Nineteen Sank, While Six Would Swim

I'm Still Alive

2013-07-28T00:04:00.001-04:00

I can't imagine anyone is checking this. I've never had what I would call a devoted following, but just in case someone's popping on, hoping for a new 19 Sank While 6 Would Swim off-beat take on whatever, please know I'm not done yet, just tired. Life has a way of pushing you into a corner if you let it, and I definitely let life shove me around for a while. Oh, I don't have some newfound resolve or anything...I'm still exhausted: physically, emotionally, mentally, but I haven't given up. I'm still here. I still have opinions. I still have things to say, and eventually, once the pressure builds up enough, I'll start saying them again. That is all. Thanks for being here. I'll try to show up more often.

19 Sank and 6 Drowned

2013-01-27T00:13:00.000-05:00

In the wake of The Mars Volta's demise, it's seems necessary that I finally break the seal on my silence and post a new blog. "Nineteen Sank, While Six Would Swim" is the title of the second movement in the "Frances the Mute" suite after all, so to allow this to go un-noted would be nothing less than a coded, passive-aggressive death announcement for my blog, something I'm just not willing to do (at least not yet). But I'll be entirely honest with you, I'm not sure how to say what I want to say, so I'll instead say what I need to say...

The Mars Volta changed me. I've loved music my whole life, but even the best of us lose faith from time to time, and as sad as it makes me to say, for probably the last decade, I've lost a lot of faith. But no matter how cynical or jaded I've become (or at least felt), every time a new Mars Volta record was released, I was reminded that I can still be amazed, that I haven't heard it all, that there's still beauty and purity and insanity lurking out there, hiding in small crevices, back alleys, and the darkest recesses of the mind. I've been reminded that I can still be surprised and that music still means something to me. I was reminded that Rock music can still move mountains, and that there is still wonder in the world. And so, for as sad as it makes me to know The Mars Volta are no more, it makes me infinitely more happy to know that The Mars Volta were.

I will miss the anticipation of a new record, but I will relish the wealth of tunage these gentlemen offered up for the last 12 years. Now if only there was a way to convince ORL to reissue De-Loused on record so I could have the entire full-length, studio catalog on vinyl without having to drop $200, my life would essentially be complete.

Unique Poop Still Smells Like Poop

2012-04-01T00:00:00.000-04:00

I find the new Creationist attitude in Rock music disturbing. Too many bands are trying to remake the world. A premium has been put on the idea of creating a sound that's wholly new, wholly unique, even revolutionary, at the expense of song. I realize that the redundancy police are probably already charging towards my house, ready to beat down my door and drag me away in cuffs for writing this, but this desperation to sonically separate yourself from anything that has come before you at all costs is driving me absolutely batty.

Tomorrow morning, I will expel the waste from the food I ingested tonight. It may smell different from any other BM I've ever taken, but in the end it will still just be a weird smelling piece of shit. Being different doesn't make you good, it just makes you different. I'm not saying that I don't respect attempting to take risks, and I'm not saying that a band who tries to make a record that sounds distinct is worthless or unlikable, I'm just sick of bands developing a sound and then writing songs to that fit within the confines of that sound. What happened to writing a song and then molding your sound around the atmosphere that that song generates?

If you ask me, bands shouldn't be focusing on imagining new existences and inventing new sounds. The wheel was already invented, you can't invent it again, but you can reinvent it. Elaborate on the past. Take what's happened before and tweak it, make it your own. Adopt the past and shape it into a new destiny rather than trying to give birth to the future.

The best records by the best bands (artists) of the last 20 years have done just that: Neutral Milk Hotel, The Flaming Lips, Jeff Buckley, Olivia Tremor Control, Radiohead, Ryan Adams, Foxy Shazam, Wilco, Andrew Bird, The Darkness, Okkervil River, The Mars Volta, Built to Spill, Arcade Fire, Lucero...they've all tried to expand on what's happened before. Sometimes they failed, but sometimes they succeeded. The failures were always admirable, the successes nothing short of genius. And even though they managed to create something the world's never heard before, what made these records brilliant was you could still hear their influences, those distorted yet somehow recognizable touchstones that helped shape the music.They loved music, their love compelled them to create music, the music they loved helped them to create something entirely new even though it felt like something we've heard before.

The development of a sound should be a natural and organic process. It should happen without force, without pretense, without ambition. It doesn't have to be accidental, but it should never be intentional. Let it happen on its own. Write songs and let them figure out how you should sound. Don't put the cart before the horse. Don't try to fit in, just fit in. Don't try to stand out, just stand out. Don't try to do anything, just do something. Make an innovative record that matters, not a record that matters because it's innovative. If more bands made the record they were supposed to make rather than than the record they sought out to make, the world would be a better place.

I Require Justin Hawkins to Make Me Happy, or An Open Letter to J.-Hawk., or Listen to Hot Leg...They're Good.

2012-03-18T00:07:00.001-04:00

The Darkness are an amazing band. They're witty, charming, hilarious, incredibly talented musicians with easily one of the most enigmatic and charismatic vocalists recording today, and the songs they write are just so good; infectiously catchy and undeniably Rock N' Roll. I'm glad they've gotten back together, hell, I'm elated, but I still can't help feeling a little bittersweet about this reunion, because it seems to me that a world with The Darkness has no choice but to be a Legless one, and that bums me out hardcore.

Hot Leg was the band Justin Hawkins formed after the breakup of The Darkness (or technically, I guess his band after British Whale, but 3 total songs hardly filled the void that The Darkness left behind, so I choose to gloss over B-Dub). They released their debut (and quite possibly only) record, Red Light Fever, in 2009, and after nearly 3 years of a life devoid of the product of Justin Hawkins' self-described "truth larynx" (you can't deny it, this guy can fucking wail), Hot Leg didn't just feel like a breath of fresh air to me, they felt like air, period. After listening to that record for the first time, it felt like I had been forced to hold my breath for 3 years and was finally given the chance to exhale.

I'll be the first to admit that even if Red Light Fever wasn't that good, I would've been on board. It was a product of Justin Hawkins and it existed, and that would have been more than enough for me, but it was good. It was really good (it still is). In fact, I would call it Rock genius. It is vastly superior to The Darkness's sophomore effort One Way Ticket to Hell...and Back, and if you ask me, on the right day it's at least Permission to Land's equal, on an even righter day, I'd probably say Red Light Fever is the better record of the two.

For as much as I like One Way Ticket..., the album still sounds to me like the work of a band trying to figure out what their next step is. I wouldn't go so far as to say they sound like they're floundering, but the record sounds like the product of a band who knows they can't possibly improve on what they've already done but can't quite decide what direction to go into. I'm not saying the album isn't cohesive because it is, and I'm not saying it's just across-the-board adequate, because there are 4 songs that are downright remarkable and 6 others that are at the very least pretty damn good. Still, the record as a whole seems to lack focus. It's the work of a band trying to reinvent themselves without knowing what they want to do or how to do it.

Red Light Fever on the other hand is fucking razor sharp; it's honed and pin-point accurate. It has all of the focus that One Way Ticket... lacks while managing to hold onto the fundamental "Man-Rock" framework that made Permission to Land so essential. And by folding in elements of soul, funk, and blues, they manage to move out of the daunting shadow that Permission to Land cast upon any purely Rock effort that Justin Hawkins would ever attempt. When you listen to Red Light Fever, you can hear that Hot Leg not only knew who they were but what they intended to accomplish before they ever even thought about entering a studio. The result is 10 über catchy songs with subtly sophisticated arrangements that give this record, if not an edge, at least separation from the work that Justin Hawkins did in the past. Sure, Hawkins' lyrics on Red Light Fever may lack the tongue-in-cheek, covert humor of Permission to Land, but they're no more blunt than the songs on One Way Ticket..., and they're so forcefully fun and infectious that being hit over the head a few times seems a very small price to pay for such a strong set of tunes.

Songs like "Chickens", "Cocktails", "Kissing in the Wind", and "Prima Donna" are good enough to match or trump the best songs on One Way Ticket..., and "Whichever Way You Want to Give It" easily rivals "I Believe in a Thing Called Love" in single-ready Pop-Rock genius. On a whole, Red Light Fever seems far more of an appropriate follow-up to Permission to Land than One Way Ticket... was, but none of the aforementioned really accounts for my lamenting.

What really makes me so sad, aside from the possibility that I may never hear "Whichever Way You Want to Give it" or "Cupboard Love" live, is knowing what was on Hot Leg's horizon. Having stumbled across rough demos and live recordings of songs that were meant to be on RLF's follow-up makes me think, fuck that, makes me know that these guys had so much more to give and were really only on the brink of making a broad musical impact. On its own, the fact that "Into my Arms" may never be recorded is enough to bring me next to tears. Add everything else I've heard into the mix, and it seems categorically tragic.

Certainly I'm not saying I'm unhappy that The Darkness are once again a band, but I can't even begin to pretend that I'm okay with the possibility that Hot Leg isn't. Who knows, maybe I'll get lucky and in a year or so, I'll find out that J-Hawk isn't a man built for monogamy and a new Hot Leg record will find its way into my grubby little hands. And I suppose that, Darkness or Leg or British Whale or something else entirely, as long as Justin Hawkins is putting new music into the world, I'm going to be happy, but without Hot Leg, I'm not entirely sure I can be satisfied.

I've Never Been a Religous Man, but I've Recently Joined The Church of Rock and Roll, and I Think I Just May Be Saved.

2012-03-11T01:39:00.000-05:00

I've bought my fair share of records over the past year and I can say that I have not passionately disliked any of them. Sure, some have simply been "not bad", but at least a decent chunk of them have been good, and some have in fact been quite good: Craig Finn's Clear Heart Full Eyes, Dawes' Nothing is Wrong, Florence + The Machine's Ceremonials, Surfer Blood's Tarot Classics, Wilco's The Whole Love, Explosions in the Sky's Take Care, Take Care, Take Care, Cloud Nothings' Attack on Memory, Cursive's I Am Gemini, Ryan Adams' Ashes & Fire...these are a few of the albums I've bought this year that I like. I am happy I own them. I like them all and they will not go unlistened to, but as much as I may like all of them, I don't love any of them, and for me that's a problem.

Personally, I need to be obsessed with a record. I want to listen to a record and get excited about it ending so I can start it over again because it's just that good. I want to be engulfed by an album. I want it to destroy and remake me. I want to feel a little emptier when I'm not listening to it. I want to be consumed by it. This is who I am and when I don't have this I feel a little less like me. Just liking something a lot doesn't cut the sauce. Sure, I can always go back and listen to older albums I love and that levels me out enough, but it's never quite the same. Rediscovering an album might be awesome, but it's never quite as special as "discovering" it. And for the last 10 months of my life, I haven't heard anything new that's been good enough to be amazing, good enough to floor me, good enough to be obsessed with. But 29 days ago, I went to see The Darkness at St. Andrews Hall in downtown Detroit. Those Lowestoft, Suffolk boys killed it (not that there was any doubt they would...come on, it's The Darkness), but Foxy Shazam stole the fucking show.

Had you asked me 30 days ago what I thought of Foxy Shazam, I would have told you I don't listen to female rappers, but then again that would have been 1 day before I watched Foxy Shazam blow the fucking doors off Saint Andrews Hall. Their live show is a spectacle, the songs rocked unbelievably hard and were catchy as all hell, Eric Nally was ridiculously funny, and that voice of his, it sounded bigger than life itself. But above all of that, watching them on stage, you knew you were watching Rock Stars; guys with too much bravado playing songs that were so huge they should be heard in stadiums instead of the relatively small venue I was watching them in. I don't know...it felt like someone was letting me in on a big secret right before it was about be revealed to the world, like the guy who takes the final tally on votes for the Presidential election. Seeing them was like knowing something that would undoubtedly affect the world before the world knew they were going to be affected.

When I got home that night, I cracked open a beer and pulled up Spotify to make sure I heard what I thought I did. I suppose I wanted to make sure the carpet matched the drapes. It didn't seem possible that a band that electric on stage could convert that energy onto tape (...probably a hard-drive). Within literally 1 second of "Holy Touch", I knew I needed this record. The next morning, I called my local record store (again, if you're in the Ann Arbor, Mi area, stop into Underground Sounds on Liberty between 4th and 5th, across the street from the post office...best record store ever, the owner Matt not only knows his shit but is the shit) and ordered The Church of Rock and Roll. A week later, it arrived, and my life has been infinitely better ever since.

This album isn't just good, it's kind of everything. Sky White is Jim Steinman without the pretension, Loren Turner shreds as major as any other great guitar player from the last 2 decades but without fighting for center stage, and the rhythm section of Daisy Caplan (bass) and Aaron McVeigh (drums) coupled with the one-man horn section that is Alex Nauth that feels very Booker T. and the M.G.'s via Otis Redding. Then there's that voice. Eric Sean Nally is a quarter Freddie Mercury, a quarter Marvin Lee Aday (Meat Loaf), a quarter space alien and a quarter ringmaster at a seedy-ass circus, but wholly Eric Nally. No sound that big should ever come out of a man so small, yet it does and it's amazing.

Then there are the songs...they may on occasion be funny, but these songs are no joke. The relentless hooks of "Holy Touch" alone would make this record a worthwhile listen, but once you toss in the unstoppable rock drive of opener "Welcome to the Church of Rock and Roll", the gutter-gospel of "I Like It", the pop-rock swing of "Last Chance at Love", penitent sincerity of "Forever Together", the beautifully bitter-sweetness of "(It's) Too Late Baby", the no-nonsense swagger of "I Wanna Be Yours", the absolute rock genius of "Wasted Feelings" (my favorite song on the record), the plodding shredfest that is "The Temple", the R&B tinged groove of "The Streets" (my son Finn's favorite song on the album. He's only 1, but that song gets him bopping like nothing else), and the positively anthemic closer, "Freedom", with lyrics that run the gamut of the human condition: from completely inconsequential but entertaining to salaciously sleazy to tender, honest and poignant...Eric Nally knows how lay down a word or two and he makes sure to do it on every fucking song on The Church of Rock and Roll.

But for me, if there's one thing that makes this album matter more to me than any other record right now, it's that it just makes me feel good. I realize I have a lot to be thankful for: a loving wife, a beautiful and hilarious son, 2 incredible dogs, a great family, unbelievable friends, food in my belly and a roof over my head, but life is still really fucking tough. It's tough when you work 45 hours a week (sometimes 50, occasionally more, though that is relatively rare) and still can't make both ends meet. It's tough when you get home from work and it takes all the energy you muster just to keep both eyes open let alone be a functioning husband, father, and dog-father. It's tough when past mistakes and youthful indiscretions seem like they will follow you to the grave, and it's tough when you feel helpless and hopeless virtually all of the time. Life is hard, and when you're holding the short end of the stick, even a handful of hardcore pluses can't cancel out the multitude of minor negatives. Feeling good isn't easy, but it's a whole lot easier with Foxy Shazam.

Dealing with life is no simple task, not for me, not for the majority of the country. But when The Church of Rock and Roll is spinning on my record player, I forget that I usually can't pay my bills. I forget that I'm overworked and underpaid. I forget that "The American Dream" is a big fucking lie and that hard work doesn't really pay off, it just gives you more stress. I forget that life is usually tough and remember that it also can be sweet. I watch my little man sitting on his knees bouncing to "Holy Tough", "(It's) Too Late Baby", "Wasted Feelings", or "The Streets", and it reminds me that even when things are bad, things can still be good. For a little over a half an hour, I remember that sometimes things rock even when things suck, and for me, that's certainly something worth remembering.

Ashes & Fire

2011-12-18T01:55:00.001-05:00

I've been listening to Ashes & Fire relentlessly for a few of weeks now, and I've been trying my damnedest to figure out just how to write about this thing, but it's been difficult because the record is a bit of a dichotomy. Musically and vocally, this record is candid and earnest which is pretty standard fare when it comes to Ryan Adams records, but there's a halcyon solemness that, while archetypal for Ashes & Fire, is atypical for Ryan Adams.

This record's the same, but it's different. It's the same, because when I listen to it I hear bits of Heartbreaker, Love is Hell and 29, pieces of Gold and Jacksonville City Nights, and the overall tone is congenial with Easy Tiger, the Follow the Lights ep, and Cardinology, but still, it's different, because even though it kind of sounds like of all of these records, when I just listen to Ashes & Fire instead of analyzing it's subtle intricacies, it doesn't really sound like any of the aforementioned records.

It's the same, because like nearly every other Ryan Adams song, the songs on Ashes & Fire are all about love and loss and failure, but it's different, because wherein the past Adams accepted the inevitable cruelties of life as cold, hard, unavoidable and insurmountable truths; brilliant songs ensconced in darkness and acquiescence, the songs on Ashes & Fire are almost acts of contrition. And above all else, Adams seems to be heavily investing in the idea that lights are always categorically at the end of tunnels.

It's the same, because like everything else Ryan Adams has done, this album ventures artistically into uncharted territory, but it's different, because in the past, Adams has always pushed himself stylistically, but on Ashes & Fire, Adams doesn't attempt to break any musical molds, it's pretty much just country-tinged folky kind-of Rock music. No, this time around Adams is pushing himself ideologically.

I recognized all of this, but I still couldn't help asking myself how Ashes & Fire can sound like the Ryan Adams we've known since he released the Angels ep with Whiskeytown a decade and a half ago, but feel like an album by a new man, until it occurred to me that, well, that's kind of exactly what Ashes & Fire is; the songwriter's the same, but everything else has changed.

Ryan Adams released one album as a solo artist without preconception or pretense; Heartbreaker was nothing more than what it was, a record by some guy most regular people had never heard of. It wasn't constrained by any outside quixotic notion of what it should or could be, it wasn't expected to break new barriers or to live up to anything because as a solo artist, there wasn't anything for it to live up to. But Heartbreaker, while maybe not an initially huge commercial success, was a critical coup for Adams that opened a lot of people's eyes to his abilities as a songwriter and musician. With a single record, Adams became this sort of critical paradigm of what was possible.

Adams spent the next 5 years of his career trying to live up to the artistic visage that Heatbreaker created, and spent the 3 after those first 5 placating his record label Lost Highway, releasing 2 records and an ep that, while are very good (Cardinology is deceptively exceptional), are also tacitly commercial. His entire output with Lost Highway was a mixed bag of sorts: one part self-actualization, self-acknowledgement, and adherence to his creative integrity, one part artistic bondage and (coerced) demiurgic concession.

It's our fault. The bottom line is we backed him into a corner. Fans, critics, his label all wanted him to live up to their expectations, and because he was slightly neurotic and his personal life was such a mess, he cared so much about what we thought of him because he had nothing else in his life to really care about. For his entire career with Lost Highway, he repeatedly tried to prove himself to us, and with each record, Adams got a little bit more jaded because no matter how good a record was, it always seemed to fall a little short of what we expected. He tried harder than any man ever should have to, and even though I think all of his records have been at least a tiny slice of genius, trying to be everything to everyone frustrated him to no end and pissed off a lot of people who were listening to the albums. We fucked him over for caring too much about what we thought, but on Ashes & Fire, he doesn't care anymore.

He's happily married and a published poet with his own recording studio and his own label. He's comfortable with himself now, and that's what makes Ashes & Fire so different from the rest of his catalog. He's not trying to prove himself to us, he frankly could give a fuck about us. He's just a guy who happens to be really good at writing and recording songs who decided to write and record some more songs. He's no longer a boy clamoring for attention and acceptance, he's a man who's accepted himself. Ashes & Fire is still Ryan Adams, he's just all grown up, and honestly, adulthood agrees with him.

Sure, I imagine that people who've listened to Ryan Adams and admired him for the musical risks he's taken might find Ashes & Fire a bit safe upon the first few listens, and in honor of full disclosure, I need to admit that I did. Certainly, Glyn Johns' production is sleek and polished, but it's also minimally intrusive, remarkably spacious, and frankly, quite breathtaking. And even if I was desperate to, it'd be hard for me to deny the fact that this record isn't anywhere near as musically adventurous as one might expect from an artist releasing his first crop of newly recorded material on his own label after spending so many years complaining as loudly as he did about label constraints, but lyrically, and again, ideologically, this is maybe as brazen and brutally honest as he's ever been. He's not using his scars as a crutch, shield, or sword, he's simply accepting them as fact and moving on, looking forward.

I can't say confidence that Ashes & Fire is Ryan Adams' best album, but it is the most honest he's been with himself in over a decade, and it's easily the most exposed, genuine, and unaffected record he's released since Heartbreaker, and there's absolutely nothing safe about that. Like I said, it's the same, but different. Superficially, Ashes & Fire may sound at first too close to what Adams has done in the past to feel comfortable with, but if you're willing and able to listen to this album with an attentive and objective ear, it's impossible not to hear that Ryan Adams is doing something really special here.

Lost Highway is a Bitch, or, Things That Suck Kind of Really Piss Me Off

2011-10-30T01:33:00.003-04:00

I'll admit that Rock N Roll was not a work of staggering genius, but then again it was never meant to be. For Ryan Adams, Rock N Roll was a means to an end, meant to do little more than get record store shelves stocked with Love is Hell, two ep's that kind of are works of staggering genius. If you're a Ryan Adams fan, I assume you're as grateful for the release of Love is Hell, pts. 1 and 2 as I am, and because the release of the latter was entirely due to the recording of the former, I would also think that you would be at least a little grateful for Rock N Roll as well, but I would be wrong. In fact, I think the response to Rock N Roll may be solely responsible for derailing Ryan Adams' career, and if I'm being honest, that kind of pisses me off. Actually, it kind of pisses me off a lot, because there's absolutely no reason it should have.

Like I said, I don't suffer from any delusions about Rock N Roll, I'm more than aware of what it is: it's not the best thing Ryan Adams has ever released, it's not one of the best things Ryan Adams has ever released, it's not even the best thing that Ryan Adams released in 2003, but it's good. Outside of its intrinsic ties to Love is Hell, outside of the incredible pressure from the label and whirlwind creation of the record, Rock N' Roll is a good record.

It's 14 songs, not a single one bad, with at least a handful of quite good ones, and maybe even a few (or at least one) of the best he's ever written. "So Alive" is easily the closest thing to a perfect single that Adams has ever recorded. It's amazingly catchy, amazingly rocking, and if you ask me, sort of beautiful in a weird, not-quite-able-to-put-my-finger-on-it way. It isn't just one of the best singles of 2003, but probably one of the best of the last decade, maybe even of the last few.

