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The Coldplay Dilemma

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According to the rushed pace of the standard Internet cycle, it’s probably more than a little late to the game to do an in-depth discussion on Coldplay at this point.  I mean, their new album came out nearly a month ago!  Even if you were interested in reading a thinkpiece on the band, you probably have had your fill weeks ago.  You’re probably even less inclined than usual to read a semi-glorified album review for something that you could have listened to multiple times already.

Of course, these are issues separate from the fact that it’s Coldplay that would be the subject of analysis.  The mere mention of their name is enough to get Internet Folk riled up to offer their witty take, usually a negative one at that.  Then again, I’m not the first person to acknowledge this fact, as most pieces on Coldplay are offered from some sort of an apologist’s perspective.  So I’m just going to lay my cards on the table: I’m a Coldplay fan.  As I’ve put it before, “That’s right: I have opinions on Coldplay b-sides.”

That’s a pretty great b-side.  See also “See You Soon” and “Careful Where You Stand”.

Now here’s where we go over all the caveats.  I’m a fan in the sense that I will buy each of their albums as they’re released, but there’s no guarantee that I will continue to listen to them as the years go by (in fact, it’s been several years since I’ve listened to X&Y, and I’ve made it a point to specifically not-listen to that album over the years–the play count on my iTunes for that album remains at zero, and you can go back three laptops and find that to be the case).  I’m a fan in that I will occasionally offer a defense of their musicianship or some of their works, but I’m not one to go out of my way to convince people.  I’m not exactly the zealous advocate that Coldplay may require.

I still listen to their first two albums fairly regularly, and I would argue that Parachutes and A Rush of Blood to the Head are two of the best albums of the 00’s.  It’s striking that often you will find that many of Coldplay’s detractors will concede that there are at least a couple of good songs on those albums; what’s even more impressive is that there isn’t a general consensus on what those specific songs are, and if you add the vote totals up for each song, you would end up with votes for half of each album.  “Shiver” or “Don’t Panic”, “Everything’s Not Lost” or “Spies”?  “The Scientist” or “Amsterdam”? ,”Clocks” or “Politik”?  It’s easy to make a case for any of these songs (except for “Yellow”, which was of course their first breakthrough hit–I won’t stand for any argument for it, and it’s the one area where I’ll agree with the detractors.  Go figure).

Once A Rush of Blood to the Head made Coldplay the biggest band in the world however, it would undercut the identity that gave them their success in the first place: that they were the underdog.  It’s hard to believe the person singing a lyric like “So I look in your direction, but you pay me no attention” from “Shiver” when he’s married to Gwyneth Paltrow, or that the frontman of the best-selling band on the planet would be contemplating suicide, as in “Amsterdam”.  They were no longer the plucky underdog, they were not the confident favorite.  This would even box the band in musically, as they built their reputation on more intimate, simple songs.  Even when they would explode with emotion, there was still an element of restraint.  Sure there are big and brash pounding chords on “Politik”, but they resolve to a delicate conclusion by the end (pay close attention to the subtle melody that overlays the chords, that is the true movement in the song).

X&Y is the sound of a band spinning its wheels as it realizes it has these issues.  Luckily, the group realized that from an artistic perspective, that it needed a change in focus (they never would have a problem from a commercial perspective–X&Y opened up at #1, as they would for the rest of their career).  The band realized that they needed to alter their style, and hiring Brian Eno was a great way to start.  That’s why Viva la Vida works much better as an album–they realize their place, but they also realize that now they can indulge in more adventurous musical experimentation.  Mylo Xyloto was conceived similarly, except any subtlety was brushed aside in favor of amplification of all their traits, good and bad.  It’s still better than X&Y, but it would take a conscious effort on my part to seek out (most of the time I forget the album even exists, honestly).

Sadly, with the recent turmoil in Chris Martin’s personal life, the band could conceivably claim the mantle of their earlier albums.  Musically, it makes sense as well–after a couple of albums of experimentation, the time is ripe to return to the original formula and make more intimate songs.  Ghost Stories does that, but in the process it seems to miss out on the strengths of those early albums.  Guitars are generally discarded and drums are programmed, with only the bass given much of anything to do.  By de-emphasizing their instrumental strengths, it often has the aura of being a Chris Martin solo album more than a Coldplay album.  This was a band that had an underrated guitarist that would use novel chords, provide incisive leads, and had a complete mastery of tone, and a group that had a drummer that had a wonderful rhythmic sense and had great control over both powerful hits and subtle flourishes.

Despite these flaws, Ghost Stories does have its merits, and at least shows that the band is still willing to engage in musical left turns (the multi-tracked vocals reminiscent of Bon Iver in “Midnight” are an example where the experimentation works).  It will make a fine late-night album, but it won’t take the place of Parachutes or A Rush of Blood to the Head quite yet.

The Pixies Dilemma

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Back in 2004, the descendants of Alternative Nation celebrated the return of the Pixies, perhaps the greatest band to come out of the underground music scene of the late 80’s and early 90’s.  For many of those fans, this was especially welcome because they had grown up well past the band’s heyday, and had figured they would never get the chance to see such a legendary band live, this author included.  I’m not using the term “legendary” lightly either–savvy music fans were well aware of the debt that their favorite bands of the 90’s had to the Pixies and realized the scope of their influence on alternative music from that era.  We discovered their genius when we heard bands like Weezer cover their songs and saw Kurt Cobain name-drop them in numerous interviews, after which we headed to the record store as if we were completing a homework assignment to study up on what helped create our favorite music.

My personal introduction to the band was hearing “Where Is My Mind?” play over the ending of Fight Club, an experience I imagine many others shared.    It was a perfect companion to a film that had just blown my mind, a moment that is unsullied years later even after thousands of people have misinterpreted the movie and turned into some sort of cinematic Bro Bible.  Though the official soundtrack didn’t include the song, it still stuck with me for a long time.

My next experience was when a friend brought along a copy of the Greatest Hits compilation Death to the Pixies for one of our road-trips up I-5.  I was immediately impressed by their cover of “Cecilia Ann”, and was hoping to hear more of this cool surf-rock.  However, the compilation is not set up in a manner really suited to the Pixies novice, though to be fair it does a good job of representing the different eras of their career.  The easier-to-swallow pop songs were mixed haphazardly throughout, and as a result the harder-edged rockers predominated in my mind (it didn’t help that driving on the interstate would cause road noise to swallow up most of the nuances either).  Still, besides the aforementioned “Cecilia Ann”, I remember loving every second of “Debaser” as soon as I heard it.

The song had everything I would come to love about the Pixies: the catchy and smooth leads of Joey Santiago, the whacked-out lyrics and delirious intensity of Black Francis, the (metaphorically) steady hand of Kim Deal to provide the counterpoint, and those driving and energetic drums from Dave Lovering.  The melodies were instantly memorable, and the song said everything that needed to be said in less than three minutes.  Hell, even the lyrics about watching weird movies about slicin’ up eyeballs were appealing to a guy branching out into the more obscure subfields of cinema, and also just being of a juvenile mindset of HEY LOOK AT THIS TERRIBLE THING.

But while the love of “Debaser” was instantaneous, and appreciation for other songs quickly followed (“Velouria”, “La La Love You”, “Monkey Gone to Heaven”, and especially “Here Comes Your Man” (which is so catchy that it boggles my mind as to how it never became a crossover smash)), it would still be time before I would have total adoration for the entire Pixies catalog.  It would take a few listens to appreciate the raucous nature of “Tame” or “Something Against You”, and realize that the genius of the band was how they were both the pop craftsmen of “Wave of Mutilation” and the harsh punks of “Crackity Jones”.  If this were a more pretentious piece, now would be the time to drop some reference to Jungian archetypes or something along those lines, but I’ll just trust you the reader to fill those in as you see fit.

