alternative rock

Collapse Into Now

Posted on by Matt

collapse_into_now

Album: Collapse into Now

Artist: R.E.M.

Released: March 7th, 2011

Highlights: Überlin, Oh My Heart, Alligator_Aviator_Autopilot_Antimatter, Blue

Through the first twenty-four years of their amazing run, R.E.M. built a career arch that nearly all bands could be envious of. For starters, they managed to ascend from underground heroes to mainstream darlings without pissing too many people off; in fact, even the idealistic Kurt Cobain would go on to describe the group as saints thanks to how they handled their migration to a major label. Secondly, during all those years, the boys from Athens amassed a large discography of thirteen records while not delivering a single dud. Sure, their albums were far from being unanimous: the band itself was, originally, not too thrilled by “Fables of the Reconstruction”; “Green” was perceived by some to be lackluster, especially compared to what had come before it; “Monster” certainly had its share of detractors; and the trio of “New Adventures in Hi-Fi”, “Up”, and “Reveal” were punctually accused of being too long. Yet, the point was that an agreement in singling out a bad R.E.M. record could never be reached because none of their works stood out negatively.

Then, of course, 2004 came, “Around the Sun” hit store shelves, and humanity finally established a consensus in the debate of whether or not R.E.M. had ever stumbled: the answer was yes, and the evidence was a bland overproduced fifty-five-minute marathon where life and energy were sucked out of the compositions until they mostly became adult-oriented rock. The band felt the blow: guitarist Peter Buck bemoaned the fact they had overworked these songs in the studio and vowed the band would make up for their mistake by going back to their roots. And indeed they would try to do so four years later in “Accelerate”, which was such a massive course-correction that besides ranking, by far, as the band’s heaviest album, it would also be their shortest: clocking in at thirty-five minutes. Nevertheless, as good and fun as it is, “Accelerate” was not a bona fide reunion with the group’s history; it was something possibly more interesting: the breaking into new sonic ground. It would actually take another three years for R.E.M. to truly reconnect with their past, which is what happened in “Collapse into Now”.

There is a very good debate to be had about the value of a band making an album where they actively try to emulate their previous successes. For groups that have always moved forward, like R.E.M. themselves, there is the chance some will accuse them of artistic stagnation or lack of creativity; to those ears, another sonic leap like the one from “Accelerate” would have been more welcome. Contrarily, when one’s past is filled with engaging twists and turns as well as very successful releases, both from an artistic and commercial standpoint, there is certainly an appeal in driving back through previously traveled roads. To boot, in the particular case of “Collapse into Now”, R.E.M. had a very good thematic excuse to regress rather than progress: they were aware this was meant to be their last album; with Michael Stipe even going as far as saying, later, that he found it amusing how nobody seemed to notice he was waving goodbye on the record’s cover. Because of that status, “Collapse into Now” more than earns its right to sound like a victory lap through the past.

It has to be said that “Collapse into Now” frequently takes its underlining theme to such an extreme that parts of it come off as self-plagiarism. “Discoverer” has an anthemic arena-rock vibe seen in the loudest tracks of “New Adventures in Hi-Fi”. “Oh My Heart” thematically and musically nods to the acoustic darkness of “Houston”, from “Accelerate”. “Every Day Is Yours to Win” imitates “Everybody Hurts” in its pep-talk nature and in its gently picked guitar. “Alligator_Aviator_Autopilot_Antimatter” has the glam of “Monster”, even if the song does not carry the tremolo effects that dominated that album. “That Someone Is You” is a bouncy nearly jangling rocker that brings to mind the fastest tunes of the “Reckoning” era. “Me, Marlon Brando, Marlon Brando and I” is a mandolin-led dirge that could have been in either “Out of Time” or “Automatic for the People”. And “Blue” drinks so heavily from the masterful “E-Bow the Letter” that, like that song, it features Patti Smith as a guest vocalist.

All in all, that is more than half of album’s twelve songs showcasing clear connections to previous records or tunes by the band, and some devoted fans are bound to be able to draw enough extra parallels to cover the entirety of the work’s tracklist. Due to that, “Collapse into Now” has unsurprisingly gotten a degree of flak from part of its audience. The bottom line, though, is that aside from giving the group’s final work a heavy emotional component as well as a marvelous thematic perspective, these links to the past lead to the creation of some downright fantastic tunes. As such, make no mistake, “Collapse into Now” is not just good as a farewell or as a record from three men who were past their artistic prime; it is a great piece even when held up against mighty flagpoles of the R.E.M. discography.

Because, yes, “Oh My Heart” is essentially a sequel to “Houston”, but it is nigh impossible not to be enraptured by the apocalyptic winds that emerge from the atmospheric wall it creates with an acoustic guitar and an accordion. “Every Day Is Yours to Win” certainly smells of “Everybody Hurts”; however, not only is it excellent in melody and mood, but it also might sound like a fresher pep talk to ears that are tired of hearing the “Automatic for the People” classic. “Alligator_Aviator_Autopilot_Antimatter” has some “Monster” glam, but that good familiar ingredient is enhanced by one of Peter Buck’s greatest rocking riffs, an electric performance by the band, and the appropriately flamboyant participation of Peaches. “That Someone Is You” has heavy echoes of “Reckoning”, but that is by no means negative: that is the era when R.E.M. made its best bouncy tunes and the track lives up to those heights. “Me, Marlon Brando, Marlon Brando and I” goes back to the mandolin to squeeze a touching reflection on flawed heroes from the instrument. And “Blue” might reuse the formula of “E-Bow the Letter”, but it does so to produce an instant masterpiece that is a brooding blend of spoken-word poetry, pain-laden Patti Smith vocals, ominous keyboards, and slow acoustic strumming.

This eclectic bunch of songs fits together quite well to form a delightfully varied record. Therefore, where “Around the Sun” and “Accelerate” were mostly painted with just one tone, albeit from rather distinct extremes, “Collapse into Now” feels looser, full of life, and more spontaneous. It makes sense; after all, given the members of R.E.M. were good friends who knew this was their last rodeo, it is to be expected that the album would have a celebratory vibe. And it seems these positive spirits translated themselves into wonderful tracks of varying moods, like “It Happened Today”, a simple acoustic tune that culminates in a pleasantly lengthy joyous wordless vocal singalong featuring Eddie Vedder; the rocking and rather catchy “Mine Smell Like Honey”, which like many tunes of the album has the greatness of its melody augmented by stellar backing vocals from Mike Mills; the beautiful and basic “Walk It Back”, a folk ballad built on nothing but an acoustic guitar and a piano; and, of course, “Überlin”, the best song of the record and an alternative rock track that has the R.E.M. signature all over it, stylishly treading the line between hopeful energy and mid-tempo balladry without fully committing to any format.

“Collapse into Now” is not without its problems. The opener “Discoverer” is loud, epic, and sweeping, but its main shouted hook is not as great as it seems to think it is. Moreover, “All the Best” is a run-of-the-mill rocker that pales in comparison to everything else in the album. Finally, a more prominent issue stems from Stipe’s lyrics, which started to decay in “Around the Sun” and that here, with some frequency, try to aim for his once fantastic cryptic and evocative images only to land as awkward, hence slightly deflating the power of some great instrumental and melodic moments that could have been better. Still, this is by all means a brilliant conclusion to a nearly flawless career. And it works both as a celebration of a rich artistic past and as a fantastic rock album by veterans who proved their songwriting and artistic chops time and time again through a little more than three decades.

five

The Car

Posted on by Matt

the_car

Album: The Car

Artist: Arctic Monkeys

Released: October 21st, 2022

Highlights: Jet Skis on the Moat, Body Paint, Big Ideas, Perfect Sense

The Arctic Monkeys were never a band that stood still for too long. Sure, their first two albums were stylistically rather similar, perhaps being the product of blokes that were still too young to move forward, but after that fantastic opening duo their discography started to gain interesting colors. Their third work, “Humbug”, had the English quartet heading down to the California desert to record with Josh Homme, of Queens of the Stone Age fame, and the dark hard rock aura of that band’s work heavily informed the sound of that album. Meanwhile, its follow-up, the saucily titled “Suck It and See”, rang with the chimes of jangle pop and flirted with the psychedelic echoes of the Madchester movement. A few years later, before unleashing record number five upon the world, vocalist, guitarist, and principal songwriter Alex Turner would quip that the only modern music he was interested in listening to at that moment was hip hop, and indicated that the band’s next album would merge the style’s beats with Black Sabbath riffs; the combination did come to fruition, and “AM” was so successful in its formula that it managed to break the Arctic Monkeys into the American market.

