Back to the way it was: February 2015 albums

I've had this written for you-don't-wanna-know-how-long, and kept putting off gathering the album covers from the Net, then this morning I started wondering why I even do that; the links end up being broken eventually anyway, it seems. You don't need album covers to enjoy or be somewhat informed by these writeups, right? Good, good, let's keep moving then.

K. Michelle: Anybody Wanna Buy a Heart? (Atlantic)
"Drake would love me," yeah, probably. Despite a few early moments of sparkling, synth-heavy production, this is schmaltzy, shrill R&B that doesn't harness Michelle's appealingly nuanced, raspy, Mary Wells-like voice the way it potentially could, nor the momentum of the decent single "Love 'Em All." The parts about weed are best.

Kaki King: Junior (Rounder 2010)
I have come increasingly to feel that King is one of the all-time great guitarists, and one of the very few capable of filling out an entertaining album with nothing but her own noodling and improvisations. This is therefore easily the oddest specimen in her catalog by virtue of its being atypically conventional, a weird, breathy Cold War concept album with songs about Russian spies, Pasternak references and musical thematics lifted from various espionage movies of the '60s. There is a gorgeous, classic KK instrumental ("Sloan Shore"), and yet the remainder gleans so little depth from its relatively far-ranging influences and ideas that it ends up blending even more than usual with the "musical wallpaper" notion associated with what was once called Beautiful Music. King is to be applauded for stretching, but her gifts -- and gifts for consistency -- lie elsewhere.

D'Angelo: Black Messiah (RCA) [A+ (originally hr)]
This stunning, sprawling heap of hardened, difficult R&B is intricate, detailed, subtle, addictive, even inscrutable, and absolutely brilliant. (My favorite Marvin Gaye record is Here, My Dear, in case you're wondering which you weren't after that sentence.) Every listen seems to push one further into its paranoid, troubling murk and redemptive sensuality. It's worthy of James Brown, George Clinton or Prince at peak, and its racial and social consciousness -- its feeling of an important act that is happening right now -- gives you some whiff of what it might have been like to live and work in the real age of those titans. This is an album of the ominous, chaotic moment, maybe the only one. Not one of its songs is as satisfying as the entire package, but not one of its songs is incomplete or weak; the package simply ebbs, flows, intensifies as a whole. The funk album of the century.

Avey Tare: Down There (Paw Tracks) [c]
The Animal Collective phenomenon already seems silly enough with hindsight to make onetime deriders somewhat more sympathetic to their cause, but my low tolerance for QUIRKY VOCALZZ keeps me from hearing anything in this.

Mark Ronson: Uptown Special (Columbia) [c]
"White Gold," eh? Sounds like a DJ who spins nothing but various volumes of Now! That's What I Call Music.

John Coltrane: Africa/Brass (Impulse! 1961) [A+]
Coltrane's first album on his famously lucrative contract with the then-fledgling Impulse! is, perhaps more than any of the other LPs issued in his lifetime, the palpable sound of sustainable artistic freedom. Its centerpiece is an otherworldly but wonderfully familiar take on "Greensleeves," demonstrating how -- with one of the loveliest melodies ever written at his disposal -- the master was so adept at toying infinitely with simple chords and melodies, working and twisting out into the sublime. But the two originals are propulsive and alight with fire, chaos and beauty -- and beauty perverted -- all at once. This featured Coltrane's largest band and some of the most unusual instrumentation featured on a jazz record of this period, including Garvin Bushell's woodwinds and Bill Barger's splendidly incongruous tuba; the orchestrations by Eric Dolphy, adapted from McCoy Tyner, are dissonant, evocative, wholly immersive. The secret weapon here is drummer Elvin Jones, however, who brings these lofty sounds back to an earthy bliss. The record's still-potent liveliness is astounding.

Jazmine Sullivan: Reality Show (RCA) [r]
Solid, varied R&B record with stern attitude and unique voice. An auspicious return to a still-fraught, intense scene.

J.B. Hutto and His Hawks: Hawk Squat! (Delmark 1968) [r]
Danceable electric blues from South Carolina by way of the Chicago '50s scene is certainly a reflection of the brief mainstream popularity of electric blues, and there's no mistaking its populist appeal. Hutto has a bite of eccentricity, something that keeps him from blending in to the 12-bar wallpaper, and this comeback session is a solid, engaging evening with a rowdy monster.

