Album Review: "Don't Stop The Music" by Robyn

Taste doesn't make sense. I didn't care about Body Talk Pt. 2 even a little bit the first time I heard it in September. I was on a big Kylie Minogue kick at the time and Robyn was such a critics' darling that I barely gave her the time of day. My cynicism got the better of me, you see. "Oh, a Snoop Dogg cameo," I sniffed. "How droll."

I did get over this attitude, eventually. Thankfully. My buddy Rick Joyce pushed me to give Body Talk another shot, and of course I realized that "In My Eyes" and "Hang With Me" were great and that my first listen-through was some kind of strange fluke (I've still never liked "Criminal Intent" but it didn't even make the full Body Talk album so maybe I shouldn't care). Then I made the discovery that Robyn had sang a song I was in love with when I was 12 years old and I almost wept. Suddenly I was all on Robyn's side, which is a silly and embarrassing thing to admit - that I could only appreciate Robyn's merits after realizing her tenuous connection with an era of pop music I grew up with. In one second I went from viewing her as "some singing lady I do not know anything about" to some kind of 90s teen pop survivor in the same vein as Justin Timberlake. It's enough to make me warm up to anybody. I have a weak brain.

I have been putting off this review for months now. I'm beyond sick of it and I've barely even started writing it yet. It started off as a straight-up Body Talk review until I realized that writing another Body Talk review would be a waste of everyone's time, but that was only the half of it - the truth is that I like Body Talk so much that the idea of explaining its appeal is intimidating to me. But it's worth a shot.

Robyn is unique to me because she deals in vulnerability and genuine human emotion, something that is rare in modern dance pop. Most dance pop stars either take a stab at profundity and fail miserably, or just don't give a shit. Lady GaGa (who Robyn has been wrongly compared to by critics over and over again) is all about spectacle and razor-toothed confidence; Kylie Minogue's Aphrodite is designed to be the Ultimate Never-Ending Dance Party Full Of All The Beautiful People (UNEDPFOATBP). This is all well and good, but Robyn deals in the same sounds and still manages to come across as relatable, which is strange. I am not usually "the guy" to pour over lyrics but my favorite songs on Body Talk - "Dancing On My Own," "Indestructible," "Hang With Me," "Time Machine," "Call Your Girlfriend," etc. etc. - marry impeccable club-ready dance beats with complex, vulnerable, self-defeating lyrical themes so effectively that it is almost perverse.

What I mean is, "Dancing On My Own" is maybe the most effective anti-dance dance song released in a long time. It is a song about sitting alone in the club feeling like garbage and not enjoying yourself while the object of your affection is with somebody else, just barely out of your view. That's it. "Call Your Girlfriend" starts with "call your girlfriend / it's time you had the talk," an opening couplet so striking and upfront that I can't imagine it coming from anybody but Robyn. Can you imagine Katy Perry opening a song like that? With two lines that push you into the most painful emotional territory imaginable right from the get-go? Even the Max Martin-penned "Time Machine," with its bombastic hey-chant superchorus, is all about regret. Doing shitty, shitty things and never being able to take them back. If you can't relate to songs like these then we are just very different people.

This is why Robyn's more attitude-driven songs never clicked with me as much - they feel like a front. A defense mechanism. Or maybe I am just too weak of a human being to connect with them. I imagine there are people who can relate to a line like "you should know better than to fuck with me" but I'm not one of them. Maybe I'm not supposed to relate to it?

So that is what I have to say about Body Talk. Maybe it is time to talk about Don't Stop The Music, a Robyn album that I like but don't have nearly as much to say about. I wanted to do the responsible thing and talk about a Robyn album that isn't Body Talk, which I accomplished soundly by talking about only Body Talk for seven straight paragraphs. EXCELLENT WORK.

Don't Stop The Music sounds like more of a standard 2002-era pop album. Clearly the aggressive-yet-vulnerable Robyn persona has not fully taken hold yet, and wouldn't until her 2005 self-titled album. But there are hints, the most obvious one being "Should Have Known," which popped up in re-recorded form on Robyn but made its first appearance here. Its dejected, defeated tone sounds like an obvious antecedent to most of Body Talk, but it eschews drama for a more introspective morning-after approach. But some of Music's charm comes from songs that would never appear on a modern Robyn album, like the gosh-darn adorable ballad "O Baby" or the hushed fidelity ode "Blow My Mind." I remember not caring about the last four or five songs on it, though. The last time I listened to it.

Oh well. The bottom line is that the instantly relatable themes that made Body Talk so appealing to so many people is not present in Don't Stop The Music, but if you have any interest in Robyn as a persona it is worth seeking out. It's as transitional as transitional records get, nestled between her producer-controlled teen pop phase in the late 90s and her independent resurgence in the mid-2000s. It's probably the last album she put out explicitly tailored for a then-dwindling teen pop audience.

Do you get the feeling that this review was headed in a potentially interesting direction? Fancy that. I don't know what happened. It's late.

Album Review: "Collapse Into Now" by R.E.M.

There are a few things I need to say about this new R.E.M. album. Here are those things:

1) I am glad I listened to it all the way through more than once or twice before I decided to sit down and review it. If I hadn't I would have been all "BUUGUHH IT'S NOT AS GOOD AS ACCELERATE BUHH BUHUHGGUH"

2) It's not as good as Accelerate.

3) More than one record reviewer has referred to Collapse Into Now as their "comeback album," as if they hadn't said the exact same thing about Accelerate three years ago.

4) More than one record reviewer has referred to Collapse Into Now as either a sign of R.E.M. finally returning to their former glory, or as a disappointing mediocrity compared to their '82-'92 classic period. I even recall somebody saying "I'm sick and tired of all these so-so R.E.M. albums!" What these people need to understand is that R.E.M. are a group of 50-year-old men. Their status as trailblazing alternative jangle-men is way, way behind them. If you are expecting them to record a Document or even an Out Of Time again, you're fooling yourself. You need to gauge your expectations. Nothing gold can stay, Ponyboy.

5) These are some of the worst song titles in the history of anything. "Mine Smell Like Honey"? "Oh My Heart"? "Me, Marlon Brando, Marlon Brando and I"? "It Happened Today"? "Discoverer"? "Every Day Is Yours To Win"? I mean - this isn't - I don't know.

6) There are some pretty dumb, dumb lyrics on here! And they are impossible to ignore.

7) Michael Stipe's been sporting a straight-up beard recently. Is it weird that I kind of love Stipebeard?



No. I don't think it's weird.

OK I think the "list bit" has run its course. The truth about Collapse Into Now is that it is a pretty solid R.E.M. album despite some stupid lyrics and boring ballads. It mines their past discography just as much as Accelerate did, but it lacks that album's off-the-cuff energy and affability. You can hear them trying a little harder here, is what I mean. You can tell that the confidence boost from Accelerate's positive critical reception pushed them into trying to make an "important" album. They've also thrown some Peter Buck mandolin back into the mix in a clear attempt to recapture that Automatic For The People magic that does not really work. "Uberlin" is nice, but "Oh My Heart" is another awkward "Swan Swan H" retread and "Me, Marlon Brando" is pretty dull. And despite being an obvious attempt at re-creating "E-Bow The Letter," "Blue" could have been a pretty effective piece of sadness if not for Stipe's completely terrible spoken word poetry oh my GOD MAKE IT STOP.

But here's the thing - the fast-paced jangly "rockers" on this album are good. Very good! This does not make even a little bit of sense. 50-year-old men should not be this good at writing catchy little rock songs, but man, they still got it! Despite having the world's worst title, "Mine Smell Like Honey" is wonderfully catchy and features some never-not-great Mike Mills backing vocals, while "Alligator" and "That Someone Is You" are at least Accelerate-worthy. "Discoverer" is a solid "Finest Worksong" remake, "All The Best" would fit in pretty well on New Adventures In Hi-Fi and "It Happened Today" features some painfully gorgeous harmony vocals in its last minute or so (despite having what my friend Rick referred to as a "ridiculously 90s Sister Hazel-esque chord sequence," which is totally correct).

I did notice - are Stipe's vocals awkwardly buried in a good chunk of these tracks, or is it just me? You can really hear it on "Discoverer," especially. It was the first thing that hit me when I previewed some of these songs for the first time. Strange, considering how up-front and strong his vocals were on most of Accelerate and Live At The Olympia. You think there's something going on, there? Was that a conscious decision, to de-emphasize the vocals? Or maybe he's losing his voice or something. I don't know.

Bottom line: Collapse Into Now is exactly the kind of album I would expect from R.E.M. at this point in their career. To expect anything more from them is wrong. If they continue to churn out records of Collapse Into Now-level quality for the rest of their existence, I will be perfectly happy. If not, well, that's fine. They could retire for all I care. They're a bunch of middle-aged men who have already made a bunch of great, great albums. They don't need to do anything else. If they want to keep recording music, well, god bless 'em.