Over the years, my love and respect for the band deepened.  I consider Doolittle to be the greatest album of the 80’s, with Surfer Rosa only a few notches behind, and Bossanova remains a personal favorite (my early love of “Cecilia Ann” and “Velouria” paving the way for years of endless repeated listens probably helped elevate my opinion of that particular album as compared to most of my peers, but fuck them, because it’s a great album top-to-bottom).  Seeing Doolittle performed in its entirety live was one of the highlights of my concert-going experience, one that I am unlikely to forget.

However, after years of touring on the backs of (their admittedly great) previous work, many fans yearned to hear something new from the band.  Sure, it was great to see our old favorites performed live, but we needed more variety, especially considering how closely the songs align with their album versions.  And thus, we have the dilemma–what happens when our expectations of a band have outstripped their abilities?  In other words, fans were soon faced with the lesson that countless others have faced over thousands of years of human history: be careful what you wish for.

*******

Perhaps we were a bit spoiled, considering how Dinosaur Jr. was able to reunite its classic lineup and toss off three fantastic albums that measure up to their early work, and how My Bloody Valentine just last year made the 20+ year wait for a follow-up to Loveless nearly worth it.  Touring behind the same old songs made the Pixies suffer in comparison, and we were eager for something new to replace the diminishing returns of seeing the same material once again.  In response, the Pixies released their first new album since 1991’s Trompe le Monde, with Indie Cindy hitting the shelves two weeks ago.  But where was the celebration this time?

The muted reaction was an understandable response to the drawn-out release of the record, as we heard bits and pieces over the previous months as the songs were released in various EPs.  Some of the initial reactions from fans (and critics) were quite vicious, and the result was that the eventual compilation of the three EPs came and went with little fanfare.  The reviews haven’t been kind, with some publications ignoring it altogether.  All that considered, I’d say that a lot of this intense reaction is misplaced.

Let’s make this clear: Indie Cindy is a decent, but definitely not great album.  There are certainly several issues with this record, many of which bother long-time Pixies fans.  The production is too loud, and the band attempts to do too much all the time instead of letting each element breathe on its own.  Consider how some of the greatest moments from Pixies songs are when an instrument are given a few seconds of spotlight, from the bass in “Gigantic” or “Tame”, to the drum intro of “La La Love You”, to the simple acoustic strums of “Where Is My Mind?” or the broken arpeggios of “Hey”.  Even when everybody comes together, these moments stand out in contrast to the rest of the song.  The lack of a bass presence throughout the album also hurts, as the band didn’t care to flesh out those parts (Joey in a recent interview when discussing Kim’s departure said, “She would have had input, sure, but at the end of the day, a bass part is kind of like a bass part, y’know?”).  While Kim didn’t play the most complicated parts in the world, they did provide an effective counter to the other guitar parts and melodies.  The biggest problem may be Joey’s leads–before, he was a almost surgical in providing concise and memorable melodies, like the descending line in “Velouria” or the bouncy melody in “Here Comes Your Man”.  On Indie Cindy, few guitar lines stick out, and more often than not play out as just an additional layer of sludge on top of ordinary material.  The worst part may be that all these songs are too long–for a guy who once cited Buddy Holly as an inspiration, saying that if two-minute songs were good enough for him, they should be good enough for anybody, it’s disheartening to see an album with songs around three and four minutes each.

All those problems aside, Indie Cindy still is on the whole a worthwhile record and not at all the black eye that its most hardened critics proclaim.  “Greens and Blues”, embedded above, would fit in perfectly with one of the bands more melodic ballads, and features the most memorable melody and guitar lead on the album.  “Blue Eyed Hexe” is a pretty good rip-off of their own “U-Mass”, and is part of a back half of an album that in general bears a closer resemblance to the golden era of the band.  The album overall holds up better with repeated listens, and there isn’t a single song that I would outright skip (though the album doesn’t do itself any favors by opening up with the weak “What Goes Boom”).  In my mind, the album rates about the same as Trompe le Monde, a record that I rarely consider whenever I feel in the mood for some Pixies, and usually only listen to as a reminder that, hey, I should probably do a better job of trying to like this album.  In that regard, Indie Cindy doesn’t stand out as some outlier among a continued line of brilliance, but more of a typical example of a band’s evolution.

It’s interesting that the band has inspired in some such a hysterical reaction; while the Pixies are one of my all-time favorite bands who put out some classic albums, in the end they’re a group that treads in catchy melodies and some fun rockers.  I can see how people create a certain bond with artists, depending on their deeply-seated philosophical beliefs or their fiercely personal lyrics, but these aren’t characteristics that one uses to describe the Pixies.  It’s not as if Elliott Smith or Neutral Milk Hotel decided to change course and start writing jingles for soft drink companies.  Even the band has no idea what their lyrics are about.

I think the real reason why the reaction to Indie Cindy was so intense was not only the intense devotion that many of these reviewers had to a band from their youth, but as a protection against the possibility that the next generation would never understand the Pixies’ brilliance if this album was their first exposure to the band.  While I see some merits to that outlook, in practice it doesn’t mean much.  As I pointed out before, I came to the band from the backdoor, though it was through one of their greatest songs.  But people all the time discover their favorite artists through unconventional means, and yes, sometimes their worst work is the gateway.  The first album I ever bought by The Jam was their mediocre swan song The Gift, because it was cheap and I knew I had to learn about the band.  Years later, I listen to The Jam regularly and The Gift rarely comes up in the rotation of superior albums like All Mod Cons, Setting Sons, or Sound Affects.  What’s funny is that many people are now getting their first taste of the Pixies not through Indie Cindy, but through an awful iPhone commercial featuring a terrible cover of their classic “Gigantic”.  Ironically, it would have been far better for everyone if they used a mediocre Pixies album as their entrance point instead.

Unlikely Heroes: The Legacy of Neutral Milk Hotel (Pts. 2 & 3)

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Neutral Milk Hotel’s reputation was built on the strength of its magnum opus In the Aeroplane Over the Sea.  What is it about this album that it has inspired rabid devotees ready to proselytize about its brilliance at the drop of a hat?  In this next part, we will closely examine the particular genius of Aeroplane and why it is worthy of such deference.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jtZx9LNpAY

It is difficult to enjoy In the Aeroplane Over the Sea on the first listen; to borrow a term from economics, appreciation has “a high barrier to entry”.  The bizarrely-stocked orchestra of cheap instruments, the ramshackle production combined with lo-fi recording touches, and Jeff Mangum’s raw and unique voice (some kind people may call it “untrained” to be charitable) all become qualities that you come to love, but it takes some time before this occurs.  It can be tough to overcome those initial impressions, and that’s how you end up with reactions like this Rolling Stone review (I don’t know if there’s a more “Rolling Stone” review than this, which when not engaged in strained allusions (Tusk and the MacArthur awards committee both get a mention) manages to do everything it can to show that the reviewer missed the point entirely (“burying the hard gem of songcraft under layers of bizarreness”; “most of the music is scant and drab, with flat-footed rhythms and chord changes strictly out of the beginner’s folk songbook”), all capped with a generic three-star rating).

