2/18/13: George Harrison: All Things Must Pass

The most Beatley of all the Beatles solo records-- the only one that attempts the sort of epic, life-changing grandeur that defined the Fab Four in their later years.  While John was singing about himself and Paul was singing about cutesy crap (not really, but, you know), George-- at least on this record-- was talking about the world, and God, and life, and really really big things in general.  He supplements his huge themes with some of the biggest, most multi-layered arrangements ever.  "All Things Must Pass"... If John gave an album that title, it'd be a dirge-fest.  For George, it's a celebration, a sweeping embrace of the totality of life, as well as the necessity of death.

Is there a song that's not good and meaningful here?  The Dylan cover has the lamest lyrics on the record, and it still takes on a spiritual cast thanks to George's ridiculously gorgeous slide guitar work.

What the album is, essentially, is a bunch of variations on "While My Guitar Gently Weeps"... Same stately style, same wailing guitars, same cosmic vision... Only here, the vision comes in colors, most of them bright, but a few even darker than we're used to from Mr. Don't Bother Me ("Isn't It a Pity" is like the beautifully sad flip-side to "Hey Jude").

Good for George!

1/23/13: Marvin Gaye: What's Going On

A very difficult album to write about.  It's a beautiful record, with a sophisticated and urban and soulful sound  (it's like the concept of "hope" embodied by notes).  You'd be a fool to dismiss it, but I think you'd also be a little naive to call it an interesting political statement.  Marvin is obviously an interesting guy, and you hear in his voice a sort of nuance, a combination of pain and peace and thwarted ambition and intelligence and compassion and anger, that is simply not in the man's lyrics.  Only two songs here, the masterful singles "Inner City Blues" and the title track, have even a hint of the generation-defining poetry that we've always been told the whole album possesses.

The album's other seven tracks form a kind of super-medley.  They all sound very similar-- you know that incredibly rousing intro to "Mercy Mercy Me," with the glockenspiels and the drums and such?  Yeah, that's pretty much at the beginning of every song.  I don't have a problem with this, though.  If there had to be a Motown album where the musicians deserved back-of-the-cover credit, it'd be this one: there is no other record that sounds like it.  It's a coming out party for the experimental and artsy tendencies of Motown's insanely gifted group of players.  Hence, the middle sevens songs all sound jammy and cool and pretty formless, with nary a tune in sight.

A song works on What's Going On when it successfully combines that sound with enough of a tune to allow Marvin to explore his character, i.e. his voice.  "Songs" like "Save the Children," which is basically a (crappy) poem, are sort of flat and corny.  "Right On" seems like a dream at first-- seven minutes of this sound?  WOW-- until you realize that the jam isn't really going to go anywhere, and that Marvin himself doesn't really plan on adding much to it.

ALL THAT BEING SAID, if I have to tell you how great "What's Going On," "Inner City Blues," "Mercy Mercy Me," or even "Flying High in the Friendly Sky" are, then either...

1. You do not possess What's Going On, and you should.

or

2. You do possess What's Going On, and you are an irredeemable idiot.

1/23/13: The White Stripes: De Stijl

I want to emphasize again the difference between the White Stripes and a typical Detroit garage rock band, a difference which “De Stijl” epitomizes.  A typical Detroit garage rock band rages at you all night with thrashing electric guitars.  The White Stripes, on “De Stijl,” employ pianos, harmonicas, electric fiddles, and other soothing sounds.  A TDGRB writes only about sex and drugs.  The White Stripes, on “De Stijl,” write about school, and birds, and domestic bliss.  ATDGRB pretty much has one mood and one style.  The White Stripes, on “De Stijl,” offer more styles than their already varied debut, ranging from slide-guitar jams (“Little Bird”) to country (“Your Southern Can is Mine”) to pop (“Apple Blossom”) to Led-Zeppelin-ish-stomp (“Why Can’t You Be Nicer to Me”) to balladry (“Sister Do Your Know My Name,” “A Boy’s Best Friend”).

De Stijl is a brave record.  It’s soul-baring and listenable and, often, (gasp) gentle.  It shows the breadth of Jack White’s record collection, his willingness to absorb a huge sum of influences from across the musical map.  And though it’s a very, very simple record, maybe moreso than the debut, it shows an increasing amount of ambition.

First song, “Your Pretty Good Looking (For a Girl)": the best melody Jack's constructed yet.  It helps that the man has discovered a new voice for himself, a sincere and unaffected tenor that he uses for much of De Stijl and White Blood Cells (and would forget about once he became a big flashy rock star).  It gives that "this feeling's still GON-NA / Linger onnn" hook a nice, soft punch, and goes great with a crunchy guitar riff.

