The surprise return of D’Angelo was one of the biggest stories in music last year, when after over a decade of silence that allowed wild rumors to flourish, he stunned everyone with the release of Black Messiah. The album captivated fans and critics alike, with the former finding that the result was worth the wait and the latter frantically trying to rejigger their year-end lists to find a place for its inclusion. During this time, we did our part in sharing news items about its release, and also highlighting especially worthwhile analysis and explanations for its significance. However, we never offered our own assessment of the album during this time, and we wanted to provide an explanation why never wrote about this record that we’ve enjoyed.
Our aim here at Rust Is Just Right is to contribute something beyond the usual echo-chamber of ideas that make up most music publications, and contribute genuine insight and any expertise we may have. To do this, we tend to write about subjects and genres with which we have more history and experience, which explains the focus we give to both rock music and to guitar, bass, and drums. We realize how boring it can be for readers to read variations of the same stuff over and over again, so we challenge ourselves to explore different genres and expose ourselves to different ideas. This allows us to avoid ruts both from a writing and musical perspective, and helps contribute to our own musical education, which we then hope to impart on our readers. It’s a beautiful cycle.
If we were to do a review then of Black Messiah, then we wanted to be able to do so from a position of some authority, with the ability to offer original insights on the record. However, after multiple listens, it was clear that our lack of familiarity with both D’Angelo (beyond a few cursory listens over the years) and with neo-soul in general would hinder our ability to make truly engaging analysis. There were few hooks for us to grab hold, and while we felt there were several admirable aspects to the album, it was difficult for us to make any personal connections to it with our initial listens. That said, it was easy to see how in a live setting D’Angelo could make the songs come alive.
We enjoyed how Black Messiah experimented with various soul and funk elements, like the subtle changes in rhythm in the electric “1000 Deaths”, which inverts and plays with straight and syncopated feels. This is an album that needs to be cranked up to truly appreciate, with special attention paid to the low end, because the bass playing on Black Messiah is truly a marvel but has the potential to be lost in the mix if no precautions are taken. Those points represent the extent of our insight, though; the lack of a lyric sheet makes that particular analysis difficult, and it’s clear that there are significant political and social themes that run through Black Messiah that would require more rigorous assessment than what I could periodically catch by ear.
So, consider this a recommendation, but we are unable to show more of the work that led us to that conclusion. But who knows, maybe after another few months of listening we’ll be able to offer up a more cogent assessment. At the very least, we’ll at least have a better foundation for discussing the next D’Angelo album–but hopefully we won’t have to wait fourteen years for that.
The Grammy Awards are a good idea in theory. We like to recognize artistic merits in a variety of disciplines, and we feel good when we come together and come up with some sort of consensus decision as to what is “the best.” The Academy Awards have worked pretty well for film over the years, and the Emmy Awards (despite never giving an award to the greatest television show ever) have done an adequate job as well, so why shouldn’t it be the same for music? And yet, pretty much from the very beginning, the Grammys have always been garbage.
I remember the moment when I completely lost faith in the Grammys, and it should be noted that this happened when I was in middle school, because that is when any hopes and dreams you may have had about the music industry recognizing artistic merit should die, and you can then readjust your expectations accordingly. It was when Radiohead’s ground-breaking, landmark album OK Computer lost out to probably Bob Dylan’s tenth-best effort (Time Out Of Mind) that I decided it was probably for the best that I stop giving a shit about this particular award. I probably should have seen the signs from the previous year, when Beck’s Odelay and the Smashing Pumpkins Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness lost out to Celine Dion, but at that point I didn’t have the same investment in either of those albums that I did in OK Computer. Even at that age, I knew that with that album I could divide my history of listening to music as pre-OK Computer and post-OK Computer, and no matter how good an album Time Out Of Mind may be, it wouldn’t be remembered in the same way. If you want to view the award as an acknowledgment of the greatness of Highway 61 Revisited, Blonde on Blonde, Nashville Skyline, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, John Wesley Harding, The Times They Are A-Changin’, and Blood on the Tracks, that’s fine, but that’s the only way to defend it.
It was then that my cynicism fully set in and I finally understood the rants of many alternative artists about the quality of the Grammys. Here’s how I can best sum it up: “How many Grammy Awards did London Calling win? That should tell you exactly how much attention you should pay to the Grammys.” This is an album universally recognized as one of the greatest of all time, one that ends up atop best-of-the-decade lists for two different decades (because of its UK ’79/US ’80 release date), and it received exactly zero Grammys. In fact, The Clash won precisely one Grammy in the course of their career, an award in 2002 for “Best Long Form Music Video” for the documentary The Clash: Westway to the World, long after the band had stopped making music. And to top it off, the Grammys had the gall to put together a supergroup performance of “London Calling” to honor the life of Joe Strummer when he died, as if the Recording Academy gave a damn about the group at all when they were around.*
Consider this: Exile on Main Street…Loveless… Nevermind…In the Aeroplane Over the Sea…Are You Experienced?…Who’s Next…Remain in Light…Willy and the Po’ Boys…Unknown Pleasures…Fear of a Black Planet…The Velvet Underground & Nico…Hunky Dory…Doolittle…not a single one of these albums received a nomination. And not only could I list dozens more examples, but I could point to a ridiculous number of artists who never won a Grammy of any kind.
Part of the issue may be with the nature of the Grammys themselves. The sheer number of albums that are produced dwarf the number of films that are released or television shows that end up on the air, so the mere act of getting thousands of academy members to listen to the same records is enough of a challenge on its own. Then consider the wide variety of musical genres that exist, and contrast that with the simple comedy/drama divide that characterizes film and TV–it’s even tougher to build any sort of consensus when you take this into account. And then there is the simple nature of voting, which anyone with a background in political theory can point to as a potential stumbling block. All of these issues make the Grammy Awards an exercise in futility, and yet for some reason people still get up in arms with the results every year.
Was Morning Phase the best album of the year? According to us, probably not, though if one considers it in comparison with the other nominees, we agree with the decision. Though it’s not Beck’s best (which is a nearly-impossible hurdle to clear, considering his incredibly consistent output and the Odelay/Mutations/Sea Change triumverate), if you judge it on its own merits, Morning Phase is a great album filled with gorgeous musical moments and poignant lyrics that will be remembered for years. But let’s consider that if the Grammys were actually interested in honoring the best of the year in music, then they would have had to invite Death From Above 1979 and have them perform, and despite the fact that they’re only two guys they would have melted the faces off of everyone in the audience with their blistering performance, and then no one would be able to work on Monday.