Still not as good as Accelerate, though.

Album Review: "Urban Hymns" by the Verve

I have no idea if anybody reading this post now has been following this blog since the early, mostly forgettable days of 2007 (if you haven't then you are better off for it, certainly). If you have, you might remember an old New Radicals review in which I referred to Gregg Alexander's songs as "Big Important Anthems," a descriptor that I thought was a real hum-dinger at the time. But in retrospect the term is much more appropriate in describing another hallmark of the ever-optimistic late 90s: The Verve's Urban Hymns.

For god's sake - Urban Hymns!! That is the actual name of the record. Richard Ashcroft is wearing a bucket hat on the cover. This might be the most intensely late-90s alt rock product ever conceived.

I have no idea why I am writing about this record. Besides nostalgia, of course. I bought Urban Hymns the weekend after my 18th birthday alongside Pinkerton. The latter hit me hard as a vulnerable teenager and has only built in reputation since, becoming my personal adolescent-idiot-bible every time I come back to it. Urban Hymns, on the other hand, has not aged quite as well and I kind of forgot about it for a few years after I graduated high school. But now I view it as kind of a strange predecessor to my eventual (and very brief) obsession with Britpop during my freshman year of college, even if it isn't a particularly Britpoppy record.

Hey! Did you know that 1997 was apparently the Year Britpop Died according to most renowned music historians? Oasis put out that big fat cocainey mess Be Here Now and everybody simultaneously realized they were a bunch of cockmen. Radiohead did OK Computer and the Verve did Urban Hymns which precluded the mellower British sounds of Travis and Coldplay. Blur fell in love with Pavement alla the sudden and did "Song 2". None of this is important.

What do you get with Urban Hymns. You get a bunch of heavily-produced 90s ballads about drugs probably, sharing album space with some vague psychedelia and some attempts at "rocking" that are not particularly thrilling. Not to mention way, wayy too long - "The Rolling People" and "Come On" are not nearly good enough to justify 7 and 15 minutes, respectively. Good lord!! Urban Hymns suffers from that unfortunate 90s tendency to fill up 80 minutes of CD space with a bunch of 3-minute tracks stretched out to 5 or 6 minutes each, making for a needlessly overlong behemoth (see also: Michael Jackson's Dangerous, R.E.M.'s New Adventures In Hi-Fi).

But I would be a bona-fide lying man if I told you the ballads on here do not turn me into a blubbering fool every time I play them. The impact of the big hit "Bittersweet Symphony" has kind of dulled over time for me, but hey. "Space And Time"? "Lucky Man"? "The Drugs Don't Work"? "One Day"? Hoo-jeez. You would be hard-pressed to find alt-rock ballads more expertly manipulative. Big Important Anthems that make you want to hug a man hard. If you don't have a nostalgic connection to this kind of music like I do you might just think it's a load of syrupy bullshit, and you would probably be right. End of review.

I have been living in Chicago for almost a year now. I just recently got a job, so. Now I'm stuck here. Don't think that I'm bitter about this, because I am a happy happy man, having a job that involves me getting paid. This is nothing but good. But I hate listening to music like this because all I think about is home. Of course, there's nothing left for me at home now besides my family - all my friends are off doing better things, and good for them. After I moved back home after college I had a boring job for a year and never left my house, and I was miserable. But fucking music like this, it makes me feel like there is something left back home, and I am abandoning it every second I am not there. It's stupid, stupid. A total lie. Why would I put myself through this??

It's trash. Manipulative garbage. You're better off with Coldplay. Fuck you!!

i am never going to write a decent review ever again

Album Review: "See You On The Other Side" by the Mercury Rev

Some part of me thinks that if had I heard The Soft Bulletin for the first time at age 23 instead of age 18, it would not have affected me nearly as much as it has. A small part of me, at least. I don't think that many people would call Bulletin a "teenager album," but as the record I held nearest and dearest to my heart during the summer before I left home for college - a summer that really felt like the LAST SUMMER of my ENTIRE LIFE - The Soft Bulletin became an aural document of every terrifying emotion I was feeling at the time, amped-up and blown apart for maximum impact. In layman's terms, that one album turned a pretty lackluster transition from one boring school to another into The Biggest Fucking Thing Ever, and every time I hear it I feel like I'm experiencing all those confused, stupid emotions all over again. There are very few records that hit me at the right place and the right time like that one did.

But that's the thing, see. Right place, right time. I get the impression that if I heard it now I'd be all like "Oh, this is pretty cool!" while preferring to champion lesser-loved Lips albums like Zaireeka or Hit To Death In The Future Head. Not to mention the unfortunate trend of fair-weather Lips fans shrugging off most pre-Soft Bulletin Lips albums as if they were part of some kind of regrettable "early period," or the fact that the Lips themselves would indulge in obnoxious quirky cuteness shortly after Bulletin's success. Had I not been an impressionable youngster in need of some Big Emotional Drumming during an awkward and vulnerable period of transition, I might have felt about The Soft Bulletin the same way I feel about Yankee Hotel Foxtrot or In The Aeroplane Over The Sea - "It's good, but it's not a masterpiece, people."

Why am I even thinking about this. I am thinking about this because I have been listening to the Mercury Rev, a band that is so much like the Flaming Lips that you might even be inclined to call them their "sister band" if they weren't a bunch of dudes. Not only did they share personnel (Rev lead singer/songwriter Jon Donahue was the Lips' lead guitarist on In A Priest Driven Ambulance and bassist Dave Fridmann produced pretty much every great Lips album you can name), but they even had similar musical "arcs" throughout the 90s. Both bands started off the decade as druggy-pretty noise rockers, cleaned up their sound a bit after losing one of their key members midway, and ended the decade as ambitious big-hearted sweet-rock balladeers. Mercury Rev's Deserter's Songs is pretty much their Soft Bulletin, only released a year earlier, and I feel the same way about it as those previously listed "masterpiece" albums - it's good and pretty and nice, but I'm not goin' nuts. I can easily say that I prefer the Rev's earlier, noisier records, back when "other vocalist" and primo weirdo Dave Baker was still in the band.

Which makes it all the stranger that See You On The Other Side, the first Rev album released after Baker's departure from the band in 1995, has become my most-listened album by these guys. Is it my favorite? I don't know. It's considered by most critics to be a decent but awkward transition between their noisier stuff and their cleaner stuff, so maybe my penchant for bucking mass critical opinion is getting the better of me. But it's a mostly lovely and fascinating listen - especially considering that it was released in '95, a few years before the Lips would indulge in these sorts of Brian Wilson-y pretty sounds themselves. Considering how close these two bands were, I have no doubt that Other Side was an influence on what would eventually become Zaireeka and The Soft Bulletin.

What See You On The Other Side lacks is the full-blown "wall-of-sound masterpiece" production that Deserter's Songs and The Soft Bulletin were going for, but that's actually kind of an asset here. A big part of Other Side's charm lies in its humility and subtlety - its big, emotional moments build gradually, and never feel cheap. It also isn't above incorporating noisy rock guitars into the mix, an element both bands would willfully abandon by the end of the decade - as pretty as "Empire State" and "Sudden Ray Of Hope" are, it's kind of exhilarating to hear both of them ending with chaotic bursts of feedback. Other Side's worst songs are the ones that eschew subtlety for a more obvious approach - "Young Man's Stride" is straight-up hard rock, which just sounds dopey and unconvincing in the wake of all this good-natured prettiness, while on the other hand "Everlasting Arm"'s overly precious Pet Sounds approach pushes dangerously close to Polyphonic Spree territory. It's a testament to the quality of the album that neither song is bad, necessarily - just kind of awkward.

But then you have a track like "Racing The Tide," my favorite on here, which takes a line as simple as "I'm so close / I'm almost inside" and turns it into a gorgeous, immaculately-produced indie rock anthem, full of gentle guitars and violins and trembly multi-layered Donahue vocals. And right when you think it's over, it bursts into "Close Encounters Of The Third Grade," featuring hip-hop beats and wailing female backup vocals that are so wonderfully 90s dated they make me want to cry. I mean this as a compliment.

(Worth mentioning: the album came out in 1995, when I was actually IN third grade. Coincidence? Yes.)

Oh, did I mention the big key difference between the Flaming Lips and the Mercury Rev yet? I don't think I did. The Mercury Rev are big sappy romantics - or at least Jon Donahue is. With Dave Baker out of the picture Donahue was finally able to indulge in all of his sweet romantic fantasies, and See You On The Other Side was the immediate result. Which is why you've got a track called "A Kiss From An Old Flame" on here. It's a more significant difference than you might imagine - can you think of a single Flaming Lips love song that isn't completely fatalist and depressing? Can you?? The Rev have none of that. No sad creepy darkness. Just love. Which is why I don't think I'd be able to handle their later stuff. I've heard they got even sappier after the new millenium, but I haven't heard any of those records yet. I'm rambling.