"So Alive" aside, there are still a lot of great songs on Rock N' Roll."This Is It", "Luminol", "Do Miss America", "She's Lost Total Control", "Wish You Were Here", and the first appearance of "Anybody Wanna Take Me Home?", these songs are all reasons to appreciate this album, or at least tolerate it, but mention Rock N Roll to the average Ryan Adams fan you'd think you'd dropped a particularly potent fart in a small, hot, crowded room. The reaction's almost visceral. People really don't like this album at all, and again, that kind of really pisses me off.

But I'm not angry that people don't like this album. I don't expect you to think it's as good as I do. If you're okay with being wrong, I'm okay with it too. Like it, don't like, I don't care one way or the other. What bothers me is that after the release of Rock N Roll, fans and critics expected, and I think almost wanted, Ryan Adams to fail. Before Rock N Roll, Adams was seen as the next great American songwriter. After Rock N Roll, Ryan Adams became just some guy who recorded a few pretty good records.

Before Rock N Roll, fans rushed out to buy the "new" Ryan Adams album because they couldn't wait to hear it. After Rock N Roll, fans waited to hear the "new" Ryan Adams album before they even entertained the idea of buying it. Fans bought Rock N Roll and they still bought all of the records that followed, but since 2003, they've approached every record with skepticism. Even though fans didn't feel right about bailing on him entirely, they didn't feel right about believing in him anymore either. Every album from Cold Roses on has been greeted with this sort of crossed-arm, prove-it-to-me cynicism. Fans are always willing to concede that the "latest" Ryan Adams album is good, whatever that album may be, but they never can imagine the follow-up will be worth its weight in shit.

Before Rock N Roll, critics wouldn't completely ignore the occasional inconsistency or slight misstep he made, but they'd write it off, gloss over it, explain it away, even embrace it because he was a critical darling and it proved he was in fact a man and not some musical demigod. The periodic odd choice made him human and all the more endearing. They saw Adams' records as flawed but brilliant, but after Rock N Roll came out, his albums suddenly became brilliant but flawed. The record could be genius, but rather than talking about the countless things that made it so good, reviews seem to focus on the one or two things that weren't. The overall reviews are still good. They're always 4 out of 5 stars or 7.5 out of 10, but when you read what the critic has to say about the record, the tone always feels like, "Okay, he managed to pull this one off and bought himself a little more time in the public eye, but the next one's bound to be awful." After Rock N Roll, reviews started to sound like a stay of execution..."We're letting him live a little longer." It's almost like they're amazed it's good.

And that sucks. It sucks because Ryan Adams is in fact probably the next great American songwriter. It sucks because in a world of music rife with fly-by-nights-but-gone-by-mornings, of pans and the flashes that occur in them, of gimmicks and gross inadequacy, Ryan Adams has consistently put out quality records. Sometimes they're unbelievable, sometimes they're just good, but they're always worthwhile. They're always better than 99% of anything else that's come out over the last decade and a half, but they're always under-appreciated. And that just sucks, and things that suck kind of piss me off a lot. But I can't begrudge the fans or blame the critics because this is all Lost Highway's fault.

Lost Highway fucked Ryan Adams. Really, from the get-go they fucked this guy: agreed to Adams' plans for Gold as a double album at a single disc price, and then at the last minute cut the last five songs and trimmed it down to a single disc and releasing it in its entirety as a "special, limited edition", with an inflated price-tag, indulged him with the recording of 3 albums over the course of 2002, and then destroyed the integrity of the work by dismantling the records and cut-and-pasting them together for Demolition. They repeatedly fucked him over and he wasn't too happy about it.

He had said that "to make Gold as a compromise only to have to watch those records get broken up for Demolition was heartbreaking." So when, after meticulously crafting it for a year, he presented Lost Highway with Love is Hell, a work that he said was the album he'd been trying to make his entire life, and they rejected it as not commercial enough, he was demoralized. Ryan Adams became bound and determined to get this music out there.Some thing he made a deal with the Devil, others think he's the Devil himself, but really, he just did what he had to do to avoid once again being marginalized by his label.

Rock N Roll was not some record he painstakingly worked on. It's an album that he wrote, recorded, and finished in only two weeks. Rock N Roll was essentially ransom for Love is Hell. He couldn't let them shelve it like they did 48 Hours, The Suicide Handbook and Ryan Adams and The Pinkhearts. He couldn't simply give in to the label, so instead he compromised. He gave them their marketable album in the form of Rock N Roll with the ultimatum that they only got it if they released Love is Hell too. And God bless him for that because I'm still livid that the possibility of my needle ever touching a record with "Walls" or "Angelina" on it is slim to none, a world without Love is Hell is a world that's just too weird to really want to be a part of. Sadly enough though, it was this double-barreled release that caused things to get ugly for Ryan Adams, and like I've already stated, it was all Lost Highway's fault.

Lost Highway may have agreed to release Love is Hell, but like so many times before, they fucked Ryan Adams, but this time it was the royal screw. By breaking up Love is Hell into two parts, they sent a message to fans, sure, but more importantly to Adams. They wanted to show Ryan Adams that he didn't concede by making Rock N Roll, but that they did by throwing him a bone and releasing Love is Hell. They wanted to make sure that everyone knew that Love is Hell was unimportant. Rock N' Roll was the main course, Love is Hell was a side dish. Rock N Roll was first class and Love is Hell was coach. Rock N Roll was the story, Love is Hell was a footnote.

They wanted to ensure that the highly promoted Rock N Roll would out sell the promotionless Love is Hell. They wanted Rock N Roll to have greater impact on the critics than Love is Hell. They wanted to show Ryan Adams that Rock N Roll was right and Love is Hell was wrong. They wanted to turn Ryan Adams into a multi-platinum selling superstar, but all they did was kind of fuck everything up for everyone, including themselves.

First off, Rock N Roll is easily Ryan Adams most niche album, and for a kind of stylistic chameleon, that's saying a lot. Lost Highway should have realized that Adams wasn't going to ever be an artist beholden to a specific style. Even if Rock N Roll had gone on to sell 3 million copies, Ryan Adams was never going to say, "Oh, hey, this album sold a lot so I should just do that over and over again". Because of how stylistically isolated it was from the rest of his catalog, anyone who jumped on the Ryan Adams train because of Rock N Roll would have immediately hopped off the second they heard Cold Roses. They were never going to create new Ryan Adams fans with Rock N Roll, they were at best going to make fans of one album who would be gone the second he released something new.

Meanwhile, all fans had wanted for years was for Ryan Adams to up the ante on Heartbreaker, the very thing that Love is Hell did. It was a return to the confessional singer/songwriter approach of Heartbreaker, but was much darker and moodier. Love is Hell should have satiated the hunger for his established, loyal fans, but it didn't.

Critics on the hand were looking for validation. For years, critics had praised Adams and wanted him to finally deliver the album that would without a doubt make them feel like their accolades weren't all in vain. Love is Hell should have provided the piece of mind, but once again, it didn't.

Love is Hell couldn't accomplish either of these feats because first, broken up into two parts, Love is Hell's impact was diluted. Regardless of how good the two ep's were, without the material presented in its envisioned and proper long-play format, the context was wrong, the pacing was off. The cohesion of the songs is one of it's greatest strengths, but with Love is Hell rendered asunder, there was no unity. In two ep's, you're only getting a part of the whole, and the whole is always going to be more affecting than a fraction of it. Second, having part 1 simultaneously released with Rock N Roll which was presented as a whole, it gave the listener the impression that Adams saw Love is Hell as a "less-than" piece, infuriating everyone and poisoning their minds against Ryan Adams, seeing him as a man who was just out to make a buck, leaving them unable to do anything but question every move Adams would make for what has so far been the remainder of his career.

But had Lost Highway let Adams win just this one, I think everything would have been different. Had Love is Hell been released as the follow-up to Gold (Demolition is a compilation album, and since compilations are not proper records, I don't consider Demolition to be Gold's follow-up.), and waited 10 months or a year to release Rock N Roll, I think Love is Hell would have reinforced and solidified fans and critics established opinions of Ryan Adams, so when Rock N Roll finally did surface, the record would have been seen as nothing more than the strange whim of an erratic genius and thus, would have been accepted by critics and fans, while still bringing those new customers into the fold.

It wouldn't have gained any more longterm fans for Adams or sold more records than it did, but Adams stature in the collective consciousness wouldn't have been effected; it may have even seemed more stalwart. Instead, Rock N Roll gave people the impression that Ryan Adams was just clamoring for the brass ring, a sycophant whose ultimate goal was to do nothing more than to fatten his coin purse. Lost Highway's ridiculous desires were projected onto Ryan Adams, giving him a false reputation he still hasn't been able to shake, and that's unfair, and disparity sucks, and things that suck kind of piss me off a lot.

Lost Highway ruined things and they know it. I don't think it's coincidence that neither of these albums have been in print on vinyl for almost a decade even though everything else Ryan Adams ever released on Lost highway is and these 2 records fetch serious coin on eBay. I don't think it's coincidence that, for the celebration of Lost Highway's 10th anniversary as a label, they announced they would finally reissue these albums only to mysteriously pull them from the roster of special edition vinyl releases days after Ryan Adams announced the release date of his first record of new material, Ashes & Fire, on his own label, Pax-Am, which fell smack-dab in the middle of the two.

Lost Highway knows they fucked things up, they just don't want us to know they know it. They limited Ryan Adams as an artist before Rock N Roll, and unfairly condemned him as a philistine because of Rock N Roll, and wrote him off after Rock n Roll. Lost Highway bungled his career, fundamentally tarnishing his reputation as an artist and leaving fans with a bad taste in their mouth that still lingers, all for the sake of making a buck. And the worst of it all is that Rock N Roll is still a pretty good record, it was ill-conceived, sure, and it was released at the worst possible time in the worst possible way under the worst possible circumstances, but it's still a pretty good album. But because of all of the bullshit, no one will ever be able to objectively listen to it, so no one will ever really know that. And you know, that sucks, and things that suck kind of really piss me off.

Heartbreaker

2011-10-16T01:28:00.001-04:00

It starts with a sigh; I'm talking about "Call Me on Your Way Back Home", the sixth song on Ryan Adams' first solo album. The sigh only lasts a second, and if the volumes too low your speakers are shitty it's not even audible, but it might just be my favorite moment in music.

It's funny I really, that my favorite moment in music should have nothing to do with music at all, yet still, it is my favorite moment, because in that single second, without singing a word a playing a note, Ryan Adams manages to expose the soul, the very essence of Heartbreaker. There's longing in that sigh, and loneliness and desperation and exhaustion and hope. And it's all amazing.

Maybe this shouldn't seem like that big of a deal, but if you know me you know that I believe there are very few artists, maybe none, who can truly compare to Ryan Adams. True, there are other bands and artists I love as much as Ryan Adams, but not for the same reasons, and the reasons why I love Ryan Adams are the reasons why I love music so much, so for me it is a big deal. It's a real big deal.

I hear that sigh, and I get this vision in my head: Ryan Adams, sitting the booth alone, guitar in hand, harmonica strapped around his neck, rocks glass filled with whiskey or bourbon or something like that, with a finger of the booze left in the glass and the ice cubes nearly melted down to nothing, but that's alright because he finished off his beer chaser with the last drink. His cigarette's burning in the ashtray on the table next to him, probably something full-flavored, maybe a Marlboro because for whatever reason the seem more "Southern" to me than Camels and he hadn't been out of the South long enough yet to shake off its' dirt to become urbane and smoke Nat Sherman's or even American Spirits. He's trying the steel up his nerve, not to do the song well but just to get through it without falling apart. The tape's rolling, it has been for 30 seconds, he knows because Ethan Johns told him when he hit record. He grabs his glass of whiskey, but puts it back down almost instantly; it's not going to help him now, maybe after the song's done he'll drink it...definitely after the song's done he'll drink it, but not now, not now. He closes his eyes, takes a deep breathe, and then let's out that sigh, the very one that's so important to me, and he starts playing.

At least some of these things are fiction, probably most of the things didn't happen, most likely all them are pure fantasy, but what I want to have happened and what actually happened are of little consequence, because in the end, that sigh is real, and that sigh says everything that Ryan Adams really needed to say on Heartbreaker.

That sigh, like the record's title, tells you all you need to know without ever listening to the music. It's sort of funny really, for a long time I assumed Heartbreaker was in reference to Adams (and there are reports that the album's title was actually just arbitrarily chosen), but the more I've listened to this record, the more I've come to realize that, arbitrary or not, the title couldn't be more apropos. With the exception of two or three songs (and even those are maybe debatable), these songs are heartbreaking. "Oh My Sweet Carolina", "To Be the One", "Come Pick Me Up", "Sweet Lil' Gal (23rd and 3rd)", "Why Do They Leave?", "Don't Ask for the Water", the aforementioned "Call Me on Your Way Back Home"; they're all songs about emptiness at its most admirable. For lack of a more articulate way of putting it, these songs are all so sad, and they make me sad when I listen to them, but that's always been a good thing because they're also so good that it makes feeling sad feel good. But in 2011, there's a new sadness, a deeper, more real sadness that goes along with listening to this record too.

Having been a little RA obsessed for the last decade, I've devoured and internalized all of the records and I've loved every minute of it. Ryan Adams has constantly shape-shifted and reinvented himself. He's grown as an artist, but over the course of a near decade of dealing with Lost Highway, expectant critics and fickle fans, he also grew jaded. It was hard to hear it as it was happening, the same way it's hard to notice the ways people change over time when you see them everyday. You don't really notice greying hair or slimming bellies or fattening bellies or wrinkling faces when you see someone every day. But when there's even a reasonably brief moment of separation, the reunion that follows can be a rude awakening.

And I've spent a decade without going all that long without listening to Ryan Adams. For the first 3 years after I heard Heartbreaker, I don't think I went more than a day without listening to a Ryan Adams album. There was a 4 year period where, even if I went a few days or even a week without listening to one of his records, I still listened to "So Alive" every day, because it is still one of the most perfect Rock songs of all time. From the second I listened to Heartbreaker, I've loved Ryan Adams' music and haven't really been able to separate myself from it. Even when I'm on a particularly strong jag with someone else, a Ryan Adams album still finds its way into the rotation. I haven't spent a whole lot of time without him. The result of that was being able to see the continuity throughout his catalog but not differences.

The fact that Ryan Adams was getting tired and growing cynical with music never occurred to me. I didn't notice what was happening. I was too involved, I couldn't see the forest for the trees. All I knew was Ryan Adams was making records and I loved each and every one of them...nothing else mattered. And still, I guess nothing else actually matters, but a week ago I put on Heartbreaker and it crushed me, partly because of just how brilliant it is, but mainly because it finally dawned on me that this record can never happen again.

Heartbreaker was written and recorded before Lost Highway tried to turn Ryan Adams into their cash-cow, before the critics decided this guy was the second fucking coming, and then decided he was just trying to be the second coming. It was before the Whiskeytown diehards hated him for making Gold, and before the Gold diehards hated him for making Rock N' Roll. It was before anyone even knew who he was, and before he was saddled with expectations so lofty that, in the eyes of fans, critics, and his label, he had no choice but to fall short. It was before cared so much about what they wanted him to do that they failed to see what he was doing. It was before all of the above poisoned the minds and hearts of non-believers against him, and prevented his records to be truly appreciated on the grand scale that they by all rights deserved to be.

Heartbreaker happened when he was still barely more than a kid, when he still had South Carolina soil clinging to the soles of his shoes, when he had nothing to prove to anyone, and as a result, proved everything to anyone who listened. It was a captured moment in time, it was a beginning, the start to a shockingly under-appreciated yet brilliant career, and if you listen close enough, you can hear all of that in a second-long sigh at the beginning of the sixth track on the record, and that sigh, that record, is magic. I really hope you have good speakers.
B

III/IV and Some Other Stuff

2011-10-09T04:11:00.001-04:00

When III/IV came out nearly a year ago, I started to write about it, but the the more I wrote, the more I began to rethink whether or not I should. The first time I heard Heartbreaker over a decade ago, I was enamored with the music of Ryan Adams, so much so that I told virtually everyone I knew to listen to him and I was pretty emphatic about it, maybe even relentless in my pursuit to convince people that they needed to pay attention to this guy. And at the time, my overzealousness was accepted by most because we all still thought Ryan Adams was human, but eventually, when we realized he was some kind of roboticon cyborg song machine turning out records at the same rate that assembly lines used to turn out Detroit Steel, most of those people who initially decided to take my advice grew indifferent, because, even though this makes no sense to me, his profligacy was a turn-off to people. How more music from an artist you like can be a bad thing I'm not quite sure, but I guess Ryan Adams' output was simply too much for people to keep up with. Apparently, people found it a bit overwhelming. Once this happened, my constant prattling on about the brilliance of Ryan Adams began to wear on my friends.

Don't mistake me, I don't think I'm so much a force in people's lives that my incessant ramblings actually negatively influenced people and polluted their minds against Ryan Adams, but it certainly wasn't helping him, and in my own little grass-roots type of way, that's what I was trying to do. So I stopped. Or more accurately, I started trying to convince myself that I was a non-partisan fan of Ryan Adams. I eventually took this stance with Easy Tiger, I did it with Cardinology, and for the most part, I did it with Orion, and for the last 298 days I've been doing that with III/IV, just doing my best to not really talk about them all that much.

I wanted people I knew to listen to it, but I didn't want it to seem like I was demanding that people listen to it, so I chose not to write about it. But now, I'm only 23 days away from owning Ashes & Fire, the first set of newly written and recorded songs from Ryan Adams in nearly 3 years (the album's release date is technically in 2 days, on October 11, but won't see a vinyl release until November 1, so I still have 3 weeks and 3 days), and I listened to a stream of the album earlier today via ashesandfire.com, and it's so good and so earnest, I'm sick of pretending to attempt to be non-biased when it comes to Ryan Adams because I'm not. Ryan Adams is quite possibly the best songwriter of my generation, and III/IV is about as good a record as he's ever recorded.

The title III/IV is in reference to the 2 lp set being the 3rd and 4th volumes of material recorded by The Cardinals. It was the first album Ryan Adams had ever recorded sober and it was recorded during the same sessions that yielded Easy Tiger, but unlike the first 2 volumes from the Cardinals, Cold Roses and Jacksonville City Nights and the session's sister album, III/IV is a Rock record in the truest, purest sense of the term.

Sure, there are a couple of folkish moments ("Typecast", "Death and Rats"), and a couple of goofball ones ("Star Wars", "Kill the Lights"). There are some Rock N' Roll cliché breakup songs (two of the strongest songs on the record, "Dear Candy", which sounds shockingly like a Rock version of Easy Tiger's first single "Two", and "Lucky and Blue", originally released as a stream on Adams' website in 2006 under the title "France"), and a few lighthearted moments too ("The Crystal Skull", "Gracie", "My Favorite Song", and one of Adams' most striking vocal performances ever, "Kisses Start Wars"), but what really makes III/IV so special is the "everything else" on the record. The majority of this double album is comprised of darkness, desperation, and self-deprecation; elements that have never truly been a part of Adams' repertoire. The album is essentially the work of a confused and terrified man, recently sober, reflecting on his days of indulgence and doing his best to atone for past indiscretions while trying to sort out who he his without his most treasured vices. The result is visceral, confessional, honest, and starkly beautiful.

"Breakdown Into the Resolve", "Ultraviolet Light", "Users", "Numbers", "Ice-Breaker", "Sewer at the Bottom of a Wishing Well", "P.S."; all songs about Adams' realization he's in danger, all songs about alcoholism, all songs about not liking yourself that much, and in some cases, not even really knowing yourself at all. But "No" is by far the most blatant and revealing of the record.

Something is wrong, something is wrong.
Something that was making me feel good is not,
Is not, is not, is not, is not.
And nobody understands, and it's all I've got.

These songs are rife with shame and self-loathing and fear, and that probably sounds uncomfortable because it is, but these songs are also so sincere that being uncomfortable is essential. In fact, it doesn't matter how you feel because ultimately you just blessed to be allowed to be able to peek behind the curtain and see the real man behind the music. That's pretty damn brave and it's jarringly refreshing.

But really, for me, III/VI is such a great record because it is one more glaring example of why Ryan Adams is probably the uncrowned king of contemporary pop music: he simply doesn't give a fuck. He does what he wants. He indulges every whim. Even though he has occasionally released a record that feels safe, he never tries to play it safe. He was a man only limited by his record company's confidence, and now that he's thrown of those shackles, the possibilities are limitless. If he wants to, he may release a series of Folk or Alt.-Country records that sound exactly like stuff he's put out before, but he also might record something that, not in a million years, we would ever imagine he or anyone else would record.

Ryan Adams isn't beholden to a stylistic precedence. He makes the album he wants to make, not the album might make him. He doesn't make albums he thinks he should record, he makes albums he wants to record. He's about personal intuition, not popular expectation. And in a day and age where artistic exploration has taken a backseat to commercial assumption, III/IV as an album and Ryan Adams as an artist is breath of about the freshest air we're going to breathe.

Sam Beam and High School Football are a Formidable Pair: The 1st in a Series of Blogs Inspired by "Friday Night Lights"

2011-08-20T20:12:00.000-04:00

For the last 5 years, Friday Night Lights has been easily one of the best programs on television. Well-written, beautifully shot, with compelling story-lines, commanding performances, an exquisite score coupled with a rocking soundtrack; it was heads above nearly every other TV drama on broadcast television. With the series coming to a close earlier this summer and with the aid of a Netflix account, I decided it prudent for me to revisit the show in its entirety before the final episode aired, just for the sake of remembering just how we got to where we were and to give myself a greater sense of closure as one of my favorite shows took its final bow. As I ran through the first 4 seasons for a second time, I was nagged to by two ideas that seemed to escape me the first time around: 1., Life is fleeting, and 2., I don't listen to nearly enough Iron and Wine.

I'm not sure if Friday Night Lights is, at its core, a show about High School Football, or if High School Football is simply a superficial vehicle for the story-lines beneath the surface, but one way or the other, it was hard for me to watch this show the second time around without rosettes of memories from my own High School Football days opening up. It wasn't nostalgia, I wasn't reminiscing; the memories were tactile, visceral. It was smells, pains, feelings of exhaustion and frustration and glory, and they all came to me in a very abstract, almost surreal and overwhelming clump.

