R.E.M.: Eponymous (1981-87)

(I.R.S.)

R.E.M.'s never been a singles band. None of their three somewhat official hits compilations really satisfies. I seldom advocate this argument quite so strongly, but if you're shooting for an R.E.M. crash course, don't start with this or In Time. Eponymous gathers the semi-hits and commercialish songs from the band's first five albums, typically (erroneously) referred to as their "indie period" -- in fact, I.R.S. was scarcely more an independent label than Sire in the '80s -- and the band, who'd just signed to Warner Bros. in 1988, wasn't particularly keen on this record's release. A label jump usually renders a best-of inevitable, but I.R.S. was a bit rude in scheduling Eponymous for release mere weeks before the band's WB debut, Green, even forcing out a single (the chestnut "Talk About the Passion" from Murmur) for competition with "Orange Crush."

But the band, presumably to protect their name, went along with the project and contributed, for the effect that unlike subsequent attempts to canonize their I.R.S. years -- including their own sanctioned retrospective, And I Feel Fine -- feels somewhat like an R.E.M. album. It doesn't have the wise sequencing or mood variance of the albums from which it lifts its twelve songs, but it has a confounding R.E.M.-like cover plus an annoyingly clever title, contains typically oddball elements like a yearbook photo of Michael Stipe with the words "THEY AIRBRUSHED MY FACE" slathered over it, and Stipe not only contributed the clipped, bizarre liner notes ("philomath is located between lexington and crawfordville and used to have its own post office") but directed a sobering video for "Talk About the Passion." The result is still a mess of abbreviation and compromise.

In 1988, R.E.M. had roughly the clout that Arcade Fire has now; not huge by 1988 standards, but huge by today's, and worlds bigger than the bands they tend to be lumped with (The Replacements, Husker Du) in revisionist essays about college rock in the '80s. They are remembered as an underground phenomenon, but all of their albums charted, and they were lifted up and celebrated by a massive scene in their hometown that spread across the country, followed swiftly by critical adoration that would stay with them for nearly two decades. Five albums in, they'd reached a commercial breakthrough with Document, buoyed by the ominous hit "The One I Love" and its horrendously ugly, butt-stupid video (directed by the man responsible before for the hideous cover of the Replacements' Tim and later for the cinema classic Johnny Mnemonic). This landed them on the cover of Rolling Stone, which billed them as "America's best rock & roll band" (within the space of a year, they'd say the same thing about a different band).

As alternative rock in general slid toward the mainstream, R.E.M.'s music grew more commercial, a decidedly positive development for them that allowed them to craft their best album, 1986's Lifes Rich Pageant, a massive-sounding southern rock opus with verve and life and personality. It's represented by one song on Eponymous. Conventional wisdom has their masterpiece as 1983's Murmur and there is, you guessed it, one song from Murmur on this disc. We end up with hardly an evolutionary tract -- the songs chosen for this collection are either outliers on their respective albums or the most radio-friendly country-leaning selections thus far. It's not even a complete set of I.R.S. singles. "Wolves, Lower" was pushed to radio as the lead track for the Chronic Town EP but isn't here, nor is the Murmur retake on "Radio Free Europe," the Fables of the Reconstruction oddity "Wendell Gee," or -- most glaringly -- the classic cover of the Clique's "Superman" from Pageant. The prospective buyer would find any of the five I.R.S. releases a richer method of exploration than this.

The fan, however, needs it for a few rarities, two of which are essential. The very first track is the slamming, crazed original version of "Radio Free Europe," R.E.M.'s first-ever release on the Hib-Tone label in 1981. Vastly different from its familiar Murmur revision, the track suggests a wholly different path for R.E.M. as maxed-out garage rock merchants. Next, Chronic Town is represented by the undisputed "Gardening at Night," but this version with a throatier, more masculine lead vocal by Michael Stipe trounces the one that made the EP and deserves to be canonical. Without the context of the strange, atmospheric enigmas of the rest of Chronic Town, "Gardening" sounds like a further pushing of the garage aesthetic.