Viet Cong (Jagjaguwar) [c]
"Alternative" "rock".

Ayub Ogada: En Mana Kuoyo (Real World 1993) [hr]
Stunningly beautiful, instantly appealing folk music from Kenyan singer-songwriter Ogada, whose vocals more than mildly resemble Nick Drake; at the very least, he's second to Alexi Murdoch in the Drake soundalike contest. The vibe is accessible (the record comes from Peter Gabriel's label) and low-key and it's hardly a monument of innovation, rather of the universal appeal of restraint: it's mostly just Ogada's voice and the nyatiti, which offers a lovely combination of the warm and the unique. The mood, occasional injections of variance via layered vocals and woodwinds, and subtle tones of lyrical unrest make it universal. I don't like to be one of the constant advocates of the slicker, quieter, less abrasive side of East Africn music, but good is good.

Sleater-Kinney: No Cities to Love (Sub Pop) [r]
Songs are only here and there but it's fun to hear them play them. Were it anyone else, it might not seem so weighty.

The Decemberists: What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World (Capitol) [c]
A band whose work was once so full of wit seems to have slowly shed it piece by piece; the warning sign was probably when so many of the richest, most satisfying and singular songs from the Crane Wife cycle were left off that release. Still, The King Is Dead suggested maturity and a future for Colin Meloy as a Nashville factory songwriter. This new record, though, is a strange leap into the adult contemporary abyss that seems hard to justify as the follow-up to a commercial breakthrough (but then, so did the Avett Brothers' last few albums; so does the work of just about every band that switches to a major label), and my best guess is that a hiatus due to Jenny Conlee's cancer treatments dimmed their focus. Cleverness, however self-conscious it sometimes was, has been replaced with cutesiness and syrup that call to mind Wild Life-era Wings. Meloy reveals how easy it is for even a dynamic, distinctive frontman to become a total nuisance. The Decemberists' audience might skew slightly mid-forties hipster at this point, but they seem to be bidding for office Muzak mostly, a curious fate for several other '00s folk-rockers like Iron & Wine and Band of Horses as well. The moments that stand out only do so in their wrongheadedness; annoying jaunty backing vocals, songs that sound routinely as stupid as barrel-scraping R.E.M. numbers like "Wanderlust" and "Shiny Happy People," and on the cut that provides the album's title, a surprisingly crass sentiment from someone so allegedly sensitive as Meloy. He wrote it in the days after the Sandy Hook massacre; it's about the contrast between the grief being felt by the parents of the dead children then with Meloy's own placid happiness as a father. In other words, it's essentially a humble brag about one's child being alive, undoubtedly well-intentioned but just another sign of how aloof a very popular band can quickly become, and how fast my generation's indie rock as a whole has faded hopelessly out of touch as it ascends to messy middle age.

The Damned: Damned Damned Damned (Stiff 1977) [hr]
Cited frequently as the first-ever UK punk band, a statistic that becomes harder to define and more meaningless with each passing year, the Damned have never had quite the international audience or legendary cachet of the Clash, the Sex Pistols or even Australian counterpart the Saints. But the claim Damned Damned Damned can lay down that's nearly unique in its era is that, beyond its association with any particular movement, it's a truly brazen piece of timeless rock & roll fuck-all, fast and furious in the vein of the Stooges -- whose "1970" is memorably covered herein -- but with ample devilish wit to match. It's an absolute shot of pulp joy that hasn't grown old with time, and its two signature singles "Neat Neat Neat" and "New Rose" (with its glorious opening echo of the Shangri-Las) can still pump up and blow apart a middling evening. But in contrast to Never Mind the Bollocks, the rest of it lives up to its peaks; the cascading, furious "I Fall" might be their very best song, and "So Messed Up" is Ramones-worthy. Taken together it's all so clear and full and complete, when punk was serious in its irreverence, focused and deeply inventive.