Yet, none of the steps in that intriguing journey had prepared the band’s fans for what was to come next. Released in 2018, “Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino” was a shock. Yes, the Arctic Monkeys were no strangers to change, but up until that point they had gone through an arch that felt natural, retaining their core strengths and changing the surrounding ornaments. “Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino”, on the other hand, dared listeners to find remnants of the group within its tunes; and although these could be located here and there, what came through was a different beast altogether. Gone were the fast-talking swagger, the street smartness, the hurricane rhythms, and the pounding guitars. In their place, what one encountered was music that seemed to be made by a band that played in the lounge of a luxurious hotel; more precisely, one situated in the area of the Moon that is known as Tranquility Base. Needless to say, reactions were mixed.

Because of that, even before “The Car” showed up on the horizon, there were abundant discussions on whether the band would continue down the same quirky path or move on to different grounds. According to Alex Turner, the intention was to travel down the latter road, as when he sat down to write new material he did so with the goal of going back to being loud. However, given artistic muses are among the universe’s most fickle creatures, the songs reportedly just did not want to go in that direction. And, before he knew it, Turner was writing more music in the vein of “Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino”. As such, to those who did not like that record, “The Car” brings little hope; it is mostly more of the same and it does not present a jump in quality that is big enough to convince someone that the Arctic Monkeys can pull off that style. Contrarily, to folks who appreciated the band’s turn into odd sci-fi lounge music, “The Car” should rank, at worst, as interesting.

As usual, though, simply labeling the album as more of the same is missing the nuances that make it effectively different. Because, ultimately, that is what “The Car” is: its constitution is, like that of its predecessor, firmly grounded on easy-listening instrumentals, which Alex Turner uses to spin wordy lyrics with nigh free-flowing melodic structures; however, there are elements that make it unique. The first and, some would argue, the most important is the absence of irony. In “Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino”, the Arctic Monkeys were playing lounge music because that was the concept; they were meant to be emulating a fictional band performing at a non-existent hotel so that Turner could go through the science-fiction playbook of talking about the silliness of humanity while using a futuristic scenario. In “The Car”, though, the subtext is gone; there is no wink and no tongue-in-cheek. The Arctic Monkeys are playing easy-listening for the sake of doing it.

On its own, that should not be a bad idea. After all, thankfully, there is not a rule out there dictating good albums should be built on concepts. But to ears that did not get along with “Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino”, that is a major blow, because, once again, many of the tunes Turner brings to the table feel flat. Too often, he meanders through lyrics without hitting on a hook; and frequently, the skillful group makes its way through instrumentals that are pleasant but not sufficiently special to leave a mark. To boot, given how the type of music that is played here naturally puts a strong spotlight on the vocal work, Turner’s voice comes off as not being suited for that task. And although he, like his bandmates, should be commended for trying something distinct, the fact of the matter is that the sum of the parts leaves a lot to be desired: Turner is not as moving of a crooner as he thinks he is, even if he has not lost a step when it comes to writing engaging lyrics; and it feels the Arctic Monkeys are being underused as instrumentalists in this brand of easy-listening music.

Still, all is not lost in “The Car”. For starters, as a whole, the album emerges as a more varied work, a trait that is nicely exemplified by its opening three tunes: “There’d Better Be a Mirrorball” feels like a straight continuation of the previous record, but with the added touch of majestic strings; “I Ain’t Quite Where I Think I Am” is led by a surprisingly funky guitar riff; and “Sculptures of Anything Goes” is dominated by a haunting synthesized landscape that could have come out of an experimental post-punk track. And that goes without mentioning the acoustic flourishes seen in the title track as well as in “Mr Schwartz”; the rocking conclusion in lead single “Body Paint”; or the abundant use of orchestrated arrangements, which are so frequent they make “The Car” as much of a chamber pop work as the albums Alex Turner put out with The Last Shadow Puppets, his side-project.

Sadly, without the hooks to back it up and the irony to make it intriguing, the musical evolution seen in “The Car” falters through most of the way. That does not mean, however, there are no redeeming tracks in the bunch, as just like it happened in “Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino”, there are at least four songs here that qualify as being enjoyable. “Jet Skis on the Moat”, which also flirts with funk in its guitar, has a genuinely beautiful chorus and a recurring hook in its verses; and the same goes for “Body Paint”, which has the added benefit of being the album’s most dynamic tune, including extensive orchestrated work and a coda that pulls out distorted guitars. Besides having a great melodic climax, “Big Ideas” oozes the irony that “The Car” lacks almost everywhere else, as Turner strings together into a meaningful narrative cliched phrases usually said by those who have huge creative projects in mind but that never bring them to fruition. And “Perfect Sense” wraps up the album as a touching string-laden lullaby.

Once more, then, the Arctic Monkeys have put together a work that is bound to be divisive. While “The Car” certainly surpasses “Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino” as far as dynamism is concerned, this is still a band that made their name playing incredible barn-burners suddenly embracing a kind of music that was projected to lie pleasantly in the background. And when one adds the general melodic and instrumental flatness of the work with the loss of the conceptual irony that fueled its predecessor, the result is a package that feels unremarkable despite possessing a few noteworthy moments. As such, even if a band should never be criticized for trying something different, especially when that target is not the fruit of commercial pressure, it is nigh impossible to hold back disappointment when a great group loses itself in the search for artistic renewal; and, to those who did not enjoy “Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino”, “The Car” is confirmation that the Arctic Monkeys are currently adrift.

five

Doggerel

Posted on by Matt

doggerel

Album: Doggerel

Artist: Pixies

Released: September 30th, 2022

Highlights: Nomatterday, Vault of Heaven, Haunted House, There’s a Moon On

With the release of “Doggerel”, the Pixies have officially put out as many albums in their second coming as they had done through their classic original run. Sure, purists may say the band is still one EP away from that threshold, as their debut, the remarkable “Come On Pilgrim”, was a twenty-minute eight-song recording that remains a cornerstone for all indie rock that is produced. Yet, the fact of the matter is that for every full-length work they created as independent heroes who toiled away in relative obscurity, there is now one album they built as veterans who joined forces again under the Pixies flag to bask in the well-deserved notoriety the band had gained since their abrupt breakup in 1993. At first, no fans whatsoever were mad about what seemed, initially, to be a victory lap; after all, everyone could happily agree the group should collect the laurels they did not get back when they were younger. However, when the matter of new material was brought into the equation, the atmosphere soured.

Some, including original bassist Kim Deal, thought the Pixies should not make anything new. Their discography, it was argued, was borderline perfect: a legacy that had to be protected. And given nobody had any hope the band could match their previous output, many thought they should just tour and go home. Others, meanwhile, were eager to listen with an open heart. That discussion, of course, does not matter. The Pixies will do whatever they – or more specifically their creative leader, Black Francis – want; and so, nearly a whopping twenty years after the group reunited, the cogs have continued to turn regardless of what some think. Kim Deal, who is an amazingly talented individual that greatly contributed to the Pixies’ signature sound, jumped ship before the band went into the studio to make “Indie Cindy”, which was their first package of new material in more than two decades. Following her footsteps, a few fans opted to either not pay attention or not put too much effort into trying to embrace the group’s second phase.

It is impossible to know how aware Black Francis is of naysayers or if he cares about that noise, but it is hard not to consider, even if only for a second, that the lines that open “Doggerel” might allude to these people. In “Nomatterday”, as his band opens the way to the album that will make the discography of their revival period as large as the one from the good-old days, the singer states “You know, I know that you don’t really hate me / But I suppose that I probably irritate you”, before asking listeners not to waste their time on him. Yes, he could be addressing a previous lover, a current affair with whom he is having a falling-out, or someone who is bitter towards him. However, besides being too good to be ignored, that possibility adds some swagger and a taste of wicked revenge to what is to come.