The other two semi-exclusives come later and won't really generate excitement for the fan, much less the newcomer. "Romance" is a soundtrack stray that got left off Dead Letter Office; it's extremely annoying and to the best of my knowledge, this is still the only place to buy it. Usually R.E.M. b-sides and leftovers are extraordinarily good, so it's a bit of perversity that the one that ends up on their best-of is so awful. Lastly, one of the remixes of "Finest Worksong" makes the cut -- the one with horns that was usually played on the radio -- but one misses the riskier strokes of the "lengthy club mix."

As for what else is here, you've got "So. Central Rain" to "Rockville" to "Can't Get There from Here" to "Driver 8" and all of those are wonderful songs, but they're illustrative of two specific aspects of R.E.M. -- the sentimental jokesters and the banshees of Appalachian-rock dread -- that simply felt like interludes in album context. Yet again, it's not necessarily the fault of the compilers, it's just that we have here a band that's extremely tough to pare down, and this LP vainly attempts to summarize five albums that are pretty much essential anyway, that even the most casual fan should own. That'd be okay if it were a straightforward singles collection, but it's not.

So beyond the two nifty opening rarities, what's the point? Well, there's "Romance" (ugh) but there's also this little detail -- Eponymous has been superseded by a 2006 compilation called And I Feel Fine, which adds a second disc and gathers everything here, including the stray singles I bitched were missing, plus lots more unreleased stuff and a considerably fleshed-out introduction to R.E.M.'s first eight years of existence. Problem: it sounds like shit, maxed out and compressed, and it's about twice as expensive as this thing, and I don't care who you are, you still are going to need the albums it references. Four of the first five R.E.M. albums, plus the debut EP, are as delightfully mysterious and resonant as alternative rock gets; you need them more than you need any condensation of them. But if you gotta, grab this one; at least you can still chuckle at the yearbook photo when you don't really need the record anymore.

Radiohead: In Rainbows (2007)

(s/r)

!!! A+ RECORDING !!!

The press narrative for In Rainbows managed to largely sidestep its music; there are times when it's easy to wonder if this was intentional, as it's so much more unassuming than perhaps any other Radiohead album, and at the very least their prior four. The story goes -- this, the seventh album by one of the biggest bands in the world, was released without a price point, internet-only for three months, etc. Its effect on the music industry was staggering; it shocked everyone by opening at #1 upon its physical release a few months later, proving this or that point about music consumers. But little of that matters now. What does is that it's their finest, loveliest effort, by now mostly eclipsing the bulk of their other work for me. Radiohead's been a pervasive part of my life since I was a preteen, loved, resented, idolized, second-guessed, feared, criticized, revered, obsessed over, neglected. In Rainbows is the album I waited ten years for them to make, the heart-to-heart regrouping to follow the loneliness of OK Computer.

That isn't to say I disliked the further loneliness of Kid A, a fine record and most folks' choice for top of the decade, but its electronic meanderings are less striking than Radiohead is as a performing band, and it doesn't have anything on The Bends or OK Computer. But an interesting, bold effort, yes. I can't say that for Hail to the Thief, which failed to reward my repeated listenings, or the direct Kid A sequel Amnesiac, which failed to reward my first listen. The best songs Radiohead released before In Rainbows were b-sides: the proto-Coldplay drunken singalong "How Can You Be Sure?" and the warm, reassuring hug of "Worrywort." It was a shock when a love song as straightforward as "I Might Be Wrong" made it to Amnesiac -- its unquestionable highlight -- and even found release as a single. Afraid of their feelings? No, just too obsessed with coldhearted quality control to give proper vent to anything so human. At least, that's the way it felt.

