The State Of The Pretzel Logic: February

Hey everyone. Pretzel Logic’s second month is now in the books. I don’t have anything too exciting to report for now. March will have more of the same, with a Who’s Simon Defending Now? on Tuesday. I’ve decided that the monthly feature will take up the last full week of every month from now on, meaning the 23rd through the 27th for March.

As for album reviews, there are none I want to change at this time.

Also, upon request, here are the albums I’m currently planning on reviewing for next month: Chris Cornell, Neko Case, U2, Handsome Furs, Peter Bjorn & John, Mastodon, MF Doom (recently renamed just DOOM), Swan Lake and PJ Harvey & John Parish. This list will probably expand as more new albums come to my attention, but there’s a 99% chance all these will be written about during March.

Thanks to everyone who’s been reading!

Breakup Albums, Pt. 5: Life's Just Not Fair

Artist: Of Montreal

Album: Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer?

Year: 2007

Hissing Fauna is probably the most bizarre and confusing breakup album I’ve talked about this week. Much of this comes from the fact that it’s not exactly a true breakup album. Instead, it chronicles a type of “imaginary breakup” in the mind of band leader Kevin Barnes. Although he was certainly going through a rough patch with his wife Nina at the time of recording, Barnes hides a lot of his autobiographical lyrics behind a Ziggy Stardust-like persona, which he dubbed Georgie Fruit. The album’s songs tell the story of a shattering relationship, brought up by the narrator’s mental chemical imbalance, eventually creating a schism, separating the Georgie Fruit persona from Barnes (or so we assume). By using Georgie Fruit as his stand-in, Barnes becomes a fairly unreliable narrator; some details are probably truly inspired by his marital problems but others are complete fiction. However, quibbling about autobiographical details aside, the album succeeds at conjuring up a hyperactive, colorful, schizophrenic representation of the emotions associated with breaking up. The first words spoken on the album are “we just want to emote ‘till we’re dead,” delivered with Barnes’s trademark cheek. The highlights are unrelenting after that, ranging from “Heimdalsgate Like A Promethean Curse”, a glorious send up to being chemically dependent, to “She’s A Rejecter”, which lurches all over the place as the Georgie Fruit ego (or is it Barnes? We don’t know! Ahhh!) lashes out at “the girl that left me bitter.” Strangest of all is the twelve-minute epic “The Past Is A Grotesque Animal”, which sounds like the most personal expression of heartache and frustration on the album. As Barnes explains it, it’s during this song that he is transformed into Georgie and, listening to the song, you can hear the story being told. “We want our movie to be beautiful, not realistic,” is his appraisal of the relationship as a whole. Whether this is true or not, whether we’re listening to Barnes or Georgie, it’s a fantastic song about the problems that tear relationships apart.

Artist: Kanye West

Album: 808s And Heartbreak

Year: 2008

In 2006, I saw Kanye live in Seattle. This was a year after Late Registration came out and he was on top of the fucking world. He was so impossibly confident, swaggering around and soaking in the attention, that he seemed almost unbearably egotistic. He seemed totally untouchable. Fast forward to the 2008 Grammy Awards. His mother Donda had just died from complications surrounding plastic surgery. He’d been plagued with unrelenting media attention which blew everything he said (most of which were, admittedly, crazy) way out of proportion. Here he was, performing two songs at the Grammys and his transformation on stage was terrifying. Instead of the buoyant confidence I saw two years earlier, he was intense and jerky, channeling all his energy into the floor with a vicious stomp. He sneered the lyrics at the crowd, before abruptly changing moods for a spectral version of “Mama” in tribute. He was a completely different creature. When 808s came out at the end of that year, everyone seemed surprised by the shift in artistic direction, but I feel anyone who had really noticed the ways Kanye had changed over the years saw it coming. On 808s, he’s also reeling from a broken engagement and separation from fiancée Alexis Phifer, which creates two different levels of broken love: a romantic one and a filial one. The music is ghostly and minimal, favoring deep bass thuds and icy synth lines slicing through the fog of emotions Kanye is surrounding himself with. Kanye dehumanizes his voice with an AutoTune effect, further isolating himself in a cocoon of loneliness. The bitterness towards Alexis shows in tracks like “Heartless”, while the loss of his mother can be heard in the resigned weariness of “Street Lights” or “Coldest Winter”. There are moments of anger on 808s, along with personal sadness and loneliness and all the rest of the usual sentiments on breakup albums, but what comes through the most is grief. 808s is an album of mourning, both for the loss of a relationship and the loss of a mother.

Breakup Albums, Pt. 4: Waiting For That Feeling

Artist: Blur

Album: 13

Year: 1999

Major breakups are confusing. They can rattle everything you’ve taken for granted, forcing you to deal with circumstances you might not be prepared for. Few albums capture this uncertainty better than Blur’s 13. Their frontman, Damon Albarn, was one half of the Britpop power couple of the mid-90s, enjoying a relationship with Elastica’s Justine Frischmann for most of the decade. However, since both were high-profile leaders of high-profile bands, the two struggled with finding personal time together. As Britpop began to suffocate under its own success and the Elastica camp dabbled with heroin use, the Albarn-Frischmann relationship deteriorated beyond repair. The breakup shattered Albarn, whose infatuation with Justine was never in doubt. All this was channeled into 13, particularly two of its singles, “Tender” and “No Distance Left To Run”. Both vividly describe his sadness, loneliness, confusion and, eventually, acceptance of the split. As if that wasn’t enough, Albarn was also growing apart from the rest of his bandmates by 1999, particularly guitarist Graham Coxon. 13 is the first Blur album that doesn’t sound even remotely coherent, which is understandable, given that Albarn was pulling the band in one direction and Coxon in another. The seeds of electronic experimentation Albarn would later cultivate with Gorillaz were sown here with tracks like “Battle”, while Coxon’s later guitar-centric albums were foreshadowed by “Bugman” and similar tracks. The album sounds schizophrenic and disjointed, but also very raw and uninhibited. Lots of ideas and emotions were flying around and Blur managed to distill them down into their most artistic album.

Artist: Beck

Album: Sea Change

Year: 2002

Throughout this week, we’ve seen albums driven by anger, loneliness and confusion. These are all important emotions associated with breakups, but in terms of absolute, numbing sadness, no album can touch Beck’s 2002 masterpiece, Sea Change. Beck has a reputation for constantly changing his sound, but Sea Change still surprised many people when it was released. Instead of the playful nonsense of “Loser” or the hip-hop/indie rock mashups on his album Odelay, Sea Change collects twelve slow, minor-key, country-inflected tunes. Beck sounds like he’s getting in touch with his inner Neil Young, brushing off an old copy of Harvest and trying his damdest to emulate Young’s tender-hayseed atmosphere. The end of Beck’s nine-year-long relationship with designer Leigh Limon is cited as the inspiration for the material on the album, most of which were written the week after the breakup. And while you feel bad for Beck’s loss, the songs he wrote are truly unmatched by anything else he’d done before or since. The resigned irony of “Guess I’m Doin’ Fine” is heartbreaking, while dark string sections give “Lonesome Tears” and “Round The Bend” an ominous and bleak feel. “We don’t have to worry,” says Beck in a distant, detached voice, but the mood is so black that you can’t help but feel concerned. He sounds utterly broken throughout this record, especially since his previous album was the sexy, funky Midnite Vultures. The change is jarring to anyone who has followed Beck’s career over the years. He followed Sea Change with 2005’s Guero, proving he could still have fun and rock out, but Sea Change showed the range and emotion Beck was capable of if he put his mind to it. The album may represent one of his lowest moments of his life, but it’s unquestionably the highpoint of his musical career.

