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RS 488 – New Day Rising by Husker Du (1985 – review featuring NQ)

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Husker Du’s 1985 post-punk classic New Day Rising popped up at #488 in the Rolling Stone 500.  One of the major influences for bands like Nirvana, Husker Du brought a combination of the punk of their youth with some more pop sensibility – and the result is noisy, yes – but also deft songwriting.  Indeed Bob Mould, the Du’s frontman and main songwriter, was back this past year with a critically acclaimed record.

Moreover, this album is the first of its kind to feature a co-review by me and my buddy NQ (and indeed this review is on his site also).  The dialogue is below:

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FROM: NIELS

TO: SRIRAM

Alright, I’ll get this started.  I haven’t listened to the album yet.  First, like any good blogger, I went to the authoritative source of our day to get some background on what we’re getting into.  Wikipedia of course.  All I knew before going to their wikipedia page was that they were from the Midwest, Bob Mould is prominently involved, they are often lumped into the category of “post-punk”, and musicians seem to like them a lot and throw them into conversations about influences.  In fact, in listening to the Nerdist podcast with Henry Rollins, he mentioned them at least once and in glowing terms.

So, here’s what I found out.  They are indeed from the Midwest, St. Paul, Minnesota.  Bob Mould is one of three members of the band, they had a keyboardist originally but they kicked him out.  They apparently weren’t going for this sound.  When I think of three piece 80s rock bands from the Midwest, I think of the Violent Femmes, so it will be interesting to see how Husker Du sounds compared to them.  The story of how they got their name is great, I’ll let you read that yourself. The band was signed during the time of New Day Rising to SST Records.  I’m familiar with some of their other bands and I’m sure you are too:  The Minutemen, Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr., Black Flag.  Given the good taste of label runner Greg Ginn during the early 80s, that makes me more excited about hearing this.

So why haven’t I heard this before?  Well, first thing is that I was only 11 when this came out and I wasn’t cool enough to find this.  Heck, I’m not sure if I even could have found a copy of this in Virginia at the time, pre-interwebs and all.  And even as I grew older and got into most of the bands named above (Black Flag, I heard but never got too into), somehow the Du slipped through the cracks.

FROM: SRIRAM

TO: NIELS

I really wanted to listen to the album a couple of times, just so it did not fade into background noise while I was working or somesuch.  The first time I heard the opening track, I was stricken – as the Rob Reiner character noted in Spinal Tap – by its unusual loudness.  Are there any other lyrics to the title track than “New Day Rising” really?  Of course that was a common theme of the album – lyrics were not precisely intelligible.

On the other hand, while I can have some snark about the lyrics, the Du clearly had to be a kick ass live act.  The energy and force are there throughout – and it was easy to get into, even if it took a few songs to hit its stride.  I certainly found the album uneven, but they definitely have talent.

FROM: NIELS

TO: SRIRAM

I’ve been through the album once and I had a similar reaction. Loud. And fast.  And it’s relentless on both counts throughout.  So, the opener does a great job of setting the tone for the rest of the album.
On this track in particular, as you mentioned, we’re not getting Bob Dylanish lyrical content.  But I’m not a huge lyrics guy, so I was quite happy with the manic drumming and the buzzsaw guitar work.
I’m also with you that live they must have been something else.  You used the word force, I think that’s a great word for them.  As for the album as a whole, there were two songs that if I were doing an iTunes 1-5 rating would get 5s (not this one, we’ll have to cover those in another email), a bunch of 4s, and one that’s a borderline 2/3.  So very good first impression for me.  Snake draft-style, I’ll bounce back with an email on the next few tracks.
FROM: NIELS
TO: SRIRAM
The other word I forgot to include in my last email was tight.  Most of the songs on the album clock in at under 3:30 and they pack a lot into those 180 seconds or so.  The Girl Who Lives on Heaven Hill is the second song on the album and I liked this song much more than the opener.  This one was written by drummer Grant Hart.  I did notice that my two favorite songs on the album are Hart-written numbers and this is probably my third favorite.  I know Mould is the one who’s gone on to a more successful career, but I’d like to learn more about Hart’s post-Du output given how much I liked his songs on this album.

