreed sound one-dimensional in comparison. Thrash-inspired riffs, Anthrax-esque breakdowns, and melodic lead fills pepper Unbroken, one of the more pleasant metal surprises of the year so far. Sure, this stuff is nothing new, and the band freely admits it, but their version of no-frills metalcore has enough depth to hold the attention of teen aggro fans and older metal veterans like yours truly alike. It's nothing but 36 minutes' worth of relentless, brutal, and thoroughly fun metal, highlighted by "Time Bomb", "Unbroken", "Bouc Emissaire", and "No Truce". Forget Hatebreed, try these guys instead.
I also have to mention a kooky little album I got a few weeks ago by a French band called Cheval de Frise. You'd think that these days, a simple instrumental album featuring nothing more than drums and an amplified acoustic guitar couldn't yield anything really original, but whaddya know, but Cheval de Frise pulled it off. Their debut originally came out in 2000, and it's some of the cleverest post rock to come out in recent years. Free jazz, rock, folk, classical, and noise rock all merge into one unrelenting, sometimes cacophonous, often moving listening experience. Drummer Vincent Beysselance delivers a superb performance, as you can hear him channeling the frantic pace of hardcore (think Daughters), not to mention an intricate, progressive rock style that dares to echo Neil Peart. That said, it's guitarist Thomas Bonvale who emerges as a supreme talent, as his nimbly-picked notes veer from beautiful melodies to more atmospheric, oblique moments that possess the same kind of chaotic precision you'd hear from pianist Cecil Taylor. It's an absolutely mesmerizing 40 minute game of musical give and take that truly defies description. It's simply amazing.
Oh, and I would like to just state for the record that Wolf's cover of Mercyful Fate's "A Dangerous Meeting" is spectacular...
And P.S.: If you haven't heard it yet, go listen to Miss Machine here. You're welcome.
Friday, July 23, 2004
Wow, right after I mention Roger Ebert's review of the new Charles Bukowski documentary and call it a great tribute to the great writer, the Sun-Times posts Ebert's 1987 article about The his day spent with Bukowski during the filming of Barfly. It's an incredible essay.
Two new, extremely intense albums to mention today. First, there's the long-awaited cd by The Dillinger Escape Plan, called Miss Machine, and is it ever phenomenal. Hardcore, metal, industrial, and a little bit of jazz, all mashed up into 40 psychotic minutes. It's all so overwhelming, and all I can offer right at this moment, after listening to the album a total of four times is, it's really, really good. It's going to take some time to get a real grip on this one, but for now, it looks like I'm well on my way to loving it. Currently, the song "Unretrofied" is the standout, as the band takes a break from the intricate, extremely high-intensity stuff to deliver a shockingly melodic tune that actually sounds like it could be a mainstream hit. Again, I'm going to have to really delve into this one some more. I'll be posting more detailed thoughts on it in the future...
Much slower, but just as loud and ferocious, is the new album by Neurosis. You know, Steve Albini has worked with a lot of different bands in his career (just heard yesterday that he's producing the new Ponys album), but every once in a while, you hear an Albini-recorded finished product that sounds considerably better than others. The combination of Neurosis and Albini is simply perfect, as the band's huge, lumbering combination of progresive metal and ambient sounds are tailor-made for Albini's trademark grating, bass-heavy sound, and everything comes together extremely well on the new cd, The Eye of Every Storm.
