Spoon played Jimmy Kimmel Live last week, with tracks from their upcoming album They Want My Soul. We had previously heard “Rent I Pay”, but the band also debuted “Rainy Taxi” at the performance. The first is a ragged, stilted rocker that Spoon has perfected over the years, but the second is a groovy, uptempo number that fits in some of the dissonant touches that the band does so well, and should be a live favorite.
Fans in Oslo were treated to a Pearl Jam rarity, as the band performed “Strangest Tribe” for the first time. It’s a beautiful, somber song that can be found on the Lost Dogs compilation, and was originally released as one of the fanclub Christmas singles. A hearty thanks to the fan that filmed this special occasion.
Rolling Stone has Jack White’s entire Glastonbury set on its site, which included a quick cover of Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” (a specific choice that the article has details about), and also a link to a previous performance with some choice covers including a take on The Stooges’ “I Wanna Be Your Dog”.
And we didn’t get a chance to post this in our traditional Friday #longreads roundup, but here’s a link to an extended interview with Dennis Lyxzen, frontman of the legendary Refused and The (International) Noise Conspiracy, who is now working in a new band called INVSN.
Now that summer has officially arrived, I’ve been in the mood for some bright and happy music, driving me to root through my collection for something that could be considered along the lines of the “aural equivalent to sunshine”. One of the first songs that comes to my mind that fits this exacting criteria is “Hideway” from The Olivia Tremor Control. And with the upcoming release from the side project Circulatory System, now is the perfect time to explore their style in greater detail. Like many of their Elephant 6 compatriots, The Olivia Tremor Control were experts mining all the possibilities of lo-fi production, proving that a limited recording budget shouldn’t limit a band’s ambition and scope. However, the band was in a class of its own in creating a full symphonic sound from a bare-bones orchestra.
On the surface, “Hideway” is a really uplifting and pleasant song, filled with tons of catchy hooks and memorable melodies (for example, I find myself singing those delightful horn parts days later). The band is really able to sell what in less delicate hands could be a corny message; “I know some kind of rain will fall, but it can’t rain everyday” would fit perfectly on a motivational poster, but the band is able to overcome any possible cynical response due to their sincere conviction that comes through in their singing. Even the darker imagery in some of the other lines take on a more positive glow, due to the overall message of triumph over adversity. So when I say “on the surface”, I’m not claiming there’s a subtle, sinister current lurking beneath in the subtext; instead, I’m referring to the many layers of the music itself.
It’s on this track that you can really feel the influence of The Beach Boys on the band’s sound, specifically the careful orchestration of songs like “Good Vibrations”. On the first few listens, you pick up on the easy-going guitar, the perfectly accented horn lines, and the gorgeous vocal harmonies. With additional listens though, you can find dozens of layers of instrumental tracks. There are multiple guitar, keyboard, glockenspiel, horn, and percussion tracks filtering in and out, and the band makes perfect use of the stereo setup by placing specific lines in different speakers. On one listen, you may notice that in the chorus, there’s a backing guitar line that plays a quickly-repeating-single-note figure that provides a slight push to the beat, in contrast to the easygoing verses before. On another, you may notice that in the bridge there’s two separate keyboard parts, one running up and down an arpeggiated scale figure, and the other providing short staccato bursts. Listen again, and you’ll notice wood percussion and bells that mirror melody lines from the vocals and horns.
Each listen brings out dozens of new details, but that alone isn’t what’s commendable about the music. It’s the fact that at no point does the abundance of instruments and melodies feel overbearing in any way. At its heart, there is still a great summer song that’s appreciable even on a superficial level, and diving deeper into the nooks and crannies of the music doesn’t overwhelm this basic fact. Even when identifying specific trees, you never feel as if you’re losing sight of the forest.