So really, the fact that the Grammy Awards don’t recognize the best music of the year is more of a public service than anything. Just don’t get up in arms when they make the “wrong” decision. They were doomed from the start.
*This is not to disparage any of the performers that participated, all of whom I assume had a great amount of respect for Joe Strummer and The Clash.
Every year there is a band that inexplicably rockets out from the depths of obscurity and ends up on all the year-end lists after riding months of breathless critics’ praise. Though the music industry is now so fractured that these groups often don’t push themselves into the mainstream, they still become an annoyance to people like the people who run this site who devote time and energy to seeking out new music. It may be a matter of only switching the station the four times the band is actually played on the radio, but there still is an irritation when you see the countless plaudits for a group that could best be called “boring”. This year, that group is Future Islands.
We alluded a bit to our issues with the band in our review of Spoon’s show last week at the Crystal Ballroom where Future Islands was one of two openers, but we let our criticisms remain vague so as not to consume too much time railing against a weaker part of the night in favor of letting Spoon’s fantastic performance remain the focus of the review. Our problems with the band began not with their performance on Wednesday, but way back in the spring when their performance on Letterman had a lot of music journalists and fans buzzing all over social media. Being the diligent researchers and devotees of music that we are, we checked out their performance of “Seasons (Waiting On You)” and were left utterly perplexed how a combination of a boring bassline, a basic disco beat, thin synths, and a comical vocal performance punctuated by comically theatrical dance moves could result in such universal praise. We checked out a few more songs from their album Singles on YouTube, and were left realizing that this same combination was present in all songs. We remained nonplussed by all the adulation.
Now, we would like to stress that our criticism is not meant to take away from anyone who genuinely enjoys the music of Future Islands–life is too short to rip on what other people enjoy. Our problem is with those who spend countless words trying to convince others that the band is “good” when it is nearly impossible to find something to truly recommend about their sound. My first reaction to the band’s style was we don’t need a post-ironic take on Roxy Music’s “More Than This”, we’re just fine with the original thank you very much. The band’s goal seems to take all of the artificial sheen that marked the worst of music from the 80’s, lay it over a never-deviating disco beat, take out all semblance of hooks or a worthwhile melody, and toss it behind a frontman with all the charisma of a guy who believes that karaoke on a Thursday night at the local dive bar is the highlight of anyone’s week. It adds up to a package that I don’t know whether to take seriously or mock, and I’m not sure if the band or critics know which one is the correct approach.
Though I occasionally tried over the next few months to give them multiple shots, I still had the same nagging criticisms each time. However, I still approached their opening set for Spoon with an opening mind; several journalists had raved about their live performance, and it felt like it would be unfair to the band to write them off without seeing them at their full potential. Instead, the show confirmed all my suspicions of the band’s talent, and then some.
Each song brought up the same pattern: a basic disco beat, basslines that went nowhere, and synths that were so airy that they forgot to provide chord structures or even suggestions of melody. Each song bled into the other, the formula never wavering. In one of those year-end reviews someone compared the bass to Peter Hook’s work with Joy Division, and I would hope Peter read that and got on a plane and smacked this critic in the face–it’s an insult to compare Hook’s innovative melodic and rhythmic contributions that were integral parts to the brilliance of Joy Division’s music to this guy plugging away at root notes at an eighth-note clip. People were looking to dance and get moving, but when it’s the same oom-cha straight beat for forty minutes it gets a little dull; it wouldn’t kill whatever it is that you’re going for to throw in a variation every couple of measures, pal. As for the keyboards, it’s hard to come up with a better suggestion than just “do something.”
The vocal performance, which most devotees point to as the band’s strength, was its own sort of awful. I can love and respect artist who put all their energy into delivering a show, but everything about Sam Herring’s actions made the entire affair seem like a “performance.” There was no semblance of genuine human emotion coming through in any of his vocals or dance moves, and every movement and inflection came across as painfully rehearsed. That is to say nothing about the deliberately weird affectations like the attempt at a human phaser effect by dipping into the lower register to deliver Cookie Monster-style vocals for an odd phrase here or there. It was unclear what the point of the entire enterprise was. I’d rather see Milosh the fresh-off-the-boat Eastern European immigrant deliver a passionate-but-fractured take on Styx’s “Come Sail Away.”
There was one moment in the show last week that proved the sheer disparity in talent between Future Islands and their fellow denizens of the Best Of lists, and that was when Spoon kicked into their hit “I Turn My Camera On.” Spoon was able to effortlessly switch gears, and the rigid stomp-funk of “Camera” not only got the audience dancing but was a seamless part of their set. The song has never felt like a genre exercise for Spoon (or a shameless stab at popular relevance), but a natural part of the band’s catalog, no matter how superficially different it may seem. Contrast that with Future Islands, who spent their entire set trying to cultivate a similar style, and not conveying a genuine emotion for a single second, or even a competent dance beat.
What may be most distressing is that one can easily see how in three years that Future Islands will go from critic’s darling to a passe joke. The most apt comparison may be Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, but as we have argued elsewhere on this site, even at their most seemingly simplistic there was genuine artistic merit to what CYHSY produced. At the very minimum, they at least knew how to provide variation to their basic drum beat.
With the release of their eighth studio album Sonic Highways this week, Rust Is Just Right is celebrating with a week devoted to the Foo Fighters. Today, we take a look over their discography.
Foo Fighters. By now, most people are familiar with the story behind the first Foo Fighters album. In the aftermath of the unfortunate end of Nirvana, Dave Grohl recorded an album’s worth of material (playing nearly all the music and instruments himself), passing around the demo to various friends. Some of the songs were old ideas that were tossed around during the Nirvana era and earlier, with a few more written during the recording process. Though it was moButre of a personal passion project and not initially intended to be a full-fledged solo album, it eventually caught the attention of record labels, and Grohl created a band to perform the songs.
But one doesn’t need to know the history of the album to enjoy its pleasures. Knowing the modest circumstances helps explain the less-professional recording style to the uninformed, but divorced from that knowledge one can enjoy the album as one of the most accessible lo-fi albums of the era. Looking back, one can see that Foo Fighters has more in common with a Sebadoh album than a lot of the rock music being produced in the mid-90’s, but it was catchy and dynamic enough to have a broader appeal. One could see Dave’s punk roots poking through the edges, as well as the lessons in songcraft that he learned from his time in Nirvana, and it added up to a side project that had enough legs to sustain a second career. It’s amazing that the album holds up as well as it does nearly twenty years later, even beyond the big hits like “This Is A Call”, “I’ll Stick Around”, and “Big Me”. I’m still holding out hope that one day the guys will see fit to include “For All The Cows” in their set once again.