Belle & Sebastian: Girls in Peacetime Want to Dance (Matador)
Having conquered seemingly two disparate career paths for the same band, Stuart Murdoch's current endeavor takes them to the dance floor, sort of. And yet, as on Write About Love, he's best when he plays to / remembers his strengths. Aside from the songs that really extrapolate into miniature but extensive dramas, the work here largely seems too cute and lacking in tangible emotion. Much like Stephin Merritt's later work, what we're hearing is the career twilight of someone for whom this has simply become too easy. Murdoch could write most of this with one eye open, his band could play it with both shut, and the stylistic toying is just costume jewelry. We're less bored than he is, but we can tell he's bored and it's tragic.

Al Green: I'm Still in Love with You (Hi 1972) [hr]
This is one hell of a subtle record; having long loved Green's singles I've only just in the last couple of years started to process his albums in order, which has been an excellent experience I wish I'd taken on with more artists (and probably will down the line). Pretending this was a new release, thus ignoring the inescapable fame and power of its several hits, I was initially disappointed that the album seemed dialed back, painstakingly smooth, even soppy at times. But each revisit reveals the tension and power lurking in songs that never make their sensual longings as initially explicit as they finally are. Thinking at first that it was the least of his first three Hi albums, I now would say it's the best. And the "Oh! Pretty Woman" cover is Wilson Pickett-worthy. But of course the singles leap triumphantly over all. Is the best of the bunch the ubiquitous title cut, which revises but amplifies "Let's Stay Together"? The teasing "Look What You Done for Me"? No way. The champion is the strangest, most hardline and brutal of the bunch -- the hard, pleading, possibly mildly sarcastic "Love and Happiness." That the album retains the vibe of its most beloved inclusions without ever growing repetitive or dull is just one of the treasured revelations it's hiding.

Pond: Man It Feels Like Space Again (Caroline)
Annoying Grizzly Bear-lite stuff.

Beatles for Sale (1964)

(Parlophone)

!!! A+ RECORDING !!!

Quieter and sadder than any other Beatles album, this country-infected set is still dynamite whether you observe the six skillful covers or the overwhelmingly melancholy originals. Either way it's a rumination upon where the four of them were just as peak Beatlemania began to crest, as a year of international fame took its toll on head-spinningly young men who couldn't possibly have known how to process it. Simultaneously the Beatles seem to dig in their heels with more honesty, maturity and pessimism than ever before and also to yearn for a past, of blistering rock & roll nights and seemingly so much less responsibility. They might always have longed to "make it" but now they saw what making it meant, particularly for a band as good as they were.

The upbeat cuts -- Chuck Berry's "Rock and Roll Music," Little Richard's "Kansas City/Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey," Carl Perkins' "Honey Don't" and "Everybody's Trying to Be My Baby," and the classic "Eight Days a Week" -- leap out of the speakers, of course, but their surroundings cause the album to seem like an introspective, vital piece of work reaching to a more direct and cathartic place beyond its influences. John Lennon sounds cold, hurt, and distant on the opening cut, "No Reply," a spit in the eye to the warmth and energy of A Hard Day's Night. "I know that you saw me / 'Cause I looked up to see your face / I tried to telephone / They said you were not home," and the chilling payoff: "That's a lie." These three words carry more weight than "You Can't Do That" and "Run for Your Life" put together. Just as the Beatles put every bit of their manpower into constructing the careening pop jet engines of their past, "No Reply" reveals them diving full-force into an unexpectedly angry, unforgiving world. "I nearly died / I nearly died." The drama is almost oppressive... and the tension does not lift.

On "I'm a Loser," John's navel-gazing lyrics of the previous album culminate in a single bare moment. No one else could write with this clarity. "Although I laugh and I act like a clown / Beneath this mask I am wearing a frown." In the chorus, the entire band nearly loses its reins on the song; it threatens to burst at any second and then, out of nowhere, comes the unabashedly foreign harmonica solo. John's vocals, unsurprisingly, possess a jolting magic for the duration of the album but particularly here. It's rare that every second of a song matters so much. The song betrays the influence of Dylan -- Beatles for Sale predates the Billboard dawn of the folk-rock movement by several months -- but sheds every bit of poetic abstraction or pretension; it's Lennon talking to us.

