Hank Williams: 40 Greatest Hits (1947-53)

(Mercury)

!!! A+ COMPILATION !!!

The music of Hank Williams has a sound that well befits its creator's legendary, almost sacred reputation -- distant, lonely and sparse yet uncommonly lively, designed to be heard vividly on banged-up 78s and one-speaker car radios rather than any higher-fidelity setup. The songs sound well-traveled and antique but also soulful and true, and their immediacy has been untamed by the years since Williams' sad, rapid, sickly burnout before he reached age 30. The level of achievement in his catalog sharply belies any assumption about how quickly he came and went as a creative force. Between learning to solo inventively on his guitar at the age of six thanks to a generous street performer named Rufus "Tee Tot" Payne and dying on a permanently mythologized New Year's Day in 1953 even as his latest singles were rising up the C&W charts, Williams laid a large portion of the groundwork for perhaps not rock & roll and popular music themselves in the decades to come, but certainly the broadness of the audience for it. Fusing his young education in the blues with the folk and country that surrounded him, he played as large a role as anyone in eradicating the racial and genre-based boundaries whose dissipation would allow rock & roll to reach its zenith in the decade after his death.

Like so many tragic life histories associated with the roadmap of beautiful 20th Century music, Williams' story is fascinating but largely academic, a barrier to appreciation of his work. And it cries out to be appreciated, which requires little work on the part of the listener -- by and large, Williams' output is simply wonderful, communicative at a base level, intensely pleasurable and cathartic, and easily as accessible as that of any country performer to rise up in his wake. His is one of the finest canons of American songwriting, ever, and that sets aside his possibly even more relevant gifts as a singer and guitarist. The most thorough way to hear his canon is on an enormous ten-disc set called The Complete Hank Williams released by Mercury in 1998, but as an introduction it is of course overwhelming, which brings us to this 1978 compilation. 40 Greatest Hits is not only the definitive method of coming to know, appreciate and love Hank Williams and to continually revisit his music for pleasure, it is among the best collections of music one can purchase with one's hard-earned dough. A library without it -- even if the curator is generally unimpressed with country music -- is all but pointless.

40 Greatest Hits predates the CD era, but runs about 106 minutes and is still spread across two discs if you buy it physically. Its sources vary; some of the original tapes were unavailable (some still are), so several major songs are mastered from shellac 78rpm records. You won't be able to tell the difference; a number of songs mastered from original sources sound harsher or display their age more than some of those that had to use copies of discs. At the time the set was issued, it had been for nearly two decades somewhat difficult to come by Williams' hits in their original form -- that is, without overdubs or artificial string accompaniment or rechanneled stereo. Obviously that's less of an issue now that the artist's work is treated with a bit more respect in general, but it bears mentioning. What's now remarkable about the collection is its consistency. It's sequenced well: not quite in chronological order but usually fairly close, with everything from the '40s on the first disc save the hallowed "I Saw the Light" (a zestful spiritual that has passed into the collective subconscious so seamlessly it's sometimes hard to remember that Hank Williams wrote it), understandably used to end the collection. Despite the varying condition of the recordings, the songs lead spectacularly into one another and manage to give a sense of the breadth of Williams' talent while also boasting an engagingly consistent sound. This is thanks in part to one aspect of his singles that was criticized at times by purists -- Williams' famous backing band was nearly always replaced on record by session musicians, but their relative anonymity does make the bandleader invariably the central leader of these cuts. Everything revolves around him as it properly should.

All of the songs Mercury chose to include here are remarkable (the only weak selection is "Mind Your Own Business," a clone of the sharper "Move It on Over," but even it has a good lyric), which is admittedly made easier by the routine strength of Williams' singles and b-sides. All of the major hits he released under his own name are here except "I'm a Long Gone Daddy" (the sole truly objectionable omission), "Never Again" and the posthumous "Please Don't Let Me Love You." The statements of purpose -- "Moanin' the Blues" (proto-rockabilly) and "Ramblin' Man" -- come marching out of speakers now much as they did (and do) when emanating from scratchy old records. The message is that Williams was a rebel, a celebrator of his own depressive flaws and thus of those in all of his millions of listeners. But the reason those two songs come across now as slightly superficial retellings of future legend is that he's so much more.

Musically, Williams' innovations are mostly still readily apparent. Heard with the modernist pop sensibility that shall inevitably color most new listeners' perceptions of these sides, rockabilly lords over one's mind. It's forecast throughout fully developed songs Williams was writing and recording in the primordial postwar years. He died before his ideas would be picked up and brought to further -- if no more inspired -- fruition by the following generation of performers in and outside of country. The rock & roll sensibility rings clearest and loudest on his first hit, "Move It on Over," which stomps, swings and engages in almost guttural call-and-response. The sound of this song and several others to follow on this collection, particularly the novel "Howlin' at the Moon" (which features actual howling) and the covers of "Settin' the Woods on Fire" and Tex Ritter's "Dear John," was clearly studied by the principal Sun Records performers in the near future, particularly Johnny Cash on "Get Rhythm" (1956). Meanwhile, the enthusiastic, even masochistic despair of the Everly Brothers, Fats Domino and even Bo Diddley ("Crackin' Up") gets predicted on "Nobody's Lonesome for Me." The specter of influence needn't even distract us on "You're Gonna Change," "Why Don't You Love Me" and "Honky Tonk Blues," immortals all, but rock & roll they remain.

Still, to view Williams strictly in this light does a disservice both to him and to country music more generally. As a traditional country singer, despite his innovations and unique talents, Williams was formidable. His most reverently approached material was generally written by others -- "Take These Chains from My Heart" (nevertheless best known now in Williams' rendition), Bill Carlisle's "Wedding Bells," Curley Williams' "Half as Much," the great Leon Payne's mystical neo-bluegrass "Lost Highway" -- and all are rendered classic here, even though except for Payne's contribution they pale next to Williams' own work. "A Mansion on the Hill" is the most mournful of his early hits and blends well with the tearful country balladry in vogue in the late '40s, but Williams' stronger, more sincere and broken spin in "Cold Cold Heart" is more humane -- that cold heart sounds truly barren here, and the song cries out for a sad landscape of nowhere emanating from some petrol station speaker off the interstate -- and a key difference between the great man and his influences comes out on "Why Don't You Love Me," a flawless honky tonk vamp that renders the same aches and pains curiously joyful and endearing.

Cover material did seem to liberate Williams to experiment, a tendency more in evidence on the larger boxed set, but you can sense his refinement of a still-distinctive style of guitar playing on now-standard "Crazy Heart" and the showtune "Lovesick Blues." The latter also features some of the first released evidence of Williams' unusual vocal style, which some cite as a kind of yodeling. He doesn't yodel in the manner of Jimmie Rodgers or early Hank Snow or, for god's sake, Slim Whitman, but the things he does on "Lovesick Blues" -- imitating Emmett Miller -- come out like an intriguing extension of his voice. His rapidly changing pitch when he reaches the peak of a song like this or "Long Gone Lonesome Blues" or "Honky Tonk Blues," taking himself in and out of falsetto and woeful lower tones, reflects the importance of a sense of emotional depth in his records -- and also permits a realization of just how intensely he controlled his own singing.

The sound of Hank Williams' voice plays as large a role in the defining of its genre as any singer ever has; even long after most of his peers have passed into cultural memory, he retains his primal appeal across generations. There's rhythm in that voice ("I Won't Be Home No More," "Long Gone Lonesome Blues"), wild exuberance and nuance ("Weary Blues from Waitin'," "Moanin' the Blues"), loneliness and heartbreak so real they hurt like this guy wasn't dead and it was us he was singing about ("You Win Again," "Your Cheatin' Heart," "Wedding Bells," "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry," "Cold Cold Heart"), regret and empathy and charm ("They'll Never Take Her Love from Me," "I'm Sorry for You My Friend"). Mostly these performances are simply stunning; Williams is so compelling as a singer in records that need his backing musicians in a crucial sense because they get out of his way. "Lost Highway" was already a brilliant song before he sang it, but he locates the song in himself, finds its function to him, and brings it to life. He does that every time he opens his mouth on this compilation.

Yet the songwriter's legacy ultimately outweighs the singer's. As musically engaging as his own songs are -- the bridge on "Why Don't You Love Me" is next to godliness, "A Mansion on the Hill" boasts as fine a melody as country's ever had -- he is remembered as a great lyricist because that's where his most obvious gifts were. This isn't always fair. No musician armed with Williams' witty and profound but deceptively simple skills as a wordsmith could've gotten far if s/he couldn't tell a story with music. Great as the lyric on "You're Gonna Change" is, the music is the narrative. But we must accept this portion of Williams' legacy because he is such an impressive figure as a writer, and specifically as a writer of lyrics.

Part of what makes Williams stand out against the better part of a century of country music (and blues, to a lesser extent) is his open resistance, maybe deliberate and maybe not, to false machismo. We've been raised on an image of "outlaw" country and rock & roll, and certainly Williams did little to counter such imagery by going on benders, drinking himself stupid and dying young in somewhat pathetic circumstances in a truck in the middle of nowhere. Nobody as smart as this guy could've been unaware that rebellion has its limits as a lifestyle choice, but even the best male rock and country stars of the years to come would pass the years by on toughness, hindered adolescence and snarling confrontation as major currency. Forget Williams' own son -- a truly uninteresting musician, and a violent bigot to boot -- and take a luminary like Johnny Cash instead. Cash had as many elements of the sacred and the romantic in his music as did Williams, one of his key influences, but Cash would always primarily partake in an ideal of baritone-voiced, Humphrey Bogart-like quiet strength: the myth of unerring dignity. When his heart was broken, he generally bellowed defiantly in response. Or take Elvis Presley's appropriation of the James Dean image; again, Dean as an actor was more complicated than sixty years of gauche bedroom posters suggest, but image informs perception, which in turn informs the culture.