The Colour and the Shape. I believe we covered this pretty thoroughly yesterday, but I’ll reiterate that this is clearly the high-water mark for the band. Not only that, but it provided a lot of the musical template that would come to define the Foo Fighters sound, though sometimes in more subtle ways than one might expect.
There Is Nothing Left To Lose. “Everlong” may have cemented the Foos among rock royalty, but it was “Learn To Fly” that got endless plays on both the radio and MTV, thanks to its goofy video. In many ways it’s a more upbeat and relaxed record, with gorgeous ballads like “Aurora” and “Next Year” fitting comfortably with moderate fun rockers like “Breakout” and “Generator”. Nate Mendel has some nifty basslines scattered over the course of the album, marking some of his most important contributions and really fleshing out the fact that this is now a group. But it’s the ultra-aggressive opener “Stacked Actors”, with its groovy Drop-A riff that threatens to blow the bass out of your speakers, that leaves the greatest impression on me.
One By One. There are few concert memories that I remember as fondly as seeing the Foos open with “All My Life”: standing ten feet away from Dave Grohl, backlit by sparse lighting during his palm-muted intro, followed by sharp bursts of spotlights once the full band entered the fray, and culminating with a dramatic banner-drop during the final chorus, all the while feeling the sensation of floating as the crowd packed in so tightly and moving along with the music. It’s a feeling that will never diminish no matter how many times I hear the song. That may explain why I hold the album in higher regard than many other fans, but I simply think that it’s a much more consistent effort than TINLTL. “Times Like These” is one of those rocker/ballad hybrids that the Foo Fighters do so well, and though its main riffs employ some unusual chords, the band makes it sound like a timeless pop record. While some people complain about the deliberate second half of the album, I believe that the band keeps the music interesting enough and pushing in different directions to keep my attention. Also, it should be mentioned that it’s kind of amazing that “Tired Of You” was used for a pivotal scene in a Chris Rock movie.
In Your Honor. This is where we first see the Foo Fighters show some real ambition, and how they look to classic rock for inspiration with a tried-and-true maneuver of established acts: the double-album. The hook was that there would be one heavy rocking disc and another softer disc of ballads (instead of allowing for a more natural flow within the course of an album’s running time), but as is usually the case, there simply wasn’t enough material to justify the gambit. This was especially true of the second disc, as the Foos overestimated their ability to produce ballads on such a large scale, though it did lead to interesting experiments like “Razor” and “Virgina Moon” (the latter with Norah Jones). But the first disc does contain some of their biggest and best rockers, like the epic title track and the titanic “Best Of You”.
Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace. Probably the weakest entry in the entire Foo Fighters catalog, which is strange because it isn’t necessarily a bad record. It’s just that there is so much that feels so inessential, with few songs calling out for repeated listens, either out of joy or even spite (before doing the research for this write-up, it had been three years since I listened to the album). It leaves only a superficial impression on the listener’s mind, even though it’s a beautifully produced record that sounds great on the home stereo where you can bring out all the different voices (especially the strings). That said, “The Pretender” was a fucking great song.
Wasting Light. After taking some time off after Echoes to do stuff like release a Greatest Hits record, one would think that the Foo Fighters were comfortable heading into the twilight era of their career, but they surprised everyone with the ferocious Wasting Light. It had been years since they played with such fury and passion, as the band seemed to fully embrace the idea of “getting back to the garage.” With Pat Smear now fully back in the fold, the band composed songs that actually required three guitars, with fantastic results. It’s amazing that the band made the process seem so natural, as there’s never a moment on the record that feels like that this is an “old guys trying to rock again” kind of deal; we can just accept that these guys can still bang out something like “White Limo” with no questions asked. Though I’d claim that the album contains some of the weakest lyrics of the band’s career, to tell the truth, that never really was a primary concern I had with the band, so I can let it slide. I’m just content to see that the band still is full of verve after all these years.
We’ll see where Sonic Highways fits in with the rest of the catalog, but considering the touring-the-country gimmick that came along with the making of the album, I have my suspicions it will be similar to their In Your Honor period, and that the band’s reach may exceed their grasp once again. But I can at least commend the band for continuing to push in new directions and constantly searching for new inspiration, and we’ll see if I’m correct soon enough.
The New Pornographers have been one of the most reliable indie rock bands in the last fifteen years, and possibly the unlikeliest to have survived. Those who’ve followed the band or read any of the profiles that were published during the publicity tour for their newest release Brill Bruisers would understand the latter part, considering their unusual origins and group dynamic. The New Pornographers are a “supergroup” that outshined the work of their predecessor outfits, only to find in the wake of their success offshoot bands that have found equal or greater success. It may be hard to grab Neko Case away from her solo work and Dan Bejar from tinkering with Destroyer, but every so often Carl Newman (who has a solo career of his own) pulls it off to give the gang another shot, and it usually pays off.
I first became a fan of the band back in college during the time that their seminal work Twin Cinema was released. I was working in radio at the time, and because I was the kind of worker that did his due diligence, I had noticed a lot of buzz surrounding the album and was excited to find out that we were getting advance tracks from the record. I remember being captivated by the title “Sing Me Spanish Techno”, partially because I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what on earth “Spanish Techno” would sound like (as it turns out, this line of thinking was at least partially responsible for the title–an offhand comment in a conversation referring to “Spanish Techno” was the inspiration). But I was soon captivated by all the wonderful melodies and enraptured by the sheer catchiness of the song, and in an irony of ironies, found myself constantly putting on repeat a song that excoriated the listener for “listening too long to one song”.
Soon I would pick up the album for myself and familiarize myself with the other highlights, from the bouncy “Use It”, to the mysterious “Jackie, Dressed In Cobras”, and the lilting “Falling Through Your Clothes”. It was after a few more listens that I finally came to recognize the epic “The Bleeding Heart Show, a song whose brilliance we recognized with our very first Feats of Strength feature. These tracks always stood out from the rest in my mind, but the rest of the album was at the level that I never felt the need to skip tracks, though I never felt the need to learn their names either. This would be a pattern that I would find in most of their other works–a few standout tracks that are certain to make most setlists, and the rest doing just enough to keep you interested to finish the album. Not a revolutionary analysis, I admit, but the significance of those particular tracks always made the band as much a favorite in my mind as a band whose discography I knew front-to-back.
