The Shins: Wincing the Night Away (2007)

(Sub Pop)

!!! A+ RECORDING !!!

Believe me, I'm aware of the stretch of credibility that grade above is now creating in your mind. Fair warning: this is an indulgent blog post, but I'd be lying if I gave this album muted praise. Wincing the Night Away was the first Shins album I loved. I wasn't ready for them at their peak of popularity, hearing only a shrillness and strain that I mistaked for dilution (not aided, clichéd as it sounds, by Garden State's dogged promotion). What I missed about Chutes Too Narrow upon first hearing it in 2003 or 2004 was that it's a guitar album, of a precision and purity the preceding decade had seldom offered so invitingly. The band arguably derailed their career by waiting too long (four years) after the groundswell of Chutes hype to follow it up, and they've been MIA ever since. Along the way, however, they let a wonderful artifact slip in the form of Wincing. It's as much a product and evocation of its time as anything from the mid-2000s, I suppose; overflowing with mystery, optimism, and reflection, it is designed to contextualize the listener's environment -- simultaneously a populist record, a telling of its audience's story, and a closed-off ramble from James Mercer. The way these qualities mesh, fusing the best elements of the prior two albums, creates a remarkably durable and unexpectedly beautiful pop record, adventurous and comfortable, without subverting the band's still-relieving musical directness.

In short, this is modern guitar pop done the right way: challenging but immediate. No lo-fi quirks needed. If it recalls anything in particular, it's R.E.M.'s initial post-Bill Berry period, particularly Up, but overstuffed with hooks; the menacing, assured triumph "Spilt Needles" and ecstatic "Turn on Me" are mega-amplified pop atmospheres, easy to live in, easier still to love. Mercer's astounding (as ever) songwriting nails it down past Up's meandering vagueness -- the gentle experimentation passes over the electro-baroque flourescence R.E.M. captured into a colorful bliss.

Still, I can't fully divorce myself from my personal history with Wincing. It was September 2007 when I heard "Phantom Limb" for the first time, in the car one day after being dumped. My life's long-ago messes are not our concern here, but in this case, how sure can I possibly be that the resilience and cockeyed curiosity "Limb" articulates didn't move me (enormously) because of the state I was in? It still does, every time, and one of the top musical moments of the last decade for me is that final minute of "Limb," when the band just gives itself away to rhythm and harmony -- the lights go out but the dancing continues. Not to be corny about it. In years hence, after a brief no-recent-music lockout, I've discovered "Phantom Limb" is only the second best Shins song (after the immortal "Girl on the Wing," to which I wasn't introduced until 2009), but it remains hypnotic to me. If, as according to rumor, the song is lyrically a lesbian-oriented reframing of Bronski Beat's "Smalltown Boy," all the better; its tentative, hung-back, but open-armed emotion is more than fitting.

I've also learned since 2007, with the benefit of not having known the Shins as they progressed, that James Mercer is an extraordinary writer; no traditional rock band to surface in the 2000s was better or more productive in the classic sense. Nearly every Shins obscurity is worth seeking out, and as good as the band's performances are, it's Mercer's writing that makes this so. As usual for power pop, of which the Shins must be a new top-tier example, everything is subservient to songs. Scattered band comments and reviews suggest that Wincing is an album about hazy insomnia, which fits with its dreamlike textures. But to me as a new fan, it was about warm blue-lit evenings in the first few months of singledom in my adult life. Even opener "Sleeping Lessons," with its bubbling intensity building to an expressive burst, seemed to narrate my world at the time in a manner I can't imagine another record doing. The tapping exuberance of "Australia" was only a natural extension. Wincing made it an unforgettable pleasure to be late to the party on the Shins.