At the core, this is a love song, as the singer pines for the opportunity to be with the eponymous Girl.  I will admit I had to go to a lyrics site to nail down all the lyrics.  Even without knowing all the words, this song had an anthemic quality to it.  Slowed down a bit and take out some of the biting guitar and you could have an FM radio hit in the early 80s.  Maybe this is just because I’ve been listening to him recently, but I also felt that this could have been an uptempo Neil Young/Crazy Horse song.  Husker Du was supposed to have been influenced by and fans of “classic rock”, which I didn’t really hear the first time around, but I think this song has some nods to that oeuvre.  I also like to think this is a song Kurt Cobain would have been listening to while recording Nevermind.

I Apologize is a good song, not quite on Girl’s level, but has a really catchy chorus.  Veering from the wistfulness of the previous song’s lyrics, this song, as the title implies, is about a not-so happy topic.  The singer is apologizing for something that may be to “my temper too quick/makes me blind” but then is asking for a reciprocal apology from his girl but isn’t getting it.  The chorus kind of made me think this could have been an early REM song with the vocal harmonizing.  This then gave me the mental picture of Michael Stipe playing this song, Bob Mould walking in and punching Stipe in the face, taking the lyrics and then “punking” it up.

Speaking of punk, Folklore is probably the most stereotypical punk song on the album.  Short, fierce, angry lyrics.  Not much more I have to say about it.

Back to you.

FROM: SRIRAM
TO: NIELS
Agreed on The Girl Who Lives on Heaven Hill – both in the lyrics needing some interpretation, as well as it having a much more classic rock tempo.  Songs like this you definitely identify where they could have been serious influences on Nirvana and such.  It is a good song.  I guess when I’ve delved into punk and post punk, what interests me is when bands have been to elevate above simply being pure energy.  I suppose that is a vestige of having been introduced to the form via stuff like The Clash and Ramones – which are much more refined and produced than things like the Germs or Buzzcocks or whomever.  One of the reasons I was so fond of “Los Angeles” was seeing it be more than just John Doe and Xine playing very loudly.  The songs were loud and kickass – sure, but there was some finesse there.
“New Day Rising” I actually appreciate as a tone setter – but it’s not a very good song.  I Apologize and The Girl on Heaven Hill have much more classic rock sort of finesse as you say. But it is very good.  But moving forward on the album – “If I Told You” is another very simple song lyrically – a shout to those who do not believe in the singers angst and problems.  It’s actually almost as spare as the title track, but somehow a much better song and the vocals capture the emotion quite well.
“Celebrated Summer” is of course one of the two “anthems” cited by Rolling Stone in its blurb on this album – I’ll leave “Perfect Example” to you – and it is actually a little shocking to hear a song with a bridge after a few songs with quick entrances and exits.  It is funny how the lyrics juxtapose the music here – Mould is harkening back to summers long ago – frankly, this could be Jan and Dean, well if Jan and Dean could play musical instruments like madmen and didn’t give a shit about harmonizing.  Really, from this song I definitely got a feel for something that The Ramones could have done – there is quite a bit of polish here, for a hardcore song.
Overall, what is interesting about the album for me has been – well, when I was about to dive into it, the blurbs I had read had given me the indication of a much rawer piece of work than I am actually listening to.  Don’t get me wrong – this is kickass, tight stuff.  But after New Day Rising, the album slowly builds into stuff where Mould and Hart’s skill becomes more apparent, and the Du’s songwriting and fairly classic sort of influences are seen.  I was not sure what I was expecting – but it is a much more refined sound than I anticipated – at least as the album builds towards the middle (I find it falls off in this respect near the end).  Anyway, promise to get faster updates – I want to do this with a couple other albums (I’ll pitch the idea later).
FROM: NIELS
TO: SRIRAM
I’m with you on getting past punk’s energy and finding something more.  When I first delved into punk with Fugazi all I noticed was the energy because it was such the antithesis of most of what I was listening to (a lot of Pink Floyd).  They are obviously one of the ones that had musicianship in spades, but some others didn’t offer much beyond that ferocity that is punk’s trademark, and frankly that can get boring after awhile.Another band that I’ve been spending some time with that fits into the post-punk genre (I think) is The Jam and I feel some similarities running between the two: speedy and sharp edged.  I’d think that Husker Du would have been listening to The Jam as they were recording this album.Back to the record at hand, good point about the bridge in Celebrated Summer.  You left “Perfect Example” to me, but not much to say here, it seems like a little bit of a palate cleanser, stepping off the throttle a little bit but keeping the angst up to a 10.Now immediately following, they pick the tempo back up with “Terms of Psychic Warfare” which is my winner for song of the album.  This would be the song that when it came on at a live show, I would be “yes! they played MY song”.  The guitar riff is spectacular, the singing has the right amount of sneer (and is much more front and center than some of the other material) and they even throw in some backing vocals.  Just a great little package of a rock song that’s over before you know it.“59 Times the Pain” kind of sputters along following “Terms” but coalesces in parts with a nice riff and the spoken word portions of the vocals.  “Powerline” is more consistent and straightforward punk with its “powerline” chorus, though they once again throw in a curve with the stripped down, bouncy outro.The other standout track for me is “Books About UFOs”.  We get some piano(!) and a rollicking beat.  The singing here reminds me of Elvis Costello for some reason, with a hint of early Springsteen sprinkled in.  This song definitely shows me that Husker Du had some serious flexibility music-wise when they wanted to stretch.