I've long forgotten how to end music reviews.

Good night.

Album Review: "Aphrodite" by Kylie Minogue

ahhhhhhh

A memo to 90% of modern indie bands making feeble, "post-ironic" attempts at dance-pop: Kylie Minogue has you beat. By a long shot. This is everything pop music should be - over-the-top synths, insistent beats, cliched lyrics, and overwhelmingly catchy hooks. With Minogue there's no hint of the obnoxious self-awareness that poisons so many wannabe dance bands circa 2010. No painful falsettos, no "hilariously quirky" 8-bit sound effects, no pointlessly wordy lyrics - just simple, fun pop music. Minogue isn't putting on an act, here; this is what she does, what she's always done. And she does it well.

Kylie Minogue has been recording pop music for a solid two decades, and she is somehow recording music in her 40s that is substantially better than anything she did in her 20s. Which is kind of ridiculous, when you think about it; she's like a bizarro Madonna, or something. Before this year's Aphrodite, I had only (VERY recently) heard a couple of Minogue's other records: 2000's Light Years and 2001's Fever, both chock-full of fantastic millennial disco-pop that I felt guilty having missed out on for so many years (as a self-proclaimed connoisseur of early 2000s pop, this was especially hurtful). These records made two things abundantly clear: one, Kylie Minogue knows good pop music; two, Kylie Minogue cares about making her records consistent, which isn't even necessary. She could've just put out a bunch of great singles and filled the rest of her records with filler pap like every other teen pop act out there, but instead Light Years and Fever are so impressive front-to-back that even the lesser tracks feel like they belong.

Aphrodite continues this trend, but things are a little different. As great as Light Years and Fever were, they indulged in over-the-top campiness so thoroughly that they came perilously close to ironic jokiness (Light Years especially). I don't get that vibe from Aphrodite; it sounds more forceful, more committed. Not to mention that it's less of a disco record and more of a synth-pop one, which I guess is emblematic of the year it was recorded. Where Light Years came out during the "DISCO IS COOL AGAIN!" era, Aphrodite is here in the midst of the "80s DANCE IS COOL AGAIN!" era, so it treads dangerous ground. A cynic might accuse Minogue of playing catch-up with the likes of Lady GaGa and La Roux, and they may be right. But it doesn't matter, 'cause Aphrodite is better than both.

Oh ho, I could prattle on and on about the songs this record. I could! So I will. I love Aphrodite because it does not waste a second. The first word you hear is "DANCE," and it does not let up from there. "All The Lovers," "Get Outta My Way," "Put Your Hands Up (If You Feel Love)" - impossible not to dance to. You will dance to them. If you think you won't, you are wrong! "Everything Is Beautiful" you might not dance to, though, because it is a ballad. But you might anyway. "Better Than Today" is a great pop song. Even if a couple tracks during the second half aren't as good as the rest, the record ends with "Looking For An Angel" and "Can't Beat The Feeling," two of the best tracks here. It's 43 minutes long and nearly flawless. You can't ask for anything more from a pop album.

Honestly, Aphrodite is nothing new or shockingly original. It probably could have been recorded a decade ago. And nobody's saying Kylie Minogue is a fantastic vocalist or anything - I imagine her cutesy cooing is probably really annoying to some people - but she knows how to deliver these songs, and that's all that matters. I won't deny for a second that my intense love of this record isn't completely personal; Aphrodite embodies all of the great dance music I grew up with, delivered without apology or condescension. It gives off that irresistible feeling of the perfect all-night party, one that could never possibly exist. In layman's terms, I feel like this record was made just for me, and that is a feeling that cannot be taken for granted.

OK, I feel like I'm losing myself here, so how's this for a comparison: Aphrodite is like if the Backstreet Boys' last record didn't completely suck after the first four songs. Because I know all of you out there spent $19.99 on a copy of that record immediately upon its release, and as such know exactly what I'm talking about.

Right? Right! Wasn't "PDA" such a stupid fucking song?? I knowww.

Album Review: "Fables Of The Reconstruction" by R.E.M.

RECONSTRUCTION

Oho, so here I am, writing about R.E.M. again. I have been listening to so SO much new music recently, and yet all I have to show for it is a review of an album - and a band - that I have loved since the beginning of time. Way to work outside of your comfort zone, Rose.

But I have an excuse! Today's record, 1985's Fables Of The Reconstruction, was just recently re-released - and, thankfully, it is getting a whole slew of long-deserved positive press. This is good news, considering that Fables tends to be the one early R.E.M. record that is continually ignored, even by diehard fans; not only was it sandwiched uncomfortably between Reckoning and Lifes Rich Pageant, but the band was not at all happy with the record by most accounts, and fans decided to follow their lead by not even bothering to hear it. Which is pretty dumb, when you think about it. Didn't XTC hate Skylarking for a while? Like, their most celebrated and beloved album? Yeah.

Bands are stupid.

Guess R.E.M. got over it, though, considering that they perform Fables tracks in concert all the time now. So we can all stop being so dumb. Fables holds a unique position in R.E.M.'s discography for a few reasons: one, it's the band's first concept album, with a set of songs exploring legends of the rural South; two, it's the last album of R.E.M.'s elliptical early years, before Lifes Rich Pageant turned them into an arena-rock band; and third, it's possibly their darkest album, the inverse of Reckoning's summertime-fun college rock. The latter point is probably the main reason so many people have trouble with Fables - it takes the least accessible traits of R.E.M.'s first two albums and magnifies them, pushing Michael Stipe's vocals even further back into the mix and drenching every track in moody guitar murk. Just a comparison of opening tracks makes these differences clear: where Murmur and Reckoning kicked off with radio-friendly college rock anthems, Fables opens with the clangy guitars of "Feeling Gravitys Pull," a song so unfriendly it sounds almost like it was designed to push the listener away.

This was my Fables dilemma, for a while. Lifes Rich Pageant has long been my favorite 80s R.E.M. record, and Fables is almost its exact opposite in every conceivable way; I just didn't know how to approach it. But Fables is a record that rewards (or, in some cases, requires) multiple listens, revealing itself to be possibly R.E.M.'s finest exercise in establishing mood and drawing the listener in. Individual tracks might not be as catchy or ingratiating as Murmur's and Reckoning's, but neither of those records could boast a sound as all-engulfing as "Maps And Legends"'s foreboding jangle, or "Auctioneer (Another Engine)"'s disarming chorus. If Reckoning felt like a lovely drive through the neighborhood, Fables feels like a dirt-road slog in the dead of night, where everything is obscured and nothing is certain.

But despite all that murkiness, this is still an early-period R.E.M. record through and through, full of gorgeous melodies, Peter Buck guitar jangling and Mike Mills/Bill Berry harmonies. Most fans probably already know "Driver 8," even if they haven't heard Fables - it's one of their best and most popular early singles - but there are so many worthy album tracks here it's ridiculous. My personal favorite, "Green Grow The Rushes," is one of Peter Buck's finest moments, a winding tapestry of folk-rock guitar beauty. It's got an environmental message, but one so thoroughly packaged in melodious songcraft that it never comes across as preachy or obnoxious - it's a should-be R.E.M. classic, is what I'm trying to say. The dramatic echo of tracks like "Life And How To Live It" and "Good Advices" give the record a palpable sense of energy (the latter featuring the immortal Stipe lyric "When you meet a stranger / look at his shoes / keep your money in your shoes"), while "Kohoutek" and "Old Man Kensey" revel in that creepy Old South vibe. And, of course, there are the two great tracks that are completely at odds with the mood of the record: the goofy horn-driven "Can't Get There From Here," the earliest inkling that R.E.M. actually had a sense of humor, and the understated country ballad of "Wendell Gee" that closes the album on an unusually friendly note.

Oh, also worth noting: if you love Mike Mills counterpoint harmony vocals, Fables is going to make you a very happy man. They are all over this fucking thing. "Can't Get There From Here" is maybe the best example, but "Maps And Legends" and "Wendell Gee" benefit greatly from his presence. God, I love that guy.

Man, there is no better time to get into Fables. It is an excellent portrait of a band at the peak of their powers, delivering one more moody masterpiece before diving headlong into the mainstream. I wouldn't recommend it for newbie R.E.M. fans - it's a little too uninviting - but dedicated listeners have no excuses. Give in.

To close things out, here's a fun live performance that answers the eternal question: "What if R.E.M.'s classic, outspoken anthem 'Fall On Me' sounded like a track from Chronic Town?" Here is your answer:

Album Review: "Broken Bells" by Broken Bells

ring them belles

I have always been a Danger Mouse fan. I have never been a Shins fan. So when I heard that Danger Mouse recorded an album with the Shins guy, I was all like "ehhh I dunno, man" and decided not to listen to it.

But then I listened to it and realized that, hey, it's pretty good and I like it! Man, what a twist.

