State Of The Pretzel Logic: March

Here we are, wrapping up the third month of Pretzel Logic. I must say, so far this whole blog has been an incredibly rewarding experience and I hope people enjoy reading it as much as I enjoy writing it. With March now in the books, there are a few announcements I’d like to make before April gets under way.

-I’m adding a new monthly column! Inspired by my Thom Yorke feature last week, I’m creating a “Great Albums In History” section. These articles will appear on the 15th of every month and will discuss a single album in length, focusing on what makes these albums important in my mind. I’ll be breaking them down track by track, looking for themes and what each song contributes to the album as a whole. Coming April 15th!

-A few album grading adjustments this month:
1) U2’s No Line On The Horizon loses half a pretzel and now has 3.5 pretzels. As the month went on, this album began to sound less and less inspired to my ears. I still maintain that it’s the best thing U2 have done since Achtung Baby, though.
2) Antony & The Johnsons’ The Crying Light gains half a pretzel and now has a full 5 pretzels. Continued listening has made me appreciate this album more and more. As always with 5 pretzel albums, I’m not saying that it’s perfect. I’m just saying I really, really like it.

-We’ve got a busy April ahead of us. I plan to review albums by the following artists: Fever Ray, Pete Doherty, K’naan, Bat For Lashes, Depeche Mode, Camera Obscura, Doves, Junior Boys, Les Claypool, Metric, Silversun Pickups, Neil Young, Art Brut, The Thermals, Bob Dylan and Frank Black’s new project, Grand Duchy. Wish me luck, folks.

That’s it for March! As always, thank you all for reading and commenting!

Left In The Dust

Artist: Yeah Yeah Yeahs

Album: It's Blitz!

Year: 2009

Grade: 2.5 pretzels

How do you cope when artists change their styles? It’s easy to be reactionary, immediately yelling “foul” when artists don’t release the type of music you expect from them. However, music is always going to be about personal growth on the part of the artist. In order for an artist to move from one style to another, they have to find a way to bring their audience along with them. Radiohead are a glaring example of a band who managed this perfectly. Yeah Yeah Yeahs, though, might have left me behind by releasing It’s Blitz!.

I’m a huge fan of the YYYs 2003 debut album, Fever To Tell. It’s an album with balls. It screams and cries and bleeds all over the floor before finally ripping your heart out with “Maps”. It’s one of the few albums released after 1980 that I feel comfortable calling “punk.” The short, sharp shocks of “Date With The Night” and “Man” will never leave me. However, when YYYs followed Fever To Tell with the much more spacious Show Your Bones, I knew things were changing. The songs got longer and all started to gravitate towards a mid-tempo feel, shedding most of the hyper-kinetic energy I loved about the band in the process. They were quickly becoming a dance band.

It’s Blitz! is the album that completes that evolution. Opening with the razor-wire-disco of “Zero”, the album’s motives are clear: it wants you to stop sitting around like a New York hipster and fucking shake your ass. I understand this part. I understand the band’s desire to move away from their early, spiky sound to something more accessible and friendly. Unfortunately, I have purely selfish motives for wanting them to stay the same. I happen to really like it when they play drunken, spastic rants really, really fast. I like Nick Zinner’s guitar pyrotechnics from the first album. I like it when Karen O spirals so far out of control on a take that her voice becomes a grating screech. These were the things that made me like the band in the first place. On It’s Blitz!, they’ve taken most of them away from me.

Watching the YYYs become this dance-rock hybrid hurts me, because there are already so many bands recording music like that, many of which are doing it better. Of Montreal do it edgier, Hercules And Love Affair do it classier. This leaves YYYs as an “average” band, which is something they certainly aren’t. However, by blunting the cutting edge of their music with disco beats and languid rhythms, they’re becoming just that. On another album, a song like “Heads Will Roll” would follow up on the threat its title poses. Here, it just boogies along harmlessly.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs faced two paths after Fever To Tell: they could have recorded more of the same material, or they could have capitalized on the success of “Maps”. Of course, being intelligent musicians who want to pay the rent, they chose the latter. In doing so, however, they missed the point. “Maps” sounded great because it was the only moment of calm on one of the most tumultuous albums of the 2000s. Take all those other songs away and all you have is a fairly boring ballad. YYYs need the energy to earn their more tender inclinations. On It’s Blitz!, they haven’t found that balance yet.

Where's The Whistling?

Artist: Peter Bjorn And John

Album: Living Thing

Year: 2009

Grade: 3 pretzels

Peter Bjorn And John confuse the shit out of me. I never completely understood why the entire world fell on its head when they released their whistle-powered “Young Folks” single a couple years ago. Somehow, with one song, this obscure Swedish band was catapulted into the spotlight, popping up all over the place. Then, they released a follow-up album that was limited to only 5,000 vinyl copies in the US. They’re still fairly unknown back in Sweden. And now, they’ve released an album that doesn’t have even a single bar of whistling on it. I just can’t wrap my mind around it.

I’ll be the first to admit it: I don’t know very much about this band. I’m not intimately familiar with their back catalogue. I don’t know the band members’ favorite breakfast cereals (they’re probably Swedish anyway). All I know is that this album sounds nothing like “Young Folks”. The whimsical indie love songs have been replaced with unusually minimal synth doodles. The most similar song Living Thing has to offfer is the shuddering single “Lay It Down”, which opens with the lyrics “Hey, shut the fuck up, boy, you’re starting to piss me off.” The song is certainly playful, but it’s not particularly gentle.

The rhythm on this album tends to get a bit wild. “Nothing To Worry About” is driven forward with a slamming, almost hip-hop beat. Add in three Swedish songwriters and somehow, the whole thing ends up sounding more like Beck than anything else. Above all, Living Thing seems dominated by space. The band seems to approach music from a definite less-is-more mentality and the songs rarely have more than the bare minimum of instrumentation to hold them together. Album opener “The Feeling” needs nothing more than a sharp drumbeat, a few handclaps and a stop-start bassline to keep things moving. While this certainly creates some stark musical moments, it also makes the songs feel unformed. Many of the songs continue to sound like demos to me, waiting to be fully fleshed out.

The highest point of the album comes with the last four songs, all of which are fairly gorgeous ballads. “Stay This Way” is one of the only songs that really benefits from the lack of instrumentation, letting the tender vocal line carry the whole weight of the song. “Blue Period Picasso” channels the Magnetic Fields to wonderful effect, while featuring a lovely, echoing synth riff. Finally, the closing song, “Last Night”, sounds like the best after-hours synth anthem since Depeche Mode. The back end of the album shows where Peter Bjorn And John’s true strengths lie. “Young Folks” proved that they can write popular, off-the-wall love songs. With Living Thing, they prove that they’re strongest when they stick to just that.

Damaged And Wanting

Artist: PJ Harvey & John Parish

Album: A Woman A Man Walked By

Year: 2009

Grade: 5 pretzels

There’s no reason I should be surprised by the quality of this record. On one hand, you’ve got PJ Harvey, possibly my favorite female singer ever. On the other, you’ve got John Parish, the producer behind my favorite PJ Harvey album, To Bring You My Love. These two have proven they can work together to create incredible music. However, even knowing all that, nothing could really prepare me for the jaw-dropping album they’ve delivered this year. A Woman A Man Walked By is an astonishing collection of psychosis put on tape, a feverish nightmare of psychosexual drama and confusion.

PJ Harvey scared many, including myself, by releasing White Chalk in 2007. That album was incredibly stark and unusual, even by Harvey’s standards. Abandoning the visceral guitar punch of her previous work, almost all the songs were centered around the piano. Her voice also went through a strange transformation, changing from a ragged, powerful holler into a thin, eerie soprano. These changes seemed jarring and out of character for Harvey, who’s forceful persona has always been integral to her appeal. White Chalk was certainly an intriguing album, but ultimately, I found it too much of a change from PJ Harvey’s previous work to really accept it.

The fingerprints of White Chalk are all over A Woman A Man Walked By, particularly in the uneasy vocals of “Leaving California”. However, they are balanced out by John Parish’s earthy music. The division of labor on the album is very clear: Parish writes all the songs, Harvey writes all the lyrics. This combination works to tremendous effect, creating twisted folk tunes to anchor Harvey’s dramatic vocal style. For example, the eviscerated banjo-blues of “Sixteen, Fifteen, Fourteen” is the perfect complement to Harvey’s yelping performance, which gradually spirals out of control until the song collapses, literally gasping for breath.

Not unlike Portishead’s Third from last year, A Woman A Man Walked By is a completely uneasy record. However, where Portishead created an atmosphere of crushing claustrophobia, Harvey and Parish aim for the opposite end of the spectrum, evoking the eeriness of too much space. There’s something very pastoral running through this album. If the album smelled like something, it would be the sickeningly sweet aroma of every flower in spring blooming at once. On songs like “The Chair”, Harvey seems to be running through emptiness, searching for things that are missing. It’s a very interesting way to present music this unstable and paranoid.