Which is kinda funny because the rest of the tracks seem to be a FU to anyone who thought “Books About UFOs” was where the album is heading in it’s last quarter.  The remaining songs are pretty much straight-on punk rock.  I think Gibby Haynes built his entire career out of trying to recreate closer “Plans I Make”.    A word about “How To Skin A Cat”.  This song is what I like to call the too smart for their own good song that creep into certain artist’s catalogs.  When I first heard this I thought of another post-punk band, the Minutemen, and the similarly excruciating “Spoken Word Piece”.  It’s something that I think could, at least in my mind, drag the whole album out of a top 500 list.  But, it’s still a really entertaining album, with a lot of very good songs, and two five-star centerpieces.

Quick Housekeeping

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Wow, have things been busy in real-life land!  Anyway, not much time to post, but figured some sort of update is needed.

  • As you might have noticed, NBA and College Basketball are back and so the power rankings are being updated – and a fresh batch of college basketball ones have just been noted.  More formal updates will be coming, but figured it was worth a gander.
  • More music reviews – I have a few albums I have been trudging through as well as an experiment on one with one of my friends.   
  • The college football title game is an obvious choice – although I’d argue Florida has a better profile.  I’ll have more on what actually happened and some ideas on how things would look in a more perfect universe.

Anyway, all I have for now.

RS 439 – Sam Cooke: Live at the Harlem Square Club (1963)

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It is funny how stuff slips through the cracks once you are no longer the youngest generation in your dwelling.  As the tiny despot flails her kung fu grip hands in rage at her loyal subjects, a weary, exhausted feeling sets over, and things like blog posts slip by the wayside a bit.  Of course, as exhausting as she is, the tiny despot inspires love, affection and even admiration – I imagine this is what being an Argentinian during Eva Peron’s time must have been like – at least if Evita lived with us and did not have control of her bowels.  All of this is a long way of saying that looking at the last several posts we have been mostly stuck with breaking down football weeks – and all of this during the rather amazing wide open baseball postseason.  Indeed, the football material won’t cease, but there is certainly more to life than that.

For instance, one of the side pursuits has been starting to peruse the Rolling Stone 500 for album ideas and start documenting the journey.  I started looking at doing it in order, but that bored me, and besides, the exercise is less to argue with Rolling Stone‘s rankings than simply to examine a cross section of work that is allegedly good.  It’s the same sort of instinct that keeps Ulysses high on my “next to read” list despite the almost certain assurance that I will never get to it.  But still, 500 albums is easier to kick around than 100 books (or for that matter one bad book), so lucky me.