I started to think about the past. I started thinking about how much time had actually passed since I played a down of Football wearing pads and a helmet, where the outcome of the game actually meant something to me, and how little time seemed to have passed, and it just really drove home just how fast life moves. Time is the only thing we lose that can never be found again. Once it's gone, it's lost forever, and although that's the inherent nature of existence, it's also the great tragedy of it. If you're standing in the bed of a truck, and that truck starts moving, you're most likely going to grab onto something for security. In the physical world, whenever we feel a loss of balance, the natural response is to grab onto the largest, most fixed object we can for stability, and the same thing applies to the figurative world. Life moves at such a high speed that we grab onto the most readily available and easily graspable memories in hopes of maintaining our equilibrium, keeping up, not being left behind by time, and those memories more often than not tend to be the big ones, the milestones. Granted, the milestones are essential parts of our lives, but they're also the most easily digestible and superficial ones. But the small moments, the ephemeral, infinitesimal flashes of experience are the things that end up having the greatest impact on us as people. The big moments define time, but the small moments define us.

My wife Amanda and I started dating a little over 17 years ago. We had talked on the phone a few times before we ever met in person, and even before I had ever laid eyes on her, I was smitten. But 2 months into our relationship, she gave me this sort of confused look with a crooked half-smile, and in that moment, I knew I loved her. That look destroyed me and remade me all at once, and from that moment on, I've never wanted to be with anyone else, even at the darkest times in our union. 5 seconds, a single look, literally changed my life. Our wedding by comparison pales in significance to that 5 seconds, but I never talk about that moment although I do talk about our wedding.

And I have to say, even when we find ourselves locked into a particularly difficult time in our relationship, the memory of that look reminds me why she means more to me than any other woman ever could. The worst times with her are still better than the best times I could have with anyone else. And I get this all from a look that lasted 5 seconds that I saw 17 years ago.

The real tragedy of life is not that we are born to die, or the fact that (I imagine) even the longest of lives seem too short when they're coming to a close, but that life, moving at even its most standard velocity, moves so fast that we are almost forced to disregard those momentary but integral twigs of existence. They get shoved aside because they're too hard to hold on to when your hands are only so big and you have to do your best to latch on to the next branch that can support your weight.

This is where I was at by the time I was halfway through the 2nd episode of the 1st season of my re-watching of Friday Night Lights. As much as I was enjoying the show, I became sad. My fear that the best parts of life get shoved aside for the easy ones kept growing and growing. But in the close of what I believe was the 7th or 8th episode of that initial season, there's this moment. After a brutal and physical fight with his brother that seems to threaten the very integrity of their relationship, one of the main characters gets cold-cocked by his best friend, and so he returns home, not for solace but because he has nowhere else to go. As he navigates around the detritus that was a product of his earlier confrontation randomly strewn about the floor, he comes upon his brother in the kitchen, making a grilled cheese sandwich and reaching into the fridge for the last beer in the house. His brother hands him a bag of frozen peas for his blackened eye, slices the sandwich in two and cracks open the beer. He sits down next to him and sets one half of the sandwich in front of him, cracking the beer and setting it in between the two of them.

The duration of this scene can't be much more than two minutes, but in that short time their relationship is defined to the viewer. And though I realize it's a TV show, and the moment shared between these two characters is fictitious, it was the very kind of moment I was lamenting in real life. It was one of those little moments that mean so much even though they may seem so small. And as the shot began to slowly fade to black on the the two backs turned towards the camera as they shared a grilled cheese and a beer, the last song on the Iron and Wine/Calexico collaboration In the Reins started playing.

"Give this stone to my brother, because we found it playing in the barnyard many years ago. Give this bone to my father. He'll remember hunting in the hills when I was ten years old. Give this string to my mother. It pulled the baby teeth she keeps inside the drawer. Give this ring to my lover. I was scared and stupid not to ask for her hand long before."

"Dead Man's Will" is really about trying to make amends, but the lyrics tell a second story too. In this song, Sam Beam, the man who plays under the sobriquet of Iron and Wine, writes about bequeathing nothing of serious monetary value, but trinkets collected over the years not from those obvious milestones, but from those tiny moments that have ultimately defined the narrator's relationships with the people he loves the most, and though this is an exceptionally beautiful song, the sentiment is not an exception to the music of Iron and Wine.

Sam Beam seems to trade almost exclusively in the small moments. In countless songs like "Someday the Waves", "Promising Light", "Each Coming Night", "Upward Over the Mountain", "Radio War", "Passing Afternoon", and even in "Walking Far from Home" from his latest and most eclectic (and least "Iron and Winey") record Kiss Each Other Clean, Sam Beam as Iron and Wine is concerned with moments, not milestones.

"16, Maybe Less", another song from In the Reins, is written from the perspective of a man now in his 50's, with a wife and a son and grandchildren, all of whom he loves, yet still, he can't help but turn back to a single hour he spent with a girl when he was in his teens ("We were 16, maybe less, maybe a little more."). He's not lamenting the life that could have been or regretting the life that is, he's just fondly remembering a fleeting experience that turned out to mean more than he could have ever imagined. In "The Trapeze Swinger", he sings about a string of seemingly innocuous moments that in actuality taught him what love meant. In "Flightless Bird, American Mouth", he talks about the epiphany of love, and how a single moment, a single look, can change the very fiber of your being forever, even if you're too dense to realize it.

In the pantheon of lyricists alone, Sam Beam is a man of notable distinction, and frankly, that should be enough, but the fact that his delivery of those words is so brilliant, his very southern, very down to earth voice that's capable of reaching ethereal heights is nothing short of excruciating in the best and most beautiful sense, lends his words an honesty and validity that most could only dream of. And the melodies and music he writes to accompany those words, whether deceptively simplistic or overtly complex, is shockingly poignant and striking in it's purity and sincerity. All three of these things work in conjunction with each other, producing not simply a song but an experience.

His melodies are soaring and haunting. They're soaked in sadness and hope, and always reflect the tone of the story he's telling, and the music does the same. The bass-line that opens up the aforementioned "16, Maybe Less" just oozes the tenderness and longing of that lost love. The melody in the chorus of "Flightless Bird..." is the sound of a heart breaking because it's just too full with love. The slide-guitar on "Promising Light" sounds almost lazy at first, but upon further listens, you hear it's not apathy but the malaise of a heart torn to shreds by stupidity and bravado and the realization that through equal parts of fear and ego, you just may have destroyed the thing you should have held most sacred.

Sam Beam takes those small but almost certainly universal moments and has turned them into a soundtrack for our lives. He somehow manages to consistently and accurately depict experiences from all of our lives that we may not talk about but will never forget, and he does this all so unassumingly and with such ease that makes him seem less like a musician and more like a historian of real life. Iron and Wine may not be my favorite, but I'm definitely glad Sam Beam's out there and continues to do what he does so beautifully.

Mid-Westerners and Jeff Tweedy (Who is, Coincedentally a Mid-Westerner) aren't Dumb

2011-08-06T23:56:00.000-04:00

It only lasts 30 seconds, that's it. Just 30 seconds, a mere half a minute, but as insignificant a passage of time 30 seconds is, one half of one minute is all it takes to make a pretty damn good song into one of the most essential and definitive moments in Rock N' Roll from over the last 20 or 30 years. It happens at about the 2 and a half minute mark on the seventh song on Wilco's second record. For a little more than 2 minutes, "I Got You (At the End of the Century)" on 1996's Being There starts out as a good song, maybe even a great song, but once that guitar solo starts, it's propelled into amazing, epic, classic.

That solo's absolutely blistering: a bit bluesy, a bit dirty, a lot catchy, best heard when you're volume knob's been turned far enough into the black to push your speakers to their maximum wattage capacity, and quintessential Wilco. It's only 30 seconds long, but it's not fleeting or ephemeral. It stays with you long after the solo and the song ends. But that's Wilco.

They're a creative band who approaches every record with a fresh perspective. No two Wilco albums sound alike, but all of them sound like Wilco. They are consistently creative and artistically provocative. But what makes Wilco special are Jeff Tweedy's songs. Jeff Tweedy writes songs that are interesting and that musically, lyrically, melodically push the boundaries of perception of what popular Rock music should and could be, but are still always rooted in familiar, middle-American ideologies. They're thoughtful and thought-provoking but there's something about them that's unmistakably Mid-Western. They're cerebral and salt-of-the-earth. They're intellectual and Blue-Collar. And as simple as that sounds, it's never really been done before, or at least not before 1995, when Wilco released their first record.

Certainly, there have been "man-of-the-people", "working-class" artists before. Springsteen alone fills that void in both quality and quantity of work. But for as intelligent as Springsteen is, he's always been a man after the hearts of the everyman with little regard for the minds, not that there's anything wrong with that. But even though Jeff Tweedy doesn't avoid moving us emotionally, Wilco's music is about feeding the common man mentally. And this shouldn't be all that exceptional, but it is, because Mid-Western ideals and the prevailing image of the middle-American man has typically been humble, hard-working, God-fearing, a little weather-worn, with callused hands and good intentions, responsible, and respectable, but not intellectual. Maybe I'm wrong, but the impression I get of the world's impression of Mid-Westerners is that, unless you migrate to one of the coasts once you're old enough to make your own decisions, you're just a kind, polite, fat, white-bread rube. But Mid-Westerners are smart. We care about more than just red meat, football, and John Grisham novels (although red meat and football...come on, right?).

But it's possible to work on an assembly-line and appreciate Akira Kurosawa films. Farmers can read Kafka and Coal-Miners can admire Rothko. And even if most people don't understand this, Jeff Tweedy does. Jeff Tweedy realizes that middle-America and mid to low level intelligence are not mutually exclusive, because Wilco isn't just a band who started out in the Mid-West, they're a band that is Mid-Western. Tweedy hasn't left, he's still lounging in the Prairie State, being smart and Mid-Western, and that's awesome, because he's given me and anyone like me a voice. He's proved you don't have to be from Boston to be a janitor who can do calculus, and I'm thankful for that. Don't get me wrong, Wilco would still be one of the most interesting and best bands in contemporary music if Tweedy moved to L.A. or Brooklyn, but the fact that he's firmly rooted in Illinois and has no intention of leaving Chicago makes Wilco a band that's a little more relatable and accessible to me, an amazing band that's a little bit better, even if they are already one of the best.

Thanks for Sebadoh Kurt, I Would've Owed You One.

2011-07-24T01:01:00.006-04:00

The most important thing Nirvana gave me was an appreciation for noise. I was given a dubbed copy of Bleach as an 11 year old boy and I liked it. It wasn't the fastest or loudest thing I had ever heard. There weren't Valkyrie-wail falsettos or face-melting guitar licks, but it was the noisiest record I had ever heard and I liked it, I liked it a lot. I wanted more of it. I wanted to find other bands that were noisy as shit, bands that didn't care about state-of-the-art studios and clean production. I was never going to find a band that sounded like Nirvana, I know that now, but I found bands that felt the same, and of the bunch, Sebadoh was the best.

Sonic Youth was probably the most auteur, Dinosaur Jr. was certainly the loudest, Guided By Voices was by far the most prolific, Pavement was the most accessible, and The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion was without a doubt the most humorous, but Sebadoh was the best.

I bought my first Sebadoh album in 1994 when I still had a subscription to Rolling Stone and still had faith in the music media. I can't remember who reviewed the record, what rating it was given, or what was said about the album, but something in the review must've hit home because I went out and bought Bakesale right away. By the time I got through "Magnet's Coil", I was convinced this was one of the best albums I would ever own. After hearing "Soul and Fire" from 1993's Bubble and Scrape, I knew that Sebadoh was one of the best bands that I would ever listen to.

I still think all of bands that Bleach led me to are great. I listen to Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain and Bee Thousand on a pretty normal basis. Dinosaur Jr. can still make me smile when I'm in the right mood. JSBE's salacious post-rock, non-blues can still easily be the life of the party, and Sonic Youth is, well, for me, Sonic Youth hasn't aged as well as the others, but it's still hard to argue with Daydream Nation. But when I listen to these bands now, something's different. When I first heard each one of these bands, their sonic commonalities sounded like a state of being. And with the exception of GBV, when I listen to them now, it sounds more like, I don't want to say contrived, but maybe a little less-than-natural. Now, it sounds less like a state of being and more like a statement of cool. Not necessarily schtick or gimmick, more like a way to seem legit; like a way to seem more creative without having to be more creative, and that cheapens the records a bit. It's a super teeny tiny bit, certainly not enough for me to dislike or discredit the bands or the records. They're all good and some are great, but for the most part, the sound, or at least the impact it has on me has degraded. But not with Sebadoh. If anything, every time I listen to Sebadoh these days, I'm a little more convinced of Lou Barlow's brilliance.

For Lou Barlow and and the rest of Sebadoh (with the exception of Eric Gaffney, but the Lou Vs. Eric story is almost an entire blog on its own), the "sound" of the records was never important. The albums were recorded in low fidelity, but the songs were never lo-fi. Lou Barlow didn't revel in it. Lou Barlow never even acknowledged it. It wasn't an ideology, it wasn't an artistic statement, it was just reality, it was just the way the records sounded.

Lou Barlow's songs were never a response to being in a noisy band. If anything, Sebadoh was a noisy band in spite of how utterly brilliant Lou Barlow's songs were. His songs ache. They drip honesty. They're romantic, bitter, irreverent, hopeful. They're 3 minute examinations of the vulnerability of man, exposing, chronicling, celebrating, lamenting the human condition.

Lou Barlow can do fun ("Rebound", "Good Things"). He can do scathing ("The Freed Pig"). He can do bitter ("Cliche"), and he's amazing at reflective ("Spoiled"), but his best songs are love songs. Listen to either version of "Brand New Love", "Vampire", "Soul and Fire", "Magnet's Coil", "Think (Let Tomorrow Bee)", "Willing to Wait", "Together or Alone", or "On Fire" and you'll understand everything. I may be a inept romantic, but above everything else, I think everyone truly wants to love and to be loved. Love songs are the ones with the real power to change the world, and Lou Barlow has written some of the most enduring, honest, and heartbreaking love songs of the last 30 years. At their core, his songs are these stark, unadorned, sometimes bleak, always beautiful love songs that should move even the heaviest heart.

And that should be enough, but when you take into account the way these songs are presented, amazing becomes genius. Lou Barlow used the "lo-fi" aesthetic to propel Sebadoh's sound into an entirely different stratosphere than all of the other bands I earlier mentioned. The thick-as-mud distortion in the chorus of the Smash Your Head on the Punk Rock version of "Brand New Love", or the way "Soul and Fire" alternates between quiet-and-clean and loud-and-chaotic, or how the sparse treble of "Together or Alone" can give way to warm, heavy hum without warning or seam are the reasons why Sebadoh was better than everyone else.

Lou Barlow never used noise to justify his songs, he used as a way to increase dynamic tension in them. He used noise to exemplify feeling. He used is to punctuate ideas. He used it create juxtaposition, he used it to notate opposition. He used it to drive home his point.

Lou Barlow's songs weren't defined by noise, they were clarified through it. He never used it as a crutch or as a disclaimer, he used it as a sonic windrose. He wrote songs for Sebadoh that were inherently universal and used noise not to characterize them but to explain them. Noise didn't make Sebadoh, it just made them more awesome. 15 year old Brandon may be as big an idiot as 32 year old Brandon is, but he most certainly got two things right: Amanda's a solid lady-friend, and Sebadoh is one of the best bands anyone will ever listen to.

Saddle Creek was Alright, Bright Eyes was Amazing

2011-07-16T22:17:00.000-04:00

In my early 20's, Saddle Creek seemed like this unstoppable, almost myth-like juggernaut of a label. I don't know, it seemed like they had managed to sign the right bands. It seemed like they were doing all of the right things. Now with hindsight on my side, this seems like an almost hilarious thought, because in all honesty, I didn't really like many bands on Saddle Creek.

Azure Ray was kind of nice. Their songs were pretty, but ultimately they weren't much more than Sarah McLachlan with street cred. And Saddle Creek put out a single, pretty good Rilo Kiley record, The Execution of All Things, but it certainly wasn't anything to lose your shit over. By the time I was 25, they released two very brilliant Cursive records, Domestica and The Ugly Organ, one fine Cursive ep, Burst and Bloom, and the near-flawless album by one-trick pony, Omaha Indie-Scene supergroup Desaparecidos, Read Music/Speak Spanish, but once you throw in bands like Son Ambulance, The Faint, Sorry About Dresden, and a wide cast of other non-starter Creeksters, it should be hard to justify my feelings about Saddle Creek at that time, but it isn't, because Saddle Creek was the only label releasing Bright Eyes records, and in my early 20's, Bright Eyes was nearly the only band releasing records that mattered.

Since about 2005, I've had this on-going debate with my friends about the merit of the Bright Eyes catalog as a whole. Since the duel release of I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning, and Digital Ash in a Digital Urn, each time Conor Oberst puts out a new Bright Eyes effort, I find myself defending a post-Lifted world, trying to convince my friends that these records are good and that Conor Oberst is still a valid artist who's writing solid songs. And, in my defense, I'm right. The four records released since Lifted, or The Story is in the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground all have they're flashes of brilliance and are otherwise full of completely respectable, good songs. And the latest (and apparently final) Bright Eyes record, The People's Key just may be the most lyrically accomplished thing Oberst has ever written.

But since the release of The People's Key back in February of this year, I find myself listening to "early" Bright Eyes in the small hours a lot and I have to say, for as right as I am about Bright Eyes: 2005-2011, my friends are just as right about everything that came before, because when I hear "February 15", "Center of the World", "Oh, You are the Roots that Sleep Beneath My Feet and Hold the Earth in Place", "From a Balance Beam", "Motion Sickness", or "Amy in a White Coat" (or I guess nearly any other Bright Eyes song from Lifted... or before), I'm instantly reminded why I love this music so much.

At this point I could start prattling on about why I loved (and love) Bright Eyes (and when I say "why I do..." I guess at least a little part of me means "why you should, if you already don't): integrity, honesty, ingenuity, purity, eccentricity, creativity, blah, blah, fucking blah. Yes, Conor Oberst as Bright Eyes is high artistry wrapped up in a catchy-via-funhouse mirror package. And if you listen to those earlier Bright Eyes records, it's hard to argue with the fact that this guy just might be an absolute fucking genius, but I'm not sure any of that really matters here, because honestly, you didn't start listening to Letting Off the Happiness/Fevers and Mirrors/Oh, Holy Fools era Bright Eyes in your early 20's, I'm not sure you're going to hear what I hear.

What my friends have failed to explain and I've failed to realize is that time and place played just as important of a role in loving Bright Eyes as the music itself. Hell, it might even be more important. I mean, I'd like to think that if I heard Fevers and Mirrors for the first time today, I'd love it as much as I do having heard it a decade ago, but I actually think I would probably respect it but find it slightly annoying. I'll never know though, because at 21, I heard Bright Eyes for the first time, which might have been the perfect time.

I was old enough to recognize the brilliance of the songs and young enough to find the seemingly constant self-deprecation brave. I was old enough to be able to wade through the sonic chaos to hear the songs for what they were, and young enough to find the din and distortion charming and creative. I was old enough to respond to the intensity without fear and young enough to still be chilled by it.

Being in your early 20's now isn't the same as it was 30 or even 20 years ago. 20, 30 years ago, it would be pretty normal to be married, have a house and a kid or two by 22 or 23, but today, most people aren't even done with school yet. Being 21 or 22 in 2011 or 2001 just isn't the same as it was in 1971, even though expectations seem to be the same. It's confusing as shit. Sure, we struggle with who we are in our teens, but it's even tougher in your early 20's because at least no one expects a 15 year old to have a clue who they are, but everyone assumes a 23 year old already knows.

And really, that's all Oberst was writing about early on; the struggle of trying to figure out who you are and what your place is in the world even though you're expected to already know. And for someone my age to hear that at that time in their life was amazing, maybe even crucial. And so sure, the latter Bright Eyes records are good, possibly even great, but that early stuff, that was pure magic.

Justin Vernon Must Be Patty Duke, Because I'm Pretty Sure "Bon Iver" is the Work of His Indentical Cousin

2011-07-04T23:20:00.000-04:00

The new Bon Iver album is good. Maybe I'd even venture to say it's really good, but only while I'm listening to it. While the record's playing, I enjoy it. Hell, there are even moments that leave me astounded by its near brilliance, but then the album ends, and I'm left feeling empty, almost demoralized.

I remember the first few times I listened to For Emma, Forever Ago and being left in awe. Justin Vernon's hauntingly beautiful, ethereal voice set against a backdrop of bare music that even at its most relaxed moments (and there are a lot more relaxed moments than clamorous ones), managed to maintain a sense of urgency. For Emma... wasn't merely impressive, it was downright percussive. The record was stark without ever sounding austere. Instead, it was grand and striking even though it was subdued and arid. For Emma... sounded warmer and more endearing not in spite of but because of its sparseness. I've listened to that album several hundred times in the last four years, and never have I felt anything but dumbstruck by its unbridled honesty and unassuming sincerity.

But when I finish listening to Bon Iver, I don't feel anything like that. Don't mistake my words, had Vernon made For Emma, Forever Ago...Again, I would have felt cheated, or at least unenthused. I already own that record. I already know it inside and out. I don't need or want it again. And if the Blood Bank ep did anything, it showed us that Justin Vernon had no intention of being a derivative songwriter. Regardless of your overall impressions of the 4-song collection, Blood Bank was the work of a man who needed a directional shift. And maybe Blood Bank should have served as a glimpse into the future, but while the direction was new, the tone was familiar (although far less overt than on For Emma...). But direction and tone are obviously two wholly separate beasts, because as I listen to Bon Iver, I realize I'm no Nostradamus, because never could have predicted that, the caliber of the record notwithstanding, Justin Vernon would offer up an album utterly devoid of the heart-on-his-sleeve songwriting and earnest delivery that made For Emma, Forever Ago so flooring.

There was nothing casual about For Emma.... Justin Vernon sounds like he's bleeding for those songs. He sounds like every note he sings, every chord he plays is a necessity, absolutely vital. But on Bon Iver, regardless of how well-written the songs are, how impeccably executed the performances on the album are, how artistically admirable his attempt was, it's just not right. Regardless of how much this regrettably makes me sound like a High School Football Coach, the album lacks heart. The songs are good, but there's no conviction. There's no desperation, it's like he already feels like he's got nothing left to prove. And frankly, that sucks.

Even though an artist never has to prove a single thing to me, I want them to behave like they have to prove everything to my all of the time. The second an artist decides they have nothing left to prove (even if they don't), aren't they just going through the motions? If you're not trying to convince the world of something, haven't you rendered yourself invalid? And if you are invalid, can you still be an artist, or are you relegated to the status of entertainer, simple performer?

Has Justin Vernon gotten too big for his britches? Has working with Kanye West, Nicki Minaj, John Legend (that one kind of makes sense to me), and Rick Ross gone to his head? I would think that the Volcano Choir and Gayngs projects would have been enough of an artistic distraction to satisfy his obvious desire to escape the "confessional singer/songwriter" label, but apparently not. Has big-name, big-money artists given him a thirst for something unattainable by a simple indie fella?