Williams' music, on the other hand, is almost wholly lacking in any kind of a macho posture. Certainly his singing is absent of it. These songs are almost routinely an evocation of the act of crying, of self-pity and solitude, frequently of heartbreak and grief -- and none of these are things that the singer seems to take lying down, instead indulging in fantasies of suicide, jail time, binges and vagrancy. Often he can't even succeed at these vices -- he jumped into the river, but the doggone river was dry. All this comes without the typical mawkishness of pop in the period; it makes a difference that the recordings tend to be rougher than usual, but far more repeatedly evident is that Williams just doesn't lapse into such things lyrically, at least not on his hits. (He did record some sentimental claptrap; the only example here is "My Son Calls Another Man Daddy," which all the same is quite effective for what it is.) C&W balladeers were a dime a dozen in the '40s and '50s, before the genre underwent a makeover of sorts largely prompted by Williams' own success, but an important distinction is that when faced with pain and regret, Williams' response is an unusual feature in popular American music of any period: sardonic black humor. Not comedy in the sense of something overly novel like Phil Harris' "The Thing," but gallows humor of a sort as a means of protecting oneself against unbearable pain.

Humor is a defense mechanism that further outlines Hank Williams' sensitivity and the empathetic drama of his discontent and angst. The abusive relationship in "I Just Don't Like This Kind of Living" commands less bleak treatment than a simple breakup on "Long Gone Lonesome Blues," but the latter is far more humane and funny -- yet it's hard to explain on paper why its fatalism is simultaneously familar to anyone who's been through such a situation and amusing in its exaggerated desperation. Lamenting the loss of a woman he brands his "leaning post," he immediately takes the direst possible tactic. "When I find me that river, Lord I'm gonna pay the price / I'm goin' down in it three times, but Lord, I'm only comin' up twice." Williams sounds far less burdened on "I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive," somewhat ironically the last single he released in his own lifetime, but the words go even farther over the top:

A distant uncle passed away and left me quite a batch
And I was livin' high until that fatal day
A lawyer proved I wasn't born, I was only hatched.

Everything's against me and it's got me down
If I jumped in the river I would prob'ly drown
No matter how I struggle and strive
I'll never get out of this world alive.

It gets more hopeless from there, and Williams delivers it with a strange thrill in his voice, very much getting a kick out of saying all this morbid shit: "I'm not gonna worry wrinkles in my brow / 'Cause nothin's ever gonna be alright nohow," well, that's a kind of optimism; "If it was rainin' gold I wouldn't stand a chance / I wouldn't have a pocket in my patched up pants" comically brings up class discontent only sporadically mentioned so directly (significantly in "Mansion on the Hill"). Throughout, it's important to note that Williams celebrates his weakness -- the fact that nothing will ever be all right is his theme, the focal point of his craft, and he isn't bothered by what it suggests about his constant mindset.

Aside from their undercurrent of such sharp self-deprecation, the lyrics vary wildly here. Except for "I Saw the Light," Williams' interest in the sacred is absent, but otherwise these forty songs are a remarkable sample of his fixations. Some of the words are just straightforwardly brilliant, like the reverence-inspiring "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry," even if they are seldom literary like the lyricists we most often praise (Chuck Berry, Smokey Robinson, Bob Dylan, Ray Davies, etc.) as being exceptions to the rule of pop lyrics apart from rap and folk being disposable outside of context. When they are, it's fleeting -- the use of the word "loveless" on "Mansion on the Hill" is incredibly evocative, for example -- but the emotional depth of something like "Long Gone" amply compensates. On the face of it, there's nothing terribly interesting about the third-person perspective in "I'm Sorry for You My Friend," which challenges another man on his treatment of a lover (kind of a reverse-"She Loves You") except when you consider how it overturns the typical use of stubborn male pride as a subject of tear-in-your-beer anthems -- like at least three included here, though two of those ("Half as Much" and "Window Shopping") weren't Williams' own work. Similarly, "You Win Again" takes a harder look at the sullen heartache of Williams' own work -- and Johnny Cash's early records to come -- and comes out with a surprisingly complex, amoral take on the relationship it describes.

But wounded masculine pride is inevitably here in ample supply; one needs mere familiarity with one of the best-known (and finest) Hank singles, "Your Cheatin' Heart," to know his skill at articulating such base pain lyrically and vocally. I would counter, however, that in most cases this is in fact human pain, gendered only by Williams' own voice. One almost need only read the titles of "Why Don't You Love Me" and "Why Should We Try Anymore" to understand the disappointment that they document. Such dispirited relationship difficulties are hardly sock-hop hot topics -- these are songs for adults, much like "You Win Again," and they talk of emotions that can easily appear nebulous and incomprehensible to one who has not experienced them. Once one has, they seem like messages down from on high; it feels like you're being understood. Or manipulated, if you're cynical; such a bitter instinct led cartoonist Charles Schulz, getting wrapped up through Hank Williams' songs in nostalgia and bitterness after his first marriage dissolved, to permanently turn off the radio in his studio. Most of this, nevertheless, comes from the heart. It's hardly necessary to pay mind to the lyric of "(I Heard That) Lonesome Whistle" to sense the gravity of its depression. That said, once you do read the lyric, its melancholic poetry is nearly as striking as the song itself.

We should mention that despite Schulz's reaction, 40 Greatest Hits is no endless festival of dread. Several of Williams' best and most famous numbers are downright jubilant: "Jambalaya," for example, and "Baby We're Really in Love." Indeed, the very best of his many masterpieces might very well be the Cole Porter-inspired "Hey Good Lookin'," which is significant because of its skipping rhythm, its coy hint of sexual equality (note that it's not, as some covers and tupperware commercials would have it, "how's about cookin' something up for me", it's "with me"), and most of all the sheer poetic grace of its lyric. Williams is quick on his feet as always with a good rhythm and arrangement and a great vocal line, but he outdoes himself on these words, rhymes, stanzas, which evoke a singular world all of their own that still resonates as a romantic ideal:

I'm free and ready so we can go steady
How's about saving all your time for me
No more lookin' I know I been cookin'
How's about keepin' steady company?

I'm gonna throw my datebook over the fence
And find me one for five or ten cents
I'm keepin' it till it's covered with age
'Cause I'm writin' your name down on every page.

Before even getting that far, he puts two dollars in his pocket and invites his woman to take a ride in his Ford to a "spot right over the hill / there's soda pop and the dancing's free." Chuck Berry would remember this swingin' little joint where we can jump and shout on "Carol." In both cases, the possibility of liberation through music is implicit -- casting the darkness that brews under most of Williams' work in its own light. This is how the world often is, and this is how we escape it.

Even on a best-of that merely scratches at the surface of his rewarding discography, Williams comes across as more eclectic than almost any other solo performer. It seems next to impossible that the charmingly off the cuff "My Bucket's Got a Hole in It" could have the same entity performing it as the starkly arranged "They'll Never Take Her Love from Me." So many of these tracks are perfect, but they're perfect in wildly divergent, seemingly incompatible ways: the hungover "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry" alongside the skipping, jumping "Why Don't You Love Me." When stepping completely outside the familiar on "Kaw-Liga," he expands country music with percussive, passionate exotica; it may be antiquated and racially insensitive now, but it remains distinctive and powerfully performed. And then there is something like "I Won't Be Home No More," the very first song the radio played when Rhett Miller was born in the back seat of a Mustang. The pain goes from ear to ear, to be inherited evermore. And despite that pain, it swings. It's agony you can dance to. 29 may be far too short a life for a creative master, but that's quite an idea for him to have managed in that time to get across.

Billie Holiday: Lady Day - The Master Takes and Singles (1935-42)

(Columbia/Legacy)

!!! A+ BOXED SET !!!

Tackling Billie Holiday as not just a musician but a complete entity is more than a lot of people can bear -- tragedy beyond what most of us can imagine lurks at every corner of that story. It's unavoidable, though, to anyone with a more than passing interest in American music or popular music in general. In a greater sense than almost any other series of recordings, Holiday's work is in our blood; divorced from the horrific childhood, adult disappointments and crushing downfalls of her private life, we're left with an unceasingly moving body of work. Knowing the frayed, dejected heart behind that strange, brilliantly imaginative voice only elevates the discography. My point is, it's crucial to read what you can about Billie Holiday to properly understand the miracle of her existence and her output, and you'll want to anyway when its enigmatic beauty and sadness strike at your heart -- even the liner notes (by historian Gary Giddins) in a set like this will help -- but in the end, the music communicates everything one truly needs to know. It's perhaps the most revealing, intimate body of work ever laid down on tape.