Really, I haven't a clue what James Mercer is talking about in any of his songs. Songs I consider absolutely classic like "Red Rabbits" and the terrifically jittery "Sea Legs" are about mood to me, and that in a sense is what I've found I hold so dearly about the Shins. In a clear-eyed guitar pop context, they push the buttons of vaguest feelings like My Bloody Valentine -- their conscious surrender to heartfelt prettiness is worthy of peak-period Beach Boys. Like the Beach Boys (who also infected Up), they are unafraid of absorbing influences uncool even to the subsequent lo-fi and chillwave movements. There's Muzak here, lounge, bubblegum, and the lushest of soundscapes, all in the context and service of what is, at the end of it all, an excellent guitar band.

I'm a longtime stalwart for not making a distinction between what is "best" or "classic" and what I love the most. Wincing didn't get great reviews and isn't discussed all that much. It might be passé at this point, whether the Shins are or not, but it means a lot to me. For me, it bears the mark of a top-caliber album: I can't imagine the last four years without it.

Ice-T: O.G. Original Gangster (1991)

(Sire)

RECOMMENDED

I'm not a ruthless warrior for the positive tip -- I too think Arrested Development is some bland nonsense, a catchy track or two aside, and I like it when B.I.G. is nasty -- but I'm willing to admit that gangsta rap is something of a black hole for me. I have attempted N.W.A. and The Chronic and came away, unfashionable though it is to admit, fairly disgusted. We won't even talk about Ice Cube. Two things have always given me pause in dismissing gangsta, which seemed a subversion of a genre of music I love and care about. One is that it arguably begins with one of my all-time favorite hip hop records, Boogie Down Productions' youthful and raw debut Criminal Minded, to me an indisputable masterpiece and one of the true landmark pop records of the '80s. Second is that I've always had an affinity for Ice-T, although until this week I never spent extensive time with any of his albums. It was obvious from his media presence that he was a bright guy and a serious artist in a field I'd once been too eager to dismiss. Finally, I've now gotten to know what is largely considered his finest record, O.G. Original Gangster, and I find it just as addictive and smart as I hoped.

What's immediately interesting is how far hip hop has strayed from the mainstream vision as of 1991. Radio rap today owes little to this style of sampling, obsessively bumping -- engineered almost in a bubblegum fashion: the way everything in bubblegum hinges upon the hook, everything in these tracks hinges upon the beat, as upfront and raw as possible. Only Ice-T himself demands more attention, and he owns the floor when he has it. His aggressive, heavy and unstoppable flow makes it hard to comprehend why he is today so overlooked -- the lyrics are intelligent, both mannered and forceful as they craft and unravel fantasies and nightmares. And while it shouldn't be so, in contrast to many gangsta peers, T deserves credit for not copping excessively to pointless misogyny and slickly macho street glorification. There's plenty of murder and mayhem, but it's murder and mayhem in the manner of Bo Diddley or Johnny Cash or, why the fuck not, Howard Hawks -- the flight of a master storyteller. And the attention-grabbing, booming "Bitches 2" takes pains to point out its use of "bitches" as a gender-neutral term; indeed, that's the song's entire chorus. He's also funnier than anyone else in the early '90s rap class: along with Evil E, Ice-T pokes fun at cock-rapping on the skit "What About Sex?" that builds to a brilliantly anticlimactic finish, and "Lifestyles of the Rich and Infamous" delves brutally into life on tour, awash with irritating reporters, mysterious groupies, crowded hotels, freakish hangers-on, and the fans T knows he can't disappoint.

This levity makes Ice-T's seriousness more compelling: his description of how failed party anthems led to his ghetto documentation on the title track is so compelling you may forget to bob your head. And he deserves eternal credit for ending his record with a spoken-word rant against the Gulf War and the American criminal justice system. I'll be honest: the record's a little long for me (though it does feel shorter than its 72 minutes), and my 1991 heart still lies with personal heroes like A Tribe Called Quest, whose music hasn't dated in the slightest these last twenty years, but moments like that make O.G. a truly special record, one I'll return to often.

You'll find no sung, catchy choruses here, few skits, no showy production distractions from the bruising samples and Ice-T's stark spilling. But as he comes close to pointing out on "Body Count," this is all still rock & roll. That's important.

Iron & Wine: Kiss Each Other Clean (2011)

(Warner Bros.)

RECOMMENDED

Read my review for the Metro Times.