The transformation of Neurosis from nihilistic hardcore to monolithic prog-stoners is not unlike that of Anathema, who went from doom metal to more mellow, Radiohead-style art rock. The thing is, with Neurosis, their new album is every bit as intense as anything you'll hear this year; guitar chords are delivered with muscle, as sustained notes suffocate you, the drumming is huge, every cymbal crash, every snare beat like blows to the stomach, and the vocals are grating, passionate howls, as if you can picture the muscles straining in singer Steve Von Till's neck. Instead of rapid-fire explosions, it's all a slow, slow burn. Songs ebb and flow like waves, ranging from gloomy stretches driven by organ and guitar drones, to all-out assaults of guitars; you're bobbing along during an extended mellow stretch, and from out of nowhere, an undertow comes along and pulls you under for a wild, wild ride, eventually letting you up for air, but before you know it, you're swept away again. This is all perfectly exemplified in the song "A Season in the Sky", which gradually builds from a dark, melancholic, soft ballad to a fantastic stoner rock dirge, complete with an amazing Sabbath style riff, as the song climaxes. There are no weak moments on this album, as "Burn", "The Eye of Every Storm", the instrumental "Shelter", and the king hell epic on an album full of epics, "Bridges", stand out. The Eye of Every Storm is a masterful album...if you like Tool's Lateralus, Anathema's A Natural Disaster, or that pesky Bohren & der Club of Gore album I've been plugging for months, there's a very good chance you will be blown away by this one, too.
Wednesday, July 21, 2004
My review of the new Anthrax live cd/dvd is up now. I posted my thoughts on this a few weeks ago...the review is basically an extension of that little piece. It's a great live document, and the cd/dvd combination is a real treat. I'm back to loving this band again.
Yesterday I polished off Louis Riel: A Comic-Strip Biography, by Chester Brown in about two hours. I first saw it in comic book form in Vancouver a few years ago, and I almost bought the book back around last September, but its $35 price seemed just a mite too steep, and this week, I finally got it from the local library. I've always been a fan of graphic novels, but this one ranks as one of the best ones I've ever read, right up there with Jimmy Corrigan and Ghost World. The difference here is, however, it's all a true story, and Brown has done a lot of painstaking research into the project, basically whittling the story down to a simple, concise, yet epic depiction of the most fascinating chapter in Canadian history. I'm no stranger to the Riel story, having studies twice in elementary school and junior high, but all the important facts (and there are lots of them) were really hammered home in this book, completely re-igniting my fascination with the subject. Brown's drawings are old fashioned in their style, very minimal, yet very powerful at times, his storytelling isn't overly biased, and the book comes with a bevy of detailed end notes and a bibliography. Riel was a hero, but he had his flaws (he was a bit of a demagogue), and John A. MacDonald was heartless and manipulative, but he had tough decisions to make, and by defeating Riel, was eventually able to unite the country from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The book is spectacular, I can't recommend it enough...it's a reminder of just how steeped in history my home of Saskatchewan is. This book should be mandatory reading in schools, it gets everything across very succinctly, much better than a stuffy old textbook that comes from Ontario.
Monday, July 19, 2004
Wow...I wrote it way back in January or February, but today, my huge piece on Pavement's Slanted & Enchanted has finally appeared in the My Favorite Thing section at PopMatters. It's basically a slightly more polished version of what I posted five or six months ago...I'm really proud of the thing. So that makes it four of my five all-time favorite albums have been covered. To recap, I've done:
Metallica - Master of Puppets
The Ramones - Leave Home
Pulp - Different Class
Pavement - Slanted & Enchanted
If I get the chance to do another one, I'll add my fifth. I'm not going to tell you guys, but those who know me should have a pretty good idea what band it is...
New review time again...today it's my small-ish review of Goldfrapp's excellent Strict Machine maxi-single. Plenty of outstanding mixes on that cd. Give the tunes a try.
Finally, Stylus's I Love 1994 is up every weekday, starting today. That was a great year, and I provided quite a bit of commentary. It's a great ongoing project, highly entertaining, so go take a look every day this week.
The highly anticipated new Hives album Tyrannosaurus Hives comes out tomorrow, so I might as well pipe in with my two cents. I liked Veni Vidi Vicious a lot back in, when was that, early 2002 or so, so, like everyone else, I kind of had high hopes for the band who gave us the killer "Hate to Say I Told You So". However, after hearing the new album, what hits me the most is just how ordinary it all is. Yeah, it's energetic, and plows along at a frantic pace, but very little grabs your attention. It's not awful (although "Diabloic Scheme" is particularly dreadful), but these guys should be so much better. You hear hints of their trademark fabulousness in songs like "Walk Idiot Walk", "Abra Cadaver", "Antidote", and "A Little More For Little You", but the rest of the songs are nothing more than garage rock by numbers, sounding as middling as The Mooney Suzuki. Actually, two thoughts that popped in my head while hearing the album for the first time were, "This sounds a lot like the new Tangiers album," followed by, "You know what? The new Tangiers album is better than this." Maybe this is as good as The Hives will ever get, a great singles band, just a solid little rock outfit who puts out solid little rock & roll albums, with a few really good songs on each record. I think it was Scott Plagenhoef who said that the best thing The Hives ever did was to inadvertently create the backing track for Conway's now-legendary mash-up "Lisa's Got Hives". And you know what? I think he's right.