Presumably most everyone has heard a fair bit of Holiday's work; it would be hard, frankly, to avoid it. In contrast to what some may instinctively believe, this music isn't simply made for the background -- it rewards close attention, and in fact the more one listens to the tics and winding roads and unexpected moments of elation and despair in Holiday's performances, the more sumptuous and even addictive the music becomes. For the newcomer, Holiday's discography can seem overwhelming and confusing -- especially to one unfamiliar with popular jazz of the period in question, in this case from the middle of the Depression through the early years of World War II. That's unfortunate because the appeal of Holiday's best material vastly transcends the sometimes intimidating world of jazz scholarship. Born in 1915, Eleanora Fagan suffered various kinds of abuse from others that shouldn't overshadow what we're here to talk about: that she began singing professionally in Harlem when she was fourteen and first recorded as a sort of cash-in jukebox swing performer for Brunswick in 1935. As so often, this music that was meant as disposable that happened to be given a laissez-faire blank slate by the label turned out as a result to stand as a creative triumph for the singer, who took the professional name Billie Holiday, and the pianist Teddy Wilson.

She would later record -- with greater control over her material -- for Commodore, Decca and finally Verve. The Commodore and Decca records encompassed some of her biggest commercial hits, including the legendary "Strange Fruit," and inheriting the sometimes ghostly, sometimes sugary string arrangements from Decca, Verve documented her loss of her former vibrant control and enthusiasm. The grimness into which she was born and that seemingly always cursed her finally caught up to her performances; some find the frayed, exhausted singing of those later Verve records to be Holiday's most transcendent and moving work. But the early material, gathered here under the Columbia umbrella (though it was issued on various labels, including Brunswick and OKeh), captures an American master at her zenith and, unlike the Verve works, requires no setup or explication. Under the Lady Day title, you can buy it as a two-, four- or ten-disc set, the two-discer an introduction and the ten-discer a diving into every bit of minutiae from 1933 to 1944. There's no way two discs will be enough for even the greenest of admirers. Ten discs might be a lot to take in, but even with these generously packaged four, you feel as if you could keep going all day and night.

Holiday's work in what we'll conveniently call the Columbia years wasn't "accidentally" brilliant, as is sometimes argued; the accident, at least, was strictly on the part of the labels that were feeding her material that often disinterested or even irritated her. She wasn't the primary artist or bandleader in those early days, though even when her peers are at their best -- particularly Lester Young and Roy Eldridge, though the personnel revolves liberally -- she dominates these recordings artistically. Given carte blanche to virtually invent an improvisational style that resonates and is (usually poorly) imitated to this day, she turned juke-joint 78s designed as flimsy musical wallpaper into statements of profound purpose that often crossed over into the sublime. One instinctively knows this without, as Giddins mentions in the liners, studying the sheet music of staid little numbers like "Spreadin' Rhythm Around" and "A Sailboat in the Moonlight" -- but indeed, Holiday spins these strands of bare, sweet-nothing inspiration into a virtuoso harnessing of, more often that not, awe-inspiringly deep and complex emotional catharsis. Holiday's Columbia sides might be the quickest way available to us to explain why and how recordings can transcend mere songs: these performances vastly supersede the trifling little numbers from which they're launching. At times, as with "LIfe Begins When You're in Love," "On the Sentimental Side" and "I Must Have That Man," Holiday doesn't merely spin mediocrity into splendid entertainment but into a masterpiece.

Not all of the songs Holiday performed in the '30s were poor. She got several chances to wring beauty and charm from the works of Cole Porter and Irving Berlin, chief playful stalwarts of the Great American Songbook, while her own "Billie's Blues" would be a keen selection even if it wasn't helped along by Bunny Berigan and Artie Shaw, but what's impressive is how frequently the quality of the material doesn't particularly matter as much as Holiday's interpretation of its mood, her subverting and expanding its essence. Something as minute as the placement of the vocals on "Did I Remember" can create delight and drama, and the records are made more vital and engaging by their brevity. With almost no exceptions, each and every performance ends so quickly as to leave you wishing it could continue, that we could expand that swinging groove just a little longer. Holiday doesn't always sound like she's enjoying herself -- indeed, a hint of playful sarcasm is crucial to the way she approaches fluff like "He's Funny That Way" and "I'm Gonna Lock My Heart" -- but she does always sound as if she is open-hearted and willing to go where the song and the band deign to take her. Some tracks here are stronger than others (though remarkably, across all four discs there is not a single remotely poor cut), inevitably, but one cannot claim that there is a false note to any of Holiday's vocal choices, which have the feel of incisive purpose and miraculous spontaneity at once.

It's natural to assume that context matters when listening to a grand boxed set like Lady Day in either of its expanded, luxurious formats, and one needn't be strongly literate in jazz to know that this music does reflect the mood and the sound of a strange, uncertain time in American (and world) history. My own feeling, though, is that in the same manner that knowledge of Holiday's personal life and its ups and downs can enhance one's appreciation of the mastery in her professional work, keeping yourself entrenched in this music's give-and-take with the culture of its time is little more than a petty distraction. The emotive reality of Holiday's performances, taking the bands she worked with into account or not (though you really should; "When You're Smiling," for instance, is great for reasons almost wholly separate from Holiday's presence), is something that doesn't change with passing years. In the specific case of her Columbia recordings, she is a sad figure behind a facade, but she's fully aware of that facade and it's an essential part of her vocalizing. When taking on "A Fine Romance" from Swing Time or the gloriously ironic "Things Are Looking Up," you get a sense of a complete, three-dimensional personality, and one probably familiar to any introspective or insecure listener: Billie Holiday is the person trying and failing to have a good time at a social gathering, anything to distract from the halting pain of late nights alone. What about the intervening decades has changed that feeling? Thought so.

If Lady Day isn't a perfect introduction to Billie Holiday and indeed to jazz (and to her importance in it, which is inextricably tied with these recordings from the first half of her career), then surely the fourth disc qualifies. There are masterpieces spread throughout the set, in fact almost more than we've got time to talk about in this review (they are listed below), but the final volume is almost freewheeling with them: the stubbornly powerful "God Bless the Child," the worn-down wounds and reluctant joy of "All of Me," the ethereal "I Cover the Waterfront," and the stunning previews of the shades of gray so prevalent in Holiday's later work on "Gloomy Sunday" and "Until the Real Thing Comes Along." We could go on, of course -- the disc peaks with my personal favorite Holiday recording (though the oddly underappreciated "You Let Me Down" isn't far behind), the bleak, cynical, gorgeous "Am I Blue?", the most perfect evocation of heartbreak and its many uncertainities in a discography with many examples. There's a kind of tearful selflessness to the song, to the scope of Holiday's output; her heartbreak eclipsed mine and probably yours. She had more reason to laugh and cry and feel the depths of "Am I Blue?" than almost anybody else, but she gave us that recording of it, allowed us to share in that sense of loss and the comfort of expressing it. That's the glory of not just music but art in a nutshell. That's why it seems reductive to just talk about melancholy, vitality, sensuality, even if "Moanin' Low" is the sexiest thing you've ever heard on a record.

Elsewhere, the layers and dimensions are harrowing to presumably even the general listener, even when she's giving stuff like "I Can't Give You Anything But Love" (now most famous as the song Katharine Hepburn sings to her pet leopard in Bringing Up Baby) a far kinder and more raggedly wise treatment than it deserves. You don't have to understand timing and timbre (or care that she doesn't bother switching the gender on "These Foolish Things") to be riveted and heartstruck by how high and low she gets, how she cracks, how you can feel like you're inside her voice on these remastered recordings. As the years go by and we listen to Billie Holiday becoming famous, becoming an icon, you can marvel at her blossoming skill as a bandleader on "A Sailboat in the Moonlight" or at how her style continues to develop with the voice finding new expressions as late as 1938's "I Can't Get Started," but there's nothing quite like the feeling when you hear Holiday take on a vast, world-altering song like "Night and Day" or "St. Louis Blues." That's when all this stuff about what it was she did on record, what motivated her to do it, What It Really Meant just washes away -- your impulse, very correctly, is to shut up, close your eyes and listen.

***

APPENDIX A: MASTERPIECES
For anyone new to Billie Holiday's Columbia recordings -- and in a sense, I am too; I've listened to this set for quite a few years but only this year have really sat down and explored it in depth -- this is a list of the songs that seem to me at least like the essence of this period. These jazz standards or songs that were made standards by this specific performer capture either Holiday as a young master of her craft, are gobsmackingly impressive in their improvisational acrobats or emotional depth, or feature extremely engaging band interplay. Mostly they're just great fun or greatly affecting to listen to.

What a Little Moonlight Can Do (1935)
Miss Brown to You (1935)
You Let Me Down (1935)
Life Begins When You're in Love (1936)
These Foolish Things (1936)
Summertime (1936) [astoundingly, the first version of this Gershwin masterwork to hit the pop charts]
Billie's Blues (1936)
A Fine Romance (1936)
The Way You Look Tonght (1936)
I've Got My Love to Keep Me Warm (1937)
He Ain't Got Rhythm (1937)
Why Was I Born? (1937)
I Must Have That Man (1937)
My Last Affair (1937)
Moanin' Low (1937)
They Can't Take That Away from Me (1937)
I'll Get By (1937)
Mean to Me (1937)
A Sailboat in the Moonlight (1937)
Things Are Looking Up (1937)
My Man (1937)
When You're Smiling (1938)
On the Sentimental Side (1938)
You Go to My Head (1938)
I Can't Get Started (1938)
Long Gone Blues (1939)
Them There Eyes (1939)
Night and Day (1939)
The Man I Love (1939)
Body and Soul (1940)
St. Louis Blues (1940)
All of Me (1941)
God Bless the Child (1941)
Am I Blue? (1941)
I Cover the Waterfront (1941)
Love Me or Leave Me (1941)
Gloomy Sunday (1941)
Until the Real Thing Comes Along (1942)

APPENDIX B: ELEVATED MEDIOCRITY
It's not far from likely that these songs would scarcely be remembered if not for Holiday's performances of them -- these phenomenal recordings define how much Holiday as a performer could make something of just about anything she was given. Even if she hated it. Even if she audibly hated it. The results are usually stunning, regardless.