Why start with a live album by a guy who Rod Stewart has spent most of his career trying to emulate?  I am not sure exactly, although one night I found myself in a live album kick – partially while the tiny despot had not retired for the night, or was it the morning; I can hardly tell anymore.  Sam Cooke came from a gospel background and ended up being one of the seminal early voices of rock and roll and R&B – and in listening to this performance at the Harlem Square Club in Miami, what really rushes is the power, something which is absent from his songs when you just hear album tracks.  There is a certain smooth coolness to most of his standards, “Another Saturday Night”, “Chain Gang”, “Having a Party”, take your pick.  All of these of course stand up well – they are timeless songs (I still get baffled as to how music like his could not get past the heart of bigots – I mean, this isn’t the Velvet Underground we’re talking about in terms of accessibility), but as cleanly produced tracks, you don’t see the fire necessarily.

But here, it all shines through, in the rare live album which really underlines the virtues of the live performance – the songs sound great, as well they should, but the performance gives the songs a distinct energy that transcends the material.  Songs like “Chain Gang” get supercharged as the “ooh-ah” bit has some extra kick to it, and this version of his “Cupid” elevates what is already a truly beautiful song – extra points for being something I have quelled the tiny despot with.  What particularly crackles though is the performance of a medley including “For Sentimental Reasons” where he leads the crowd through singing along – it is one of the rare cases in live albums where it does feel like “you are there”.  In terms of stuff I’ve listened to this year, it is one my favorite discoveries.

Got More Hits Than Sadaharu Oh – Adam Yauch 1964-2012

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Yeah, as my buddy hammockrus noted, the death of MCA – and thus the death of the Beastie Boys – hit particular hard last week.  In some ways Michael Jackson kind of broke the seal – of folks who I had a contemporary experience with passing away.  I was discussing this with my buddy T the other day – especially the notion at how the Beastie Boys were just so flippin’ good.  Of course he countered with “What about the Beatles?  Dylan?”  Of course you could say that about the Stones, Led Zeppelin, Prince, Britney Spears (ok, maybe not ALL of them), but that’s not the point.  The Beastie Boys were different, because they were OF my life.  I remember an article about the Beatles I read recently, and one of the comments put it brilliantly:

No one who comes to the Beatles as a completed body of work quite understands what it was like to hear on the radio, for the first time, I Want To Hold Your Hand. It was so obviously different from anything that had come before. All you wanted to do is hear it again. And again. And you wondered — what the heck is that? And then you started to hear about them, and you started to hear a few more songs like She Loves You and All My Loving and Please Please Me and you bought Meet The Beatles and that was it — you were hooked.

That was what the Beastie Boys were to me – though it took until Check Your Head for me to fully GET it.  Indeed, Paul’s Boutique is one of the few truly “ahead of its time albums”, a brilliant commercial failure of which 11 year old me, being such a philistine with music at that point, of the reasons that it failed so.  I knew hip hop of course, but I did not know THIS.  You had the samples and influences – plundering a rich tradition, mashing both true old school and Bob Dylan and even (in “Intergalactic”) themselves.  Sampling is so often lazy – taking an old song and changing very small aspects to repackage it – but the Beasties took it to the sort of rich area that professional DJs like Shadow or Cut Chemist know.  They saw the samples as instruments themselves, and since they started out as rock musicians themselves, they saw it as a complement to the old classic stuff.  In Check Your Head you see that amalgamation of old school hip hop and instrumental rock.

Listening to old Beastie Boys material recently, in addition to the musical stuff mentioned above though, what is striking – and a remnant of the hip hop groups of yore – is what a team sport it was – and how important harmony still was, even if they were rapping?  I mean, other bands the lead singer often is the “front man” and really he or she becomes the identity of the band – Mick Jagger, Gwen Stefani, take your pick – or possibly folks take turns leading (The Eagles).  Of course with the Beastie Boys, it was never a vehicle for Mike or the Adams to become soloists – indeed most of their songs were woven with each guy having a role in the main rhyme and when they came together for the chorus, they supplied vocal diversity.  Yauch of course, provided the bass/baritone voice to go with AdRock’s squealing voice and Mike D’s midrange.  That touch of harmony – yeah not Beach Boys but – elevated the rhyme and helped create their distinctive sound.  It also spoke to the sense of togetherness that the band fostered in each other – you never got the sense that there was a Metallica Some Kind of Monster level of dysfunction there at all.