What else?  The whole record is full of folksy but mostly non-whimsical melodies, sung well, played with varying amounts of distortion.  The cover of "Death Letter" is one of the great White Stripes songs, turning a classic Son House number into a non-sleazy-but-plenty-slidey dance jam.  (This is how you play a guitar... How does Jack get such a thick, booty-shake-inducing sound with just Meg-- read, no bass-- to back him up?)

So I guess what really gets me about De Stijl is how it's a rock album, no question, just one that has very little to do with "cock."  It makes you move and bob your head and occasionally sit and meditate without filling your head with thoughts about what a worthless, slimy, perverted, semi-misogynist piece of shit you and every other man in the world is.  (AC/DC have always been better at making me feel this way than, say, Bikini Kill.)  

1/23/13: The White Stripes: The White Stripes

The White Stripes were not the only band in Detroit doing garage rock at the end of the twentieth century.  So what made them different?  What set them apart from the dirty, smelly, un-tuned pack, and turned them into internationally renowned superstars?  There’s the obvious things.  The color scheme.  The whole “two members” thing (no bass!).  The weird mythology.  But there was music, too.  Jack White was not the best singer or guitar player or songwriter in 1999 (and he is certainly not that now), but he had a musical vision, even then, and a distinct way of seeing that vision through.  The White Stripes’ first record is a strikingly confident and competent debut— you can tell, listening to it now, that Mister Jack wanted to be much more than a mere player in Michigan music rags.  

What impresses me most, I think, is its variety.  There are the obligatory garage rock rave-ups here (“When I Hear My Name,” “Jimmy the Exploder,” “Screwdriver,” “Broken Bricks” et al… and all wonderfully done), but there’s also cutesy folk (“Sugar Never Tasted So Good”), dramatic ballads (“Suzy Lee,” “Wasting My Time”), heavy blues (“I Fought Piranhas”), semi-political punk (“The Big Three Killed My Baby”) and a pretty daring selection of covers (they do “Stop Breakin Down,” which the Stones did on fucking EXILE ON MAIN STREET, and Dylan’s “One More Cup of Coffee,” and the blues standard “St James Infirmary”).  Jack’s moods swing wildly, from childish joy to bitter rage— pretty impressive, given he’s just using a guitar and Meg to convey this stuff.

“Eclecticism,” yes, that’s the word.  That’s what made the Stripes a band apart, even from the get go.  That, and not caring what the hell cool people think.  Has any other Detroit band ever attempted a rocker as plaintive as “Do”?  Or a popper as disarming as “Sugar Never Tasted So Good”?  (For that matter, has any Detroit band ever sang about “Sugar” without it being a euphemism for the female anatomy?)  These two qualities of the Stripes would be expanded and refined over the group’s next two records.  Jack’s mostly a riff-man on this one—the really strong pop melodies would come later— but his guitar playing already exhibits the kind of efficiency that would make Johnny Ramone nod (see what he does with just TWO notes on “Astro” and “Big Three” ?  THE SAME TWO NOTES, I’m pretty sure).

“The White Stripes” is the band’s only “true” garage-rock album; as such, its one of the best in said genre that I’ve ever heard.  Only a few filler tracks (“Slicker Drips,” “Little People”) prevent it from being on par with the group’s next two semi-masterpieces.

4/15/12: Smashing Pumpkins: Siamese Dream

One of those early 90's dreamy guitar shoegazey hard rock records that I've listened to a thousand times to get but have just never gotten.  The difference between this one and Loveless (that's the other one that fits the bill) is that while I "get" what I'm "not getting" with My Bloody Valentine, I simply don't understand what people like so much about the Smashing Pumpkins.  Actually, wait... here's a hypothesis.  Most people get into the Pumpkins while they're teenagers--i.e. when they are stupid-- then grow up and reminisce about the good old days without ever re-visiting the band's music, which is, for the most part, juvenile.

There are splendid moments on Siamese Dream.  "Cherub Rock" is a first-class fist-pumper.  "Quiet" has a lovely evil edge.  "Soma" is the only one here to successfully straddle the line between "acoustical beauty" and "hard emo rock," a feat that's admittedly difficult to accomplish.

The rest?  Overdramatic or boring or amelodic or plain stupid.

I think "Silverfuck" offers a nice microcosm of the record as a whole.  The metallic rocky part is highly satisfying, if a tad obvious.  The quiet part does not have enough ideas to justify its length (forever).  "Bang bang you're dead / Hole in your head" is the dumbest thing I've ever heard.