So along comes In Rainbows, an album consisting almost entierly of woozy, intensely pretty ballads about relationships, the Radiohead album on which Thom Yorke sings the line "I don't want to be your friend / I just want to be your lover" against a minimal mutation of an Al Green backing. The record's mood is beautifully sustained, its opening dance and rock salvos fitting as more than mere tokens; "Bodysnatches" might be the one thing here that isn't really new for them, but it's a stronger burst of energy than the last three albums offered. On the whole, this is an elegant cycle of songs about falling for somebody, losing somebody, learning to accept that, being too far away from somebody, and finding somebody new, not necessarily in that order. It's decidedly un-Radiohead, and the musical (and lyrical) stretch suits them, coming off as their calmest, broadest evolution to date. A couple of weeks after the record was issued, as I found its mood remarkably coalescing with mine, I struggled out loud about whether it or The Bends now deserved the edge as their best LP. Three years later, as I've found deeper, lasting comfort with it in any number of states, there is no doubt. Radiohead here show their ability as something beyond politically-conscious rock stars; the record is a personal fireside chat that circumvents any need for posturing.

It can be difficult to deconstruct an album that hits you like this one has me -- it already holds considerable nostalgic punch -- but I think what makes In Rainbows such a stunning album is, in simplest terms, the refined band arrangements (a carryover from the more elaborate Thief that was heading in this direction) and the singing. Thom Yorke’s performing is absolutely the best it has ever been on this album; he is enormously wide-ranging, felt, impassioned, loud, powerful, pained, warm. Even most of Radiohead’s detractors admit there’s something about that voice. Now, for the first time in ten years, the voice wraps around real songs. And they are some pretty wonderful songs. "Nude," a leftover from the OK days when it was "Big Ideas (Don't Get Any)," tackles personal defeat with Brian Wilson-like grace, underscoring its pain rather than its absurdity, all with the most starkly beautiful, expressive vocal I can recall from Yorke. The pure professionalism of the band behind it (that bass!) only helps to provide a platform.

After hearing "Black Star," "(Nice Dream)," and "Fake Plastic Trees" from The Bends several hundred times over the years, I can report that they are impossible to shake, but those days of punchy production and explosive singles can't match the aching transcendence of In Rainbows, which is rife with the strongest material in the catalog. The influences are worn more plainly than before -- the skittering beat and Prince vocals on "15 Step," the direct Beatles channeling "Faust Arp," the hazily pretty, fluid Motown of the undeniable "House of Cards" -- but by paring themselves down to a guitar band with expansive atmospherics, they plainly expose the maturity they've attained since the last time they were just that: listen to the tragic isolation of "Videotape," the menacing ease of gathering and scattering captured on "Jigsaw Falling into Place," and especially the swooning marital love letter -- overpoweringly strongarmed, not delicate -- "All I Need."

Two other cuts, though, warrant special attention. Out of the box, "Reckoner" was my choice for the centerpiece; more cathartic and less optimistic than most of the others, it sears with sonic hugeness and Yorke's impassioned exorcism. A true showcase for Nigel Godrich, it employs a remarkable, unique sound that layers a sweetly modest band arrangment over a cacophony of rhythm as Yorke swirls around. Nothing on the record is more instantly striking. But others took over my attention and it was some time before the song's thematic power hit me: their most selflessly kindly lyric since "Worrywort" dissects a communication breakdown, maybe or maybe not between lovers. It comes off as a warning of the frailty of a relationship and an admonishment that "you are not to blame," but most important is the line "Because we separate, it ripples our reflections"; that hushed moment is the climax just before a rebuilding of intensity -- it is the pleading for mutual forgiveness about distances for which no strength can compensate. If that's not the intent, fine, but it allows the room.

Perhaps it's the flipside of the most sincere yet perversely Radiohead love song to date, and coincidentally the best song they have ever recorded. "Weird Fishes / Arpeggi" is a calming, almost hallucinatory force, packing an indescribable wallop. Yorke sings of infinite devotion (not desire), seeing those eyes a world apart from everything, "in the deepest ocean," while the band captures a graceful flood of sensory-filling detail: wailing and twiddling and bounding like a space age Pet Sounds, all perfectly unsentimental and calmly ecstatic. Complex, playful, winding, it sounds like love, and it is the peak of the most emotional Radiohead album, the one so good that whatever they do afterward is really OK with me.

[Editorial Note: The above contains a few sentences from my initial writeup of this album from '07 in my old journal.]