Roger Ebert's review of the new Charles Bukowski documentary Bukowski: Born Into This is not so much a movie review, as more of a beautiful little tribute to the man. Ebert's obviously an admirer (hey, you'd be, too, if Buk put you in one of his books), and championed the great Barfly back in 1987, and with this piece, he has written one of the best essays on Bukowski that I have read in a very long time.
Friday, July 16, 2004
If you're older than, say, 25, chances are you don't spend much time in the punk section in your local record store. That is, unless you're buying reissues by The Clash, The Ramones, Bad Religion, or Turbonegro. Punk has to be the most rigid form of rock music there is, so that must be why it appeals to the kids more than adults. Most of the new punk that comes out these days just does not sound fresh to us oldsters at all, and it's getting tougher and tougher to tell the difference between the sincere punks and the phony ones, so much so, that we just wind up ignoring most of it, letting the kiddies have their fun with their dozens of cookie cutter Warped Tour bands. That said, if there's one band who is going to lure us fogies back to the punk section, it'll be Canadian indie heroes Alexisonfire.
I first heard Alexisonfire when one of their early videos aired on the late EdgeTV (weird, I miss that channel now) a couple years ago, and I was mildly intrigued, not to mention really confused about their name (is it "Alexis on fire"? "Alex is on fire"? -it turns out to be the former-), but despite the band's extremely ferocious sound, their singer George Logan was a bit of a distraction, as he spewed incomprehensible lyrics as if he was fronting a Locust tribute band. You heard hints of greatness in songs like "Pulmonary Archery", but you knew the singer was too grating for this band to appeal to mass audiences.
Now, one could tell that Alexisonfire was really making some inroads when it came to word of mouth, as they've toured the country extensively, but who knew it would explode the way it did a month ago, when the band's new album Watch Out! debuted on the Canadian album charts at #6? The fact that the band has no major label deal, and that until now, their songs had received little to no radio airplay whatsoever, makes this feat all the more remarkable.
So how's the album? Pretty darn good, definitely some of the freshest-sounding punk I've heard in a long time. This time around, the dynamic between screamer Logan and guitarist/singer Dallas Green is played up even more, and because Logan doesn't dominate as much, the contrast works remarkably well (much like the new Atreyu album). Hardcore fans will be screaming, "sellout", but in all honesty, this is perfectly executed crossover punk. Songs like "Accidents", "Control", and "Hey, it's Your Funeral Mama" are outstanding, highly catchy anthems (especially "Accidents", which has the potential to be a mainstream smash), but the most interesting musical shift is during the album's middle section, where the band goes for a more expansive, big-sounding blend of roaring guitars (as opposed to their more well-known, almost metal-inspired riffs), slower tempos, and strong vocal harmonies, sounding like a surprisingly good combination of the Deftones and Foo Fighters, best exemplified by "It Was Fear of Myself That Made Me God", "Side Walk When She Walks", and "No Transitory". Before it can begin to sound stale, the album regains the momentum it had on the opening two tracks, coming to a fierce close with "Get Fighted" and the jarring, Albini-esque "Happiness By the Kilowatt".
The album has the odd bump here and there, as the young band sometimes sounds like they're trying to do too much at once, but these guys are so full of youthful enthusiasm (egads, the year they were born I was buying Slayer's just-released Haunting the Chapel EP!), that you just let it slide and drink it all in. "Music isn't dead," Logan screams at one point, "Maybe we just forgot what it fucking sounded like." Watch Out! won't save rock music, but at least Alexisonfire is trying to do something about rock's current stagnancy, and I applaud that. Finally, punk for the masses that is actually good. Now get thee to the punk section immediately; this stuff isn't just for teens anymore.