Ultimately, I would say no, but I do think it's given him a level of confidence, or maybe conceit is the right word (although I sincerely hope not), that is not becoming of him, or of what the Bon Iver moniker should, or at least did, represent. Maybe Justin Vernon's trying to be some enigmatic character that he's not worthy of being, or maybe I'm just some judgmental asshole wanting to force him into parameters that make sense to me because his music is too advanced and intelligent to, but I think it's more the former and less the latter.

Really, I think that based on the Bon Iver record, Justin Vernon wanted to put as much distance between himself and For Emma... as possible without going as far as to disown the debut. I think he's been influenced by these superstar collaborations too much. I think his desire to show growth pushed him away not from what he did, but how he did it, and as a result, the album will never have that same gut-wrenching impact that For Emma... had because no amount of artistic exploration can make up for the absence of sincerity.

I don't know. Maybe all or none of that is true. maybe it's somewhere in between, or maybe it's nowhere near either. I think you'll have to pick it up and decide for yourself, because, despite all of my grousing, the album is in fact good and worth listening to. It's just a matter of whether it's an artistic progression or an egotistical regression. I didn't want it to sound like For Emma..., but I needed it to feel like it to really care, it just doesn't. No doubt, the second Bon Iver record is good, but it will never matter the way the first one did.

Obliviousness and Obsession Makes For Two Very Frustrating Months: I Really Love Okkervil River, or the 1st Post-Finn Blog

2011-06-05T01:27:00.001-04:00

I get stuck; I get stuck all the fucking time...my mind I mean. I guess "fixated" is the more apropos term, but to me, even though it may be entirely inside my head, it just feels like I can't move forward even though I'm trying my damnedest. When I find something to get excited about, my brain becomes that proverbial broken record, playing it over and over again, the same thing repeatedly, leaving virtually no room for anything else until I do something to move the figurative needle. That's the real reason why I started doing 19 Sank, While 6 Would Swim. Don't get me wrong, I feel a drive to write regardless of how amateurish my prose may be, and I'd like to think the things I have to say at least border on "slightly interesting" or "moderately valid", but really, it was a way to push the needle off the scratched groove, a way to purge. Ultimately, 19 Sank, While 6 Would Swim is a mental suppository, and thank God, because, in spite of the fact that I derive pleasure from these fixations, whether of the butt or the brain, constipation always starts to get uncomfortable. Eventually, you just need to get that shit out to start feeling normal again.

So I started the blog. It's sporadic as shit, I know. But when I find the time to put in the work, it tends to work for me, cleaning out the pipes (or the Parietal lobes or whatever) and helping me to focus on whatever new obsession might be waiting in the wings. The funny thing is, the very thing the blog helps me work through is the method I use to write these blogs. I guess it's not really a method as much as a compulsion, a fixation (there's that word again). Once I decide what I need to write about, I write probably too many blogs about it. And I'm not talking revisions, I'm talking full-on rewrites, a complete and totally different approach. Don't think you've missed anything though, you haven't. You don't get to read them, I just have to write them. It's ridiculous and pretty annoying really, having to write obsessively in order to break myself of obsession, but I've never really had a talent for being functional, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised that I have to obsess in order to be less obsessive...it makes very little sense, I know, but I usually make very little sense as a person, so I guess it is what it as, just as I am what I am (but I am no sailor, and I merely tolerate spinach, so make of it what you will). The point is, for 19 Sank I decide what I need to write about and write about it, then I decide what I wrote was not the right thing. I'm pretty sure I've used this phrase before, but what I write isn't wrong, it's just not right; it's not what I want to say.

Okay, so maybe it's a little right. If I write it, I give you my word I think it's important, it's just not the most important. So I write the blog, I read the blog, I realize the blog doesn't actually say what I want to, so I scrap it and move on to take 2, which usually turns into take 3, which probably morphs into take 4, and so on. This happens pretty much every time I write one of these things. For every 1 you read, I've probably written at least 3. It's almost humorous really, such a sloppy dude being so absolutely meticulous for something that only 8 people might read, but what can I say, I'm a fucking enigma, a puzzle within a conundrum. I do what I want, and what I do rarely makes sense.

This rewriting is actually enough of a problem that I had to put in place a "blog-law" for old B., "The Rule of 5". If I write 5 blogs, and am yet still unhappy with the results, I give up. I just try my best to move on. I figure if I can't say what I want to in 5 attempts, I'm either writing about the wrong thing or writing about the right thing at the wrong time, thus I retreat, reassess, and regroup. It's not an easy thing for me to do, but so far I've managed to do it with reasonable effect...but then I decided to write about Okkervil River.

So far, I've written 13 blogs about Okkervil River, not a single one right. So far I've tried to abandon the Okkervil River blog 7 times, but once I consciously decide to write about something else, I find myself completely disinterested after at best a paragraph. My thoughts instantly turning back to Don't Fall in Love with Everyone You See, or Black Sheep Boy, or The Stand Ins. Every time I even entertain the idea of writing about something other than Okkervil River, my mind shuts down and writing starts to become a chore rather than a joy and a release, and rather than writing, I drink a bunch of beer and listen to Okkervil River records and revel in how amazing they are. The fact is, I can't seem to write about anything other than Okkervil River because I think I need to write about Okkervil River.

But for as much as writing about this band feels like necessity to me, every single time I wrote anything, I knew even before I finished it, sometimes only a paragraph or two into it, I knew it was wrong. Even though the point I wanted to make was eluding me, every time I wrote about them, I knew I was even further away from the point I wanted to make than I was before. I knew I wasn't saying the things I wanted to say, I was just saying things that could be said.

So 2 nights ago, I sat down and read every O.R. blog I've written in succession (I save all of them until I post the "correct" one). And during this self-evaluation, the problem I was having finally occurred to me: I was approaching this blog the same way I approach every blog. Let's face it, my blogs are in a very general sense, kind of the same. Oh, I'm writing about different things, and with every subject, the content is going to be different as well, but really, my blogs are mostly me telling you why I love a band, or why I hate a band, or why something excites me or scares me or whatever, and when I do this, I tend to find the one thing that from an artistic standpoint separates (or for those negative ones, integrates) the subject in question from the herd. I give my opinion about something, and it's always based on a perspective that my friend Matt would almost no doubt call "arthouse junkie", because well, that's kind of what I am. I've said before I'm not a music snob, and I stand by that assertion, but I am pretentious when it comes to music because frankly, the pretentious side of things is usually the most artistic side of things, and that side is what gets me off the most.

And so with the Okkervil River blog, my approach was identical to that of nearly every other blog I've written. I wrote one that focused on the whole "No Depression" movement that started in the early 90's and talked about how all of those bands essentially were Country music with a Punk Rock mindset rather than a fusion between the two sounds, which from what I've gathered, was the initial intention. Don't get me wrong, I love a lot of those bands. Uncle Tupelo's catalog alone is reason enough to think the entire movement was absolutely amazing, but as far as making Country-Punk, they just didn't do it, but Okkervil River did...on their first two ep's and record, The Bedroom ep, the Stars Too Small to Use ep, and the debut album, Don't Fall in Love with Everyone You See.

I wrote another one juxtaposing the 2nd (Down the River of Golden Dreams) and 3rd (Black Sheep Boy) full length albums, plus the companion ep for the 3rd (Black Sheep Boy Appendix), talking about how the music on ...Golden Dreams
seems to be loosely thematically based on the opening track, "Down the River of Golden Dreams", a song written in 1930, and how the lyrics on Black Sheep Boy + ...Appendix use the Tim Hardin song "Black Sheep Boy" (the O.R. cover of the song opens the album the album by the way) and Hardin's life as thematic inspiration.

Then there was another one about 2007's The Stage Names (as a side note, it was with the release of this one that I began listening to Okkervil River on the recommendation of my friend Nick) and 2008's The Stand Ins, essentially a double album released piecemeal, about various aspects of Pop-Culture. And there were others, 10 to be exact, and regardless of how correct every one I wrote was, not a single one was right. But like I said, I was coming at Okkervil River the same way I attack all subjects; I was intellectualizing.

And in my defense, when it comes to Okkervil River it's really easy to do. It's easy to talk about Will Sheff's ability as a song writer to seamlessly integrate multiple styles into a single, unified Rock sound without loosing any of the integrity or uniqueness of those individual sounds, or how Sheff writes beautiful, thoughtful lyrics with intelligence and sophistication that literally no one else in music can currently compete with, or how, if you compartmentalize the individual Okkervil River records, each album has a sound that is all it's own, but when you listen to their catalog at a breadth, there's a singularity and cohesion to it that feels completely natural.

All of the things I've mentioned are valid reasons to listen to this band. They're all what normally would get me really pumped about a band, but none of them are why I listen to Okkervil River because they're all intellectual reasons for liking (or loving) this band, and for the first time in 17 years, I love a band on an almost purely instinctive level, and maybe it goes without saying, but that's a pretty big deal to me.

I love Okkervil River for how the make me feel. I love Okkervil River for the way Will Sheff's voice sounds when he sings the lines "And for a second, Something in me..." on "A Girl in Port", or "See how that light you once loved just won't shine?" on "Lost Coastlines". I love Okkervil River for the way the hair on my arms slowly rises with the tension on "The War Criminal Rises and Speaks", and as the song reaches the peak of its' crescendo and breaks out in a sort of controlled chaos, I break out in goosebumps, or the way"For Real" unexpectedly explodes for only seconds after a minute or so of quiet reluctance. I love Okkervil River for the way Will Sheff can take a gruesome subject like The Yogurt Shop Murders, and write a song that has so much heart without loosing a single bit of the abysmal darkness that a song like that should be shrouded in. I love Okkervil River for the way that "We Need a Myth" reminds me of how it felt to be innocent without ever attempting to pretend we are anything but. I love Okkervil River because I can't listen to "Unless It's Kicks" in the car without rolling the windows down, turning the stereo up, driving a little bit faster, and singing every word at the top of my lungs with a smile on my face the entire time.

And above all, I think I love Okkervil River for the sincerity and conviction of Will Sheff as a songwriter, singer, guitarist, multi-instrumentalist. When I listen to Okkervil River, I hear candor bleeding out from the speakers. Not only is what Sheff sings smart and compelling, I can't help but buy in to every notion, every idea, every phrase, every word that he breathes. You can hear that he both believes and believes in every thing he says, and his tenet doesn't simply make me believe, it makes me desperate to do so. Every song Okkervil River records is soaked in honesty and passion, and the combination is refreshing and absolutely breathtaking.

For a guy who so often gets caught up in the fact that music is art, I tend to sometimes forget that the forest is the trees. Because of my ennoblement of "music is art", I can become ultra-focused on what music and art "is", which makes it easy to forget what music and art "is supposed to be". Certainly, art should push us intellectually, but it should move us emotionally too. Sheff and Okkervil River make me think, but thankfully, they move me to no end.

Don't Paint with Poop, You're Art Will Stink

2011-03-07T02:40:00.007-05:00

I think it's probably time I admit to myself that I don't get music anymore. For about the last 2 years, I've maintained this persona of a guy who still has his finger on the pulse of contemporary tunes, but the truth is that I don't understand why any of the new "it" bands are bands at all. I hear the things I'm supposed to dig as a person who loves left-of-center music and I just don't understand it. Without realizing it, I might have become the aging-music-fan/curmudgeon; the guy who thinks that anything released after he was 26 is bad on principle, because frankly, everything new sounds like shit to me.

Okay, so I have heard some new(er) bands that I think are amazing. The Rural Alberta Advantage recorded a breathtaking debut and followed it up with a record that, although nowhere near as brilliant as the first album, manages to be not just listenable or even solid but actively very good. Florence + The Machine's Lungs, though occasionally a little too "Neo-Lilith Fair" for me to be entirely comfortable, is shockingly soulful, full of heart, and kind of remarkable. Dawes released their debut, North Hills, a simple but incredibly well-written set of songs that channels the spirit of their Laurel Canyon predecessors, like CSNY, Joni Mitchell, Jackson Browne, and the Momas & The Popas, with honesty and sincerity that's a breath of fresh air in the current musical climate. And even as vapid as it ultimately may be, that first Sleigh Bells album released last summer rocks pretty fucking hard.

And then there's new albums by old bands. In the last 2 years or so, The Hold Steady, Bright Eyes, The National, Band of Horses, Tim Kasher, The Decemberists, The Flaming Lips, and Ryan Adams (although his 2 records, Orion and III/IV were recorded 2005-2007) are just a few of the bands who have put out records that I would file under "awesome". Hell, even that last Interpol album wasn't nearly as bad as I expected it to be. And I imagine that new Okkervil River coming out in a few months will be as geniuso as ever, but still, for the most part, everything new I hear sounds derivative or worse, either painfully boring or just painful.

Honestly, I don't think I'm too old to appreciate new music. I'm a person destined to maintain a high level of mediocrity my entire life, so I was going to ever have a prime, thus I certainly haven't passed it. I'm only a stone's throw away from 32 years old, and my wife tells me I often think and behave like a child, so both physically and mentally, I'm still pretty young. But being too old to get the new bands is the only thing I can really come up with because every time I hear a new band that's supposed to be the shit, I can't help but believe that labels have started hiring retired sanitation workers for A&R jobs, because all they're doing is collecting trash and filling the record stores with garbage.

And hey, maybe I am too old and am just equally too stubborn to admit it. If I was, it would definitely make life way easier. I could just kind of give up. I could stop paying attention to what's going on. There's enough new music being released by bands I already like, so I wouldn't be in short supply of unheard tunage, and if I occasionally by accident heard a new band I did like, it'd just be icing on the cake. Plus, not only is there a boatload of old(er) stuff I have yet to explore (for instance, my record store-owner buddy Matt* played me The Black Angels the other day and those guys kick serious ass), but making the switch from the sterile and beleaguered digital existence to the purity of a life in analog ensures that my joy (problem) of record collecting won't take a hit.

Between already in-print albums I love but don't own, the mountain of re-issues that seem to be coming out on a weekly basis, and quality of selection and physical integrity of used records at Encore in Ann Arbor (I hope that place manages to stay open. If it closes, I'm not sure my soul can take it.), there's more than enough of the flat, black, and circular to keep my wallet hemorrhaging and collection growing for years.

If I was too old, I'd be alright, but I can't let it go, I have to keep listening, I have to keep trying, I have to keep ultimately punishing myself and getting annoyed and angry, so I don't think I'm too old. If I was too old, it'd be easy to throw in the towel. I'm a classic underachiever; I will never be a person unwilling to call it quits even if I have no business continuing to try. If I was too old, I'd have no problem retiring, but I can't, so I'm inclined to believe that my age isn't a factor in what I hear. Regardless of what angle I look at things or how in-depth I scrutinize this predicament, reexamine why I feel this way, I keep coming up with a single, 1 word answer: gimmick. All paths lead to gimmick.

The Record Industry seems desperate for invention. Desperate, shit, they seem downright ravenous. The bands want to solidify a sense of unique identity, small labels want to release records that sound like something no one's ever heard before, the critics want to adore the stuff that seems too "out-there" for general mass consumption; you add those things together, you end up in the situation we're in.

With the exception of Fucked Up, there's not a band on the planet who doesn't want to be heard, who doesn't want to sell records. That's an obvious truth, and you won't convince me otherwise. (In the case of Fucked Up, clearly these guys have no real desire to make it big because you can't choose a name like that without being completely ambivalent to record sales. No TV or radio station in the country is going to play a single or video by a band whose name they can't say without accruing a hefty FCC fine.) No one becomes a doctor in hopes of having no patients, no one becomes a teacher with crossed fingers and a wish for no students, no one decides to create art in any of its various forms and hopes no one ever sees it. Art is supposed to effect people. It's supposed to make us think, make us feel. It's supposed to push boundaries and buttons. It's supposed to force the consumer to reevaluate their ideologies. At the very least, it's supposed to make us feel good. If no one's there to be effected by it, then the art an artist creates doesn't fulfill its primary directive.

Kurt Cobain was the archetype of the disenchanted artist and even he didn't hate selling records, he hated the people he was selling records to. He didn't like the fact that the kind of people who beat him up in high school were also the same kind of people who were beating up new defenseless kids while humming the tune to "Smells Like Teen Spirit". If you could've convinced Kurt Cobain that his records were only being bought by 10,000 misanthropic teens who came out of the woodwork because they finally had a public voice, he would've been ecstatic. Instead, a lot of cookie-cutter, white-bread assholes who hated anything that didn't fit into their limited rubric of "normal" loved "Come as You Are", and the result of said equation is Kurt Cobain's misery-fame.

Bands want to be heard. They want to sell records. Maybe they're not looking to be Micheal Jackson or N'SYNC, but they want to have fans. This has been the case since time immemorial, but recently, I'd say the last 2, maybe 3 years, what always was changed. Bands still want to sell albums, but they don't want to be beholden to any other band. Suddenly, the idea of influence has become pornographic. There's been a ton of music released since the invention of the phonautograph in 1857. Out of that ton, at least a few hundred lbs. have been brilliant. Usually, these brilliant artists are the ones who pass on their genius to other budding geniuses and the cycle thankfully continues. But lately, it seems that bands don't want to derive comparison. They want to be heard as a solely unique, entirely individual entity, almost as if their music appeared out of thin air and leapt onto the tape or a hard-drive. Bands want to be seen as brilliant and want that perceived brilliance to be entirely a making of their own design. This wouldn't be a problem if they could write good songs.

I'm not arguing against eccentricity or individuality in music. If a band (artist) can write a good song and approach the application of that song in a new and fresh way, well, that's what makes music so exciting. That's what makes music worth listening to. But if a song isn't well-written, it doesn't matter how unique or eccentric the execution is, it's still just a bad song played in a different way. I mean, as far as I know, there's never been a painter who's decided to work in a fecal medium. I could paint a picture with my or other people's dook, and it would be a unique approach, but that painting would still smell like shit. And I don't know about you, but I think poop smells bad.

This is, I guess, in a crass nutshell, the approach I see the new "it"bands taking. It's not simply style over substance, it's style without substance. It's like these bands have tried so hard to sound different that by the time they get to actually writing a song, they're spent, so they hope that people will be so amazed by the fact that they sound so very different that the fact that they have no ability to write a solid or enduring song will be missed, and sadly enough, that approach is kind of working.

Bands like Deerhunter, The XX, Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti, or the latest piece of indie-tale, James Blake, are great at sounding different, but bad at sounding good. The songs have taken a backseat. Where are the hooks, where's the melody? Where's the skeleton, the backbone, the nerve center of popular music? Where's the feeling, the life? They, and many others like them, have hawked it for a stab at flavor of the month status. Get your name out there, and hopefully, enough sheep will be within earshot to herd. Sound used to be a vehicle for the songs, but it seems that song has become the means for delivering a sound, and that's a shame.

I don't know, maybe I'm too old or too pedantic. Maybe I'm too stubborn or too pedestrian. Maybe I'm provincial or parochial or some other applicable "P" word. It's possible. I might be any or all of those things. Who knows? At least I don't. But I do know I will take the 20 second guitar solo in Wilco's "I Got You (At the End of the Century) over the longest Toro Y Moi song in history.

*Underground Sounds, 255 E. Liberty Suite# 249, Ann Arbor, MI 48104. If you live here or find yourself in the area, do yourself a favor and visit this store. Not only is the proprietor Matt knowledgeable, friendly and accommodating, his store is just probably the best I've ever been to. The selection is remarkable, and if he doesn't have what you're looking for, he'll get it for you.

The Rentals are Fredo Corleone?

2011-02-28T01:05:00.001-05:00

I've been thinking a lot about The Killers lately, but only because I've been listening to Pinkerton a ton. You wouldn't think the Killers and Weezer have anything in common, and sonically, I guess they don't, but after the release of both of their first albums (which incidentally came almost exactly a decade apart: Weezer ("The Blue Album") in May of 1994, Hot Fuss in June of 2004... not sure if that's poignant or not, but whatevs), both bands found themselves in near identical situations, and both bands chose dramatically different paths for their second records. The early careers of both Weezer and The Killers may have only coincidental similarities, but when looked at in tandem, the first 2 years of their recording careers serve as the perfect examples for both the good and the evil that goes along with super-stardom.

Both bands released their debuts to little immediate fanfare. Both band's first singles petered out before cracking Billboard's Top 50 ("Somebody Told Me" reached #51, and "Undone (The Sweater Song)" reached #57), both albums took off commercially with the release of the second singles ("Buddy Holly" and "Mr. Brightside"), and both albums eventually went Triple Platinum in the US.

But as I look back now, what really seems to be the tie that binds these guys is that, when listening to these records when they first came out, I got the distinct impression from both bands that the guys who made these albums probably got beat up by the cool kids in High School: Weezer for being dorks who spent their weekends playing D&D while cranking Fair Warning or Dressed to Kill, The Killers for being effeminate boys who cared more about fashion than football. Either way, both bands wrote and recorded fantastic debuts that would clearly become hits in the sequestered world of Indie-Rock, but be unlikely (but not undeserving) conquerors of the mainstream Rock universe. Both bands seemed to operate too far outside of the boundaries of normal (nerd-central and hipster-metro-sexual) for mainstream audiences to be comfortable enough to make them successful. Clearly, I couldn't have been more wrong. Both bands achieved that second scenario...crossover success.

There isn't a negative connotation in the general sense of the term "crossover success". It really just means that an artist who should have a niche audience makes a record that satisfies the needs of those outside of that niche. I'm sure there are apartment-dwellers in Brooklyn cranking Taylor Swift, just as there are 13 year old, upper-crust, private school suburbanites in my neck of the woods blasting Jay-Z. And the Jigga fans that bought the "In My Lifetime" single out of Damon Dash's trunk in 1993 aren't pissed at Jay because a bunch of entitled snots bought The Blueprint 3. My guess is that most of them see his ability to sell records to kids who have no clue about where he's coming from or what he has to say to be a testament to his talent. His shit's just that good. But "crossover" doesn't mean the same thing in the street-cred-obsessed-but-not-from-the-streets world of Indie-Rock.

Generally speaking, in Indie-Rock, "crossover" is really just another term for "sell-out". When a band on the rock fringe finds itself in the warm and unlikely embrace of the common folk, Indie-Rock fans usually jumped ship about 3 months earlier. But after their debuts, both The Killers and Weezer found themselves in the dubious position of achieving mainstream success while retaining their niche appeal. Even with the chart-topping albums and FM pop radio-friendly singles, Indie fans didn't abandon them. I don't think commercial ascendancy was necessarily embraced by the cool kids, but they didn't lose interest either. And as the clamor for a second record exponentially grew, both bands found themselves in the same position, only a decade's worth of time apart. (Weezer released their second album in September of 1996, The Killers in October of 2006, exactly 28 months after each their debuts.)