The "5" Royales: All Righty! The Apollo Recordings (1951-55)

(Westside)

RECOMMENDED

The history and legacy of the "5" Royales was explored some months back in this space, coinciding with my own discovery of the woefully underappreciated R&B legends. The King recordings I reviewed at that time are genuinely unclassifiable; far more idiosyncratic than even the shining lights of rhythm and blues of their time, those singles with their bursts of exploding guitar are unlike anything I've ever heard in any genre.

I've now gotten my hands on a set of their Apollo recordings. The big hits I knew; "Baby Don't Do It" and "Crazy Crazy Crazy" are classic R&B staples I've played in DJ sets, "Help Me Somebody" is peerless, with its appalling rhythmic shifts, and "Laundromat Blues" is a priceless curio. The rest is new to me, and I reckon it's not really proper to call it a disappointment -- this, after all, is what gave way to the stunning music the group recorded for King, but it does seem accurate to label it generally far more conventional.

To be clear: some of it is conventional and quite wonderful; the early "Give Me One More Chance" (1952) is a shot in the ear, suggestive and wild, a direct contrast to the sacred sides by the Royal Sons Quintet, the group's earlier incarnation, also included here. "I Like It Like That" has a filthy saxophone bit worth the price of the set, and "What's That" is layered, unshakeable pop displaying a clear passageway back to gospel and ahead to the Isleys' "Shout."

This is essential for anyone who loves early R&B, at the point when its lineage was so fascinatingly naked, and anyone who loves the Royales' astounding later work, but the prospective listener new to the group is advised to proceed directly to the King records. You'll love these too, but you'll love them because of how they recontextualize and validate the King 45's. Great group, well worth exploring.

[SEE ALSO:]
Complete King Masters (1954-60)

Madonna: Hard Candy (2008)

(Warner Bros.)

Innovators can't typically keep it up as long as Madonna has, so her slowdown in the last ten years is understandable. She still has yet to issue two bad albums in a row. Whether that remains true will be determined by the quality of her first release on the dubious Live Nation record label. For the moment, we're left with Hard Candy as her most recent statement. To those who feel comfortable being dismissive of Madonna, the record's a big joke -- its garish, ill-advised cover art; its hyperactively gimmicky, ultimately empty R&B; its half-assed vocals and half-baked songwriting. But for an actual fan of Madonna, for someone who holds her in genuinely high regard as an artist, the record feels disappointing but entirely forgivable. The complex relationship the star has established with her audience, the mainstream media-skepticism she once brilliantly spearheaded, perversely allows followers free reign in questioning her bizarre creative detours; when she's on the wrong track, it's instantly apparent.

Those disappointments are not strictly musical. Hard Candy isn't at all a bad album -- it's listenable, decent fun, and often infectious -- but it marks the indisputable point when Madonna copped to trend-following rather than -setting, a perhaps inevitable downturn she sidestepped with a couple of left-field projects in the middle of the decade, the regrettable kitsch American Life and the quite ingenious throwback Confessions on a Dance Floor. As of the dawn of the millennium, Madonna was still a leader, still in the trenches breaking ground; Ray of Light and Music were both unqualified successes setting the stage for the pop decade to follow, integrating their uncommercialisms into neatly digestable form, like most of her best records. Confessions might be a better record, but its effect on Madonna's progeny seems nonexistent. Thanks to its blatant pandering, Hard Candy will join it.

Madonna's meanderings in the commercial urban radio sound are more convincing than you'd expect, if only because she so consistently throws herself in the background in favor of performances by Kanye West, Justin Timberlake, Pharrell, and Timbaland, who are all far better at this sort of thing but none of whom reserved any real inspiration for this project. There are decent moments here, like the snakelike bumper "She's Not Me," but for the most part, the songs are too long, their thrust too obvious, the cameos are too obnoxious, the feeling of an insufferable comback bid littered and weighted with unhelpful "collaborators" deathly. Even the big hit, "Four Minutes," might be Madonna's least interesting single ever; it sounds like a b-side from Timberlake or Timbaland that happens to feature Madonna, whose relevance audibly slips away during the course of the tune.