3/25/12: The Replacements: Let it Be

The quintessential Mats record, as the good stuff strikes major emotional chords and the bad stuff is just stupid and fun enough to be, well, stupid fun.  I don't think anyone's gonna confuse what's "good" and what's "bad" on Let it Be: the ballads are near-perfect, the pop/rock songs are superb, and the more metallic/hard rocky numbers kind of blow.  Course, these latter tracks (I'll name them outright: "Gary's Got a Boner," "Seen Your Video," "Black Diamond," "Tommy Gets His Tonsils Out," and "We're Coming Out") are played so sincerely, with seemingly no winking involved, that I cannot help but love them, at least a little bit (actually, I love "We're Coming Out" more than a little... just awesome energy).

The key to the Replacements-- the reason why I care-- is not just that they mixed traditional rock, country, and folk influences into their "punk rock" sound: it's that they introduced a touch of human sympathy to punk that was almost completely lacking before.  Prior to Let it Be, and to a lesser extent, Husker Du's Zen Arcade, there were just a handful of ways to approach other human beings in a punk rock song.  You could spite them (a la the Sex Pistols), you could judge them (a la Minor Threat), you could distance yourself from them with your cute artistic whims (a la Patti Smith), or you could plain alienate them (a la Public Image Limited)-- that's about it.  At least in the early days, punk bands were not driven by a need to understand the whole around them, but by a desire to remove themselves from said world.

On the other hand, the Mats took a kind of pride (maybe ironic, but rarely mean-spirited) in their fragile and silly (but never insignificant) humanity.  They came from the Midwest and liked drinking and covered Bad Company.  They wrote songs you could understand and maybe relate to, and on Let it Be, they started writing songs that were kind of serious and beautiful and humane.

"Sixteen Blue," for example.  Probably has the best guitar solo of all time.  But I don't wanna talk about that; I couldn't, anyway (too gorgeous).  I wanna talk about the lyrics, which ask you to empathize with the most loathsome character in America at any time: the teenager.  I mean, what a chorus:

Your age is the hardest age
Everything drags and drags
Looking funny, you ain't laughing are you?
Sixteen Blue


That's it, amiright?  That is exactly what it is to be a teenager.  Everything really does drag and drag when you're sixteen.  And you try and try to be an adult, but people still see you as an awkward nobody.  So, yeah, you're kinda blue.

There's also "Androgynous," a perfect lyrical combination of the anthemic and the everyday (a combination only a few other songwriters, thinking here of Bob Dylan, have ever conceived):

Here comes Dick, he's wearing a skirt
Here comes Jane, y'know she's sporting a chain
Same hair revolution, same build evolution
Tomorrow who's gonna fuss?


Cuz who is gonna fuss tomorrow?  In a couple decades, no one is gonna give a rat's ass about what people look like or who they fuck.

Paul Westerberg is the closest thing punk has to a poet, because his lyrics are actually punk rock.  They are not full of obscurity and allusion and artisness like Kim Gordon's or Richard Hell's or whatever.  They speak of recognizable things in inspiring ways.

3/4/12: The Beatles: Let It Be

The least perfect Beatles album, and for that reason one of my favorites.  The Fabs had been rougher and wilder and weirder before, but never so disjointed, and rarely so human.  This is the Beatles album that mortals could've made... providing mortals had voices as charming as Lennon and McCartney (and Harrison too, I suppose... his vocals on "For You Blue" are adorable).  It's a funny one.  Not many bands would put a statement song like "Let it Be" IMMEDIATELY AFTER "Dig It"... That's some Guided by Voices shit, if ya ask me.

As is characteristic for the Yoko era, Lennon is lazy as fuck here.  He doesn't even attempt to make sense, and only goes serious once-- the admittedly moving and beautiful "Across the Universe."  I love these stupid throwaways though: "Dig A Pony," "One After 909"...

Meanwhile, in church, Paul is finding God.  In what must be deliberate contrast to John, he turns in some of his stateliest and most soulful tunes ever.  (Which isn't to say his work isn't fun... "I Got a Feeling" is a far better party song than the Black Eyed Peas "jam" of the same name.)  I'm a John man, and always will be, but I don't know how anyone could listen to this album and deny that, in their final third, the Beatles are pretty much Paul's project.  Let It Be is his concept, and he delivers on the idea.

So what you have here is something that's both mature and playful.  It's a nostalgic record (originally titled "Get Back").  Its one hint of darkness comes during "I Me Mine," a song that people like far too much.  (And here's why: it's about GREED.  People love that money hating shit.  But I can see right through them, and George.  I'm not fooled by his Quiet Beatle nonsense.  Guy was just as corrupt and drug-addicted and sinful as anyone else in the band.  And he was NOT, NOT the talent that Lennon or McCartney were.  He had a lot of great songs... 15 or so.  Paul and John each had a hundred.  So yeah, stop talking about him.)