Breakup Albums, Pt. 3: This Ain't About Regret

Artist: Afghan Whigs

Album: Gentlemen

Year: 1993

Remember what I said last time about emotional gutpunch albums? Well, Gentlemen is one of those. From the impossibly ironic title down, the album is one seething pile of caustic hatred and rage, aimed directly in the face of frontman Greg Dulli’s first adult love (her name was Kris). Gentlemen is completely unrelenting in its aggressive assault, with even the softest songs taking no prisoners and leaving a trail of destruction in their wake. The slow “Be Sweet” is melted apart halfway through by an acidic guitar solo from Rick McCollum, while “My Curse” is so broken and fragile, Dulli couldn’t even bring himself to sing it in the studio, instead relying on a friend, Marcy Mays, to sing the vocals. However, the heart of the album lies in the two peaks of poison-spitting anger near the beginning of the album: the title track and “Debonair”. “Gentlemen” is a jerking, shuddering diatribe about Dulli’s collapsing relationship, pointing fingers with lines like “we dragged it out so long this time, started to make each other sick” before concluding with “I waited for the joke, it never did arrive.” The band cranks up the guitars, with McCollum adding lacerating little guitar sproings throughout the bridge. On any other album, this would be as good as it gets, but Gentlemen has one last knockout punch with “Debonair”. A melodramatic tour de force driven by two key guitar riffs (one scratchy rhythm bit and a furiously descending lead), “Debonair” internalizes all the angst and rage. How can you argue with a song that has a chorus of “tonight I go to hell, for what I’ve done to you?” Five of the hardest hitting songs on this album, including “Gentlemen” and “Debonair” were recorded on Dulli’s twenty-eighth birthday, while he was cruising out of his mind on coke, trying to impress a stripper he’d brought back to the studio. You can literally hear his vocal chords tearing themselves apart by the end of the session (“Fountain And Fairfax”) but, in an album so obsessed with flaws and self-abuse, nothing could be more fitting.

Artist: Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds

Album: The Boatman's Call

Year: 1997

Oh lord. A Nick Cave breakup album? This is going to be a howling, apocalyptic mess, right? Cave is scary enough when he’s perfectly happy. Dear god, how unhinged would he be if he was heart-broken and consumed with anger? Well, The Boatman’s Call answers that question. As it turns out, Cave’s heartbreak takes the form of twelve stately, beautiful, piano-led ballads. Those expecting the usual bloodthirsty guitars and screaming were thrown for a loop when this album came out in 1997. Cave had two different women on his mind when he was writing these songs: Viviane Carneiro, with whom he had a son several years earlier and fellow dramatic singer PJ Harvey, with whom he had just finished a brief relationship. These two exes inspired Cave to write some of the calmest, most restrained music of his entire career for The Boatman’s Call (not that it has much competition). There’s plenty of the usual breakup album sentiment (“People Ain’t No Good”), but Cave’s a sucker for stories and he fills the album with his usual mess of Biblical references (“There Is A Kingdom”), ponderings about God (“Into My Arms”) and so on. However, women weren’t the only things Cave was breaking up with at the time. Following this album, Cave took a full three years off from recording to completely wean himself off the intense drug habit he’d cultivated since the 80s. The Boatman’s Call, as its title suggests, is full of the awareness that life is not eternal. By 1997, Cave was starting to realize that, one of these days, he was going to die and that speeding that process up with reckless living and music to match probably wasn’t the best idea.

Breakup Albums, Pt. 2: Diving For Your Memory

Artist: Richard & Linda Thompson

Album: Shoot Out The Lights

Year: 1982

That cover says it all. English guitar-slinger Richard Thompson, backed into the corner of the room, with a picture of his wife Linda on the wall. A single lightbulb swings above him. The wallpaper is peeling. And scrawled in red is this album’s title: Shoot Out The Lights, one of the most emotional breakup albums of all time. He was probably the most highly regarded English guitarist not named Eric Clapton and an ex-member of folk-rock pioneers Fairport Convention. She was a British folk singer with a silvery voice. They were married in 1972 and proceeded to record album after album of quality rock music. But by 1982, things had fallen apart. Linda was pregnant, their records weren’t selling and Richard was having an affair with his tour organizer. Their first attempt at recording new material in 1980 had been disastrous. No record label would touch them. Finally, in 1982, they managed to sign with the tiny Hannibal label and tried to record their songs again. The results were absolutely astonishing. Although all but two of the songs on the album were written before the marriage was in its death throes, the wild emotions flying everywhere gave the songs a strong, immediate edge. “Walking On A Wire” was originally just a pretty ballad. Now it was a weary, sighing lament to failing love. “Don’t Renege On Our Love” was transformed from a midtempo toe-tapper to a damning indictment of an ungrateful partner. And then there was the title track: five-and-a-half minutes of razor-sharp guitar slashes, soundtracking one of the most harrowing tales of paranoia ever put to tape. To this day, Shoot Out The Lights sounds raw and wiry, a record so stripped to its bare essentials that the emotional turmoil beneath it all rises to the surface. The marriage was doomed, but, in its last gasps, Richard and Linda Thompson delivered a truly incredible album.

Artist: The Go-Betweens

Album: 16 Lovers Lane

Year: 1988

Most breakup albums are angry. They’re filled with betrayal, rage, loneliness and bitter resentment. But, in 1988, Australia’s Go-Betweens managed to pull off one of the greatest anomalies in music: the graceful breakup album. Grant McLennan, one of the Go-Betweens two major songwriters, had discovered violinist Amanda Brown playing in a café in 1986. She was promptly invited into the band and, quickly, she and McLennan were an item. As any student of Fleetwood Mac knows by now, inter-band relationships are almost always doomed to failure. Sure enough, McLennan and Brown were no exception. However, the way they broke up and managed to capture those feelings in song is unique. Instead of the usual backstabbing and accusations, McLennan’s songs on 16 Lovers Lane reflect a mature sadness, quietly pining for what his relationship used to be. The opening track declares “love goes on anyway!” (complete with exclamation point). This type of sentiment continues throughout the album, from the gorgeous, heart-wrenching “Quiet Heart”, during which McLennan cries “I tried to tell you, I can only say this when we’re apart,” to the lovely, breezy “Streets Of Your Town”. The latter song is a particularly wonderful moment, as McLennan and Brown sing a calm duet with each other, in stark contrast to the figure-pointing and manipulative bullshit on albums like Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours. 16 Lovers Lane is a thoroughly thoughtful and restrained album, reflecting the maturity of the songwriters behind it. Even at its most intense, with songs like “Is There Anything I Could Do?” the focus is internal and constructive, as the song’s protagonist tries to reason through his moment of loss. Although the emotional gutpunches of more bitter breakup albums are thrilling, this album shows that there are other, equally rewarding ways of expressing those feelings.

Breakup Albums, Pt. 1: You're An Idiot, Babe

February is, of course, the month of Valentine’s Day. Therefore, I can think of nothing more appropriate for this month’s feature than breakup albums. I find breakup albums to be one of the most fascinating and timeless musical trends around. Ever since there’s been heartbreak and loneliness, people have been channeling those feelings into music. However, there are a few albums that stand out from the rest. These are the albums that tell very specific stories about relationships ending, forever marking that time in the musician’s life. I’d like to spend this week discussing ten of these great breakup albums, looking at the stories they tell and how these artists choose to manifest their heartache.

