Keepin' Up The Good Work

Artist: Atlas Sound

Album: Logos

Year: 2009

Grade: 3.5 pretzels

I was late to jump on the Deerhunter bandwagon. While various chunks of the music community immediately attached themselves to the Atlanta-based band’s dreamy, meandering sound, it took me a couple of years (and a very impressive live show) to see the quality songwriting hiding beneath all the shoegaze-lite guitar strumming. Over the past six months, I’ve cracked one of the many musical mysteries I’ve been trying to solve, meaning this is the perfect time for me to hear Logos, the second solo album from Deerhunter’s frontman, Bradford Cox.

Again recorded under the moniker Atlas Sound, Logos is a considerably more coherent and unified work than last year’s Let The Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel. Even more organic and babbling than Deerhunter, Cox’s solo songs strip away most of the shimmering guitars in favor of warm acoustic guitar strumming, supplemented by layered keyboards and minimal, efficient drumming. This fairly skeletal sound reveals the songs’ odd twists and turns, featuring all kinds of pleasantly atonal details floating through the mix.

Of course, the downside to this style (and all of Deerhunter’s work, for that matter), is that the songs can get so wispy that they threaten to float right out the window. Roughly half of Logos compensates for this with winning melodies or other compelling elements, but “Kid Klimax” or “Criminals” will pass by unnoticed if you’re not careful. The songs aren’t exactly boring, but they don’t draw attention to themselves. The album’s highest points, including the endlessly hummable “Sheila” and the squelchy “Walkabout” (featuring Animal Collective’s Noah Lennox), are the songs that force the listener to interact with them in some way.

Logos is very good by the usual solo album standards. It has its own distinctive qualities that separate it from Cox’s work in Deerhunter, while still retaining enough similarities that fans should embrace it pretty much wholeheartedly. It also features a handful of truly memorable songs, which rank among some of the most enjoyable indie pop in years. The other songs do let the album down somewhat, but I’m not going to kick the proverbial gift horse in the mouth, here. “Walkabout” alone justifies this album’s existence and it’s nice to see Cox maintain his insanely rapid rate of new music releases.

Some Songs Are Better Than Others

Artist: Morrissey

Album: Swords

Year: 2009

Grade: 3 pretzels

2009 was an important year for Morrissey. First of all, everyone's favorite curmudgeon turned fifty back in May (presumably, he had an “unhappy birthday”). However, second and more importantly, he released Years Of Refusal in February, a strong, assured album that capped a tremendous comeback decade for Moz. Combined with You Are The Quarry (2004) and Ringleader Of The Tormentors (2006), Morrissey’s work these past ten years has reassured the world that the Mozfather isn’t fading into obscurity as he ages. Not unlike Nick Cave, who is still rocking hard at fifty-one, Morrissey is entering his fourth decade in the music industry on a very strong note.

However, as the last dregs of the 2000s float around, Morrissey is releasing one final album, Swords, compiling the assorted b-sides that accompanied his past three albums. This makes sense on a number of levels. For one, those three albums will always be grouped together by music historians, hopefully as Morrissey’s “renaissance period.” Having all their outtakes grouped together is convenient for fans and underlines the albums’ trilogy-like status. Morrissey has also established a precedent for releasing compilation albums, giving his fans more and more of the moody babble and anti-social moaning they love so much (I say that with affection, Moz). Finally, if nothing else, it gives the world more of Morrissey’s amazing song-titles.

I mean, really, how does this man come up with this stuff? “If You Don’t Like Me, Don’t Look At Me”? “Friday Mourning”? Perhaps best of all, Swords offers up “Don’t Make Fun Of Daddy’s Voice”. While the actual track is a lackluster guitar cruncher marred by some misplaced keyboards, just reading that song title makes me grin (an experience foreign to Morrissey himself). As is occasionally the case with Moz, the idea is better than the actual execution and most of the songs here are better quips than they are songs. However, there’s nothing truly abysmal, with the possible exception of the shapeless “Sweetie-Pie”. These are b-sides and they sound the part. They would have dragged any album down a bit, but they’re still interesting to those deeply interested in Moz’s craft and bottomless depth for musical moping.

Swords doesn’t have too much value for casual Morrissey fans (although a fiery cover of Bowie’s “Drive-In Saturday” is nothing short of awesome). Those interested in buying into the cult of Mozzer are encouraged to pick up his aforementioned three proper albums of the decade, along with his very solid work from the early 90s. Once you’ve thoroughly absorbed those basics, you should be ready to dive into Swords, which features a less polished, but still rewarding side to the man’s songwriting.