Of course, all this does is make the Beastie Boys a vestige of my youth, like Michael Jackson or Bon Jovi or whomever.  But of course the Beastie Boys kept evolving, and Yauch in particular was a leader in this.  How many rap artists openly question the implications of their material?  How many not just adopt Eastern religion but live it for real – with the Tibetan freedom concerts and with Tibetan freedom movement in general?  How many become lauded filmmakers?  And how many Jewish anybodys could be prescient enough to understand the second classness of Muslims in America well before most people have caught on?  Adam Yauch remained a creative and thoughtful force throughout the last 30 years, including of course the Beastie Boys continuing to deliver quality material, hip hop and instrumental, right up until his passing.

Adam Yauch lived as he believed – advancing notions of gentleness and compassion and commonwealth.  The Beastie Boys started as a band punk band, evolved into a great rap act and finished as just a great band – one of the few of my childhood who continued to grow and challenge itself.  Yeah they have not been in my conscious musical brain in recent years but when they did something new, I always checked it out, and it was always quality.  My life has been chock full of bands and acts which will go down as being truly great, and the Beastie Boys and MCA will be near the very very top.

On Whitney Houston

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“Didn’t We Almost Have It All?” obviously now becomes a certain piece of dark irony.  It was amazing scanning my social network how much of a cultural thud the death of Whitney Houston made.  Of course then I put on her classic performance where she turned David Letterman into a pile of goo:

Really this video kind of contained everything – the beauty, the voice, the charisma.  Seeing her in this setting was the same sort of chills basketball evaluators could get seeing Shaquille O’Neal at LSU or a film critic seeing Boyz In da Hood.  This sort of total package does not come along often – to say the least.  I mean seriously – when Simon Cowell was berating American Idol contestants about “star presence” or whatever, he was really describing Whitney.

What is interesting ruminating about her death and the reaction is that, well, the normal sort of thing that comes with somebody dying young does not seem to apply.  For instance, when Amy Winehouse passed fairly recently, that death was also rather inevitable.  However, she was still only 27, and many people had fucked their lives up royally at that age to pull their shit together.  There was definitely the sense that another opus was in her – and possibly a happy life, if she did not die in the meantime.  Whitney offered no such promise anymore – her ghastly work on the Bobby Brown reality show gave that game up (as well as underlining the sort of negative stereotype bukaki that set the world up for the Real Housewives of Atlanta)  In some ways the fact that she had not been really relevant culturally for nearly a decade was cleansing I think.  Her old fans had their chance to give up on her and toss her into the “missed opportunity” pile in 2002.  Now her death can be met with an elegiac shrug and some gratitude towards the music that she did produce.  (even if we are hearing a bit too much of “I Will Always Love You” compared to the above)

Yeah, she should have been the Streisand for folks my age.  Yeah, she had a refinement and perceived “class” that set her apart.  But it is a testament to the sheer amount of talent she had that she could more or less squander most of her gifts and potential, and still have a career prolific enough that fans can be nostalgic for something considerable today.  She was not an auteur, or a songwriter of note, but that voice – you don’t get that everyday.  Fortunately we’ve had a decade to absorb that THAT Whitney was gone forever.

5150 and Craft vs Crackle

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As you might have noticed, Van Halen has been coming up in some recent listening.  That the pickup in my IPod use coincides with an apparent new album coming out is coincidence.  Indeed, a review of their new work simply makes one pine for times when they were still throwin the fastball.  As everybody who grew up in the 80s know of course is that Van Halen really was two distinct movements – the David Lee Roth chapter and the Sammy Hagar one – and while the former is more fondly remembered, the latter was perhaps a better crafted band, and the contrast between the two spawn interesting notions about music in general.