See now, I was embellishing a bit when I said "I have never been a Shins fan." What I meant to say was "I heard a few of their songs here and there, wasn't crazy about them, and made a concerted effort to not bother with any of their studio releases as a result. Also, fucking Garden State, jesus christ." Which, you know, is a completely unfair judgment. And now I'm thinking - if James Mercer is just as bearable on all those Shins albums as he is here, maybe I should give them a chance? Yes. Maybe I should.

I mean, I could say Danger Mouse is the only reason I like this record, but that wouldn't be right either. Mercer's voice is all over this thing, for one. I always pinned Mercer's vocals as too introverted and dull for my tastes ("New Slang," for one, which features one of the most bored vocal deliveries I have ever heard), but on Broken Bells he really sounds like he cares, which is a definite plus. He and Danger Mouse make for a surprisingly compatible duo: Mercer writes a bunch of pretty, mournful low-key tunes, and Danger Mouse bathes them in the atmospheric electronics that are his signature. The best thing I can say about Broken Bells is that it reminds me of my personal favorite DM production, Gorillaz' Demon Days; like that album, it indulges in a sweet electronic haze, but doesn't sound meandering or self-indulgent.

At least, for the most part. Some of the songs on Broken Bells' second half don't thrill me too much (a little too Shins-y, I guess?). But there are a lot of cool things going on here. My personal favorite track would have to be "Your Head Is On Fire," which somehow manages to evoke all the splendor of a Pet Sounds instrumental without being completely obnoxious, a nearly impossible feat nowadays. There's also the cool dark electronics of "Vaporize" and "October," the expansively pretty opener "The High Road," and "The Mall & Misery" which manages to beat Phoenix at their own sordid little pop-rock game.

I would also like to take this opportunity to apologize to Broken Bells' big hit single, "The Ghost Inside," which I was not fond of upon first listen but I now accept as a decently funky track. Here is my thing: I have a real problem with indie rock white dudes trying to be funky. I think it is a stupid, obnoxious trend that needs to end as soon as possible. Not that I don't think white dudes can be funky - if the Bee Gees can, who can't? - but in recent years it sounds to me like a mocking, self-important stab at relevance by a bunch of clueless white-boy Prince fetishists. It's silly, empty posturing. So when I first heard Mercer's over-the-top falsetto on "The Ghost Inside," my immediate reaction was to pause the track, rest my face in my hands and squeeze until I went numb. But soon I realized, hey! It's pretty much a Gorillaz song! And that falsetto, Damon Albarn does that a whole lot, doesn't he? So it would be pretty hypocritical of me to demonize "The Ghost Inside." It's good, and it's the only song on here featuring Mercer's funkmaster highvoice, so I can't get too mad at him.

So there you are. I like Broken Bells. You will, too, if you like Danger Mouse. And the Shins, I guess. I wouldn't know.

As for the "I hate funky indie rock dudes," that is a subject that will pop up again in the near future, I can assure you. Whether you like it or not.

Requested Review: "Wilco (the album)" by Wilco

adorable.

My good buddy Matt Hoffman has been waiting for his requested review for a good long time now. And with good reason - he's been waiting since, what, July? Poor guy.

Matt asked me to review Wilco's new self-titled album (Wilco (The Album) as they call it), which I have had sitting in my iTunes since its release without having actually listened to it once in its entirety. I can't explain why this is; a few songs have popped up here and there, but I guess I have just been distracted with other records, which tends to happen often (I have a horrible attention span). But I consider Wilco to be one of my favorite modern rock bands, and so it is a little weird that I have ignored their new release for such a long time. I haven't heard Dinosaur Jr's new album yet either, which came out around the same time as Wilco's. Do I just not care anymore?? Oh jeez.

No, I don't think that's it. I am just not a man that gets very excited about new music releases from anybody (which is kind of weird since I run a music blog but let's get past that for a bit), so I just kind of let them fall by the wayside. The only new release that I have been excited about recently has been the Flaming Lips' Embryonic - 'cause, y'know, it's the Flaming Lips and all that. But I am also a pretty big Wilco fan so I still have no real reason to not be all excited about this album too! What is the deal here??

Hey it doesn't matter let's just talk about the album we have here. Wilco (The Album)'s first track is called "Wilco (the song)" and for the life of me sounds like a song that is actually about the band itself, which is the weirdest thing. I could be completely wrong here (and feel free to correct me if I am) but I think Wilco are quite possibly the first band to write a theme song about themselves since, oh I don't know, the Monkees? But that's the thing, 'cuz the Monkees' theme song was the first track on their first album, not to mention the opening theme song for a TV show based around them (and hey it wasn't even WRITTEN by them). Wilco, I will say, are the first band to write a track about themselves as the opener of their seventh studio album after a decade-and-a-half career in the music industry. "This is a man with arms open wide / A sonic shoulder for you to cry / ay, ay, ay, on, Wilco / Wilco will love you, baby." Hmm.

But besides that bizarre moment of self-mythology, Wilco's new album is not really anything new. I know I sound like kind of a dick saying that, but it's true; Wilco (The Album) shares the same down-home chilled-out atmosphere as 2007's Sky Blue Sky, but you'll hear some Yankee Hotel Foxtrot here and some Summerteeth there, and maybe even some hints of their earliest records. I wouldn't know, myself, because I'm a terrible Wilco fan and the only Wilco records I have heard are all the ones I just listed above. I'm a shallow shallow man.

Oh man I was going to talk about those other Wilco albums before but I forgot to! Let me fill you in. 1999's Summerteeth was the first Wilco album I ever heard and it is still my favorite. It's pop magnificence, man! Catchy hooks and great production and "A Shot In The Arm" and all that. Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is pretty good and I love "Heavy Metal Drummer" and all but I am not as crazy about it as so many other people are. I haven't heard it in a while, maybe that's my problem, but it's a little too moody for my tastes. Would you hate me if I told you I kinda like Sky Blue Sky a little better?? It's such a pretty album! I admit that it's not a "sonic masterpiece of this decade" or anything like that but it's just so amiable that I can't help but love it. "You Are My Face"? "Side With The Seeds"? "What Light"? Get out of my face, those are so good.

So in that context I would say that Wilco (The Album) sounds like a mix of Sky Blue Sky's mellow atmosphere and Summerteeth's immaculate pop songcraft, which is why I am confused that I don't like it a lot more than I do. I don't dislike it or anything, but I have listened through it four or five times now and my only reaction as been along the lines of "oh, that was pleasant." Pleasant, but nothing that grabs me, you know? Sky Blue Sky was "pleasant" too but it kind of sucked me in in a way that I can't quite pinpoint. Maybe I just liked the songs better?

That might be the case. My favorite songs here are the straight-up pop songs: the aforementioned "Wilco (the Song)", the groovy "Sonny Feeling", and the wonderful "You Never Know," the first single from the album. "You Never Know" is honestly a great single and probably the best and most inviting pop song Wilco has written since Summerteeth. Every time it comes on I have to sit there and listen to the whole thing, it makes me feel so good! And that cutesy George Harrison-esque guitar solo near the end? Jeff Tweedy are you trying to paralyze me with powerpop fanboy glee?? Man, what a good track.

There are a couple vaguely "artsy" songs on here, too - "Deeper Down" recalls Yankee Hotel Foxtrot with its unusual structure, and "Bull Black Nova" repeats this bizarre monotonous piano riff for a while before descending into a guitar jam not unlike Sky Blue Sky's "Impossible Germany." But besides these songs and the aforementioned pop-rockers, Wilco is a pretty mellow album, almost to a fault. Songs like "Country Disappeared" and "Solitaire" are quite lovely, really they are, and Tweedy's duet with Feist in "You and I" is nice and all. But it feels a little drab and there are times when I feel like they are retreading old ground - does "I'll Fight" sound a bit much like "On And On And On" from the last album or am I just paranoid? The whole album smacks of a "been there done that" sort of feeling for me. I think it's fine for a band to consolidate their strengths and write songs in a signature style that they know they're good at, and clearly this is what Wilco did on this album. I just feel like most of the songs are not as good as songs on previous releases.

But really - I'm being overly negative. If you are a casual Wilco fan I'm sure you'll like this album, because it certainly is a Wilco album! Jeff Tweedy sings on every song and there are guitars and catchy hooks and Americana and all that. Also the word "Wilco" is on the cover of the record so you know what you're in for. And "Sonny Feeling," hey, that's a fun little track huh? I think I would honestly like Wilco (The Album) a whole lot more if they'd stuck with the fun pop-rock of those aforementioned few tracks for the whole album, but that's just me and I am not the wisest man alive.

Matt, do you like it? I'm sorry if you do because I have been a dick in this review like always and I'm sorry to do this to you. I mostly like it! It just feels a little slow and samey sometimes. What can you do?