If You Were Mine (1935)
Spreadin' Rhythm Around (1935)
Life Begins When You're in Love (1936)
It's Like Reaching for the Moon (1936)
Did I Remember (1936)
One, Two Button Your Shoe (1936)
I Must Have That Man (1937)
The Mood That I'm In (1937)
Where Is the Sun? (1937)
Don't Know If I'm Comin' or Goin' (1937)
A Sailboat in the Moonlight (1937)
Without Your Love (1937)
He's Funny That way (1937)
On the Sentimental Side (1938)
I'm Gonna Lock My Heart (1938)

Tonight is the first night -- August 2014 albums

You're correct in thinking that no, it is not currently August. Only I can explain the strange patterns and methodless madness of this blog. And I choose not to, so you're stuck with me. I don't even know if I'll have a best of 2014 post up before the end of 2014! And maybe that's okay. Inside this post are the opinions I made, can you dig it!?

Perfect Pussy
Say Yes to Love (2014)
(Captured Tracks)

Sonic Youth: not "dead" the way you know it. This noisy set of impossible-to-tell-apart shouted rants is what it is -- a shot straight into the heart of the audience that needs to hear it, incomprehensible to all others, sort of like a No Age album. (An exception is "Interference Fits," which comes on like Yoko's commentary on "Revolution" Take 20.) Even for this avowed fan of punk anger and spirit, it's somewhat ineffectual despite its speed and volume but at least it won't take more than half an hour of your time -- considerably less in fact, if you disregard the live bonuses.

Parliament
Chocolate City (1975)
(Casablanca)

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED * And talking of revolution, George Clinton (who released this, Mothership Connection and Funkadelic's masterful Let's Take It to the Stage in the same calendar year -- smoke that one) extends the mass black migration to Washington D.C. to a righteous fantasy of a black president and cabinet (all consisting of America's greatest artistic credits: Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, Richard Pryor, onward) pushing back against the vanilla suburbs. The rest of the album steps away from any such direct politics because Clinton has by now so successfully defined just how inherently funk itself makes a radical stand. The delightful, well-defined groove runs across every cut loud and fast or soft and hard. The keyboards, bass-heaviness, vamping vocals and weird romance on "Ride On" and "Together" spiral out with the same beauty found on the oddball ballads that populate side two. The piano on "Let Me Be" backgrounds the doo wop crooning at the roots of Clinton's musical legacy, and we could spend all day speculating on whether or not "I Misjudged You" is a joke. Take "Let Us Lay Some Funk" as one of the highlights in a long line of chanted anthems and come away from this wonderfully eccentric groove album with the same overwhelming impression one gets from Funkadelic's near-simultaneous classic: the hooks are backed up by musicianship, and the thing rocks like nobody's business.

Mac DeMarco
Salad Days (2014)
(Captured Tracks)

!! CAUTION !! * Harsh, mayhap, but I get mad just looking at his mug on the freaking cover, which looks like some frat dude's bad Facebook parody of Rubber Soul. Guess what doubles as a great description of this extremely annoying album?? The songwriting, starting with the busy "lalala"ing on track number one, is as tossed off and bland as the performances, with the boredom of material like "Let My Baby Stay" not even sustaining DeMarco's interest enough to make it sound like he could really be bothered to show up. He's the Ariel Pink who'd have a beer with you. Whatever movement he's a part of with that slick slippy slidy guitar sound and the smug laziness that undercuts his inborn inoffensive nature, it's better illustrated nowhere than "Passing Out Pieces" and "Chamber of Reflection," which borrow good ideas from The Beach Boys Love You and R&B in general respectively then falter because he's too pedestrian to know what to do with them. The big joke writes itself with such song titles as "Goodbye Weekend" (oh, indeed) and such lyrics as "You're no better off livin' your life than dreamin' at night / This much is true, but it's still up to you." You can almost hear bro-rock lapping itself.

Pet Shop Boys
Please (1986)
(EMI America)

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED * Like a lot of '80s blockbusters, it's a stacking together of big hit singles when you look at it very simply. "West End Girls" into "Opportunities" into "Love Comes Quickly" into "Suburbia" is such a parade of mastery it warrants an encore in a reprise of one of them, but it's the second half that not only provides the conceptual string that makes it all signify something but indicates very early on that this pair of critical darlings would end up recording one of pop music's most magical discographies. The dance floor is only a bit of the story, and they'd delve into that with more assurance later and elsewhere, and the long-running debate over which half of what Neil Tennant says is what he actually means is the source of some of the intellectual appeal for sure. But listen closely to the words on the startlingly romantic "Tonight Is Forever," on the equally potent fantasy of cutting and running "Two Divided by Zero," on the desperately deal-making "Opportunities," on the monstrously nasty (interpolating "God Only Knows" into "I may not always love you / you may not care," ouch; and try listening side by side with Bob Marley's "Is This Love?") "Why Don't We Live Together" and you discover the first pangs of insecurity in a world just as subtly marked by the apartheid protests in the background of the "West End Girls" video or in the fragility of Tennant's vocal and Chris Lowe's piano on the incongruous "Later Tonight." The economic anxiety of the Reagan-Thatcher years imbues and darkens the living and loving of the casual and businesslike young professionals that populate these songs. There's a song about violence breeding violence, too, but more important are the songs about thinking of ways to get rich, about neglecting the bills to go out and dance with the love of your life while ignoring the future, about kicking it downtown with nowhere much to go, about living together more because it makes financial sense than because you love somebody, and about loving somebody so much you'd break the law and run away with them. All these uncertain futures, not least the band's one guesses, and while it's no news that Tennant and Lowe would become experts at juggling their conceptual distance with emotional honesty, it's something to witness it all falling into place so long ago, on music that remains remarkably and depressingly timely. Living for tonight -- it's forever, it's later, and I don't want another drink or fight I want a lover then -- still isn't bad advice, either.

Todd Terje
It's Album Time (2014)
(Olsen)

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED * No idea where this came from except Norway, but it's the weird lounge record you've dreamed about that you never thought anyone would dare produce. The timing probably doesn't work out but it fulfills a lot of the promise of Daft Punk's last record -- fearlessly interpolating Herb Alpert, Vince Clarke ("Swing Star 1"), Roxy Music, the Tornados' "Telstar," Bert Kaempfert and Les Baxter all with four on the floor playfulness and those wistful memories of disco bliss. And it has more propulsion than Random Access Memories but is just as layered and endlessly fun, drowning us in keyboard trills and bass lines that come from nowhere and sound so right. Highlights are constant and range from bossa nova to unstoppable night-driving time capsules to a freaking Robert Palmer cover sung by Bryan Ferry??!? It's like a compilation of theme songs from the best cool kitschy jet-set teevee shows you've never seen. You don't have to watch them to have an attitude; you just have to fake it.

At the Drive-In
This Station Is Non-Operational (1997-2000)
(Fearless)

!! CAUTION !! * I remembered this band primarily for an incident in high school during the Napster era, wherein a George Bush-adoring classmate in my Computer Applications class begged me to burn this song he'd heard on the radio to a CD. He claimed the chrous was "run away / run away." Unable to source this, I sought clarification and learned that his revised theory had it as "get away / get away." Well, no, in the end "One Armed Scissor" actually contains the words "cut away / cut away," which as the smartass Nader kid next to us pointed out, is pretty obvious given the title. I also remembered this band as a terrible rap-rock-ish outfit with one interesting and terrifying video ("Invalid Litter Dept."); they've become sort of a small legend in the years since "get away / get away" filled our happy headphones. I decided to take an extra listen to see if I'd missed something, blinded by my loathing and lack of synchronicity with the radio circa 2000. At the Drive-In's little moment was an odd one, but no, they're not for me. They sound turgid and whiny beyond belief to me, in fact, and I wish this came prepackaged with snark in the liner notes like Depeche Mode's The Singles 81>85, which is the kind of thing I was listening to in 2000. Epilogue: Bush won the election.

Curren$y
The Drive-In Theatre (2014)
(Datpiff)

Speaking of drive-ins. It's not hard -- read any of the last 17 reviews of Curren$y albums and you get the concept. I don't mean to be flippant, but I really am paying the price for highly-recommending an album this guy did four years ago. Behind the scenes that means I force myself through any full-length an artist releases for the next ten years and while nothing Curren$y puts out is bad -- the guy's nothing if not dependable, honest to goodness -- I don't think it's an insult to him if I say that his prolific nature exhausts me, especially when releases like this require a download rather than a simple stream. Actually I have fun listening to his new stuff but the part where I have to write something about it in response is painful. All I can think of to say is that I listened to this while I fed my mom's chickens... and that doesn't seem like it belongs here?