As always, Harvey showcases her incredible range of vocal possibilities over the course of the album. Calmer numbers like “The Soldier” have her almost whispering over Parish’s gentle mandolin backdrop. That song is immediately followed by “Pig Will Not”, a vocal-chord-ripping guitar cruncher which Harvey intones in a grating, low voice. The album tends to switch back and forth between extremes, never letting you rest until the last notes have faded away. Strongest of all is the opener, “Black Hearted Love”, which is the rock anthem many fans have wanted from PJ Harvey over the last few years. Between Parish’s paint-peeling guitar riff and Harvey’s emotional performance, it more than delivers.

A Woman A Man Walked By is a difficult album to approach. You have to have a certain tolerance for music that makes you feel uncomfortable. The queasiness of songs like “April” or the title track, featuring Harvey screaming “I want your fucking ass” quickly gets under your skin. I can totally understand how this isn’t going to be everyone’s cup of tea. All I know is that this album panders towards my musical tastes. It’s sickly, disturbed music, visiting the darker corners of the human psyche that people would rather just hide from. Ever the extremist, PJ Harvey seems perfectly at home working there.

The Eraser, Pt. 5: Don't Turn Away

"Harrowdown Hill"

Don't walk the plank like I did

You will be dispensed with

When you've become inconvenient

Tom, in his sadness and pain, begins reflecting on the long path that brought him to this point. He realizes the futility of his relationship, thinking that it was just a matter of time before he’d end up where he is now.

Up on Harrowdown hill

Near where you used to go to school

That's where I am

That's where I'm lying down

As he wanders though the city, he finds a place of special importance to him and his partner. I’d like to think it was the first place they met, but that seems a bit overly romantic. Either way, this spot reminds Tom of his partner.

Did I fall or was I pushed?

Did I fall or was I pushed?

And where's the blood?

And where's the blood?

Tom wonders how this relationship started. Did he fall in love, head-over-heels and all that? Or was he pushed into this relationship by other forces? Either way, Tom feels the relationship started violently and it’s only fitting that it would end in a way that was incredibly painful for him.

I'm coming home

I'm coming home

To make it all right

So dry your eyes

Being back here at Harrowdown hill, where it all started, is like going home to Tom. But he knows he can’t actually “make it all right.” He tries to deny his situation, wishing he could still do something to fix his old relationship. Sadly, he knows he can’t. He keeps crying.

We think the same things at the same time

We just can’t do anything about it
We think the same things at the same time
We just can’t do anything about it

Looking back, Tom sees all the great times in his relationship. These were those good ol’ days his partner urged him to see. The days where they were smiling and happy, finishing each other’s sentences. In many ways, Tom and his partner actually were well-matched with each other. But it’s too late for any of that to matter now.

So don't ask me

Ask the ministry

Don't ask me

Ask the ministry

Tom concedes defeat. How can he make sense of any of these problems? Perhaps the answers lie with some higher power, so go ask a priest. Another reading of “ministry” could imply marriage. Tom could be sarcastically saying, “Why did we get married? Go ask the minister.”

We think the same things at the same time

There are so many of us

So you can't count
We think the same things at the same time

There are too many of us

So you can't count

Tom isn’t alone in his loneliness. We live in an age where divorce is becoming more and more common. In the US, over 40% of couples get divorced within fifteen years. Clearly, Tom isn’t the only one struggling with the mystery of relationships.

Can you see me when I'm running?

Can you see me when I'm running?

Away from them, away from them

Tom didn’t want to be one of those people, though. He wanted to make things work. He wanted to be the shining example of how two people can really make a relationship succeed.

I can't take the pressure

No one cares if you live or die

They just want me gone

They want me gone

But things didn’t work out that way. The relationship was too much for him to handle. He couldn’t cope with feeling unloved like that. And now, his partner just wants him gone. Tom’s relationship has officially failed.

I'm coming home

I'm coming home

To make it all right

So dry your eyes

Tom can only deny things so much longer. Sooner or later, he’ll have to accept that there is no going back. Things will not be “all right” any time soon.

We think the same things at the same time

We just can’t do anything about it
We think the same things at the same time

There are too many of us

So you can't
There are too many of us so you can’t count

Tom has become another relationship casualty, the product of two humans who misjudged their compatibility. Sure, they had many things in common, but did they really have the skills and mentality to be able to make it in the long run? It appears they didn’t.

It was a slippery slippery slippery slope

It was a slippery slippery slippery slope

I feel me slipping in and out of consciousness

I feel me slipping in and out of consciousness

Alone on Harrowdown hill, Tom sees how tiny problems snowballed into huge problems over the years. In relationships, nothing is too small to be ignored. Those tiny issues will grow until the entire relationship is crushed by them. In the face of all this, Tom can only curl up and go to sleep, hoping that tomorrow will somehow be better for him.

"Cymbal Rush"

Try to save it but it doesn't come off the rock

Try to build a wall that is high enough

This song functions as the moral of Tom’s story. No matter how many defenses you try to put in place, relationships are complicated things. Once problems start, it’s very difficult to hold back the flood of emotions.

It's all boiling over

All boiling over

For Tom, it was too much. The lying, cheating and manipulation in his relationship reached a point where it overran him and his partner, destroying any love either of them had for each other.

Try to save your house

Try to save your songs

Try to run

But it follows you up a hill

As Tom experienced, running from your problems doesn’t help either. Relationship problems won’t go away until they are resolved, somehow, once and for all.

It's all boiling over

All boiling over

Your little voice

Your little voice

That little voice in your mind, the one that tells you when things are irritating you, cannot be ignored. If you leave it alone too long, the emotions will eventually boil over.

No more conversation

No more conversation
You should’ve took me out when you had a chance

You should’ve took me out when you had a chance

Tom’s relationship got to that point where talking about problems simply isn’t enough. People have to change their actions as well. Words aren’t enough.

All the rooms were numbered

And the losers turned away
Don't turn away

Don't turn away

Above all, pay attention. Don’t ignore the problems you have, just because they seem difficult to deal with. The only way you can solve them is to confront them. Like the man on the album’s cover, you have to stand facing the emotional flood, warding it off and standing strong even as it threatens to overwhelm you.

The Eraser, Pt. 4: I'll Be Ok

"Atoms For Peace"

No more going to the dark side with your flying saucer eyes

No more falling down a wormhole that I have to pull you out

After all this adventuring and skulking about, Tom is ready to go home and settle back down. No more sneaking around the city, meeting strange people in the dead of night. It’s time to put things behind him.

The wriggling, squiggling worm inside

Devours from the inside out

Tom’s love for his partner is overwhelming. Tom may not have recognized it at first, but after spending some time apart from each other, he or she is all Tom can think about.

No more talk about the old days

It's time for something great

What destroyed their relationship last time was Tom’s partner’s insistence on trying to recapture the past. Instead, Tom is encouraging his partner to live in the present. It doesn’t matter what the old days were like; they can be happy together right here, right now.

I want you to get out

And make it work

After his dalliance with wild life and impulsiveness, Tom honestly wants to make things work between him and his partner. He thinks they have a chance to escape all this deceit and pain.

So many lies

So many lies

So many lies

So feel the love come off of them

And take me in your arms

Sure, both of them were constantly lying to each other. But, maybe, they were lying because they both love each other so much. Maybe, somewhere in all that dishonestly, they can find a way to figure all this out.

Peel all of your layers off

I want to eat your artichoke heart

Maybe a bit more honesty wouldn’t hurt. Maybe it’s time to really acknowledge each other for who they really are, flaws and all. The first stage is always acceptance.

No more leaky holes in your brain

And no false starts
I wanna get out

And make it work

No more paranoia, no more passive aggressive behavior, no more distrust. Tom is serious about all this and he’s determined to make this relationship work once and for all.

So many lies

So many lies

So many lies

So feel the love come off of them

And take me in your arms

Again, Tom is trying to look past all the lies. He’s more than willing to forgive this person, since he loves them so much. He accepts his partner completely, even the lies.

I wanna get out

And make it work

I want you to get out

And make it work
I'll be ok

Somehow, Tom will make this work. He’ll find a way to be understanding, he’ll be patient, he’ll talk his problems out. Somehow, he will be ok. All he asks for is his partner’s love.

So many lies

So many lies

So many lies

So feel the love come off of them

And take me in your arms

But wait a second here. Doesn’t Tom have a big lie himself? Didn’t Tom just lose himself in an affair outside of the relationship? Has he told his partner about that yet? And if he does…will his partner be as even-minded and accepting as Tom is right now? There’s only one way to find out…

"And It Rained All Night"

And it rained all night and washed the filth away

Down New York air-conditioned drains

The click click clack of the heavy black trains

A million engines in neutral

Fuck. Things did not go over well. Tom finds himself walking through the city at night. He’s been kicked out of his home once and for all. His partner just couldn’t accept him.

The tick tock tick of a ticking time bomb

Fifty feet of concrete underground

One little leak becomes a lake

Says the tiny voice in my earpiece

As Tom wanders through the streets, he thinks about what just happened. How did one tiny piece of truth, one honest admission made in the spirit of reconciliation, lead to this huge emotional torment? What the fuck just happened?