An additional note: The review sounds harsher than is probably warranted, the consequence of its word count. Many of the songs on Kiss Each Other Clean are worthy of Sam Beam's catalog. I consider this record analogous to Broken Social Scene's Forgiveness Rock Record last year, an album that I found sorely disappointing but that nevertheless I appreciate as an addition to the BSS canon. The songs come on individually and I enjoy them a great deal. I suspect the same will be true of Clean.

...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead: Source Tags & Codes (2002)

(Interscope)

!! CAUTION !!

[This was going to be the first review I posted in this blog a year ago, which is why it sounds different than most of the others. I abandoned it for reasons explained below, but now I present it nearly unaltered, because I'm tired and having a bad day and someone asked me to. Apologies for the delays of late.]

We inaugurate this blog with one of those albums that was so happenin' when I was in high school that I wasn't cool enough at the time to investigate. I remember seeing Trail of Dead on a cable concert series back around ten years ago and finding them pretty whacked out and interesting. I know the sordid tale of their abandonment of original label Merge in favor of Interscope, an action that altered Merge's business practices and blacklisted the band in North Carolina forever, and I know of the cultish acclaim and glee that greeted 'Source Tags and Codes,' but until this week I'd never heard it.

Track down some Trail of Dead fans and they will contradict this for sure, but this sounds like prog rock to me -- *heavy* prog rock at that. The first post seems like a decent moment to announce that this uncovers two of my major musical prejudices. There's such a fine line between lovely and awful; prog and metal hurtle themselves headlong over the line. Prog heads pride themselves on the "intelligence" of their music; metalheads pride themselves on its loudness. I love loud music, and intelligent music. But play me this kind of stuff and my brain shuts off. The orchestras, the guitars, the intricacies of the songs: I only hear wank.

People don't really talk about Trail of Dead these days. Seems like some of them are kind of embarrassed, but who's to say? In a sense, the band was ahead of its time on a movement I quite favor -- the reckless snowballing of college/indie/alternative pop music to incorporate all of the forms that were once its antithesis: AM adult contemporary and soft rock, over-the-top progressive and torch music, etc. It's no longer compelling to make divisive separatist arguments about rock & roll. It's all a wonderful din now, and it's become reassuringly constant and all-encompassing, even as listening habits themselves have grown astonishingly democratic and fragmented. It's a new age, and the old dichotomies are interesting only as intellectual surveys of the first few decades of our popular music. No need to condescend to metal or prog or jam bands anymore.

Unless you hate them. Which I do. But that's immaterial. Me personally? I can't get fun out of TOD's incorporation of these ridiculous forms any more than I can hear Television in Phish. One of the few conclusions I can draw about this nebulous aspect of my music fandom is that I'm rather uncomfortable with heftily expressed masculinity -- a theme running through the bulk of my most hated popular bands -- but Trail of Dead doesn't seem all that macho. Perhaps I'm too old and stubborn now to adapt to the coolness of uncoolness -- I certainly feel that way at times when new bands incorporate the dreaded Hall & Oates -- which puts the urge to tone everything back down to guitars and verses and choruses in a peculiar position. Are we rebelling again, or just backward looking? I like to think I am an extremely adaptable listener, ready for new things, and I want that to be the theme of this blog, making Source Tags and Codes kind of a terrible starting point, exposing as it does an instance of music that probably isn't as turgid and awful as it sounds to me (see also: Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin). So th [At this point I stopped writing, it having apparently dawned on me that for the stated reasons, this was a terrible album with which to begin this weblog. So I put it away and wrote about Essex Green. All this time I've left Source Tags on my computer to listen to again and write up and then finally delete. After listening again, I don't have much to add really, so here you go, and off it goes into the recycle bin. No offense to the TOD fans reading this.]

The Decemberists: The King Is Dead (2011)

(Capitol)

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Read my album review for the Metro Times.