The I had the privilege of seeing the band live during its short reunion tour, and it gave me a new-found appreciation of the collaborative nature of the group. While the group is driven by its two leads Bill Doss and Will Hart, you could sense the joy of each other musician who would join in and play their small part, knowing that while it may seem minor from a distance, each part was a key component to the song. This goes to the other subtle strength of the song, that the band was able to convey the same intricacy and detail that would be found in a 100 piece orchestra with just a few friends joining along on whatever instruments they found handy. It’s this quality that made The Olivia Tremor Control one of the most significant bands of the 90’s, and how their music still seems fresh today.
We recently saw the release of new albums from Jack White and The Black Keys (events which readers of this site should be very much well-aware), and while we were happy to hear new music from these great artists, that was not all that returned. If you were to read up on any of the news surrounding these releases or the reviews themselves, you were bound to find the same tired joke/trope/criticism in every piece: these artists were merely “ripping off” old music. Often this would be accompanied by the added attack that these were white men getting rich off of black music. While there is an element of truth to this, it’s time to stop resorting to this same hackneyed cliche.
In the past, this was once a novel and significant complaint. There were vast amounts of people that had overlooked or were ignorant of the exploitation of artists throughout our history, and this form of criticism helped illuminate the struggle they endured. It’s why Chuck D’s lyric that “Elvis was a hero to most, but he never meant shit to me” could strike a chord with so many people, both in the fierce resistance by some of an attack on their idol, but also by the support of other communities who could point to how they were left out in the process of cultural appropriation.
It’s taken for granted at this point by many that Elvis built his “revolutionary” rock’n’roll sound off the rhythm and blues music of contemporary black artists like Little Richard. But this attitude that Elvis “stole” black music is an ultimately shallow analysis and illustrates a pointlessly reductive attitude. It’s a charge made without context. Elvis acknowledged the influence of black music and performers throughout his career, and made sure to point it out to others; his career shouldn’t be viewed in the same way as say, Pat Boone’s.
The problem with approaching music in only this way is that it completely reduces the role of the performer. A song is made up of several components, from the chord changes to the rhythmic patterns to the lyrical content and so on. While the strength of one part may dominate over the others, to rely solely on that part would make for boring and crappy music. The fact that we have a whole feature on this site (Covered) where we analyze different performances of the same song helps emphasize this point. Personal interpretation as well as individual technical skill are both vitally important elements and can significantly change the effectiveness of a song.
[This is where I would put up a video clip of the scene from Spinal Tap where the band spontaneously begins singing “Heartbreak Hotel” at Elvis’s grave, but you’ll have to make do with just the audio.]
The focus on deconstruction of the elements of a song to a simple common origin ignores the collaborative nature of music, and how new works of art are always indebted in some way to past works. New music is built on the ideas of old music, often through slight tweaks or modifications. A slight change may seem insignificant on paper, but the effects in reality are often significant–by changing the emphasis of the beat, you can switch a polka (hit the 1 and 3) into a rock song (hit the 2 and 4). Therefore to identify a song as employing a traditional 12-bar blues structure and then calling it a day is ridiculous. It invites the assumption that we have already found the One True Blues Song, and everything post Robert Johnson has been a waste of time.
You can play this game with just about any artist. The Ramones play sped-up Beach Boys songs, Nirvana is a slicker version of the Pixies, Rachmaninoff puts the bombast of Beethoven and the lyrical romanticism of Chopin in a blender, and so on. I’ve been guilty of this myself, namely when I complain that the EDM scene today is solely a rehash of the work Aphex Twin did over a decade ago, that it’s just “Windowlicker” with a heavy dose of “Come to Daddy”. But why limit ourselves to music? I mean, there’s no need for new video games when we already have “Pong”. And for that matter, what are you doing on your computer, when you have a perfectly good television over there? It doesn’t take much to show that the entire exercise is pointless.
None of this is to say that “rip-offs” don’t exist; artists still have to contribute something to the exercise. But pointing out that elements of a song bear a resemblance to previously recorded music is not an end in and of itself. Because Television used the double-hit ringing guitar in “Marquee Moon”, does that mean that Interpol can’t use a similar figure in “Obstacle 1”? It should be obvious to any listener that the two bands achieve different results using the same concept, with each having their own merits.