I then worked my way back, picking up the band’s excellent debut, Mass Romantic. It showed that the group’s knowledge of how to write a killer riff filled with sugar-sweet melodies was evident from the start, from the propulsive “The Body Says No”, to the jaunty title track, and the bouncy “The Slow Descent Into Alcoholism”. The New Pornographers simply had a knack from the start for mixing big guitar chords and riffs with inventive and and playful keyboard lines, as well as simply displaying a keen ear for memorable melody lines. During the time that I spent revisiting the band’s history, I’ll be damned if I didn’t find myself humming the chorus to Neko Case’s powerhouse “Letter From An Occupant”.
Electric Version would be proof that yes, sometimes lightning can strike twice, as the band effectively copied the same formula from their debut. While I have fond memories of the album and always am glad when it it comes up on shuffle, I have the hardest time remembering the specifics of what I love about the record. On the whole, in many ways it’s a louder and happier take on their debut. Any other band would be enormously proud of an album like Electric Version; it’s only problem is that it’s sandwiched between two of the great records of the 2000’s.
It was after the success of Twin Cinema where my tastes began to diverge from the consensus. While many critics and fans were a bit disappointed with Challengers and Together, I find myself listening to these records quite often with a smile on my face. True, the band began to write more ballads and for some it may have felt that the band couldn’t capture the right momentum on each album, but both albums offered the kind of highlights that would spur me to keep listening to these albums time after time. It may have partially been the result of the fact that the band released a song with the lyric of “stranded at Bleecker and Broadway” while I was living at the other end of that block in New York (“Myriad Harbour”), but I always had a soft spot for Challengers. Of course, I think that even the most disappointed critic would be hard-pressed to deny the charms of “Mutiny, I Promise You”.
Together suffered from many of the same critiques as Challengers, but has a slightly better reputation. Again, I point to the fact that the album includes several of the group’s finest work, from “Crash Years” to “Silver Jenny Dollar” to “Up In The Dark”. And it has one of the best openers the band has ever done, with “Moves”.
And so when Brill Bruisers was released earlier this year, it was met with the best reviews that the band had received since Twin Cinema. But once again, I found myself disagreeing with the mainstream opinion. As is the case with the rest of the band’s output, on the whole it’s a fine album. However, it really lacks those two or three standout tracks that will be remembered for years to come and become an eternal part of their regular set (though that is of course assuming a lot with this band). I enjoy the Dan Bejar-penned “War on the East Coast”, and appreciate how they merged Bejar’s more eccentric taste with the regular NP sound, but it feels like a lesser effort on the whole The first four tracks on the whole work pretty well, but there’s nothing that leaves a lasting impression, and the momentum starts to peter out well before the record finishes.
It may be that the artificial tones used in the recording rub me the wrong way, but I don’t think that’s necessarily the case; I for one appreciate the much-discussed use of arpeggiators and love most of the keyboards on the album, so it’s not those 80’s-era type touches that bother me. It may simply be that there is a simple lack of hooks that get me listening “too long to one song” or humming to myself everyday for weeks on end. This is why when in the weeks leading up to its release we spent a lot of time around here linking to articles and reviews about the band, yet we didn’t recommend Brill Bruisers and write-up a full review of the album; in the end we pushed LOSE from Cymbals Eat Guitars, a fantastic record that may have benefited from lower expectations on our end, and not suffered like Brill Bruisers did.
Still, the band has had a fantastic career and well worth checking out, if you haven’t already. And we’ll be there tomorrow night when the band takes the stage at the Crystal Ballroom, even if the show includes a healthy portion of new material.
With the release of Interpol’s fifth album El Pintor on Tuesday, now is a great time to take a look back and examine the career of the band. Yesterday we analyzed their brilliant debut, Turn on the Bright Lights; today we’ll examine how Interpol’s career developed in the wake of the their initial success.
The common narrative behind Interpol’s career has been that they’ve been in a steady decline since their stellar debut. It’s understandable that a band may seem incapable of reaching the same creative peaks of an artistic triumph like Turn on the Bright Lights, and in our culture it seems that we are all too ready to tear down what others have built up. However, while I will admit that album-to-album the quality of Interpol’s output has dipped, it is not nearly as steep a drop as other critics make it out to be. In fact, there are several moments and songs that are the equal or better of their work on TOTBL.
Given the massive expectations that would surround any followup to an accomplishment like Turn on the Bright Lights, it is amazing that Antics ended up being as great as an album as it is. Listening to the album now, disconnected from all the circumstances of its initial release, it’s easier to appreciate the record as the perfect response to its debut. Interpol managed to balance the nearly-impossible task of creating an album that is true to the spirit of their early work without surrounding derivative of themselves, and at the same time progressing from their previous album while maintaining a deep connection with the elements that made their songs so successful in the first place. In other words, they didn’t make a repeat of TOTBL and they didn’t abandon their formula either.
The biggest difference between the two albums is perhaps the clarity of the songs and the production. In terms of the latter, with TOTBL there was an air of gauziness (for lack of a better term) that surrounded the recording of the instruments and especially the vocals, which helped give the music a hazy, dreamy quality. Antics differs in that each part is recorded with sharper precision and instead of blending in as it did on TOTBL, the parts stand in sharp relief to one another. There is more snap to the drums, more pop to the bass, and less effects on the vocals. The result helps alter the mood and ambiance, with Antics moving away from the gloom that so many attached to TOTBL.
Antics, on a track-by-track basis, is still one of the best album of the 2000’s. Though it initially caught fans off guard with its surprisingly danceable beat, lead single “Slow Hands” ended up being the perfect connection between Antics and their debut. There was the sly mention of “weights” that was a callback to their previous hit “Obstacle 1”, but musically there was also several of the hallmarks of the Interpol sound, from the funky bounce of Carlos D’s bass to Sam’s expert shifting between different drum patterns, to the interaction between Paul’s and Dan’s guitars. And while it’s easier to hear Paul’s vocals, the specific story within the song is as hard to determine as ever, though there are several memorable lyrics spread throughout (“I submit my incentive is romance; I watch the pole-dance of the stars” was a particularly good turn of phrase).
“Evil” also was a significant triumph for the band, working as a straightforward rock song with sparer instrumentation than they’ve used before. The lyrics were also some of Paul’s best, evoking in my mind images of Camus’s The Stranger amid a mysterious love triangle. “Evil” also provided an example of the band’s sly humor and subtle wordplay, with lines like “you’re weightless, semi-erotic; you need someone to take you there”–with those two lines in tandem, it’s easy to determine what exactly Paul means by the latter phrase. But perhaps my favorite track is “C’mere”, a paean to unrequited love wrapped around several catchy riffs. Just in the verse, the music alternates between a basic driving riff, a start-stop lead guitar, and a delicate chiming second guitar; similarly, the lyrics capture different emotions wrapped around the situation, from distressed (“the trouble is, you’re in love with someone else; it should be me”), to wistful (“oh how I love you in the evening, when we are sleeping”), to the cheeky (“we try to find somebody else who has a line”).