Camera Obscura
Let's Get Out of This Country (2006)
(Merge)

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED * It feels like Tracyanne Campbell's triumph if no one else's; not that her band (and producer Jari Haapalainen) doesn't do plenty of the work to make this the finest of Camera Obscura's fine albums, but the toughness and yearning that seem to weave stories untold from every line she sings are a good proportion of what puts this in the top tier of indelible, emotionally devastating records made in the last ten years or so. That's an achievment for a band whose mission is clearly to evoke memories of baroque records from long ago, Phil Spector singles and sad dancing-alone Northern soul moments from prior to Campbell's birth, much less memory or adolescence. Anyway, this is not an exaggeration: her singing throughout this record is absolutely flawless... it is one of those performances you wish you could see happening. It's so good that the songs themselves sometimes seem vaguely unworthy of her (and to be honest, nothing here will break you apart and put you back together like "Books Written for Girls" or "Teenager" but plenty will come damn close). Nevertheless, it's still the kind of record that makes other records seem extremely inadequate in proximity. "Lloyd, I'm Ready to be Heartbroken" could be cute throwback without that break 38 seconds in or the relief Campbell draws from the chorus; what would "Tears for Affairs" be without its lyrical wit and lilt? "No, you never stay"; "I love you, Dory Previn"; "what does this city have to offer me / everyone else thinks that it's the bee's knees"; the whole of the infectious, Peanuts-quoting "I Need All the Friends I Can Get." She's Dusty Springfield, Ray Davies, Tammy Wynette. Despite the glorious arrangements, especially those horns on "Razzle Dazzle Doze," they're nothing without her. And that's just fine.

Elbow
The Take Off and Landing of Everything (2014)
(Concord)

Since we're doing a lot of Personal History this evening, my history with Elbow is that they were once included on a mix CD given to me by a guy that my then-girlfriend was sleeping with. I think the CD was a peace offering, I'm not sure. And I can't think of a band that screams "peace offering" more than Elbow -- you gotta hand it to 'em, this is damn functional music, like ten hours of Peter Gabriel covering U2's "Bad" or some group of the songs that used to have music videos included at the end of VHS rentals of romantic dramas or whatever. I mean, it's all dumb, but it has some keen flourishes. It's hard to imagine anybody mustering up passion about this unless they're like me and just love to pretend "Fly Boy Blue" is being sung by zombies. Or the Steve Miller Band.

***

Among the things I'm now sure I won't get to before the year's out: Love's Forever Changes (revised from my deeply ignorant 2007 first impression), Devo's first album, the Avalanches' Since I Left You, Stevie Wonder's Fulfillingness' First Finale (spoiler: as good as anything he ever released), Beatles for Sale. Am I telling you this so you'll be upset and/or angry? Yes! And also, because you now know what will probably happen in 2015, and can look at a list of every record ever made and use process of elimination to determine what I will review in the remainder of the year. Two more mixed posts, four or five more full reviews, then a rush of new releases that will run god knows how long, but don't worry, I've already listened to and formed opinions on lots of stuff. We'll have fun, I promise!

Aretha Franklin: I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You (1967)

(Atlantic)

!!! A+ RECORDING !!!

The way to hear this album is either on vinyl or from (warning: illegal advice ahead) a high-bitrate needledrop. The official digital versions that exist simply don't, maybe can't capture the intensity of the drums or the intimacy of Aretha Franklin's voice at its upper register. This is the greatest singer in rock & roll at her unquestionable peak, and it deserves the full range of sound and unfaked warmth that simply can't be fully appreciated from a digital signal. I used to think such things were woo-woo nonsense, and still believe that a good mastering engineer could make I Never Loved a Man the Way I Loved You, this landmark of soul and pop music, this most emotionally powerful of all great albums, into a divine-sounding compact disc or MP3 album. But for now, take my word for it -- the hype over vinyl exists because of cases like this one. You won't regret seeking out this experience for yourself.

Never Loved was recorded over a span of just over a month in the first quarter of 1967 in New York, released barely a dozen days after it was completed. The Muscle Shoals band backing Franklin on these cuts, led by King Curtis on tenor sax, is illustrious and untouchable, but Franklin herself bears nearly all of the responsibility for their grace and majesty. Her simple but stunningly beautiful piano playing, bursting at the seams as it challenges the boundaries of the secular and sacred, is bested in its impact only by the singing voice that feels too large and important to have been emitted from a mere human. You know "Respect" damn well, and well you should, but as the first cut of a truly phenomenal album it sings out like a new song, fierce and unkempt, eclipsing Otis Redding's original and -- in retrospect -- eclipsing much of what the hell else was going on in 1967. This contained, exuberant, brilliant arrangement wraps around a nearly formless vocal that's just a pure expression of romantic frustration, anger, and -- this is rock & roll -- sly attitude.

Franklin explores those three vital implications of her vocal range throughout this series of frequently despairing love songs, at least as much as they wander into the more soul-traditional evocation of bottomless sorrow. That efficiency and eclecticism, that range, is why she stands apart from other rock and soul performers, why this is one of the top soul records of the '60s in a realm with Otis Blue and Night Beat. With that said, even in the moments of conventional heartbreak, Franklin defies the box that outsiders might place her in. There is nothing remotely ordinary in her version of the Ray Charles classic (penned by Henry Glover) "Drown in My Own Tears" -- it may as well just be viewed as a series of climaxes, a concept more typically seen in power pop or the baroque productions of Phil Spector, whereby all lines point to a dramatic peak. The exhilaration within this record's first three cuts is an act of incredible consistency despite each song standing out as an entirely separate entity, with its own aims and internal crises; the value in the album comes from how every cut presents another side of Franklin's angst and, perversely but perfectly, her utter confidence in her expression of same.

Atlantic Records was a creative hotbed in those days, and it could conceivably be argued that Never Loved was just another day in the life; it is, after all, mostly a covers record. Franklin's sole contributions as co-composer are the anguished but playful "Save Me," the sensual "Dr. Feelgood," the stirringly expressive (at her highest vocal register) "Baby Baby Baby," and "Don't Let Me Lose This Dream." All are outliers here, though one ignores the jazz-like, tense and plaintative "Don't Let Me Lose" at one's own risk. But does anyone argue that "Respect" ultimately belongs to anyone but Franklin? Would anyone in a thousand years ever be able to loosen her grasp upon the melody of Luther Dixon's "Soul Serenade"? The absolute heaven of the title cut and its b-side, the absolutely perfect (and audibly wounded) "Do Right Woman - Do Right Man," two of the best recordings of the century?

There is no letup in all this drama or closeness, to the extent that the LP single-handedly gives the lie to any equation of authenticity with self-composition. In every sense except the most strictly and meaninglessly technical, this is a singer-songwriter album. With the sole exception of the two very respectable Sam Cooke covers, these songs belong to Aretha Franklin and hence always they shall; this story, this cycle, this expression of pleasure and pain is all exclusively hers, and we should count our fortunes that we are able to witness it continually. It remains as fresh, powerful, invigorating, overwhelming as ever, nearly five decades on.

Wire: Pink Flag (1977)

(Harvest)

!!! A+ RECORDING !!!

What do you think rebellion sounds like? Musically, I mean. Is rebellion a flower-power thing, an anti-war newspaper song, "folkies playing drums" and all that? Is rebellion even something tangible to be primarily associated with adolescent fervor, or are we talking more about just the basic expression of nonconformity? Is rebellion "Revolution 9"? The bold strokes of individualism like when Patti Smith covers "Gloria" and makes it her own on Horses, or when John Lydon goes under the Berlin Wall, or when Poly Styrene snarls in response to the adage that little girls should be seen and not heard -- that's a favored definition. But there's something about Wire's Pink Flag, one of the most unique and strange artifacts of punk rock, that seems deeper, weirder, more devoted. There is a casualness, an almost mechanical deadpan to the repetitive riff "3 Girl Rhumba" and its brash, half-assed insights ("Think of a number, divide it by two / Something is nothing -- nothing is nothing!") that is more than just gleefully primitive and raucous-past-the-distortion-point. Both those aesthetic qualities are valid and significant, of course, but this song is a threat. And it's a threat because, well, it sounds like these boys just don't care how you feel about the results.

They say it themselves in the demonic earworm "Mannequin": "You don't even start to interest me / Not even curiosity / It's not animosity, it's just you don't interest me." The strongest of kiss-offs: apathy (though "My mind is unwilling and your flesh is so weak" will do in a pinch). Ultimately, nearly every other landmark punk album had some degree of audience service in its philosophy. The tip of the iceberg must be Never Mind the Bollocks, essentially such a barely-disguised greatest hits package as to be three steps away from A Collection of Sex Pistols Oldies. Don't even limit yourself to Great Britain. The Ramones, the Clash, the Damned, Blondie, the Saints, and certainly Patti Smith and Television all exorcised their small rebellions in the firmly established context of good old rock & roll. The song structures, for example, in the Saints' "Messin' with the Kid" or virtually any Ramones song are essentially pared-down revisions of ideas wrought by the Stones, the Beach Boys, Buddy Holly and Chuck Berry two decades earlier. It isn't that Wire is immune to such pleasures so much as they are interested in brushing away the dross and cutting it all down to its essence even more so than their peers. These songs rush in, make their point and then leave -- with no friendly repetition or carefully orchestrated hooks. If there is a hook, you might hear it once. Then it's gone.