Artist: Bob Dylan
Album: Blood On The Tracks
Year: 1975

No discussion of breakup albums can begin without mentioning Bob Dylan’s Blood On The Tracks. Much has been said about how much his wife Sara and their separation at the time influenced the songs on this album. Dylan himself has maintained that they’re not supposed to be autobiographical. However, the fact that he wrote ten exquisite songs about broken relationships when he himself was suffering through a broken relationship seems too appropriate to be accidental. The album opens with “Tangled Up In Blue”, and from the very first lines, Dylan is already wistful about his missing love: “early one morning, the sun was shining, I was laying in bed, wondering if she’d changed at all, if her hair was still red.” From there, Dylan jumps back and forth, examining his broken heart from every different angle. The detached, confused “Simple Twist Of Fate” ponders how all of this happened and where it has gone, while “Shelter From The Storm” is impossibly tender and nostalgic, remembering the comfort and love “in another lifetime.” Dylan tackles all of these songs with his usual peerless lyricism, but seldom before this album had Dylan been so raw or exposed. By 1975, Highway 61 Revisted was ten years old. It also marked the ten-year anniversary of his marriage to Sara. Dylan had lived and experienced much since his crazed 60s days and you can hear that on Blood On The Tracks. He sounds older and wiser than the cheeky imp who plugged his electric guitar in on a July evening in 1965 and scared a bunch of folkies shitless. However, he still finds time to record the most vicious and pointed song of his entire career. “Idiot Wind” is virtually unparalleled when it comes to capturing the flailing rage you experience when a long-term relationship ends. The third chorus hits the hardest, with Dylan positively spitting out the words “idiot wind, blowing like a circle around my skull.” Few lyrics are as damning as “you’re an idiot, babe, it’s a wonder that you still know how to breathe.” It’s the perfect centerpiece to the golden standard of breakup albums.

Artist: Fleetwood Mac
Album: Rumours
Year: 1977

No matter what you personally feel about Fleetwood Mac’s music, their 1977 masterpiece Rumours is another cornerstone in the grand tradition of breakup albums. In the years leading up to this album, it’s truly terrifying how many relationships were disintegrating within the band. Bassist John McVie and keyboardist Christine McVie were divorcing, while guitarist Lindsey Buckingham and singer/gypsy waif Stevie Nicks were ending their own relationship. To top it all off, drummer Mick Fleetwood was also getting divorced, although he was the only member smart enough to be with someone outside of the band (also, everyone was coked out of their minds). Of course, anyone who knew that Fleetwood Mac had two couples in it knew the day it all fell apart was inevitable, but few could have predicted it would all happen at once. Needless to say, all this angst, pain and jealousy found its way into the songwriting. “Second Hand News” introduces the record’s themes, with Buckingham crooning “someone has taken my place.” Moments of optimism (“Don’t Stop”) are balanced by cruel attacks like “Go Your Own Way”. The latter song is particularly noteworthy, since Lindsey Buckingham has the balls to make his ex sing harmony on a song in which he declares “loving you isn’t the right thing to do.” I can’t even imagine what these recording sessions were like, with people recording bitter songs about people who are sitting right across the goddamn room! Thankfully, everything (and everybody) finally comes together for “The Chain”, the only song all five band members ever wrote together and probably the finest song on Rumours. Driven by a lurking, ominous bassline, it shows the entire band finding a way to put their personal drama aside for four-and-a-half minutes to create a great moment of music, united by their collective heartbreak. Rumours stands as the strongest warning ever about mixing business and pleasure.

Too Little, Too Late: The Grammys, Two Weeks Later

Artist: Robert Plant & Alison Krauss

Album: Raising Sand

Year: 2007

Grade: 2 pretzels

It’s been two weeks since the Grammy Awards and the irrational hatred I inevitably feel after watching them has subsided. I promised to listen to Robert Plant & Alison Krauss’s Raising Sand, the album that ran away with five Grammys, including Album Of The Year, making it the crowned champion of this year’s awards. So, without further ado, here we go.

I’ll be honest here: I didn’t want to like this record. I was annoyed that it won so many awards, so, being biased, I went into this album looking for things to criticize about it. Is this fair to the album? Absolutely not. Am I entitled to do this? You betcha! However, as soon as I started the album, I realized there was a flaw in my whole plan: I really, really liked the first song. Even now, two weeks later, I still enjoy listening to “Rich Woman”, the smoky leadoff song that won the award for Best Pop Collaboration With Vocals. It’s a dark, mysterious, subdued…hey look! All three of those are things I like in music! Are they gonna maintain this throughout the album? Did the Grammys get something right here?

Answer: nope! Any goodwill “Rich Woman” had earned this album in my mind was erased by the impossibly dull country-blues clunker that followed it, “Killing The Blues”. I’ll point out that this was another song from the album that won a specific award (this time, it was best Country Collaboration). Unfortunately, “Killing The Blues” is very, very boring. Worst of all, it makes Robert Plant sound old. Of all the things missing from this album (originality, inspiration, etc), the lack of true Zeppelin-like vocal heroics is the most glaring. Of course, Plant is sixty years old, but numerous PBS specials have proven that he can still wail like he used to if needed. Without his golden voice to offset Krauss’s pure, slightly irritating croon, Raising Sand feels flat and detached from the emotions in the songs.

Perhaps there’s a reason Plant and Krauss seem so distanced from the songs: they didn’t write them. A quick look through the album notes reveals that producer T-Bone Burnett is the real creative force at work here. Besides producing the whole thing, he chose the grab-bag of covers that Plant and Krauss tackle. He also played virtually all the guitar parts on every song. When seen through that light, Raising Sand is quite an accomplishment for Burnett. His production and musical choices are inspired, favoring a stripped down, skeletal sound that exposes the songs he’s covering. Unfortunately, it also exposes the weary vocal performances his singers are turning in.

It’s interesting that the Grammys have awarded Album Of The Year to covers albums two years in a row (last year, it was Herbie Hancock with his insipid record of Joni Mitchell covers). While I don’t want to say anything bad about the artistic merit of covers albums, we do live in an era were originality in music is treasured. On top of that, Raising Sand isn’t even a very good cover album. Like most, it has a few tracks where the artists manage to transcend the originals (their take on Tom Waits’s “Trampled Rose” is another highlight). However, all too often, they simply retread through their source material, without putting any unique touch on the songs at hand. This album has moments of undeniable brilliance, but they are too few and too far between for this album to be truly considered the Album Of The Year for 2008. Shame on you, Grammys.

Everyone's A Critic, Part 2

I wanted to issue one last thought on the subject of the ethics of music criticism. I’d like to thank my friend Sam for posting a fantastic response to my original essay. One of the points he brought up, however, I don’t exactly agree with. He drew issue with the idea of needing to persuade others to agree with your opinions, instead suggesting that everyone join together and embrace their different opinions to improve the overall discourse about art. While this sounds great on a very idealistic level, I don’t feel it’s completely practical for a couple of reasons.

First, as Sam did point out, this kind of exchange of ideas can really only happen with people who really care about art and music. Expecting a casual music fan to devote the time and energy to these things is absurd. They have actual lives to live, unlike people like me, who just blog way too much when they should be doing constructive things. Casual music fans count on critics to do the heavy-lifting when it comes to music criticism.

Second, I don’t think media criticism is completely benign. With so many opinions and egos jostling around, critics do develop a competitive sense, trying to make sure their opinions are the ones that last. I’m borderline obsessed with something one of my teachers refers to as “the game” in art. “The game” is the process through which we decide what “the greatest albums of all time" are or other such things. Certain people’s opinions have “won” over time, creating the sort of “Hall Of Famer” albums we deal with today (Sgt. Pepper’s, Pet Sounds, Highway 61 Revisted, Nevermind, etc). I want my voice to be one of the many that dictates what albums become Hall Of Famers in the future. This is the competitive element of the whole process and my goal as a critic is to try to be on the “winning” side of things.

As always, if you’ve got thoughts to share, please comment away!