Even beyond the singles, the album is filled with several gems, from the slow-rolling opener “Next Exit” to the pounding “Not Even Jail” to the deliberate “A Time To Be So Small”. Really, the one misstep is the goofy “Length of Love”, but I’m willing to give it a pass since it seems like it must have been a blast to play.
Interpol jumped from indie powerhouse to a major label for Our Love To Admire, but there is little in the music that would make the shift obvious to the casual observer. It’s not as if Interpol all of a sudden became an ultra-slick, sugar-coated pop as a result of the move. The one noticeable aspect of the change is that it seems that OLTA was a victim of the music industry’s “loudness war”, where individual parts were compressed and brickwalled, creating problems such as unintentional distortion at certain points. The other problem with OLTA was probably not the result of label interference, but instead an offshoot of natural band evolution–the diminished role of the bass and drums. It was at this point that Sam’s and Carlos D’s parts became simpler and took a backseat to a more prominent role for the guitars, as well as more prominent placement of Paul’s vocals.
That said, there are several songs that would fit in perfectly in an Interpol setlist. “The Heinrich Maneuver” is a blast of hooky, uptempo rock, and the one example where the louder production serves the song well. The unrelenting beat of “Mammoth” hits right after, and is an excellent example of ever-escalating tension. “Who Do You Think?” sounds the most like traditional Interpol, and its place in the second half of the album is the best spot for that trip into nostalgia. The last two tracks, “Wrecking Ball” and “The Lighthouse” also sees the band experimenting with new compositional techniques, and while they don’t necessarily completely hit, it shows that the band is attempting to branch out creatively and have not stifled themselves by sticking to the same old formula.
In other words, Our Love To Admire is better than its reputation suggests, with several points to recommend in its favor. And that’s even in spite of the fact that Interpol decided to cater to critics’ jokes about the band in actually titling a song “No I in Threesome”, a song which is far better than its title suggests.
Interpol’s next album, their self-titled effort, is definitely a step down. On the one hand, it showed the band willing to experiment with different musical ideas and compositional concepts, but it never fully cohered into a pleasant listen, even for fans. In many respects, it seemed to be the sound of a band spinning its wheels creatively; one could sense that the band was running out of ideas, and it was reflected in the music. At least the band was still making an effort, and didn’t seem too tired of actually being in the band (unlike say, The Strokes). And while the announcement that Carlos D had left the band occurred after the release of Interpol, it almost feels like he left in the middle of recording the album–in most of the second half, the complete lack of bass is extremely noticeable.
Again though, it was not a completely wasted effort. The first half has songs that play to Interpol’s usual strengths (“Success”, “Summer Well”, “Barricade”) as well as others that see the band do a great job of trying something new (“Lights”, “Safe Without”). The problem is that while it’s an admirable effort, especially when attempting to assess the album as a neutral observer, there’s something unsatisfying about the whole endeavor, and it’s obvious that the band couldn’t quite figure out what the missing piece was.
The good news is that upon my first few listens of El Pintor, it seems that for the first time we can say that Interpol has improved upon its previous work. We’ll have a full review next week, but go ahead and check out this weekend on your own.
In Part 1 of our Spoon feature last week, we went over the elements that make up the Spoon “sound” as well as their early work. In Part 2, we’re closely examining Spoon’s brilliant stretch of work from Girls Can Tell to Transference, making sure to highlight key tracks and themes.
Kicking off one of the most impressive hot streaks in rock history, Girls Can Tell is an artistic triumph that remains one of the greatest records released since the beginning of this century. It’s an album that is truly timeless–it sounds as fresh today as it did back in 2001, and has a classic sensibility that would have fit into the music scene at any point in the past 30 years, but would not have a “dated” quality that would make it sound like a product of a particular era. Its themes and sensibilities make it the perfect late night album, as the songs explore and evoke feelings of quiet contemplation and reminiscences tinged with slight regret; it’s nostalgic without being overbearingly so, a quality that is rare to find these days.
The album also marked a stylistic shift into the now classic Spoon sound, as the band brought in pianos and keyboards while placing the guitar more in the background. This change is clear from the classic opener, “Everything Hits At Once”, which begins with a light bouncy keyboard figure with the guitar used sparingly to provide accents to melodic ideas. The memorable first lines set the tone for the album: “Don’t say a word–the last one’s still stinging.” The directness of that command is a jarring emotional cut for the listener, and exposes feelings of not just anger from the narrator but vulnerability as well. While seemingly a traditional tale of moving on from an unpleasant breakup, the words take on a second meaning when considered against the backdrop of the band’s release from their record label prior to the recording of this album. Though you can sense the bitterness throughout, there is still some hope, as Britt repeats the lines “I can still change my mind tonight.”
Girls Can Tell is filled with perfect segues, including how “Everything Hits at Once” merges beautifully into “Believing is Art”. The song modifies some of the melodic figures of the previous one by adding a bit more jagged guitar as well as a quicker beat, two elements that help set up songs later in the album. “Lines in the Suit” and “The Fitted Shirt” form another inspired combination, both thematically (in obvious and not-obvious ways) and musically. “Lines” alternates between a bouncy verse and a disheartening chorus, and again works as a commentary on their response to the pitfalls of the music business, with the resulting feelings of being young yet washed up (there’s a direct reference to their early work with the lines “I’m listening to ‘Mountain To Sound’ [from the Soft Effects EP]and the way it’s panned is cool”). However, it’s the powerful vignette that Britt depicts in the bridge, where he introduces a previously unmentioned character, that is most memorable:
“The human resource clerk has two cigarettes and back to work; she eats right but hurts. And she says it could’ve been good by now–it could’ve been more than a wage. How come she feels so washed up at such a tender age now? It could’ve been easier.”
The listener can instantly form a mental picture of this woman and immediately grasp at her inner emotional turmoil, all in the span of a couple of lines, proving that Britt Daniel has skills that most songwriters only wish they could have. With “The Fitted Shirt”, Spoon flips the imagery, with the fancy clothing no longer being a target of ire but instead a totem of a warmly remembered past with his father. Musically, the repetitive guitar figure in the verse does a great job of mirroring the drudgery of the everyday rat-race, and the descending line in the chorus helps emphasize the feelings of nostalgia. Lyrically, the band capably manages to romanticize the past without sounding like bitter/naive old men, and somehow make the act of wearing an old fitted shirt an act of rebellion–a sentiment matched by the increased fury of the music.