Buddy Holly: Greatest Hits (1957-59)

(MCA)

!!! A+ COMPILATION !!!

but around probably like 11, other people started to show up and i was amused by how wrong i was to feel abnormal when i was younger at my fascination with all things outdated. pretty much it’s an epidemic. the dance floor ERUPTED when he played buddy holly. it was "oh boy." i have listened to a LOT of buddy holly lately; i fucking love him, he is so angry and his songwriting was fucking sick. and there was nothing quaint about his sound on those enormous speakers for serious. anyway that wasn’t the song i expected would start to tear off the roof but it was.

Pretend you've never heard of Buddy Holly for a moment. Therefore, pretend that you didn't grow up hearing "Everyday" and "Peggy Sue" on oldies stations and never glimpsed the telecine images and promo photos of the gawky chemistry-teacher physique and iconically clunky spectacles. Pretend it's just a thing that happened half a century ago and all that's left of it is maybe some records or mementos in a dusty attic somewhere, a forgotten teenybopper indulgence, and then do me a favor and listen to "Not Fade Away." I want you to do this because I want you to hear the carefully controlled but unvarnished human cry in Holly's voice, the tense, precise, but calm press of his band, the immediate, homey, beautiful upside-down Bo Diddley rhythm. Or take the swagger, the cunning John Wayne reference, the teasingly brutal brokenhearted subtext of "That'll Be the Day." It's not about importance; it's not about laying groundwork; it's about the unobstructed delivery of base emotion, the feat Buddy Holly achieved in his insanely short recording career, the feat no one else will ever have the balls or the blank slate to duplicate.

If we must, let's say this: from 1955 to 1959, Elvis Presley may have been the lightning rod, but Holly was the man who did it all from his gut. Yes, he did turn rockabilly around from its elements into a force of unmatched nature that would quickly become the line of the rock family tree that would see the most fruitful development in the coming decades; only Chuck Berry eclipses in influence, and even Berry might not have as many disparate subsequent notions easily traceable back to his catalog. A better comparison to Holly might be his friend Sam Cooke; it's not that rock & roll wasn't enough for them, it's that they saw how far rock & roll could be taken, then were silenced before they got the complete opportunity. In their wake, new fragmented branches developed, but never the unity of black and white, country and soul, aggression and peace, bullshit and expression that they envisioned. It would be a generation before any pop music could match the ruthless ambition and concise, stabbing directness Holly provided. His roadmap died with him, and the world was left hurtling in his wake.

Holly's twisting of rockabilly and his absorbing of R&B and gospel influences was quite directly the creation of rock's second wave. It was Presley that inspired him to begin -- all roads lead back to Elvis, no doubt -- but the many explosions for which Holly was the catalyst are unimaginable in the rock story without his presence. Most of them continue unabated as cultural forces. We have the dawn of the geek, the obsessive, the awkward as the rock & roll artist -- the true outsider, the true emotional force; on "I'm Looking for Someone to Love," track two here, he's staying at home while she runs around and finally learning to bust the fuck out -- it's joyous, and scarred. There is the invention of the rock band: the Crickets, the model of every group to follow, plus guitar solos that are to the instrument as "Hamlet" is to the theater. Holly offers, in turn, the dawn of the rock & roll artist as adventurous innovator -- the celesta and intimacy on "Everyday," the alarmingly moving compressed exotica of "Not Fade Away," the thrillingly obtuse confrontation of "I'm Gonna Love You Too," the moody, bottom-heavy shake of "Peggy Sue." The dawn of so much, maybe everything, that we as music fans care about.

And of course, the Beatles cribbed all of it. It's blatant. This compilation illustrates so much of the direct lineage it's initially shocking. How can the supposed dictators of the form have received such a jump start from outside? But all of it is here -- the inventively odd and lovely songwriting, the charged and clever but minimal lyrics, the spare, forceful production, and especially the expert application of so many crazed, bent and intricate vocal tics, the caterwauling that would become highest cultural art. The neuroses that the Beatles seemed to bring to light like Elizabethan orators, well, Holly's celebration of vast fuckedupness, the exposure of his emotional fray, his fearless and economical application of his darkness: there is no kitsch to be derived. No innocence, only purity: rock & roll as humankind's sole unmuddied line of communication -- a thing of screaming beauty and importance. After this moment, never again, for the baggage would build, but nothing could spoil these songs. Nothing linguistic or subtle could truly diminish their reach. His command is audible; he seems to understand more than was known by anyone else about his artform by the time he died.