Ex-Trucker Goes Rogue

Artist: Jason Isbell And The 400 Unit
Album: Jason Isbell And The 400 Unit
Year: 2009
Grade: 3.5 pretzels

Anyone who’s been around me for the past year knows of my undying love for the Drive-By Truckers, Alabama’s finest southern rock band. Since first hearing them just over a year ago, I’ve become totally enamored with their distinct blend of country rock, blistering guitars and southern history. Few bands, from Alabama or otherwise, are as smart, passionate and as viscerally rewarding as the Truckers. As I listened to their records, I began to imagine personas to go with the three different songwriters I heard singing. Patterson Hood, whose songs dominate all of their albums, was the strongest personality, a benevolent-but-belligerent Alabama man with a guitar and a rage against all the negative stereotypes the south is saddled with. Mike Cooley was another character, with his heavy southern twang and confident songs about southern life. But it was the third voice I found the most interesting. It seemed to be the best storyteller, with songs like “The Day John Henry Died” and “Danko/Manuel” using the stories of John Henry or the Band to shine a light on bigger problems and the realities of living in the south. Compared to Hood and Cooley’s gravely drawling, this voice was bright, clear and distinct. This voice belonged to Jason Isbell and right before I started listening to the Truckers, he chose to leave the band.

Isbell’s split from the Drive-By Truckers was a nice, amicable one and the band proved they can manage just fine without him by recording 2008’s stunning Brighter Than Creation’s Dark. However, Isbell’s style of songwriting cannot be replaced in the Truckers. The holy trinity of Hood, Cooley and Isbell worked so well because each complimented each other’s styles, providing different shades to a similar set of experiences, with just enough distinction to keep things interesting. Once Isbell is taken out of the equation, the Truckers sound slightly unbalanced. Hood and Cooley (and, on Creation’s Dark, Isbell’s ex-wife, Shonna Tucker) continue to write great songs, but breaking them up with a few of Isbell’s engaging stories would have been fantastic.

The opposite applies to Jason Isbell And The 400 Unit, Isbell’s second solo album. His songwriting is still in full force, especially on the barn-burning rocker “Good” and the gloriously melancholy “Sunstroke”. Isbell’s got a fantastic ability to work small, minor-key riffs into strong southern rock songs, evoking all the faded glory and contradictory attitudes that define the south. “However Long” charges forward with a chorus of “however long the night, the dawn will break again,” capturing all the optimism of our new Obama-led era. However, as strong as the writing is, the album feels slightly empty without the more direct, confrontational antics of Hood or Cooley. Isbell is a great songwriter, but without his ex-bandmates, he quickly becomes just another southern songwriter, aiming at broad targets and only occasionally hitting anything. In the Drive-By Truckers, Isbell’s songs opened their albums up to encompass the entire south, but here, without his fellow songwriters as a safety net, there’s nothing to keep him tied down to specifics.

Thankfully, Isbell has assembled a very strong band behind him, the 400 Unit. Musically, the songs are strong, clear and punchy, not unlike his work with the Truckers. Isbell and Browan Lollar recreate much of the multi-guitar interplay that the Truckers mastered, while the solid rhythm section grounds everything nicely. You definitely get the impression that these guys could be playing in the corner of some Alabama bar, perfectly confident but not demanding the audience’s attention. Isbell has always been a guy who lets his songs speak for him and he hasn’t changed a thing for this record. Sadly, without his old songwriting partners, it becomes too easy to miss the beauty of his songs. When they aren’t surrounded by contrasting material, they sound like just so many routine country rock songs.

Note: Sadly, none of the songs I referenced have videos on YouTube. However, I did find one decent live clip of a song from this album. To give you a taste of what I’m talking about sounds like, I present “The Blue”.

The End Of Two Eras

A couple of big announcements were made this week in the music community. First of all, Trent Reznor left a slightly cryptic message on the Nine Inch Nails homepage, saying that “it’s time to make NIN disappear for a while.” Is this an official breakup of the band? Well…nobody’s really sure, especially since Nine Inch Nails, the band, is ultimately just Reznor himself. He’s been releasing NIN records for exactly twenty years now and he says that he’s onboard for one last tour before NIN “disappears.” Being somewhat of a NIN fan, my initial reaction was something along the lines of “NO, TRENT, NO!! WE LUV YOU!!” However, after thinking about it for a couple days, I’m starting to think Trent is doing something very smart here. The last two NIN records, while being very strong, showed very little new musical growth. I’ve written in the past about how I can’t believe Reznor can make musically treading water sound as good as he does. But, after a point, you’ve got to move on. I think Trent understands this and is wrapping up NIN so he can do other things without his old band hanging over him. Knowing Trent, I’m sure they’ll be awesome. (Those interested can read his full message here.)

Meanwhile, indie stronghold Touch & Go Records announced that they are going to stop releasing new music and are disbanding their distribution arm. While they have said they hope to start putting out music again in the future, when they can get their financial matters in order, the idea of Touch & Go not putting new music out there is terrifying. These are the people who gave the world Big Black, the Jesus Lizard, the Butthole Surfers, the Dirty Three, Yeah Yeah Yeahs and TV On The Radio, just to name a few. Touch & Go has always been a reliable source of edgy, risky music with a lot to offer. I mean, these are the people who deal with Steve Albini on a regular basis. Not folks you wanna fuck with. Hopefully, the loss of their distribution department will be fairly painless and they can get back to releasing great music.

The Worst Of Bad Band Names...Or Is It?

Artist: ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead

Album: The Century Of Self

Year: 2009

Grade: 3.5 pretzels

Across the vast spectrum of band names, there are good ones, there are bad ones and then there’s …And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead. It’s awkward, impossibly long and, sure enough, the band members insist that the ellipsis always be there. It’s such a rough name that it almost crosses over into being awesome. Almost. For the record, the band says they took the phrase from an ancient Mayan chant, but, somehow, this just makes me angrier at them. I Love You But I’ve Chosen Darkness is the only band that gets away with shenanigans like this in my mind.

In terms of actual music, Trail Of Dead (no, I will not keep writing the whole thing out!) go for broke with huge, monolithic slabs of noise. The guitars are huge, the drums are huge, the keyboards are huge…are you starting to see the pattern here? In 2002, they established themselves with the well-received Source Tags & Codes, before a string of disappointing albums cost them much of the goodwill they had built up, along with their record contract. The Century Of Self was recorded more-or-less on their own, before a small imprint called Justice Records took the gamble and picked it up.

Now, when I sat down to write this review, I fully intended to rip this album apart. After the first listen, I dismissed Trail Of Dead as arena-obsessed guitar freaks with a ridiculous name. But as I sit here, playing the record for a second time, I can’t in good conscience say I don’t like most of what I’m hearing. The huge guitar riff-itude on “Isis Unveiled” is actually all kinds of awesome, even after the band gets lost in an overlong bridge during the middle two minutes of the song. “Halcyon Days” sounds like the loudest Decemberists song ever. Is it all somewhat ridiculous? Well, yes, but perhaps not in a terribly bad way. Trail Of Dead certainly do love their prog-rock noodling, but they manage to rock mightily at the same time. Bands have been trying to reconcile those two urges for decades. I guess I have to tip my hat to Trail Of Dead for finally getting the combination right.

Before listening to any of their music, I had already made up my mind about Trail Of Dead. I knew they played loud, arena-ready guitar music and I knew they had a stupid name. Putting two and two together, I assumed they were some humorless, indulgent band that I would hate unconditionally. See kids, this is what happens when you insist on elipses! But, after listening to The Century Of Self and spending some quality time on their Wikipedia page, my opinion towards the band is softening. They certainly aren’t my favorite band in the world, but this world needs more strong guitar music. I commend Trail Of Dead for filling that niche with a minimum of stupidity. Also, Wikipedia tells me that their name “is merely an ongoing joke.” My god! They have a sense of humor after all!

The Best Of Bad Band Names

Artist: The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart

Album: The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart

Year: 2009

Grade: 4.5 pretzels

Picking the right band name is incredibly important. More and more, bands these days don’t seem to understand this, when they pick impossibly unwieldy names like I Set My Friends On Fire or Scary Kids Scaring Kids (these names come courtesy of the Warped Tour website). As a general rule, anything that can stand alone as a sentence should be avoided. Bands apparently don’t realize that they are saddling their entire future careers with these names. On top of that, many people are put off by these sprawling titles, since they virtually reek of pretentiousness. Bands with bad names start on the wrong foot. They are already fighting an uphill battle just to be taken seriously as a band, let alone considered great music.