This should be just as clear with Jack White and The Black Keys. Yes, they are heavily indebted to old styles (namely the blues, but country and folk play roles as well) and they wear influences on their sleeves, but to deny the fact that each of them add significant personal twists on old ideas is idiotic. They’re also ready and willing to point out their influences and to try and convince their audience to check them out–Jack White is quick to mention Son House, and The Black Keys released an EP of Junior Kimbrough covers.
The “rip-off” argument at this point is close to outliving its usefulness, and comes off now as lazy and a desperate attempt to impress others with the appearance of some music knowledge. Hopefully we’ll see the end of it soon.
It’s probably hard to discuss an album from The Antlers without comparing it to their previous work at this point, at least for me. Familiars is an absolutely gorgeous album, one that’s well worth exploring for hours on end with headphones cranked as high as you can stomach, which should be enough to recommend it on its own merits. But from a critical perspective, it begs to be analyzed in comparison with the band’s previous work. Fortunately, in my opinion, that only enhances the excellence of the album, though I wonder how useful this perspective is for the novice.
The good news is that this should be easy to fix. To those of you who are new to The Antlers, I recommend that you stop whatever it is that you’re doing and you immediately go and purchase a copy of Hospice, their breakthrough album (at least among the music critic intelligentsia; while it made several Top 10 lists in 2009, I would highly doubt that it sold more than a hundred thousand copies, much less went Gold or above). I would prefer that you get in the car and drive to your closest independent record store, but I understand that may be a significant demand of some of our readers, so I will let a quick purchase online slide…this time. It’s not a difficult listen, like most critics’ faves are; in fact, it’s filled with huge melodic hooks and incredibly moving instrumentals, all hanging on an easily digestible allegorical storyline of a disintegrating relationship between a nurse and a terminally ill cancer patient. Though the subject matter is bleak (and the lyrics often make this abundantly clear–if you don’t feel at least the beginning of tears when listening to the bridge of “Two” or the end of “Wake”, then it is possibly that you are an android), The Antlers are able to provide enough hope through their music that the listener knows that just because these are the worst emotions you can deal with, that does not mean that this is the end; there is still the possibility of triumph, the chance that redemption is still possible.
Burst Apart dealt with similar emotions, this time substituting the dying patient narrative with a more conventional analysis of the end of a romantic relationship, while also expanding the band’s sonic palette. Hospice often relied on toy instruments or thin sounds, but Burst Apart was built on expanding the sonic depth of each instrument. It’s this path that The Antlers continue on with Familiars. The musical exploration is not necessarily with chord progressions or melodies, but instead on textures and deepening the general sound. Think of playing a piano, where instead of relying on three notes to determine the shape of a chord, instead the entirety of both hands is used to give the maximum amount of color with each chord. It’s in this regard where we see the evolution of the band’s sound. For example, the single “Hotels” in many ways would sound like it could easily fit on Burst Apart (in fact, it shares many melodic similarities with “I Don’t Want Love”), but there are enough nuances in the song that distinguish it from its predecessors.
There are numerous slight subtle musical touches that reveal themselves after multiple listens, especially on the second half of the album. The upright bass on “Revisited” is a particularly striking example: the particular tone of the upright as opposed to the typical electrical bass provides an excellent counterpoint to the melodies occurring simultaneously over the top. This is typical of the areas where The Antlers are content with exploring throughout Familiars,and rarely does the band attempt the big hooks found in either Hospice or Burst Apart. All the choruses and climaxes are the result of slow burning builds instead of sudden explosions; that is to say there are no counterparts to say the fiery refrain of “Bear” or the catchy jangle of “Every Night My Teeth Are Falling Out”. This can make it a disappointing listen at first, but hopefully it’s apparent that there is more lurking below the surface that’s worth exploring. The band takes its time with each track, furthering the process the band began with the stop-gap Undersea EP, with nearly every track clocking in above the five-minute mark (with the two below it coming in at 4:59 and 4:56). That said, the songs rarely lose focus and should hold the listener’s attention throughout.