So I give in to the rhythm

The click click clack

I'm too wasted to fight back

Tick tack goes the pendulum on the old grandfather clock

Tom’s been on the emotional roller-coaster ride of his life. By now, it’s just too much to take. He can’t keep fighting to save his relationship. Just when he was ready to put his problems behind him, new ones rose to the surface. It’s just too much to cope with.

I can see you

But I can never reach you

Tom can only resign himself to the fact that he’ll never be with the one he loves.

And it rained all night and then all day

The drops were the size of your hands and face

The worms come out to see what's up

We pull the cars up from the river

Everything starts to remind Tom of his ex-partner. Raindrops, worms, cars…it all just leads back to his partner. He remembers hands and faces and old memories.

It's relentless

Invisible

Indefatigable

Indisputable

Undeniable

Tom is left trying to wrap his mind around the mystery of relationships. How can you make them work, when they’re so hard to understand? Everything is so intangible and transient, how can you ever get a solid grip on anything?

So how come it looks so beautiful?

How come the moon falls from the sky?

Tom is left in the middle of the night, staring at the sky. He’s lost the one thing he really loved.

I can see you

But I can never reach you
I can see you

But I can never reach you

Tom was so close. Everything he wanted was within his grasp. But now it’s gone. Tom is alone.

The Eraser, Pt. 3: This Is Fucked Up

"Black Swan"

What will grow crooked, you can't make straight

It's the price that you gotta pay

Do yourself a favour and pack your bags

Buy a ticket and get on the train

Buy a ticket and get on the train

Tom’s depression is starting to spill over into anger and bitter sarcasm. He tells himself that he might as well leave, since there's no hope of rescuing this relationship now that it has jumped off the tracks.

‘Cause this is fucked up, fucked up

‘Cause this is fucked up, fucked up

If you just see these lyrics on the page, they look very angry. However, the way Thom Yorke delivers them on the album changes the meaning considerably. He sings in a very detached deadpan, essentially devoid of real emotion. In the story, I see Tom (the character) shaking his head, sarcastically marveling at just how bad all this is getting.

People get crushed like biscuit crumbs

And laid down in the bitumen

You have tried your best to please everyone

But it just isn't happening

No, it just isn't happening

Again, Tom’s emotions seem detached and distant. The way he sees it, relationships fall apart. It’s only natural. No matter how much someone may try to keep their partner happy, things will inevitably fall apart, leaving people crushed and hurt.

And that is fucked up, fucked up

And this is fucked up, fucked up

This your blind spot, blind spot

It should be obvious, but it's not

But it isn't, but it isn't

Tom feels like he’s starting to understand the problems in his relationship. They’re fucked up, sure, but it’s too late to do much about them now. Both he and his partner should have seen this coming, but neither of them did until they were past the point of no return.

You cannot kickstart a dead horse

You just crush yourself and walk away

I don't care what the future holds

Cause I'm writin' out today

With your fingers you can touch me

Tom finally takes action. He leaves, telling his partner that their relationship is “dead” and there’s no point trying to revive it. He walks out the door, towards the future, which must be better than all this.

I'm your black swan, black swan

But I made it to the top, made it to the top

This is fucked up, fucked up

Tom is finally celebrating his escape from the pain in his relationship. He survived and is finally out in the world, a free man.

Be your black swan, black swan

I'm for spare parts, broken up

Despite his distancing sarcasm, Tom can’t hide the fact that’s he’s still in deep emotional pain. He may have escaped the relationship, but it has still scarred him. He’s really in no condition to be wandering around, looking for a new relationship.

You are fucked up, fucked up

This is fucked up, fucked up

This final chorus is the most serious repetition of the “fucked up” theme. Tom realizes how truly warped his relationship was and how much damage it has done to him. He can’t believe how incredibly fucked up the past few years of his life actually were.

"Skip Divided"

I'm in a skip divided malfunction

I flap around and dive bomb

Frantically around your light

Enveloped in a sad distraction

Things haven't been working out well since Tom walked out on his relationship. He’s met someone new, a “sad distraction”, but he keeps thinking of his old partner. Nothing’s really working for him right now.

I got your voice repeating endlessly

Could you guide me in? Could you smother me?

I swoop around your head, but I never hit

I'm blinded by your daylight

Tom can’t get his old partner out of his head. He tries to escape into his new relationship, trying to let it “smother” him so his old feelings will be drowned out. However, this new partner just doesn’t connect with Tom at all. Besides, Tom is still blinded by his love for his past relationship.

Electric veins pass through me

I thought there was this big connection

Again, Tom finds himself in a relationship that isn’t working. He can’t connect with his new partner at all.

I only got my name, I only got the situation

I just need a number and location

All Tom really has is himself and what he knows. Also, could the “number and location” imply that his new relationship is actually with a prostitute? That could explain why there wouldn’t be much “connection” between them.

Without appropriate papers or permissions

I'm known to bite in tight situations

Tom’s definitely doing something he shouldn’t be doing. He’s thinking about how he doesn’t have “permission” to be in this new relationship, but in his bitterness and anger he has decided that he doesn’t care. He’s lashing out, biting back in vengeance.

And I head into your french windows

I thought there was a big connection
I only got my name, I only got my situation

I just need my number and location

It may not be with a prostitute (how many prostitutes have homes with french windows?), but Tom is definitely having some kind of affair by now. His old relationship has driven him into this impulsive new one and Tom hasn’t fully thought any of this through yet.

And my mum keeps telling me

Hey hey, hey hey, hey hey!
The devil may

Hey hey, hey hey, hey hey!

Tom is conflicted. He knows he shouldn’t be here, with this new partner who probably doesn’t really care about him at all. At the same time, he’s blinded by his anger at his old partner and just wants to feel good for a brief moment.

You are a fool, you are a fool

For sticking ‘round, for sticking ‘round
Yeah, you are a fool, you are a fool

For sticking ‘round, for sticking ‘round

Tom keeps turning his feelings over in his mind. The conflict between his guilt and his anger is starting to drive him crazy. He’s mad at himself for staying in his old relationship for so long, but he’s also upset about seeking refuge in this indulgent fling.

I tried every trick in the book

I tried to look and knew

Every trick in the book

But how come I look?

Tom keeps finding himself in these painful relationships and he can’t understand why. He thought he was doing everything right. Why does this keep happening to him?

No more common dress or elliptical caress

Don't look into your eyes 'cause I'm desperately in love

In love, in love

Tom confronts his new partner, saying he can’t hide his feelings any longer. He still feels something for his old partner and those feelings aren’t going away any time soon.

When you walk in the room everything disappears

When you walk in the room it's a terrible mess

When you walk in the room I start to melt

When you walk in the room I follow you round

All Tom can think about is his old partner. Everything else on his mind has been eclipsed by this obsession. He’s starting to fall apart without him or her in his life.

Like a dog, I'm a dog, I'm a dog, I'm a lapdog

I'm your lapdog, yeah

There’s nothing Tom can do about it. He’s too loyal, too in love with his old partner to ever leave. He’ll always keep going back, begging for forgiveness.

I just got a number and location

I just need my number and location

There’s only one thing Tom can do from here: go home.

The Eraser, Pt. 2: Just Playing A Part

"Analyse"

A self-fulfilling prophecy of endless possibility

You roll in reams across the street

In algebra, in algebra

When we last left Tom, he had realized that something had gone horribly awry in his relationship. Now, he’s trying to understand what exactly it was that happened. He’s examining what he knows, searching for some way to make sense of all this hurt and pain. Tom wants his emotions to work like math, with clear solutions to problems. However, this is obviously not working.

The fences that you cannot climb

The sentences that do not rhyme

In all that you can ever change

The one you're looking for

Tom begins to list his problems, looking for patterns or connections. He sees boundaries and restrictions in his relationship, along with broken communication. He begins to yearn for someone, anyone, who won’t put him through these painful situations.

It gets you down

It gets you down
There's no spark

No light in the dark

Trying to make sense of all these problems is only making Tom more depressed. He hoped that laying everything out in front of him would show him the solution. Instead, all he sees are those same problems, staring back at him. The spark is gone from his relationship. Darkness is closing in.

It gets you down

It gets you down

You traveled far

What have you found

Tom realizes that all these years with his partner have ultimately left him with nothing. Their journey together has led to this point, where no one’s happy and things are falling down around them. It all just adds fuel to his depression.

That there's no time

There's no time

To analyse

To think things through

To make sense

No matter how much he’d like to rationalize things away, Tom can ignore his emotions no longer. His feelings are too strong, his anger too heated for calm and logical reasoning. Something must be done now.

Like cows in the city

They never looked so pretty

By power carts and blackouts

Sleeping like babies

Tom looks at his life and everything he and his partner have shared. Perhaps they have actual children, or maybe the “sleeping babies” are just the various items, furniture or experiences they’ve shared over the years.

It gets you down

It gets you down

You're just playing a part

You're just playing a part

No matter what Tom is looking at, he now sees everything as fake. This relationship has been an act, nothing more than an elaborate piece of theater. All these things surrounding him are just props in this sham.