Such angry feelings, though, do not materialize all that much in “Doggerel”. Starting from “Indie Cindy”, it was clear that the new incarnation of the Pixies was more interested in melodic softness than their younger selves. Obviously, melody had always been there: Black Francis has proven, in the more than twenty albums he has released as a musical artist, that he knows how to write a catchy vocal line; and one of the many charms of the Pixies was their ability to combine unhinged punk noise, hellish screams, and a dark undercurrent with irresistible pop hooks. But as tunes like “Greens and Blues” and “Ring the Bell” proved, this was a band that now felt comfortable writing more straightforward indie rock. With the follow-ups, “Head Carrier” and “Beneath the Eyrie”, this tendency was accentuated, as melody seemed to be gaining more room in its battle against abrasive noise; and in the context of such struggle, “Doggerel” often feels like the culmination of that process.

It goes without saying that this can be seen as a bad trait. Rightfully, nobody wants to see the Pixies, in all their quirkiness and originality, shift towards the indie rock mean. And some will say “Doggerel” is too close to that line for comfort. Yet, doing so may be missing the subtleties that make the album special, because this is not a record in which the Pixies become boring conventional musicians; this is actually their work that most successfully bridges the gap between their identity and the general independent scene they helped birth. In other words, this feels less like a compromise and more like a middle-ground, one that they had been building towards. Because, yes, “Doggerel” is the mellowest and more melodic work to ever receive the Pixies stamp, producing plenty of moments that stick to one’s ear or reach for an unexpected level of pure beauty. But the musical staples of the group can be heard all over these tracks.

“Nomatterday” and “Dregs of the Wine” dive deep into quiet-and-loud dynamics; “Get Simulated” drinks from “Cactus” as well as “River Euphrates” to squeeze a quirky basic punk tune out of pure friction; and “Vault of Heaven” has a spacious ambiance that seems to have been taken straight from “Bossanova”, with Joey Santiago promptly filling that void with one of his remarkable alien riffs. But it is not just in the framework of the songs that the touch of the Pixies is present; that magic is in the little bricks that build these tunes. David Lovering remains a steady metronome that pulls off some sneaky surprises. Paz Lenchantin delivers a pile of fantastic simple bouncy bass lines that are frequently prominent in the mix, and her sweet backing vocals alternate between being dorky and enhancing the beauty of the softest melodic moments. Joey Santiago creates various marvelous textures and little catchy licks with his unique guitar-playing. And Black Francis often pulls out his acoustic guitar – as he did back in the “Come On Pilgrim” days – to add rhythmic chugging to many of the cuts.

Nevertheless, even if they are indeed still the Pixies, the band employs the fresh terrain on which they landed to build songs that could not really be anywhere else in their discography. “The Lord Has Come Back Today” is a bona fide gorgeous ballad that gains momentum as it goes along. Augmented by keyboards in their marvelous climaxes, “Haunted House”, “There’s a Moon On”, and “Who’s More Sorry Now?” boast arrangements with a fullness that was unknown to the band. And many of the songs, especially those who fall on the angrier and noisier side of the spectrum, run away from the standard verse-chorus structure, with the highlights on that front being “Nomatterday” and “Dregs of the Wine”, which almost feel like multi-phased little operas.

Not everything in “Doggerel” is perfect. As it happened on the previous three albums of the reunion era, the lyrics can feel somewhat awkward, as Black Francis seems to try to channel the weirdness he could summon with so much ease in the past only to fall flat. Additionally, “Get Simulated” lacks the hooks of its peers, “Pagan Man” is the point where the album bumps into conventionality, and “You’re Such a Sadducee” is instrumentally marvelous but melodically dry. Still, as a whole, the record is a thoroughly enjoyable and fun indie rock ride. And instead of getting lost in empty discussions about how it compares to the work of the band’s distant past, its quality should be celebrated for what it is: proof that the Pixies are alive, doing well, touring, collecting the laurels they earned, and respectably maintaining their creative juices flowing to keep on adding to one of the indie rock’s greatest discographies.

five

Cruel Country

Posted on by Matt

cruel_country

Album: Cruel Country

Artist: Wilco

Released: May 27th, 2022

Highlights: I Am My Mother, Bird Without a Tail / Base of My Skull, Tired of Taking It Out on You, Hearts Hard to Find, A Lifetime to Find

Although they arguably reached their artistic peak while operating within the indie and alternative scenes, the country rock label was always attached to Wilco. It made sense. For starters, the band’s frontman, Jeff Tweedy, initially emerged as one of the leaders of alternative country group Uncle Tupelo; therefore, a lot of Wilco’s early work – particularly their first two albums – exhibited traits of the genre, as if their key songwriter was progressively working his way through shedding the skin he had accumulated in the beginning of his career. Meanwhile, down the line, as Wilco grew slightly freakier and notably more experimental, the country qualification remained even if not much of the style could still be clearly identified in the band’s sound; this persistence might be harder to explain, but it can be attributed to numerous reasons: the popularity of Wilco’s early material, the fact none of their alternative generational peers came as close to the acoustic tonality of the genre, and the generally downcast demeanor Tweedy often showed during the group’s indie incarnation.

Yet, even though country was always there in some form or intensity, the bottom line is that Wilco never truly embraced the genre, at least not through the course of an entire album. Their first two records carried way too many radio-friendly electric anthems to qualify, and the works that followed may have had plenty of contemplative acoustic music, but they usually received a rather weird treatment before being committed to tape. That reality, however, changed with “Cruel Country”, because in their twelfth release, the members of Wilco – as stated by none other than Jeff Tweedy – throw themselves into country music without much reservation.

Based on the length of “Cruel Country”, one has to assume that either the band was very enthusiastic about that perspective or Tweedy happened to have a lot of unreleased country songs stashed away in his closet, because the album clocks in at nearly eighty minutes and contains twenty-one tracks. From the start, it is reasonable to see those numbers as problems; after all, rock history has shown repeatedly that long records are only able not to sink under their own weight if they check one of two boxes: variation or message. “London Calling” and “Exile on Main St.”, for instance, thrive because of the former; “Quadrophenia” succeeds due to the latter; and “The Suburbs” showcases both traits. “Cruel Country”, though, does not have these qualities.

In style, the songs merge into one another, since most of them are short acoustic tracks with delicate electric or piano ornaments; and over this instrumentation, Tweedy steadily sings in the sullen whispery mood he has uniformly adopted during the last decade or so. In message, meanwhile, “Cruel Country” does not really have a powerful overarching theme. Before the album’s release, Tweedy spoke of how the record was an examination of the beauty and ugliness that the United States was capable of producing; and country does indeed come off as the appropriate genre for that confrontation because while there is a lot of beauty in it, the style also has an intimate relation to regions of the country where ugly political ideas have the most traction. This interesting contrast, though, does not materialize lyrically to a very notable degree, because even if it is alluded to in the title track as well in a few others, the truth is the tunes that make up “Cruel Country” are mostly concerned with general sadness and relationship trouble.

The combination of these absences could spell disaster for the album, but surprisingly it does not. Surely, there will be listeners who will come away from “Cruel Country” thinking its songs are too similar and that the monotony of its mood mixed with its length turn the work into a nice substitute for sleeping pills. It might not be the fairest assessment, especially since “Cruel Country” is one of those albums that need to be given plenty of time for the music to sink in and the hooks to start emerging from the thick persistent fog; however, it is a reasoning that can be understood: perhaps a little more variety could have helped, maybe a stronger editing process could have made the record’s qualities be more evident, and there is a chance Tweedy could have elevated a few of these tunes by trying not to sound hopeless through an entire track. Nevertheless, the fact remains that “Cruel Country” might be the most enjoyable Wilco album in a long while.