From there we travel to "Baby's in Black," a slice of melodramatic black humor that boasts, once again, a performance that speaks volumes about the Beatles' versatility. They fill a relatively simplistic ballad with noise, refusing to allow it the obvious fate. During a repetition of the verse that offers the song's ugly lyrical essence -- "Though he'll never come back / She's dressed in black" -- the wall of sound is shut off, underscoring the weight of the moment, before a drum fill leads it all back in. It's not exactly subtle, but there's something magnetic about it.

Even hearing "Eight Days a Week" after all these years, it's stunning that in Britain it was never a single. The way it hops straight at you and spends two minutes focused thoroughly on enchanting you. "Pop bliss" has never been such a true and valid term, and even the introduction and coda have sex appeal. If any song could dream of capsizing "I Want to Hold Your Hand" as a peak of all the Beatles' powers, if any song could cause the mass surrender of "She Loves You" to a similar extent, this is probably it. And what an odd context in which to find it, but evidently they felt it lackluster in the face of prior hits. The concurrent choice of a single for the end of 1964, "I Feel Fine," does reassert the band's commitment to innovate, but the slow burn of Beatles for Sale is no less valuable in its palpable fear and pain.

As a composer, Lennon had a hell of a year in 1964; he even offers his own "Here, There and Everywhere" in the absolutely perfect, Spector-size, way too fucking short "Every Little Thing." Even in its platitudes it seems as personal as the stark folk ballads of Side One. And there's one more, another knockout. "I Don't Want to Spoil the Party" is a start-to-finish masterpiece. The western tones finally reach their climax here on Lennon's last song of the album... the band is as quick, efficient, and loud as ever, but in this world the sadness is eternal. He takes a walk, but he never reaches his destination. The following year John would be striking with "Help!," "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away," and "Girl," all of which can be traced back in delicate spirit to "Party."

Paul McCartney's bizarre absence as a songwriter in the band's most crucial year rages on, but the two he offers are staggering. The moving "I'll Follow the Sun" is, without question, his most personal piece to date, and begins his golden era as a composer (though in fact it was written much earlier). And don't talk to me about "What You're Doing," just about the finest song he's ever written, because you will surely regret it. If you need proof that the soliders of the Beatles for Sale-as-worst-album school of thought are full of shit, dig that proto-Byrds guitar riff and "If you need a love that's true / It's meeeeeeeeeeeeeeee" and the piano. This should not be an obscurity; the commitment audible in the band's performance reminds you of what sort of confounding interplay they had at the beginning of it all. (Future fusions are also predicted within the perfect harmonies and stinging guitars of the Beatles' take on Buddy Holly's "Words of Love," which seems to bury itself simultaneously in the past and future and attain a true sweetness that doesn't devolve into the saccharine broadness of "Till There Was You.")

The covers that are peppered throughout the album continue the Beatles' tradition of outstanding taste and selection even though at least three of them stand in direct contradiction to the rest of the material. "Rock and Roll Music" is a perfect example, but somehow the transition seems natural. And it's useless even for a tireless Chuck Berry fanatic to deny that John Lennon's voice utterly revitalizes this gorgeously written anthem. McCartney lights up "Kansas City/Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey!" with his usual conviction, and George conquers the echo chambers of his Carl Perkins cover, "Everybody's Trying to Be My Baby," to deliver a moment of unbridled charm. Ringo delivers that same key ingredient in spades on perhaps his finest vocal performance, behind the wheel of a wonderful "Honey Don't." The expert understatement and southern swing of Carl Perkins' songwriting helps, but Ringo really makes this recording even with a flawless performance to back him up. "Aw, rock on, George, one time for me." He is really on fire after the solo, too. In its manner this is no less cause for Beatle worship than your "Eight Days a Week."

"Mr. Moonlight" is a cover, but it may as well not be; it belongs to Lennon forever. Okay, Lennon and George Martin's cheesy organ. The song passes into the overblown Paul Anka corners of songwriting... it is an outrageously dumb composition, and the Beatles' performance happily pushes all the buttons to ham it up to the max. John pushes his vocal chords to the end of the world. It is the band's stupidest, goofiest moment on record (the hell with "You Know My Name"), yet it's sublime. Dark, moving ballads, warmly surreal humor, naked self-examination, pangs of love, country, melodrama, the sheer wonders of growth, and undeterred rock & roll. It's not often these all come in a single package. When they do, the result is seldom -- if ever -- this strong, this unforgettable.