Not Even An Echo Of The Past

Artist: Echo & The Bunnymen

Album: The Fountain

Year: 2009

Grade: 1.5 pretzels

No band wants to be saddled with a “sell-by date” by critics and fans. In a perfect world, great bands would keep releasing great music until they decided to call it a day. However, that idealistic dream is far removed from the reality of things. As much as us critics can sit here and discuss how an artist’s latest album sounds lazy or weak, the musicians themselves rely on releases to, y’know, make money and feed themselves and all that. This is a reality of being a working musician, especially once your glory years have faded into the past. However, this doesn’t make the albums in question any easier to listen to.

As much as I love their albums from the 80s, I’m the first person to admit that Echo & The Bunnymen should have packed it in back in 1989, when drummer Pete de Freitas died in a tragic motorcycle crash. De Freitas was a huge part of the Bunnymen’s sound and there was simply no way they’d ever be the same again. After an awkward album in 1990 (without singer Ian McCulloch to boot), they did actually break up. Yet, there was another reunion in 1996, this time with McCulloch back in the fold and it’s this version of the band that has limped along painfully over the past decade. The Fountain is their fourth album since then and it only reaffirms what any longtime Bunnymen fan already knows: the magic is gone and shows no signs of every coming back.

First, you’ve got McCulloch’s ragged voice. His original soaring bellow has been shredded by years of smoking and drinking and rock & roll lifestyle. It’s tragic to hear his once-majestic pipes reduced to something resembling gravel being mixed in a blender. His croaking and gasping gives these songs a sadly unintentional sense of sadness and futility. The Bunnymen are still writing the same evocative ballads as always…but the voice behind them has disintegrated beyond all recognition. When McCulloch asks “Don’t You Know Who I Am?”, he doesn’t realize how much irony he’s just stumbled into.

You also can’t ignore the fact that these songs just…well…blow viciously. There’s no polite way around it. There’s nothing memorable about 90% of the material here. Despite a bright, glistening production job, there’s just no substance. The opening “Think I Need It Too” is three-and-a-half minutes of fake drama and bombast, disguising Will Sergeant’s disappointingly simplistic guitar figures and the song’s tendency to just repeat itself over and over again. Even more hideous is “Shroud Of Turin”, featuring lyrics so appalling bad (“I love that you’re from Turin, I love that sweet sack you’re in”) that one wonders how nobody said anything during the recording sessions. McCulloch’s words have degenerated to the point of obnoxious old-man-puns. Please, make it stop. Be merciful!

Listening to The Fountain is almost physically painful for a huge Bunnymen fan such as myself. There’s just enough of the old Bunnymen here to remind the listener that this actually is the same band that recorded “The Killing Moon”. McCulloch and Sergeant have not aged gracefully and this dreary album is just the latest affirmation of that. Although there is a brief moment of hope towards the album’s end, in the form of the rolling “Drivetime”, The Fountain gives Bunnymen fans no reason to keep any last shreds of faith we may have in this band. Echo & The Bunnymen are over. Most fans have accepted this. Now, if only we could get the band to agree with us…

Who's Simon Defending Now?: Igor Stravinsky

(Due to Internet problems and college-related stresses, Pretzel Logic experienced some downtime this past week. However, things are now resolved and I’ll be posting at a slightly more rapid pace this upcoming week to compensate for missed time.)

I spend most of my time here on Pretzel Logic discussing what musicologists refer to as “popular music.” This poorly defined term describes virtually anything that doesn’t fit in the equally vague categories of “folk music” and “art music.” “Art music” is music supposedly informed by complicated musical relationships and so forth and so on… it’s what most people would call “classical music.” Now, as a diehard cultural postmodernist, I simply refuse to believe that music can be classified in such black and white terms. All these types of music blend and mix, creating the vast range of music the world knows and loves. Why do we need arbitrary dividing lines? In keeping with this line of thinking, this month’s Who's Simon Defending Now? is dedicated to the most badass, intense and all-around hardcore “art music” composer of the twentieth century: Igor (mo’fuckin’) Stravinsky!

Now, full disclose time: I’m not much of a musicologist. I’ve got a very limited understand of music theory and keys and diminished, Mixolydian quarter notes and so forth. I can’t talk about Stravinsky’s formal musical inventions from any real, educated place. All I can speak for is the way music makes me feel… which is precisely why I like Stravinsky’s music so much. His music doesn’t require focused cerebral scrutiny to be rewarding. He just assaults you with powerful emotions. Sounds good to me.