Just like Big Thief had done it in February with their equally countrified and long “Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You”, Wilco prove that sometimes lengthy albums can throw variation and message out the window to succeed via sheer songwriting power. Although they may take time to emerge, mostly because Tweedy does not wrap his voice around them too strongly, the melodies are notable throughout the record, regardless of whether they come to the forefront in choruses of sweeping sadness or in quiet verses whose nice little variations can pass by unnoticed. When it comes to lyrics, even if Tweedy is moving through places and themes that are very recurring to him and his audience, the words tend to not only land well, but also show that indie gloom goes rather nicely with a country tinge.

Moreover, despite not being stylistically varied, “Cruel Country” does a good job stretching its muscles in the tight realm it operates. Cuts with a full-band setup contrast with songs carried solely by Tweedy’s voice and his acoustic strumming. The slide guitar goes from evoking contemplative sadness in some tunes to ushering a borderline happy country fair flavor in others. And Wilco does not miss the chance to throw some of their alternative flair into these mostly rural proceedings. Although these odd turns are overall not very frequent, there are a couple of songs with extended instrumental codas, there are a few tunes that have unexpected variations in structure in spite of their brief nature, and there are tracks where traditional country instrumentation takes a back seat to Wilco’s more sparse ambiance, with drums, punctual guitars, keyboards, and other effects filling up the space.

“Cruel Country” may fail to reach the target Tweedy set for it, because not much in its constitution materializes as a trip through the beauty and ugliness of the rural United States. However, as a journey into country music by a band that had long been associated with the genre while never fully dabbling in it, the album is a success. Obviously, as an indication the group could have dug a little deeper, the material would have benefited from a thematic approach a bit more distant from the Wilco standard or from a higher degree of variation in mood. But it is safe to say most who spend a good amount of time with “Cruel Country” will be happy the band finally embraced their country roots in a nigh unadulterated state. And there is a good chance those fans will appreciate the fact that instead of a normally sized package of forty minutes, Wilco has delivered a whopping eighty minutes of good music.

five

We

Posted on by Matt

we

Album: We

Artist: Arcade Fire

Released: May 6th, 2022

Highlights: Age of Anxiety I, The Lightning I, The Lightning II, We

A certain level of concern in regards to the dangers of modernity has been present in the work of Arcade Fire from day one. In their classic debut, “Funeral”, one of the key tracks – “Rebellion (Lies)” – talked about the hardships of living in a world drowning in mass-produced manipulation. In the follow-up, “Neon Bible”, television was given a dark hypnotic nature in “Black Mirror” and was employed by cynical televangelist in their power-seeking obsession. In “The Suburbs”, contemporary urbanization – with its malls and gated communities – destroyed organic neighborhoods and eroded the joys of youth by creating a generation of children who had their freedom severely limited. In “Reflektor”, among the many themes approached by the band, there was the irony of how, in a society that is more linked than ever, the finding of true connections and the showing of genuine empathy has become so rare. At last, in “Everything Now”, there was a deep dive into the matter of social media, with the songs mostly looking at the effects these networks have in the human brain, including depression, anxiety, insecurity, and attention deficit.

Given “We”, the band’s sixth record, kicks off the proceedings with a two-part track called “Age of Anxiety”, it is very easy to feel Arcade Fire has run out of new topics to sing about and that the group is merely repeating itself at this point. After all, as the song’s title implies, its verses go on to touch on matters that had already been vastly explored by lyricist Win Butler, especially in “Reflektor” and “Everything Now”, as the band’s creative leader talks about rather contemporary mental troubles: brainlessly consuming content just for the sake of it, feeling inferior due to the perfect personal image most people expose on social media, being suffocated by an onslaught of worrying news, and trying to find solace in pills that only make it all worse.

Instead of dwelling on those issues here, though, Arcade Fire uses them as the starting point for a distinct narrative; one that unfolds through ten tracks and, as it is the norm for the band, turns “We” into a conceptually cohesive whole. After emotionally succumbing to the woes of his era, the main character watches as the world itself crumbles, with the album gaining contours of apocalyptic science-fiction when the only way out of the sinking ship that is plant Earth involves an interstellar trip in the search for a new beginning. The ultimate realization of “We”, however, is a bittersweet one, as Win seems to point out that wherever it is that humans might go, our nature and problems will follow, and as he envisions a future where these situations will play out over and over again (perhaps in continuously different shapes), he concludes the best he can do is prepare future generations, his child in particular, to better deal with the inevitable turbulence and be there for them while he can.

Thematic value, though, is far from being the main concern when it comes to “We”, because in that regard – despite a few recent lyrical missteps – Arcade Fire has repeatedly proven they can deliver the goods. The big question mark hovering over the album in the eyes of those who have followed the band is actually centered on the music; to be more blunt, the focus is on whether the group can still produce a work that matches what they did on their first three albums or if the mixed reaction to “Reflektor” and the flood of negativity surrounding “Everything Now” mean that one of the greatest and most influential indie bands is irrevocably creatively finished. The verdict ends up falling somewhere in-between those poles: “We” might not be enough of a resounding success to sweep doubts away for good, but it is certainly a better album than its two predecessors.

If there is one particular aspect in which “We” loses to “Reflektor” and “Everything Now”, that would be musical reinvention. In those two albums, Arcade Fire expanded their craft to incorporate elements of synthpop, electronica, as well as Haitian music (in the case of “Reflektor”) and disco (in the case of “Everything Now”). Perhaps as a conscious reaction to the backlash, in “We” the band abandons that sort of experimentation to fall back on the safety of their early sound. As such, even though it is possible to glimpse remnants of their past stylistic detours, with electronic instrumentation punctually emerging in a few songs, “We” is by all means a return to Arcade Fire’s iconic brand of indie: folk at heart but grand in how it incorporates emotional outbursts and baroque pop orchestration into the formula. Because of that nature, it can be easy to label the album as a retread; and, to an extent, it certainly is. But at the same time, “We” is far from just being a redux version of “Funeral”, “Neon Bible”, and “The Suburbs”.

It is true that the two parts of “The Lightning”, which are the greatest moments of the record, could be put into any of those three albums without coming off as jarring, as the song builds to a bombastic two-minute rushing and pumping coda that is a burst of adrenaline matching that of “Keep the Car Running” from “Neon Bible”. The same logic applies to “Unconditional I”, whose earthly folk base and grandeur carries echoes of heartland rock. But, everywhere else, “We” appears as a far more intimate and electronic album than the band’s classic trio. The pair of tunes that make up the “Age of Anxiety” suite do reach explosive climaxes, but before that they are piano-and-voice ballads underlined by electronic beats. “End of the Empire” eventually uses keyboards and orchestration to swell into grandeur, but most of its four parts – which amount to nearly nine minutes – are spent floating in space via a soothing bed created by those same instruments. Sung by Régine and featuring backing vocals by Peter Gabriel, “Unconditional II” is a synthpop gem cut from the same cloth as “Sprawl II”, from The Suburbs, with bright keyboards adding sugar to what is essentially a very contemplative and wishful tune. Finally, the title track is a quiet closer sitting on nothing but an acoustic guitar and Win’s voice.

Like it happens with the theme, the music makes up for a pretty stylistically consistent listening experience; moreover, clocking in at forty minutes, “We” is a lean record that avoids the pitfalls of length that doomed “Reflektor” and caused “The Suburbs” to be perceived by some as excessively long. The problem with this brief nature, however, is that paired with the long multi-phased nature of the songs, it gives birth to an album with just a few tracks – eight, to be more precise. And when that is the case, any musical misstep ends up representing a considerable chunk of the work. Sadly, in “We” this issue is particularly evident due to how its two longest tunes are also the weakest ones by a solid margin. The almost seven minutes of “Age of Anxiety II” simply do not click: the call-and-response between Win and Régine, which was clearly intended as a hook, is closer to annoying than to engaging; additionally, its dancing electronic coda, which is basically half the song, is not a very interesting climax. Meanwhile, the four parts of “End of the Empire”, which essentially constitute one nine-minute track, are not dynamic enough to justify their length, lack a good melody, and are ultimately undone by Win’s poor lyrics, which evidently falter here despite being very good through most of the record.