It isn't all that fair to complain that Madonna is experimenting with something that is essentially "new" for her; the problem is that as she grew, up to and including her prior album, she continued to keep enough of an ear to the ground for her music to continue to feel fresh and trailblazing, rather than simply aping the sound of radio which is -- by the time an LP's released, inevitably -- at least a year old. It's not an exaggeration to say she's the finest solo dance music artist we've ever had, and the finest period if not for Pet Shop Boys, who were tapped to work on this then kicked off the project days later at the label's request. One wishes the Boys' ideas had been heard. Despite settling into an identifiable sound, which Madonna has not, they continue to craft memorable, inventive, commercial disco twenty-five years after their first hit. PSB sensed Madonna's capacity for new sounds early on; in 1987, they attempted to lend her the song "Heart," which they recorded themselves after not hearing back. Relentlessly banging, emotionally intense, wittily ironic, and confoundingly sensual, it would've been a smash and a classic for her. It would be nice if that dream collaboration happened one day. Timbaland and Kanye West are brilliant performers, Timberlake is a very good one, but they don't give vent to anything here that actually sounds like it matters to Madonna.

A few days ago, I heard "Open Your Heart," Madonna's 1986 blockbuster from the True Blue album. Dating from her commercial peak, before her albums became more refined and textured affairs, and long before her voice developed the nuance it's shown since the mid-'90s, the song seems to explode to escape its time, its context, any set of speakers. The track itself is steamy, but Madonna belts her part out as though it's the last thing she'll live to do; through its innumerable layers of electronic haze, she pulls herself up to evoke utter empathy, pure emotion. It's a shameless direct blow to the senses, and it's awesomely powerful. Can we ever get that magnfiicently joyous, populist sophistication back? Perhaps when Madonna's operating from a new home and not simply riding out her recording contract, we'll find out. But frankly, I'd be happy with several more Confessions on a Dance Floors... provided we get more restrained packaging than this.

Stevie Wonder: Music of My Mind (1972)

(Tamla)

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

It's endlessly fascinating to consider this album's context; we so easily forget that not just under the Motown umbrella but in pop music, Stevie Wonder was already a major star in the 1960s. So was Marvin Gaye; where Gaye's singles wallowed and seduced, Stevie's soared. "Classic period" nothing; those '60s singles are still the most infectious, endearing, beautiful songs Wonder has ever recorded, regardless of who wrote most of them. But when Marvin and Stevie broke free of tyrannical operation by Berry Gordy and associates, the true chasm between the two came to light. The primary feature of What's Going On? that lends the record its humanity is its maturity. Meanwhile, there is melodic innovation, there is a floating ambience that encapsulates and enraptures. These features appear in different form on Stevie Wonder's 1972 album, his second (after Where I'm Coming From) since gaining full artistic control, his first acknowledged classic, but the difference is marked. Maturity is hardly what 21 year-old Wonder brings here. Giddy thrill at the possibility of the recording studio is more like it. He's in the world of Orson Welles being given the key to RKO, or Truffaut saying to hell with it and unleashing Shoot the Piano Player. Every second of recorded music here has two features: it is played by Stevie Wonder (save a trombone on one track and an electric guitar on another), and it is tweaked and twisted to maximum teasing, intricate effect.

Unlike the four subsequent albums in Wonder's "classic period," Mind doesn't rely on killer songs, although they're here if you need them -- the entire second half save "Evil" holds its own against his masterstrokes. This record is about the accumulation of a feeling. Wonder shares production credit with Robert Margouleff and Malcolm Cecil; whoever's responsible for the sound of the album deserves a bulk of acclaim here. Overflowing with detail and comforting sonic depth, with buried dialogue and quiet instruments and elements blaring away in the distance, making better use of stereo sound than most ever will in a career, Music of My Mind sounds like world-changing heaven, and timeless at that. To this day, it has that otherworldly gutsiness that once made Wonder seem like an alien, but Our Alien, and because its songs have suffered less overexposure, it is quite alarming now.