[Reformatted version of a review from 2003.]

R.E.M.: Fables of the Reconstruction (1985)

(I.R.S.)

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

"I've seed de first en de last...I seed de beginnin, en now I sees de endin'."

The above comes from William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury, not at all coincidentally the original title of R.E.M.'s third album, which in the end received a name equally indicative of its concern with the Southern identity. It's a circular title; it can be Fables (as in Uncle Remus) of the Reconstruction or it can be Reconstruction of the Fables, but in fact it is both infinitely, a title that goes on forever and is reproduced as such on the nearly incomprehensible album sleeve. The flexibility may be pretentious, as may be Michael Stipe's description of the album's sound: "It reminds me of two oranges being stuck together with a nail." The things adorning the heart of the record are clumsy and confused, but that is a natural result of a strength in atmosphere and surrealism that perhaps even the band itself didn't fully understand. Musically, this is one of the few rock albums of its period in which everything seems studied, devised, proper, all to serve a central idea: the immersion into Heaven and Hell, sound and fury, comfort and terror of the Deep South.

The South is a place of secret histories, the antithesis of the entirely human nature to gather and store knowledge of the outside. It is the last place in America where reality can be completely overtaken by eccentricity, willful isolation, de-evolution. It would be pointless to elaborate extensively on how R.E.M.'s Fables is not just a Southern album (recorded in London, in fact) but an album about the South... the definitive writing has already been done by Marcus Gray, in his "About the Place Where You Live" chapter of It Crawled from the South. Nevertheless, the issue is impossible to avoid in a record so dominated by Southern images and characters, by the highest level of disorientation achieved by any American band.

"Feeling Gravitys Pull" may have little to do with Faulkner, but it remains the random shreds of rantings and ravings of a deluded man beyond help, the necessary entrance to an alternate universe. "Driver 8" and "Auctioneer" are train songs, the box cars pulling out of town. "Maps and Legends," "Good Advices," and "Green Grow the Rushes" are Appalachian folk songs. "Life and How to Live It" is a song about a bizarre, deeply racist man who split his house into two halves and wrote a book (Life: How to Live) about his philosophies. "Old Man Kensey" and "Wendell Gee" are both also about deep South weirdos, the former a dogcatcher who used to hide in a coffin and scare children, the latter a man who ran a car dealership and whose entire family dominated the businesses of the tiny town of Philomath, referenced in "Cant Get There from Here." The entire experience is a dream, not accidentally. The first words spoken on Side One are "I fell asleep," the random information sliding in and out of the speakers (and the sensory overload of the end of the opening track) are evidence of the degree to which the band and the producer Joe Boyd fought for a completely heightened, disarming experience; after the more haphazard Reckoning, the band has returned to the mystery of Murmur with a newfound tendency toward the macabre that would remain untapped for the rest of their career.

Michael Stipe described the musical inspiration as "someone with an old tape recorder recording an old man with a fiddle, with a woman in the background with her hand on the stove." The juxtaposition of this with the dirty Tom Verlaine guitar of "Feeling Gravitys Pull," the New Orleans funk of "Cant Get There from Here," and the unfiltered electric terror of "Old Man Kensey" is only superficial; all three songs present conventionally youthful entrances into deeply unusual but identifiably ancient ideas, the central notion behind rock & roll in the very beginning. Fables is a far more difficult recording than Murmur, for reasons that may at first be tough to determine: Listen to the sparkling production and harmonies of "Maps and Legends," so far from the earlier album's mud and mush. But the band has been taken over; not content to merely make an impression, they are now performing. The overpowering chorus of "Maps and Legends" is alien, stunning, unexpected even years later. Its power is nearly subliminal; the listener is overwhelmed, a feature inherent in one gorgeous song that becomes increasingly important as the album progresses. The glory of "Maps" and the two other pure folk songs, "Green Grow the Rushes" and "Good Advices," is in their simplicity of emotion, in which lies an improbable elegance. The majesty and mystery of "Legends" would be remarkable enough even if not complemented by the sing-song grace of the two later songs. "Advices" is amusing and offhanded, but "Rushes" is a masterpiece of sorts, perhaps not on a scale with "Maps and Legends" but certainly impressive in its fusion of distant worlds with the bracing clarity of feeling in the bass, guitar, and harmony vocals.