As a musical middle ground between their three stellar early albums and their two usually maligned follow-ups, “We” may smell of compromise and retread, but a closer analysis ought to reveal a work that is relatively strong. Its sci-fi thematic aspirations are nicely realized in a concise fashion and are a very respectable nod to the Yevgeny Zamyatin book of the same name. Simultaneously, its music has a solid mixture of classic bursts from Arcade Fire’s past, which are the album’s best moments, with new good musical findings that are a direct result of the more balanced approach between indie and electronica. Consequently, even if it may not convert the non-believers or fail to rescue fans that moved on after its two predecessors, “We” is likely to be warmly embraced by many as proof that Arcade Fire still has something to say.

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Fear Of The Dawn

Posted on by Matt

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Album: Fear of the Dawn

Artist: Jack White

Released: April 8th, 2022

Highlights: Taking Me Back, Hi-De-Ho, Esophobia, That Was Then This Is Now

Be it as the creative leader of The White Stripes or in the first two records of his solo career, Jack White displayed clear reverence for the traditional genres that gave birth to rock, with blues usually coming off as his greatest source of inspiration. It is true that, in a stylistic sense, what Jack did alongside Meg was rather different from the work he put out on his own: with her, he banged out garage tunes that echoed the utmost simplicity of blues; whilst alone, his tone was more subdued, polished, and sometimes intimate. Nevertheless, in both cases, his music, though sprinkled with quirky flights, remained anchored on tradition and it is safe to say most of his fanbase would be thoroughly satisfied if Jack opted to build a lengthy career out of those flavors. But then 2018 came around and his third solo effort, “Boarding House Reach”, was unleashed upon the world, proving that Jack White is a pretty restless individual.

Obviously, one could already have made that deduction by looking at his numerous side-projects or reading between the lines of the last two The White Stripes albums, but “Boarding House Reach” made that reality more blatant than ever because it burst through the boundaries of the genres Jack tended to explore. In essence, it was a rock record, but that label only truly stuck occasionally, because Jack seemed far more concerned with stretching himself towards avant-garde territory via electronic layers, strange production touches, and a songwriting approach that skewed his usual tendency towards pop hooks. In a way, it seemed that sensing rock music was no longer mainstream, Jack concluded that the time was ripe for it to be pushed to odd places; after all, since only the aficionados are still tuning in, one might as well take them for a wilder ride.

Because of the drastic artistic break that “Boarding House Reach” represented, “Fear of the Dawn” arrives alongside some degree of doubt, as one naturally wonders if that album was just a brief strange detour or if White is entirely committed to cementing himself as the king of rock and roll weirdness. As it turns out, the answer lies somewhere in the middle of that spectrum, because even though “Fear of the Dawn” shows no interest in reuniting the singer-songwriter with what used to be his style of composition, it does bring the music back to a firmer garage-rock format. In other words, the songs in “Fear of the Dawn” are still positively weird and initially unwelcoming, but most – if not all – of them could be executed in their entirety by a band armed with nothing but guitars, bass, drums, and a microphone; something that did not apply to “Boarding House Reach”.

This partial reconnection with musical past is made evident by how numerous of the tunes here could conceivably be done by The White Stripes themselves. While all of Jack’s previous solo works had at least one or two tracks with such a characteristic, in “Fear of the Dawn” this feature applies to nearly the entire album, as the majority of the tracks expose a very simple recipe: pounding riffs, guitars that are played at distortion levels that bring them within an inch of utter destruction, performances that are utterly savage in their rawness, and unexpected instrumental left turns where Jack goes atomic as he allows himself to be overcome by primal instincts only channeled by those who are very much into what they are doing.

One could point out that such list of ingredients is not too different from what The White Stripes brought to the table, which could make “Fear of the Dawn” a retread, and that argument is absolutely correct. However, a couple of components contribute to making the album radically distinct from what came before it, and the first is songwriting. With his former beloved band, Jack – whether intentionally or not – wrote for the masses, letting loose plenty of pop hooks that made the duo’s inherent wildness and oddity more universally palatable. In “Fear of the Dawn”, as it was the case in “Boarding House Reach”, Jack is writing for the converted (or perhaps for himself), which makes the record a work that is not concerned with delivering melodic sugar, focusing instead on the freewheeling energy that exists within the utter abandon of garage rock. Here, Jack is not trying to charm anyone into listening; contrarily, he is actually daring his audience to keep watching as he goes completely ballistic.

The second element, and possibly the most important one, that adds character to “Fear of the Dawn” is the sheer breadth of the sounds Jack is able to extract out of his guitar. In fact, it is this particular facet that is responsible for building a stylistic link between “Fear of the Dawn” and its predecessor. It feels like even if he loved all strange noises contained in “Boarding House Reach”, Jack was somewhat miffed he reached for them without using his signature instrument; consequently, this time around he enacts revenge upon the world by causing the guitar to emit a variety of textures that the average musician would extract out keyboards, synthesizers, or other electronic devices. Because of that, it would be no exaggeration to claim “Fear of the Dawn” finds a way to break into new territory for the guitar right in the middle of an era where there are rumors the once world-dominating instrument is done for good.

Given there is a prevalence of garage rock tunes that bring The White Stripes to mind, it goes without saying that the weird sounds of Jack’s guitar are mostly used in that context, creating – therefore – nastier and experimental takes on that music, which wisely employ that artistic freedom to boast rarely witnessed song structures and a good amount of instrumental freak-outs. However, in another detail that ties it to “Boarding House Reach”, “Fear of the Dawn” displays some eclecticism, opening the way for moments when the guitar is deployed to create hip-hop grooves, little flourishes that recall electronic beats, and other touches that sometimes are used in standalone songs but that occasionally also add unique flavor to cuts grounded on garage rock.

Because of its frantic experimental soul and the shunning of traditional hooks, “Fear of the Dawn” can get a bit lost on its carefree spirit, and during moments like those a few tracks can land on the ears like they are heavy, loud, and weird just for the sake of being so, exhibiting therefore a lack of purpose. Nevertheless, the thrill of listening to it will remain intact through most of the way to those who have love for noisy guitar-playing. And besides being the heaviest album Jack has ever put out, be it alone or as part of a band, it is also – up to its release – the most genuinely interesting record of his solo adventure, as it balances his newly found wish to take rock music to new grounds with what he does best as an instrumentalist: extracting a tuneful and refreshing racket out of electric guitars.

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Unlimited Love

Posted on by Matt

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Album: Unlimited Love

Artist: Red Hot Chili Peppers

Released: April 1st, 2022

Highlights: Black Summer, Not the One, It’s Only Natural, White Braids & Pillow Chair

For such a long-running band, the Red Hot Chili Peppers have always displayed a very good level of stability in their lineup. Vocalist Anthony Kiedis and bassist Flea have been in for the ride from the very start. Meanwhile, drummer Chad Smith may have missed the group’s first three records, but he has since then become as essential to the band as the other two veterans. It is in the position of guitarist that it all gets shakier, because – as of 2022 – the Californian quartet has gone through a whopping eight guitar players, with five of them holding on to the spot for long enough to be there during the recording of albums. Despite such a slew of options, when asking any Red Hot Chili Peppers fan to say who is the definitive owner of that position, the answer is bound to be the same; even if some may utter appreciation for Hillel Slovak, one of the band’s founders and a young talent who was lost to heroin in 1988, the name of John Frusciante will get most, if not all, mentions.

Such dominance is, of course, not accidental. It was with John as their guitar player that the band began to mature in “Mother’s Milk”; it was in his presence that they recorded their breakthrough and most critically acclaimed album, “Blood Sugar Sex Magik”; and it was thanks to his fantastic creative input that the Red Hot Chili Peppers produced – in the run of “Californication”, “By the Way”, and “Stadium Arcadium” – a string of high-quality commercial successes that made them one of the biggest rock acts in the world. After leaving the group and staying away for a whole decade, during which the Red Hot Chili Peppers released two records and toured extensively with newcomer Josh Klinghoffer, “Unlimited Love” marks the return of Frusciante to the lineup; and given his history with the band, it goes without saying that their 2022 work arrived with high expectations attached to it.