You're playing a part, playing a part

And there's no time, there's no time

To analyse, analyse, analyse

This relationship has hit the point of no return. Now that Tom sees the partnership for what it really is, he can’t bring himself to think rationally. He gives himself over to more irrational thinking, knowing that the relationship will disintegrate very soon.

"The Clock"

Time is running out
For us

But you just move the hands upon the clock

Tom knows it’s doomed, but his partner is still trying to pretend nothing is really wrong. In Tom's eyes, he or she is trying to turn back time to happier days. However, Tom sees the error in this. If this whole relationship has all been fake, a pretty piece of play acting, then there were no happier times.

You throw coins in the wishing well

For us

You just move your hands upon the wall

His partner keeps insisting that things will be ok. But Tom knows that no amount of empty wishing will solve their problems. The partner keeps insisting that there were better times in the past, but in Tom’s irrational rage, even the past begins to look bad.

It comes to you begging you to stop

Wake up

But you just move your hands upon the clock

The way Tom sees it, his partner is asleep. He or she keeps dreaming this idyllic fantasy, the fairy tale that Tom is trying to shoot down. His partner needs to be woken up so they can face the cruel reality of the situation.

Throw coins in the wishing well

For us

You make believe that you are still in charge

There’s no going back from here. The relationship cannot be recovered. Tom is so sure of this that nothing his partner says will change his mind. His partner cannot control him any longer.

The Eraser, Pt. 1: I Am Only Being Nice

This month, I’m going to be doing something a bit different with my week-long feature. Instead of listing many albums that fit a common theme, I’m going to be taking an in-depth look at a single album I find particularly interesting.

Thom Yorke’s The Eraser was released in 2006, to impressive sales and generally warm reviews. The legions of Radiohead fans flocked to it, since it was the first new material from Thom since 2003. Thom himself explained that many of the songs on the album were inspired by issues surrounding climate change. However, last year, I ended up in a discussion about one particular song (“Atoms For Peace”, if it matters) and realized that I saw a whole different narrative running throughout the album. Looking at the lyrics across the album, in the order they are presented, I noticed that all the songs dealt with a disintegrating relationship. I immediately began to imagine characters in this grand narrative, particularly our questionable protagonist, who I refer to as “Tom” here. This week, I’m going to do a close lyrical reading of The Eraser, focusing on this story that I hear in the album. It’s important to remember that this is not what I believe Thom intended to be heard in his songs, but is just a personal reflection on the album. Enjoy!

“The Eraser”

Please excuse me but I got to ask
Are you only being nice
Because you want something?

From the word go, we know something is wrong. Our main character, Tom, is immediately questioning his partner about her (or his, for that matter) motives. Deceit and duplicity appear again and again over the course of the album, often in increasingly paranoid terms. Tom has hit a wall in frustration and he is demanding honesty.

My fairy tale arrow pierces
Be careful how you respond
'Cause you'd not end up in this song

The “fairy tale arrow” line seems to have a double-meaning to me. On one hand, it acknowledges the pettiness of the metaphorical arrows Tom and his partner are shooting at each other. However, it could also be an arrow aimed at the heart of the fairy tale, the myth of content domestic happiness.

I never gave you an encouragement
And it's doing me in, doing me in
Doing me in, doing me in

What makes Tom’s story so interesting to me is that he doesn’t just point fingers at others. He switches back and forth between lashing at others and turning his anger inwards, pointing out all his own flaws and mistakes. Here, he understands how his own actions have led to where things are now.

The more you try to erase me
The more, the more, the more that I appear
Oh the more, the more
The more you try the eraser
The more, the more, the more that you appear

This chorus summarizes what this first song wants us to know. In Tom’s relationship, denial and avoidance are exposing everything. Every time his partner tries to avoid the problems he or she has with Tom, it only makes the problems worse. Thom also begins to see more and more of his partner’s true personality as he or she tries to eradicate the problems in their relationship. They are both starting to know each other a bit too well and with that comes the realization that, perhaps, they’re incompatible.

You know the answer so why do you ask
I am only being nice
Because I want someone, something

Now, Tom reverses the roles. After suspecting that his partner is using him, he turns that accusatory eye on himself and realizes that he’s been doing the exact same thing, manipulating emotions for his own gain. He's oddly cold about this, saying that it's only natural that he'd be doing the exact same thing as his partner.

You're like a kitten with a ball of yarn
And it's doing me in, doing me in
Doing me in, doing me in

This is another particularly icy line, with Tom painting his partner as a force that’s just toying with him, bouncing him from paw to paw for entertainment. However, there could be another way to look at this line. What if Tom is the one holding the ball of yarn, taunting his unsuspecting partner with it and marveling at how easy it is to manipulate him or her? It could very well be both. Either way, Tom has realized that this dynamic isn’t good and it’s “doing me in.”

The more you try to erase me
The more, the more, the more that I appear
Oh the more, the more
The more I try to erase you
The more, the more, the more that you appear

The chorus is repeated here, with a slight change. Tom is now directly accusing himself of the same crimes, saying that he’s trying to “erase” their problems as well. It’s clearly not working well for him either, as more and more truths seem to come to the light when he tries to bury them.

No, you're wrong, you're wrong
You're wrong, you're wrong
You're wrong, you're wrong
You're wrong

The song ends with this flailing accusatory statement, which could be directed inward, but is probably aimed at Tom’s partner instead. All the years of avoidance and assumed happiness have led to this. The problems have become too much to handle and the couple is hurtling towards disaster. All Tom knows for sure, though, is that all of this is just “wrong.”

Just Remember: All Caps, When You Spell The Man's Name

Artist: DOOM

Album: Born Like This

Year: 2009

Grade: 4 pretzels

In an era where rap seems divided between the exaggerated posturing of Top 40 rappers and the heavy-handed social consciousness of many indie and underground rap acts, MF DOOM offers a third way. The London-born MC has made a name for himself over the past fifteen years with his abstract, stream-of-consciousness lyrics and deadpan, gruff delivery. He also surrounds himself with an extreme air of mystery, always performing and being photographed while wearing a metal mask, emulating the Marvel Comic character Doctor Doom. In fact, comics seem to permeate DOOM’s entire aesthetic. His songs tend to be short sketches, each seemingly a frame in a bigger picture. It’s a remarkably playful and interesting way to record music.

MF DOOM also loves aliases. His real name is Daniel Dumile, but he’s recorded under the names MF DOOM, Viktor Vaughn and King Geedorah over the years, not to mention his collaborations as Madvillain and Danger Doom. He recently announced he’d dropped the “MF” from his name, creating this new DOOM alias. For all intents and purposes, the music still sounds the same, but every time Dumile introduces a new persona, it’s worth wondering why. If there’s any difference, DOOM sounds considerably more direct than before on Born Like This.

The biggest strength of DOOM’s music is its unpredictability. You’re never quite sure which set of free associations is gonna drift out of Dumile’s hazy mind. Often his albums are centered on a theme, allowing DOOM to riff off that core theme from song to song. Born Like This seems vaguely Batman-centric, which fits with DOOM’s ongoing obsession with superheroes and, particularly, supervillains. One of the album’s funniest moments is “Batty Boyz”, which questions some of the homoerotic undertones in old Batman shows (“grown man in a rubber suit, running around with a young boy”). It’s exactly the kind of hilarious, weedy observation you’d expect from someone who was awake at 4 AM watching old cartoons. Of course, DOOM also finds time to throw a few hilarious non-sequiturs into the mix, including “turns dirt to dollars like Don Henley”, which never fails to make me crack up.

DOOM also scores with some strong sketch songs. “Rap Ambush” is an entertaining, mostly nonsensical short, bookended with samples of police explaining an ambush in progress. Stranger still is “Cellz”, a lengthy song (by DOOM standards) that features a sample of Charles Bukowski reading a description of a dystopian future, all while the sounds of explosions and roars echo over a dramatic string sample. When Bukowski finally stops, DOOM picks up right where he left off, with his gravelly voice continuing the bleak vision (“sinister, don’t know what he’s saying but the words be funny”). It’s a surprisingly serious moment for the usually abstract DOOM.

Born Like This, like every other MF DOOM album, is a bizarre one. His strange style of wordplay can be confusing, dense and inaccessible. However, he’s definitely one of the most unique voices in hip-hop today. You’re never quite sure whether he’s trying to say something serious or not, since he jumps between subject matters at a moment’s notice. At least in my mind, though, it doesn’t really matter what he’s saying in the long run. Above all, I find DOOM’s style endlessly inventive and entertaining. Words themselves can be incredibly fun. I’m glad DOOM understands that.

The Hazards Of Concept

Artist: The Decemberists

Album: The Hazards Of Love

Year: 2009

Grade: 3 pretzels

Everything seems to be coming in pairs this week. Two reviews of Canadian supergroups, two albums I compared to Pavement, etc. Well, it doesn’t look like this trend will be stopping any time soon, since The Hazards Of Love becomes the second concept album I’m reviewing this week, joining Mastodon’s Crack The Skye. However, this time around, there will be 100% less Rasputin and Russian cults. Disappointed?