So the band -- consisting of fussy, restless renegades Bruce Gilbert, Graham Lewis, Robert Gotobed and razor-sharp but subtle frontman Colin Newman -- rewrites "Wild Thing" as a sarcastic parody of self-help manuals and feel-good relationship philosophy in "Feeling Called Love." All the big riffage, even a singalong peak, but it's all over in eighty-two seconds. "Champs" even offers handclaps and a certain curious joy. In some alternate universe, "Start to Move" and "It's So Obvious," only one of which even exceeds a minute, might sound like radio hits but they're out the door in a flash. Even for someone who loves Wire's approach here, it's hard to hear the wittily pouty "Fragile" and "Champs" without thinking of what a career this band might have had if they'd further explored their effortless, focused popcraft. Minimalism in this context amounts to a certain gleeful denial of pleasure, but it also renders Pink Flag both an enigma and an addiction -- because its ideas are so numerous and come at such a rapid pace, all quickly discarded, the immediate need is to hear it all again.

Raw as it is, it's also intensely well-recorded. Among the more elaborate constructions here, the instant classic "Ex-Lion Tamer" has, like "Mannequin," a fully fleshed-out structure with a bridge, chorus, backing vocals and a tight rhythm, all peaking with the ultimate in fascistic commands: "Stay glued to your TV set." Throughout the song, the volume level goes up, and up and up, so slowly it's almost unnoticeable, but pronounced enough that the track is deafening by the end. The unsettling slow-burn "Strange" -- the longest track here, and one of only three longer than three minutes -- adds interlocking guitars and a flute, yet its variation upon the nightmare is equally unforgiving given the time to engulf us all.

"Strange" is, by this band's standards, something of an epic concoction. But it's long strictly because it can hold their sinister interest for that long. "Pink Flag" is more of a dramatic, overblown stage piece, meaning apparently to mock the flamboyant extremities of prog rock; even it devolves into a series of broken one-chord rave ups, strikes of drum and guitar like some demented H.P. Lovecraft reversal of the beginning of "A Hard Day's Night" drowned out eventually by the band's screams. This only enhances the worldview of "Field Day for the Sundays," which slags off bourgeois lifestyle, middle class fantasy and the TV set you're glued to in under thirty seconds and two spit-out sentences: "I want to be a field day for the Sundays so they can fuck up my life, embarrass my wife and leave a bad taste striped toothpaste can't remove on Monday morning. I want to be a target for the dailies so they can show pictures of me with a nude on page three, so lacking in taste, touched up near the waist looking as limp as Monday morning." These two extremes of Pink Flag don't run in opposition. They both demonstrate that only the barest elements are necessary for a reformation of rock & roll as a catalyst of astonishing tension, fury and barbaric humor.

Musically, it's one thing -- more implosive than explosive but inspiring of plenty of danceable glee, if clipped and frequently interrupted. But rock & roll never was just rhythm and melody, it's the whole package -- the attitude, expressed less often in a lyric than a snarl. Pink Flag's vaguely apocalyptic, dada-influenced fuck-it-all worldview would seem like an expression of almost deathly nihilism if it did not circumvent any attempt to interpret it so straightforwardly, unimaginatively. It must be said, the lyrics -- many by Newman, many not -- are a delight even at their deathliest, and are at times arrestingly poetic ("If you had a room he'd paint it white / Survives the day, prefers the night"). The inner sleeve reads like the world's strangest advice column or autobiography, all detached philosophy and mathematical oddity. But is the inaudibly shouted "Mr. Suit" -- "Take your fucking money and shove it up your arse... I'm tired of fucking phonies, that's right, I'm tired of you!" -- a satire of lesser punk bands' empty anti-authority ethos? Is it a sincere attack upon capitalism? Is it a mockery of the duplicity of so many of Wire's peers? Unlike the Sex Pistols, the Clash, the Damned, the Ramones, and well, basically everyone else, Wire wasn't on a major label; they never shook hands with the Mr. Suits. One thing's for sure: the song is a riot, and a joy -- even Newman is having a blast, you can tell by that cheerful "come on!" he emits after the first verse. But it's also scary, threatening, and that makes it all the more cathartic.

The guttural abandon of most great popular music is key here, but so is a rare sort of imagination; Wire may have rebelled against the same systems -- mostly musical and infrastructural, maybe a few political -- as all other punk rock groups from the first wave, but no one else did it in quite the gleefully oblique way they did. The Pistols could scare you, but Wire could trap you, in a dirge or in the deafening silence when a song just collapses. There's strange beauty in "Reuters" or "Lowdown" for all their cacophony and drone, in the descent into chaos of "Surgeon's Girl" (later revised into even louder chaos on "Too Late" from Chairs Missing) and "Pink Flag," and in the sensation of being found out and exposed on the deservedly legendary, outrageous climax "1 2 X U" -- the inverse of "Field Day for the Sundays." And yet they can also offer "Straight Line," one of the cheeriest punk songs not performed by the Ramones. At the end of it all, punk washes away along with most everything else because Pink Flag is singular, maybe even more than the band Wire itself was. It does something new with rock & roll, something new with the rock album, its structure, the interweaving relationship of the songs to one another and of the songs to the listener. It's one of the definitive LPs, one of the reasons the LP deserved to be created, and better than most of the reasons we probably thought it was created back in 1977.

July albums

Sorry this post is so late. My life intervened pretty annoyingly this summer; read all about it here if you want the decidedly non-fun details. But I did listen to music during all that. Below is about half of what I've been evaluating lately, with the rest to come as soon as I can spare the moments. I've extracted myself pretty much completely from a lot of the established critical voices across the Web because it seems -- as evidenced below -- that what other people are hearing and loving is more than ever wholly divorced from what's connecting with me. The two records that lit up my spring and summer near the bottom of this post have received little attention elsewhere, while between Marissa Nadler and Sun Kil Moon I'm finding it increasingly hard to be persuaded that the Pitchfork establishment isn't just punking everybody. But lord knows there's no less sharp, vibrant music than before. You'll read about some of it here, some shortly after.

Oh, and Amber Morris contributed (semi-unwittingly) to the Real Estate, Beck and Sam the Sham reviews.

Young Fathers
Dead (2014)
(Aticon)

RECOMMENDED * Interesting, atmospherically vibrant debut by this Edinburgh (by way of Liberia, Nigeria and Maryland) alt-hip hop collective, heavy on melody and a broad pallette of influences that calls TV on the Radio and Shabazz Palaces to mind, with more of a cloudy cumulative impression than a lot of specifically striking numbers. The record comes after a few mixtapes I haven't heard but is breezy enough to make a quick impression and is mostly a flexing of innate gifts; check out the sweeping, unexpectedly gorgeous "Low," tense and aggressive "Mmmh Mmmh." It's a bit short and unfocused, but we'll probably be hearing more good stuff out of these blokes.

***

Five Live Yardbirds (1964)
(Columbia)

RECOMMENDED * New to me, this unusual live document is interesting for a few reasons, only one of them being that it's one of maybe two albums in existence that doesn't suffer for Eric Clapton's involvement. The choice to have a live album function as the band's debut is actually something that was considered by George Martin for the Beatles; history's been kind to his decision not to pull such a stunt after checking out the acoustics at the Cavern, but the tactic is an excellent choice for this somewhat less disciplined but equally raucous live act -- captured in the spring of 1964 at the Marquee Club. The Yardbirds would subsequently create considerable magic in the studio, brilliantly combining a fervent pop sensibility with the blues obsession audible here -- a balancing act none of their peers ever quite figured out, except maybe the Animals -- but this is pure rave-up rock & roll, capturing an eager band with unstoppable energy and a great repertoire of cover material. It's sort of a pity that this is a stronger document of a peak-moment British Invasion band than any of the Beatles', Stones' or Kinks' similar recordings from the period.

***

Marissa Nadler
July (2014)
(Sacred Bones)

!! CAUTION !! * Iiiiiiiii'mmmmmmmmmmmmm ggggggggggggggggllllllllaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaadddddd yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyoooooooooooooouuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu lllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiikkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiittttttttttttttttttttttttttttttt

***

Bo Diddley
20th Century Masters: The Millennium Collection (1955-62)
(MCA)

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED * I generally frown on these homogenized greatest hits sets that were put out -- along with similar variants from other labels -- in the early part of the last decade with titles like Icons and Essentials and such, but this is the best (and best-sounding) introduction I'm aware of to one of the crucial architects of rock & roll. A big part of what makes it so much more immediately engaging than the just-as-worthy Chess Box, despite some unfortunate omissions, is that it never stops being fun. The all-time classics "Bo Diddley," "Who Do You Love" (Diddley's strongest piece of proto-hip hop along with the hit "Say Man") and "Road Runner" keep the beat going all night across a sweltering dance floor even now, while "I'm a Man" and "Diddley Daddy" reveal Diddley's hard blues roots and "Crackin' Up" shows off his pouting vulnerability. But best of all, perhaps, is "Mona," proving there's no barrier between filthy primal rock & roll and burning, yearning romance.

***

Angel Olsen
Burn Your Fire for No Witness
(2014)
(Jagjaguwar)

Impassioned in the garage, restrained and dull in the opera house.

***

Ashford & Simpson
Best Of (1973-90)
(Capitol)

RECOMMENDED * Nickolas Ashford and Valerie Simpson did their best work as composers for other artists, most significantly Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell, but they also recorded some zippy singles about their own marital bliss -- they've got the passion if not the voices to communicate desire, passion and yeah, solidity. This is one winning and agreeable compilation, and breaks a sweat; the songs are almost invariably about commitment -- the ups and downs, highs and lows. Mostly ups and highs. But then, these are singles. Woefully missed is the cover art from one of their other best-ofs, which is almost comically indistinguishable from a depiction of the pair cooperating in said marital bliss with coy grins on faces; good for them, I say.