Very few bands have have the luxury of finding themselves in such a precarious circumstance. But when a band is confronted with this unlikely situation, it's time to make hard and important decisions; what direction does record #2 take?

You could go the Red Hot Chili Peppers' route and stay the course. (Granted, the Chili Peppers didn't find themselves in such a place until after their 4th record, but still...) It's certainly the safest road to travel. You could record a couple of great records still. (After RHCP broke through with Mother's Milk, they recorded the absolutely brilliant Blood, Sugar, Sex, Majik, the solid One Hot Minute, and the remarkable Californication.) You'll probably lose 10 to 25% of your overall fan-base to boredom, and you run the inevitable risk of eventually becoming invalid (i.e., Stadium Arcadium) but you'll retain the bulk of your fans, probably gain some new ones, and ultimately enjoy a relatively solid commercial harvest.

Road #2 is the Coldplay route. Taking this path is playing it more than safe; it's playing it commercial. You can adapt your music to market trends, make songs that are well-written but so absolutely white-bread, dry-toast, horribly uncreative and obviously formulaic that they clearly cater to the lowest artistic common denominator and result in records that sell like hotcakes but sound and ultimately are soulless and nearly indistinguishable from anything else you (or anyone else on top 40 radio, for that matter) have recorded and are an absolute tedious listen to anyone who isn't a sheep or over 40 with a desperate desire to be hip without hurting their ears. Oh, Coldplay sells a shitton of records, but at what cost? You'll make more effing money than you can ever hope to spend, and you'll get to marry Gwyneth Paltrow, but you'll no longer be any good...and you'll name your daughter Apple (not so hot either).

Then there's road #3. The third path, the one least traveled. This is the route with the greatest level of risk/reward...the Nirvana route. You could look at your breakthrough record and acknowledge that it was a success, drawing in and hooking the hardest core of fans as well as the most casual of listeners and make the decision to up the ante, expand the boundaries of modern commercial musical mores, break new ground, not simply try to push the envelope but attempt to fucking set it on fire and burn it to cinders. You can try to alter the face of modern music. The impact might not be directly noticeable, but it will ultimately manipulate the shape and parameters of contemporary tuneage. Even if your contribution doesn't engender an automatic change in popular music, it can at least pave the way for future endeavors, whether from you or artists influenced by you. Even if your attempt at progressive adaptation falls on deaf ears initially, it may and probably will result in some up-and-coming youngster fucking up people's world and making modern music a more compelling force because of being influenced by that record you made.

So if the parallels I see between the first two years of both Weezer's and The Killers' careers aren't completely imagined, this is where their paths diverge. Weezer chooses one road, The Killers choose another. This is where these two bands truly become different. Weezer goes one way. and essentially, The Killers became the Indie-Rock Saruman the White.

The Killers had the world by the balls, and that grip was well deserved. In 2004, Hot Fuss was about as good as Indie-Rock gets. Even people who didn't like that album bought that album because it was totally irresistible. It was the perfect mix of Indie street cred and sugary-sweet, radio-friendly pop. Every song on that record could have been a hit. They were that good. The Killers were poised to unite, or at least bridge the gap a little between the arthouse* sect and the mainstream herd. They could have taken the unlikely situation that Hot Fuss generated and pleased the hipster contingent while potentially expanding the world of the imaginatively inept by pushing the boundaries of their creative indulgences, even if only slightly, and helped to usher in a new era of commercially viable music that was just as artistic as it was marketable. They had the opportunity and the means. In 2004, if Indie-Rock bands were Istari, The Killers were certainly the leader. But like that Son of a Bitch Saruman, they got scared and greedy.

Let's face it, Saruman was no idiot. You don't get to be the leader of all Wizards on Middle-Earth if you're a dummy. He saw the writing on the wall. He saw that the potential for success was at best slim. Shit, everybody saw that the potential for destroying Sauron hung around the neck of a naive little guy with big hairy feet. Can Hobbits even run with those feet? And Hobbits were always full of greasy meat and beer, that's hardly the diet for an active hero. How is some full-bellied, kind of drunk dude who's never left home going to elude the Nazgûl flying around on the mounted backs of the Fell Beasts, let alone The Dark Lord Sauron, if he can't even run because he's got a bunch of junk sloshing around in his breadbasket and his feet are too big to be graceful?

Things looked bleak in Middle-Earth when the fate of the world rested on dear Frodo's shoulders. It didn't take a genius to see the potential benefits in becoming a turncoat, but Gandalf didn't bail, neither did Aragorn or, Éowyn, or Pippin, and sweet Sam, well, frankly, Samwise Gamgee risked just as much as Frodo did with a lot less glory. They didn't bail because they had principles. They all thought it was better to die fighting for good than throwing on the manacles of evil, no matter how comfortable and stylish they might be.

But not Saruman. No, Saruman got scared. Saruman saw the potential for failure in supporting Frodo and the rest of his Fellowship of misfits, and the possibility for great wealth and comfort in backing that very darkest of horses, The Dark Lord of Mordor, Sauron. So he took the easy way out. He took the road that seemed most lucrative and least risky. He took the path of Coldplay.

Okay, so Saruman had Wormtongue doing his bidding as a result, and he did get that kind of kick-ass army of blood-thirsty Orcs at his disposal, but what was he left with? Wormtongue killed him. He took the wrong path to avoid death and gain wealth only to be cast out of society and die at the hands Gríma Wormtongue, a filthy sycophant, a grimy, slimy liar; a lowlife if there ever was one.

Reenter The Killers, welcoming us to Sam's Town. They had the chance to change everything, but just like Saruman, they chose the easy way out. They feared obscurity, they craved a wider commercial appeal. What they ended up with was a record that has easily one of the most exciting lead singles of the last decade, and 11 other tracks that make dust-covered dog shit look like a motherfucking thrill-ride.

When I first heard "When You Were Young", I expected Sam's Town to be one of the greatest records in the history of the world. (Had they not so blatantly ripped-off Springsteen, "When You Were Young", probably would have been one of the best songs The Killers ever recorded; with the obvious theft, it was without a doubt the best song The killers ever recorded.) Instead I got one of the best songs I had heard in a long time, and a bunch of other boring songs designed to adequately coexist with their previous material and generate record sales. They aren't necessarily awful, they just aren't good. They're boring, insincere, middle of the road, insubstantial tracks. In the end, 11 of the 12 songs on Sam's Town seem utterly lifeless. They're not Rock songs, they're jingles for toilet paper or cotton-balls or any other innocuous substance you can think of. Those songs aren't alive, they just exist. And for me, they would have been better off recording nothing at all.

What should have been a game changer turned into nothing more than a slightly better rendition of everything else. It wasn't unlistenable, there was just no reason to listen to it. It was sterile and manufactured. It was a record designed to sell rather than a record that sold a ton because of a brilliant design. The Killers had an opportunity to reinvent the wheel, but instead they chose to manufacture a new brand-name tire. They put out the same product virtually everyone else was, they just slapped a different name on it. The Killers didn't simply drop the ball, they cremated the fucker.

Weezer on the other hand did the exact opposite. (Okay, I guess I have to acknowledge that Weezer actually did the exact same thing The Killers did, they just did it one album later. I guess if I'm sticking with the literary analogies, this would make Weezer the Micheal Corleone of Indie-Rock. [Does that make The Retals Fredo?] Micheal tried to do the right thing, tried to avenge his father and legitimize the Corleone fortune even though, at least at first, he felt like he had no place wallowing in the mire of "The Family Business". Ultimately though, the desperation he felt as a result of the deaths of first his brother and then his father thrust him into a life that was too cavernous and alluring for him to reject. He started out sweet and ended up evil, but at least for my purposes, the most important thing to remember is that between his two poles, he was a hero.)

"The Blue Album" was recorded, "The Blue Album" was released, "The Blue Album" was huge. The success of Weezer gave Rivers Cuomo opportunity. As Weezer's primary songwriter, Rivers Cuomo certainly could've opted for road #1 or #2. Both would have most certainly made him a buck and an even bigger household name. That's obvious, because their second self-titled album (their third record, "The Green Album"), sold over a million copies in the US and peeked at #4 on the Billboards even though it's only 28 minutes of I guess respectable but remarkably derivative songs ("Photograph" is a pretty solid song, and "Smile" is ultra rocking, but other than that, it was really more of the same from record #1 without any of the excitement of novelty.) But with Pinkerton, Rivers Cuomo decided to walk the path least traveled, that 3rd road, the "Nirvana Road".

Pinkerton's almost 15 years old. That amazes me, because as I played it tonight, it sounded fresh, exciting, relevant. Pinkerton sounds just as new and valid today as it did 14½ years ago. When Rivers Cuomo wrote the songs that collectively became Pinkerton, there were no aspirations of grandeur, no attempts at super-stardom in mind, he was just a man hemorrhaging, a man in need of catharsis, a man who deserved exorcism. The fact that everyone and their mothers knew he was the guy who sang with The Fonz didn't mend a lifetime of rejection, disappointment, and marginalization. That's why he wrote Pinkerton.

For Pinkerton, Rivers Cuomo skinned himself. He stripped away all airs and exposed himself; all of the dirty, painful, uncomfortable bits were laid out for mass consumption. For as much hook as "The Blue Album" had, as much as it rocked and crunched, it was never as honest, as sincere, as emotionally bare, or as brave as Pinkerton. RC hung it all out on the line with Pinkerton; he acknowledged the existence of the restless skeletons and then he threw open the closet door, exposing himself to the entire world.
And that's just conceptually, lyrically.

Musically, this record is about as adventurous and uninhibited as the band has ever been. The music courses with pain, disillusion, and cynicism. Rivers Cuomo's voice has never sounded anywhere near as passionate and brazen. The gritty distortion swallows almost every expertly written and delivered guitar riff. The performance given by Pat Wilson isn't simply adequate but downright savvy, and Matt Sharp's bass is not simply brilliant but quite possibly the backbone of the entire operation. It's how Pavement would have sounded if they wanted to be successful.

No meticulous overdubs, virtually no attention to aural detail; the band entered the studio with the songs, their instruments, and a handful of mics, recording the songs live from a single room to tape with virtually no production whatsoever. It was a minimalist approach to a massive undertaking with masterful results. It was important for the moment as well as the song to be captured. It was more important to chronicle the spirit of the endeavor than to manufacture a product for the consumer. The result is an unbridled and sincere record devoid of manicuring. There's no pretension or preconceived notion, only an organic essence to a crop of remarkably honest and unabashed songs. It's amazing. It's inspiring. If it's not genius, it's just a shade short of it. And 15 years later, it's just as essential to me as it was when I first heard it.

Okay, so after Pinkerton, Weezer went all Micheal C. on us. After Pinkerton, Rivers Cuomo turned to the dark side (could Weezer also be Darth Vader? Would that make their tour bu the Death Star?) because he couldn't handle the commercial dejection of his soul-offering. So what? None of that matters. What does matter is that for one single, brief, but nonetheless shining moment, Rivers Cuomo was a hero. For that one moment, RC had enough heart to record Pinkerton. It's not a typical Weezer record, it's the quintessential one. Maybe Rivers Cuomo gave up greatness for solace. We still have Pinkerton, an single offering more chock full of valor than most artists can hope to achieve with their entire career. Do doubt, now Weezer is who Weezer "is now", but they once were so much more, and Pinkerton proves that. And hey, they may no longer be "my" Weezer, but at least their not The Killers.

(*The word arthouse™ means pretentious and was coined by Matt McKenna)

"The Long and the Short of It: A Focused and Truncated sort of Autobiography" or, "Motivations of an Old Toaster: A Manifesto"

2011-02-18T23:09:00.011-05:00

An Introduction:

You don't know this, but I've written 17 blogs over that last 6 months. You don't know this because I haven't posted a single one of them. Okay, so none of them are "finished", per se, but they exist. They're all nearly done. They're on the precipice of substantial. They're there, all fuzzy and flickering in and out out reality, trying their hardest to break through the plain of idea and theory into the realm of actuality, but these writings have a single, significant stumbling block...the writer.

I keep writing; I always write. But regardless of how much I've liked the finished product, it was wrong. I was always wrong. I would tell myself it wasn't good enough, wasn't funny enough, wasn't clear enough, but really, the only problem was it wasn't "right" enough.

It's not that what I was writing was factually incorrect or misrepresentations of my opinions, it was the subject matter that was wrong. They were all fine subjects and I hope to finish and publish them very soon, but I've been dwelling on something for quite sometime, something that I have needed to get out, but have kept side-stepping. The irony of course is that by standing in the way of what I should be writing, the things I wrote stood in my way.

But no more...I'm done. After great contemplation and a much needed pow-wow with my super-good-buddy Liz, I've decided fear will not be my master. I'm too tired and too frustrated to be scared of appearing unbalanced. I have something to say, a blog to write, a blog that is probably the most egotistic and self-centered one I will ever write, but so be it. The more I've thought about it, the more I'm convinced I have to write it if for no reason other than emotional exorcism, catharsis, or self-preservation. As one final note, it is not my intention for what is written here to sound either self-deprecating or condescending, but there's a good chance it will be both. Oh well, here goes nothing...

The Long and the Short of It or Motivations of an Old Toaster

I'm not like you, or at least I'm not like literally every other music fan I've ever met. Everyone I know, everyone I've ever talked to about music (and if I've talked to you, there's a 99% chance music has come up. I probably forced the topic.) seems to have a singular similarity, they're looking for a visceral response to the music they listen to. Whether the provocation is emotional or physical, in order to fall in love with a song, album, artist, they need to be moved. This is something I do not need.

Don't get me wrong, an emotional response is great. Hell, an emotional response is invigorating, liberating, amazing, but for me an emotional response is simply a welcome byproduct. For me, music is an intellectual pursuit. A song can't even begin induce an emotional reaction if it doesn't make me think first. (Okay, so that's a blanket statement that doesn't cover all the bands I love. It doesn't account for Sigur Rós [I don't understand a thing those guys are saying], the Misfits, The Ramones, any of my beloved 80's Metal [exception within the exception: Metallica, Anthrax, Megadeth, White Lion], Wham!, or Kelly Clarkson, but "exception to the rule", writer's prerogative, and all that shit...they don't count in this instance.)

My friend John has always said I'm a horrible party DJ because I don't abide by Party Music rules, and I could never figure out what he meant. But since I've been trying to figure out what makes me different from all of my friends, I've realized that that statement is completely wrong for me, but he is, in fact, entirely right. The fact is, I have a solitary emotional response to the music I listen to, happiness. The Cure's Pornography makes me feel exactly the same as The Cure's The Head on the Door. I just feel good. But that's because Robert Smith and the rest of his rotating gang of bros that have encompassed The Cure over the last 3 decades never fail to make me think. Lyrically, Robert Smith has always written remarkably poetic, insightful, thoughtful words. And from a historical perspective, you can track the trajectory of The Cure's stylistic metamorphosis through their biographical timeline. Even though the series of singles released between November of 1982 and October of 1983 share no sonic resemblance to the songs recorded for and released on Pornography in May of '82, without the latter, the former would not have existed. That is a tale for a different day, so I won't go into it, but believe me, it's true.

And this (both the discovering and eventual knowing and dwelling) excites me. Getting to hear this stuff, know how it all intersects and interconnects is for me just pure, unbelievable, unmatchable, pulsating energy. Deducing this, dissecting it is intrinsically scholastic, but it's also unyielding in its brilliance. For me, thinking about this is fun, and that's makes the music fun. So even though the songs on Pornography are quite possibly the antithesis of fun, the fact that it gives me something to think about is fun, thus it makes me happy, thus Pornography makes me happy (I'm talking about the album, but I certainly see the humor here), thus I am happy when I listen to Pornography. So for me listening to Pornography at a party makes total sense. And this logic applies to everything I have ever loved.

Being given the opportunity to deconstruct what a band or artist is doing is what I love about music. Without that, I am only capable of at best liking it. In order for me to love something, it has to be intellectually compelling in one form or another. That's what does it for me, and once I have that, I'm happy...and there's that emotional byproduct. And if this was the only issue, it wouldn't be an issue at all. So what if I want something different out of the music I listen to than you do. You want something different from me, so it should at least be a wash. But of course, it's me, so there's always another issue.

If pending fatherhood has forced me to do one thing, it's been to attempt as best I can to seriously examine who I am as a person. I don't want my bullshit to become my kid's bullshit. I don't want my baggage to become my child's inheritance. In doing this very bare-bones self-diagnosis, I've discovered that my problem is I'm an old toaster.

Everyone's had one at one time or another. You know the one I'm talking about; the toaster that, in order to properly brown bread into that state of golden and crispy edible accoutrement that is a staple on breakfast tables around the world you have to "toast" the bread on one side, flip it over and "toast" it on the other. If you're particularly unlucky, you might have to jiggle the lever in just the right way to make the thing turn on at all.

Well, that's what I am. I am the human equivalent of that. I function, just not in the intended way. I can hold down a job, conduct conversations without educing fear in my conversant, perform the basic vitals necessary to survive, but outside of that, I kind of begin to fail as a human. I'm sort of like a believable imitation of a person. I am dysfunctionally functional. I hesitate to call myself crazy, but I have to admit, a more apt term continuously seems to escape me. Maybe quirky or not-quite-right are more satisfactory terms, but I don't know, crazy seems to just ring a little more true to me. Oh, I'm not stabby or rubber-room crazy, I'm just incapable of functioning in a full and normal capacity in the realm we call the real world.

Maybe I'm being a little unfair to myself. Maybe I'm not crazy, but I'm definitely not normal, I'm definitely flawed. Whether I'm crazy or just a little broken, the result ultimately ends up being the same, I'm a little fucked up and communication seems to be the root of the majority of those flaws. It probably sounds funny that the loudest guy in any room who has apparently no filter for what is and is not appropriate social conversation should say he has a hard time communicating. I think I come off as an open book type of person, but I'm not. I'm actually pretty fucking guarded. I think I also often come off as a pretty easy going guy, but again, I'm not, or at least not entirely. Don't get me wrong, I like having fun, I enjoy jokes and laughing. I'm not saying I'm dark and brooding, but I am somewhat intense. The way I think, the way I feel, internally, I'm kind of severe. Because of the severity of my personality, I have very little tolerance for small talk, but because of the insularity of my nature, I have a hard time talking to people about the things I want to talk about, the things that actually matter.

So where does that leave me? Well, kind of fucked is where. Essentially, unless I feel like I can trust you 100%, I have a hard time showing you the dark, cold, abyssal waters that exist beneath my surface. There are probably only 5 people on Earth who know the whole me. It's not that what everyone sees isn't me, it's just not the whole me. And if you're close to me but don't think you're one of those 5 people, don't feel bad. If you're my friend, that means I admire, respect, and love you. It's not anything you did; it's me, it's my hang-up. I'm not sure why I'm like this. I wasn't raised that way. I'm not some über-masculine, Clint Eastwood as Dirty Harry type. I'm no Cromagnon man (although if Brendan Fraser's portrayal of Link in 1992's Pauly Shore vehicle "Encino Man" was anywhere near historically accurate, I might not be giving the proper credit to the intuition and range of emotional depth of the Neanderthal). Still, there's a real fear attached to the idea of truly exposing myself. Maybe it's fear of vulnerability, maybe it's a fear that, if I allow you to see the whole messed-up picture, you'll decide I'm not worth the energy. Maybe it's something entirely different that I hasn't occurred to me yet. I don't know. Nonetheless, here I am and here it is.

"So what does any of this have to do with music?", you ask. Well, music has served as my great neutralizer. If you like music, and I like music, this the one way in which I know you and I are the same. Thus, I have used music as a way to safely reveal myself to you. I relate to the world around me through the music I listen to and love. If I recommend something to you, that probably means I'm trying to, in my own backwards, cryptic way, open up to you. I'm trying to show you something about me that I think you may not know. I'm attempting, in what I realize is the most unobvious way, to be a better friend, or open up to you in a way I probably haven't yet. The music I listen to is rarely music I simply like, it's part of me. It's someone's unintentional yet probably apt interpretation of an aspect of my personality. So by recommending you listen to this, I guess I'm sort of indirectly hoping that we'll get a chance to later talk about it, and as a result, you'll gain a greater understanding of who I really am.

Oh, I realize this is asinine. Not only would I have to actually tell you that this is what I was doing for you to get it, but you'd also have to listen to music the same way I do to glean what I was trying to convey, which we've already established is probably not the case. I guess in the end, what's important here is that I've finally realized this. My expectations are unfair and unrealistic. And although I'm 100% sure that I won't stop attempting to cram the music I love down your throat in order to put myself on display, I'm going to make a concentrated effort to be a little more obvious, a little more open. I guess this is one part explanation, one part personal exposé, one part self-gratification, and one part apology. I'm sorry I've been a kind of crappy friend to most people, but it's not because I don't love you, it's because I don't know how to say it, and for that, I'm sorry. I'm going to try to be better. And if you appreciate it, do me a favor, and when my baby is old enough to understand, let he or she know that the mere idea of their existence made their dad try to be a better person.

Protractors+Crystals=The Shit, Whod've Guessed?

2011-02-05T22:11:00.011-05:00

I think most people have flashes of genius; most people have great ideas. Almost all of us have those moments where we think "wouldn't it be cool if..." or "wouldn't it be funny if..." or "wouldn't it be crazy or weird or amazing if...", and we're probably right, it probably would be cool or funny or crazy, wierd, or amazing but it seems too hard or too ridiculous or too far-fetched to even try, so we don't, but Wayne Coyne does, Wayne Coyne always does. If Wayne Coyne dreams it, he does it. This alone would make it hard to have anything but respect for The Flaming Lips, but the fact that no matter how maniacally insane Wayne Coyne's ideas are, they always seem to work makes The Flaming Lips one of the greatest bands in the history of Rock n' Roll.

Last night, I listened to In a Priest Driven Ambulance for the first time in probably at least a year, and I couldn't help wondering how, if this record was released in 1990, every record since then hasn't been amazing? I mean, it's all right there; The Lips showed everyone how to make a brilliant record. Okay, so maybe it's a stretch to believe ...Ambulance should have inspired all music. Maybe expecting SWV to release It's About Ambulances, Snoop Dogg to drop Prieststyle, or Jordy's hit single to have been "Dur dur d'être prêtre" is a bit much to ask. But there has been a lot of Rock music released over the last 2 decades, still I have yet to hear a band who has been obviously influenced by The Flaming Lips. How can this be?