A lot of these questions came into my head as I put on the first Van Halen Sammy Hagar album, 5150, which stands up very nicely as arguably the band’s best album – and one of the most professional of rock albums generally.  What is interesting about the album is that – well, I am not sure how to put it, so let me back up.  Consider X, a punk band from Los Angeles whose record of the same name was touched on a while back in this section of the blogosphere.  Without pretentiously quoting myself, that review noted a certain endearing lack of polish.  There are some real good songs, and a couple that showed much more finesse than you’d think – but what drove the train was the passion and palpable energy.  They wanted to be something special, and it courses through the album.  There are flaws, and a lot noise – but the album works both in spite of it and because of it.  5150 on the other hand, certainly does not sound like it’s ripped out from anybody’s soul.  What we actually have here is 1980′s rock-pop craftsmanship of the highest order.  The album and its charms owe not the crackling firepower of the Sex Pistols, but more to the pristine production and meticulous perfection of Steely Dan.  There is not a bad track to be found, indeed consider a few of the songs that come after the midpoint of the record:

In a 1986 rock-pop sort of way, these are really well made songs.  Eddie Van Halen’s guitar, as noted previously was all time great – and for the derisive “Van Hagar” bleatings you get on internet forums and such, Sammy Hagar was a much more polished singer than David Lee Roth.  Also you have Michael Anthony not just providing bass but the layer of high backing vocals which make the Van Halen harmonizing among the most distinctive.  It is really how their harmony sounds that drives the “this is a Van Halen song” sentiment home.  Now what is interesting to ponder is whether this is sufficient?  Is this made with love sufficiently?  This is a stark contrast to more flawed but archetypally bad-ass rock and roll that we have grown up with.  But can just a bunch of great, well produced songs be valued too?  I am not sure the term “corporate rock” applies – but there is stuff like this or Steely Dan or Peter Frampton or – what we have is not the garage band kickassness, but the sense of pros doing really pro stuff.

Dancin’ in the Street (Diver Down!)

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One of the favorite topics of my friend NQ has been covers – and as I have found Van Halen playing in the earphones this past week, it is hard not to note that this is a band – especially in their first movement with David Lee Roth – that made a lot of hay with covers.  Indeed, their covers of “Pretty Woman” and “You Really Got Me” are good solid entries in the genre – but when you look at their Diver Down album, the Van Halen version of “Dancin in the Street” might not only be the best version of the several versions of the songs that have been recorded – but probably the purest expression of Van Halen’s greatness:

At the core of it is of course Eddie Van Halen’s guitar, one of the best of all rock guitarists – and in this song – you get the rare comparison to Hendrix, where Van Halen gets the guitar to fundamentally make a different sound than other guys can find.  I have always loved this rift – especially with the title of the album – the guitar makes the song almost seem like it is taking place underwater.  The guitar almost bubbles and boils over into the  song.  That sort of oscillating between notes to accomplish the melody is just mystifying.  It is a really slick trick certainly.  Really this guitar combined with the top harmony provided by bassist Michael Anthony are the things that really drove the band throughout its prime, even when the lead singers changed.  David Lee Roth of course, provided the energy and a vocal style which worked – but as they showed in their landmark 5150, that it was not a crucial factor.  But the instrumentation here points to a great rock song, one that has been in my head all week, even now.

 

Los Angeles

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Sheer curiosity led me to Los Angeles, the 1980 debut of X – I had heard John Doe do a relatively genial interview on The Adam Carolla Show – and in an interesting coincidence, in front of me on the telly as I am tying this is another episode of Bravo’s Work of Art: The Next Great Artist.  Of course this show takes the ever-durable Top Chef formula, and attaches it to aspiring artists, as the host and critics go out and offer apparently erudite (I am a luddite – how can I contradict them?) critiques of these people’s pieces.  It is funny and intriguing and whatnot – as these sorts of shows are – but it is funny as hell that this format could choose “The Next Great Artist”, especially thinking about what total basket cases some of the true greats actually were.  Of course, these artists on this show are emotional, dramatic and cry a lot (hey, it’s reality TV!) – but it is hard not to think that they are dramatic the way that cops nowadays studied cop movies to be cop, that somehow they have internalized that this is how artistes roll.  The show produces people with talent, but the work – and for that matter, the artists themselves- don’t exactly seem to be sweatin the auteur theory.  I guess it was stuff like this that punk was meant to repudiate.