Whatever. I'm happy Wilco are still around. And when else am I gonna be able to compare them to the Monkees? Never, ever again. That is something to cherish. Oh, how I wish I could write this review of Wilco's 2009 release Wilco (The Album) for the rest of my life.

But no, I can't do that. Then when would I ever get to Limp Bizkit??

(Oh, and Matt - do you have a blog or a website or anything? If so gimme a shout and I'll link to it.)

Album Review: "Live At The Olympia" by R.E.M.

pretty sure Stipe stopped wearing that stupid facepaint for these shows

Oh hey! Today is Thanksgiving in these United States! I hope most of you have enjoyed your turkey and stuffing and gravy and naptime. To celebrate this holiday of thanks I will go ahead and write about a band that I have written about many times before and has nothing to do with Thanksgiving: R.E.M.

R.E.M. are one of my favorite bands ever. I have made this pretty obvious in the past, but it is worth repeating. They are a band that cuts me deep, you see. So when I heard they were putting out a double-disc live album, one that was getting more-than-decent reviews, I figured it was worth a shot. And not only was I not disappointed - I was enthralled. I mean, I expected quality, but I did not expect this much quality. For a huge R.E.M. fan like myself, it is a special treat.

Perhaps some context is necessary. R.E.M., surprisingly enough, have issued only two official live albums in their entire 25+ year existence - and they've both been released only in the past couple years. The first one, R.E.M. Live, came out in '07 and focused on a few 2005 shows in support of Around the Sun, quite possibly the least exciting R.E.M. album ever released. And the tracklisting bore this out: not only was Sun the most represented album there with a whopping six tracks, but most of the other songs were the usual, predictable hits (a little "Losing My Religion" here, a little "Everybody Hurts" there) and questionable album cuts (like "So Fast So Numb," a decent but middling selection from the otherwise lovely New Adventures In Hi Fi, and "I Took Your Name" from the always-bleghh Monster). As for their classic I.R.S. albums, "Cuyahoga" was the only out-of-nowhere choice there; otherwise, they were barely represented. The band sounded OK, but the album was nothing that was going to bring anybody back to the R.E.M. fold after almost a decade of mediocre albums. If anything, the band sounded more out of touch than ever, trotting out their biggest hits without much gusto. It was, in a word, depressing.

Fast forward to the present. We now have R.E.M. Live At The Olympia, a two-disc 39-song set recorded during their "working rehearsal" shows in July 2007. At this point, Around The Sun had been thoroughly panned and ignored, and the band were determined to write better material for their next record in the face of rapidly thinning fan support. Most of those new songs are previewed here, and would eventually see official release on 2008's Accelerate, far and away their best album in a decade; so while it's the most represented record on here, it at least deserves to be, unlike Around the Sun. And as for their older songs, well, let me put it this way: besides Accelerate, the most represented albums on here are (in descending order) Reckoning, Fables Of The Reconstruction, and Chronic Town (FOUR songs from Chronic Town - that's one song shy of the whole thing). Coming from a band whose setlists have been painfully 90's-heavy since, well, the 90's, this is pretty remarkable; I mean, maybe Reckoning isn't a huge shock, but Fables Of The Reconstruction? With FIVE songs?! And so much of Chronic Town? These are albums most R.E.M. fans assumed they had just plain forgotten about - and maybe they had, considering how cautious they are in the introductions to each older song (especially on "Kohoutek" where Peter Buck goes as far as to say to Michael Stipe, "You should probably apologize to the audience before we play this - it could be bad").

The important thing is, though, that these old hits sound great. I mean, it doesn't hurt that they're great songs to begin with - the early-mid 80's were a good time for this band - but here they sound even more energetic than ever. I can't imagine songs like "Maps and Legends" and especially "1,000,000" sounding better; they play these older hits as if they were Lifes Rich Pageant or Accelerate songs, with more muscular guitarwork and front-and-center vocals (Michael Stipe is in really good voice the whole way through - just saying). It's really something, man. And as for the less-represented albums on here, the song choices are surprisingly top-notch. What would you expect from Document: maybe "The One I Love" and "It's The End Of the World"? Try "Welcome To The Occupation" and oh-my-lord-yes "Disturbance At The Heron House." Murmur gets "Sitting Still"(!!) and "West of the Fields"; Lifes Rich Pageant gets "Cuyahoga" and "These Days"; and the wrongs of R.E.M. Live are thankfully righted with the inclusion of "New Test Leper" and "Electrolite" from New Adventures, two of the honest-to-goodness most beautiful songs in the band's catalog. There are times when I almost feel like this setlist was tailor made for me.

But there could be some complaints. If you are more of a fan of R.E.M.'s more commercially successful late 80's-early 90's work, this record will sadden you deeply. There's nothing from Green or Out Of Time here, and only one song each from Automatic For The People and Monster. Speaking as a diehard Automatic fan, this is a little upsetting, since its one song here - "Drive" - was also on R.E.M. Live (still sounds great though, and at least it's not the horrible "rock" version they used to play on the Monster tour). But it's a testament to the quality of this live release that I honestly don't even notice they're missing most of the time. Those old hits are just so overwhelmingly well played that it just doesn't matter. And hey - "Circus Envy," from Monster, sounds a lot better here than it has any right to.

As for the newer songs, well. Accelerate's songs are still wonderful, even in their early incarnations (and I am reminded that "Living Well Is The Best Revenge," which kicks off the first disc, might be the best song they've recorded in the past decade). There's also a couple of unreleased tracks intended for Accelerate that didn't quite make the cut: the so-so rocker "Staring Down The Barrel Of The Middle Distance" and the kinda-boring "On The Fly" which finds the band still grappling with the dull-as-nails Around The Sun sound. And speaking of that album, "The Worst Joke Ever" is on here, and isn't much more exciting than the album version. "I've Been High" from Reveal fares a little better - definitely a pretty song, but not a remarkable one. These are the only songs taken from their last few albums, however, and they stick out like a sore thumb (they are literally the SLOWEST SONGS EVER WRITTEN). It just goes to show how eager they were back in the post-Sun fallout to reconnect with the sound that made them great. Listening to this show all the way though, it is easy to see why Accelerate turned out so damn good.

Oh sure, you could trifle a bit with the song choices (as I just did). You could even think to yourself, "hey, maybe these live songs sound a little TOO good to not have been meticulously overdubbed," but then you would just be a nagging nelly, wouldn't you? Honestly, if you are an R.E.M. fan of any stripe, this is essential listening - ESPECIALLY if you fell off the wagon after Bill Berry left and haven't even bothered giving Accelerate a chance. This one, unlike the last live album, will convince you. This release reminds me happily of when I saw these guys live last year, just being shocked at how re-energized, charismatic, and entertaining they were. And hey, they brought out "Ignoreland" and "Find The River" for that show, so I'll excuse their exclusion of Automatic tracks on here for now. Consider us even, band I love so dearly!!

I'll end this with a couple videos for you to see: one from one of the Dublin rehearsals, with them playing "Romance," a B-side they hadn't played in about twenty years. (Stipe is reading from a lyric sheet, which I'm sure he had to do for most of these old songs.):


Also as a bonus, and old live version of one of my favorite Out of Time tracks, "Half A World Away" (which, in a perfect world, would be on this thing):

Requested Review Two-Pack: "Strangeways, Here We Come" by the Smiths / "Viva Hate" by Morrissey

morrissey you could have tried a little harder with that there coverart buddy.

Oh, hello there again! Yes it has been a while since I last updated. Chicago was a good time. I ate a hot dog with a large pickle on it and bought a wood painting of a cute kitty cat. I could tell you more but that would be boring! Instead let's review some music why don't we.

Today's requested albums come from good friend and blogfriend Paul Grigas. He's been a good buddy of mine for many years. This guy, what a guy!! Paul's a Smiths fan, so it is perfectly logical for him to have requested these records, one being the last Smiths album ever recorded and the other being Morrissey's first solo album a mere six months after their breakup. Since Paul happened to request two albums of me instead of just one, I - like any red-blooded American - got real lazy about listening to both albums enough to write a decent review, and sat on my laurels for a good long time. But hey! That era of darkness has passed, and here I am, ready and willing to discuss this Morrissey and these Smiths.

(although I've still only listened to these albums about one-and-a-half times each and I just want to get this over with, but that shouldn't worry you my friend)

Just to preface, my current status on the Smiths is as such: I first heard their so-called "magnum opus" The Queen Is Dead way back during my freshmen year of college, and I pretty much fell in love with it. And unlike other albums I adored from that period that had already fallen to the wayside by the time I hit nineteen (sorry Oasis), The Queen Is Dead still sounds great to me. I will always dig that crazy Johnny Marr wah-wah guitar on the title track, those high-pitched "Ann Coates" backing vocals on "Bigmouth Strikes Again," and the over-the-top romantic fatalism of "There Is A Light That Never Goes Out." It's just an album with a lot of good songs on it! Admittedly, I also picked up Hatful of Hollow shortly after Queen enchanted me and I just couldn't get into it, which began a solid three-year period of me not listening to the Smiths much at all. Until right now, of course!