Wednesday, July 14, 2004
Another day, another new review to plug. Bjork's Live Post cd, to be specific. Like I said in June, a decent live document of the oh-so-durn talented lady, but egads, it should have been better. The whole momentum of the Shepherd's Bush songs is nearly derailed by several flat, lifeless tv performances. Still, you can't hate Bjork, even when she stumbles. I still like the disc.
I have no idea what I was doing in 1999 and 2000. It was bad enough that I missed out on The Soft Bulletin, but Modest Mouse, too? Well, that's just ridiculous. And Modest Mouse are on a major label, too. I read music review sites all the time (I think around then, I read the now-defunct Wall of Sound the most), and was totally into the whole napster thing in early 2000, but Modest Mouse completely flew in under my radar. I knew of them, had even heard a track or two on the local community radio station, but I was always indifferent. Even last year, when the band played a show in my city, where people were going , "Modest Mouse are coming! Modest Mouse are coming!" I just thought, yeah, whatever, and didn't think anything of it. Because of my 1999/2000 musical dry spell, I've been playing catch-up ever since.
Well, I'm slowly atoning for my sins, as I recently traded in some mediocre cd's for used copies of Modest Mouse's 2000 album The Moon & Antarctica and the new Good News For People Who Love Bad News, and over the past week, I've been thinking, why haven't I listened to this stuff earlier? This is incredible stuff. As a raw newbie listening to both albums at the same time, I'm still undecided about which I prefer. The Moon & Antarctica has its meandering moments, but it's never dull, as songs like "3rd Planet", "Dark Center of the Universe", "Tiny Cities Made of Ashes", "Paper Thin Walls", "What People Are Made Of", and the majestic, epic "The Stars Are Projectors" serve as the real memorable moments. It's a beautiful album, and Issac Brock's lyrical skills are something to behold, a real revelation to yours truly. Good news For People Who Love Bad News, though, is a bit more taut, and has a bit more of a Flaming Lips/Grandaddy feel than the previous album. This record doesn't have a big majestic opus like "The Stars Are Projectors", but what it does have are some real great, single-worthy tunes, most notably "Float On" (which is already a hit in the US). It's one of the year's best songs, ranking right up there with Franz Ferdinand's "Take Me Out", possessing a similar guitar rock stomp and catchy-as-all-get-out chorus, and best of all, some of the happiest lyrics you'll ever hear ("Bad news comes don't you worry even when it lands/Good news will work its way to all them plans"). Then there's "The World at Large", "The Ocean Breathes Salty", "The View", "Black Cadillacs", "One Chance", and "Blame it on the Tetons". People have been knocking "Bukowski", but as a longtime Buk fan, I think it's the best song about the dude that I have ever heard. Sure, the album hiccups a little bit on the overly Tom Waits-ish "Dance Hall" and "The Devil's Workday", but the rest is so good, I'm willing to let that mis-step slide.
Overall, two great albums, one of my best cd trades in ages. It took me a long time to finally get around to giving Modest Mouse a listen, but hey, better late than never, right?
Tuesday, July 13, 2004
I hate you, All Music Guide. I hate your tedious, slow-loading, unreadable new site. It's supposed to be a quick reference guide, not a site where you have to click four pages just to read a stinkin' one paragraph album review! Worst. Redesign. Ever.
Well, after a very hectic, very fun weekend of keeping the little niece entertained, it's back to the tunes. New review again...this time, it's the new Atreyu album, which I've already stated I quite like, despite its flaws. It's good to see the kids are catching on to the screamo-goes-retro-metal sound of the band, as it debuted in the top 40 last week. The band has apparently had a bumpy start at Ozzfest, first being heckled (heh), then having problems at the Canadian border and missing an Ottawa gig, as well as the second Ozzfest date.