The platitudes that cross the mind, like "hugely impressive," seem to have been part of Wonder's intent. For a soul album, this is a rather cerebral affair, and a heavy proportion of its appeal comes from the palpable blast the artist is having. Still, after the complex, immensely tricky seven-minute sunburst of "Love Having You Around," which opens as pop, passes through gospel, and finds time for a crazily modern keyboard solo, with speech and singing popping in and out incessantly left and right (you can see where Kanye West is tipping his hat with that ear for detail), it's inevitably a letdown to find ourselves seeped in the draggy "Superwoman," the semi-hit single here and one of the two tracks that doesn't quite work. It doesn't work because it's arrogant, smug, and adolescent, the leftover unenlightenment from a too-sheltered life that fortunately would not forever stunt Stevie the way it would Michael. The other dud, "Evil," proves that a penchant for too-slick balladry ran in Stevie's blood long before the wrongheaded sellout accusations crossed anyone's mind; there's a lot of shit like that on Talking Book too, which no one ever mentions.

As for the rest, well, pick your future subgenre: new wave Afro-funk ("Keep On Running," the too-innovative-for-the-charts first single), infectious vibe-disco ("Seems So Long"), achingly minimalistic jam ("Girl Blue"), and just Stevie doing that stunningly crazy shit he can do with countermelodies and counterrhythms and unexpected twists and just the canny explosion of an assured individuality ("Happier Than the Morning Sun") in the service of no less or more than a love song. There are even a couple of sexy slowish ones -- the celebratory "I Love Every Little Thing About You" and the scandalous "Sweet Little Girl" -- early on that have him at his absolute most playful, the vocals especially. He didn't have to be this good to keep the world with him, but he did it.

But far more than proto-this or that, this sounds in 2011 like real and now, like world saving artistic shit in a fucked up world. We don't need Stevie to do it again; we've already got it. Please, everyone take some time out and listen to this album for a while. You'll feel better, really.

Depeche Mode: Sounds of the Universe (2009)

(Capitol)

RECOMMENDED

Depeche Mode was right about everything. They never got the credit for it but their humanely adolescent, tongue-in-cheek melodramatic goth-synthpop crafted the electro-sound that falls over us like a curtain every place we walk today. Over three full decades, they've remained one of the most consistently adventurous (and critically underappreciated) of all mainstream bands. Maintaining this quality control has had its price; since the departure of musical backbone Alan Wilder fifteen years ago, they've slowed to a crawl and managed four LPs. Luckily, they've saved all their excesses and rough-hewn ideas for solo records and side projects, and have managed to pile up so much good Depeche Mode material that by 2009, there was an excess of roughly a dozen and a half songs that arguably could have made the final release. Those leftovers were saved for various collector releases (which we'll cover in the future), but it's interesting to note how specific and calculating the band still is about what ends up on their full-length releases.

Sounds of the Universe is, unlike the band's prior two albums (Exciter and Playing the Angel), not a revelation. It is the subtlest DM album in some time, but like their boorish 1993 pseudo-rock effort Songs of Faith and Devotion, it seems designed to make a specific impression. It aims to surprise, but all of its bombast comes off as a retread, while the chugging dance songs impress as much as ever and the quieter cuts buried at the back end actually offer something New from a band that seldom displays discomfort with its traditional sound.

The remarkable facet of Depeche Mode has long been just how expert they have become at crafting Depeche Mode music; it has never stopped sounding inspired, and by 2005's jaw-dropping dinosaur New Romantic classic Playing the Angel, it wasn't unreasonable to suggest they were at their peak. Better yet, the times have moved with them. The analogue synthesizers and skittering beats of Sounds of the Universe sound like trend-mongering, but they actually symbolize their status as trailblazers. Everyone wants to sound like early '80s Depeche Mode these days, including Depeche Mode.