It can't. It's simply not possible. I'm sure there are bands out there who have been influenced by The Flaming Lips. I'm sure I've listened to bands who have been influenced by The Flaming Lips. I'm sure I like or maybe even love bands who have been influenced by The Flaming Lips, but it's never sounded obvious that a band has been influenced by The Flaming Lips because, unlike pretty much any other band in history, it's impossible to believably replicate the sound of The Flaming Lips.

I listen to a lot of music. I love a lot of music. I can't imagine a life without The Cure. I adore Ryan Adams. I love Wilco, Joy Division, Bright Eyes, and even when Morrissey has released something bad (Smiths or solo), it's still better than 99% of everything else out there. But regardless of how unique you are, you can almost always find another band who has clearly ripped you off. Oh, I'm not saying it's as good as the original or that it's even good at all, but the attempt is unmistakable.

But The Flaming Lips, well The Lips are just too crazy. The Lips are fucking nuts. I think you have to comprehend to effectively imitate, and the only thing any of us will ever understand about The Lips is they are completely incomprehensible. You never know what Wayne Coyne's going to do. You only know that it will probably blow your mind.

Like a lot of people, the first thing I heard from The Flaming Lips was "She Don't Use Jelly". I bought Transmissions from the Satellite Heart with expectations of mild rocking with boat loads of comedy. Instead, I got a remarkably chaotic and equally brilliant record with at best an occasionally humorous moment (the lyrics for "She Don't Use Jelly" were and remain ridiculously funny, and it's hard not to crack at least a tiny smirk at the gelatinous quiver of Wayne Coyne's post-Ruthless Records voice). Transmissions... made me smile, but it was certainly nothing to laugh at. From the second I heard "Turn it On", I knew that these guys were no joke. They might have a sense of humor, but there was nothing funny about them. They were pure Rock n' fuckin' Roll, period.

But frankly, that's just who The Flaming Lips are. They are pure American Rock n' Roll to the N^th degree. Whether it's the "Replacements on acid and amphetamines" sound of the Ruthless Records albums (Hear It Is, Oh My Gawd!!!...The Flaming Lips, Telepathic Surgery, and In A Priest Driven Ambulence), the futuristic, communal lasciviousness of Hit to Death in the Future Head
(This album's always sounded dirty to me. It's probably only because of the use of the word "Porn" in "Talkin''Bout the Smiling Deathporn Immortality Blues (Everyone Wants to Live Forever)"), the intense Space-Rock of the aforementioned Transmissions..., the crunchy, chaotic sincerity of Clouds Taste Metallic, the conceptually adventurous spirit of Zaireeka (in a practical sense, Zaireeka is a bit much to handle, but you can't fault Coyne and the rest of The Lips for trying), the shimmering, silken beauty of The Soft Bulletin, the sentimental whimsy of Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, the sweeping disjointed grandeur of At War with the Mystics, the ultra-stylized and epically ominous Christmas on Mars, the mechanized brilliance of Embryonic, or the remarkably original yet shockingly true take on Pink Floyd's classic masterpiece Dark Side of the Moon, The Lips are calculatedly chaotic and destructively dissonant while always maintaining a symphonic ornateness; a delicate, focused, intricate, structural integrity.

The Flaming Lips are simply amazing. They have consistently managed to release the most insane music of the last three decades (that's right, they've been around for nearly 30 years...doesn't that make you feel super old?). They're music is always unique, fun, slightly unsettling (in the best possible way) and incredibly chaotic, but the brilliance of The Lips is that within that chaos are amazing songs. If you strip away all of the din and bedlam, you're fundamentally left with timeless songs played in the most irreverent way. Ultimately, this is why The Flaming Lips sound is unable to be replicated. They are simultaneously universal and antithetical. They are both experimentally sterile and classically touching. They are everything to anyone. They're science and mysticism, they are quite possibly the best American Rock n' Roll band recording today.

If you're not a Flaming Lips fan, do yourself a favor and become one, because there's no way around it, these dudes are the shit.

Napster, and the Softest Bullet Ever Shot

2010-07-29T20:11:00.019-04:00

Napster fucked us, plain and simple. It was like we all became crackheads. It was cheap and as long as you knew where to go, it was easy get and you could take as much as you could carry. It felt good at first, but before we knew it, we couldn't stop using it. Eventually, it left us hollow, a shell of our former selves. When we looked in the mirror, we didn't recognize who we saw. We became mp3-addicts, freebasing electronic rocks through our Ethernet cables, forgetting how to live and how to listen to music.

Trust me, I know because I was a huge user. Oh, it started out innocent enough...born out of curiosity and a desperate desire for out-of-print Cure b-sides; I turned to Napster as a way to satisfy my completest urges, but before I knew it, I had stopped buying music all together and started downloading songs and albums I didn't even really want simply because I could.

A large part of it was novelty. Before Napster, the only thing I used the Internet for was printing out a Misfits lyrics book, looking up inaccurate information for high school research papers and seeking out naked pictures of Jenny McCarthy, but then Napster came along and suddenly the Internet seemed to have a higher purpose. I could get music for free. It was a revelation. It was exhilarating. It was like handing a rockhead a packed pipe and a bottomless supply...only bad shit could come of it. A wise man named Justin Hawkins once said "It seemed like such a good idea at the time", and how right you were Mr. Hawkins. It seemed like a fucking great idea at the time. But we tend to only see our mistakes clearly when we look at them in a rear-view mirror, and Napster was a mistake. P-2-P networks changed everything, stole it all; robbed us of our fanship, our humanity, our souls, and the kicker is, we unlocked the God-damned door for them.

Napster got us hooked, and once that happened, the way the world collectively looked at music changed. There was no more investment. Obviously, if you were using Napster you weren't investing financially, but more importantly, Napster allowed music fans to check out emotionally. That's not to say that economics wasn't in itself a significant factor. It changed record sales which changed the industry which ultimately changed the way we saw musicians. All of the sudden, artists who wanted to sell records became evil and greedy. We suddenly thought artists who were upset about their music being ripped off were sycophants to the almighty dollar, like they didn't care about their art or their fans, like all they wanted was a big pile of cash to put on top of their already big pile of cash.

The fact that Metallica had spent 14 months on the road playing shows for fans ceased to matter. Metallica, as the obvious example, wasn't touring relentlessly for themselves. Can you imagine how hard it must be to tour for over a year? I'm away from my house for 5 hours and I start to get the shakes. They, like pretty much every other band in history, were doing it for the fans, they were doing it so as many people who wanted to see them had the opportunity to do so. And because they played so many fucking shows, ticket prices stayed down. This isn't meant to be a defense of Metallica, or a validation of Lars Ulrich. I like Metallica, and I think Lars Ulrich is a dick, but not because he wanted people to buy his records. That just makes him a working musician.

I remember all the Lars bashing; I was in on it anytime the topic crossed my path, but not because I agreed with the arguments, because I was scared not to be. I was scared that understanding the point of Ulrich threatened my coolness factor, so I agreed and mimicked people's rage, but I understood where he was coming from. First off, L.U. claims that his only anger at Napster was the fact that it gave bootleggers opportunity to release unfinished material. Maybe that's true, maybe that isn't...I don't know. But I do know I don't like anyone reading what I'm writing before I'm finished, not even my wife. So if rough cuts of a song find their way onto the Internet, I can understand why he'd be pissed. It'd be like eating a chef's food before their done cooking it. Even if it tastes good, it's not going to be as good an experience had you let them finish.

But even if it had more to do with the cold, hard dollar more than our buddy Lars let on, people seem to have forgotten that although music is art, it's also a musician's job. I don't know about you, but if I showed up to work tomorrow and they told me my services would be on a strictly volunteer basis hence forth, they would blink their eyes and see nothing but my dust trail. I'm not going to work for free, and I suspect neither would you, so why would we expect musicians to do it?

I've heard the counter arguments. "I go to the shows", and "I spend money at the merch tables". I know the arguments because I've used them myself. But truthfully, I will never have enough money to buy tickets to even just one show by every band or artist that I've downloaded music from, I certainly won't have enough expendable cash to throw at merchandise. It's an excuse, a rationalization. It's illegitimate and it's delusional. It's something to say in order to make ourselves feel better about doing something we know is wrong but wish wasn't.

It fucked the record industry too. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not a huge supporter of the record industry or big business in general, but I also don't have time to care about trying to stick it to "The Man". I'm tired a lot, and I am a big fan of instant gratification, so with the exception of my wife, I don't really want to stick it to anyone. Hey, I'm all for the theoretical overthrow of "The Man", and it someone wants to stick it to the man in my honor, go for it, but in this case, we didn't stick anything to anyone making above a 5 figure salary by using P-2-P programs, we stuck it to ourselves. The result of the use of of Napster and other P-2-P networks resulted in a change in the way the record industry operated.

At one time, record companies conducted business much in the same way that publishing houses do. Publishing houses sign mass-market paperback-ready authors because they sell a shit-ton of books. They then can funnel the profits they make from that less-than-creative but more-than-lucrative author into other less-than-lucrative but more-than-creative writers. The rewarding ends justify the filthy means. Danielle Steel gives us John Irving. Granted, Irving carries weight on his own now, but he didn't when he started, and all good things have to start somewhere, and 9 times out of 10, good things are misunderstood and under appreciated in the beginning.

In 1994, Columbia Records was the home to both Aerosmith and Jeff Buckley. By 1994, Aerosmith sucked but sold a lot of albums and Jeff Buckley did neither of those things. I can't say that Aerosmith's record sales had a direct impact on Columbia singing Jeff Buckley, but I can't imagine it hurt. In a perfect world, Jeff Buckley would have sold 6 million copies of Grace worldwide, but we live in a very imperfect world, and in reality, Jeff Buckley was never going to sell millions upon millions of records. It sucks, but it's the truth. With a crappy cash-cow like Aerosmith on it's roster, Columbia could sign Jeff Buckley without fear. If it's a commercial success, awesome, but if it's not, if signing Jeff Buckley turned into a financial black-hole, Columbia could find solace in the fact that they unleashed a brilliant artist on the world, even if the world was too myopic to care and still have Aerosmith to churn out another shitty record that would sell 3 million copies to fill the economic void.

But the Napster shows up. Faster than anyone could ever imagine, Napster begins draining record sales, not only from the paltry numbers of the artistically brilliant but commercially unmarketable, but also from the horribly marketable but artistically barren. What's a company supposed to do? A business that deals in art is still a business, and they need to at least break even if not turn a profit. So the record industry shifts from the old mold. They no longer use commercially feasible entertainers to foot the bill for honest artists, they take a dollars-and-cents, practical approach to business. They start to sign, promote, push only commercially proven, probable money-making artists. Suddenly, we're overrun with bullshit. Suddenly, unless you're 'NSYNC, you're album doesn't get made on a major label because if it can't make a ton of money, then it's costing the label too much money to make. The result is record companies discharging a tumult of entertainers with no artistic merit but an excess of commercial viability on us, saturating the airwaves with junk-food sounds instead of solid, enriching, nutritious sustenance.

And can you blame them? They're just trying to stay afloat. They're just trying to make records that make money so they can continue to make records, period. I wish I could find the fault with and point the finger at the record execs for ruining recorded music, but they've never been in charge of making a good band popular, they've only been in charge of giving a good band a chance to be popular, and Napster destroyed the record labels' financial ability to take chances on a good but unproven band. After Napster, good bands still made records, and a ton of people listened to them, but without the numbers reflected in dollar-signs, major labels had to resort to releasing nothing but Enrique Iglesias records, because Enrique still sold, and even he and the others of his ilk weren't selling as much as they would have in a Napsterless world. Still, the pop stars were making some bank, so the record companies released and promoted the shit out of that stuff, forcing everything else in to a dark corner.

Meanwhile, the pool of creative and worthwhile artists being released and promoted on major labels was slowly drying up, evaporating from an ocean to a lake. Good musicians were still getting signed, but they had a lot less time to prove themselves as a viable economic force. Where artists once had three, four, five records to make a name for themselves, they now had an album or two before the major labels chalked them up to a bust and cut them loose. I wish we could blame the record companies, but they were like any other evolutionary organism, adapt or die. The adaptation wasn't beneficial to the music buying public, but the companies managed to survive. It sucks, but you kind of have to give them a pass. Napster on the hand doesn't get that pass. Napster was the music world's CFC's, destroying the ozone and perpetuating the global warming that evaporated that ocean.

But then there's this other effect, less tangible but far more dangerous. See, when you buy music, you feel a greater need to give an album a fighting chance. When you pay hard-earned greenbacks for a record, you listen to it a lot. Maybe you don't like it the first time you hear it, but you still listen to it five, eight, ten times. Maybe you will eventually throw your hands up in disgust and admit to yourself and the world that you wasted your money on a bad album, but maybe after that tenth time listening to it, you'll hear something you didn't hear those first nine times, some subtle nuance, some small detail that managed to escape you the initial handful of times you tried to justify your purchase. And sometimes, some of those albums you don't like at first turn into some of the best records you ever heard.

Some of my favorite albums ever are ones that I didn't like at first: Radiohead's O.K. Computer, Jeff Buckley's Grace, Neutral Milk Hotel's In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, The Hold Steady's Boys and Girls in America were all records that, after one listen, made me wonder what in the fuck my friends or the critics I respected were listening to. But because I refused to give up on them, eventually they didn't simply grow on me after but fucking floored me.

I think about that a lot, about where I'd be if I'd given up after a listen or two; would I be a different person? Probably not, but I still would have missed out on some of the most enriching material I've had the pleasure to fall in love with. I paid money for them, so I wanted to give them as many opportunities as it took for me to be absolutely conclusive. I wanted to repeatedly pour over the evidence before I handed in my verdict. I invested financially so I wanted to invest emotionally. And I think that's how it was for all of the music buying public, that's how it was when you had to buy music, but Napster changed that. "No cash" equated to "no real involvement".

Napster made music disposable, like food at an all-you-can-eat-buffet; don't like something you grabbed? Set the plate aside, toss it out. Go back and get something else. It's no thing to you, you're not paying any more for it than you already have. And if the next thing you take isn't so great either, throw that out too and find something new. If something wasn't instantly pleasing, you could get rid of it with a few simple mouse clicks, sending it away into the garbage disposal without ever having to think twice about it. For some people, it was liberating, but for me, it just made me feel sad, wasteful, traitorous, and helpless to stop myself.

Napster provided us the opportunity to lose a part of ourselves, and we lunged at it, we drank it up with fervor and begged for more. True, we only have ourselves to blame for what it did to us as fans; you can't blame a drug dealer because you're an addict. The dealer may be a piece of shit, but unless we're willing to buy what he's selling, he doesn't exist. But what Napster helped us become as music consumers doesn't come close to comparing what it did to what we're consuming.

Napster showed the world that coupling music and technology was a lucrative prospect. MP3 players may have existed years before Napster, but I certainly didn't know anyone who had one. Before Napster, the MP3 player required a lot of personal dedication. You had to create your own MP3's from CD's you bought, or spend massive amounts of time searching for websites that hosted downloadable files. They were bulky and expensive but had small amounts of memory, and required a lot of work. They were annoying and wouldn't have lasted, but then Napster came along and made everything easy, thus destroying the viability of the physical medium of music. But it doesn't end at MP3 players.

Napster accelerated music-based technology. Suddenly, software companies began pumping out products that made home recording easier and the results sound more professional. Simultaneously, websites like Myspace and Youtube begun popping up that gave these new home-recorders an outlet to display their material. The virtual world became saturated with two-bit hacks who found themselves with means and opportunity. Sadly enough, the music world responded, and everything became a hastened reaction to the guerrilla bullshit that we found ourselves swimming in.

It ushered us into the age contrived novelty; writing a solid song and executing it with precise and exceptional aptitude took a backseat to gimmick. Separating yourself from the heard became the most important and essential thing. Even though that ocean I mentioned earlier was definitely shrinking, the water had to go somewhere, and suddenly we found the plains flooded with uninspired musicians, or at least incapable ones. Now anyone who had ever had the slightest aspiration to be a rock star found the opportunity to do so, as long as they sounded original. Being different became more important than being good. We have stopped caring about artists who wrote good songs and focused on people who write different sounding songs. Good or bad, it doesn't matter as long as it doesn't sound like something that came before it. But a piece of shit that smells like perfume is still just a good smelling piece of shit. Just because something is different doesn't make it good, it simply make it different.

What all of this ultimately amounts to is that Napster showed the world that there was money to be made by pairing music with burgeoning, non-musical technology, and once that happened, the music world began to spin way too fast for music fans. We couldn't keep up, so we, like the major labels, had to adapt. And like the major labels, those adaptations may have allowed us to survive but made us fundamentally less than what we used to be.

Artist loyalty went out the window. We used to buy records by artists we liked simply because we liked the artist. Good or bad, we bought the album and listened to it. Some albums were better than the last one, some were good but not as good as the last one, and some weren't good at all, but we bought them all and listened to the shit out of them. For better or worse, you stuck out with your artists because they were your artists.

That may seem horribly moronic if not maybe at least a little admirable, but if you love music, the outcome is really just purely beneficial. Ryan Adams is one of my artists. I'm going to buy anything that R.A. puts out simply because he put it out. Some of it's been good, some of it's been not so good, some of it's been mind-blowingly, fucking-A brilliant, and for me, the average and sub-par have proved to be as equally valuable as the amazing, life-altering shit. Oh, I'm not saying the aesthetics are equatable; Cold Roses and Heartbreaker will always sound better than Demolition or Cardinology, but in the end, their substantive worth is the same because the great and not so great both give me a clearer, deeper insight into the music. I've always believed that to truly appreciate the present, we have to internalize the past. Pouring over what's already happened gives us the ability to comprehend and appreciate what's currently happening and helps us prepare for the future. I can feel the newer Ryan Adams records more because, good or bad, I've thoroughly studied the albums that have already been released.

By giving the missteps just as much attention as I've given the triumphs, I've gained a greater understanding of Ryan Adams as an artist. This understanding creates a more immediate and intimate relationship with the good records, but it also provides me with the ability to comprehend the moves that seem incomprehensible. I can listen to a record he makes that isn't nearly as good as some of the things he's done in the past, and even if the end result isn't what I want it to be, I can find reason in his process; I can find method in his madness. This helps me to see the less obvious records in a different light than I otherwise would be able to, to see the more veiled efforts for what they really are and not just what they simply seem to be.

What this boils down to is I get him as an artist. As a human being, who in the hell knows. He's easily one of the most baffling fucks I've ever known of, but as a creator, I understand him, I get it. The good, the bad, and the ugly as it applies to his music all makes sense to me. I may not agree with all of his decisions, but I understand why he makes them. As a result, his music means a lot more to me than it ever would otherwise.

Maybe this seems like self-coercion or maybe concession. Maybe it seems like because I've allowed myself to fall in love with an artist I'm willing to accept whatever swill they throw at me as something worthwhile, excellent, significant or possibly even essential. I don't know, maybe that's exactly what it is, but I don't think so. I don't think I'm deaf to what I listen to, even if it may seem like I'm blinded by the person who creates what I hear. What I think it means is that I'm searching for clarity, looking for more depth not only in the music I listen to, but the way I listen to music. This used to be the way. This used to be the way we all did it, everyone. This was the approach everyone took when listening to music. But once Napster happened, that ideology went out the window for a lot of people, too many people, frankly. We once were all loyal fans to somebody, but P-2-P networks stole that principle from us. We were no longer devout fans to anyone, we were simply slaves to the technology.

Suddenly, the excitement about new albums released by the bands you loved was gone. Enthusiasm was replaced by skepticism. If a band released a record you loved, and you heard a new one was coming out, you greeted it with crossed arms rather than open ones. What a band or artist did in the past became meaningless. We stopped expecting new albums by great bands to be as great as the previous effort; precedent ceased to be a factor. We are no longer happy about a band who has made us happy in the past. If someone's impressed us, we're no longer expectant, we're incredulous. We might listen to it...hell, we probably will, but rather than being thrilled about something new by someone we love surfacing, we approach it with cynicism. We expect the artist to fail; we expect the artist to fall short of the expectations their previous effort established. We want the artist to prove it, prove they're worth our time.

In the past, music fans were like sports fans, but Napster came along and gave us everything we wanted pretty much all at once, and that kind of unlimited access coupled with heightened disposability made us jaded. We no longer listen to transitional albums and try to find the transition. We don't attempt to decipher the code, we don't try to see where the music might be headed, simply because it hasn't already gotten there. We want instant gratification.

Now, when a band doesn't constantly perform, we write the band off instantly. The idea of a "rebuilding year" in music no longer exists. Sports fans, like music fans once were, are willing to accept a lackluster season or two if it means that their team will eventually be better. They don't stop watching the games or throw the jerseys away if their team is in a transitional period. They watch the games while wearing the logos with staunch pride and loyalty. Failure doesn't stop being disappointing, but they persevere and wait for a brighter day.

But once Napster happened, loyalty and patience became insignificant. When financial investment was a factor, we had to be selective, we had to make decisions, form bonds, and let those bonds play themselves out. Before Napster, we had to try, had to care; we kept the concert t-shirts on and listened to the new records even if they weren't as good as they had been in the past because we were waiting for our bands to shine again, and although this was often grueling and painful, and sometimes, there never was that return to form we were so desperately waiting for. But but then there were other times, other times when, after hanging in there through an album or two of shit, our artists recaptured what they had once been and shined brighter than ever before. Your loyalty was rewarded, and it was amazing. That was what made being a music fan truly worth while.

But in order to have loyalty, you had to have emotional investment, and more often than not, to be emotionally invested you had to be financially invested, and financial investment is made only when something is deemed valuable, and nothing disposable is ever truly valuable. So when Napster made music a disposable commodity, it also made the users incapable of ever really loving anything they heard. Oh, it was easy to like a lot of it, maybe even all of it, but love never reentered the equation. Everything suddenly had a sell-by date. New albums no longer had the potential to achieve timelessness because now they had a shelf-life. All the bonds we once developed with the music and artists we loved became tentative and insubstantial. There was no more devotion, no more loyalty, no more historical connection with artists. There was no more marriage to the music, no more relationship with the songs. Instead, we metamorphosed into a culture that saw their music as nothing more than just a seemingly random string of events tied loosely together by time and place, a culture that valued style over substance and quantity over quality. We settled for what was "pretty good for now" over what would be "great for ever".

And in the end, that's what truly sucks about Napster and P-2-P's. They turned us in to automatons. We stopped being fans. We stopped caring about our library because we could amass as big a library as we wanted without repercussion. Because we stopped having to make a decision about what music was important to us, all music became equally and simultaneously less important. We stopped caring because we could. The music we listened to became less a statement of who we were and more a statement of who we wanted or thought we should be, and that mentality makes us stupid and indistinguishable.