The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart have managed to transcend this in my mind. I will probably never know what exactly compelled them to pick such a cringe-inducing name, but I can sleep easier knowing that they’ve managed to record a wonderfully compelling record of bouncy, dense guitar-pop. Taking the best bits from the Jesus & Mary Chain, the Stone Roses and Belle & Sebastian before putting them all in a blender and hitting frappe, The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart succeed despite their name.

There’s been a noticeable renaissance of shoegaze music lately, particularly the band Deerhunter and their assorted side projects. But while these bands have certainly captured the dense swirl of guitars that defines the genre, they do so at the expense of the thrilling momentum that drove shoegaze’s finest, like My Bloody Valentine or Ride. The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart remedy that, taking shoegaze out of the hands of avant-guard guitar noodlers and back to its poppier roots. Instead of wasting time crafting exquisite, shimmering guitar sculptures, the songs come tumbling forward with all the sun-clipped exuberance of early Stone Roses or Happy Mondays. It all sounds undeniably young, fun and joyful.

It also helps that TPOBPAH (ouch…) have some solid vocals soaring over all the tumult. Taking a page out of the Belle & Sebastian songbook, frontman Kip Berman has refined a sort of Stuart Murdoch-esque purr, that delivers lines like “this love is fucking right” like he was saying, “yes, sir, I’d like a lemon wedge for my tea, please.” With keyboardist Peggy Wang providing some nice female harmonies, the vocals provide some calmness to counteract the charging guitar and bass. There’s nothing radical here in terms of subject matter (songs have titles like “Young Adult Friction” and “A Teenager In Love”), but TPOBPAH deliver them with such energy and assuredness that it’s hard not to get lost in the positive vibes that come flooding out of every song.

The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart seem to be following closely in the footsteps of Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. Both were bands laboring under horrific names before some crucial patronage from the almighty Pitchfork brought them to the national eye. Both manage to create strong enough music that we forgive them for putting more than four words in their band names. CYHSY became a huge indie phenomenon and I’m expecting TPOBPAH to do the same. But let observers beware: just name your band something sensible. It’ll be much easier in the long run.

Everyone's A Critic

As anyone who follows the comments on my blog knows, my friend Sam Johnston challenged me to write something explaining my views about “good art”, “good music” and the general role of music reviewers. As it just so happens, this has been something I’ve been discussing with many people over the last year or so and my thoughts have been distilled down to the point where I feel they’re more-or-less coherent (unlike this sentence). That said, the following is definitely somewhat abstract and weird, in a sort of “wow, that’s really deep…man…*puff of weed smoke*” kind of way. I promise that I’m not just bullshitting here and that I’ve actually spent some time considering this.

By having the word “art” in our language, we imply that there are some things that are “art” and some that aren’t “art”. We use words to draw the lines separating one thing/emotion/ concept/whatever from the vast array of things/ emotions/concepts/whatevers that we can experience or conceptualize. In order for a word to mean anything, it has to convey what makes a specific thing different from everything else. We understand that “dog” means a hairy barking animal instead of a tall, leafy plant. If we saw a tall, leafy plant, its lack of hair and barking (despite having bark *rimshot*) would tell us it was definitely not a dog. We would then remember that tall, leafy plants are usually known as “trees.” Aren’t words wonderful?

The problem with “art” is that we (by which I mean humans who speak languages with words the mean “art”) have never quite understood what makes “art” different from everything else. There was a time (hundreds of years ago), when people could tell you, without hesitation, whether something was “art” or not. Now, post-60s, post-modern art, post-performance art and post-everything in-between, the boundaries of “art” have expanded so much they aren’t visible. The easiest thing to say at this point is “everything is art”…but again, that only really sounds good if you follow it with a massive bong hit. I think everyone knows that, as we go through our lives, there are things we consider “art” and things that we don’t. We just can’t get everyone to agree on these things.

Instead, I like to say that “anything CAN BE art.” “Art” is a type of potential lying in essentially anything, waiting for someone to come along and realize it. Nothing is intrinsically “artistic.” You need someone to come along and say “that’s art” for its art-ness to come into being.

Of course, a minute later, someone could come over and say, “Fuck you, man! That’s not art at all!” An argument would arise, points of view would be shared and, in the best case scenario, someone would eventually persuade the other that their view, whether this thing was “art” or “not-art,” was the better one.

This is where critics come in. I see my role as a music critic as someone who’s really good at persuading people. If nothing is intrinsically “artistic”, then nothing can be intrinsically “good art” or “bad art.” Instead, things can be “good art…in my opinion” or “bad art…in my opinion.” The people with opinions then have the responsibility to defend those opinions or change them if they encounter more compelling ones. A critic’s job is to have opinions. Therefore, it should also be their job to persuade people that those opinions are valid.

As the Internet has proven, you don’t have to be an “expert” to be a critic. This blog is a testament to that. I’m not a classically trained musician. I haven’t spent years in the record business. I’m a twenty-year-old college student who just likes listening to every record in sight. But I have opinions and from there, I can consider myself a critic. What separates a good critic from a bad critic is the ability to articulate those opinions well enough that you persuade people that your opinions are ones they should agree with.

Here on Pretzel Logic, there’s not a set criteria for what will get a good review from me as opposed to a bad one. It’s easy to say that “innovative” music is good, or “original” music is good, etc etc. But, in my mind, that’s only so much hand-waving. At the end of the day, it comes down to whether or not I like it, simple as that. Now, there are many ways that I might like something (based on sound, context, what I had for breakfast, etc), but it all boils down to whether I want to listen to it again.

From there, it’s just a matter of articulating the variety of thoughts that led me to decide whether I personally like this album or not. Hopefully, my reviews help give you, gentle reader, an insight into what pros and cons stand out for me for any given album. In a perfect world, you’d consider what I had to say, listen to the album, formulate your opinion and then compare it to mine.

Now, whether you agree with me or not is mostly irrelevant. You can have whatever opinions you want, since you are now as much of a critic as I am. But, if I’m a particularly good critic, most of the time you would find yourself agreeing with me, or changing your initial opinions based on observations in my review or information you didn’t know. A good critic has opinions you’ve grown to trust.

I don’t know if I’m a good critic. All I know is that I have opinions and I try my best to articulate them. Hopefully, I’ve persuaded a few people to listen to new music, or hear music they already knew in a new light. But, understand that when I review an album, no matter how many pretzels I’m awarding it, I’m not saying it’s inherently “good” or “bad”. If many critics come together in agreement over a certain album, we could, just maybe, begin to say whether something was “good” or “bad”, but that would still marginalize any minority opinions. To be safe, all any critic can say is whether they like something or not and try to get anyone who cares to agree with them.

What do you think? I find this whole issue fascinating and if you’ve got opinions about opinions, I’d love to hear them. Comment away, readers!

The Unbearable Blandness Of Brindie Rock

Artist: Glasvegas

Album: Glasvegas

Year: 2008

Grade: 2 pretzels

It’s about time I confronted something I’ve wanted to talk about for a while. It’s something that lurks around virtually every corner. It keeps me up at night. It haunts me in my dreams (that is, after it finally lets me sleep). I am, of course, talking about Brindie rock.

“Brindie rock” is my catchall term for what is often called “British indie/alternative rock” elsewhere. I use Brindie rock to refer to basically any English guitar-based band that sprung up in the wake of the “rock revival” around the beginning of the new millennium (The Strokes, The White Stripes, etc). I usually mark The Libertines as the first true Brindie rock band and Franz Ferdinand as the band that really put the genre on the map. Just like Britpop in the 90s, these bands seem quasi-united by a desire to make great rock music from within their own country (or, at least, the U.K), instead of importing American rock.