The chord changes that the Rolling Stone reviewer derides are actually one of the quiet strengths of the album.  Most of the songs only rely on three or four basic chords, all of which should be familiar to the average listener’s ear.  The effect is that it grounds the songs into something that is immediately identifiable to the listener, and allows one to appreciate the more peculiar touches without allowing one’s attention to completely drift away.  The title track is a perfect example of this: it’s built on a common progression, G – E minor – C – D, or as I like to call it the “Last Kiss” progression (the I, vi (relative minor), IV, V chords for those inclined), over which Mangum sings a sweet and pleasant melody, and gradually more and more instruments are layered to provide distinctive accents, like the various horns and especially the eerie singing saw.  Mangum never changes the chords but in the bridge he makes a slight adjustment in their order, beginning each phrase with the E minor chord instead, which changes the tone of the entire section to something darker.  These little touches help bring out certain lines in the lyrics; a perfect example is how the singing saw helps embellish the line “how the notes all bend and reach above the trees”, providing an aural representation of the image depicted in the lyrics.

The brilliant “Holland, 1945” is another excellent example.  It’s even simpler than “Aeroplane” in that it uses only three chords: C, G, and D, the most basic chords in all contemporary music.  In fact, most of the time it switches only between C and G, with the D thrown in occasionally to provide the bridge between those two endpoints.  The simple structure also allows the song to retain the same amount of power when it’s just Mangum and his guitar.  That said, there are few things that equal the magnificence of this song when it’s the full band playing–the fuzz bass that gives the low end that buzzed edge, those horn lines which provide glimpses of triumph, and that excellent driving percussion that is always on the threat of falling apart but blisters through nonetheless.  Just listen to those crisp snare rolls and how they push the song into the next line, or those kick drum hits that accent the walking bassline in the coda.

It’s almost amazing that I’ve spent this many words analyzing the album with only passing references to the lyrics, because the story behind the words is often what is most familiar to those with even a passing knowledge of the band (“Oh, they’re the guys with the ‘Anne Frank’ album, right?”).  The discussion of the mythology of Aeroplane is certainly a factor that draws in many fans, and Mangum’s lyrics definitely invite further scrutiny.  Much of the album was indeed inspired by Anne Frank’s The Diary of a Young Girl, and she is referenced in many songs throughout the album (the bulk of her appearances is in the middle of the album, with “In the Aeroplane Over the Sea”, “Holland, 1945”, “Oh, Comely” and “Ghost” as significant examples).  However, it needs to be seen through the eyes of Mangum’s intense reaction to her ordeal and not just a recounting of her story.  Mangum uses several other characters on the album, as he weaves scenes of an impoverished modern family with fantastical characters and the ghost of Anne Frank, all as attempts to process all the terrible things that happen and how we are often powerless to stop them.  Individual lines alternate between sweet, childish simplicity  and bizarre horror, all processed through a particular straightforward innocence.

It is an extremely affecting and compelling work underscored by Mangum’s raw and impassioned vocal performance.  What initially comes off as harsh at worst and amateurish at best becomes warm and comforting after repeated listens.  You can feel each and every sentiment that Mangum goes through as he journeys through the emotional roller coaster of an album; the album veers from the affectionate “The Earth looks better from a star that’s right above from where you are” to the stark “I know they buried her body with others, her sister and mother and 500 families…I wish I could save her in some sort of time machine” to the redemptive “And when her spirit left her body, how it split the sun; I know that she will live forever, all goes on and on and on.”  It’s the reason why one of the most powerful experiences in my life was when I listened to this album and then visited the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam.

However, it’s not just the brilliance of the album itself that has inspired such fanatical devotion, but the mystery surrounding it.  While it’s easy to pick up on the general story behind the songs, the often cryptic lyrics  filled with fantastic and grotesque imagery have inspired wild theories and intense discussion.  And fans were left to argue their meaning among themselves, because Jeff Mangum rarely spoke about the album and conducted very few interviews once it was released.  Actually, I may be understating Mangum’s reluctance a little bit, as his silence led to stories of him becoming a recluse in the face of the overwhelming reaction to the album, so much so that Slate published an article in 2008 that dubbed Mangum “The Salinger of Indie Rock”.  The continued silence of Mangum over the years fed a cycle that increased the hysteria behind the album, and as nature abhors a vacuum, people rushed in to fill the gaps and speculate on the meaning of what seemed to be the last musical release of an eccentric genius.  With nothing to compare it to, the stature of the album was destined to grow, a pattern we’ve seen before (My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless is an excellent example of this phenomenon).

*******

Which was why it was such a surprise when Jeff Mangum eventually began his return to the spotlight a couple of years ago with a scattering of solo appearances, and why segments of the internet exploded in euphoria.  Finally, we would be able to hear from the man himself!

A triumphant return.

A triumphant return.

In the years leading up to his return, fans had to make do with scattered bootlegs and a tantalizing glimpse of the early form of Aeroplane-era songs with Live at Jittery Joe’s, a recording of Jeff performing solo before friends and an otherwise indifferent audience in a tiny club in Athens, Georgia between On Avery Island and Aeroplane.  It was remarkable to hear Mangum interact with the audience and give brief explanations and insights into his songs, and the casual nature of the set helped undercut some of the self-serious reverence that some fans had developed over the years.  This was music made by an actual human, not some ethereal muse or other mystical creature.

Jittery Joe’s also provided a clue as to how some of those early return shows would sound like, as Mangum seemed weary of returning the band as a whole.  Instead, he gradually introduced other band members in various performances and only for certain songs, generally performing by himself just with a couple of acoustic guitars.  I had the great fortune of seeing Mangum on these early tours twice, and it was a concert experience that few could possibly match.  It was amazing to watch a crowd that over years and years had connected on a deep emotional level with an artist that they had no idea they would ever have the chance to see, finally confronted with the opportunity to witness the source of their passion in person.  It was a mixture of joy and adoration, and took on the tone of an almost-religious revival.  I can say with some authority that the only person that could get a bunch of young Portland hipsters to yell “I love you, Jesus Christ” would be Jeff Mangum.

But still, there was something missing from these performances.  Jeff and his guitar may have been the backbone of each of these songs, but we had come to adore all the extra flourishes over the years–the thrashing drums, the buzzed bass, the kitchen-sink orchestra, et al.  So we were welcome to the new experience of seeing “Neutral Milk Hotel” as a whole perform these songs that we had come to know by heart.

Fellow Elephant 6 comrades The Minders and Elf Power were the opening bands, and they did a good job of keeping the energy of the crowd up.  We got an unexpected highlight when Elf Power covered the Olivia Tremor Control’s “Jumping Fences” in memory of Bill Doss, who had tragically died two years ago.  It was a reverent take of a brilliant song whose greatness was somewhat unappreciated by most of the crowd, who apparently had not delved into the oeuvre of the other band in the collective that often matched the brilliance of Neutral Milk Hotel.  One of the greatest concert experiences I ever had was seeing the Olivia Tremor Control perform a raucous set in a tiny Portland bar during Music Fest Northwest with a bunch of their friends from Elephant 6, and I wished that the other people in the crowd had been there so they could have been as excited as I was for this cover.

After Elf Power, the audience grew impatient as the moment that many had spent at least a decade to see was growing closer, but soon their fears were allayed as a lone bearded figure climbed up onto the stage.  Jeff opened the show with a stirring solo version of “Two-Headed Boy”, buoyed by a raucous crowd singing along.  And in a manner that perfectly matched the performance on the album, the rest of the band gradually made their way in a procession to the stage as they played the instrumental segue “The Fool”, and we could finally say that we had lived to see the return of Neutral Milk Hotel.  When the band launched into “Holland, 1945”, I could barely contain myself, and I shouted the lyrics along with the band as they played my favorite song of all-time.  It was an unbelievable moment, made better by the fact that you could see the joy of the band as well.