The album ends with another excellent pairing, with the instrumental “This Book Is A Movie” providing an excellent introduction to the closer “Chicago At Night”. It helps settle the listener after the (relatively) raucous “Take the Fifth”, and with the help of a few deftly placed mysterious guitar chords helps set the mood for the aforementioned enigmatic track. “Chicago At Night” helps capture the feelings of alienation lurking throughout the album, with its constant references to a wall and its repeated mantra of “Everybody’s at disadvantage speaking with their second language.” It’s almost sinister, and by any objective evaluation should be considered to be a downer of an ending, but somehow Spoon makes the listener comfortable with its ambiguity, and satisfied with the album’s conclusion.
And to think, I didn’t even get the chance to mention “Me and the Bean”, a personal favorite and a song that’s so great that most people don’t even realize it’s a cover, since it sounds in many ways like a typical Spoon track. Even the cover is chosen with great care, as it also explores looking back through the past through the eyes of a partnership between an older man and younger woman. The initial dismissal by the former turns into acceptance of the importance of the latter, first as a symbiotic relationship (“I’ll bring you cover when you’re cold; you’ll bring me youth when I grow old”) and then total dependence (“I am your shadow in the dark; I have your blood inside my heart”); with three short verses (and no real chorus, besides some oh-o-o’s), we get the entire relationship between two people over a lifetime.
Kill The Moonlight followed the template established in Girls Can Tell, but cleaned up the production a bit and added a bit of an edge to most of the songs. Tempos picked up on several songs, and even on some of the softer tracks the band approached their instruments with a bit more ferocity. Piano/keys began to take an even more dominant role in the music, as evidenced by the opener “Small Stakes” which focuses on different variations of a playful organ riff (save for a tambourine), reserving the entrance of a chaotic drumset for the end. “The Way We Get By” is probably the song that most people know from the album, which again uses the piano as its driving force, this time opting for a jazzier/swingier vibe as Britt spins tales of misfits growing up tying various references to Stooges songs (“Shake Appeal”, “Some Weird Sin”, and “Down on the Street”, for the record) to certain rites of passages.
The band also begins to show their eye for experimentation, like with the studio-processed percussion of “Paper Tiger” and “Stay Don’t Go”, or the various production tricks of “Back to the Life”. Spoon manages to make these oddball touches sound almost organic, and never like mere gimmickry, and they’re able to fit right alongside more classic sounding songs like “Someone Something” or “All The Pretty Girls Go To The City”. The true heart of the album may be in the raging “Jonathon Fisk”, whose emphasis on a driving guitar call back to the earlier incarnation of the band, except for perhaps the horn lines that pop up at certain points in the track that indicate their newfound appreciation for jazzier influences. And just as they did before, Spoon ends the album with an excellent ballad, “Vittorio E.”, a song that to the listener provides a fitting resolution to the album, with its delicate acoustic guitar (mirrored by piano) and looping melodies, even as it ends with the repeated line of “It goes on.”
My first introduction to Spoon was with their next album Gimme Fiction and its unconventional lead single “I Turn My Camera On.” I was working in radio at the time, and I remember being utterly bewildered when I heard it for the first time, wondering to myself how it could be these guys that I had heard so much about from music critics. But I quickly came to appreciate the charms of Britt’s falsetto and marvel how the band could make a song with such an insistent straight beat sound so funky. I made sure to quickly grab a copy of the rest of the album, and it soon became a favorite of mine.
The opener “The Beast and Dragon, Adored” gave a clue that Spoon was now interested in deconstructing a lot of the basic elements of rock and putting them back together in an unconventional manner. When listening to the song, the structure seems relatively normal, but when you learn the music you realize that the different verse and chorus figures never follow the same pattern, and instead add and drop chord progressions at random. It gives the whole song a disorienting feel that would be otherwise impossible to determine. The melodies themselves are great at building up a mysterious, foreboding air, and the band writes great lyrics that give an almost-mythic sense to the music. The line “When you don’t feel it, it shows, they tear out your soul–And when you believe they call it rock and roll” is one of my all-time favorites and gives the sense that Spoon is fighting for the future of rock music as we know it, and is a brilliant setup for Britt’s spastic guitar solo that is the very definition of controlled chaos. It may sound like random noise, but it takes serious musical skill to pull off something that dissonant and make it still fit the song.
Even with more conventional rockers like “Sister Jack”, Spoon tweaks the formula in subtle ways that help capture the listener’s attention. The chord progression elongates some of the time spent on certain chords (a technique that is more clearly heard in the last few iterations in the song), providing some added tension, and helping to underline the emotions of betrayal that are evident from the lyrics (“But I can’t relax with my knees on the ground and a stick in my back”). Then there is the absurdity of the title character, “Sister Jack”, which is never actually explained in the lyrics. The tweaking of gender identities is found elsewhere on the album, most notably in “The Two Sides of Monsieur Valentine”. It took the video for me to realize the storyline that was hidden in plain view, but a subtle tweak between the first and third verses provides the plot twist: in the first verse, the role that M. Valentine wishes to play “gets to sword-fight the duke, he kidnaps the queen”, but in the third verse “he makes love to the duke, he sword-fights the queen.”
Musically, the band places less emphasis on keys, though “My Mathetmatical Mind” proves to be an exception to the rule as its jazzy piano drives the tune, and in many ways represents the quintessential Spoon track. In fact, there were a few times I heard commercials with backing music that imitated the song, surely the result of some ad executive demanding something Spoon-esque but unable to pay the licensing fee for the real deal. Instead, acoustic guitar takes a more prominent role in many songs, like the excellent “I Summon You” and “The Delicate Place”, though the band makes sure that each strum is heard cleanly and doesn’t bleed from one stroke to the next. It still sounds like “Spoon”.
Spoon would return with the tight and poppy Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, which is probably best-known for its ebullient single “The Underdog”, a song whose effervescent horns recall for many Billy Joel, and not in a punchline kind of way. It has an infectious bounce and great incisive lyrics that help propel its positive message, and if you listen to it when you wake up it’s a great way to start your day. Another standout track is the buoyant and irrepressible “You Got Yr. Cherry Bomb”, whose driving beat and soulful beat lift up the spirits of the listener, but mask what is actually a downer of a song. The music sounds so joyful, but the lyrics are all about the end of a relationship; even the central conceit of the cherry bomb is a reference to this, as the mentions of blowing out the cherry bomb are surrounded by lines like “We lost it long ago”, ‘I watched you start that drive alone”, and “Get yourself to bed”. It’s the happiest song about a breakup you’ll probably ever hear
The five best songs from Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga (“Don’t Make Me A Target”; “Finer Feelings”; “Black Like Me”; and the two previously mentioned ones) rank up with the best that Spoon has ever done, but on the whole I always have difficulty recommending this album over any of their others. The issue is not that the other five songs are bad–they’re all quite good, aside from “Don’t You Evah” which I would appreciate much more if the local radio station had chosen any other song on the album but that one to drive into the ground–it’s just that the Fab Five are so much better, that it creates an imbalance that you don’t really find on their other albums.