The problem with Brindie rock is that, while their ranks have swelled to epic proportions in recent years, there is very little actual depth. The genre (as I define it), has become increasingly stagnant, with fewer and fewer new ideas being added to the overall formula. Bands like Arctic Monkeys and Art Brut set some very high standards for English rock several years ago, but the bands that sprouted up since sound like they’re simply retreading those ideas over and over again. Decent bands (Kaiser Chiefs) turned into mediocre bands (Editors) which, in turn, turned into completely forgettable bands (The Enemy). Throughout it all, the English music press has treated each new release with the same gushing tone, declaring every new band as “the next Beatles” or whatever hyperbole their writers dreamed up the night before. This is where I start getting frustrated. I keep hearing about these amazing new British rock bands and they keep sounding worse and worse. Brindie rock is creatively in decline.

This brings me to Glasvegas. They’re a charmingly Scottish band from Glasgow and apparently they also like Las Vegas. They’re also the latest Brindie rock casualty. They sound more-or-less exactly like every other hype-laden British band you’ve heard in the past five years. Big guitars, big choruses, impossibly thick accents (Scottish this time) and ultimately unmemorable songs. All this would be fine if the English music press hadn’t saddled them with a truly mind-boggling amount of praise. Five major English music mags had this album in their top ten of the year. Three of those had it in the top five. Now, I understand that 2008 was a particularly slow year for music, but I guarantee they could have found at least ten albums better than this (speaking of which…this whole idea of “better” is complicated. Check back this weekend for a piece on “good” and “bad” in art and my personal ethics of music criticism).

I realize that most people reading this will say, “Simon, man, why do you care so much about what the British press says? Or any press whatsoever? Just listen to whatever you like, man.” While this is tempting, it would A) be giving me fewer things to rant and rave about here on Pretzel Logic, and B) undermine my whole approach to following music. The truth is that I care deeply about what people are told is good music and what isn’t. As I will explain in further detail this weekend, I think all music criticism is ultimately a matter of persuasion and that a music critic’s job should be persuading people that his or her ideas are valid. I want to have a hand in what people are told about music. I want my opinions to be added to the vast, seething stew of music journalism that will ultimately effect which albums we’re still talking about in twenty years. Music history is my passion and all I want is to help write it in the way I think it should be written. I don’t feel that Glasvegas and many of these other Brindie bands should be held up as the highlights of the late 2000s. The line in the sand is drawn.

This Is Your Brain. This Is Your Brain On Music.

Title: Musicophila

Author: Oliver Sacks

Year: 2007

If you’re anything like me, the idea of reading a book about how music and the brain interact sounds daunting and more than a little off-putting. When I first got this book (a Christmas gift), I eyed it warily, expecting it to be full of scientific abstract concepts and medical nonsense. To my amazement, however, it turned out to be a fascinating and charmingly written read, compiling a series of glorified anecdotes Oliver Sacks has collected over the course of his forty-plus year career as a neurologist.

The strength of the book lies in its pacing. Instead of throwing example after example at his readers, Sacks lets one or two individual stories say everything he needs about a specific subject. The chapters are nice and short, making the book easy to read before bed or before classes. However, despite their brevity, the chapters always feel fully explored, with few questions left unanswered in the reader’s mind. On the rare occasions when Sacks does veer into detailed medical jargon, he makes sure he explains everything adequately. You don’t have to be a neurologist to understand what he’s talking about here.

The range of subject matter is fascinating. Connections between music and seizures, music and Parkinson’s, music and schizophrenia…it’s all here. Some of the most interesting chapters explain the biological background to phenomena like absolute pitch and synesthesia (“seeing” certain musical notes, often in the form of color. “D-sharp is yellow”, etc). As much about music as it is about brains and biology, Musicophilia definatly gives you an interesting new way to appreciate music.

A Cry For Help

Artist: M. Ward

Album: Hold Time

Year: 2009

Grade: 3 pretzels

There must be something wrong with me.

I should be able to feel this album’s warm embrace. It should wrap around me like an oh-so-carefully-worn wool blanket, protecting me from the icy New England winter I’m currently living in. It should soothe the Grammy-induced pain in my heart. It should smell and taste like a glorious (and surprisingly appetizing) combination of chicken noodle soup and cookies. This is comfort music. It should make people feel good, assuring them that all their problems (yes, even that blasted economy) will be just fine.

I don’t feel that when I listen to this record. I feel bored. I need help.

M. Ward is, according to Wikipedia, “a singer-songwriter who rose to prominence in the Portland, Oregon music scene.” That sounds pretty good, right? We’ve got a Pacific Northwest connection. Of course everyone loves a good singer-songwriter. Plus, the album sounds like something that couldn’t go wrong: fourteen short tunes, sent out with open arms to spread joy and contentment. That sounds nice doesn’t it? Then why the fuck don’t I like it?

I can’t shake this feeling that M. Ward is, at the heart of the matter, interchangeable with virtually every other indie-folk, guitar-strumming troubadour. He’s got more press and those songs sure do sound purdy, but is there anything that really makes him…distinct? Perhaps, for M. Ward, simply being the go-to guy for Indie 101 is what makes him important. Somehow, in a field of seemingly identical baseball-cap-wearing songwriters, he’s been selected as the standout. He’s been chosen as the flag bearer for respected indie songwriters everywhere, conquering college radio stations and Starbucks with equal ease. And yet…he does nothing for me. I’m a terrible person.

Whatever the reason, M. Ward has sure made some impressive friends over the years, several of whom show up here on Hold Time. Although My Morning Jacket’s Jim James is sadly absent, alt-country supreme deity Lucinda Williams shows up on a fairly routine version of “Oh, Lonesome Me”, adding some much-appreciated scratchiness to M. Ward’s usual honey-soaked tones. Indie goddess Zooey Deschanel, his She & Him collaboration buddy, quietly sneaks into the back of “Never Had Nobody Like You” and “Rave On”. These are high-profile figures, so clearly M. Ward is doing something right. The trouble is, I’m still trying to figure out what exactly that is…

...And You Can Quote Me On That Smoothie: The 2009 Grammy Awards Coverage

Oh, the Grammys. That one time of year where the entire musical community gathers together to celebrate the best that music has to offer. It’s stars and it’s pioneers. Music we love today and will shape the sounds of tomorrow. Music that pushes the boundaries…

…what’s that?

Oh, we’re not doing that this year at the Grammys? That’s ridiculous! I’m sorry? We’ve never done that at the Grammys?

Well alright then.

Ok, all joking aside, I can’t help but watch the Grammys. Sure, they’re horrifically out of touch with just about everybody who cares about music on any level. Sure, their voting system is somewhat sketchy and is probably an astonishing conflict of interest. Sure, no one wants to see Sly Stone’s emaciated carcass being dragged around the stage. But, damn it, it’s the only award show music has. I’ve gotta watch.

That said, here’s a small sampling of the various unformed thoughts that ran through my head over the course of the epic 3+ hour broadcast.

1) Bono shouldn’t have his lyrics printed behind him. It just reveals how awkward they are. “Candy floss ice cream” indeed.
2) Whitney Houston is on a lot of drugs.
3) The Rock is not funny. The silence following his joke about “The Beatle Fighters” proves this (Paul McCartney and Dave Grohl were performing together, see…).
4) Paul McCartney and Samuel L. Jackson in one frame is the most incredible single frame of television I’ve ever seen.
5) When did Kid Rock start listening to so much gospel?
6) Introducing the Jonas Brothers by listing other great brother combinations, like, say, oh, you know, CAIN AND ABEL seems completely appropriate. *chuckle chuckle*
7) For a band that is supposedly reuniting, Blink-182 seem like they’re trying to stay as far away from each other as possible.
8) Katy Perry can’t sing. She also can’t dance. Or be graceful. She can, however, dress like a smoothie waiting to happen. We all have talents.
9) Why did Morgan Freeman introduce Kenny Chesney like he was the second coming of Jesus Christ?
10) T.I. + Kanye + Jay-Z + Lil’ Wayne + preggers M.I.A. = every kind of badass. Swagger like us….
11-20) I heart Radiohead.
21) Thom Yorke looked positively feral, stalking around the stage with long hair. He’ll fuck you up.
22) OBAMA GRAMMYS OMG WTF?!!!!
23) Excluding Ron Asheton from the “Encore” section (you know, where they pay tribute to the folks who died) is absolutely unforgivable. The Grammys had a month to add one last picture to their little PowerPoint. I expect their collective heads on my desk by the end of the week.