I haven’t been able to deduce whether there is a coherent story or theme throughout Familiars, but it’s probably worth noting that the lyric sheet has alternating lyrics in italicized and normal print, indicating multiple viewpoints at the very least. The good news is that the music underneath seems to be worthy enough of continued exploration that it’s still probably a productive use of time to determine the overarching story. It’s hard for a band to continue to impress after an artistic triumph like Hospice, but The Antlers are providing a good roadmap on how it can be done.
Some videos to help you get over that heartbreaking…tie against Portugal.
Interpol just released the video for “Anywhere” from their upcoming album El Pintor, and it’s a live version shot in an “amateur” style from one of their recent shows. Musically, it sounds like one of their usual busier, uptempo numbers, but it should be enough to get the crowd pumped at future shows.
Courtesy of the Everybody Loves Our Town Tumblr, we have footage from a recent Pearl Jam show that has gone somewhat viral over the weekend. As per their usual, Pearl Jam tagged the end of “Daughter” with their cover of “It’s OK” by Portland punks Dead Moon, but this time Eddie sang a bit of the Oscar-winning song “Let It Go” from Frozen. Since I do not have any children, this is the first time I’ve actually heard the song, so I finally have an idea what everyone is referencing; Eddie seems to miss a couple of notes, but hey, it’s a live improv and he’s fitting it to the chord progression of a different song, so I won’t bust him too much.
We mentioned previously that Soundgarden did a special show where they played Superunknown in its entirety, and here’s the audio of that full show, with additional interviews from the band.
Only a few #longreads this week, which is OK, because you should probably be out enjoying the first official weekend of summer.
The most significant news of the week has probably been the breakdown in negotiations between various independent labels and YouTube over the terms of a new subscription service. Consequence of Sound has a piece providing details how a potential block on videos would work, and Billboard has specifics on the contract details, breaking down exactly how the various services work with the labels. Both pieces get pretty technical, so you should probably read them at a point when say, a soccer game isn’t happening at the same time.
The Atlantic has a great piece with Hamilton Leithauser, who explains how Elvis proves that there is such a thing as “brilliant nonsense” when it comes to write lyrics, and goes on to detail his own process in coming up with lyrics.
OK Go released a new music video this week, and though we don’t have an article to go along with it, we’re posting it now instead of waiting until Monday so that you have time over the weekend to find all the optical illusions.
I finally have to deal with the moment that I’ve been dreading for weeks now, and that’s a discussion of Jack White’s latest solo album Lazaretto. It’s not a matter of disappointment with the record, or anything along those lines–in fact, I think it’s a pretty good record. The problem instead is that I feel I have no particular insight specific to this record to offer at all. As per the usual, White dabbles in different old-timey styles, while often adding a unique personal touch: here’s a more traditional folk song;, here’s the song where he inverts blues conventions and utilizes bizarre guitar tones, etc. It’s not that it’s formulaic, but at this point the audience should have a good idea in their minds of what a Jack White record sounds like, especially now that we have a variety of post-White Stripes work to analyze.
Of course, this doesn’t stop others from attempting to postulate on the supposed themes of the album, or worse yet, divine some sort of grand theory behind Jack White the artist and what it means for Our Culture. As one of the few cross-generational “rock stars”, White is a figure that no matter what he does is going to generate some interest, or at the very least some page views. Beyond learning about his origins, considering how striking the White Stripes were in contrast with the contemporary music scene, for the most part I never indulged in this impulse. To me, beyond chuckling at a few articles about his various idiosyncracies (who doesn’t love a good “record release by balloon” story?), Jack White was a guy that wrote a lot of great rock songs, and some that were not-so-great. My one concession to this line of thinking is the fact that my favorite Jack White moment is the beginning scene of It Might Get Loud, where he constructs a makeshift guitar out of various spare parts.