In those earlier Jeff solo shows, there was always a delicate tension between performer and audience, as the crowd was careful not to disturb a potentially emotionally fragile performer.  There was a strange dichotomy at work, as there was a connection between Jeff and the crowd because of the music, but also a distance between the two, as the crowd didn’t want to cross any imaginary line.  With this in the back of my head, I was therefore interested to see how Mangum would react with the rest of his band during the show.  Instead of being withdrawn and remote, Jeff seemed most joyous when he was playing along with his band.  He was still somewhat on an island off to the far right of the stage, and the nature of the songs meant that often it was him by himself facing the crowd, but the sense was not of “Jeff Mangum & Some Guys” but more of a cohesive unit called “Neutral Milk Hotel”.

The band had a varied set, shifting between songs from throughout their career.  There were of course several songs from Aeroplane, but they also hit highlights from their debut like “Gardenhead-Leave Me Alone” and “Song Against Sex”, as well as tossing in rarities like the early single “Everything Is” as well as “Ferris Wheel on Fire”.  The band saved the best for last, as they ended the show with an encore of the ending trio of songs from Aeroplane.  There’s “Ghost”, which manages to create this unbelievable tension as instruments pile on top of each other while the upbeat is hammered incessantly, while at the same time there is some relief because we have the potential relief of Anna’s ghost being free to escape.  Then there is the instrumental segue “Untitled”, which has the aura of a carnival celebration and where the band let loose, led by unusual instruments like the zanzithophone, which handles the main melody.  One of the indelible memories I will have of the show will be of Jeff jumping around with his acoustic guitar as this joyous circus performed along with him.  “Two-Headed Boy Pt. 2” then closes out this set, as we revisit characters from throughout the story as gradually everything fades away, and we’re left with Jeff alone with his guitar.  However, he doesn’t leave as he does at the end of the album; instead, Jeff has one more sing-along for the audience, and the crowd joins in on the fan-favorite “Engine” to close out the show.  It was the perfect ending to a memorable show, and we exited into the night to the sounds of “Pink Moon” filtering through the Crystal Ballroom sound system.  That’s about as good as a Sunday night gets.

Unlikely Heroes: The Legacy of Neutral Milk Hotel (Pt. 1)

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I remember a recent conversation where an acquaintance asked a question along the lines of “How did Neutral Milk Hotel become so popular?” For the vast majority of the American public, this would seem to be a preposterous question, especially for a group that has yet to sell even a gold record; furthermore, I’d imagine that most of these people would be clueless as to how those three words could possibly fit together.*  However, depending on the community, this bewilderment is understandable.  Within the right group of people, Neutral Milk Hotel, and especially their masterpiece In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, have taken on an almost hagiographic glow, and both now exist as shorthand for raw, cathartic genius and simple, pure brilliance.**  Not bad for a few guys from a small town in Louisiana.

One of the signs that you know you're in my office.

One of the signs that you know you’re in my office.

I’m going to twist the original question a little bit, and rephrase it as “How did Neutral Milk Hotel reach this level of acclaim (with the corollary ‘Is it deserved?’ answered with a quick and resounding ‘Yes.’)?”  Looking back to their origins, there would be few clues as to how these guys would become the most influential voices in the independent music scene of the last two decades.  As the story has been recounted before, it dates back to the early days of childhood friendship in Ruston, Louisiana, the home of Louisiana Tech.  It began with the sons of a couple of professors bonding over their love of strange and exotic music, and together they navigated following their cultural ambitions with the realities of small town life.  Sharing records eventually led to experimentation and making recordings themselves, and it was from those humble beginnings that the Elephant 6 collective was born.

Those childhood friends were Robert Schneider, Bill Doss, William Cullen Hart, and Jeff Mangum, and their bands and their subsequent offshoots would create some of the greatest music of the 90’s.  The Apples in Stereo, The Olivia Tremor Control, and Neutral Milk Hotel all trace their origins to those days in Ruston, and they in turn would inspire and work with several other bands like Beulah, Elf Power, and of Montreal that would shape the sound of independent music from the mid-90’s to today.  But while I feel this history lesson is beginning to drag us away from the question at hand, it does provide the proper context to understand Neutral Milk Hotel.  It was within that setting that a culture of sharing and experimentation developed, where bands and genres blended as necessary, all in the name of making beautiful and heartfelt music.  It was from these humble beginnings where you can also hear the origins of the Elephant 6 aesthetic.  The sincere belief that merely lacking the trappings of an expensive studio is not a good enough excuse to prevent musicians from emulating the psychedelic sounds of the Beach Boys and the Beatles, when all you need is a bedroom, a tape recorder, and a bunch of friends to help you.

The story of Elephant 6 is significant, but the particular importance of Neutral Milk Hotel still needs to be explored.  One can find momentary glimpses of future genius in their debut album, On Avery Island: songs like “Gardenhead”, “Song Against Sex”, and “Naomi” are great examples of the warped take on folk music that would be the hallmark of the band’s sound.  In a way it captured the old-time spirit of folk music, which wasn’t the sixties stereotype of the singer/guitarist in a cafe, but friends gathered together playing whatever instruments were handy.  This atmosphere was enhanced by the lo-fi recording techniques and production, which emphasized the do-it-yourself spirit of the group.  And on top of all this were Jeff Mangum’s cryptic and often bizarre lyrics, which draw your attention and invite endless speculation.  However, there was little that would prepare fans to the great leap forward that would come next from the band.

Next door to the Anne Frank House.

Next door to the Anne Frank House.

I still remember my first introduction to the band, back during my freshman year of college.  I was looking at the away messages that my friends would post on AOL Instant Messenger, and one of them had posted a few lyrics from the song “In the Aeroplane Over the Sea” and had listed the name “Neutral Milk Hotel” underneath.  I found the words particularly moving, which led to further research to learn more about these guys.  After reading a few reviews filled with lavish praise, I immediately used the intra-college network to download the album, since we had long passed the halcyon days of Napster (quick aside that attempts to justify my actions: this was before the days of YouTube and other streaming possibilities; the nearest record store was two towns over and I lacked a car; and I have a strong habit of purchasing what I like after the test preview download as soon as I can).

Those unmistakable first acoustic guitar strums of “The King of Carrot Flowers, Pt. 1” soon were filtering out through my computer speakers, and I was subtly intrigued.  It was a catchy little progression, with a playfulness that was reminiscent of old nursery rhymes.  And then that distinctive and idiosyncratic voice came in, and I was momentarily taken aback.  At this point, I had limited experience with such an unconventional vocal style, where emotion and passion took priority over a pleasing tone or technical accuracy.  So I was put back on my heels a little bit at this point, and I was still listening to the first song at this point.  There’s a slow transition into “The King of Carrot Flowers, Pts. 2 & 3” as a sustained organ chord bridges the two songs, followed by a staccato banjo arpeggio, and then…

“I-I-I LOVE YOU JEEE-SUS CHRIIIIIIIIIST! JEEESUS CHRIST I LOOOOO-O-VE YOOOOOOOOU!”

At that moment, my first thought is “what the hell have I just gotten myself into?”  And when I played the album for the first time for each of my friends, that was the exact point where they would produce an identical reaction.  I have expressed a similar philosophy as Hank Hill when it comes to Christian Rock, and so this moment was quite jarring: the combination of the raw emotion and the nakedness of the proclamation itself were a bit much to take on first listen.  But then that triumphant trumpet kicks in, the drums begin to ramp up, and then the song morphs into the most punk rock folk song I had ever heard in my life.  My initial concerns were slowly fading away.