On "Old Man Kensey," a remarkable piece of fully tangible atmosphere, the lyrics are fine (as studied below), but the story is told well enough by the performances, not even so much the music. The way the guitars and bass are presented offer the strongest case for Kensey as a breathing human, the precise double tracking of the guitar line evocative of a long-ago whisper from David Byrne: "Someone controls electric guitar!" R.E.M. defines performance art here, a point driven home by the way that Fables stands apart from everything else in their catalog; all of them are performances, and all are entirely convincing.

Michael Stipe is perhaps on an equal level of importance here with Mike Mills and Peter Buck (something that would change with Lifes Rich Pageant, which owes much of its greatness to Stipe), but his vocals are what truly sell the record. On many of the songs, he calls to mind an early lyric (from "Pilgrimage") that mentioned "speaking in tongues." Perversely, Stipe dominates several of the songs because he is himself dominated by the music, his body and mind taken over until what he sings, rather than what he says, is a direct product of what circles around him, unadorned by conscious thought, entirely informed by rawness of emotion. "Life and How to Live It" is the most soaring example, an exhilarating and horrifying song that finds both Stipe and the listener gradually taken over by the beautifully sustained intensity that builds and builds until an explosion of babbling ("the air quicken thicken tension build and then suddenly"), at the point of which it is verifiable that Stipe and the audience are feeling and experiencing exactly the same thing, an identification established in "Maps and Legends" that becomes almost unbearable when confronted with the cathartic devastation of "Kensey." It becomes difficult to separate the music from oneself, to distinguish the otherworldly environment -- real as it is -- from one's own. "Spooky gospel" was how the band described it then. "Spooky gospel" it remains, and the speaking in tongues continues with the deliberately unpleasant, uncompromisingly bleak vocal line of "Auctioneer (Another Engine)," a song of rolling around in agony, a song of being tied to the tracks, of certain doom, of the darkest of dread.

Indeed, the problem of Fables of the Reconstruction is ultimately that the band can't keep up with Stipe. Everyone is in unison at first, but as in many other cases, the formula breaks down on the second half; it seems wasteful for themes and structures to be established with such care only to be eventually ignored. Two of the strongest songs on Side Two break the album's mold uncomfortably. On vinyl, it might be easy enough to overlook this, with "Can't Get There from Here" easing the audience from a familiar world to an alien one, but on CD, the lack of space between is crippling, even after the threatening "Kensey." "Feeling Gravitys Pull" has already set the scene; after a recording as evocative and intriguing as "Old Man Kensey," an equally brilliant but far more lightweight song like "Can't Get There from Here" simply can't keep up the pace, not even so much because of the R&B influence as because of its affecting of an outsider rather than an insider perspective, and the strong separation of listener from narrator, a line that was blurred and destroyed by "Maps and Legends," "Old Man Kensey," and "Life and How to Live It" in an impressive feat of performance and storytelling.

Every song on the first half shared a sense of menace, even the single "Driver 8," a haunting thematic "summing up" of the album. There is no such string tying together the rest of the material. "Green Grow the Rushes" is bleak but comfortable, "Good Advices" weird but hardly disconcerting. "Kohoutek" is completely divided from the rest of the album, an atypical love song, except on the point of the vocals. While not bad, it is doomed to be indistinct in this environment. "Auctioneer (Another Engine)" is an unworthy rock diversion despite the intrigue of the vocals, the album's own "Second Guessing." And "Wendell Gee" is the album's only note of absolute fakery, though it made a fine single and contains the album's only moments of charm, but more ominously its only moments of sap, despite some unforgettably disturbing images of chicken wire and appealingly incomplete backwoods phrases of almost barbaric nature ("he was rare to give respect"). Clever as it is, it doesn't do half as much work as the best songs on the record, saved narrowly from schlock by the exquisite hollering of Bill Berry (not the cloying banjo solo by Peter Buck, the opposite of the charm of "Rockville," recalling the type of material a band that had never been to the South might play to imitate the sound of the region). The lamenting a dead but kind-hearted weirdo may be more pleasant than the lamenting of the insanity of a live one, but all of the emotion in "Wendell Gee" is processed and secondhand. The same cannot be said of "Life and How to Live It" or "Old Man Kensey," both of which strive so completely for the direct transference of trepidation if not fear, disorientation if not insecurity. The effect may be colder, but the stronger achievement is clear.