Instead, The Hazards Of Love tackles an exceedingly convoluted love story, cooked up by Decemberists mastermind Colin Meloy. Apparently (by which I mean, according to Wikipedia), the story follows Margaret, a woman who falls in love with William, who is, I shit you not, “a shape-shifting forest dweller.” Perhaps there’s something a bit warped about me, but I’m much more inclined to accept the wacky story about Rasputin than transforming satyrs. Anyway, the story goes on, as the “forest queen” becomes jealous. Apparently, a “murdering knave” also plays a part. All these various characters are each “played” by different singers, with Meloy himself singing as William and assorted female singers (including Shara Worden of My Brightest Diamond) playing other parts. Still with me?

As I’m sure you can tell, this is a sprawling concept for an indie rock album. Even by the Decemberists usual lofty standards, this album is quite a piece of work. However, the album’s story tends to run off the tracks whenever Meloy sacrifices direct storytelling for whatever new piece of vocabulary he’s discovered. His love of words is positively palpable (“it proceeds you like a black smoke pall”). The story he’s trying to tell becomes lost is this maze of syntax and multi-syllabic words.

The music is very different from what the Decemberists' have recorded in the past. Instead of the wavering sea shanties they became famous for, the band have opted for a very strange hard-rock/folk sound for The Hazards Of Love. There’s some lovely acoustic guitar licks scattered throughout the album (“The Hazards Of Love 1” is a personal favorite), but they are few and far between. Thunderous electric guitar crunches appear much more frequently, often at strange, possibly inappropriate moments. Plus, being the rock opera it is, the album is filled with small motifs and riffs that recur again and again. While the concept is very ambitious, these small details don’t translate well. The listener is left wondering if they already heard each song earlier.

I can’t fault Meloy and the Decemberists for being ambitious, nor can I say this album is unexpected. It was just a matter of time before the hyper-literate Meloy tackled a full-fledged rock opera. Sadly, The Hazards Of Love never really clicks. A few songs, such as the stomping “The Rake’s Song”, show moments of genuine artistic inspiration, but most of the space on the album is taken up with songs just trying to move the sprawling narrative forward. They don’t get to simply exist as songs in their own right. Ultimately, The Hazards Of Love is heavy on concept, but tragically short on substance.

How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The P4K, Part 2

While I’m on the subject of Pitchfork, I’d like to announce a new addition to Pretzel Logic. On the right hand side, below my picture, you’ll notice a new “2009 Favorites” section. This space will have links to every album over the course of the year that I grade as a 4.5 or 5 pretzel album. Now, f anyone really wants to know which albums I’m enjoying lately, they can check the 2009 Favorites.

I basically stole this idea wholesale from Pitchfork, with their Best New Music section. I feel that one of Pitchfork’s biggest strengths is their organization and navigability. Having a nifty little space where people can see the best of the best albums is more than a little useful. I try to run this blog in a very organized manner and I think this new 2009 Favorites area will help in that regard. Enjoy!

How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The P4K, Part 1

Artist: Cymbals Eat Guitars

Album: Why There Are Mountains

Year: 2009

Grade: 3.5 pretzels

There’s something I feel I have to deal with as a music blogger: Pitchfork (or P4K, if you spend too much time at your computer). They are the giant that looms over every other music website, whether you like it or not. No matter how elitist you think they are, or how bitter you are that they didn’t review your favorite underground neo-folk-metal record very well, you can’t ignore them. What Pitchfork says holds a lot of clout in the music world. Appearing in their “Best New Music” section almost guarantees a band several thousand listeners, simply on the principle of the matter.

This is what happened with me and Cymbals Eat Guitars. I would have never, ever heard this band if they hadn’t popped up on Pitchfork earlier this week. They’re an unsigned New York group that recorded Why There Are Mountains in a basement somewhere (actually, it was a studio in Manhattan, but we can imagine). Pitchfork liked ‘em enough to warrant a coveted Best New Music nod. As soon as I saw that, I knew I needed to find a copy, just so I would have an opinion. I knew that this Pitchfork review would bring them much wider attention and, being the amateur music journalist I am, I felt it was my duty to at least hear what everyone would soon be talking about.

I’ve listened to the album a few times and I definitely like it, in a vague, unformed sort of way. It reminds me of lots of other bands I like: a bit of ramshackle Pavement attitude, some My Bloody Valentine oceans of guitar, a helping of nervy Modest Mouse energy, etc. For an unsigned band, I must say, I’m impressed. However, there’s nothing that keeps me coming back for more. There’s no one song that makes me go, “Holy shit! I need to play this every five minutes for the next eight weeks!” I would never call it a bad album; I just find it slightly unmemorable. You’ll notice that the majority of this review isn’t really about music and that should tell you something about what I think of this album.

This brings me back to Pitchfork. I feel that the most responsible way to deal with this much loved and hated website is to be aware of what they’re saying, but try to form opinions on your own. I know people at both extremes on this matter: those who seem to agree with everything Pitchfork says unconditionally and those who ignore Pitchfork altogether. Both seem very stupid to me. If you’re interested in music, particularly less-prominent stuff, read Pitchfork. They’re a professional bunch and they know how to write. They cover music that probably doesn’t even exist yet. As a music resource, they’re unmatched. However, blindly acknowledging what they say as truth is irresponsible. The pressure is on them to convince us, the lesser music websites of the world, that what they say should hold weight. And in order for us to even be part of the conversation, we need to listen to these albums they think are great. You’d don’t have to like ‘em, but please, please have an opinion.

No Escape, Trapped In Time And Space

Artist: Mastodon

Album: Crack The Skye

Year: 2009

Grade: 5 pretzels

People always seem surprised when I tell them I’m a big metal fan. Apparently, in most people’s eyes, corduroy jackets and thrashing power chords are mutually exclusive. I think most of the problem comes from how picky I am about my metal music. The way I see it, good metal needs to balance two different artistic urges. The first is the need to be “epic.” Metal is, almost by definition, larger than life. Emotions, guitars and vocal-chord-ripping screams are all exaggerated into huge, dramatic versions of themselves. This overblown hugeness is what gives metal its power and sheer awesomeness. However, in order for metal to really win me over, it also has to have an element of “cool” to it. Simply hurling a wall of noise at me isn’t going to make me want to hear more. There needs to be something behind it all which grabs my attention and makes me try to dig for more details. I need to care about what these guys are doing and saying. Iron Maiden, for example, are a band I find very “epic,” but not very “cool” (sorry Maiden fans, they just don’t do it for me). All the fantasy references in the lyrics just become silly after a while. At the other end of the spectrum, mid-90s Metallica were very “cool,” but not “epic” at all. As a result, they sounded toothless and old. Few bands can find that perfect balance on the razor’s edge between these two.

I can say with the utmost certainty that Mastodon are one of those few. The Atlanta-based band has spent the past ten years proving again and again that they are possibly the finest new (and certainly not nu) metal band the decade has to offer. They’re capable of thrashing with the best of them, but they also have a tremendous talent for intricate guitar interplay. Best of all, they fully embrace melody, leaving you actually humming metal songs after a while. Never underestimate the power of catchy metal.

They’ve also got a pretty fantastic sense of humor. The following is drummer Brann Dailor explaining the story behind the songs on Crack The Skye. Oh, did I forget to mention it was a concept album….?

“There is a paraplegic and the only way that he can go anywhere is if he astral travels. He goes out of his body, into outer space and a bit like Icarus, he goes too close to the sun, burning off the golden umbilical cord that is attached to his solar plexus. So he is in outer space and he is lost, he gets sucked into a wormhole, he ends up in the spirit realm and he talks to spirits telling them that he is not really dead. So they send him to the Russian cult, they use him in a divination and they find out his problem. They decide they are going to help him. They put his soul inside Rasputin's body. Rasputin goes to usurp the czar and he is murdered. The two souls fly out of Rasputin's body through the crack in the sky(e) and Rasputin is the wise man that is trying to lead the child home to his body because his parents have discovered him by now and think that he is dead. Rasputin needs to get him back into his body before it's too late. But they end up running into the Devil along the way and the Devil tries to steal their souls and bring them down…there are some obstacles along the way.”

Let’s just take a moment to let that sink in. Sure, it’s absolutely ridiculous, but it’s also damn hilarious. And the band knows this. More than virtually any other metal band I’ve seen interviewed, they seem to understand that the nature of metal is inherently dualistic: you have to be completely serious and completely full of shit at the same time. This is what makes metal fun, but also incredibly satisfying. You can wallow in the sheer weight of the music, or you can sit back and grin as four guys with beards solo on their guitars until their fingers bleed. No other type of music can do that. (In case you’re still not sure about their sense of humor, I suggest this video.)