And this brings me to my final point:

…wait for it…

…you ready for this…

…oh god no…

ROBERT PLANT AND ALISON KRAUSS?! Are you for reals, Grammys? This is two years in a row you’ve managed to award the one album nominated for Best Album that has absolutely no relevance to contemporary music. I understand and respect the musical talents that Plant and Krauss have. I might even concede that the album isn’t half bad (I haven’t heard it. Guess what I’m doing tomorrow). But NO ONE CARES! Coldplay are one of the most beloved bands on earth right now. Lil’ Wayne is an incredible force of charisma. Radiohead are the single most important band in the universe (mmm, hyperbole tastes delicious…). Fuck, even Ne-Yo would have been better. But no. Instead, I have to listen to Raising Sand tomorrow. Tears for Simon.

Another year, another slog of bullshit music awards. I’m used to this by now. The fires of hope are struggling to stay alive after yet another deluge of culturally pointless backslapping. Perhaps, one of these days, I’ll completely give up on the Grammys. But…but…I just can’t.

So, with that, I’ll…oh god, am I actually saying this?...see you at next year’s Grammys. Sigh.

Sound Off!

What’s that? You’re in the Seattle area and you don’t have plans for Valentine’s Day? Well, I’ll tell you what you should do. You should go to the Experience Music Project at Seattle Center and check out their annual Sound Off! competition for bands under the age of 21. I’ve got friends playing in two bands, Dearboy and Dyno Jamz, and they would love your support. Go, enjoy some fabulous live music and cheer for whatever band you like the most. I can’t imagine a better Valentine’s Day.

Curious about their music? MySpace can help:

Dearboy
http://www.myspace.com/dearboyband

Dyno Jamz
http://www.myspace.com/dynojamz

Again, February 14, at EMP at Seattle Center. It’ll be a blast.

Being Taken Over By The Fear

Artist: Lily Allen

Album: It's Not Me, It's You

Year: 2009

Grade: 3.5 pretzels

So now you know the words to our song
Pretty soon you’ll all be singing along
When you’re sad, when you’re lonely and it all turns out wrong
When you’ve got the fear

These are lyrics from “The Fear”, the opening track of Pulp’s 1998 bloated masterpiece This Is Hardcore. And, as anyone who’s been poking around YouTube for the past several months knows, “The Fear” is also the name of the first single of Lily Allen’s new album. Being the obsessive music fanatic that I am, I can’t shake a feeling that the two are somehow connected. Just look at the chorus of Allen’s version:

I don’t know what’s right and what’s real anymore
And I don’t know how I’m meant to feel anymore
And when do you think it will all become clear?
‘cause I’m being taken over by the fear

The similarities between This Is Hardcore and It’s Not Me, It’s You don’t stop there. Both are defiant “fuck you”s, coming three years after albums that brought them crashing into the social consciousness. Both were made by artists reacting to extreme media overexposure. Both are dramatic shifts in sound and style. But, while Pulp’s Jarvis Cocker could use his poisonous, razor-edged lyricism to slice his targets to ribbons, Lily Allen doesn’t exactly have that talent. Instead, she lets her bubbly personality and natural charisma shine through, seemingly smiling like a lunatic while she cuts her detractors down. It’s an oddly effective way to make an album.

Allen’s lyrics have an incredibly charming honesty to them. When she says “I want loads of clothes, and fuckloads of diamonds” on “The Fear”, in the calmest voice imaginable, you can almost see here winking at you through the record. The hilarious squeakiness of “Fuck You” underscores the bite of the song, hiding the actual bitterness with some acidic comedy. Allen also tones down the snarking once and a while, letting the honesty of her stories rise to the surface, particularly on “I Could Say” and the disarmingly sweet “Who’d Have Known”. Not unlike fellow British songwriter Alex Turner (of Arctic Monkey’s fame), Allen seems to have mastered the art of creating fantastic stories using the tiniest of details (names flashing on phones, specific bottles of wine, etc). These songs really do ring true and you can’t help but feel some empathy for Allen.

That isn’t to say the album doesn’t have a few misfires. The awkwardest moments are when Allen tries to tackle problems bigger than herself. “22”, an overly cliché rant against the media’s bias towards young girls, doesn’t quite deliver, mostly because Allen’s target is too broad for any of the one-liners to really hit a weak spot. The album also includes the excruciatingly heavy-handed “Him”, following in the footsteps of Joan Osborne’s “One Of Us” by asking God all kinds of weighted questions and wondering if, at the end of the day, he’s just like everyone else. Amid an album that rips ex-boyfriends and bloodthirsty critics apart, this somewhat ambivalent musing about God seems out of place.

Lily Allen has certainly had a rough stretch lately. Media harassment, breakups and a tragic miscarriage are more than enough for any single person to deal with. It’s Not Me, It’s You is an incredible positive sign from Allen, proving that she’s capable of turning the problems in her life into some great songs. Despite a few overly preaching tunes, she seems to be coping with the avalanche of issues she’s dealing with. This can only be a good thing.

96 Tears In 96 Eyes: R.I.P. Lux Interior

Yesterday, Lux Interior, frontman for the Cramps, died at the age of 62 from a heart condition. I’ve only recently started listening to the Cramps, so I can’t wax poetic about how their music changed my life and Interior’s death is an icy stab to the heart. However, I know enough to emphasize the importance of the Cramps’ music. Blending rockabilly with punk and a fascination with b-movie horror and schlock, the Cramps were instrumental in creating the genre known as “psychobilly”. It sounds something like this.

It’s always tragic when musicians die, especially pioneering and influential ones like Lux Interior. May he rest in peace.

OK By Himself

Artist: Morrissey
Album: Years Of Refusal

Year: 2009

Grade: 4 pretzels

By now, Morrissey is somewhat of a known quantity. Twenty-five years of albums and emoting and flowers have locked Morrissey’s image in everyone’s collective mind. We know his music will be somewhat gentle, but bitingly acerbic. We know he’ll sing a few songs about how he just can’t find love. He’ll probably take a few pot shots at choice political targets, too. There’s this established pattern, right?

Well…sort of. The past five years have seen a Morrissey renaissance, ever since emerging in 2004 with You Are The Quarry. Moz is turning the guitars up and reshaping his voice into something strident and forceful. Years Of Refusal is a continuation of this process and it feels like Morrissey is finally becoming comfortable in his new skin. The songs are short, to the point and vicious. The first eight whip by you, with nothing exceeding four minutes and most straining to make it through three. I’m fairly certain this has something to do with the young hired guns Moz has got playing for him these days and, at least on this record, it sounds damn near great. Morrissey turns 50 this year, but no one wants to hear him sing about being old. How many witty one-liners can you really expect to get out of settling down and watching some nice TV? No one wants to hear that.