However, "incomplete" is an important description because it is so accurate an articulation of why Michael Stipe's lyrics (when they are important) work so well. These are more direct narratives than anything on Chronic Town, Murmur or Reckoning, but Stipe noted correctly that they are by no means conventional story-songs. They don't have a beginning, a climax, an end. They are "a slice somewhere out of the middle." This is what gives the random imagery, the folky portraits of characters and behaviors in a strongly traditional oral-storytelling flavor, its power and its genuine nature. "Old Man Kensey" and the antihero of "Life and How to Live It" sound like people who actually exist (which they did), not pawns forced into a balladeer's one-dimensional stories (like, for instance, the story of "Wendell Gee," who in fact did not die until ten years after the song was written). It's interesting to note, too, how vital the interplay is between Stipe's singing and his words. When read, the lines "Those who know what I don't know, point to the yellow, red, and green" and "Keep these books well stocked away and take your happy home" have no meaning, make no impression; when he sings them, they are standout moments of tongue-rolling beauty and satisfaction, of comfortable sing-song invitation. The sense of melody provided by Mills plays an equal part, but it's highly evident on this record how much a knowing, intelligent vocal performance can enliven a seemingly useless line into something sublime. It would be easy to misread this as a criticism of the lyrics; in fact, it's a compliment to Stipe's intrepid genius as a writer, his understanding of the three-way interactions between lyric and music and vocals, of what sounds good not on paper but when sung.

Stipe fills "Driver 8" and "Can't Get There from Here" with witty southern terminology but takes each song, very similar on paper, to entirely different places, and ensures that every word of "Life and How to Live It" adds to the urgency. "Wendell Gee" may be a fun but empty exercise in cushiness, but it does hit a note of genuine feeling in the simple line "There wasn't even time to say goodbye," which rings woundingly true despite all else. None of this is to suggest that Stipe always makes the right decision. His character portrait of Old Man Kensey is almost oppressively evocative and Roald Dahl scary, listing the occupations Kensey "wants to be": A dog catcher, a sign painter. But he can't be these things; first he's got to learn to read, or count. In a throwback moment of apparent panic, Stipe adds that Kensey also "wants to be a goalie." A goalie!? That feels false, as if the opposite of the mentioned bit of "Wendell Gee" that defies criticism. It's the only second of disappointing self-conscious doubt in a song that otherwise maintains itself perfectly.

R.E.M. had broken with their regular producers and their regular location to make this album with Boyd in England, and they nearly broke completely, according to legend. The band later shunned the album, but if not their best, it may easily be their most fascinating, certainly in the way it is seeped in legends and harsh realities of the Deep South, a region of endless fascination, stories winding up and down through centuries, beautiful and ghostly and surreal. So completely was the band taken over by these ideas, it invaded everything up to their promotional handouts (a tour poster from the time features a chilling Southern Gothic woodcut-type image of a man filling his family's turn-of-the-century vehicle with petrol). The only criticism of any real significance for this album is the way it sets up so many ideas that have potential to stretch and expand the boundaries of a rock LP, then forgets most of them. In practice, it isn't a major problem, but on their next two records, R.E.M. offered songs that could easily have repaired it. With "Swan Swan H," "King of Birds," and "Oddfellows Local 151," Fables could have been nearly perfect, despite Stipe's statement that "Oddfellows" was a "debunking" of Fables. That may have been the best case for its inclusion. Myth-making is the essence of rock & roll, but there is equal vitality in the destruction of those same myths.

As such, Fables cannot be described as kaleidoscopic, but it's as strong a statement any band could make on myth making and myth destruction, and the equal importance of each. They had taken "spooky gospel" as far as it would go, as far as it will ever go. The album precludes the need for more like it, because it is a work of such conceptual exploration and depth that it can offer a permanent sense of discovery.