Crack The Skye succeeds because it’s very much about the story Dailor is trying to tell, but it’s also completely not. Sure, the lyrics are all about Rasputin and astral cords and space travel, but that’s not really what you’re supposed to be focusing on. Mastodon can still absolutely rock and the great moments come fast and unrelenting on this album. “Oblivion” is a sludgy metal dirge, tapping into the same vein as 2006’s “Sleeping Giant”. “Ghost Of Karelia” shows expansive new ground for the band, highlighted (as always) by Dailor’s mind-destroying drumming. Towering above everything are the two monolithic epics on the album: “The Czar”, at a solid ten minutes and “The Last Baron”, which creeps over thirteen minutes. It’s a testament to the band’s strength and songwriting abilities that neither becomes boring. Mastodon are a band so full of ideas that the challenge is to jam them all into a fifty minute CD. On Crack The Skye, they shoot for the stars and the world is that much better for it.

One Big Happy Canadian Family, Part 2

Artist: Swan Lake

Album: Enemy Mine

Year: 2009

Grade: 3.5 pretzels

Enemy Mine, for those of you who aren’t epic sci-fi fanatics, is an occasionally entertaining 1985 movie starring none other than Dennis Quaid, mugging as a futuristic space pilot. He crashes on a hostile planet, along with a Drac, a member of a reptilian race at war with humanity. Eventually, they become friends, leading Quaid to adopt the Drac’s child. Of course, when Quaid is inevitably rescued, everyone can’t understand why he’s attached to this alien-child. There’s lots of screaming, lots of fighting and eventually everything works out. How it didn’t sweep the Oscars is a mystery that will probably never be answered. But an even bigger mystery is why Swan Lake, a Canadian indie rock supergroup, chose to name their second album after this twenty-five-year-old movie. To my disappointment, this is not the album that finally marries indie rock to intergalactic space relations. I keep waiting.

Misleading title notwithstanding, Enemy Mine (the album) is certainly interesting and rewarding in its own right (arguably, more so than its namesake movie). Swan Lake is an artistic collaboration between three heavy hitters in Canadian music: Spencer Krug of Wolf Parade/Sunset Rubdown, Dan Bejar of Destroyer/the New Pornographers and finally Carey Mercer of Frog Eyes/various other bands forgotten by time. It’s an odd partnership to be sure. All three are idiosyncratic, slightly warped songwriters and putting them all together like this threatens the world with previously unheard of levels of inaccessibility. Mercer’s throttled baritone is a very acquired taste and Bejar’s elliptical lyrics and ability to out-nasal Bob Dylan haven’t exactly won him top 40 hits. Even Krug, by far the most “normal” of the three, has a distinct streak for oddball songwriting, while possessing a manic, strained voice. Swan Lake are a band that aren’t exactly for everybody.

However, Enemy Mine is certainly a step in the right direction. They debuted back in 2006 with Beast Moans, an album which lost itself in disjointed artistic indulgence. It sounded exactly like what it was: three out-there songwriters pooling their songs together and seeing what happened. By now, they seem to have settled down and are working together to bring out the best in each other’s work. They each bring three tunes to the table, each with its writer’s identity firmly stamped upon it. But instead of sounding mismatched and roughly shoved together, Swan Lake have found a way to weave those three voices around each other to create something a bit stronger than the sum of its parts.

There are still a few problems to be ironed out. Lyrically, the album is very strong (when you can understand the words for all the warbling), but the melodies are still a bit rambling and lost. Bejar’s “Ballad Of A Swan Lake” has some fairly hilarious lines (“I sat down and took a number at the table where Death resides”), but the music just drifts along, shambling drunkenly. Mercer especially offers up some very difficult material to swallow, with “Peace” being a particularly dense and strange piece, even by Mercer’s wacky standards. The one absolutely solid, out-of-the-park hit on the album is Krug’s “A Hand At Dusk”, which makes the most out of a dusty, dark piano motif over an exquisite six minutes. It is, by miles, the finest thing Swan Lake have ever recorded and is a highlight of Krug’s entire career. Using that song as a starting point, I have no doubt that Swan Lake could record a true knockout album soon enough.

When Biographies Go Bad

Title: The Many Lives Of Tom Waits

Author: Patrick Humphries

Year: 2007

Tom Waits is a fascinating musician (and actor), who intentionally shrouds himself in as much mystery as possible. Like many artists of his generation, he has a flair for inventing personal histories to derail overzealous interviewers. Plus, when you sit and look at his back catalogue, you’ll notice that he’s released very few albums for someone who’s been at this since the early 70s. All in all, he’s the perfect person to write a biography about. There are hoards of Waits fans yearning to know all about his early life, his thoughts, his personal growth over the years and so on. Even if Waits won’t tell you, a good biographer should be able to dig into his personal history a bit and uncover something new to tantalize Waits’ legions of fans. That book would fly off the shelves.

The Many Lives Of Tom Waits is not that book, no matter how much it wants to be. Its biggest problem is lack of original material. By his own admission, author Patrick Humphries met Waits only once, back in the early 80s. This was pre-Swordfishtrombones, pre-Rain Dogs, pre-everything that has now lifted Waits up to near mythic status. Humphries comes back again and again to that brief afternoon interview when he tries to bring something new to the table. But when that fails him, all he has to fall back on is a pile of interviews and quotes from other journalists. This leaves the reader begging for something insightful, something unexpected while reading the book. Even a few interviews with close friends or old musical collaborators would have been golden compared to those old interviews.

What this book is begging for, with big, drooping eyes, is a good editor. Being the nitpicky reader I am, I couldn’t help but notice a few inconsequential, but distracting errors throughout the book (for example, Humphries says a video was made for the title track of 1992’s Bone Machine. That album has no title track and the video was for “Goin’ Out West”). While these are understandable typos and oversights, when I, amateur twenty-year-old music historian Simon Irving, can pick these things out, it undermines the credibility of the book. Humphries also writes in a convoluted, counterintuitive style where the Waits timeline is bent to fit the needs of the author. 1987’s Franks Wild Years is discussed before 1985’s Rain Dogs, for example, which will confuse anyone with a passing knowledge of Waits’ career. These errors are better than glaring mistakes, but they’re irritating nonetheless.

Finally, on a matter of personal taste, Humphries’ assessment of Waits’ recorded works bothers me greatly. Waits’ music is generally divided into two categories: his pre-1983 balladeer work and his more experimental post-1983 albums. Humphries makes it clear he prefers the earlier stuff, which in and of itself is fine. The problem I have is that this is counter to the prevailing critical opinions on Waits’ work and Humphries never acknowledges this. He casually declares 1976’s Small Change as “Waits’ masterpiece,” as if it was common knowledge. Just reading that sentence, I could hear the ranks of Waits fans screaming in protest. For someone who writes like the biggest Tom Waits fan in the world, Patrick Humphries seems surprisingly cut off from what the rest of Waits’ fans actually think.

One Big Happy Canadian Family, Part 1

Artist: Handsome Furs

Album: Face Control

Year: 2009

Grade: 4.5 pretzels

I must say…the Canadian music this year is amazing me. I guess this shouldn’t come as a surprise, since the same musicians who made Canada seem awesome earlier this decade are still to blame. However, what’s strange about these albums is that they all seem to feature artists working outside of their “main” bands. Handsome Furs are the quintessential example of this, featuring Dan Boeckner of Wolf Parade collaborating with his wife Alexei Perry. Wolf Parade already made a very strong impression with 2005’s Apologies To The Queen Mary, so Handsome Furs was looked at as a promising offshoot when they started recording in 2007. Their first album, Plague Park, was certainly interesting, but many, including myself, ultimately found it rather boring. It seemed like a typical side-project: a handful of half-formed ideas that needed to be polished.

Face Control is Handsome Furs’ attempt at breaking out of that side-project status, in order to be taken seriously as a fully fledged band in their own right. Escaping from the shadow of Wolf Parade is suddenly easier, since their last album, At Mount Zoomer, was a staggering disappointment. Not unlike fellow Canucks the New Pornographers, Wolf Parade sounded like a band that needed to spend some time apart, so that the creative juices could start flowing again. Face Control reassures me that, as one half of Wolf Parade’s songwriting partnership, Boeckner still has a solid grasp on his own song style.

The album is an impressive testament to the power of minimalism. The Handsome Furs aesthetic contains very little beyond simple programmed beats, a few synth riffs, squiggles and Boeckner’s ragged electric guitar work. However, instead of sounding lazy or undercooked, the lack of clutter in the songs gives them an edgy immediacy. The echoing drum effects on “Evangeline” are all that’s needed to hold the listener’s attention while the song gradually builds to its climax. Boeckner’s guitar stabs are slowly introduced, showing an impressive sense of restraint that was missing from the recent Wolf Parade efforts. Even at their most dense, such as the lead single “I’m Confused”, there are very few parts to this music. The simplicity is a virtue, letting the songwriting peek out through the bare-bones musical surroundings.