“Don’t Make Me A Target” initially sounds like a remake of “The Beast and Dragon, Adored”, but the fact that the entire song revolves around variations of the same riff, played differently according to the emotional mood of the lyrics, instead of the unsettled progression as outlined above, makes it an entirely different animal. That said, the breakdown into the guitar solo is a great partner to the Gimme Fiction track, and both are highlights of any Spoon show. “Finer Feelings” is simply a perfect pop song, filled with memorable lines like “A hundred yard stare of a kiss–Lord, I know I’ll never miss it” and “I was part-time at the Tasty Prawn–that and moving furniture and cutting lawns”, as well as the ingenious wordplay of using the Memphis newspaper Commercial Appeal in the chorus. Musically, the bass does a great job of locking into a bouncing groove, the guitar does a great job of providing the right rhythm accents and then twisting it into the chorus melody, and the fun studio tricks of using different samples and incorporating the talkback in the studio between the room and the performance area provide a nice color to the song without overwhelming it. And the closer “Black Like Me” is a great lovelorn ballad, one that plays the cruel trick of seeming to be just about to explode when the song suddenly stops, but somehow it works. “All the weird kids up front, tell me what you know you want–someone to take care of tonight.”
Spoon then closed out the decade with Transference, and it was at this point that it seems that critics got tired of writing praise for a consistently brilliant band and began taking them for grand. I feel like I need to start a support group for fans of this underrated album–well, as underrated an album can be when it still maintains a rating of universal acclaim at 80 on Metacritic. In many ways, it’s almost a reaction to the easygoing nature of Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, but there are gems that are ready to be found. Part of the allure is that there are so many subtly subversive tricks to the album that delight music obsessives; for instance, the band put the lead single and biggest rocker “Got Nuffin'” as the tenth track of an eleven track album. The band also indulges in some of the studio trickery that they had only previously dabbled in, incorporating more talkback in different songs as well as switching between demo instrumental tracks (the rougher sounding spots) and regular studio tracks. It gives the album a really great raw and stitched-together feel, and is an excellent rebuttal against their earlier meticulous production.
There are some truly great songs on Transference that should rank high on any Spoon fan’s list, like the energetic and spirited “Trouble Comes Running”. In many ways, its pop sensibilities would be perfect for Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, but there are subtle tweaks that make it a natural fit for Transference; there’s the mix between demo and studio guitar for one, but then there’s the general approach of keeping the guitars as thin as possible when the natural melodic pull of the song would push other artists to fatten it up as big as possible. “I Saw The Light” uses its initial 6/8 triplet feel to create some excellent tension, and Jim Eno deserves a great amount of credit by switching on a dime to a straight-ahead 6/4 time signature, and seemingly cutting the climax at its knees. The fact that the lyrics cut out as soon as this time change occurs should be a signal to the listener that this is the exact moment that the narrator “saw the light”. But the outro almost raises more questions than it answers, as the chords continues to follow a descending pattern, while the guitars and piano hit on odd beats, so the listener is left to wonder exactly what it is the narrator “saw”. The album also includes two of the finest ballads of the band’s career with the gorgeous “Out Go The Lights” and the delicate and touching “Goodnight Laura”, songs which unfortunately have seemed to have gone overlooked in the years since the album’s release.
Where does They Want My Soul stack up within this great run? We’ll have the full review tomorrow, but we’ll say this now: it is definitely a fitting companion.
With the release this week of They Want My Soul, now is an excellent opportunity to take a look back at the remarkable career of Spoon. We here at Rust Is Just Right want to give novices a look at the elements that make up the Spoon sound, and how the band was able to become so reliably brilliant over the years that it was named the Metacritic Band of the Decade. In addition, we want to point out our favorite highlights of each album, so you know what to look for when listening through their discography this weekend.
It’s hard to pinpoint what exactly constitutes the Spoon “sound”, but the band has developed a general style over the years that is identifiable to the trained ear. I’ve read in a few interviews with the band how critics would deem their music “minimalistic”, but that’s not quite accurate; there are dynamics, melodies, and chord progressions, unlike the true “minimalist” music that’s more experimental in nature. The better descriptor is “sparse”–Spoon doesn’t load up their songs with a lot of unnecessary filler, allowing the notes that each member plays to have room to breathe.
First, the band uses only a handful of tracks per song; there are not layers of guitars and keyboards and strings in a Spoon song. Second, as Britt noted in an interview with The Guardian, the band early on took out the rhythm guitar in most songs, so that it doesn’t clog the music, and this philosophy extends to the other instruments as well. The drums rarely rely on a ride cymbal or hi-hat to keep continuous track of the beat; the groove is felt through the precise emphasis of the rhythms of the bass and drums. The rhythms themselves aren’t particularly complex, but Spoon does a wonderful job of varying the way that they’re hit, shifting from drums to cymbals to tambourines to shakers and so on. As for the “rhythm” guitar, it’s deployed in the same way as the bass and the drums, usually as a counterpoint, with the additional responsibility of providing the occasional burst of color with the odd chord or novel tone; pianos and keyboards are often deployed in the same way as well. From these basic elements, Spoon has proven that it’s possible to assemble a wide variety of songs without repeating themselves; it also helps that the band also knows their way around a great melody or two.
The Spoon sound didn’t come fully developed; their debut Telephono almost sounds like the work of a completely different band, one that was much more indebted to 90’s alternative rock and 80’s post-punk. A lot of critics compared this album to the Pixies, but the comparison is really only accurate in describing their emphasis on short songs and oft-kilter stories. It’s much less oft-putting than the Pixies are on first listen, and filled with catchy hooks. The band hadn’t developed the philosophy to rhythm guitar as mentioned above, so it’s much more prevalent on Telephono than on any of their later work. Over the years, songs from Telephono gradually fell out of the band’s setlist, though songs like “Plastic Mylar” and “Don’t Buy the Realistic” still sound great today. The follow-up Soft Effects EP continued in a similar vein, and “Mountain to Sound” and “I Could See The Dude” get the occasional spotlight in a set, and represent a key point in the early evolution of the band.