***

St. Vincent (2014)
(Republic)

RECOMMENDED * Delightful and barbed enough pop to put you in a trance (dig the At the Drive-In interpolation on "Birth in Reverse"!). Still, it seems to me that Annie Clark is holding us all at arm's length somehow, even though she says this is her extroverted record. There's something just a little too professional about it, even though the synths are nasty and Clark's vocals impeccably frayed and full of character. But there's not a weak or ill-advised moment and the right person will find much to love. The voyeuristic anthem "Digital Witness" makes up for everything, anyway.

***

Sam the Sham & the Pharaohs
Pharaohization (1965-67)
(Rhino)

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED * In addition to one of the filthiest pieces of barely competent, trashy garage rock ever to reach mass popularity with "Wooly Bully," this bizarre outfit recorded a succession of assembly line nursery rhymes and novelty tunes that are conceptually worthy of the Ramones. Some of the many forgotten treasures here: the accidental rock-critic anthem "Oh That's Good No That's Bad," the proto-MRA neckbeard lament "How Do You Catch a Girl," the relentless "Banned in Boston" and the thrillingly vile "I Couldn't Spell !!*@!". In contrast to lots of archival collections from one- or two-hit bands, this brings it for just about an hour. Not that "Wooly Bully" and the splendidly raunchy Big Joe Turner / Big Bopper hybrid hit "L'il Red Riding Hood" (one of the best songs ever written about a woman's clitoris) wouldn't be enough.

***

Real Estate
Atlas (2014)
(Domino)

Unceasingly pleasant, unceasingly polite, unceasingly boring. I don't ask for much, but can't we keep some personality? It seems for this admirer of folky, washed-out guitar hooks as though excessive separation of elements and the DDD pillowy bed of sound so familiar from the early CD era isn't even a good fit for nostalgia, but in an age when people want to sound like Mark Knopfler and Tom Petty only sleepier, what do I know? Gr8 for chillin' poolside though, y'all.

***

Tinariwen
Emmaar (2014)
(Anti-)

RECOMMENDED * Another terrific band (like the thornier, more jagged Ngoni Ba) displaced and disheartened by the militant regime in Mali; following big breakthrough American success with their last record (a long time coming; the group formed in the late '70s), they recorded this one in the California desert. It rumbles, grooves and quakes, it's catchy and bluesy, and about as immediately accessible as African music can be for a western audience new to it.

***

Artic Monkeys
Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not (2006)
(Domino)

!! CAUTION !! * Alex Turner is a... brilliant man with lots of well thought out, practical ideas. He is ensuring the financial security of Domino Records for years to come. Oh, and his personal hygiene is above reproach.

***

Lydia Loveless
Somewhere Else (2014)
(Bloodshot)

She went to a party, someone gave her some blow, the tears came right to her eyes and the phone was right there. So you got a phone call and here it is, and other yearning alt-country psychodramas and collapses. She's an "outlaw," sez the press, but mostly combines the ragged, uncertain maturity of Tracey Thorn with the classic fatalism of Richard Thompson. As a result, the lyrics are insightful and harrowing, but the music (excluding gripping, triumphant moments like the chorus of "Wine Lips" and Loveless' guitar work throughout) and production are a little too much of a retread of seemingly every other modern country record for me. (And as established last year with the Pistol Annies and Kacey Musgraves, I just don't have the ear for it.) At its best, an emotionally striking achievement all the same.

***

L7
Hungry for Stink (1994)
(Reprise)

RECOMMENDED * New to me, actually; I love their prior two albums and have for some time. This one is only inferior to them insofar as it bites just a little bit less -- success hangover? maybe, but more likely the result of an evolution completely beyond the punk ethos to full-on hard rock -- but the second half is still searing and they are, any way you hear 'em, one of the top guitar bands of the last twenty years. It's a sin that more people don't celebrate that.

***

Beck
Morning Phase (2014)
(Capitol)

!! CAUTION !! * It's been a long time since I listened closely to any of Beck's records (we had a long history, it ended bitterly), but when did he become this dull? Not one moment makes an impression; at least he used to be funny. This reminds me of the fucking John Denver records my parents used to play. The inexplicable modern indie rock attraction to unmitigated lite-FM boredom has apparently spread to '90s nostalgia acts now. Coming soon: Billy Corgan's album of Doobie Brothers tunes.

***

Wild Beasts
Present Tense (2014)
(Domino)

RECOMMENDED * For some reason "Nature Boy" makes me want to watch Aguirre, the Wrath of God. The rest sounds like a particularly indulgent Martin Gore (or Bryan Ferry, on "Sweet Spot") solo album -- so, not bad! "A Simple Beautiful Truth" and "Past Perfect" -- delicate schlock -- convinced me. Though now I will spend the rest of the decade getting this band confused with Wild Nothing, who do pretty much the same thing?

***

Asylum Street Spankers
Live (1997)
(Watermelon)

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED * Among the major regrets of my previous ten years in a catalog of plenty is that I never saw this band live before their untimely, financial crash-related breakup. They are an acquired taste, sure; some say -- not without reason -- that the relentless comedic setpieces within and without their original songs render the music trite and trivial, and honestly I could do without some of the wacky stuff. (Some of it, like a rockabilly cover of the Beastie Boys' "Paul Revere" not included on this disc, is sublime.) You do get a bit of it here, as on most of their releases, but when the group focuses on their particular brand of acoustic mayhem and despair, it shrinks the ironic distance of years between the band's choice of cover material and their own sensibilies. I think that's crucial: the banter may be safely sardonic, the music seldom is. It will surprise casual fans that wunderkind vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Christina Marrs, one of the best American musicians of our time, provides only some of the highlights (like the crushing, mindbendingly sexy "Sugar in My Bowl"). The rest is a true ensemble. Check out "Bizness" and "Last Kind Word," or better yet just let the band's irresistible, haunting fast-yet-soulful version of the great murder ballad "Banks of the Ohio" covert you single-handedly.

***

Neneh Cherry
Blank Project (2014)
(Smalltown Supersound)

RECOMMENDED * Sensual classisist -- and, in case you forgot, an absolutely terrific singer -- returns after seemingly forever with Four Tet in tow. Complex and serious throughout, but at its best when she cuts loose and gets weird; the title cut is as far out and intense as anything on the St. Vincent record.

***

Nana Grizol
"Ruth" (2010)
(Orange Twin)

One of Athens' most interesting current bands jumped out of the gate with the heartfelt, celebratory Love It Love It, a flawed album that was hard not to adore passionately, and after a few years I'm still not convinced they waited long enough to record the follow-up, which bears all the hallmarks of a rush job. It's surprisingly slow with filler instrumental and otherwise, but of course offers some huge contributions to collective cult goodwill, the same sort of stuff the first album was overflowing with. The bouncy yet mournful "For Things That Haven't Come Yet" is probably their best song so far. But we miss the barely-put-together but infectiously enthusiastic lyrical insights of Theo Hilton, somewhat in the manner of the Modern Lovers, that so generously filled the band's earlier work.

***

September Girls
Cursing the Sea (2014)
(Fortuna Pop!)

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED * This is rock & roll that I, an increasingly grouchy librarian in my thirties, understand intimately. September Girls are a Dublin quintet so new they've only played Stateside on one occasion so far -- at SXSW -- and are getting lost in the flood of neo-noise dream pop groups that have so dominated the attentions of indie bloggers in the last few years (in part because so many of these bands are led by women, and you're surely familiar with the critical need to throw things together for no more compelling reason than that). But they're different for several reasons; sure, it's all a throwback to the Jesus & Mary Chain and My Bloody Valentine days of yore, but it's a beautiful throwback, with a buried pop sense as strong, varied and well-schooled as such godparents ever had. The songs are vastly more compelling than those of the far more successful band Dum Dum Girls, with whom they're constantly compared. Again, there's no doubt the whispered shoegaze wall of vocals appeals to me because of various long-held prejudices and joys, but this fast and sad music has an innate magic that I don't think is limited to their interest in the records they like. Take the unapologetic bitterness of "Another Love Song," the girl group meltdowns in "Talking" and the absolutely perfect (almost Kimberley Rew-like, don't tell anyone) "Someone New," the million dollar riffs and drama on "Green Eyed" and "Sister," or the turn-it-the-fuck-up pulse running through all of it. By the time "Money" builds to a persuasive climax that eats at you like 1986 never ended, one wonders what the hell is the matter with appropriating the sounds you love most. Nothing, when the results are this fresh, invigorating and, well, (for all their self-conscious darkness) lovable.

***

The Replacements
Sorry Ma, Forgot to Take Out the Trash (1981)
(Twin/Tone)

RECOMMENDED * A hint that they're more than juvenile thrash, but only a hint, and what's wrong with juvenile thrash? The splendidly self-deprecating liner notes by Paul Westerberg are the best part, but the music has its winners -- both funny and otherwise. "I Hate Music" and "Customer" constitute charming laziness of a sort seldom exemplified by hardcore bands, who were and are typically more worried about making an impression than these ne'er-do-wells, while the considerable sophistication of "Shiftless When Idle" and "Johnny's Gonna Die" transcend the small-town Minnesota glue sniffing anthems that populate both sides. You can hear the band's future in it even if they couldn't, and that parallel purity and complexity are what make the record finally more intriguing than tedious.