Wolf Parade proved that Boeckner has a talent for wiry, emotional songs. 2005’s “It’s A Curse” was one of the clear highlights from Wolf Parade’s first album, showcasing his punchy guitar playing and weathered, yelpy voice. It feels like the musical predecessor for most of the material on Face Control, particularly “Legal Tender”, the eerie, scratchy number that opens the album. Boeckner’s songs have a distinct darkness creeping around their edges, which is only underlined by his strained vocal delivery. However, he also has a talent for soaring, anthemic melodies and Face Control closes with two of his finest in “Thy Will Be Done” and “Radio Kaliningrad”. The last is particularly moving, rising out of a cloud of electronic noise before the strident, driving melody takes hold. It finds the strangest of balances between New Order and Springsteen.

Alexei Perry’s contributions should not be ignored. Her beats are effective and imaginative, providing a solid anchor for Boeckner’s guitar. However, Boeckner inevitably becomes the focal point of the band. His style and intensity (I saw him play a whole Wolf Parade show with a fever of 102 a few years ago) are unmistakable. Handsome Furs have proven they are just as deft and capable when it comes to music as Boeckner’s more famous band. With albums this strong, Handsome Furs might just eclipse them if Wolf Parade doesn’t get their act together soon.

The Dangers Of Too Much California

Artist: Wavves

Album: Wavvves

Year: 2009

Grade: 2.5 pretzels

There’s something strange in the air over in California. Just witness Wavves, the latest indie phenom to emerge from the sunny wilds of the West Coast. Wavves is the performing name of Nathan Williams, a young Cali man who recorded this entire album on ever-reliable 4-track recorders in his bedroom. Needless to say, the recording quality is more than a few pegs below Steely Dan. However, not unlike his fellow Californians in Pavement, his work is an argument that “good” recording quality is all relative and that his flaws-and-all style of recording captures his songs the way they were meant to be heard.

Now, that’s all fine and dandy if the music sounds appealing. Unfortunately, the strangely titled Wavvves never really becomes the iconoclastic, shambling masterpiece it might want to be, on level with Pavement’s Slanted And Enchanted. Williams doesn’t help his cause by melting his songs with the heaviest of guitar distortion. His abrasive wall of sound is certainly attention-grabbing, but it blunts any unique edge the songs might have, burying them all in a very similar-sounding flood of feedback. He also records his vocals through a similar set of distortions, sounding like he’s singing to you from underneath an ocean. You’re lucky if you can even understand a few words.

There might be an interesting aesthetic lurking behind all this sludge. Williams seems to have a certain obsession with goth culture, since five of his songs have the word “goth” in their title and another three feature the word “demon.” What does all this mean? Well, honestly, I haven’t got a clue. My prevailing attitude towards this record is one of mind-buckling confusion. Aside from a slight nod to accessibility with “So Bored”, Wavvves seems determined to create its identity through poorly recorded noise. It’s a challenging choice, to be sure, but it also seems incredibly lazy. Williams doesn’t take his songs to another level just by recording them “badly.” In the end, the album feels like an inside joke from a young man who needs to get out of his room some more and who's baked by more than just the Californian sun.

The Night Is Always Darkest...

Arist: Various Artists

Album: Dark Was The Night

Year: 2009

Grade: 4.5 pretzels

The year is 2035. My kids are studying history with their full-immersion, virtual-reality headsets. Suddenly, they stumble across a reference to a wacky type of music that was popular decades ago.

“Dad,” they ask, “what is ‘indie rock’?

“Well, that’s a complicated question…,” I reply.

“Is it anything like the New Wave electro-rap-folk that’s all the rage these days?”

“Not exactly,” I say, searching through my ancient collection of CDs (which my kids make fun of endlessly. Apparently, the new mp6s are way more reliable) for something that can explain the vast scope and range of indie rock, the music I enjoyed so much in my college days. Then, suddenly, I find exactly what I'm looking for.

“Kids, if you want to understand indie rock, you should listen to this album.”

I hand them Dark Was The Night.

Now, to my continuing amazement, Dark Was The Night wasn’t intended as the definitive compilation on indie rock. As a matter of fact, it was assembled by the Red Hot Organization, which raises global awareness about HIV and AIDS. This in and of itself is tremendously admirable. I’m very glad that the money made by this album is going to a good cause. However, it just so happens that the collection of songs here, chosen and produced by Aaron and Bryce Dessner of the National, capture the entirety of the indie rock aesthetic.

The idea behind the album is very simple. The Dessner brothers cornered virtually every prominent voice in the vast indie rock community and asked for an original song to be recorded and added to the two-disc album. Everyone, from Feist to Conor Oberst, from Spoon to Arcade Fire, is present and accounted for. Any artist you’ve heard on a college radio station recently is somewhere on this album. David Byrne even shows up, acting as the spiritual godfather for the entire genre by collaborating with Dirty Projectors. The sheer amount of people the Dessner’s got involved in the project is staggering and gives the album a distinct sense of importance.

It also helps that the songs aren’t explicitly about AIDS. While using the proceeds from the album to fight this horrible illness is a wonderful thing to do, thirty-one original songs about AIDS would have been either obnoxiously heavy handed or soul-crushingly depressing. Instead, we get a fascinating range of material, reflecting the diverse nature of indie rock as a genre while still having a discernible identity over the course of the two CDs. To top it all off, the album’s consistency is just as impressive as its all-star lineup. With thirty-one tracks to choose from, the standouts will probably change from listener to listener. My personal favorites include “Train Song”, a delicate ballad sung by Feist and Ben Gibbard, and Spoon’s wiry “Well-Alright”.

Being a zealous album-format purist, I tend to dismiss compilation albums as needless rehashing and re-packaging aimed at people who don’t have the patience or drive to hear songs in their natural, album-centric habitats. However, Dark Was The Night seems to be an impressive exception. I commend the Dessners for creating an album of 100% original recordings, instead of poaching album tracks from the artists they wanted to work with. I also hope that those artists refrain from releasing these songs on future albums. As it stands right now, Dark Was The Night feels wonderfully complete and concise. Plus, besides being an admirable political fundraiser, the historical function of this compilation should not be ignored. This is the neatest, most organized distillation of indie rock the world might ever get.

Words, Words, Words

So, as you might have noticed, my usual manic rate for updating this blog has slowed this week. I blame a combination of Spring Break, home cooking and the World Baseball Classic games that are readily available on my TV (go Australia!). Hopefully, I’ll find time to write a few reviews as the week goes on and I can assure you that regular blog posts will resume on Monday.

In the meantime, I’m going to try a blog experiment. I was thinking about how I use the words “record”, “album” and “CD” interchangeably when I refer to albums that I’m reviewing. I’ve decided to try attaching concrete definitions to these three terms:

-“album”: a series of songs arranged in some order by an artist or artists
-“CD”: albums that are on the compact disc format
-“record”: albums that are on the vinyl formal, so beloved by hipsters of the world

Hopefully, I’ll be able to use these definitions in all further album reviews. However, should I find the lack of synonyms completely infuriating, I’ll switch back.

A Whirlwind Of Predictability

Artist: Neko Case
Album: Middle Cyclone
Year: 2009
Grade: 3.5 pretzels

I remember, way back in 2005, it seemed Canada was the next great frontier for music. Wave after wave of great bands seemed to be migrating down from the northern border: Arcade Fire, Wolf Parade and Islands, all from Montreal, reinvigorated indie rock. Death From Above 1979 and Junior Boys showed two new ways for electronic music to evolve. Hell, even Godspeed! You Black Emperor seemed to be part of this overwhelming Canuck invasion. Of course, a few years down the line, most of these bands have lost their hype, some even vanishing all together. Canada’s brief stint as the new mecca of rock music appears to have ended.

However, we still have Neko Case. Although she’s best known as the silvery voiced siren from the New Pornographers, her solo albums usually eclipse anything the Pornos have to offer. Middle Cyclone is no exception, delivering yet another set of bold, downbeat country-inflected songs. As always, Case’s extraordinary voice does the majority of the heavy lifting. She’s blessed with an incredibly versatile set of pipes that can blow you away or whisper softly in your ear, depending on what’s required for the song at hand. Coupled with her talent for writing sharp, emotionally charged lyrics, she’s become one of the shining lights in the realm of alt-country and indie rock.

Middle Cyclone is definitely a strong album. However, the one glaring fault, if you want to see it as such, is its predictability. Ever since her stellar 2002 album Blacklisted, Case seems stuck in a particular orbit. The usual down-and-out country stories and bluesy narratives haven’t changed. There might be new names or new chords, but the stories being told seem like rehashes of older songs. Of course, Case executes these with the same talent and skill as she always has, but there’s certainly nothing surprising going on here. The best songs (“People Got A Lotta Nerve”, “This Tornado Loves You”) sound great because they sound like great Neko Case songs of years past. The last true song on the album, “Red Tide” (the record ends with half an hour of swampy crickets chirping), seems to me to be the only song on Middle Cyclone I haven’t heard in some variation before. The ominous, descending melody does a fantastic job evoking the paranoia the lyrics are conveying. Now, I can’t fault Case for continuing to record the same stuff if it sounds good, but I can't help but wonder what other dimensions she might be able to bring to her music.