In the P-2-P world, loving Ludacris is no different than loving Against Me! because we no longer have to pick between the two. You no longer have to decide what to spend your money on. Through the P-2-P mentality, one thing is the same as the other. Weighing options isn't a concern in the P-2-P world because everything is at your disposal. The music you listen to is no longer a statement of who you are because choice is no longer a factor. Everything can be yours, so in the end, nothing is yours...it's anyone's who wants it. You are now no different than someone who is actually completely different from you. Napster and P-2-P's drained our individuality.

What all of this adds up to is Napster made music less important and to save some cash, music fans fell in line. We accepted Peer-2-Peer networks' degradation of an art-form we loved in order to keep some green in our pockets and our greed (or frugality depending on how you look at it) not only prevented us from being outraged but made us cheer and celebrate Shawn Fanning. Certainly, it would be impossible not to applaud Fanning and Napster as a technological crowning achievement, but as for a musical one, it was nothing more than a slowly penetrating bullet to the head.

If You're Not Already Listening to "Orion", You Should Be (If You Can Find It)

2010-07-21T22:51:00.008-04:00

In the past, I've been accused of being a Ryan Adams slut. Okay, so maybe no one's ever used those exact words, but I've always been pretty good at reading between the lines even when I pretend not to be, and ultimately, that's what the criticism boils down to. Adams has never released a (legitimate) album I haven't liked (the DJ Reggie and Werewolph e-albums were good for a laugh but nothing more, and The Finger is virtually unlistenable).

I adored Heartbreaker, couldn't get enough of Gold, found Demolition to be a suitable snack to satiate my R.A. cravings, loved Rock N' Roll (yes, I said "loved", and I meant it), considered the Love is Hell ep's to be a strong and valiant effort (although I don't think nearly as highly of them as most Ryan Adams fans do), was floored by the brilliance of the 2005 trilogy, Cold Roses, Jacksonville City Nights, and 29 (contrary to every other account I've heard about the latter, that one might be favorite of the three). Easy Tiger and the Follow the Lights ep would have benefited from a slightly dirtier sounding production, but despite that fact, they both were remarkably well-written outputs. Even the somewhat lackluster Cardinology, with its flirtations into the realm of "adult contemporary", still had some relatively lofty high-points (even if the lows were possibly the lowest of his career). Over the last several years, I've done my best to shed the "Adams' whore" tag as best I could, but with the release of Orion, sew a scarlet R and A to my v-neck T, because I gave myself to this record within seconds of hearing "Signal Fade".

The instant I heard this record existed, I bought it; partly because I knew of its limited availability and feared it might be good, mainly because I assumed it would be so horrible that I had to hear it...but it wasn't horrible. No, this record is good, damn good in fact. This record renews any lost faith I had in Ryan Adams as a viable and important, maybe essential, artist in our time.

With Orion, Adams manages to incorporate every crucial Metal movement: the breakneck pace of the speed/thrash sect, the aggressive simplicity of hardcore, the intensity and weight of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal scene, and (on occasion) the infectious hooks of the 80's/early 90's mainstream Pop-Metal acts. Of course, individually, none of these pieces should appeal to the typical R.A. fan, but when Adams fits them all together, the result is nothing short of a pure and brilliant Ryan Adams record.

The album opens with "Signal Fade", a number with churning speed that Slayer would approve of, and a guitar chug that would sound at home on a bill with Sick of It All, and the relentless speed and thud doesn't stop with track #1. For the next 25 minutes and 28 seconds, Adams rips through 12 more tracks ("Signal Fade" clocks in at 2:49 as the second longest song on the record, making the total running time of Orion 28 minutes and 17 seconds). Adams guitar work on Orion leans more towards his punk rock roots with its simplicity, but for what it lacks in complexity and classic Metal showmanship, it makes up for in ardor and ferocious velocity that could give Adrian Smith a run for his money. Still, as "Heavy Metal" as the licks may be, they somehow manage to maintain an undercurrent of the passion and rootsy-substance we've all come to know as Ryan Adams, making this sound less like a "Heavy Metal" album, and more like "Ryan Adams playing at Heavy Metal", which is good, because, well, that's exactly what it is.

And the vocals are impeccably and unmistakably Ryan Adams. It sounds simultaneously familiar and foreign. The tone and control are instantly recognizable to anyone who has bought and loved a Ryan Adams record in the past, but the fervor and force with which he sings sounds more potent and fresh than he has in years, maybe ever. Vocally, the apogee comes on the bridge on "Fire and Ice" (the standout track on the album and easily the most traditionally Adams-esque song on record). R.A. belts and wails stark and desperate words about imminent doom, "How much longer will they let us survive? All the weapons pointed as us as we die. Either way only the Sun will survive. Either way only the Sun will survive". Adams sounds more vibrant and uninhibited than he has since the Whiskeytown days.

But what's most refreshing about Orion is that, in true Ryan Adams fashion, he clearly doesn't give a fuck what we think about it. Okay, it's no secret that Adams has badgered critics who have unfavorably reviewed his records, but Adams has never recorded an album for critics. He doesn't write albums for critics to like, he writes albums he wants to and then expects critics to like them. Unrealistic...definitely, positively delusional...probably, but nonetheless, he's not kowtowing to the people who declare his merit to the world, he's expecting the those people to kowtow to him, and Orion is no exception.

Most people would probably find this behavior pretentious, bratty, erratic, annoying, but not me; I find it invigorating. Music is art, musicians are artists. Good art is an extension of the artist and it should be completely selfish. Certainly, once fans get a hold of it, it becomes a selfless gift; it begins to apply to lives other than the artist's. But if the primary objective of any art is to please anyone other than the artist, than it's not art, it's entertainment. Ryan Adams is not and has never tried to be an entertainer, he is an artist. Orion exemplifies that fact. When you listen to this album, you know there were no preconceived notions or delusions of grandeur about what he was doing; he was just making an album he wanted to make. And in an increasingly electro-reliant world where record sales mean far less than public opinion, that's about as refreshing as it gets.

That's not to say it doesn't have its weaknesses. Lyrically, if you're looking for the slightly nutty, homespun wisdom of past Adams efforts, you best look elsewhere. The lyrics on Orion are, for lack of a better word, ridiculous. With lyrics like "Evil overtakes him, The dragon speaks in tongues, The master has arisen, To swallow up the systems"...on "Ghorgon, Master of War", or "We wait in the caves, Machines do not detect the heat from our bodies, We are disguised by rocks, One leaves and investigates"...on the album's closer, "End of Days", it sounds less like a Ryan Adams album and more like the most depressing conclusion to The Terminator franchise. It's clear you're not going to find any poignant life-lessons here, but with Orion, the ends certainly justify the means.

Orion may not be exactly what we pictured for the return of Ryan Adams. It may be an insane and ludicrous concept, but the songs on Orion are lean, unencumbered, and unpretentious. They aren't molded or derivative, they are simply the product of a man trying to write and record an album that he wanted to make. Orion may be the craziest legitimate release of Adams career, but it also might be the most pure and steadfast record he's ever had the balls to dream up.

Prayers are Sometimes Answered

2010-06-18T21:48:00.013-04:00

Tonight I'm listening to The Cure's 8th Studio album Disintegration. When I put Side A of the first record on, the sky was blue achromatizing to gunmetal gray. It seemed no more an omen than it was attractive; innocuous on both counts. As "Fascination Street" ended, concluding Side B on record 1, I rose from my seat on the couch to change the record and I noticed out of my living room window that the sky had changed. It had darkened and become premonitory. A storm was on its way.

As the needle dropped on Side C, I stepped out onto the porch for a clove cigarette and a Miller High-Life and I searched the air for the smell that accompanies the moments before a hard rain; soil and electricity, but the scent wasn't there. The storm must still be a ways away, I thought, but as the beginning of "Prayers for Rain" poured from the speakers, the deep gray of the sky gave way to a deeper black, and as Simon Gallup's bass began to boom and writhe on the 8th track on what I can only refer to as one of the most beautiful and brilliant albums I have ever heard, the onyx sky burst open and released a torrential downpour. This was a full-on, no-joke, motherfucker of a rain, one that came on so hard within little more than 30 seconds, and began to flood the earth.

I watch the sky swell and explode in a tumult of water in real time as I listen to "Prayers for Rain". How apropos.

As track 1 on Side C ends and the 2nd track, "Same Deep Water as You", envelops me, so begins the thunder that fills the air outside my door. With the windows open, the natural roar and the authentic reproduction on "Same Deep Water as You" sound like syncopated eruptions; they almost explode in unison. Suddenly I can't help feeling that listening to an album that came out in 1989 somehow conjured the weather that would happen over 2 decades later.

This is ridiculous, of course. As magical a moment as this is, I know in my mind it's nothing more than a perfectly timed and poetic act of nature, but in my heart...well, in my heart I can't help but believe there's some sort of of ethereal, cosmic hand at work here, some divine being with kick-ass taste in music orchestrating this. It's hard to believe there's not some omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent puppet master pulling strings out there in the ether because this moment is too perfect to be accidental.

Since I began listening to The Cure nearly 2 decades ago, I have experienced a series of seemingly random yet oddly similar Cure-related events that, when closely examined, seem fantastic but and coincidental. But when looked at with a wide lens, seem too recurring to be simply random or mere happenstance; a random pattern can only truly be random until it becomes a pattern, then it becomes fact. Time and time again, my real life and the chimerical dream that The Cure have created with their songs have bumped up against each other, overlapped, became one and the same, even if only for a few ticks of the seconds hand...and now this, one of the most empyrean experiences I've had in a very long time. I am in utter awe.

I can't be 100% positive, but I'm pretty sure God wants me to love The Cure.

Don't Eat Yourself, It's Not Good for You

2010-05-21T18:38:00.003-04:00

When did autosarcophagy become an acceptable practice? Now let's make no mistake, I'm not saying that self-cannibalism isn't a little more selfless than your everyday, garden variety cannibalism, but there's something about consuming your own flesh that still seems more demented, at least more masochistic. But regardless of how degenerative this mentality seems to me, this has clearly been deemed okay by a certain subculture of society (one that I am regrettably a part of) because Indie Rock is eating itself alive and we are not only standing by, watching it happen, but are actually applauding every time another chunk of meat disappears down its proverbial gullet.

As I see it, there are three interrelated causes for this: 1.) The fans, 2.) Technology, and 3.) Pitchfork. (But not necessarily in that order.)

First off, there has been a change in attitude of the fan. Indie Rock was always a call to arms for the disenfranchised. If Heavy Metal of the 80's and 90's was the music for the disregarded, burn-out youth, Indie Rock was the music for the bookishly intellectual and misunderstood sect (I'm thinking Ducky from Pretty in Pink, but then again, most people probably were.) If you were a little too artistic in the 70's to play High school football and couldn't get into the sounds of Average White Band, you had Bowie or The Stooges or The Velvet Underground to make you feel like you had allies in the world. If you weren't comfortable in an Izod polo and couldn't afford (or didn't want) tickets to the big Duran Duran show in the 80's, then The Replacements or Robyn Hitchcock or Nick Lowe might have had something to offer you. If you were outside of the norm but couldn't fit in with the W.A.S.P./Krokus/Dokken bunch, you still had R.E.M. or The Cure or The Smiths to listen to and find a home. Just like the Heavy Metal of 30 years ago, this music welcomed anyone; Underground rock has always given the outcast a place to belong as long as it felt good to be a part of it.

Fast-forward 30 years, and things have most certainly changed. Indie Rock has become an exclusive club for over-intellectualizing prats. Indie Rock fans tend to be fashionable hipsters who like to laugh at those who aren't like them. Where the Indie fan was once part of a faction of society that had banned together to create something beautiful and extraordinary because they had been spurned by "normal" culture and had no where else to turn, they have now morphed into the very kind of culture that the music was initially created as a reaction to. Simply put, Indie kids think they are smarter, cooler, better.

And if you've ever read the album reviews and opinion pieces on Pitchfork, you already know that the content on the site plays directly into this elitist mentality. Did Pitchfork create this superior attitude or is Pitchfork simply reacting to the already-in-place superiority complexes of it's readership? I don't know the answer to that, but it's clear the more you talk to Indie kids and read the Pitchfork editorials and reviews they regurgitate like scripture, the two are definitely working together to make Indie Rock an increasingly exclusive and uninviting club that most of us are not cool enough to join.

Now let's combine this first idea with the hyper-fast, technologically advanced, digital age of music. Music has become such a "point-and-click" medium with iPods, iTunes, home computers and P2P networks that it has changed the way we listen to music. We have access to a greater number of albums, songs, artists, but still have the same 24 hours in a day to digest it. We obviously can't listen to it all. At one time, we had to make hard choices. If you buy a record, you're going to give that record more than a simple cursory listen. But now, with everything quickly at the touch of a button, we can try to hear as much as possible, even though we may not really be listening to anything.

That of course, doesn't change the fact that there's so much out there. How do we hone? How do we focus? How does the hipster-about-town figure out what they should be hearing? Easy, let the "über-hip" Pitchfork guide your way. The "ultra-sheik" Indie elitist looks to Pitchfork to see what's hot, and has their self-serving insincerity validated by the identical tone of the pieces they read. Again, whether the "better than you" modern Indie Rock persona originates from Pitchfork or Pitchfork is simply a reflection of the contemporary mindset, I can't say for sure, but one way or the other, this co-dependent relationship that has developed between the reader and the read is cultivating the destruction of the very music both groups claim to celebrate.

Still, there's a bigger problem...a much, much bigger problem. I've noticed for years that a strange difference in the way people are listening to Indie Rock has slowly been occurring. I could see things changing, but up until recently, I couldn't quite put my finger on what that change was (and when I say a recently, I mean recently, as in a little less than two weeks ago). But then Heaven is Whenever came out.

Every week when the new releases come out, I try to read as many record reviews from as many different media outlets as I can. I find real value in the work of the Rock Critic. In fact, if I had my choice of "dream jobs" and that choice couldn't include being independently wealthy/unemployed, Rock Critic would be the job I would choose. The Rock Critic provides a biased yet essential service to the music consumer, and I appreciate what they do for me. I don't have a ton of money to drop on records. Because of this, I do my best to read and take into account what they have to say in order to focus my purchasing decisions. The critic helps me a lot. But occasionally, there's an album that comes out where the "to buy/not to buy" question is already answered, regardless of what the Rock Critic has to say about it. Good or bad news, thumbs up or thumbs way down, I'm going to buy "this" record. In these cases, I tend to avoid the reviews until I've formed my own opinion, then after I've decided how I feel about said record, I backtrack to see what the Critics have to say.

Last week, this very scenario presented itself. The new Hold Steady album, Heaven is Whenever, came out, and this was something I was going to own regardless of what any other person in the world had to say about it. Come hell or high water, Heaven is Whenever would be mine, even if every critic on Earth panned it. So I waited until I thoroughly digested the record before I looked to see what the professional appreciators had to say. After a little more than a week, I had made up my own mind about the album (fucking brilliant), so I began to scour the globe (maybe a slight over-exaggeration) to see what others had to say about The Hold Steady's fifth joint. I hit all of the obvious outlets: Rolling Stone, Spin, allmusic, Paste, but I went much further than that. I read everything from legitimate but tiny e-music site reviews to what the average blogger thought (I even read Entertainment Weekly's review...still kind of shocked that there not only was one, but that I took the time to care what EW thought). I wanted to read it all. And everything I read was, if not glowing, at least reasonably positive. They all had written the things that mimicked my feelings about the record...but then I got to Pitchfork's review.

When I read Stephen M. Deusner's review of Heaven is Whenever, I was angry. I wasn't angry that he gave the record an unfavorable rating. He did in fact give it what would amount to a D if it was a test, but he and everyone else is entitled to their opinion, even if that opinion happens to be wrong. But reading Deusner's review, it quickly became aware to me that his problems with the record had very little to do with the record.

"Coming from a band so rooted in notions of community and classic rock, "The Sweet Part of the City" seems to acknowledge that the Hold Steady realize their function as a liaison between the underground and the mainstream. They're trying hard to achieve widespread appeal while remaining embedded in the scenes they've been chronicling for half a decade. Heaven Is Whenever loiters in the same dives, clubs, and party houses as their previous albums and chronicles the sagas of similar hoodrats, townies, gamblers, waitresses, and girlfriends. Meanwhile, the band has graduated to larger venues, festival appearances, and an avid fanbase that shouts along with every word. The distance between subject and band has never been greater than it is on this album, and these new songs just don't hit as hard."

Maybe I'm overreaching and overreacting. Maybe I'm being petty because a guy I don't know, whom I'll never meet or even speak to wrote a less than positive review about an album I love by a band who is easily the best Rock n' Roll group recording today. But I'm not. Mr. Deusner doesn't have to like the new Hold Steady album, but if he is writing a review of this album, he should write a review of the album.

Now I don't want this to disseminate into a Hold Steady blog because 1.) I wrote a Hold Steady blog not more than 3 weeks ago, and 2.) I have every intention of writing another Hold Steady blog about the new album and the band in general because the new album's kick-ass and I left a whole bunch out of that initial blog that I wanted to say (a topic I intend on writing about in and of itself, so I will abruptly cease this line of discussion). But with the Pitchfork review, it seems obvious to me that the writer's problem isn't necessarily with the music, but the fact that The Hold Steady have achieved a certain level of fame.

Essentially (and I now paraphrase and interpret), Deusner feels that Craig Finn has no right to sing about dark alleys, drug deals, and raved-up, boozed-out nights because The Hold Steady have become too "mainstream" to have a valid perspective on these subjects. But as angering as it is that this sentiment seems to drive the entire feel of the review, that's not even the most maddening part. What's so revolting to me is that Deusner calls the Hold Steady "widespread" and "mainstream".

I'm not upset by any means that The Hold Steady are "big". The Hold Steady are an amazing band that deserve to sell millions of records and get super fucking rich playing the music they do because they're better than the bands who already do that. The Hold Steady are better than U2 or Green Day (not to take away anything from U2 or Green Day, I like them both). They are infinitely better than Coldplay or Train (2 bands I absolutely don't like). The only problem is The Hold Steady are not "big". They are not selling anywhere near the number of records the afore mentioned bands are selling. If you ask the average person on the street in nearly any city or town in the U.S. if they like or even know who The Hold Steady is, I can almost guarantee they will say "no". Okay, in college towns and NYC or other big cities, that ratio might be skewed, but then again, are college towns or the East Village average?

The assertion that The Hold Steady are a "mainstream" band made me realize that somehow Indie Rock now exists in a vacuum. Okay, so the last 2 Hold Steady records have manage to garner a pretty decent position on the Billboard charts (Stay Positive topped out at #30, and Heaven is Whenever has thus far reached #26, but still, if you aren't breaking the top 20, I'm not sure you can be categorized as big. Furthermore, the first 3 albums haven't managed to climb into the top 100. In fact, the first 2 haven't even charted.) Shit, Godsmack's latest album came out on the same day as Heaven is Whenever, and it debuted at #1 on Billboard's top 200. If a great band like The Hold Steady can't outsell fucking shit-ass Godsmack, can they be that huge?

To answer my own question...no, they can't be. They may be a big Indie band, they may even be the "biggest" Indie band, but that still means they are no more that a large fish in a comparatively small pond. What this says to me is that from the perspective of Pitchfork, which ultimately has become the perspective of Indie fans, Indie Rock operates outside of the actual mainstream. If you're a "big" Indie band, that means you're a "huge" Indie band even if you've only sold 400,000 records worldwide simply because other Indie bands haven't sold as many records as you have. And this is dangerous ground to tread, because in the Indie paradigm, "mainstream" has become the dirtiest word, and as a result, we are inorganically backing Indie Rock into a cacophonic corner.

Because we've forced Indie Rock into this separatist bubble that operates outside of the rest of modern pop music, our reality has become skewed and our perspective has become disoriented. And The Hold Steady aren't the only applicable example of this. Take Neutral Milk Hotel. The amount of times I've had conversations with people who make the assertion that "everyone" has heard In the Aeroplane Over the Sea is overwhelming. Virtually no one in the grand scheme of things has heard In the Aeroplane Over the Sea. It's sold over 200,000 copies, and I'm sure twice as many people have downloaded it from P2P networks. Still, 600,000 people is not a whole lot. The world population is currently estimated at 6,822,200,000 people. 600,000 is less than 1% of the population. That's hardly "everyone". And if we compare my NMH estimates to the sales of a truly mainstream record, like say Guns N' Roses Appetite for Destruction, Guns N' Roses debut album has sold 46 times more records than NMH's sophomore release has had in total listeners. I apologize for the math lesson, but the numbers make it clear. Nearly every Indie kid knows Aeroplane..., but no one else does.

And this brings me back to my first issue. A stigma has been attached to the word "mainstream" because if the indie kids desperately want to be smarter and cooler, and certainly different than the mainstream, than they can't possibly allow themselves to relate to something that is considered mainstream. And because they are also influenced so severely by the Pitchfork pedagogy, when Pitchfork says "mainstream", Indie fans flee. And because Indie Rock is now in a Pitchfork-induced Indie bubble, the number of acceptable Indie Rock bands is shrinking and becoming more and more unlistenable.

Imagine for a second drawing a line in the dirt. On one side of the line is "Indie", and on the other is "Mainstream". As a "respectable" Indie fan, you are to believe you need to stay a minimum of 5 feet from that line at all times. Once again using The Hold Steady as an example, when Boys and Girls in America came out, The Hold Steady were 10 feet from that mainstream line. Then comes Stay Positive. It was a little more mature and a little more accessible. So now, even though The Hold Steady's sound hasn't changed much, because more people have bought the record (probably pretty much all Indie Rock fans, I might add), the line has to move. The Hold Steady doesn't move; they're in the same place. The music, attitude, soul, focus hasn't changed. The only change has been the perception of what mainstream is, based on the fact that more people like this band.

So the line moves to the left 3 or 4 feet, leaving The Hold Steady only 1 or 2 feet from the safe 5 foot distance. Now comes Heaven is Whenever, apparently not simply more accessible, but in the eyes of Deusner and the folks at Pitchfork, actually mainstream. The old mainstream has stayed in the same place. Nickleback hasn't moved, nor has 30 Seconds to Mars or Coldplay or Daughtry or HIM or any other crappy bands that a lot of people listen to. But still, somehow, The Hold Steady is now on the other side of that line, grouped with these other (f)artists (I fucking kill me). The line has moved 10 feet in 4 years, but the music has retained the same heart it had in 2006. But the Hipsters still need to stay 5 feet from that line. They've moved 10 feet from where they used to be. Every time that line moves, they have to take another step to maintain a 5 foot distance. With each move, the line is forcing good bands onto the other side, making them "unlistenable". And with each movement of the line, the bands who are now deemed hip enough to rock out to become more subversive, abrasive, gimmicky, and ultimately less musical.