***

Hospitality
Trouble (2014)
(Merge)

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED * Plenty of indie rock bands that've shown up in this decade show a determination to zoom right past the hip parlance of post-punk and appropriate the weirdly crunchy, buzzy ambiance of '90s alternative rock, including -- horrors -- the stuff that was on the radio at the time. Brooklyn's Hospitality are different from someone like the more unabashed revivalists Yuck because their attraction to such music isn't the surface jolt of pleasure and memory but how much more complicated and involved the act of listening to guitar music seemed then, even that recently. Songs and records held secrets they took their time revealing; sometimes they still do, but only sporadically is the effort celebrated. So Trouble's indelible melodies and idiosyncratic, multilayered performances may go unnoticed by many but not here. The songs are all different but mostly share an impeccable sense of interplay, the rhythm section bubbling under Amber Papini's sharp, hard, complex vocals and outstanding guitar playing. Papini is a formidable talent calling to mind Neil Young and Karen O in equal measure, though her gift for restraint is her own. Her songs are engagingly straightforward, smart and well-written midtempo pop, sophisticated without being slick. I have yet to hear the band's apparently less eclectic, more immediate first album, but what connects here are the many, many ideas being tested out and exercised, from the unnerved New Wave of "Going Out" to the doo wop interpolation (almost worthy of Television's "Prove It") on "It's Not Serious." Papini's guitar boasts considerable lyricism throughout, peaking with the magically fevered solo (best of the year, probably) that closes out "Last Words." That song's a particular miracle, six and a half minutes of Fleetwood Mac / Postal Service / Brian Eno magic to make you either dance or cry, probably both. From there, the band goes out on high, edging on the divine with the acoustic lullaby "Sunship" and the utterly wounded "Call Me After." I knew immediately that this album was special, but it's taken several listens for me to realize how special. I can't wait to hear what this band does next.

***

A long-festering essay about Wire is coming soon; two more lengthy posts like this will follow, but I can't exactly tell you how long. Also probably going to say my piece finally about two of the luminaries of 20th century music, Billie Holiday and Hank Williams, if my life settles down as much as I'm hoping it's gonna. And I'm also gearing up to write about my favorite album of the last thirty years but just to be an asshole, I'm not going to name it. Have a great September and please let me know if you're still out there and haven't given up on me!

The Byrds: Fifth Dimension (1966)

(Columbia)

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

In a way it's interesting that I've never written much about the Byrds here, or anywhere that I've ever put up any kind of music criticism, almost as if I was afraid to try and delve into a body of work that's had such an effect on me. Three Byrds LPs were a staple of my early childhood, an outgrowth of the band's appearance on a compilation tape my brother had. They were Mr. Tambourine Man, Turn! Turn! Turn and Greatest Hits. The latter is the only of the three I listen to very much now. Tambourine Man, despite its many highlights, is too earnest for me, and Turn too much of a dated slog. What moved me about this music was its sound -- it goes so much beyond the mere idea of folk-rockers with 12-string guitar and a sort-of-okay drummer. The voices were a lot of it, the ethereal friendliness but also mystery of them. The collision of baroque Appalachia with turned-on rock & roll was something too.

But the truth is that so much of my adoration of this band -- in some ways more important to me than any other, certainly in their accidental formation of my future tastes -- lies in something more intangible and emotional: the constant hunger for a transcendent moment, the sort of thing that was so often out of reach of conventional white rock bands and is a more admirable goal for them than anything technical. It's all over Greatest Hits, for me the definitive way to hear the Gene Clark-era Byrds. Just listen to that moment on their first and best single, the cover of Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man," when Roger McGuinn's interpretation of Bob Dylan's lyric "I promise to go under it" erases any gap between words and meaning; it's audible in him that he means those words to his core. The Byrds are seldom arch or sardonic, but nor are they oblivious and sober -- their essence is the matching of their genuine maturity with a thirst for the new. For me, as much as Gene Clark's work is for many the essence of the Byrds, the band's true nature comes to its peak on the four incredible albums that follow his departure, starting with this one.

Clark was of course a brilliant songwriter, and a strong case could be made that he's a far better one than Roger McGuinn -- and virtually no one disputes that David Crosby is not the best personality to be positioned at the Byrds' front lines. Fifth Dimension is really a stopgap, a fine band looking for their footing after a crippling loss, but in its strange search for an identity it happens upon a sound that remains nearly unique. For all their sure-handed experimentation, the Beatles weren't so bold as to attempt to make Rubber Soul and Revolver the same record.

There are aspects of Fifth that still seem desperate: the band's version of the rock standard "Hey Joe" is one of the weakest on record, the awful Booker T.-like instrumental "Captain Soul" reminds us of the limitations of the folk-rock universe, and the closing kiss-off "2-4-2 Fox Trot," a sound FX-laden repetitive nothing, would barely be sufficient to justify a b-side placement. (I admit I thought it was an extremely cool song when I was younger and attracted to anything "weird." The Royal Guardsmen's "Airplane Song" and Tom Tom Club's "Booming and Zooming" will suffice now.) But more generally, the record's conflation of folksy melodicism and genuinely oddball, almost jazz-like tonal experimentation make it in retrospect a brilliant document of a strange moment. Much as the Byrds conceived folk-rock itself out of wholecloth, with hangers-on like the Cyrkle to gingerly follow, here they recorded some of the earliest music that justifies the "psychedelic" label.

A lot of psychedelia, like a lot of folk-rock, would prove gimmicky and pandering. Fifth Dimension presents us with noises and asides, and moments of unexpectedly shattering beauty, that are truly new and that still resonate with the sense of something being created. One of the most impressive songs from this period still boasted Clark's contributions and was left off the record; the brilliant, barbed, bizarre "Why" showed up as the b-side to "Eight Miles High," forming one of the few '60s singles that can compete with the Beatles' "Penny Lane" / "Strawberry Fields Forever" twofer as the most vital double-sided 45 ever pressed. A lot of folks claim, and they may be partially right, that everything Fifth Dimension accomplishes can be pared down to these two songs. Certainly "Eight Miles High," primarily a Gene Clark song but launched into the stratosphere by McGuinn's guitar, is among the boldest and most adventurous songs ever labeled rock & roll, a ringing parade of tricky and unexpected guitar acrobatics matched beautifully with sinister, alluring harmonies and an exhilaratingly seductive crescendo. It's unwaveringly scary and beautiful in equal measure and deserves its pedestal wholly.

But discount the accompanying album and you miss several songs that may not synthesize the Byrds' new approach so economically but certainly present additional layers and angles from which to consider it. At a glance, "5D (Fifth Dimension)" is stoner claptrap, a bunch of poetic scientific babble (actually a paring down of Einstein) speak-sung by McGuinn in his "The Bells of Rhymney" voice, but as the song progresses and he lets out an unprompted "ohhhh" and the band's harmonies -- darker, stranger than before -- kick in, the evolution is obvious and their naivete becomes an object of affection rather than ire. The old Byrds are still evidenced on the traditional-ish number "I Come and Stand at Every Door," eerie but gorgeous, and the standards "Wild Mountain Thyme" and "John Riley." The change is not just in the tasteful string arrangements from new producer Allan Stanton, worlds beyond any meddling attempted by Terry Melcher. The voices -- with Clark now replaced by Chris Hillman -- are more halting, emotional, thus in some sense more appropriate to the material than the confidence and detachment all over Turn! Turn! Turn!.

The moments on Fifth Dimension that feel truly new are those that carry forward from the strong raga and Coltrane influences of the leadoff single. The "Eight Miles High" sequel is "I See You," a fine rock number that sees further bracing guitar experimentation from McGuinn at the peak of his inventive powers, but even David Crosby's "What's Happening!?!?!" is a distinctive creation, sounding for all the world like an Ravi Shankar-infected sitar adventure without actually featuring even a second of real sitar playing. As on "Why," that's all McGuinn's 12-string you're hearing. Less of a stretch for the band but ironically pointing the way forward is "Mr. Spaceman," a remarkably witty country-ish take on UFO abduction that gives McGuinn an opportunity to show off with a splendidly warm vocal and melody -- in my head now since the age of four, roughly -- and one of the best, most concise guitar solos on any rock record ever.

But inevitably, "Eight Miles High" stands above all. The Byrds had been listening to Coltrane a lot, according to legend, and also to the Zombies, who'd managed to include improvisational jazz interludes on several big songs (and would continue to up to their breakup). So for this record, McGuinn uses his 12-string to initiate a ragged and stunningly lyrical imitation of the saxophone of the twentieth century's single most gifted musician. In the process he single-handedly creates a new sound, and it goes beyond psychedelia. This was 1966, before the Velvet Underground, before Forever Changes, certainly before bands like Television who would so emphatically capture the yearning emotional force of jazz in Tom Verlaine's guitar playing, in a sense whose roots are unmistakably audible in "Eight Miles High." In so many ways, this feels like a new beginning: the start of the real California Sixties, as we remember them, and of everything that would grow outward, ready to mutate and grow. It starts with someone pulling a stunt that doesn't sound quite right at first but that feels profoundly, fascinatingly, ear-tinglingly wonderful. There is no more noble pursuit for rock & roll.