The scene helps show a lot of what I love about White as an artist–his practical ingenuity, his love of cheap crap, his ability to find music from the unlikeliest of sources, and the pure emotion that he puts into his music. I enjoyed Jack White before seeing the documentary, but I came away with a new-found appreciation about him as an artist.* The documentary also is worth mentioning because it helps define my critical viewpoint of Jack White: it’s usually one that’s in opposition to someone else.
I know that it sounds like the douchebaggiest position imaginable, but in reality it works as more of a grounding influence. “The White Stripes suck”/”Actually, they’re a pretty good band that shows how limits can actually result in even more creativity”; “The White Stripes are the best band in rock’n’roll”/”They’re really good, but come on, there’s a lot of filler in their catalog and you can’t say that every detour Jack White takes is one worth exploring”; “Jack White is a shit guitarist”/”He knows how to wring pure emotion out of his guitar, and the seemingly odd melodic choices are there for a reason–he’s not just randomly choosing notes, unless it’s in specifically appropriate circumstances”; “I never want to hear ‘Steady as She Goes’ ever again”/”…We agree on this.” I think that White Blood Cells and De Stijl are the Stripes’ best albums, with Get Behind Me Satan a severely underrated number three, especially considering how White was able to organically expand the sound with pianos and marimbas and still have it sound natural, and that Elephant despite its high points is not their magnum opus. I also believe that the solos in “Icky Thump” sound like an electric dog fart, and hearing that song in heavy rotation while I was working full-time as a DJ has to rank as the worst part of an otherwise great job. But I could listen to the guitar in “Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground” forever.
At this point, it makes sense that Jack White continue as a solo artist; even though a lot of this discussion centers on his work with Meg White, his solo work does allow him to indulge in different styles outside of the pigeonhole he created with the self-imposed barriers of The White Stripes. And the listener has benefited as a result, and it’s led to some thrilling results. You’ll find some of the most amazing displays of pure musicianship anywhere at one of his live shows; it was amazing to watch how in sync the band was with one another, especially the drummer, as Jack would change tempos and arrangements often on a whim.
Yet, amid all this general awe, there is little that is particularly memorable about White’s solo work. There are no immediately identifiable high points, like “Fell In Love With A Girl” or “Ball and a Biscuit”; I kind of remember “Love Interruption”, but that’s only because it got fairly significant airplay and I still had to think a bit before I could remember its melody. This is essentially the problem that I have with Lazaretto as well–when it’s done, I feel like I just listened to a good album. Ten minutes later, if you asked me about any favorite moment, I would be stumped. No matter how much I admire the music, there is still that little extra that is somehow missing to make it truly great.
Still, I’m going to be on the lookout for the next time Jack stops by the Northwest.
*My opinions about Jimmy Page were completely confirmed, however, as he displayed once again that he is the most overrated guitar player in existence. I cannot stand his extremely sloppy playing, and that’s on top of his lack of creativity. At one point he was playing one of his old Zeppelin songs, and he kept fumbling and making mistakes, and I had to think “Couldn’t they have done at least another take?”
As you may have noticed with our various features and mentions of the band, we here at Rust Is Just Right are big fans of the band Parquet Courts. Their album Light Up Gold made our Best Of 2013 list*, and when we heard that a follow-up was coming this year we were extremely excited. We loved their incisive blend of Pavement-meets-Minutemen smart-ass punk, and were hoping for another quick blast of their nervy, no-frills guitar rock. However, it seems that these expectations have only set us up for disappointment, and while Sunbathing Animal has its moments, too often it seems like we have to work to get its full rewards.
Part of what made Light Up Gold work so well was the willingness of the band to get to the point and then get out of the way. Parquet Courts would write a couple of quick hooks, say their piece, and then end the song–Light Up Gold was a lightning-quick 15 track/33 minute album, with several songs less than two minutes. When the band would stretch out on certain tracks, like “Master of My Craft” or “Stoned and Starving”, there was enough momentum to sustain your attention, and enough interesting ideas that made it worth your while to stick with it (we wrote a feature specifically about the latter’s use of making the mundane seem epic, and how the band used the relatively epic track length in comparison to the rest of the album to its advantage in our Feats of Strength feature). On Sunbathing Animal, many of the tracks seem to stretch out a minute or so too long, at least if you have the Light Up Gold template on your mind.