There's a change, though, and not just the newly dirty, compressed emphasis on the age of those synths. These are the styles of our techno times, but they're fitted with a curious aggression. The band's toyed with this rather laughable macho expression before, in a sometimes laughable ("I Feel You"), sometimes delightful ("Dead of Night") fashion, but never before have they attempted to match this grunting pomp with the sort of keyboard sounds they were toying with back when they were Vince Clarke's backing band. Though the nuances and joy in these songs grow clear with time, it's not as interesting a match as one hopes. The single "Wrong" unnecessarily buries its candy-shop catchiness in mud and spittle. Despite being twisted enough from that premise to be interesting, "Miles Away" is equally odd. Even the two opening tracks, "In Chains" and "Hole to Feed," squander their lite-gothic funk with pointless bombast. Still, give these fiftysomethings credit for continuing to find new ways to grow and tweak this far into the game; they certainly don't have to.

Since Universe is a more outwardly experimental record than Playing the Angel and maybe even the shiftier Exciter, it's mildly disappointing that it doesn't work as well, and that the most rewarding songs are the ones that were probably easiest for the band to come up with, even as they fit impossibly well with current club music. "Fragile Tension," "In Sympathy," and "Perfect" are propulsive, distant dance music in the vein of any number of late '80s DM classics; they stand up with their predecessors and kick, swing, and all the rest. They're even balanced by the typical Mode sex jam move, "Little Soul."

As long as they're still putting out bangers (yes) and they're still funny (mm-hmm: "You know your right from wrong / At least to some degree"), who gives a fuck? But Universe does offer tantalizing glimpses of a future Depeche Mode I wish we wouldn't probably have to wait another three or four years to meet. "Come Back" continues Dave Gahan's stratospheric growth as both vocalist and writer. His singing is top-caliber for most of the album, wringing new feeling from those consonants he once barked out like a man drearily possessed. And Martin Gore sings "Jezebel," the most original tune in the catalog for a while -- sinister, surreal, new, it's not quite "Death's Door" and not quite "When the Body Speaks," but it's as sideways and unexpected as either. Pretty great that they can still do that.

Playing the Angel came equipped with "Precious," the best single Depeche Mode had issued for fifteen years; on an album full of gems, it was a juggernaut. Now, on this promising record with a few gems and a few intriguing oddities, we have another killer: "Peace" is as anthem, an answer, a protest, a private solace -- more personal and somehow larger than anything they've done before. Without a reversal of any of their blipping teenaged eccentricities, it's universally powerful and packs a wallop.

Subsequent to my initial exploration of this album I heard some of the peripheral releases containing its corresponding outtakes. Curiously, there are a number of songs that match "Peace" in quality if not impression. They seem to belong on the LP more than some of the cuts that made it. Depeche Mode's always had strong b-sides -- their singles are more like very strong EPs, always worth paying for -- but this might be the first time that their commitment to mood has been so devout they sacrificed the best material they recorded. "Esque," "Oh Well," and in particular the magnificently lurid "Ghost" are stronger than a number of the album cuts here, and the entire set of outtakes is surprisingly strong. Knowing this puts a hamper on Universe even as it becomes more ingratiating with time and falls into place in the Mode catalog.

It's exciting, all the same, that the band seems headed in a specific direction, and that this involves them stretching beyond what we know they're capable of. Not many artists have made stronger material from running in place; by refining their sound rather than revolutionizing it, they've long managed an alarming consistency that outmaneuvers the identity crises of their peers. Every Mode record from Violator on has been preceded by a single that deliberately oversold how much of a "departure" the album would be. This is the first time that crazed first single, "Wrong," was an accurate suggestion of new avenues traveled or at least glimpsed on the LP. That's pretty exciting, and a bit scary.

Oasis: Definitely Maybe (1994)

(Epic)

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Assuming it's been a while since you gave it much attention, you've no idea how amazing and cathartic this album sounds in 2011. Its unapologetic "more is more" guitar-wash sneer proves there's more than the Arcade Fire way to combat alt-rock irony: Oasis captures something explosive, overheated, and maniacal. Despite their fascinatingly cranky interviews, which always existed in the alternately lowbrow and brilliantly nobrow Beavis and Butt-Head universe, the Gallagher brothers' music seldom suffers from any actual pretension, least of all on their debut album. This record is the sole entry in Oasis' catalog that really bothers to put them up as a band; the string arrangements and the irksome resistance to growing the hell up would all come later. In the moment, it's still about feeling good and fuck off if you don't go for that. But who wouldn't? The rare person who isn't already won over by the time the hook in "Live Forever" hits will melt then; if they don't, their actual affection for rock music deserves to be called into question.