Speaking of Ozzfest, word has it that Judas Priest and Slayer are totally stealing the show, which is really no surprise. It pains me beyong words how badly I want to see this year's lineup, but stuff like this never comes to Western Canada. It's tragic, and disheartening. Anyway, I'm stuck living vicariously through the many recaps of the fest...this detailed report in particular is well worth reading.
Man, it's just been metal metal metal with me lately. There was my own personal PriestFest, which lasted weeks. The new Wolf album (which I wrote briefly about last month) continues to grow on me, the new Wuthering Heights cd is so shamelessly goofy that I love it to bits, and the new album by Ontario's The End is slowly niggling its way into my head. In addition to that, Lamb of God have a brand new song on the new Ozzfest sampler cd, and should be leaked on the net soon enough...their new album is one of this year's most highly-anticipated albums by yours truly.
Still, above all else, is the mighty Meshuggah, and the monumenal "I", which is far and away the best metal release of 2004 so far. It's time to serve up a closer look at the 21 minute epic:
0:00-1:33
The song opens with stuttering double bass drum beats and tom-tom accents by Tomas Haake, accented by crunching riffs by Frederik Thorendal and Marten Hagstrom on the same beats. Not unlike Anthrax, actually.
1:33-1:55
All-out, unbridled freakin' chaos, a demonic overture of roaring guitars and Jens Kidman's throat-ravaging screams, like you're suddenly plummeting towards hell.
1:55-2:55:
The song kicks into gear, Kidman growling away, the riff still in keeping with Haake's beat, as he keeps 4/4 time with the snare, but punctuating with bass drum and cymbal:
I - this fractal illusion burning away all structure toward the obscene
I - to cleanse, to purge, to breach eternity and smother all life
Blind - these mortal men of clay, divine and dying in their harnessed form
I - this furnace of limitless hate. Bestial, pure
The pendulum swings semi-attatched to the centre of all
I drug these minds into ruin and contempt - the acid smoke of burning souls...
2:55-3:34:
The riffs continue, but are now sustained a bit longer, as lead harmonies (likely by Thorendal) enter the fray.
3:34-5:40:
The first big stylistic shift, the riffs and rhythms becoming more complex, as the first guitar solo continues, the band shifting smoothly into the first Nothing style jam. Kidman re-enters, as the song shifts subtly to a much more menacing tone:
This is an anomaly. Disabled. What is true?
Not destined for incarceration. I crave my nothingness
This illness that they whisper of, is that what makes me fail?
I see through the eyes of the blind
Not clear what it is to be this self I dread, the immense, the rabid I am
The cogs turn, grinding away at ceaselessness - willing it to dust...
5:40-7:47:
Sharp, staccato rhythm riffs back up a frenzied solo, as Haake goes for all-out speed metal, one of the fastest things the band has done to date:
Re-disintegration. Convulse. A dead universe - Impales this twilight
Fear aligns. Sadistic me. Meant to devour. Despair
Sickened by the fact that immortality is not mine to have
A snail along a straight razor - dividing itself through motion
I charge this feeble product of god
Laughing, drenched in the bile of millions
Chewing on the stinking flesh of the crown of creation...
7:47-8:40:
Abrupt halt, feeling like being grabbed by a seat belt when you come to a creeching stop after careening in a car at 100 mph. Discordant, chiming guitar melodies, lulling you to a state of unease and apprehension...Then, pow.
8:40-10:34:
The song tightens up again, a taut two-chord riff and simple (for him) beat by Haake, as a solo of long, sustained single notes takes flight:
Solitude in splendor has been rivalled
Shrouds stained with tarblack vomit
Veiling the rotting eyes of the masses
The strain of armageddon evolves
Shifting through worlds from chaos, to chaos, to chaos
I devour this manure of existence - infertile, barren, whole
Rancid redeemer. Virulent deterioration of faith...
10:34-12:00:
Then it's Meshuggah at their simplest, a basic, glorious headbanger of a riff, doom metal at its finest:
Sacrilege in persona. In truth, fundamentally twisted
A witness to this savage carnage. A frenzy of animosity
The will to mutilate. Dominate deviation
The worship of the sick and degenerate will spread...