Reportedly, during the sessions for “Unlimited Love”, a total of about fifty songs were recorded, in spite of how Frusciante himself had expressed self-doubt regarding his ability to compose straight rock tunes following ten years experimenting away from the genre. It is a number that could be credited to an outpouring of creativity stemming from the reunion of artistic soulmates, but the fact is that – at least with Frusciante – the quantity is not so absurd and could actually be considered par for the course to the band: the sessions for “Californication” as well as “By the Way” produced similar numbers, and those of “Stadium Arcadium” yielded an album with twenty-eight songs. Maintaining those traditions, “Unlimited Love” is a mammoth of seventeen tracks and seventy-three minutes.

Again, it is an extensive collection whose length could come off as exaggerated to most groups but that, for the Red Hot Chili Peppers, is standard operating procedure. The difference is that, this time around, the final product blatantly suffers because of that. Sure, some may argue “Californication” and “By the Way” were also excessively long; and an even larger portion of fans and listeners likely remember the two hours of “Stadium Arcadium” as bloated. But during “Unlimited Love” that problem is more apparent and undeniable than ever, which leads one’s mind to wander in search of explanations for why that is the case. And, as it turns out, those are pretty easy to find.

For starters, “Unlimited Love” simply lacks the variety of colors and flavors present in “Californication” and “By the Way”. Mostly, it consists of mid-tempo funky grooves of a very relaxing nature, with Flea showcasing outstanding creativity in outside-the-box basslines while Chad anchors the rhythm with class and Frusciante settles on guitar scratches. With a few exceptions, like in the great lead single of “Black Summer”, there is little of the psychedelic flourishes, layered instrumentation, and seeping choruses of the band’s turn-of-the-century pair of “Californication” and “By the Way”, as they go for – instead – the stripped-down garage setting that dominated “Stadium Arcadium”. It had the potential of being a successful recipe, as “Unlimited Love” could have emerged like a leaner version of that generally good 2006 release. But the album fails to get there due to its second prominent issue: a notable lack of remarkable inspiration.

“Stadium Arcadium” was certainly long, but it had numerous particularly notable centerpieces that drove the album to the stratosphere and kept its audience engaged. “Unlimited Love”, contrarily, lacks these revelatory points. Be it in the funky cuts that dominate it or in the pieces of calm balladry that punctuate it, listeners will know what to expect and they will get it every single time. Anthony will either rap or intimately sing during the verses only to kick into catchy bursts when the choruses come around, showing he still has the voice and the melodic knack to deliver moments that have the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ signature all over them. This is not inherently bad, as there is value in nailing a formula repeatedly. The problem with “Unlimited Love” is that most of these instances feel manufactured or mundane, because the inspiration to generate awe with some regularity does not seem to be there and the overall basic production makes the issue even clearer since it rarely works towards elevating the songs from their original raw state.

Aligned with the dominating quiet tone of the album, the absence of this spark contributes to the final problem that plagues “Unlimited Love”: the lyrics Kiedis has come up with. Gibberish has always been his style, but when that nonsense is accompanied by inspired melodies, frequent and great psychedelic touches, or frantic rhythm, the wackiness becomes more digestible and perhaps even evocative. When they are backed up by subdued instrumentation, though, they take a central position that makes their weaknesses more apparent. Aggravating matters is the fact that the quality of the gibberish has simply diminished; in other words, there is an abundance of downright embarrassing phrases, which are sometimes bad enough to take the power away from tunes that would otherwise be great, like “These Are the Ways”, in which a fiercely rocking chorus loses might due to what is sung in it. And this lyrical problem is so apparent that even Anthony indirectly admitted to it, saying the words in “Unlimited Love” did not go through any sort of quality control because he had trouble creating lyrics to all tunes the band produced during the sessions.

“Unlimited Love” is not a disaster. “Black Summer” is an immediate classic. “The Great Apes”, “Bastards of Light”, “White Braids & Pillow Chair”, and a few others feature creative guitar work by Frusciante. “The Heavy Wing” is a successful rocker. Closer “Tangelo”, the sole acoustic track of the package, is simple yet moving. At last, despite being predictable, most of the album’s ballads (with “Not the One” and “It’s Only Natural” being the highlights of the bunch) are perfectly fine because Anthony’s gibberish does not rear its head so much when it comes to love songs. Yet, as the return of John Frusciante, the overall result is very disappointing and the album could have been improved in several ways: its lyrics could have been polished, its size could have been cut, or – among the nearly fifty tunes created during its sessions – the band could have selected a more varied tracklist. After all, given what they have created alongside John in the past, it is hard to believe their reunion yielded so much bland midtempo funk and so little of everything else.

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Icky Thump

Posted on by Matt

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Album: Icky Thump

Artist: The White Stripes

Released: June 19th, 2007

Highlights: Icky Thump, You Don’t Know What Love Is, 300 M.P.H. Torrential Outpour Blues, Rag and Bone

Although creativity is often associated with absolute freedom of expression and the power to explore a boundless artistic expanse, there are times when establishing apparently suffocating constraints on the whole creative process can lead artists to impressive breakthroughs, as they are forced to work with a limited set of tools. For example, take the case of Jack and Meg, of The White Stripes. Setting out from Detroit in 1997, the pair wanted to play blues rock as a way to pay homage to the black musicians deeply admired by guitarist and vocalist Jack White. Although the style was far from being in vogue during that decade, the proposition by itself was not exactly original as by that point rock history had registered plenty of instances when white suburban kids from the United States or from across the Atlantic modernized blues so effectively that they made a fortune out of the venture. Jack and Meg, however, had a slightly different plan, as they opted to tackle that style with nothing but a guitar and drums.

To say that the approach worked would be an understatement: that limited setup made the duo birth a type of blues rock that was punk in its raw delivery, visceral in its no-frills presentation, and accessible thanks to Jack’s ability to write snappy pop melodies to go along with the raucous noise. Moreover, with the recording of four excellent albums in which the band progressively matured that sound whilst sticking to the same radical constraints, they were able to become critical darlings and a considerable commercial force. And it was not until their fifth record, “Get Behind Me Satan”, when Jack and Meg gave themselves the chance to move out of their guitar-and-drums configuration to go for a type of music that while still rooted in traditional American sounds and exhibiting garage ethos, allowed itself to get a bit weirder and stylistically varied.

“Icky Thump”, which closes The White Stripes’ discography and follows the unexpected sounds of “Get Behind Me Satan”, can – especially in the wake of its predecessor – be considered a return to the group’s roots after a short one-album detour. Where “Get Behind Me Satan” had a bunch of piano-centered tracks, not to mention the somewhat sinister marimba-led trip of “The Nurse” as well as the mandolin-based ditty of “Little Ghost”, “Icky Thump” mostly rids itself of stylistic oddities and posits that Jack and Meg still had something of value to extract out of a guitar and a drum-kit. Given the strictness of the setup and the fact that by that point they had already created nearly four hours of good music using it, one would not be considered crazy for betting against the band’s success in that endeavor. “Icky Thump”, though, beats the odds and shows The White Stripes could still break into new ground with their rudimentary approach.

Although labeling “Icky Thump” as a back-to-basics work is not incorrect, the version of The White Stripes seen here is not the same one that had appeared on the 2003 masterpiece “Elephant”. If that were the case, the “Get Behind Me Satan” journey would not have taught Jack and Meg anything worthy; worse yet, because of that, “Icky Thump” would have merely come off as a step back, something that is not very interesting from an artistic standpoint. Thankfully, none of those statements are true, and the reason “Icky Thump” is a meaningful trip to a not-so-distant past, rather than a dull retread, is exactly due to how, here, The White Stripes emerge once more like a garage blues rock duo, but – this time around – they are a band that is not afraid to add some layers and complexity to their primeval racket.