With all the New Pornographers’ constituate members putting out records this year, it’s inevitable some comparisons will be made. A.C. Newman’s Get Guilty already set the bar high and all signs point to Dan Bejar’s album with his Swan Lake collaborators as being another strong competitor. Middle Cyclone sounds like it can definitely go toe to toe with both of those albums, which bodes well for the New Pornographers if they can fully harness these three voices. However, whereas the other two records seem to show noticeable artistic growth, Neko Case continues to sound the same. She still sounds good, but treading water usually doesn’t cut it in the music industry. I’m very curious to see what she does next.

Two Things

With all this talk about “good” music and “bad” music, I thought it’d be appropriate to share an amazing bit of science someone showed me on the Internet. Apparently, a group of scientists (if we want to call them that) surveyed a variety of people to determine what people hate the most in music. From there, the logical next step was to put every single thing people hate into one epic track, to “scientifically” create the “World’s Worst Song”. It’s a bit of an endurance test, clocking in around twenty minutes and featuring lots of harps and rapping opera singers. Listen at your own risk:

http://blogs.houstonpress.com/rocks/2009/02/the_scientifically_engineered.php

Also, I have a Sound Off! update. Both bands I have friends in, Dearboy and Dyno Jamz, have made it to the finals. Again, I encourage anyone in the Seattle area to go check them out and cheer them on. They’ll be performing at the EMP Sky Church this Saturday (March 7) at 8 pm. Links to their music can be found in my original Sound Off! post.

Black Hole Sun, Won't You Come, And Wash This Album Away

Artist: Chris Cornell

Album: Scream

Year: 2009

Grade: 1.5 pretzels

Weezer’s “Pork And Beans” was a great little song that more-or-less flew under the radar last year. One verse had a particularly funny concept behind it:

Everyone likes to dance to a happy song
With a catchy chorus and beat so they can sing along
Timbaland knows the way to reach the top of the charts
Maybe if I work with him I can perfect the art

Now, Rivers Cuomo meant those words ironically, especially since they were inspired by a rough meeting with record label execs, who asked him to write more commercially minded material. Of course Weezer wasn’t going to record with Timbaland. C’mon now, that’d be silly.

Apparently, Chris Cornell missed the irony here. Scream is the former Soundgarden/Audioslave singer’s third solo album, coming on the heels of 2007’s forgettable Carry On. However, for this one, he apparently decided to jettison everything that had won him legions of fans over the years, instead opting for a bizarre, pop-R&B clusterfuck, produced by --- you guessed it --- Timbaland. In the history of unnecessary pairings in music (Lennon & Yoko, David Bowie & Tina Turner, Axl Rose & anybody not named Axl Rose), this desperate attempt to weld Timbaland’s pop sensibilities onto Cornell’s over-earnest rock tendencies ranks as one of the worst.

Now, there could have been something great here. A real rock-R&B crossover hit would have been an interesting creature indeed. However, in order for that to work, both Timbaland and Cornell would have needed to adjust and find some sort of a middle ground where their musical styles can relate to each other. Unfortunately, on Scream, neither seems willing to give an inch. Timbaland’s beats sound like they were imported from a Justin Timberlake album, while Cornell just keeps doing the throat-shredding screams he’s been doing since the mid-80s. Instead of a genuine artistic collaboration, it sounds like a rough mixtape Timbaland made with old Soundgarden records.

It also doesn’t help that the songs blow viciously. Cornell has never been an upper-echelon songwriter, but his work with Soundgarden (and even occasionally with Audioslave) still had a unique and recognizable edge to it. However, over a decade down the line, his songs have been reduced to excruciating metaphors (“you are the ocean I will swallow, you are the wind that I will ride”) and bland platitudes. The leadoff track, “Part Of Me”, seems like a microcosm for everything that’s wrong with these new songs. It relies too heavily on electronic effects and production, hoping that they will disguise the fact that the chorus is just one, horribly written line: “that bitch ain’t a part of me.” This is the kind of writing I expect from the acoustic guitar guy at my old high school, not one of Seattle’s most revered rock gods. Cornell, buddy, what happened?

As if that wasn’t enough, Cornell and Timbaland throw one last screwball your way by insisting that each track finish with a thirty-second preview of the very next track. If you had to read that sentence a couple times to understand it, I don’t blame you, because it sounds just as weird on record as it does when written out. Apparently, Cornell wanted something reminiscent of old psychedelic records, but if that’s what he was going for here, it failed completely. Hearing a quick jumble of the riffs and themes from the next song doesn’t create any kind of interesting continuity over the course if the record. It just leaves me scratching my head in confusion, wondering who in their right mind signed off on this god-forsaken album.

Who's Simon Defending Now?: Big Black

A brick of fireworks explodes onstage.

A scrawny, bespectacled nerd walks on stage, with two lumbering goons in tow. They wear their guitars with strange straps around their hips, instead of the standard shoulder ones.

There is no drummer.

The nerd walks toward the microphone.

“1… 2… 1, 2, FUCK YOU!”

The next three minutes are the worst three minutes of your life. You’re plunged into a lacerating flood of guitar distortion and slamming bass. There may be no drummer, but there’s a brutal drumbeat coming from somewhere, hammering itself into your head with inhuman precision. The musicians are staggering around the stage, spitting, screaming, bleeding. Is this Hell, you ask?

No, this is Big Black. And they probably hate you.

In terms of music that challenges you, there simply are no other bands that can touch Big Black. Driven by Steve Albini, a crazed, bitter lunatic hailing from the vast nothingness of Missoula, Montana, they tore rock audiences apart for five brief years in the 80s. With guitarist Santiago Durango and bassist Dave Riley providing the necessary muscle (not to mention “Roland”, the drum machine which was always treated as a full band member), they openly provoked audiences who had grown accustomed to the formulaic nature of American punk bands. 80s underground rock in America meant the rigid viewpoints of hardcore punk or the loose jangle of R.E.M. and college rock. Big Black didn’t try for either.

To call Big Black “abrasive” or “offensive” doesn’t even begin to do them justice. The Sex Pistols were “abrasive,” but they still played recognizable chords and blues progressions. Modern rap can be “offensive,” but today’s rappers don’t talk about child molestation and slaughterhouses. Such things are impossibly bad taste, right? If they are, it didn’t keep Big Black from singing about them. Against a backdrop of intolerable noise, there were no subjects off-limits for Big Black.

The sound of Big Black is certainly recognizable. Using aluminum guitars and playing with copper guitar picks that were clipped in half, the guitar sound is best described as “ungodly metallic screeching.” Instead of riffs, Albini and Durango created sounds resembling sheet metal being ripped apart. However, the cacophony was carefully controlled. Especially since their drummer was, in fact, a machine, the precision in Big Black’s music is amazing. Unlike the flabby distortion of heavy metal, Big Black’s sound is pure punk, honed down to its leanest, sharpest edge. This is efficient, carefully executed music intended to grab you and never let you go.

The lyrics are certainly attention-grabbing as well. Particularly on their debut album, 1986’s Atomizer, their songs dealt with every taboo topic they could think of. Songs about police corruption and post-traumatic stress disorder target large social problems, while others are told from the perspective of alcoholics or a wife-beating husband. Most of Albini’s lyrics are in this first-person perspective, which is where most of their offensiveness comes from. We’re not supposed to relate with these types of misanthropic characters, but Albini’s songs force us into their shoes through the lyrics. Perhaps most shocking of all is “Jordan, Minnesota”, which is based on a true account of a city-wide child molestation ring. A song told from the perspective of an abused child would be controversial enough, but Albini takes the role of the molester. By the time he starts moaning and screaming, saying “come here and do as you’re told,” you understand just how horrific and tasteless this story is.

But it’s also true and this is where Big Black gets complicated. It’s easy to dismiss them as a bunch of horrible, offensive sociopaths, but, by doing so, you’re only looking at the surface of the music. Beneath the wall of noise and button-pushing words are some of the most pointed satires and black comedy in history. Big Black confront issues like child molestation head on, whereas most other bands won’t even go near such subjects. In the world of Big Black, to avoid something is to act like it doesn’t exist. The problems Albini writes about are all real. A song like “Bazooka Joe”, featuring a PTSD Vietnam vet, deals with a real problem in 1980s America. Big Black don’t dress these issues up at all, which is why they offend so many people, but if you take a moment to look at Albini’s word choice and phrasing, it’s clear that their songs aren’t meant to be taken literally. In the middle of “Bad Penny”, the song pauses so Albini can deliver this monologue:

I think I fucked your girlfriend once
Maybe twice, I don’t remember
Then I fucked all your friends’ girlfriends
Now they hate you

Maybe I’m just as twisted and warped as Albini, but I can’t help but laugh when I hear that. Big Black’s music and lyrics are so extreme that they simply can’t be taken at face-value. The point is that they offend. You’re supposed to have a strong reaction. Besides, above all, their songs are theatric. Albini writes character sketches, putting himself (and the listener) into the shoes of the most undesirable elements of humanity, in order to shine the light on subjects people would rather just ignore. There’s no excuse for that kind of ignorance, however, and Big Black ensure that nobody gets away with it.