Particularly on two of his greatest ballets, The Rite Of Spring and The Firebird, the sheer power of Stravinsky hits you. His most bombastic sections abandon any attempt at sounding “pleasant,” usually resulting in a belligerent, atonal attack, full of screeching violins, blasting horns and some ruthless timpani. Just give a listen to the second part of Rite Of Spring (accompanied by Disney dinosaurs). An ominous build-up eventually culminates in a roaring, rhythmic motif, full of fear and anger and intensity. From its first subtle entrance on the horns all the way to its final, full-orchestra reemergence, it’s an unforgettable snippet of music.

Stravinsky was also a bit of a rock star in his time. When Rite Of Spring premiered in 1913, people, for lack of a better term, lost their collective shit. There were riots. There were tears. There were accusations that it “wasn’t music at all! Just noise!” Good ol’ Igor challenged the musical conventions of time, pushing highbrow music down a path that was too dark for many listeners. In tone, his music actually parallels (and preempts) so much of what modern hard rock and metal musicians have accomplished in the past forty years. Stravinsky confronted you with a cataclysmic collection of notes, played fast and loud, breaking away from the all-too-boring conventions of “nice and pretty” music. Just listen to the final segments of The Firebird (again, accompanied by Disney’s loving animations). How can you not pump your fist in the air during those last moments? The strings soar, the horns crash all around you, while the drums pound and hammer away. And the whole thing sounds absolutely majestic. “Art music” or not, “classical” or not… it makes no difference what genre it gets arbitrarily lumped into. It’s music that makes you feel something. That’s all I could ever want from a piece of music.

Here's Johnny!

Artist: The Cribs

Album: Ignore The Ignorant

Year: 2009

Grade: 2.5 pretzels

Ignore The Ignorant is never going to be given a fair chance. No critic is going to approach this album from a rational perspective, carefully looking at how it fits into the Cribs’ body of work. Instead, every person listening will immediately address the elephant in the room: this is guitarist Johnny Marr’s first album as an official band member. Maybe you’ve heard of Johnny’s first band. They were called the Smiths.

Mind you, music listeners have already dealt with this situation once before, back in 2007 when Marr hooked up with Modest Mouse for their We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank. Yet, after the initial flurry of incredulous stares and jaw-gapping wonderment had faded away, most people realized that Johnny’s actual musical contributions to that album were very subtle and not attention grabbing in any way. In Modest Mouse, Marr became just another guitarist, adding some nuances and texture to the band’s sound, but certainly not stealing the show the way he used to in the Smiths. Ignore The Ignorant is no different. While Marr’s name will bring this album a lot of press, his actual guitar playing remains somewhat in the background.

As for the Cribs’ themselves, the group of three English brothers at the core the band, they play the same, strident Brindie rock they’ve been playing for years. Unfortunately, their songwriting chops seem to have stumbled mightily on this new album. Until now, the Cribs could be relied on to deliver catchy songs at the very least, bursting at the seams with charming little guitar hooks that wormed their way into your ears. With Ignore The Ignorant, they seem to have aimed for “mature” songwriting, focusing more on their weighty lyrics and sonic adventurousness than catchy pop. However, most of what made them lovable gets thrown out in the process. Let’s compare this album’s lead single, “Cheat On Me”, with “Men’s Needs”, the lead single from 2007’s Men’s Needs, Women’s Needs, Whatever. Give ‘em a good listen. Which one do you really think you’re going to want to listen to more than twice?

Ignore The Ignorant just doesn’t seem comfortable with itself, as an entire album. The songs wander through semi-aimless chord progressions, while the dual vocals from Gary and Ryan Jarman rarely go beyond heavily accented barking and warbling. The rockers have an awkward desperateness to them, best heard on “We Were Aborted”, which can’t seem to decide which it wants to be: an angsty rock song or an anthemic pop single. Even the Smiths-aping “We Share The Same Skies”, which finally lets Marr do what he does best, falls a bit flat. Aside from the Sonic-Youth-lite guitar weirdness of “City Of Bugs”, the songs on Ignore The Ignorant are sadly forgettable. They don’t grab your attention, making the album’s title a bit of an ironic joke. The Cribs may have become the latest vehicle for Johnny Marr’s midlife crisis, but their lackluster songwriting lets everybody down.