The band’s major label debut A Series of Sneaks saw the band smooth out some of the rough edges of their debut, cutting out some of the fat and sticking to the hooks. It’s an album that still holds up well to this day, though it’s clearly of a different period than the traditional Spoon album. But you can tell there’s a clear connection between many of the songs on Sneaks and their later work; “Car Radio” or “Utilitarian” can pop up in the middle of a Spoon show and it wouldn’t sound out of place at all, even if the piano player has to figure out something to do for a couple of minutes. However, due to lackluster sales and turmoil at the record label, Spoon was dropped and left to their own devices to figure out what to do next; part of their thought process is heard on the re-release bonus tracks “Laffitte Don’t Fail Me Now” and “The Agony of Laffitte”, detailing their anger and feelings of betrayal.
The band responded to the lowest moment of their career (and to circumstances which would have killed most bands), with one of the greatest albums of the new millennium, Girls Can Tell. While Telephono and A Series of Sneaks are fine efforts (especially the latter, which is unfortunately often forgotten when discussing the band’s oeuvre), they are a cut below the brilliant hot streak that would follow in their wake. In our next and final part, we will discuss each of these albums in depth, which will hopefully serve as a bit of an appetizer to our review of their newest record, They Want My Soul. But to give a taste of what to expect, here’s the definitive ranking of Spoon albums according to Rust Is Just Right, which should certainly end any such debates from ever occurring again.
The story of Clap Your Hands Say Yeah is one we’ve seen countless times before, and just as unfair as with many other cases–band debuts with huge buzz and overnight success, becoming a shorthand for the Hot New Thing, difficult followup alienates the tastemakers and the band’s profile begins to dwindle, band now exists in shadow of former glory and is now shorthand for “hey, weren’t we crazy back in [insert year]?” Granted, since we’re talking about indie rock bands in the new millennium, the full scale of their trajectory is of a much smaller scale than previous decades, but it’s a familiar pattern nonetheless. Even we here at Rust Is Just Right, fans of the band that we are, have added insult to injury by letting their most recent release pass by without much comment, letting it get lost amid a sea of other stellar releases that week.
However, since the newest iteration of Clap Your Hands Say Yeah is set to play Portland this Sunday, now is the perfect time to correct our previous omission and attempt to put the band’s career in context, and also to help give the band a needed reassessment.
The story of the unexpected success of the band’s debut is still remembered today, as the band was able to sell over a hundred thousand copies of Clap Your Hands Say Yeah even without the benefit of record label support, based purely on the power of word-of-mouth and shares through music blogs. The album eventually made its way into the hands of various critics, and with a helpful push particularly from Pitchfork, the band became indie darlings and were selling out big halls while at the same time individually mailing out copies of their record. To give you an idea of their success at the time, the opener on their tour was The National, who were supporting their just-released classic Alligator. Today, it’s a different story, as The National can headline festivals while CYHSY plugs away at tiny clubs, but there’s no hard feelings–Matt Berninger does a guest vocal spot on the band’s new album.
While the story remains compelling, many might be surprised that the actual music still holds up years later. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah didn’t exactly spawn a legion of odd-voiced, delicate indie-dance rock imitators, so their unique sound stands out even today. The sparse arrangements serve the songs well, and the melodies remain strong and filled with hooks. If I hear “Upon This Tidal Wave of Young Blood” or “In This Home On Ice” pop up on my iTunes, I can still sing along with ease.
It was with their next album, Some Loud Thunder, that the band began to lose support; you can probably pinpoint the exact moment, which is when the heavily-distorted title track opens the album. I believe that initial impression turned off most people, as many probably reached for their album once it started playing and asked “Did I get a warped copy?” However, I personally eventually found some charm to that abrasive opening, and admired the ballsiness of the band’s maneuver to dare people who were merely hoping to catch the tail end of a trend to keep listening. The opening lines are also a brilliant response to the incredible hype that the band had received: “All this talking, you’d think I’d have something to say, but I’m just talking.” There was no hidden agenda; the guys were just interested in making music.
The album also features a couple of the group’s best singles, the twisted-but-goofy “Satan Said Dance” and the dramatic “Yankee Go Home”, but they failed to gain traction outside of a devoted fanbase. Otherwise, the album was filled with dreamy textures and various sound experiments, which work well if one is committed to listening to the album but can present problems for the casual listener. But when you strip away all the extra layers, there are still beautiful songs below the surface. For example, here’s a gorgeous if haunting solo acoustic performance of “Underwater (You and Me)”.
After the intentionally confrontational Some Loud Thunder, the band regrouped with the bouncy and fun Hysterical, trading experimental rock for more keyboards and a dance beat. It’s certainly an enjoyable record, and one that works extremely well live, though only a handful songs leave any sort of lasting impression. “Same Mistake” is an energetic rave-up, and “Adam’s Plane” is a nice dramatic ballad that builds to an epic finish, but in between those two songs the album merely seems to float from one track to the next.
Even with a pivot toward more crowd-pleasing material, the band’s audience continued to shrink. During the Some Loud Thunder tour, they sold out the Roseland Theater, one of the biggest venues in Portland; for the Hysterical tour, they downgraded significantly to the Hawthorne Theatre. Despite this, the band’s performance actually improved, as the smaller size of the venues seemed to be a more comfortable fit. The band was also helped by the fact that the people who showed up to see them were actual devoted fans, who had a great time providing an energetic response to the material and dancing along to the music, and yelling out the lyrics as needed.
After a few years off, the band returns in a radically different form, existing in recording form as basically a duo. Alec Ounsworth and his distinctive voice remain as he tackles most of the guitars and keyboards as well, with some help from drummer Sean Greenhalgh. The result is a careful, more subdued record that falls more in line with recent bedroom-pop-like efforts, and one can sense an element of restraint throughout the album. The result is an unusual combination of an air of calm mixed with a bit of unease, as the sounds themselves are soothing but they’re seemingly pushing against an unseen force to prevent a full explosion of emotion. Keyboards are a more dominant presence on the album, with single-note guitar lines cutting through to provide some edge and movement at particular moments, such as in the single “As Always” (embedded above) or to propel the momentum forward, as in “Coming Down”.
Overall, it’s an intriguing step forward for the band, and one that shows that while the band may be content to have a lower profile, the important thing is that they are still committed to releasing new music. Looking back, it was clear that the “living room” tour that the band did a few months prior to the release of Only Run was an indication of this new direction, and perhaps a sign of things to come. The band has shifted to an even smaller venue this time as it passes through Portland, as they perform within the intimate confines of Mississippi Studios. But if previous events are any indication, it will be an even better experience.
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?”
Rust Is Just Right 