Now, I am no expert on punk.  I know the same bands you do.  We have your Clash, your Sex Pistols, your Ramones.  I’ve heard “Blitzkrieg Bop”, but then, who hasn’t? **  But a real unvarnished punk record – something touching the notion of “work of art” in that sort of non-Bravo way – that is new.  So how does a true hallmark of the genre – but one by a band that has largely disappeared from a lot of radar screens – sound fresh a scant 31 years later?

** True Story:  I knew The Ramones knew “Blitzkrieg Bop”, and I knew the SONG which has that title.  However, I did not know that the song was THAT song.  Ever sit around and have someone point out something that apparently everybody but you knew?  Like this time, my wife was telling me, ahead of going to see them at the concert, that she was telling her co-worker how she appreciated the pun in the name Fitz and the Tantrums.  I sat there blank faced as she went on totally correctly presuming that I would have picked it up.  Except that I didn’t, because I am a retard. **

Los Angeles, it must be said – oozes commitment.  Switching in my IPod between this and something that has seen the board room like a Wiz Khalifa, that sort of je ne sais quoi is evident.  X leans into the performance in a way that you see rarely in arts these days – maybe some of the seasons of Def Comedy Jam possibly.  For instance, consider the opening song “The Phone’s Off the Hook – But You’re Not”.  We get the gnashing of the guitars, and the voice of Exene, the female lead vocalist.  The voice is not polished – this is not a vocal style you are going to be inviting to Broadway – but she is belting it out with the same sort of passion.  That passion is evident, and it shows in the final product, in a way that a more produced work might have obfuscated.  The dish here is baked with love.

At the same time, sitting here and complimenting the commitment and the passion evident in the music – the love – shortchanges that skill here.  Yeah, the musicianship and vocals are not the REASON to listen to it, and the production is raw and, well, punkish – but there is some finesse going on here too.  In particular, the second track, “Johny Hit and Run Pauline” has a lovely riff which almost hints at rockabilly stuff of today.  The hook is legitimately fun – evident of a pop sensibility that belies how unfiltered it is.  There is skill here.  The skill is further evident in the phenomenal finish to the album, with “Sex and Dying in High Society:, “The Unheard Music” and the cheeky “The World’s a Mess: In My Kiss”.  Especially with the latter track, we are getting riffs and hooks that are really catchy and show a knowledge of what works musically in songs.  The finesse – even borrowing Ray Manzarek for organ at times – is evident, and Exene’s voice really works.  It’s like a rawer, rougher – Beach Boys Goes Punk.  I did not expect to enjoy this album really – or to even understand it – but I must say, it’s worth it, and a better theme music for LA than that crap Randy Newman wrote.

My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy

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In what has been a canon of bloated, overproduced, pretension – Kanye West’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy achieves a kind of summer blockbuster sort of perfection.  West plunders the depths of tricks rappers have been using for years.  You want guest stars?  Oh, I’ve got guest stars – I might even guess that West raps at best 50% of the lyrics on this record.  To list the collaborators – Jay-Z, Rick Ross, John Legend, Rihanna, Beyonce to begin the census – would be an invitation to turn this into a 2000 word post.  You want autotune – we know from his last album (the not-for-everybody 808 and Heartbreak) – he cheerfully plays around with it.  The album is chock full of overlong, arena-rock scale tomes … and it is probably the best hip-hop album (and possibly a few other genres) I have heard in a long time, a long time that includes Kanye’s other albums – so this is saying something.