Beatles comparisons are only valid in the sense that a number of Oasis' melodies and chord structrues are clearly derived from any number of stoned Abbey Road listening parties; the majority of the band's Fab borrowings are gigantic clichés which have been appropriated by many before Oasis. Still, the influence is integral, but so are those of glam rock and shoegaze, less celebrated ingredients in the Gallagher pot. As easily as "Live Forever" and "ShakerMaker" invite Beatles chatter, "Columbia" recalls My Bloody Valentine, "Supersonic" New York Dolls, "Married with Children" and "Digsy's Dinner" Bowie, and so on. But this LP is to those luminaries what Raiders of the Lost Ark is to 1930s serials: a summary and magnification. Oasis picks up the loose ends and aural ideas of their influences and pushes them, squeezes them until there's nothing left. So "Rock 'n' Roll Star" and the immortal "Cigarettes & Alcohol" sound like '70s glam the way it exists in your head, the way it looks in pictures; "Live Forever" is a Beatles singalong maxed out into blissed-out oblivion, lacking every bit of the Beatles' mystery and subtlety but upstaging them for sheer chutzpah and button-pushing pleasure, and "Supersonic" is the brashest psychedelia the '60s were never audacious enough to produce. Noel Gallagher's songs and production amp up all of his obsessions until they overflow, gleeful in their intensity. Few '90s rock records are more satisfying.

The band itself takes a backseat to Liam's larger-than-life vocals, but Paul "Bonehead" Arthurs' lead guitar licks are the secret magic trick, and a prime reason for the constant Beatles callbacks. Still, it's Liam we hear the most, and he's just sprightly enough here to remain charming for the full listen. Even by the time of the naked, bitter closing track "Married with Children" -- a pretend-adult ode to man-child behavior that's truly contemptible and brilliant -- he is still uncovering nuance far beyond what he'd be displaying in even his better performances later on. And no cut is at all weak, but the hits ("Cigarettes & Alcohol," "ShakerMaker," "Live Forever," "Supersonic," "Slide Away," "Rock & Roll Star") leap out irresistibly; other classics like "Columbia" and "Digsy's Dinner" tease and expand the sound of the singles in the perfect fashion. What a difference, in comparing this with the band's pre-Creation recordings, a gimmicky production style and some excellent songs end up making.

Luck played far more of a role in Oasis' career than in the Beatles'; a combination of god knows how many label and corporate and radio forces made them, briefly, one of the biggest bands in the world, a title shared by few others in the '90s. Fleeting though that was, Oasis made good on their crucial immaturity by banking on sonic refinement while their peers all concentrated on trying to craft a unique enough voice to become, well, a fraction as popular as Oasis. It wouldn't be unfair to say they deserved the gold medal less than (in particular) Blur, but the calculation of Definitely Maybe is blow-away masterful. Putting all your best ideas on the debut album is an unenviable position to put yourself in, but few bands in history generated more excitement from simply not holding back. Perhaps the flaws of every subsequent release were built into this first one. For now, Oasis is a gut-level guitar band with appalling pop sense; they believe nothing else matters, and it's easy to wish they'd never changed their minds.

Of course, then, Oasis never issued another record this good, and certainly not one from so perfect a moment. Definitely Maybe captures them young, hungry, and obnoxious, at the perfect crossroads between the wall-of-noise Creation Records sound of their demos and the Britpop sneer they magically affected and came to forever define. Oasis never had Blur's wit and creativity or Radiohead's ambition, but they were brilliant at being self-fulfilled rock stars -- rock stars before the fact, even -- and at sounding like an audio miracle. To hear Definitely Maybe now is to feel yet again that innocent teenaged urge to bust out and go swimming in a shamelessly cartoonish portrait of adult reality in which compromise is futile, relationships are for a laugh, and the radio is always on full-blast.

[SEE ALSO:]
The Early Years (1992-95)