It was then that the title track came on, and my conversion was soon complete.  It’s a gorgeous ballad, filled with gorgeous unique touches, like the eerily beautiful singing saw that wavers in and out throughout the song.  Yet it was the lyrics that had slowly captured my attention, language filled with gorgeous imagery and a sentiment of sweetly innocent longing, an emotion that Mangum’s voice wonderfully captured.  And by the time I heard the last verse, I had reached an epiphany.

“What a beautiful face, I have found in this place that is circling all around the sun; and when we meet on a cloud, I’ll be laughing out loud, I’ll be laughing with everyone I see.  Can’t believe how strange it is to be anything at all.”

That last line continues to stick with me to this day; I have never heard a more perfect summation of the absurdity and majesty of existence, and the mere acknowledgement of this fact proves the sentiment in and of itself.  It’s in moments like that instant connection with that particular lyric that reveal how a band can inspire such intense devotion.

*******

To be continued in Pts. 2 & 3

* The best explanation that I remember reading of the band name was that “milk hotels” were a specific lodging that I believe sprang up during the time of the Gold Rush, and they were not stocked with alcohol.  “Neutral” didn’t describe the non-leanings of the hotel, but rather was the name of a town.  My search skills are failing at the moment, but I will edit this when I find more information.

** It can also exist as shorthand for people trying to make a quick joke about hipsters or as a comment on seemingly pretentious and inscrutable music, but fuck those guys.

Note: The book from the 33 1/3 series on In the Aeroplane Over the Sea written by Kim Cooper was an invaluable resource in helping to flesh out some of the backstory of the Elephant 6 Collective, and I highly recommend picking up a copy if you want more information.

Intellectualism and Music Criticism: Do We Need A Defense?

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Recently, a piece by Ted Gioia in The Daily Best made the social media rounds where the critic lamented the depths to which music criticism as he perceives it has fallen.  Gioia made some good points, though a lot of it reads as a screed that those who fancy themselves as members of the intelligentsia could latch onto and feel superior to seemingly low culture.  I say this as someone who tweeted out the article with similar intentions.

Gioia’s thesis is that music criticism has devolved into emphasizing spectacle over substance–that publications are more concerned with fashion and controversy and less interested in substance and musicality.  This is certainly true to some extent.  Depending on the source, it could easily appear that the only thing that matters is what’s controversial or scandalous, and the fact that music is involved is only window dressing.  Of course, you may notice the caveat I included at the beginning of that concession–it depends where you look.

Fake Banksy probably has a point.

Fake Banksy probably has a point.

With that in mind, Gioia still managed to make a few good arguments.  One that I thought was particularly persuasive was the comparison to football announcing and their expectations of the audience’s knowledge (though I assume that Gioia was not thinking of Troy Aikman when he thought of the analogy).  Announcers drop technical terms all the time in their game commentary, and often take for granted that the audience knows the specific jargon concerning plays and formations.  Music writers, by contrast, often seem to bend over backwards to avoid mentioning specific musical vocabulary and concepts, and instead resort to broad language and vague analysis.

So it pained me when I read this quick jab in an unrelated Deadspin post on schlubby frontmen (for the record, the fact that James Murphy is not the inaugural nominee makes the Baseball Hall of Fame not making Greg Maddux a unanimous inductee look positively sane).  In referring to the Gioia piece, Rob Harvilla writes “[t]he hot new thing in rock criticism is to talk trash about people who don’t know what a pentatonic scale is[.]”  Presumably, Mr. Harvilla should know something about music considering his many jobs in the field, but he’s content to play the part of the semi-ignorant rube at least for these purposes.

The reason I found this quote more distressing than most was the fact that Deadspin takes the opposite approach when it comes to sports.  This is a site that has a whole section devoted to analytics and using proper statistics to cut through the bullshit.  The general ethos of the site has long been to mock the empty platitudes and generic analysis by the pundit class, and determine what really works in sports.  In other words, the same goals and ideals that Gioia was attempting to convey.  The attempted slam about the pentatonic scale is particularly noteworthy, because in the original piece Gioia cites an instance where Harry Connick, Jr. made a reference to it in an American Idol episode and was mocked for doing so.  It’s the celebration of ignorance and mocking of knowledge that Gioia lamented–the very same things that Deadspin has spent its years decrying.  It’s not as if a basic scale that is the foundation for most popular music should be worthy of knowledge, right?

That’s not to say Gioia is fully right.  As I mentioned above, part of the problem is that Gioia is probably not looking at the right sources.  There are numerous places where you will find that intellectualism and music criticism are not mutually exclusive (like, for instance, this site).  This was the great point that Jody Rosen made in his Vulture piece.  Why is Gioia looking to Billboard magazine for a discussion of music theory?  The magazine’s primary focus is the business itself, but I’ve linked to multiple Billboard articles that are pretty incisive critical explorations or great interviews with musicians.

You just have to know where to search.  And we’ll continue to do our part to help.

A SXSW (P)Review

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The big news this week is of course the SXSW Festival, and you’re probably tired of hearing the same stories about the festival over and over.*  They usually follow one of two tropes, and it doesn’t matter which, because they’re both terrible: either the “all of your favorite bands are having a blast here in the LIVE MUSIC CAPITAL OF THE WORLD” or “it sucks now that SXSW has totally sold out, man” (annoying coming from either an Austinite or a music industry lackey, for different but totally valid reasons).  Here’s what you should know: 1) None of your favorite bands, if they are in Austin, TX this week, are having a blast because it’s now a requirement that anyone with new music coming out has to stop by and play crowded bars that haven’t seen an inspection since 1998, and 2) Nobody cares that the festival was awesome before anyone heard about it.

*I’m making a couple of assumptions here: that you like music (why else would you be here, unless you were really into cartography, I guess) and that you have at least enough of a passing interest in music/news that you are aware that there is a festival called “South by Southwest” (SXSW for short) and have seen at least one mention of this gigantic festival.  I would think that these assumptions didn’t need to be stated for the record, but it’s better to be safe than sorry.

Don't believe everything that you read.

Don’t believe everything that you read.

That said, there are tons of pieces out there attempting to provide a preview of this year’s particular incarnation of SXSW, and they’re all fighting for your eyes and clicks.  That means I have to come up with my own original approach, and I think I found the right hook: I’ll be reviewing my previous trip to SXSW in order to give you an idea of what to expect.  Because history repeats itself, and time is a flat circle.

I was lucky enough to attend the festival in 2011, when it lined up perfectly with my Spring Break from law school.  With my sister already in town for grad school, I had a floor for crashing and the toughest part of the trip figured out (a previous attempt to attend the festival back in 2007 when I was still working in radio fell apart because of that detail).  It sure seemed to be a better idea than sleeping in each day until noon and then waiting three hours in line for a Shake Shack burger–now I would sleep in each day until noon and then wait three hours to watch some of my favorite bands (because let’s be honest–I wasn’t going to work on my thesis in either scenario).  I looked forward to a week of sunshine, music, and cheap/crappy beer, instead of a week of cold, traffic, and expensive/crappy beer.

The thing that’s hard to realize about SXSW until you’re there is just how many bands are there, and they’re all playing venues that they would otherwise have no business playing in, whether it be a downward or upward shift in fortune.  Queens of the Stone Age playing in a converted auto-body garage?  Um, if you say so.  Some Brazilian surfer-punk zydeco hybrid band playing a packed two-story bar?  Yeah, you’ll never hear of them again (I think their name started with a ‘Z’), but for a brief moment they were a Next Big Thing at this festival.  You truly can’t comprehend the sheer number of bands.  My one souvenir from the festival was a t-shirt that listed “all” of the bands that played.  I took it out during the course of writing this as a reference to help jog my memory of what bands I saw, but it’s practically worthless in that regard because the half-point font makes reading impossible.  And and all these bands are playing in any possible space that they can find.