Examples that reveal such characteristic abound throughout “Icky Thump”, but three of its first four songs send that message with a particular clarity. The opening title track is based on a threatening pounding and culminates on an iconic riff that works as a wordless chorus; it is a formula that is not too distant from the one used on the classic “Seven Nation Army”, but the tune has various unpredictable instrumental breaks, including one where Jack improvises on a keyboard, that lend the song a quirky epic structure that suits the strange tale it tells. Clocking in at an unprecedented, for the group, five minutes and a half, “300 M.P.H. Torrential Outpour Blues” is equally filled with brief instrumental breaks, but most of its uniqueness comes from the fact it pulls a new trick in The White Stripes’ catalog, featuring bluesy acoustic verses that are interrupted by guitar freak-outs that make it seem the band is in the middle of the titular storm. Finally, the much briefer “Conquest”, which cleverly compares romantic pursuit to bullfighting, materializes its theme in music by bringing in a Spanish-flavored horn section.

If stripped to their essence, none of these compositions would have felt out of place in a record like “White Blood Cells”, as they display dirty straightforward playing laced with quirky jabs. As such, what fans get out of “Icky Thump” still has a blatant The White Stripes signature all over it. However, the elements that ornate these tracks and their wilder structures could have only been made by the group that went through “Get Behind Me Satan”, as here the duo often disrespects their unwritten guitar-and-drums rule and threatens to sound like an actual full band. And this attitude is nearly omnipresent in “Icky Thump”. It appears in the keyboards that soften “You Don’t Know What Love Is” to the point it becomes the track in the entirety of the band’s discography that comes the closest to being a bona fide – and excellently written – pop rock song. It can be seen in the mandolins and pipes that deliver a Scottish folk flavor to “Prickly Thorn, but Sweetly Worn”. And it is vivid in the pair of “I’m Slowly Turning into You” and “A Martyr for My Love for You”, respectively a bitter attack and a ballad, which have their drama accentuated via keyboards.

Of course, being a The White Stripes’ work, “Icky Thump” inevitably embraces the band’s traditions and boasts a light-hearted (and absolutely brilliant) acoustic closer, “Effect and Cause”, as well as a handful of tunes where Jack and Meg – in full attack mode – are left alone with their signature instruments; and out of that bunch, a couple of career highlights emerge in the utterly menacing “Little Cream Soda” and in the theatrical “Rag and Bone”, where the duo exchanges words in the role of junk dealers who try to convince listeners to give them their stuff while rocking proud and loudly. However, even in those more orthodox instances, the band still sounds fuller – albeit thankfully not overproduced to dullness – and the tunes come off as more full-fledged than usual.

“Icky Thump” may not be a peak for The White Stripes, as differently from the band’s trio of best records, the album has a few minor issues: “Prickly Thorn, but Sweetly Worn” and “I’m Slowly Turning into You”, which are instrumentally solid, can verge on annoying due to how Jack sings them on an uncomfortable high pitch; “St. Andrew (This Battle Is in the Air)” is an experiment that could have been cut; at last, the rocking “Bone Broke” and “Catch Hell Blues” are good but lack a defining trait. Yet, it is truly hard to find a band that waved goodbye to the world as stylishly as The White Stripes did in “Icky Thump”; and more impressive than that is how the record goes back to basics while proving the pair still had plenty to say within that limited style, showing that the guitar-and-drums constraint the pair imposed on themselves early on worked greatly to their benefit until the very end.

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The Mollusk

Posted on by Matt

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Album: The Mollusk

Artist: Ween

Released: June 24th, 1997

Highlights: Mutilated Lips, The Blarney Stone, Buckingham Green, Ocean Man

Whenever an outrageously idiosyncratic band signs a deal with a major label, there is always – understandably – some concern among fans that the pressures that come with a contract of the kind will harm creativity freedom. Take the case of Ween, for example. Before signing up with Elektra Records in the early 90s, the duo formed by Aaron Freeman and Mickey Melchiondo had spent over five years working independently and cultivating quite a reputation with amateurishly recorded lo-fi tracks that jumped between countless genres and boasted lyrics drowning in juvenile jokes. Out of that phase, the pair was able to squeeze not only a vast collection of cassette tapes but also two full-length releases – “GodWeenSatan: The Oneness” and “The Pod” – that together carried more than two hours of material that was absurdly noisy, highly experimental, unbelievably eclectic, positively crude in humor, and occasionally quite catchy to boot. Yet, as unlikely as it may be, and probably because of that last characteristic, by 1992 Freeman and Melchiondo were dragged into the bowels of the music business.

Their first two albums as part of the ruling system, though, showcased Freeman and Melchiondo had opted to be a nuisance from within rather than a cog in the machine, since “Pure Guava” as well as “Chocolate and Cheese” were – like their predecessors – works so big they felt unedited, so varied they could come off as unfocused, so abrasive they were bound to please only established fans, and so thematically ridiculous an unaware listener would probably conclude the lyrics were written by high school students. As such, at least during that period, Ween fans could safely sleep in the knowledge that the wackiness of their favorite music maniacs had not been tamed by the powers that be; and it is precisely at that point that “The Mollusk” comes in.

Released in 1997, “The Mollusk” sees Ween putting together, for the first time ever, a work that falls into the definition of what the boring general public perceives as an album. Obviously, that does not mean its predecessors were not proper records; they were, when it is all said and done, sequences of songs published under a name and with beautiful cover art. But thanks to their length, variety, and noise, they were more likely to be seen by most human ears as wild experiments in madness to see what sticks to the wall than as calculated efforts that are intended to deliver some sort of message. “The Mollusk”, on the other hand, is notably well-behaved: it clocks in at only slightly over forty minutes, it is almost devoid of lo-fi aesthetic, and – more shocking than everything else – a good look at what is sung in it reveals it might even have a degree of thematic cohesion. In other words, “The Mollusk” is Ween sitting down and making a normal album.

It is possible to say that before “The Mollusk” Freeman and Melchiondo had already done something of the sort. After all, one year earlier, the pair had gone down to Nashville, gathered a bunch of experienced musicians, and released “12 Golden Country Greats”: a concise trip through all corners of the titular genre that does not leave the duo’s signature humor out of the equation. However, given that project’s focus on a singular style, the Ween stamp it carries is a bit faded, as if it were a little detour on the journey rather than an actual stop. “The Mollusk”, on the contrary, has the band’s fingertips all over it because despite its cleaner production and controlled size, it is a wild journey through a kaleidoscope of genres, which is what one expects out of Ween.

Truthfully, when compared to works like “The Pod” and “Pure Guava”, the genre exploration conducted by “The Mollusk” is not so significant. For starters, the record does not have enough room to be so wild since it only has fourteen songs whereas its older brothers either approach or break the twenty-track threshold. Secondly, as revealed by its title and cover, “The Mollusk” has a notable lean towards maritime music and sounds that nod to the ocean, which narrows its boundaries considerably. Yet, inside them, the record has quite a ball, going through an old-timey vaudevillian ditty (“I’m Dancing in the Show Tonight”), a drunken pirate song akin to Tom Waits’ carnival period (“The Blarney Stone”), a slice of medieval balladry (“Cold Blows the Wind”), an art pop exercise on imitating Peter Gabriel (“Buckingham Green”), and an irresistible gem that either single-handedly inaugurates the underwater folk genre or at least marks its peak (“Ocean Man”).

The king of the proceedings, though, is undoubtedly psychedelic pop. It is hard to pinpoint exactly why Ween decided to go so strongly in that direction, but the fact is that the genre benefits the record in at least three visible ways. The first is that it opens the door to a myriad of sonic oddities that lend “The Mollusk” the necessary quirkiness that fans want from Ween; the best example of that result is in the hilarious effects thrown into the vocals of “Mutilated Lips”, which is a fantastic and trippy pop song. The second is that it equally unlocks production trickery that helps the album attain its aquatic soundscape, like the keyboards that imitate woodwinds in the title track, the unsteady wave-like rhythms of “Polka Dot Tail”, and the lush ambiance on the obscenely silky-smooth pop of “It’s Gonna Be (Alright)”. Finally, betting on a genre that is – at its best – cleverly melodic and technically skillful plays right into the hands of the band’s greatest abilities.