It's a slippery slope. before you know it, Pitchfork going to be calling The Animal Collective Neil fucking Diamond. With each band that falls prey to the "mainstream" tag, the bands and Indie kids in response have to up the ante and move further away from what this new perception of mainstream is. Now LCD Soundsystem and Broken Social Scene are considered the wunderkinds of Indie Rock, and then the line will sweep them up because too many Indie kids will buy their records and the next band will be swept up, and the next band and the next band, and the next. Before you know it, it'll only be cool to listen to bands whose albums of nothing more than a series of blips and clicks and buzzes. Because of Indie Rock's desperation to be so anti-mainstream and Pitchfork's desperation to seem ahead of the popularity curve, and the fact that so many people are unwilling to see Indie Rock in the context of music at large, the "good" stuff is becoming nothing more than an abradant in cool clothes.

And what does this mean for those bands who are actually good? Well, they won't be mainstream enough to garner a significant mainstream following, but because the hip Indie Clergy have deemed them sinful, quoting their website like the Bible to save the elite souls of the eagerly converted, they'll lose a large percentage of the hipster Indie kids. They'll be a band condemned to hell. They'll be a band without a country, and that's not only a shame but a downright Shakespearean-sized tragedy.

The Indie world is shrinking into a black hole of chaos. Slowly but surely, the less capable you are of playing an instrument, the greater possibility Indie fans will love you. The more noise and less song you write is all the more chance you'll sell records to the Indie crowd. No melody, you gain allies, more melody, your simply maligned. Indie Rock, with the help of Pitchfork and the misguided, misdirected ethics of the fanbase, is slowly killing itself, lopping off the good bands like pieces of flesh and devouring them, tossing the ripped tissue down its throat and smiling as it bleeds out. Eventually, if attitudes across the board don't change, there's going to be nothing left but a large intestine full of bullshit, and this makes me sick to my stomach. But I guess I should look on the bright side; if I record the sounds of my purge and combine it with a sweet back beat, Pitchfork will probably make me an Indie God, that is until the sound of electro-vomit becomes mainstream.

(Me-Morrissey)=And And And(A Big Smile and Two Thumbs Way Up)

2010-04-30T21:39:00.011-04:00

The other day, I was listening to Your Arsenal, and I realized that Morrissey and I have very little in common. He likes to write and record music, I like to listen to the music he writes and records, we both look smashing in a billowy, blue-sequence shirt unbuttoned down to our navels, but after that, I see very little similarities between the two of us.

Now granted, I don't know Morrissey. I've never met him, I've never spoken to him (I have seen him live and that was rather amazing), and in all honesty, I haven't even read a whole lot of interviews with the man. Still, I know we aren't similar, mainly because I've decided that there are a handful of songs that truly represent Morissey's character ("The First of the Gang" is not one of those songs. I have a very hard time believing Morrissey was some kind of street tough wreaking havoc on the streets of Manchester. Sorry Moz, the image just doesn't ring true). I hear an absolute sincerity in "I've Changed my Plea to Guilty", there seems to be genuine malaise and melancholy on "My Love Life", and he seems to be genuinely happy on "Now My Heart is Full", but above and beyond everything else he's done, "We Hate It When Our Friends Become Successful" sound like Morrissey to me.

I'm not saying Moz is a dick, or even that he's not that good of a guy. He quite possibly is a fantastic gentleman, and at the absolute least, he is a remarkable singer/songwriter/performer, but there's something about him that makes me think he is just little bit petty. Certainly, this song was written and recorded 18 years ago, and a great deal of personal growth can occur over the course of nearly 2 decades, but that doesn't matter. To me, Morrissey then is the same as Morrissey now because my only gauge of him personally is his music, and although it's stayed consistently good over the past 18 years, it's also stayed consistently spiteful.

So for this reason, I'm sure that Morrissey and I have little in common, because I can honestly say I do not hate it when my friends become successful. When my friends enjoy an exuberance of success, I can say with the utmost sincerity that I am not simply "happy for them", it actually makes me happy. I enjoy it when my friends achieve something that gives them something they didn't have before. Both personally and professionally, it impresses me when my friends set their minds to reaching a goal and do their best to go out and make that goal their bitch. Don't get me wrong, when my friends out-stride me in the race towards success, it puts an internal spotlight on my meager treading of water in the ocean of life (how's that for a mixed metaphor...), but I don't begrudge them a single bit. It simply highlights my own failures at attempting to be the man I once thought I would become. (I apologize for the sympathy-pandering self-deprecation.) But when my friend Tyler Keene e-mailed me a song he recorded with a fella named Nathan Baumgartner that he met after moving to Portland, OR, I was met with a wholly new, unexpected, and I have to say, rather creepy feeling...pride.

Pride is supposed to be a feeling a parent feels for a child, or a grandparent feels for a grandchild. Uncles and aunts can feel it for nieces and nephews because I know I am proud as hell of the people my little guys (and not so little guys, kids grow up fucking fast...) are becoming. I guess even a kid can be proud of their parent once they get to a certain age and phrase it right. As long as a child is old enough to be taken seriously (I'm thinking 27 or older), and says "I'm proud to call you my...(insert gender specific parental title here), or your parent has learned to live with or overcome some sort of extreme adversity (i.e. being paralyzed, beating addiction, etc., etc.), then it's okay, but outside of those examples, pride is weird. In my slightly oddball mind, pride should be an emotion reserved for a blood relative (a spouse or significant other works as well, but it's still a tiny bit weird if you're not married). Felling pride for a friend is, well, not a normal feeling. But nonetheless, there I was, positively beaming.

(I realize I'm kind of exposing the alter-ego here T-Boz, but I just can't write this and refer to you as Run4YoLife, not to mention, only 12 people are going to read this anyway, and I'll probably 4 of that 12...nonetheless, sorry.) Tyler and I met when I was a senior in High School, and after hanging out twice, I knew that this guy was meant to be my best friend. Tyler and I have a weird relationship. As best friends (I guess I'm speaking for him by making that plural, but I think that might be okay), we rarely discuss our personal lives. Sometimes the facts of our day-to-day lives bleed into our conversations, but it's always by accident, and it's kind of ultra-rare. I can say with a reasonable degree of authority that neither of us are uncomfortable when it happens, and, at least for me, an increase in frequency of discussion about our everyday lives wouldn't be frowned upon. In fact, (again, at least for me) it would be welcome, because it would be simply one more facet of our lives that we could share and most likely connect with. But ultimately, the day-to-day doldrums of everyday life aren't important when it comes to our friendship.

The birth of our friendship hinges on 3 inter-related factoids. 1.) I wore a Led Zeppelin T-Shirt to school, 2.) He asked me a question about a Led Zeppelin song ("Dazed and Confused"), and 3.) I could accurately answer his query. That was it. He hummed me the bass-line, I knew what it was and told him what album it was on, he bought the C.D., and then decided he should start sitting next to me in 4th hour. And we began to constantly talk about music.

Music has always been the thing that connects me to other people. I think I have a stunted personality. I think I'm a perfectly pleasant person to be around sometimes. I can be funny, witty, insightful, I try to be a good listener (though I think I always end up dominating the conversation, regardless of how hard I attempt not to), but in the end, I have a difficult time relating to people outside of the context of what music they listen to. This is a sad fact about me, it's also the plight I'm stuck with. Whether I like it or not, this is who I am. Because of this, I've always seen the music people listen to as not only an extension of who they are, but a extroverted, physical definition of who they are. Understand the music, understand the person. Is this a twisted, perverse, psychologically fucked? Probably, but oh well, it is what it is.

For this reason, I spent the first 18 years of my life feeling remarkably lonely. I had friends who liked music arguably as much as I did. I had friends who liked the same bands and the same songs, but to everyone I knew, it seemed that they simply saw a band like The Cure as being my favorite band, not an extension of me or some sort of sonic road map to my soul, but this is how I saw it. I felt that, because no one could see me in the music I loved, no one really knew me. Regardless of how many friends I had, if I were to die, I would die with no one knowing who the real me was and that's a very lonely place to be.

But then I met Tyler and we started hanging out a lot. We began to know each other through the music we listened to and I felt like I had finally found a friend who truly understood who I was. Our friendship developed and I think is now at least partially defined by the music we love. The funny thing is, we don't even really like the same music. There's certainly some overlap, but by and large, we're excited by different sounds, but we both listen to music the same way. We both look for the same things, it's just that those things happen to sometimes be a little different. But the key is, I can hear a song I know he likes, and I can see why he likes it, even if I don't agree with him, and I think he would probably say the same thing about me. Even if he doesn't like something I happen to, he seems to understand why I like it. For me, this is one of the main reasons our friendship is important and special.

So when Tyler moved to Manhattan a few years ago, he was inspired by the city and began to write and record his own stuff. He had done this before, but his songs had always been more for the purpose of making his friends laugh. They were musically-infused, well orchestrated jokes. But the stuff he was doing after he moved to NYC was different. It was serious. It was attempt to really communicate something about himself through music. This was exciting to me, because not only was he speaking the language that I understood best, but the music wasn't simply an interpretation of him through the efforts of someone else but his own words and his own music expressing his thoughts and feelings. What was even more exciting was that the stuff was good, really good.

Over the course of 3 years, he wrote and recorded a ridiculous number of songs. Some were funny, most were not, all were good, and a lot fantastic. But I have to say, something was missing. Tyler is a musician, not a computer programmer, and without a band, he couldn't tap his full potential as a performer. The recordings fell short of capturing the brilliance that was there. Songs that should have sounded mind-blowing and explosive simply sounded really excellent. But then he moved to Portland, and after about 6 months, things changed.

In the fall of 2009, Tyler e-mailed me a handful of songs that one of his neighbors had recorded and given him. He was impressed, but wanted to know what I thought. He wanted to know if I thought he should try to start doing something with this guy. Now, don't think I'm trying to take any credit here, because I could tell by the way Tyler talked to me about this guy that he was going to play with him come hell or high water. I could have said I was thoroughly unimpressed and my opinion wouldn't have changed a thing, but I didn't have to do that because the songs were amazing, and his performance of them was even more compelling. Nathan Baumgartner's voice is other-worldly. He sounds like Ian Curtis without the manic-depression, he sounds like Brandon Flowers without the self-important pretension, he has the intensity and inflection of Serj Tankian without any of the restraint. He is Morrissey, Bowie, Robert Smith, yet he's none of these; he sounds like every singer I had ever loved and like no one I have heard before. He is dynamic, emotive, exploratory, and fearless. His talent has given Tyler a reason to rise to the occasion, and since working with Nathan, Tyler's voice sounds more powerful, clear, and brilliant than it ever has before. He is Tyler's musical soul mate.

Nathan has grand musical presence without ever sounding grandiose. He feels lofty but with no traces of bravado. Tyler has this innate ability to hear melody in every possible crevasse, but never overdoes it. Tyler has a penchant for noise and an innate ability to find complexity in the beautifully simple. Together, these abilities (along with 4 other gentlemen who, I sadly have to admit to know literally nothing about, sorry fellas...I look forward to forming strong, complimentary opinions about you as well, given that I don't think you suck. I assume you don't, but anything is possible) create a fantastic sound, and that sound has been given the moniker And And And.

And And And is not so much a band as they are a mind-fuck experienced through a dream sequence in the most accessible Fellini film that was never made. No pretension, no gimmick, no rules. They do exactly what they want to do, exactly when they want to do it. There's no formula, there's no rubric, everything is on the table, nothing is off limits.

And And And's music has the straight-forward, melodic simplicity of The Beatles or The Beach Boys, with the depth and complexity of The Flaming Lips or The Mars Volta, saturated in the chaos of the drunkest Replacements or Pavement show that ever happened. It's easily accessible without ever sounding obvious or overdone. The songs are layered and multidimensional but never busy or self-indulgent. It's raw, sincere, down-to-business, down-to-earth Rock n' Roll music that is fun as hell and loud as shit.

They're a little punk, a little indie, a little lo-fi, thrown into a bucket full of mud and poured over top of sweet, well-written pop music. On their first album, We'll Be Better Off with the Plants, they plow into you with sweeping, Indie-Rock grandeur ("The Great Tide"), dirge into noise-drenched dirt-Folk ("Seize the Day", "I Will Still Break Your Heart"), toy with British Invasion era Pop-Rock tripping on acid and saturated in fuzz (She's Got A Gun, There is No Meaning Here), and thud and grind with Punk-soiled, American Rock N' Roll ("Seeding"), somehow managing to sound consistent and honest regardless of the aural twists and turns.

I have to be honest, I've only heard a few rough snippets from the forth-coming A Fresh Summer With And And And, but from what I have heard, this record will not disappoint me. If anything, it will only tether this band to my heart tighter than they already were. From what I've heard, it's more focused but it loses none of the rawness and honesty of the first record. It sounds bigger but not pompous or over-inflated. It's ambitious but still true to what they do. This band seems to be able to do what ever they want to and somehow remain in their element.

And And And has blown me away. I guess I might be biased because having your best friend be the co-lead singer/songwriter/guitarist/multi-instrumentalist of a band seems like the perfect cocktail to get you drunk off bullshit, but I love music (and cocktails, both the liquids and the Hot Leg song) too much to sully its name with lip-service. When it comes to "my tunes", I cannot lie, and And And And is most definitely My Shit. Personal relationships be damned, And And And is the real deal. They are a band that you should be listening to, a band you should be watching. Two, three, five years from now, you'll be thanking me if you do because you'll be able to say I was listening to And And And when...and that's going to be an amazing feeling, maybe you'll even feel proud.

To listen to And And And music, visit AndAndAndspace

To buy And And And's music, visit Super Dream Music.

If You're Not Already Listening to The Hold Steady, You Should Be

2010-04-22T22:59:00.014-04:00

I wish I could say I was a Hold Steady fan from day one, but the truth is I didn't start listening to them until 2006's brilliant Boys and Girls in America, and even then, I wasn't sold at first. I could tell there was something there for me, I just couldn't figure out what that was. It took a little while; a couple of months listening to the record at least once on an almost daily basis, trying to decipher some code that would provide me the key to unlocking the mysteries of this band that so many indie-media hounds and "clustered-up, clever kids" who were obsessed with "the scene" adored. Then one day it plowed into me like a mac-truck. I still didn't know what hit me exactly, I just knew that I was lying on the ground with pulverized bones and blood pouring from my open and confused mouth. 11 days from now, The Hold Steady will release their fifth album, Heaven is Whenever, and although I haven't heard it yet, I can guarantee it will be the best album released in 2010. (Just as a side note, I now have heard the album. I attempted as best I could to avoid listening to it until the record came out, but NPR's free stream of the album proved to be too great a temptation. Oh, and by the way, I was right.)

I know this to be true. I know this because 1.) The Hold Steady are the best American Rock n' Roll band recording today, but mainly because 2.) I have realized something about The Hold Steady. I have realized that The Hold Steady know something about Rock n' Roll music that most bands have either forgot or never knew in the first place; Rock n' Roll is music for the young.

The greatest records in the pantheon of Rock music have been written and recorded by aged musicians (When it comes to Rock n' Roll, I consider anyone over the age of 24 "aged") recapturing the spirit of youth: Bruce Springsteen's Born to Run, Meatloaf's Bat Out of Hell, Neutral Milk Hotel's In the Aeroplane Over the Sea (that one's got a whole lot of other shit going on too, but still...), literally everything The Ramones did pre-Too Tough to Die, virtually every Kiss record made before Unmasked, pretty much every Thin Lizzy album recorded between the years of 1973 through 1977 (the "great, youthful Rock n' Roll exception" here is Thin Lizzy's exquisite Black Rose: A Rock Legend, which is quite possibly the absolute antithesis of youthful, and also quite possibly the band's greatest achievement, but Thin Lizzy was one of the greatest Rock bands in history, those dudes made everything sound kick-ass...Well, not everything. 1981's Renegade and 1983's Thunder and Lightening are not so good; the keyboard had no place in the music of Thin Lizzy.)

Even great Rock that has no overt lyrical or thematic ties to youth still embody the spirit of the young in its sound: Zeppelin, The Flaming Lips, The Replacements, everything Justin Hawkins has touched, C.C.R., Nirvana, T. Rex, Ryan Adams (sometimes, maybe often), Bowie, Lucero, basically every metal band from the 80's and early 90's, etc., etc., etc. But recently, something has changed. New rock music, I guess what hipster's refer to as "Indie", has shifted the focus from experienced guys recalling what it meant to be young and stupid and free and, well, just pretty fucking awesome to younger guys trying to sound older, wiser, more mature. (I know I'm generalizing, but frankly, I like to make broad, sweeping declarations about the way I perceive the world, especially when those perceptions are music related, and even more so when those perceptions are fact.) As a result, the world of Rock music has started to kind of suck. (Again, this a generalization. I know there are a lot of "grown-up" bands making (or made) remarkably brilliant music: Wilco, Joy Division, Bon Iver, Sigur Rós, Built to Spill, Pearl Jam, Cursive, the ethereal genius of The Cure; again, etc., etc., etc. There are always exceptions to the rule, it's just that in this case, the exceptions comprise around 40% of the good Rock music out there, and The Cure comprise about ½ of that 40%.)

The fact is, Rock n' Roll has always been liberating because it allows the "older folks" to relive and get lost in the memory of what it felt like to be 17, while simultaneously giving the lifestyle of the Seventeener meaning, but now, the Seventeener is trying to be a Twenty-Sevener. (This is a problem for multiple and more obvious reasons, but mainly, what self-respecting 27 year-old is going to take advice from a 22 year-old kids on how you're supposed to feel when you are 27?) What are we left with? We are left with a bunch of kids pretending to understand what it means to be us (maybe I should say "me", someone under the age of 24 might read this, though I doubt it.)

What happened to the escapism of Rock music? What happened to falling in love with a song and falling into a song, forgetting the things that ail you, feeling young and strong because the music feels young and strong? It appears that The Hold Steady must have sucked up all of that energy and are using it solely for themselves, because they are the only ones writing tunes that feel classic, inspired, young, and rockin' (Exceptions...Lucero and Hot Leg, look them up, learn something). But as sad as it is that only one American band out there is truly capturing the spirit of youth and playing real fucking Rock n' Roll, that one band has decided to dole that energy out in spades.

Craig Finn's songs are about firsts: the first hand-hold, the first kiss, the first fuck, the first epic party, the first beer, the first time you decide you are, in fact, invincible, the first time you spend all night next to the toilet vomiting up fire and blue from too much Five O'Clock Vodka and "Mountain Blast" Powerade, cursing yourself from ever suffering from the delusion that you were, in fact, invincible, the first time you fuck over someone you like for no good reason, the first time someone who likes you fucks you over for no good reason. They're all about love and lust and drugs and booze and music and drugs and friends and booze and enemies and hopes and dreams and drugs and failure and despair and booze. Craig Finn's songs aren't about memories though. The mind tends to filter out the bad and leaves only the good when we're dealing with memories. Everyone has a great memory about the biggest party they went to in high school or college, but no one ever seems to have memories about how awful they felt the next morning. Those latter kind of recollections are for people who don't deal in memories, they simply remember things. And Craig Finn definitely remembers.

His songs are not nostalgic; there is no sentimentality clouding up his images of youth. They are lyrics that are about what it felt like to be 17, but clearly from a 38 year-old's perspective. He remembers that being young was amazing and painful and sometimes detrimental to the remainder of your life. Some people do all the wrong things until they graduate High School, and then they go to College and still do all the wrong things but at more appropriate times, and then they graduate after figuring out ways to occasionally do the right things and they get a job and come out relatively unscathed. They may still choose to exhibit occasional bad behavior, but they recognize that there are right times to do the wrong things and work within the confines of this socially-constructed yet still liberating structure.

Some kids aren't so lucky. Some kids lose their innocence earlier than others. Some kids do all the wrong things and never figure out that there are better times than others to be wrong. Some kids become adults who just keep doing all the wrong things. Some kids become adults who end up never doing anything right. Craig Finn knows that, and he knows that when we were 17, all of us were friends regardless of what are inevitable (or not-so-inevitable) destinations might be. Some were on the road to success, others were on a crash-course with disaster, but for at least a little while, we all partied together at that fork in the road, taking shots of Black Velvet from a plastic half-gallon jug and chasing it with warm cans of Hamm's and choking down Marlboro Reds while listening to The Police on somebodies crappy car stereo. Some times were great, others were shitty, but they were all times we had when we were younger and these times were magical because of that. High School wasn't great, but being 17 was. College was better, but still not always great, but being 21 was. This is the crux of The Hold Steady's music, the reality of being young; black and white, good and bad, success and failure, we'll always experience both, but all of the bad shit was sufferable as long as we were young when we were suffering.

Craig Finn writes lyrics about being a kid but for people who no longer are. The "old-timers" get it because his words are honest and sincere, and they remind us of how it felt to be young and indestructible. The kids get it because his words are honest and sincere, and they validate their existence, validate exactly who they are at the exact moment in time that they are listening to them. He somehow manages to write lyrics that mean completely different yet equally important things to two very different groups of people.

And that's only the lyrics. The music, well, I could describe the music, but I don't need to. The Hold Steady are writing songs that are as unique, original, and good as the best bands out there (if not better), but I'm guessing you've heard them before. If you've ever been listening to a song with friends at 1 a.m. and felt compelled to sing every word at top volume in each others faces just because you were there, the beer was cold, there was still a half pack of smokes in your pocket, and the song was just that fucking good, then you've heard it before because that's who The Hold Steady are and what The Hold Steady do. The Hold Steady write music that's meant to be listened to at top volume while driving in the summer with the windows rolled down and no particular place to go. They write the kind of music you listen to while getting ready to go out for a "massive night", only to cut your evening short so you can go home and listen to The Hold Steady again.

If you can hear the opening riff to "Slapped Actress" and think that these guys aren't as Rock as fuck, then I'm not sure what to say to you. If you can put on "Your Little Hoodrat Friend", and not smile at the lead-in to the chorus, I'm not sure I understand you. If you can listen to even just the first 20 seconds of "Hot Soft Light" and not be convinced that this is some of the most kick-ass, serious, and essential Rock n' Roll that you've ever heard, than I don't think there's a thing I can say here that's going to make you think differently. And to be honest, I wouldn't want to, because if you can listen to these songs and not feel those things, then you don't deserve to listen to The Hold Steady.

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