It is nice to hear that Strangeways, the album directly proceeding Queen, continues the Smiths' then-current trend of writing a bunch of catchy, mostly-rockin' tunes. Right from the loopy opener "A Rush And A Push And The Land Is Ours," you can pretty much deduce that the rest of the album is going to be a good time. How about that grunty Morrissey vocal delivery? "ARRRRRRRush!" Yeah, man. And how about that riffin' guitar on "I Started Something I Couldn't Finish"? Or that background harmonica all over the "Vicar In A Tutu"-esque "Death At One's Elbow"? Yeah, yes. These guys got a good sound. The production's not too different in comparison to Queen, but it's a little fuller, with more strings and horns and maybe even some synth keyboards in the background (never pushed up front, of course - this is the Smiths after all).

Here are my favorite songs on Strangeways: "Girlfriend In A Coma," in just about two minutes, manages to be funny ("Do you really think she'll pull through?"), creepy ("There are times when I could have strangled her"), and - somehow - endearingly bittersweet ("Let me whisper my last goodbyes, I know it's serious") all at once. And it's catchy, too! "Stop Me If You Think You've Heard This One Before" is typically well-written Smiths pop-rock; "Paint A Vulgar Picture" doubles as an entertaining critique of record companies' treatment of popular deceased musicians ("Re-issue, re-package, re-package / Re-evaluate the songs / Double-pack with a photograph / extra track (and a tacky badge)") and of their obsessive fans ("No, they cannot hurt you, my darling / They cannot touch you now / But me and my 'true love' / Will never meet again"); and "Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me" nearly tops "There Is A Light" in terms of sheer romantic tragedy. "Unhappy Birthday," too, is a dependable Morrissey kiss-off. While I can't say I like Strangeways more than Queen - the latter, in my eyes, still nails the whole "Smiths" formula better than anything else I've heard - I will gladly file it into the "Smiths Albums Sean Rose Enjoys" portfolio and just leave it at that. (I can see myself listening to it more than once in my leisurely time - this is a plus.)

Viva Hate, Morrissey's 1988 debut solo album, doesn't quite hit me like Strangeways. It's a little more mellow, with a little more emphasis on Morrissey's vocals (obviously) and - at the same time - is a little less gripping and melodic. For me, at least. To be honest, the sound of Viva isn't a huge departure from Strangeways (which isn't too surprising, considering how close those two releases are) but definitely downplays the guitar-driven energy of the last couple Smiths releases (the lack of Johnny Marr, while completely expected, is a bit of a drag). To be honest, I have listened through Viva Hate almost three times now and I have trouble remembering a lot of the songs!! This is not good, for a man like me.

But maybe that isn't fair. Here are some Viva Hate songs I love: "Suedehead," oh man, that song is beautiful. What a pretty guitar! Sounds like the Cure or something. "Hairdresser On Fire" has that lovely piano line and epic melody - that's a good one. "I Don't Mind If You Forget Me" is a Smiths-worthy pop-rock tune - energetic, funny, and complete with a synth-keyboard intro! Who saw that one coming? "Dial-A-Cliche" and "Margaret On The Guillotine" are both very graceful album closers (despite the latter's caustic anti-Thatcher lyrics) and "Atsatian Cousin," unlike the rest of the album, is even more guitar-heavy and bitter than the Smiths ever could have been.

I can't think of any songs on Viva Hate that I flat-out disliked, but after hearing Strangeways it just doesn't "get" me as much. It's a slower, longer, and more morose album than Strangeways so maybe it's just that. Or maybe I'm just being unfair; these reviews are all based on first impressions, after all. I liked Strangeways a lot more upon first listen, and as such I've been listening to it more. I can't help it, man!! Maybe Viva Hate will rub off on me the next time I listen to it, whenever that may be. Until then, I will stick to the Smiths.

Really, I have never been a huge Smiths fan but Strangeways has done a lot to pique my interest. Maybe I should give their earlier stuff another shot? It's worth it. I will say this - diehard fans of the Smiths would do well to seek out this Viva Hate record, as I am sure they would enjoy it a lot more than I have. As a guy who is not that big into Morrissey, I will have to settle for only midly enjoying it. But you don't have to be me! You don't have to settle!!

I am excited, though. My next requested review is going to be a lot of fun - one I have been looking forward to for many months. Look out for it. Also there is a new R.E.M. live album out that is really something special, you'll probably be hearing a lot about that too. Until then, I hope Paul Grigas will sleep well tonight, knowing that his absolute best friend has approved of his musical tastes!! (You know it, Paul. You do.)

Album Review: "Embryonic" by the Flaming Lips

MUAHHHHHH (give it a kiss)

So yes, once again I am delaying my next requested review, which I will take care of next week. If this upsets or surprises you, I don't care because there is a new Flaming Lips album out and if I don't review it soon I am going to drive myself insane!

In all honesty, I have a lot of trouble reviewing records by bands that are very important to me; so many thoughts and emotions bubble to the surface and I want to get them all in my review, but I never do. As such, I never feel that I've said enough and in the end I am not satisfied. So, in that regard, it doesn't get much worse than reviewing Embryonic - not just a new record by the Flaming Lips, a band I consider one of my long-time personal favorites, but one that is seventy minutes long and is easily one of the densest and most complex records they've ever released.

In other words, there is no way I am going to be happy with this review. There are so many things that I am going to forget to say. So I might as well just go with the flow.

I won't bore you with my extensively personal experiences with the Flaming Lips' music. I'll save that for another time. Anybody who knows me well, however, knows that I have been a big fan for a while. And while - not unlike another favorite band of mine, XTC - I have barely ever written about them in this blog, they are written into its very DNA: their 2006 record At War With The Mystics was the first record I ever reviewed in this thing a good three and a half years ago. And it is funny, considering how enthusiastic I am in that review about an album that, in retrospect, did not thrill me - and one that I didn't listen to all that much following its release. Chalk it up to being a younger man in the midst of a year-long rush of euphoric Flaming Lips fandom, I guess, but even back then my reservations about the album - which would become more explicit the more I listened to it - would pop up more than once, like in my summary of "The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song":

"My problem here - it's the Flaming Lips trying to sound weird, which they really don't need to do. You're already fucking weird, Wayne. You know it!! You don't need throw random arcade noises and "funny" stuff like that in a song like this to make it sound weird. You couldn't be normal if you tried. But still, it's a cool song that doesn't quite represent the rest of the album."

I was being polite here, because I did not want to admit that I was not satisfied with a Flaming Lips song. Until "The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song", I felt that the Flaming Lips could do me no wrong, and I wanted to maintain that excitement. But for a moment there, I think I hit the nail on the head: The Flaming Lips, all of the sudden, were trying way too hard to sound weird. And while I stand by that statement, in retrospect I feel the problem ran even deeper than that: worse than weirdness, the Lips were trying to sound cutesy, bubbly, or that dreaded descriptor: quirky. It was indie-quirk pandering, to put it bluntly, and even now it bugs me. It bugged me then, too, but I didn't really know how to put it into words. With Mystics, it felt as if the Flaming Lips - a band known for taking risks and defying audience expectations with each new album - were pandering to a group of people who viewed the Flaming Lips as cutesy, uplifting bunnysuit-wearing happymen who wrote songs for Spongebob Squarepants movie soundtracks. It did not make me happy. (Nothing against Spongebob, but y'know.)

At War With The Mystics did bother me, but - and it's obvious from that review - I still liked it a lot. Because, well, it's not that bad of an album! The whole "we are the crazy quirky Flaming Lips and welcome to our sunshine-and-balloons factory" attitude definitely kills some of the songs' impact ("Yeah Yeah Yeah" and "Free Radicals" being the obvious examples), but the songs that cash in on the Lips' trademark beauty are typically wonderful: "Cosmic Autumn Rebellion," "Vein of Stars," "Sound of Failure," etc. But the one song that still stands out to me - and to a lot of people, I think - is "Pompeii Am Gotterdammerung," an echo-laden bass-driven prog epic that is still one of the most exciting tracks they've ever recorded. That song, unlike everything else on Mystics, sounded like the Lips pushing themselves into something new and great, and as I said at the time: "If the Lips ever did a straight-up prog-rock album in the style of this track I have no doubt it would be fucking awesome."