Although humor and eclecticism tend to be the terms most closely associated with Ween, they had always been a group that thrived on melody and on technical prowess, especially the one exhibited by Melchiondo with a guitar in his hands. Nevertheless, in most of the material that preceded “The Mollusk”, songs in which these two variables met were not so easily found because one had to sift through a good deal of wildness to locate cuts that went for one without leaving the other behind. In “The Mollusk”, however, the balance between technical goodness and melodic excellence is the norm, and guided by the light of catchy and musically rich psychedelic pop, Ween delivers an absolute barrage of great tracks that are memorable from a singalong standpoint as well as from an instrumental perspective; the solo in “Buckingham Green”, for example, should be mentioned in any list that attempts to rank epic guitar moments.

Of course, this being a Ween album, there are still a few moments when Freeman and Melchiondo go a bit too far into the joke and hit bum notes: opener “I’m Dancing in the Show Tonight” lacks creative spark, “I’ll Be Your Jonny on the Spot” nods to their noisy lo-fi origins without leaving much of a mark, and instrumental “Pink Eye (On My Leg)” is a bit dull. However, by any standards, “The Mollusk” is a major musical victory. It proved Ween could find a balance between their impetus for wild experimentation and the focus usually required to produce a solid album, and it manages to hit that target perfectly without relinquishing any type of audience they may have. Fans will still find humor, eclecticism, and eccentricity; while outsiders will encounter a tuneful work filled with catchy and fun tracks. As it is the pattern for Ween, “The Mollusk” is dubious enough to leave one guessing whether the duo is tackling these genres out of love or out of mockery; what is not questionable, however, is the caliber of its songwriting genius and the joy that can be found in this pleasantly watery collection of tunes.

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Painful

Posted on by Matt

painful

Album: Painful

Artist: Yo La Tengo

Released: October 5th, 1993

Highlights: Big Day Coming, Double Dare, Nowhere Near, A Worrying Thing

Saying that, by 1993, Yo La Tengo had yet to release anything of significance would be a rather misguided statement. Up to that point, the New Jersey indie rockers had put out a wide assortment of marvelous tunes that embraced quite a few styles: there was the unsung jangle pop anthem “The Cone of Silence”; the surprisingly introspective union of gentle electric strums and relentless noise heard in “Barnaby, Hardly Working”; the immaculate folk harmonies of the gorgeous “Alyda”; the half country-like instrumental and half loud shoegaze lethargy that made up “Detouring America With Horns”; the pop rock bliss of “Upside-Down”; the blistering guitar fury of the nine-minute “Mushroom Cloud of Hiss”; and countless others. Nevertheless, despite all that excellence, Yo La Tengo certainly did not feel like a fully-formed group.

The reason for that was simple: almost a decade and five albums into their career, the band did not have a defining full-length release. There were cases when still budding songwriting abilities produced records that were part greatness and part filler, with the debut “Ride the Tiger” being the most blatant example of that problem; there were moments when musical concepts were not thoroughly developed to the point of yielding works that felt complete; there was an album of decent country covers; and there was plenty of stylistic soul-searching, since Yo La Tengo was such a weird confluence of varied musical inspirations that sometimes one could tell the band had trouble either sticking to one road or finding a middle ground between their influences that the trio could claim as its own.

Then came 1993 and, with it, the release of “Painful”. In a way, it was a continuation of the evolution that had been displayed by its predecessor, “May I Sing With Me”, which had showcased Yo La Tengo was at last ready to bring their music to full maturity in a work that felt complete. However, “Painful” had not only a greater degree of musical cohesiveness, but also a firmer grasp on songwriting goodness and a mightier dose of the key element that had been eluding the band for so long: focus. And with those tools in hand, Yo La Tengo succeeded in delivering their first truly essential album; the one in which they proved the genre-hopping of their past had given way to a very defined identity.

The fact “Painful” has focus and stylistic consistency does not mean, however, Yo La Tengo abandoned their adventurous eclecticism before heading into the studio; if they had done so, they would have also lost a major part of their personality. Consequently, this is an album that has crispy guitar jangle, touching folk picking, country harmonization, furious noise that flirts with the wilder moments of The Velvet Underground, hazy introspection that borders on dream pop, and guitar walls that nod to shoegaze. These are ingredients so disjointed that it is hard to conceive how a band could pull them into a unified whole; it would be much easier, in fact, to see them coming together to form a sprawling delightful mess that could rate as the “Exile on Main St.” of the 1990s. But, quite contrarily, Yo La Tengo fuses these pieces into forty-eight minutes that feel more like an alternative rock suite than a collection of disconnected ideas.

What “Painful” ultimately proves is that Yo La Tengo is a band that follows no rules. They can write and execute small tracks that feel like interludes, regularly sized songs, or more sprawling tunes whose length would be daunting to average listeners. Although somebody who is used to the more adventurous corners of rock music would expect the big cuts to be the ones where the band goes wild in their noisy trips while the shorter tunes remain the most accessible, that is simply not the case, because Yo La Tengo is a band that is constantly pushing against one or more predefined standards, and settling into any of those patterns would be giving up that attitude almost completely. And so, through the entirety of “Painful”, the band is seen succeeding in subverting concepts and forging their unmistakable brand of indie rock.

On the shorter side and qualifying as the two tracks of the album that most clearly display the shoegaze influences of Yo La Tengo, “From a Motel 6” and “Double Dare” turn tall screaming guitar riffs into their choruses and main hooks, making those loud moments nicely contrast with the soothing vocals of their verses. Almost equally concise, clocking in at slightly less than five minutes, “Sudden Organ” is another excellent racket, but one built on a distinctive and nigh tribal drum pattern, a nasty guitar that delivers a notable low hum, and – as the title implies – an organ so wild that comparisons to The Velvet Underground’s “Sister Ray” are not absurd. At the same time, though, the band also uses brevity to put out a trio of calmer tunes: the mesmerizing interlude of “Superstar-Watcher”; the whispered and only suggested beautiful melody that hides in “A Worrying Thing”; and the breathtaking “The Whole of the Law”, which transforms the original by power pop band The Only Ones from a drunk country tune into a song where a gently strummed guitar and punctual percussive touches are all that accompany Ira Kaplan and Georgia Hubley as they stunningly harmonize.

When it comes to the lengthier numbers, “Painful” confirms an ability that had already been insinuated by the band’s previous releases: their knack for excellently extending tunes that would normally have no business being so long. Opener “Big Day Coming” boils down to an organ and background guitar feedback that stay steady whilst Kaplan slowly delivers a trio of stanzas; it is simple, but the beauty it generates is so grand its seven minutes breeze by. “Nowhere Near” is similarly stripped down, with the key difference that it eventually disintegrates into noise during its second half; yet, its six minutes could loop forever that nobody would wish for the end of the dream-like state produced by the instrumentation and Georgia’s gentle vocals. “I Was the Fool Beside You for Too Long” has Kaplan repeating the title for nearly a whole five minutes, but behind him such a mass of noise that could escape at any moment builds so intensely one cannot help being anything but gripped. And closer “I Heard You Looking” is a seven-minute instrumental centering on a riff any guitar amateur could pull off, but the way the band dynamically sustains it for so long is sheer talent and magic.

What is most impressive about “Painful” is that even though it is invariably pushing boundaries to form its own take on alternative rock, the record never puts a wrong foot forward. Although some of its song lengths might indicate that is the case, the wild adventurous spirit of Yo La Tengo never goes too far here. “Painful” is far from being an accessible album that can please anyone with a love for alternative rock of the early 1990s because be it melodically or instrumentally, Kaplan, Hubley, and McNew are always throwing curveballs that can be slightly hard to swallow for some even if they happen to appreciate some of the band’s folk and country influences, which can still be heard to a point. Yet, the truth is there is not a single tune in its tracklist that fails to deliver some sort of musical gem, be it an irresistible strum, a gripping instrumental passage, a moving melody, or all of those items combined. And with so much to offer, it is no wonder this first instance of greatness by these indie legends rightfully stands among their best works.

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