They even had a singing saw, but they couldn't play a Neutral Milk Hotel cover?

They even had a singing saw, but they couldn’t play a Neutral Milk Hotel cover?

So to people who are fans of “music” as a concept, this all sounds wonderful; to sane people, not so much.  You walk down Sixth Street, beer in hand, (or as I call it, Bourbon Street Lite) and  hear through the air the strains of 30 different bands playing packed, ramshackle bars.  Oh what glory it is to be alive, as the streets are filled with the sound of music!  Of course, if you’re able to actually pick out through the cacophony that sounds great or at the very least interesting, good luck in trying to actually make it into the venue.  This is something that a normal, sane person would enjoy, but SXSW makes this task very difficult indeed.

SXSW is of course famous for the long lines at its venues.  Of course, as a ridiculously popular festival, it’s to be expected.  However, I thought I had purchased a proverbial golden ticket: the wristband.  A couple of hundred bucks up front, and I had bestowed upon my hand the promise of “access” to nearly all shows without paying additional cover charges and the ability to skip lines.  As anyone who’s been to Disneyland knows, this is truly the only way to travel.  And it’s true, you CAN skip ahead of the lines…well at least part of the lines.  What I didn’t know is that SXSW had created an additional supertier with “badges”.  Those were the people that actually had access and so on–you know, what you thought you were getting with the wristband.  In the end, you realize that your purchase of a wristband was the equivalent of pulling into the gas station and selecting the “Plus” nozzle–additional dollars down the drain, with no real noticeable difference in product.

That means your dreams of seeing someone like Bad Brains were pretty much gone.  You thought you could make it into the shack where Death From Above 1979 had a surprise reunion?  Only one possible reaction.  If you’re aiming to see Queens of the Stone Age put on a show at midnight, well you better get to the venue at 7 and watch random crap for five hours, because there’s no way you’re going to be let back in.  It’s tough shit for the badgeless.

Kim Crowdsurfs

Kim Crowdsurfs

That means your dreams of bouncing from show to show are pretty much shot to shit, no matter how willing you are to zig-zag around town.  You are now forced to plan your time judiciously.  And you were hoping that there was not going to be any homework on this trip–I mean, if i was going to think at all this week, shouldn’t it have been in the course of completing my thesis?  These are not the kinds of reflections that I should be having on Spring Break.  Instead, I’m having to do calculations of “is this band popular enough that I can go see them with minimal hassle, but if there is a line, do I really want to see them?”  At this point, I’m about five seconds away from dumping all relevant information into Excel spreadsheets.

Travel 2000 miles to remind yourself of home

Travel 2000 miles to remind yourself of home

For those looking for the best way to see multiple bands, the lawn parties are really the best way to go.  It amazed me that I traveled a couple thousand miles to see a lawn party hosted by the record store that was across the street from me in New York, but Other Music had a great lineup, and offered a bonus attraction for avoiding the terrible Texas heat: shade.  It’s not the most intimate setting, but I was able to see Low, Ted Leo, and !!! all at the same place, and in relative comfort.  And if I wasn’t so restless, I could’ve seen future favorites of mine Sharon Van Etten and Cults as well.

Lawn party is the way to go, for multiple reasons

Lawn party is the way to go, for multiple reasons

The calculus homework that I did before truly came in handy during the night, when it was more of a crapshoot to determine which shows I could get in.  And here’s my advice: you know those buzz bands that you think you’re so cool for hearing about in the days before the festival?  You’re not special.  There are thousands of other people at this festival that read Pitchfork, SPIN, AV Club, FILTER, and whatever other random music press there is out there.  Hell, a lot of them read specific SXSW previews, so there’s no way that you have a chance of getting into the Toro Y Moi show that’s being held in a 50 person dive.  Unless of course you have a badge, as I mentioned above, but if you’re reading this I’m guessing you don’t.  So that means having to aim slightly lower than the hippest, buzziest bands.  And sometimes, this works very well.  I was able to catch The Antlers perform an NPR showcase that proved that Burst Apart would be a fantastic follow-up to Hospice.  I was able to watch Tapes ‘n Tapes, years after their initial breakthrough, put on a great show and convince me to give them another shot and purchase their third album (and afterwards ate some absolutely kickass Korean BBQ tacos).  And I was able to witness Cloud Nothings blow the roof off a bar as they blistered through material, and showed signs of their potential before Attack On Memory was released.  Plus, I got to hear Dylan Baldi in the last instance ask the crowd if anyone had a place where they could crash, because they just drove down from Ohio with no real plan.  I hope someone picked up the slack.

Cloud Nothings tear roof off of roofless bar

Cloud Nothings tear roof off of roofless bar

I keep emphasizing the crowds, and there’s a good reason.  I’m not claustrophobic by any means, but Andy Richter has the right idea.  Every place is absolutely jammed with people, fire codes be damned (and honestly, if they were strictly enforced, you’d just be pissed that you couldn’t get in to watch the show).  And not only that, these are some of the dipshittiest people that you’ve ever seen.  I cracked that Sixth Street was “Bourbon Street Lite” above, and that’s really the attitude that the seeming majority of festival-goers take–they’re not in Austin for a great music festival, there in town as a substitute for Cancun or New Orleans, hoping to have A FUCKING BLAST, YO!  As a result, I overheard some of the absolute most inane shit possible while spending hours in lines over the course of the week, and I have to be thankful that I can’t remember anything specific.

Which leads me to my next piece of advice: bring a friend.  Of course, it’s always fun to share the experience with someone else, but I’ve managed to go solo to several shows without any problem.  But when you’re stuck in lines for hours on end, it’s best to have someone else with which to engage, or else you will have to endure only in your head what seems like a lifetime of bullshit.  It’s not pleasant.

This is even more awesome, knowing this is outside of Odd Future

This is even more awesome, knowing this is outside of Odd Future

In the end, is it all worth it?  I did get a chance to do things like stand five feet away and see …And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead play a hometown show at one in the morning, see random old guys jamming on guitar outside an Odd Future show, and see The Strokes for the first time as fireworks exploded over the Austin skyline during “Last Nite”.  I also saw a ton of forgettable bands and people consistently make such asses of themselves that it would seem to be a productive use of my team to merely weep for the future of humanity.  But in the end, it was probably a fair trade-off–all I missed was a Shake Shack burger (which I’m now told exists in Austin) and a Godspeed You! Black Emperor concert that I had purchased tickets for months earlier.  And I didn’t work on my thesis, but we all know I wasn’t going to work on it anyway.

Anyway, for those who don’t care about history and are here for some advice, here we go, in list form:

1. Bring a friend.  This makes the boredom and idiots tolerable.

2. Buy a badge.  Being rich and important is a good idea for most things in life, SXSW included.

3. Have a plan.  You’re not going to see everything you want.  You’re barely going to see half of what you want.  Deal with it.

4. Find the Korean BBQ Taco truck.  That was delicious.

5. Texas beer sucks.  I didn’t mention this earlier, but just know ahead of time.  Know that the best thing you’ll buy is some off-brand cerveza at the taverna next to the gas station.

https://twitter.com/Vice_Is_Hip/status/442940702872584192

The Beck File

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With the release of Beck’s new album Morning Phase this week, it’s a great time to take a look over Beck’s long, varied, and often bizarre career.  Imagine telling someone back in 1994 that the guy who sang (or rapped, your call) “With the plastic eyeballs, spray paint the vegetables/Dog food stalls with the beefcake pantyhose” would still have a career twenty years later, and more than that, was a highly-respected musician; that person who was the recipient of your madness would be more than justified in attempting to have you committed.