And so. Now we have Embryonic. I could get all prophetic and congratulate my 18-year-old self for accurately predicting what the next Flaming Lips release would sound like, but that would not be right because none of Embryonic's eighteen tracks sound a whit like "Pompeii." To be honest, in terms of attitude and structure, Embryonic has no obvious forebear in anything the Flaming Lips have released previously, which I think is giving people a lot of trouble. Most Embryonic reviews I've read have people attempting to compare it to some other album they've done, or - more frequently - touting it as a "back to basics" album, returning to the reckless spirit of pre-Soft Bulletin releases like Telepathic Surgery or Priest Driven Ambulance. This confuses me, because let me tell you, Embryonic sounds nothing like their older stuff. Their 80's records were more psychedelic and fractured, to be sure, but even their darkest and noisiest moments were always leavened with pretty acoustic guitar ballads and a goofy sense of humor (why else would Priest Driven Ambulance end with a sincere, noisy cover of "What A Wonderful World"?). If the Flaming Lips wanted to record a "back to basics" album, they would have ditched the widescreen studio production, returned to the two-guitars-bass-and-drums setup of their early 90's work, and let the guitar noise rip. And that's not what they do on Embryonic.

So why are people so quick to compare Embryonic to those records? Well, you see, Embryonic is a dark record - much darker than the musical therapy of The Soft Bulletin, the brooding yet lovely Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots, and especially the in-your-face cutesiness of Mystics. So, of course, the most obvious conclusion people can make is that Embryonic is a return to their pre-Soft Bulletin records, a knee-jerk reaction that simply isn't true. Embryonic is the darker than those albums too, and is just about the darkest record the Flaming Lips have ever released.

Now, I should clarify that statement (and I should also start talking about what Embryonic sounds like considering I've spent too many paragraphs talking about what it doesn't). The Flaming Lips, even in their most uplifting moments, have always had a dark undercurrent to their work - a recognition of mortality, the inevitability of life and death and whathaveyou. Clouds Taste Metallic, one of their happiest albums, featured a song called "Evil Will Prevail." Soft Bulletin, probably the most uplifting thing they could possibly record, ends with a song called "Feeling Yourself Disintegrate." Yoshimi's "Do You Realize??," the other most uplifting thing they could possibly record, has really fucking depressing lyrics (not to mention that it is followed up by the defeatist anthem "All We Have Is Now"). But these records, despite the aforementioned moments of depression, offered an answer to life's worries: "Hey man, it's okay! Life can be tough - real tough - but everybody's gotta go through it! We'll all go through it together, and we'll all be okay!"

Embryonic doesn't have these answers. It is not designed to give you a hug and make you feel OK - instead it buries you deep, deep down into the murk and never pulls you back up. The only song on here where Wayne Coyne sings like the Wayne Coyne we all know and love is "Evil," a song that could probably fit comfortably on Yoshimi with its warm electronics. But it's a trick, see - "Evil"' leads directly into "Aquarius Sabotage," which immediately attacks the listener with manic drums, screeching guitars and an unsettling bass line. "The Impulse," which might have been one of the prettiest songs on the album, is marred by Wayne's creepy vocoder-processed vocals. "I Can Be A Frog," which could have been a cutesy joke song on Mystics, features vintage horror-movie backing music and Karen O making a bunch of creepy animal noises. While Embryonic is just as lavishly produced as their last few albums, it exploits their sonic palette in a much darker way, making every potentially peaceful moment sound sinister, unsettling, and uncomfortable. There is no "Do You Realize??"-esque moment of release - it's all downhill.

And Embryonic's darkest tracks? Hoo-ee. "See The Leaves," with its overpowered drums, bendy bassline and unwelcoming Wayne Coyne vocals, has to be one of the darkest songs they've ever done. You remember Mystics' "My Cosmic Autumn Rebellion"? With Wayne warning against those pessimistic folks who "see the sun go down, but don't see it rise"? Well, let's sample some lyrics from "See The Leaves": "See the leaves / They're dying again / See the moth / It's flying again / See the grass / It's dying again / See the sun / It's trying again." Well well. So much for optimism! The jerky psych-rock album opener "Convinced Of The Hex" continues this darker trend, as does the bass-driven tribal chanting of "Sagittarius Silver Announcement" (is that Wayne singing lead on that, by the way? If it is, Jesusss) and the formless murk of "Gemini Syringes," featuring echo-laden Wayne vocals and a monologue from German mathematician Thorsten Wormann on what I assume to be the nature of the universe. At times these songs can feel formless, murky, and incomprehensible, but they all manage to sound cohesive in the context of the album, which is no small feat.

I'll be honest - upon first listen, Embryonic was just so downtrodden and long that I did not manage to get all the way through it. To be fair, I was just streaming it casually off of Colbernation.com, and it was like 3 in the morning, so the circumstances were not ideal. But it does show that Embryonic is an album that requires a few listens, 'cause there's a whole lot here to absorb, which might be a bit much if you're not a diehard fan. But when it comes right down to it - and forgive me for generalizing - Embryonic is just cool. It can be a little dark and draggy, yes, but it's all worth it for songs like the pulsating groover "Silver Trembling Hands," the epic power rock of "Worm Mountain" (featuring MGMT, apparently), or the remarkable album closer "Watching The Planets," one of their most apocalyptic songs to date. Considering that these guys are not getting any younger (or, in Wayne Coyne's case, pushing 50), it is great to hear them still pushing the boundaries of their music and trying new things, at the risk of alienating the mainstream audience they have built up over the past decade. Mystics had me worried that they were running out of ideas; Embryonic, thankfully, has proven me wrong.

In preparation for this review I have spent the last few weeks listening through every Flaming Lips album since 1986's Hear It Is (with the exception of Zaireeka, which I will get to soon I am sure). I was a nice reminder that I seriously love this band, and that Mystics is the only record they have put out that leaves a bad taste in my mouth - and even that one is pretty good. I am happy about Embryonic's critical success but I am a little upset that people are using it as an opportunity to diss on Bulletin and Yoshimi in the same breath as Mystics, which has happened in a few reviews I've read. Let's get this straight: The Soft Bulletin and Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots are wonderful albums that everybody liked upon their release, and for good reason. Embryonic is practically as good as they are but for completely different reasons. What I'm trying to say is, if you're going to diss on a recent Flaming Lips album, make it Mystics. That one actually deserves it.

One last thought before I finish this and never ever talk about the Flaming Lips again until their next album comes out - and maybe this will give you a better impression of what this album is like, considering that I have done a less than adequate job of describing these songs to you. I was a little worried before I heard Embryonic, 'cause you know, their last album was Mystics and I wasn't sure what it would sound like. And what worried me especially was the fact that there were guest artists on a Flaming Lips album! That ain't never happened before! I mean - two songs with Karen O? I half-expected some lame quirky duet between her and Wayne to clog up the proceedings here. But man - if you're going to have guest artists on an album, you gotta do it like Embryonic. Karen O's vocals just add a creepy texture to her songs rather than overpowering them, and MGMT's appearance on "Worm Mountain" just make it even more brutal. Hell, you can barely tell they're there, but they make the songs cooler!! It's a good album, guys. Check it out.

So that'll do it. Next week, I promise, will be a requested review - two albums in one, actually! So check that out. As for the Flaming Lips, I may end up doing a career-summary post for them sometime in the future, considering I just sat through all of their albums and have so so many thoughts about them. I'll probably do what I did for that Radiohead overview from like a year ago and just recommend a bunch of tracks from each album that I like. Sound good to you? Sounds good to me.

(Also a quick note: if you have just listened through Embryonic and are wondering out-loud to yourself "Jeez, where CAN these guys go from here??," the answer may surprise you.)

Album Review: "Walk Away Renee/Pretty Ballerina" by the Left Banke

literally the least rowdy group of teenagers you will ever meet

Sad news this week: due to a computer hiccup, I do not have access to my music, and as such I do not have access to the requested albums I was planning on reviewing this week: the Smiths' Strangeways Here We Come and Morrissey's Viva Hate, both requested by my good friend Paul Grigas. Tragedy! Fortunately, other good friend Emily Vasseur has adopted my shitty laptop and I will probably be able to get it back without erasing my hard drive. So this is a good thing. Whenever I do get it back, I promise you that requested review post haste.

In the meantime, let's talk about another record that has enchanted me over the past couple months - Walk Away Renee/Pretty Ballerina by the Left Banke, which despite its misleading title actually has more than two songs on it! There are nine other tracks besides those two classics and they are mostly all good. If you don't know anything about the Left Banke, they were a 60's pop-rock group mostly known for epitomizing the "baroque pop" genre - that his, pop music with a whole lot of harpsichord and strings thrown in there. At least, that's the Left Banke definition. Keep in mind that this music sounds little to nothing like the Beach Boys/Brian Wilson style of baroque pop recorded around the same time ('66-'67), with super-complicated song structures and vocal arrangements and whathaveyou. The songs on Walk Away Renee aren't even heavily influenced by classical music, at least not to me - they're just pop songs with a whole lotta harpischord.