The album opens with the splendid “Dark Fantasy” – whose opening you might have heard during trailers for The Hangover sequel – which uses the gospel choir hook to build up to a pumping throbbing sort of beat, all following a talky beginning that was more evocative of talky rock concept albums like – well, like just about any second half Pink Floyd record.  ”Gorgeous”, the second track is a more straightforward rap song, but gets to the six minute mark – where as much time is spent in the developing of the beats and music as is developed in the rapping.  The lyrics throughout are West’s usual mixing of playfulness with anger – he has some gangsta style, but like Snoop Dogg there is some humor underneath, it sure does not feel as menacing as some of the NWA stuff.  ”Power” with its chanting, thumping backbeat has an incantation quality that is typical of his music of yore (“Jesus Walks” for instance).  The album peaks in the middle with “Monster” – which might be the best song I’ve heard in a long time, with the lyrics, the incredibly addictive beat, and the groove that takes up damn near the last three minutes of the operation.

The long finishes to tracks is typical in this album.  As mentioned earlier, West is cramming each track here with all of the tools of the trade.  There is autotune, the guest stars (especially one indispensable appearance by Chris Rock when you least expect it), the borrowing of other influences and styles – but none of it is for gratuitous effect.  Or perhaps, ALL of it is for gratuitous effect – there is a definite conscious effort to create a large sound.  In some ways, this work is more of a comparison with 70s rock albums like The Wall or classic Queen or And Justice for All than any real rap analogies.  The songs feel meant to be filling a stadium – Kanye is putting out something to compete in the marketplace of Coldplay or Arcade Fire.  Is it pretentious?  Of course – when is Kanye not?  But who would want it any other way?

Lonely Avenue

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You know what hope is,

Hope is a bastard,

Hope is a liar, a cheater, a thief

Hope comes near you, kick its backside

Got no place in days like these

- from “Picture Window”

Music and lyrics are obviously the building blocks of popular music – but really how often are lyrics such a star of a project?  After all, if the words weren’t sung – or rapped – there would be no real point to the exercise, no difference from conversation.  Good lyrics are rewarded but poor lyrics are not punished to nearly the same degree.  Basically, a good hook can save simpering lyrics, but a crappy display of musicianship will derail even Eliot-like verse.  What is interesting about Lonely Avenue is that the lyrics are not just the star, but part of the entire raison d’etre.  We have a singer-songwriter Ben Folds, turning over half of his songwriting process to Nick Hornby – the famed writer whose work has kept Folds company on his many travels and who has been gushed over at length in this section of cyberspace before (and undoubtedly will again).  What we have here is a bit of a “two-rooms” Elton John-Bernie Taupin sort of songwriting experiment, not just an experiment in lyrics being turned into music, but Nick Hornby showing us whether he can write any kind of verse worth treasuring (at least as song lyrics).

What we get as a result is a very cheeky album that manages to embody both the virtues of Folds and Hornby.  The songs have the richness musically that we expect from Folds while the lyrics do have the feel of short stories and vignettes.  There is a literary depth to what is being sung – but what Hornby is able to do is to do it in a way that it never feels like Ben is singing in someone else’s voice.  For instance, “A Working Day”, with its quirky, spacey beat (sort of a sci-fi “Nerdist” sort of vibe) with the sort of turn of phrase lyrics like “Some guy on the net thinks I suck, well he should know/He’s got a guitar” sounds like something Ben would write.  The lyrics and funny, but Hornby’s ear for voice is the surprise.

The songs in the album mirror the arc of Hornby’s best work, whether it be High Fidelity or A Long Way Down where modern politics, funny insights and pathos and depth and manchildren are alternated with multidimensional deftness.  We have a speculation of Levi Johnston’s life (“Levi Johnston’s Blues”) and a love song and crush based on the flimsiest of pretexts (though absolutely correct: Saskia Hamilton is a great name) to provide great humor.  But it is coupled with a couple of the more poignant songs.  In particular “Belinda” works as a story of a singer who has to sing his one big hit over and over again, though the subject of the song has left long ago. “Belinda, I love you/I’m sorry that I left you/I met somebody younger on a plane …”  – the manufacturing of “ripped from your heart” emotion a performer needs is placed into sharp relief.  Similarly, the album’s poppiest song “From Above”, speaks of empahy and a world ultimately comprised of coincidences, touching stuff that was even ruminated over in the movie Red.  For a song with a good hook, it provides a lot.  These are all “story songs” in a sense, though that evokes those insipid Harry Chapin songs of yore – but of course Harry Chapin was not a professional story writer.