Hopefully that scenario I presented only exists in the hypothetical world, because CrazyPants was actually correct.  Here we are, two decades after “Loser” and Beck is now an elder statesman, whose every move the music press documents and analyzes for greater meaning, even if his album sales have declined over the years.  As of the writing of this article, Morning Phase has a MetaCritic rating of 82 based on 43 reviews, his highest score since the release of Midnite Vultures in 1999.

With this release, and because we now live in a culture that is obsessed with mining over the past (especially the recent past), there has been a flurry of thinkpieces and longreads about the career of Beck and what this album means, most notably its relation to his somber album Sea Change.  And what better way for a fledgling new publication to distinguish itself than by writing a variation that other more popular outlets have already done?  We won’t be looking at the new album specifically (we’re saving that for its own review), but instead taking a closer look at each of Beck’s previous albums.  Really, it’s the least we could do considering how the entire week before was spent on listening to those albums.  Think of it as an actually decent Consumer Guide, coming from a guy who doesn’t stubbornly insist that In The City was The Jam’s best album.

It would be a fair assumption that the proper place to start with any retrospective is from the beginning, but it’s somewhat of a difficult task with Beck, since he had a few albums before his major label debut Mellow Gold.  These on the whole amounted to glorified demos, and while there are a few gems here and there, I never really have the energy to sit through entire albums of alternative folk songs.  There are a few interesting songs on One Foot In The Grave, and if you get the re-released version, you get the gem of an early version of “It’s All In Your Mind”, which would eventually be used for Sea Change.  Beyond that, I would only recommend the early material if you’re a completist or are really into weirdo-folk, and if that’s the case, all the more power to you.

So it’s probably a good idea to start with Mellow Gold, and to answer the question that those who only know about Beck in passing–is there anything worthwhile on the album besides “Loser”?  Yes!  Even though I would personally rank it on the lower end of the Beck Album Scale, it’s definitely not an album with just one single and then filler through all the rest.  You do get glimpses of the genre-splicing that Beck would become famous for, though the highlights tend to be variations on folk (my shorthand in this case for simple acoustic chords).  “Pay No Mind” and “Blackhole” are great examples of this.  And Beck’s humor in his lyrics are evident throughout the record.  In other words, there was a good reason why you would consistently see “Beercan”, “Soul Suckin Jerk”, and “Fuckin With My Head” in people’s Napster directory.

 

 

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The Danger Mouse File

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With the recent release of the new Broken Bells album After the Disco, this is as good a time as any for people to become even more familiar with the different projects of Danger Mouse.  If you’ve listened to music in the last ten years, you’ve come across several songs produced by Brian Burton, aka Danger Mouse, and more likely than not own at least an album filled with his contributions.

If there is one thing that I can pinpoint as a signature of the Danger Mouse Sound, it’s the idea of the old made new again, or perhaps the retro in a modern context.  This is not done in a showy or bombastic way–at no point in a Danger Mouse song is he calling to the listener’s attention THIS IS AN OLD STYLE/CONCEPT.  There is nothing post-modern about his use of old styles, and certainly no ironic commentary.  He’s not just throwing old records into a blender and spitting out reprocessed old music; you won’t find a dubstep version of a Hollies song, for example.  Though he first got most people’s attention with his Jay-Z/Beatles mash-up The Grey Album, he’s moved well beyond throwing modern beats behind old soul samples. It’s much more subtle, which is why it’s worked so well over multiple iterations. 

There are certain reoccurring elements that can be found in the Danger Mouse sound.  The one that I usually pick up on is a certain bass sound–quick, staccato single notes, and often muted to dampen the sound a bit.  There are also certain idiosyncrasies to his drumming/percussion, namely in his snare sound and his use of the ride cymbal, often matched with a late 50’s/early 60’s rock beat.  And you are also likely to hear certain organ flourishes that give an additional color; it’s usually not a dominant sound, but present enough in the background that it is a significant part of the atmosphere of the song.

Danger Mouse hasn’t just been consistently excellent in the past decade, he’s been quite prolific.  That means there are probably a few albums of his that you haven’t gotten around to listening to, or may not even have known existed.  I mean, I was looking at this list and saw a few albums that I owned that I had no idea he had helped produce.  It could just be confirmation bias speaking, but as I’ve listened to them in writing this article, I keep going, yeah, that definitely has that Danger Mouse sound.

One of those albums is The Good, The Bad & The Queen, which has unfortunately been forgotten about a bit over the years.  It’s the rare super-group album that’s worth listening to (and it definitely is a super-group: Damon Albarn of Blur, Simon Tong of The Verve, legendary drummer Tony Allen, and holy shit Paul Simonon of The Clash).  While each of the component parts are brilliant, they unite to create a singular album that is different than anything else they’ve ever done.

Another overlooked album is the debut of Electric Guest, Mondo.  I’ve heard the single “This Head I Hold” a bit on the local alternative radio station, but it never made much headway nationally.  It very much has the kind of groove found in Danger Mouse’s work with Gnarls Barkley, namely from the bass and from the classic pop-rock drums, just with a different singer.

Speaking of Gnarls Barkley, even though everyone knows their breakout hit “Crazy” and a lot of people picked up their debut album, their follow-up The Odd Couple never caught on like it should.  There was no single track that stood out from the pack like “Crazy” did, but the album was stacked from top-to-bottom with fantastic songs.  “Run”, “Going On”, and “Surprise”  were all incredibly fun tracks filled with energy that should pack the dancefloor.  “Blind Mary”  was a bouncy track that managed the difficult task of being positive yet melancholic.  And then there’s the devastatingly heart-breaking ballad, “Who’s Gonna Save My Soul?”, with it’s absolutely perfect video.

2008 was an absolutely banner year for Danger Mouse, creatively speaking.  He had three of my top ten albums of that year, an honor that means absolutely nothing to most everyone.  In addition to The Odd Couple, there was his work on Beck’s Modern Guilt and The Black Keys’s Attack & Release, albums which I will argue are among the high points of each artist’s careers.  Beck is of course famous for shifting genres with each album, and he slides in smoothly into the Danger Mouse style.  Beck always had a great touch in finding bits and pieces of old styles and repurposing them in modern contexts, so it should have been no surprise that he and Danger Mouse were simpatico.

The Black Keys were a different story.  They had an easily identifiable trademark sound of ragged two-man blues/rock, and it was unclear how another element could fit in without disrupting that aesthetic.  So often the production touches were at the margins or added for just little bits of color–a perfectly timed organ hit here, a little jazz flute there, etc.  It was enough to push the group into new creative directions and eventually into greater commercial success.  While some may grow tired of how The Black Keys have come to dominate rock radio today, I will always appreciate it when great songs like “Little Black Submarines” come on, even if they ruin some of its beauty by knocking out a whole verse and not allowing the song to properly develop (a rant that I will save for a later day).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=735aRmMrTP0

It’s a lot better than being constantly subjected to Nickelback.

But perhaps the most interesting entry in the Danger Mouse discography is the project he did with composer Daniele Luppi, entitled Rome.  It’s basically a soundtrack to a fake spaghetti western, and it’s really quite a blast.  The album does a great job of mixing in instrumentals with more traditional “songs”, featuring Jack White and Norah Jones on vocals.  In the end it fulfills the goal of any project like this: it makes you want to see the movie that would have this soundtrack.

If this has done anything, I hope it makes you at least somewhat excited when news of another Danger Mouse release comes out.  And checking the calendar, you should be feeling that in approximately…three months.  Enjoy.