There’s still a lot to recommend on Sunbathing Animal, however. Yes, the comparisons to Pavement’s slacker-ish attitude and careful tunelessness are still apt, and those trebly guitars with minimal distortion are still on full display. Songs like “Vienna II” and “Always Back in Town” keep up the uptempo, ramshackle spirit of their earlier work, and songs like “Black and White” and “What Color is Blood” show that the band can find new areas to explore within a similar sound. It’s in songs like the title track that you can see the new emphasis of Parquet Courts, focusing on ideas like repeating patterns and unbreakable cycles. “Sunbathing Animal” is one song where the longer-than-expected song length eventually works to its advantage, with the anticipation of some sort of resolution continually delayed, increasing the tension that the listener feels as the band bashes away and vamps on a single chord with barked-out vocals. By the end, you’re ready to sing along with the words of the title, and somehow it provides a satisfactory conclusion even though the music itself doesn’t seem to resolve as you would expect.
But even knowing in advance the emphasis on repeated patterns can make the album a slog in certain places; the album practically dies with “She’s Rolling” in the middle, and “Raw Milk” kills all the momentum from the goofily fun “Ducking & Dodging”. Then again, one of the highlights is “Instant Disassembly”, which somehow manages to ride a simple melody played at a languid pace over the course of its seven minute long running time; it certainly helps that while it may be basic, the melody is still catchy. I imagine that the band had in mind the irony of naming their longest song “Instant Disassembly”; it’s possibly also why they named the song that almost stops the album dead in its tracks “She’s Rolling”. I can admire their intent, but as a casual listener it’s not always a successful approach. While Sunbathing Animal has grown on me with repeated listens, it’s unlikely to take the place of Light Up Gold in my car’s stereo.
*We know that technically Light Up Gold was released in 2012, but it was such a limited run that most people didn’t hear it until its 2013 re-release. And if you claim that you were one of those few people who did hear it in 2012, you’re probably a liar.
Covered is a feature where we examine the merits of various cover songs, debating whether or not they capture the spirit and intent of the original, if the cover adds anything new, and whether or not it perhaps surpasses the original. If we fail on those counts, at the very least we may expose you to different versions of great songs you hadn’t heard before.
Pulp never achieved the same success stateside as it did in its native UK, but if Americans ever heard one of their songs it was probably their classic “Common People”. The reputation of the song has grown over the years, and is considered by many to be the shining moment of the Britpop era. It’s a fantastically fun song, a synth-heavy dance rave-up in a scene fueled by guitar-driven rock. It’s also a masterwork in perfecting the “build”, morphing from a sly and mysterious beginning into an explosive, anthemic second half. It’s also the perfect showcase for vocalist’s Jarvis Cocker’s smart and sarcastic persona, as he incisively tears into “class tourism”–a topic that bears increased relevance today, as any article on an area facing the pressures of gentrification would show. As Jarvis points out, while most people who live in the slum-like conditions are forced to do so by circumstance, the woman in the song can easily escape with a simple phone call to Dad.
If people were asked to name someone who could successfully pull off a great cover song, William Shatner would have to rank near the bottom of the list. To be fair, there’s a perfectly good reason for this. But all due credit to producer Ben Folds, who found an excellent complement for Shatner’s unique…”singing” style. Shatner’s dramatic talk-singing is the perfect vehicle for the trenchant social commentary inherent in the lyrics, and he’s able to draw out every bit of sardonic humor and bitter sarcasm with each line that he can. Even his unusual pauses help provide the right amount of emphasis with each verbal attack. As for the music, keyboards are traded for guitars in this version, and they do a great job of driving the song and providing an extra bit of edge while still allowing for the natural beat to push through. In the end, you’re still rocking out and dancing, all the while smiling at the humor of the lyrics as you sing along.
Rust Is Just Right 