Holly's catalog and the structure of his career now seem strangely modern -- singles plus albums divided neatly almost in half, the blazing shot-off rocker of "Rave On" and the unstoppable "Oh, Boy!" versus the hopeless romantic of "Words of Love" and "True Love Ways" both belying his modest outward appearance and polite reputation, all immaculately crafted -- but it's not hard to gather that this is the result more of racial casting off and disorganization of his black peers' recorded outputs than of his own quality control, solid though it was. There's a sense in which the brevity of his career supplies an elegance (this forty-minute fireball of a compilation covers the commercial peak of Holly's recorded output, a tiny range from 1957 to 1959), but that illusion is shattered when one hears his final recordings, which suggest a spiritually devastating potential with their beauty, charm, and dogged focus. The ambition and what it might have wrought outweighs all else, but we must compress our concern here down to the hits and all they reveal, which is plenty. After such a long life as oldies, these songs' vitality is striking; the Hank Williams-esque regret and resignation of "Maybe Baby" only seem more knowing today, and the brilliant kissoffs "Think It Over" and especially "It's So Easy" (a song that never gets credit for its bitterly adult cynicism) reveal themselves as monsters when the volume is pumped.

But it's the cheerily fractured, explosive revenge song "Early in the Morning," bothersome choral backup notwithstanding, that lays it all out. John Lennon owed the bulk of his entire fortune to this one 45. Holly's voice seems to be channeling some otherworldly force, as Lennon's later would, and it peaks and teases in the same places. His singing is something to witness, still; it alone sells many of the tender ballads from his experimental sugary sessions later on. "Fool's Paradise" and "Heartbeat" are deserved classics, both gorgeous and towering, but the lesser-by-default "It Doesn't Matter Anymore" and "Raining in My Heart" warrant attention if only for Holly's crooning, sophisticated readings of both.

And oh, impact, of course; it would be ignorant to suggest Holly hasn't had the farthest reach of any of the first generation of rock & roll performers. Of course he has. The problem is it's somewhat irrelevant. Perhaps because of that same miraculous reach, that stunning knack for unpretentious, conversational, but still brilliantly nutty expression (love, lust, hatred, dread), these songs don't age. I don't think Chuck Berry's songs have aged either, but Holly's sound as though they were preserved cryogenically and their year of origin became somehow of no consequence. After all, who in five hundred years (when I'm certain he's one of the handful who will have survived all the filters of scholarship and decay) when they listen to Holly will make a distinction between the 1950s and the 1990s? Holly's songs wonder why we do now. He sounds like he's a couple of rooms away, belting and wailing away as ever, and making it all such a workday thing, something to fight for and be passionate about. He's pissed off, he's in love, and he's hungry. In our illustrious career as humans we've yet to come up with any three ideas that cut to the bone more. I doubt we ever will.

Indeed, when rock & roll is studied seriously in however many centuries, there will be a giant thick bold line. Below it will be almost everyone, in small 10 point text. Above it will be James Brown, the Beatles, Chuck Berry, and Buddy Holly. It's not that no one else matters. It's that they created a form in which no one else would ever really have to matter, because the thesis was written. Every brilliant stretch of the form after (and there are many, no doubt) is somewhere in those four texts. And Holly could lay claim alone to one title: the most innovative pop musician of all time. It remains dismaying that he died so young. The tiny bit of work he got to put down on tape is so lively, universal, and ahead of its time, anticipating almost every subsequent movement in popular rock & roll, I think his full body of work would have been unbelievably dangerous. But what does it matter when kids still connect to him now as it is? And don't tell me they don't because I've witnessed it -- dancing and freaking out and declaring their love for him, fifty years after his death. It's like he's permanently ours, whoever's young enough. The man was the fucking tops, is all I’m saying.