12:00-14:07:
An enigmatic, indecipherable narration comes in as Haake provides stuttering, hiccuping polyrhythms, his snare accents sounding jazz-like, while Thorendal delivers a blistering solo. Kidman re-enters in normal voice, but the lyrics are not provided by the band, adding a most enigmatic touch to the song.
14:07-20:59:
A sudden flourish, like a false stop. Long, gut-churning, sustained notes begin, like the best moments of the Nothing album. A sinister, ominous riff starts up, as harmonies swirl around. You're now in the deepest, darkest depths of the black hole, as Haake comes in with cymbal crashes, as the band goes into an all-out prog-metal jam, before Kidman concludes:
Conception derived from misconceptions
The dimensionless features of truth
Silence in the core of undoing
Untie its knots and set it loose
The inertia of my existence is clear
Premutations of slaughtered worlds
I alone will behold the dying sky
A servant of eternity
Progress finally, emergence of doom complete
Here only to reverse the flow of life...
Kidman closes the song with the Swedish slang of, "Aj, aj, aj...", an apparently colloquial expression of pain, which is also a play on the whole "I" theme.
The lyrics, written by Hagstrom, are phenomenal, in that they evoke the kind of images you'd read in a William Burroughs cut-up novel: "Re-disintegration. Convulse. A dead universe...A snail along a straight razor [okay, maybe a bit of Apocalypse Now, as well]...drenched in the bile of millions...Shrouds stained with tarblack vomit...I devour this manure of existence..." It's like a post-millenial, metal version of Dante's Inferno, the words and images adding the final blow to what is an all-out assault of a composition. Monstrous, prodigious, apocalyptic, "I" is quinessential, vital 21st century metal.
Thursday, July 8, 2004
Three new reviews today...they're just puring in now. There's my bit on the album by Scotland Yard Gospel Choir, which is a somewhat middling album. Good potential, but the Belle & Sebastian obsession wears thin quickly. Also, my review of the very disappointing Unintended album, which I was hoping would be so much better than it is. Much, much better is the solo debut by Andre Ethier...it just missed my mid-year top ten, but it's a real buried treasure, a fun, folky little record.
You know, I've had the new Uncut cd for quite some time now, but I was so busy during June, I didn't get around to mentioning it. And no, I'm not talking about Uncut the magazine, I mean the Toronto band. They're a recent signing to the uber-hip Paper Bag Records, and the album is called, annoyingly, Those Who Were Hung Hang here. So how is it? Well, the band's bio delivers a big, unintentional laugh when it declares, "This isn't revisionism, though. This isn't 'disco-punk' or 'Nu-Wave.' This is something decidedly now."
First off, this album smacks totally of revisionism. It is disco punk, and it is Nu-Wave. Lots of insistent beats, angular (critics love that word) guitar riffs, and a combination of jarring Fugazi sounds and a strong dance influence. Plus, of course, a huge Joy Division influence. It all sounds good, the band delivering simple, no-frills post punk stuff just like their labelmates controller.controller, but no matter how many times I listen to this cd, I can remember very little of it. The cold, hard truth is, it's so incredibly bland. Unlike controller.controller, Uncut lack any kind of musical flair whatsoever. Guitar riffs are generic and clunky, basslines are the same, and the vocals, well, the vocals leave a lot to be desired. Jon Drew sings in a morose, bored monotone, barely audible in the mix (tink the Raveonettes' Whip it On). There's nothing wrong at all with this shoegazer vocal style, but when the dude is just sitting there reciting lyrics that could either be the most profound stuff we've ever heard, or just lame high school poetry (we'll never know), delivering it all wish such a frustratingly detached tone, and not adding a solid vocal melody to the workmanlike riffs, his efforts are a complete waste of time. It gets to the point where, after half an hour, when you're stuck hearing a tiring J. Mascis imitation on the ballad "When For Now", you can't take anymore.
The album isn't awful, though, as songs such as "Understanding the New Violence", "Buried With Friends", and "Day Breaks Red Light" hold their own rathe