Sophomore Slump or Underrated Gems? Yuck and Cults

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In recent years I developed a scientific but informal method to determining the best albums of the year.  It’s scientific in its attempt at objectivity (number of plays over the year), but informal in that the order was only for the purpose of guiding friends as to which albums they would get the most bang for their back.  For the year of 2011, this process determined that the self-titled debut of Cults was the fourth-best album of the year, while Yuck’s album (coincidentally enough, also a self-titled debut) took the crown at number one.  Since then, I can honestly say those assessments hold up, since I continue to listen to those albums on a regular basis (in fact, if I re-ranked the list, I’d bump Cults up into the number two slot, close behind Yuck (sorry Girls and The Antlers)).

Is there a reason to pair these bands together, besides future narrative convenience?  In a way, probably.  As has been the case for most rock bands for over a decade now, both of these bands took their major inspirations from the past and offered their own reinterpretations of their favorite old bands.  If you want to be mean, you could say the urge was not to push boundaries and create new genres, but to affirm a love of the old sounds that they had heard before, and hey what do you know, let’s try to do the same things ourselves.  I myself don’t want to be mean, so don’t pin that accusation on me (others, however, have no problem whatsoever with this approach and react in a way that makes you want to ask if there’s anything you can do to console them, because it seems as if somebody in the band ran over their dog (possibly on multiple occasions)).

What distinguished Yuck and Cults from their colleagues was the era of their particular nostalgia.  While several bands trafficked in 80’s revivalism (from post-punk to top-40 sounds) or hearkened back to 70’s arena rock, Yuck and Cults chose different routes: early-90s guitar-rock for Yuck and 60’s-era pop for Cults.  After years of call-backs to Joy Division, Gang of Four, or God forbid, Led Zeppelin, critics at least would have a different set of bands to name-drop in describing each group’s sound (well, Dinosaur Jr. at the very least–that was the one that got the most references from what I’ve read for Yuck; I never saw too many specifics for Cults).  But reminding me of some of my favorite bands only gets you so far; I was more than anything impressed with the execution of each band.

Take “Get Away”, the track that kicks off the Yuck album: the super-fuzzed-out rhythm guitar instantly catches your attention, and then the delicious lead guitar line, both in terms of melody and tone, kicks in through the mix with a circular riff that matches the song’s theme.  But it’s the little moments that add up that make me truly appreciate the song:  the excellent use of feedback as lead parts in the second verse, a post-chorus that truly builds on the chorus and leads perfectly back to the verse, and a bridge where everything drops out but a bassline reminiscent of the Pixies before everyone jumps back in for one last go-around.  It’s early 90’s alternative done with an ear for perfect songcraft, and the only thing that’s infuriating is that the band members are even younger than I am.

For Cults, the comparisons are more general: the sunny nature of Madeline Follin’s vocals and the bright happy melodies do a lot to evoke an air of nostalgia, and bring to mind memories of Phil Spector and old-time girl groups like The Ronettes.  It takes a lot to make this style seem like more than a gimmick, and over the course of an album Cults managed to do this successfully.  There are subtle modern touches that provide enough of a twist to capture your attention, especially with the drum programming, and the seemingly carefree vocals mask lyrics that are more melancholic than expected.  And I have to love a band that’s willing to do not only music videos, but videos that can be best described as “the director decided to get stoned and watch Lost Highway, and oh yeah, let’s make it a bizarre love story too”.

It’s easy then to imagine the excitement I felt when I learned that these two bands would be releasing new albums in 2013.  I was excited to see what new influences the bands were willing to explore, or if they decided to stick with their old formula, that frankly sounded fine as well–it was a win-win as far as I was concerned.  But soon after the announcements of the new albums, bad news followed: Yuck announced that lead singer Daniel Blumberg had left the band (and would record an album as Hebronix), and Brian Oblivion and Madeline Follin had broken up as a couple, but in both cases, new albums were going to be released anyway.  This was just the kind of news that makes a fan more than a bit wary of what could possibly be released, or worry that there would even be a release at all.

Each banded handled the turmoil in different ways: Cults agreed to several interviews detailing the process of making their new album and providing further background of the romantic-but-not-band breakup, and Yuck just started releasing music.  The first single after Blumberg’s departure that Yuck released was “Rebirth”, which is just too on-the-nose to not be something that was planned.  It did signal a new influence for the band, as they seemingly had decided to switch their focus from American alternative-rock to British shoegaze, and it seemed that the band had internalized the latter style as well as they had the former on their debut.  In a normal year, I would have said that “Rebirth” was the best My Bloody Valentine song released that year; since hell froze over and My Bloody Valentine actually released a new album last year, I would revise my statement and say it was the third or fourth-best MBV song of the year.

The Cults approach worked too, because at least with continued engagement with the press indicated that a follow-up was not a tossed-off effort, and that they were committed to continuing the band.  And their choice of a teaser single took the opposite approach of Yuck: from a stylistic perspective, “I Can Hardly Make You Mine” would fit right in at just about any point in the track-listing of Cults, though there were some subtle differences in the instrumentation that pointed to some growth (synths that were higher up in the mix, a more dominant guitar part, and livelier drumming all pointed to exciting possible new directions for the album).

With these songs, optimism began to build up once again, and I gladly purchased Glow and Behold and Static as soon as they were released.  I then went through my usual ritual, ripping the CD and importing the tracks onto my iPod (to be played during the next workout), and then putting the physical discs in my car (to be played on my next drive).  And just as was the case with their debuts, my reaction to each album was that of near-instant love.   Now here we are a few months later and both albums remain in my car as part of the regular rotation, and when I write up my review of the best albums of 2013, both albums should have a place on the list.

But apparently I’m in the minority with this opinion (well, a minority of a minority–we’re talking about indie bands that are somewhat obscure even by indie rock standards).  While Static actually has a similar Metacritic score to Cults, it failed to generate as much press or buzz, and failed to appear on year-end lists at the same rate that I remembered that their debut did.  And there was a huge nosedive in critical appreciation of Glow and Behold as opposed to Yuck.  Another bad sign was the lack of local promotion for either of their shows in Portland, which is pretty amazing considering that the backstories for each album should be a hook for both critics and their subsequent audience.  The articles practically wrote themselves.

At least with some critics, it appeared that some were unwilling to let go of the past.  This is especially evident in AllMusic’s review of Glow and Behold, which can’t seem to accept the fact that the band decided to continue without Blumberg, and subsequently would not sound the exact same.  It may be just that I personally found the increased emphasis on shoegaze to be a more interesting route to take than an attempt to ape Blumberg’s whine, or that I had fonder memories of Teenage Fanclub than others (when Yuck first came out, I remarked that it seemed like they were the one band that learned that Bandwagonesque was SPIN’s album of the year over Nevermind and seemed to agree with the result; the Teenage Fanclub influence was even more pronounced on Glow and Behold, with the album’s more focus on brighter melodies and cleaner guitars).  It was the same case with the more negative reviews of Static, though in a way in reverse: reviews would say how there was little deviation from the first album, when there was an entire two-thirds of the album that had a darker mood and more challenging instrumentation than anything on the debut.

So it’s clear what my answer to the title question is, and for what it’s worth, the few of my friends that care about this sort of thing tend to agree.  I’m fine with enjoying great songs like “We’ve Got It” and “Middle Sea” (a song that would be near the top of my list of best singles of the year) on my own, but I just hope that we won’t end up seeing more great bands like these two get caught up in the downswing of the hype-cycle, despite continuing to produce great music, as we’ve seen plenty of times before.  In other words, when album number three comes out, I’ll be there.