Old 97's: Blame It on Gravity (2008)

(New West)

RECOMMENDED

This CD, the band's seventh, was released at the height of my Old 97's fandom, a few months after I became extremely enamored of them and they rapidly found their way onto my all-time favorites list. Conventional wisdom has it as a disappointment, but I loved it at the time and played it nonstop for several weeks. Then my life sort of got derailed all of a sudden and I put it away for about three years, only to take it out today expecting to hear -- now devoid of enough bias that I saw their subsequent Grand Theatre Volume One as lacking -- the blandness everyone else has reported. Surprisingly enough, I still dig the whole thing -- every track -- and I've been away so long it doesn't even necessarily feel married to its time anymore. It's like getting a new Old 97's album out of nowhere. Rhett Miller's lyrics ("Don't tell me the world is in trouble; do you want to dance with me?") are stronger than ever, the melodies tease and slide with hooky perfection, and the band only seems to be growing tighter. I can't help thinking it's largely because they're making no artificial attempt here to be "alt-country" or to reenact Too Far to Care.

Yeah, okay, this is "soft rock," continuing the ever more commercial (and yet, ever less popular) track the band had been taking since it shifted to a power pop atmosphere in the late '90s -- the songs are friendly, calm, mature, and you could even call them dad-rock without that necessarily being pejorative. The boys have grown up, though they still occasionally lose their shit enough and get fucked up for a borderline-stalker anthem like "I Will Remain," and maybe the comparatively uneventful nature of writing music for minor albums on a tiny label hurts, but this disc at least posits maturity as a less destructive force than, say, the Replacements' last two albums. It's not what the Old 97's are really about, but its eloquent charm makes it an extension of their former selves rather than a shadow. Plus, the gently ambitious impulses that manifested themselves in playful Drag It Up cuts like the surf-rock "Smokers" fall into more fully-realized songs here: the vague Greek textures and insistence of "Dance with Me," the surprising gospel-tinged "Here's to the Halcyon," and the oblique doo wop shuffle on "She Loves the Sunset." There is finally something to be said for a slight loss of machismo, miss it though you will.

His (and Murray Hammond's) continued progression in songwriting notwithstanding, Rhett Miller's singing is less compelling than usual here, as is instantly apparent when he croons "there is looove" on opener "The Fool," and his overly relaxed adult contemporary manner may have contributed to the reception of Blame It on Gravity by fans. The rough edges are mostly gone, perhaps a consequence of the watered-down feel of his solo work, but he still does wounded and quiet like a master ("No Baby I"), and Hammond one-ups him with the magnum opus "The Color of a Lonely Heart Is Blue." Some of the more derivative moments are troubling; the band plagiarizes itself on "The One" (a clone of "The House That Used to Be" that redeems itself a bit by referencing the Sandals' "Theme from Endless Summer") and "Early Morning" (dead ringer for "Four Leaf Clover," a song they've already plundered more than once), and cops a Shins riff for "My Two Feet." But little of it matters when they pull themselves together for triumphant pop (with killer bass) like "Ride" or touhctsone country-rock like "The Easy Way," either of which could fit on earlier albums seamlessly.

Inevitably, Gravity is now recontextualized by Grand Theatre, but it's surprising how well its songs hold on when compared to the often desperate grappling for passion on the newer record. No one apparently wanted the complacency this album exhibits, but I'll take that honesty over a vain attempt to bottle up youth anytime. This band always has been and will likely always remain one of the strongest, and they've earned enough goodwill for the rest of their lives, but I would honestly prefer the middle-of-the-AM-road direction Gravity suggests to the cockamamie scheme for rejuvenation derived by Theatre. Perversely, hearing this again makes me a bit more optimistic about Theatre's second installment, due out later in 2011. As I said before, that record will likely determine how much attention I pay to new Old 97's material from now on. But I'll be permanently thankful for the soundtrack they gave my early summer of '08.

[SEE ALSO:]
The Grand Theatre Volume One (2010)