Now, Morrissey being Morrissey, most of the songs on Years Of Refusal are about the some old Morrissey problems, namely, how damn confusing his love life is. The songs tend to fall into one of three categories:

1) Songs about how nobody loves Morrissey and how this makes him sad
2) Songs that explain why nobody loves Morrissey
3) Songs that explain how, despite what he just said three minutes ago, Morrissey doesn’t actually need love

I’m sure you can see the vicious cycle working here. On “Throwing My Arms Around Paris”, he’s embracing the metaphorical city because “only stone and steel accept my love.” Aww, tears for Morrissey. But then he turns around and unleashes this zinger on “That’s How People Grow Up”: “I was driving my car, I crashed and broke my spine, so yes, there are things worse in life than never being someone’s sweetie.” This sort of contradictory lyrical backpeddling isn’t new for Morrissey, but it’s never been quite as obvious. His voice has found some new power, which certainly drives the songs more than ever before, but it also grinds some of the subtlety out of his lyrics. The amazing part is that all this doesn’t detract from the album. This new Morrissey is a very direct Morrissey, which is something people have been begging Moz to be all his life. Even though he’s trying to say eight different things at once, it’s the first time it sounds like he’s saying exactly what he wants to say. There are a few flaws on Years Of Refusal (especially the more-or-less forgettable last fourth of the album), but overall, it’s a respectable success. It might even find ol’ Mozzer some love somewhere. We can only hope…

Who's Simon Defending Now?: Scott Walker

Why Scott Walker isn’t more famous is a mystery I’ll never quite understand. Despite being tremendously influential and a true musical pioneer, I struggle to find people I know who’ve even heard of him. While admittedly not music geared towards pop charts success, his music has proven over the decades to be immensely important and deserves the attention given to other pioneering groups like the Velvet Underground or Leonard Cohen. All this is why Noel Scott Engel, better known to the world as Scott Walker, is the subject of this month’s Who’s Simon Defending Now.

To properly tell the tale of Scott Walker, it must be divided into two parts. The evolution his music has seen between the 1960s and the present is absolutely mind-boggling. However, when he first started his musical career, no one (probably literally no one) could have predicted where his music would eventually lead him. Scott first rose to prominence with the Walker Brothers. Three Americans, they weren’t brothers and none of them were named Walker (very much like the Ramones!). However, their dramatic pop ballads became very successful, especially in Britain, persuading all three Walker Brothers to move there for good. They hit the top of the UK charts with songs like “The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore” before the usual mess of creative differences started creating riffs between the three of them.

Scott used this opportunity to release four incredible records of bizarre, classical, orchestrated pop ballads. Taking cues from the Belgian singer Jacques Brel, Scott found himself writing intense, dramatic songs, such as “Montague Terrace (In Blue)”, while also turning out some impassioned covers of Brel and other classic songwriters (see “Mathilde”). For 1967, the same year the Beatles and Rolling Stones got really, really high and got lost with backward tape loops, this type of backward-looking music sounded simply alien. The records did sell (Scott was a pop star, after all) but as the music got darker, his fanbase dispersed and Scott began to sink into reclusiveness. By 1969’s Scott 4, all his songs were original and he was singing about Ingmar Bergman films. No one bought the record.

Since no one was doing particularly well on their own, the Walker Brothers chose this time to reunite. The resulting music (both on the Walker Brothers’ and Scott’s solo albums, recorded and released parallel to the Walker Brothers) was generally uninspired, bland and all-around boring. It looked like Scott Walker’s career was spiraling into obscurity. Just another balladeer past his prime. Thankfully, it’s here that the second half of Scott Walker’s career began.

1978’s Nite Flights isn’t a particularly good record overall. Disjointed and horrifically uneven, it was the result of the three Walker Brothers essentially compiling their various current solo projects onto one LP. Two-thirds of the music is absolute trash. However, the third that Scott Walker wrote is nothing short of transcendent. His four songs fully embrace the new, experimental electronic sounds being pioneered by artists like David Bowie and Brian Eno. The masterpiece is “The Electrician”, an eerie slab of noise shoved in the middle of an unsuspecting pop album. Still one of the most unnerving songs I’ve ever heard, “The Electrician” is truly in a class of its own. It would also serve as the blueprint for the revitalization (at least in artistic, if not commercial terms) of Scott Walker’s career.

Scott essentially vanished off the face of the earth following Nite Flights. Taking “reclusive” to a whole new level, he settled into a loose rhythm of releasing a single album every ten years. 1984 saw Climate Of Hunter, his first album fully dedicated to his new, intensely claustrophobic music. However, the record was somewhat marred by an overly detailed 80s production job and it wasn’t until 1995’s Tilt that the metamorphosis of Scott Walker was complete. The opening track, “Farmer In The City”, says it all: deeply experimental forays into the darkest corners of music, with Scott’s semi-operatic voice resonating through the murk. Tilt is one of those rare albums that simply sounds like nothing else, defying all genre tags thrown at it. Scott was essentially silent again until 2006, releasing The Drift, which proved to be even more experimental and forward-thinking, if not absolutely, uncontrollably insane. Shattered guitars, animal noises, the sounds of meat being punched…The Drift redefines music as you know it (there are very few albums that actually deserve such a ridiculous, hyperbolic statement, but I swear this is one of them). Simply listening to “Jesse” shows you what a mean. It’s a Lynchian nightmare about Elvis’s stillborn twin brother, ending with Scott’s otherworldly cry echoing in silence: “Alive…I’m the only one left alive…”

The influence of Scott Walker is felt all throughout music, including virtually all of post-70s English rock. David Bowie and Marc Almond (of Soft Cell fame) were both fascinated with his music, going on to become new disciples in the school of Jacques Brel-flavored drama. A primordial Radiohead would often rehearse a song they called “their Scott Walker song.” You know it by a different name: “Creep”. Even newcomers, like the Last Shadow Puppets, show a remarkable affinity and loyalty to Scott’s music. Pulp even lured him out of the dark to produce their stellar 2001 album We Love Life. He’s achieved an almost god-like status in the UK…

…which is why it’s unforgivable that Americans haven’t even heard his name. Sure, he’s an ex-pat from Ohio, who abandoned this country for another one that understood him better. Sure, he records some of the most off-the-wall music you’ve ever heard. Sure, you can’t understand his style of hand-to-forehead melodrama. But I bet at least 50% of the music you listen to has been influenced to some degree by Scott Walker. Know who he is. Listen to his music. You certainly don’t have to like it (people might even worry about you if you do), but it's undeniably important. Scott Walker can be ignored no longer.

To conclude, here’s one last video. This is the most recent live clip of him I can find…and it’s from 1995. He’s performing Tilt’s astonishing closing track, “Rosary”. Enjoy.

The Springsteen Redemption Begins

A couple weeks ago, I reviewed Bruce Springsteen’s new album, Working On A Dream. I found it interesting, stronger than I expected, but ultimately a bit boring. I pointed out that Springsteen has done little lately to really make his albums relevant to the music community as a whole.

Well, it looks like Bruce is suddenly changing that.

Springsteen has certainly been very visible lately. Artists like Arcade Fire and the Hold Steady have been very successful with Boss-like music. He won a Golden Globe for his song featured in The Wrestler. He was at the presidential inauguration, functioning as Obama Cheerleader #1. And last night, he turned in one of the most electric Super Bowl halftime shows in recent memory. He was fun and energetic, never for a moment looking like the 59-year-old man he is. He was a stark contrast to last year’s performance by Tom Petty, who looked like he was waiting for Death to come and take him away right then and there. Bruce’s selection of songs was very strong, opening with two excellent tracks from Born To Run before closing with his new single and “Glory Days”, with some football-related lyrics attached. It was exactly what the Super Bowl halftime show should be: a big, positive, fun-loving performance for a big, positive, fun-loving sports game. Bruce even plowed into an unprepared cameraman, which was more than a little awesome.

I’m still not sure if this makes Working On A Dream a better album. Rolling Stone felt the need to give it a five-star review, which seems a bit excessive to me. But all this recent Springsteen-mania is giving me a reason to go back a reevaluate it. It’s Boss time.

(Note: Jennifer Hudson’s performance of the National Anthem was also spectacular, although, according to the producer of the Super Bowl, it was lip synched. Hmmm…)