Thankfully, they're really good pop songs! Great, even. "Walk Away Renee," obviously, is the classic and the biggest hit, good enough to be covered - with equal greatness - by the Four Tops a couple years later. "Pretty Ballerina" is the other hit, one of their prettiest and most alluring songs, defined by Steve Martin Caro's plaintive vocals. There's also "She May Call You Up Tonight," my favorite Left Banke song and one of the best songs ever. It's a wonderful, catchy pop tune driven by a jazzy piano - like Vince Guaraldi or something. If nobody sang on it it would sound like "Linus and Lucy" or something. But man, the vocals are so CATCHY! It's a great song, and the entire reason I got into the Left Banke in the first place, thanks to Adam Spektor playing it on his radio show.

It's not very "baroque," though. Actually, a lot of songs on here aren't baroque in the slightest! It's funny, 'cause if you listen to songs like "Barterers And Their Wives" or "Shadows Breaking Over My Head" these guys sound like the most polite and reserved rock band that has ever existed. But THEN, you've got songs like "Evening Gown," a peppy harpsichord-driven rocker (??) with Steve Martin Caro almost YELPING his vocals, and "Lazy Day" which features an actual FUZZ GUITAR! Like some kind of NUGGET or something! But that's not even the weirdest part - "What Do You Know"? It's a COUNTRY ROCK SONG. Like "What Goes On" by the Beatles or something. Twangy guitars and everything. Lead guy sings like Ringo Starr all the sudden. HOW IS THIS BAROQUE IN ANY WAY YOU IDIOTS.

So yeah, the random stylistic diversions are unusual and unexpected, ESPECIALLY if you've only heard "Walk Away Renee" and "Pretty Ballerina." They aren't bad songs, though. And the ones that aren't whacky diversions are simply beautiful songs that deserve all of this world's love. Mysterious, subdued, yet accessible pop music - it's all here!

Oh, one more thing about the Left Banke. Michael Brown, their pianist and main songwriter - the guy that wrote every great song on here - was sixteen at the time. Sixteen!! Man, what were you and I doing at age sixteen? I was playing "Enter The Matrix" on Gamecube and writing Mega Man X fanfiction. This guy was writing "Walk Away Renee." Sheesh.

That's it for now. I am waiting for my comptuer to return to me, and once that happens you will be getting two things: 1) more requested reviews, and 2) a review of the new Flaming Lips album! Oh man it's a good one! I am actually gonna wait on the latter there until the album is officially released, just to be fair and decent, but that's coming up pretty soon anyway so I am not worried. Enjoy your weekend!

Requested Review: "Black Sea" by XTC

it is an album full of whaling chanties (or is "chanties" not a word?)

Ohhh folks. We've got a scorcher for you tonight. This here review has been requested by none other than a living legend - my freshmen year college roommate Nick Hennessey!

Now, OK. In a perfect world Mr. Hennessey would need absolutely no introduction - you would simply see his name and nod to yourself in instant approval, a Pavlovian response to his inimitable genius. But sadly, we do not live in this world, so I will explain. I lived with Mr. Hennessey for a year, and what a trailblazing year that was. Before college I was a nascent waif of an eighteen-year-old, with my only known methods of "partying down" being reading Final Fantasy VIII guidebooks and drinking Mountain Dew Code Red by the liter. A year with Mr. Hennessey changed all that - and when he wasn't busy introducing me to the pleasures of hard liquor and fast women, he was blasting great music into my face every morning noon and night, whether I was prepared for it (read: awake) or not. The list of bands he turned me on to that year - most of which are now among my favorites - is pretty startling: you got your Undertones, your Replacements, your Wilco, your Beach Boys, your Smiths, your Television... the list goes on and on. And it wasn't just music - the guy showed me the British Office for the first time, too. Yes, that British Office! The one that is like my favorite show now. Mr. Hennessey's taste surely knows no bounds.

So yes. Along with close high school bros Luke Coryea and Adam Spektor, Nick Hennessey is one of those indispensible "threw a lot of great music at me all at once when I was a teen'ger" sorts of dudes. A solid guy. And yes, the album he requested for me tonight is one by none other than the biggest band he got me into during my freshmen year - XTC! One of my favorite bands ever thanks to him, and unusually enough, a band that I have not discussed in this blog even a single time. And I have been writing in this blog for, what, almost four years now? Yikes.

Now, mind you, I had been planning on reviewing an XTC album here for quite a long while - my all-time favorite, 1999's Apple Venus Vol. 1. However, the album Mr. Hennessey has requested of me is 1981's Black Sea, a completely different sort of album by what might as well be a completely different sort of band. While Apple Venus is a studied, graceful record by a band in their waning days, Black Sea is a twisted, guitar-driven slice of kinda-sorta-New Wave with a kooky lead singer. It's one the last albums the band made before lead singer/songwriter Andy Partridge developed some unfortunate stagefright and kept the band in the studio for, you know, the rest of their career. So here on this album you've got the sound of a live band: pounding drums, screechy guitars, forceful vocals, and so forth (I guess there's a bass in there too). At this point XTC were definitely more Devo-sounding than the Beatles/Beach Boys pastiches of their later work - nearly every song here sounds like, you know, something is horribly wrong. But in a good way!

There are differences in vocal delivery as well. Andy Partridge, in comparison with his more pop-friendly late 80s/early 90s vocals, sounds straight-up frightened in these songs, his voice teeming with wild teenage awkwardness. At this point in his career he did not feel the need to make his voice sound "accessible" in any sort of way - he just sounded like a yelping, nervous man, and he was all the better for it. Then there is the George Harrison-esque Colin Moulding, who at this point in his career had the exact same voice that he would have for the rest of his career, and was also all the better for it. He's a great vocal counterpoint; whereas Partridge sounds like he has something broken deep inside of him, Moulding sings like a nice, charming Britishman, no matter what song he is singing. "Generals and Majors" is an obvious war satire, to be sure, but with Moulding's straight-up adorable vocals it doesn't feel bitter in the slightest. Just fun!! Hey, that's XTC.

Enough with this. Let's talk about the songs, because those are the most important things on a record album, are they not? The first two tracks here are two of the best two XTC tracks ever, all two of them. Andy's screechy tune "Respectable Street" and Colin's aforementioned jaunty "Generals and Majors" both border on experimental dub-influenced New Wave, but are really just great pop songs: why else would the former include those "Oooh-eyy-oooh-eyy-oooh-oooh!"s in the verses, and why else would the latter feature one of the catchiest little guitar riffs EVER?? Yes, yes the answer is obvious. These guys were raised on the finest 60's pop, and it shows. It doesn't let up from there - if anything, things get a little more exploratory, and a little weirder. You've got Andy's hammy vocal delivery in "Living Through Another Cuba," those loopy phaser effects in the piano-driven "Rocket From A Bottle," more super-catchy poppiness with the classic "Towers of London" - the fun does not end, not ever! And while pretty much every other song on here is written by Partridge, the one other track Moulding has - the cutesy, riff-driven "Love At First Sight" - is a real keeper that you'll want to hear. These guys are good.

Oh, no no, I'm not done describing songs yet! "Sgt. Rock (Is Going To Help Me)" is a goofy little song that I used to not like much but has grown on me over the years. It popped up in Hot Fuzz and man that was a good movie, wasn't it? And this is a good song, featured in that good movie. Admittedly "No Language In Our Lungs" and "Burning With Optimism's Flames" have never been my absolute favorites but I like them pretty good. Oh, and man, how about those two atmospheric tracks that do not sound like conventional songs at all?? I used to not like those much either but they sound so much cooler to me now. To be fair, "Paper And Iron (Notes And Coins)" isn't that atmospheric, but it does start off with that echoey guitar effect that always makes me swoon like a man. And then there's the album closer "Travels in Nihilon" which I just now realized is like the neatest album closer ever. Those tribal drums! That uncharacteristically creepy Andy Partridge vocal delivery! Those vocal-echoing guitars in the chorus! The fact that it doesn't get boring even a little bit for a full seven minutes!! Oh maaan. That's a good song. Sadly, after '82 they would never write another song like it ever, and where does that leave us? (Not a rhetorical question. I need the answer to this.)

I think a lot of people might have trouble with Andy Partridge's voice. If there was any point of contention anybody could have with early XTC, it is that. He just doesn't have a pretty voice! Not yet, anyway. Even when they write a pretty tune, he does not want to sing it in a pretty way. For me, that makes it sound a whole lot more interesting, but for others it might just sound ugly (and it does kinda sound ugly to me too, but hey, I'm a forgiving man). And sometimes he can get a little hammy or over-wordy. But what can you do? The guy was a great songwriter. I don't know if I can recommend this as a "First XTC Album" - you might want to ease in with their poppier late 80's stuff, I don't know. I don't know how you feel about all this, readers. I don't know what music you like. If you're an ELO fan, check out their later stuff. If you're a Talking Heads fan, check out this one. It 'twill not disappoint.

Thank you for reading, True Believers. As a gift for you, I will present you with nary a slice of Nick Hennessey's genius: the classic "Fresh Lettuce," performed as his rappin' alter-ego Pauley Boom:



Stay gold, Ponyboy. Stay gold.