***

[Originally posted elsewhere in 2005.]

Back in class again: January 2015 albums

Delving into the back catalog; sorry this wasn't posted sooner.

******

Goldfrapp
Seventh Tree (2008)
(Mute)

At the time this was released I was very high on Goldfrapp's two previous (and much glitzier) albums, which didn't really prepare me for this complete reversal of technique, though in retrospect it's hardly out of nowhere. "A&E" is still one of their worst, most pandering moments of baldfaced stylistic ripoff, but I sort of like some of the bleak cabaret stuff now. Eventually they would master this style with the far bleaker Tales of Us; the strongest song here is clearly "Happiness," which is better in a bootlegged Rex the Dog remix from '08.

***

Gossip
Music for Men (2009)
(Columbia)

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED * This extremely focused collection of thirteen unstoppable disco bangers never quits; it's, at last, the perfect application of this odd trio's perverse, trebly format and Beth Ditto's titanic voice to joyous, explosive music that fits it. The main vinyl release consists of a set of 12" singles and that's more than appropriate, so convincing is the sense of throwback to an era of glorious, beautiful decadence that now translates as a kind of unfettered freedom. "Men in Love" is the cheerful promiscuity anthem of the century, "Pop Goes the World" and "Dimestore Diamond" the democratic statements of purpose assuring that the band's new, utopian dance-music-sex-romance revolution is all-encompassing; nearly all of the rest (other favorites: "2012" and "Heavy Cross") are splendidly, engagingly filthy. Their best by far, and one of the best dance albums ever released by a rock band.

***

Game Theory
Tinker to Evers to Chance (1982-90)
(Enigma)

Scott Miller's verbose power pop is clearly distinctive and unusual but, despite the lineage and tragedy, the band and their songwriting come off as flat to me. Most nerdy indie rock can likely be traced back here, but everything feels so subservient to the cerebral words and the scramble to fit them into the songs that the emotion doesn't reach.

***

Hospitality (2012)
(Merge)

RECOMMENDED * Compared to the wonderful follow-up Trouble, this is a bit fluffy -- hookier, sweeter, thus more ordinary in the landscape of alt-rock. But the guitars and vocals still ring, and the songs are actually best at their jauntiest. Justifies the instinct to call them a singular, affecting band.

***

Average White Band
AWB (1974)
(Atlantic)

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED * All-time fave Scottish funk band's best moments are mostly here; you don't need a greatest-hits. A fine party record if decades of radio overplay haven't worn you out on the singles. "Pick Up the Pieces" is still capable of bringing introverts back out onto the dance floor after a break.

***

Interpol
Our Love to Admire (2007)
(Capitol)

In retrospect, this isn't bad per se -- though that doesn't mean it isn't embarrassing, like someone proving that if you amped up the self-importance on their first two records just slightly you'd get a mortifying self-parody of generational Joy Division affectation. Lots of laughs here, beginning with "how are things on the west coast?", extending to the absolutely horrendous update to David Crosby's absolutely horrendous "Triad" ("No I in Threesome" is the actual title; the best song about group sex remains Curren$y's "Bring Her Home") and an amusing piece of abortive 2000s-indie history; they signed to Capitol Records to release this then were immediately, unceremoniously dropped. It almost feels like an act of sabotage, what with these bad threesomes, bad city symphonies, bad macho romantic demands. The quintessential post-Mike Love surfer jock album. Key lyric: "I haven't slept for two days / I've bathed in nothing but sweat."

***

Chuck Berry
One Dozen Berrys (1958)
(Chess)

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED * Caveat: all of Berry's early Chess albums are a few classics plus a lot of filler, so if you're not already enamored of him and interested in hearing him noodle, this won't do much for you. It's inconsistent and lazy... and brilliant, raving up and goofing around and kissing off. Any album that boasts not just "Sweet Little Sixteen" (Berry's very best, a masterpiece of freedom and hero worship) and "Rock and Roll Music" but "Oh Baby Doll" and the marvelously witty "Reelin' and Rockin'" warrants forgiveness for the likes of "Guitar Boogie," or for the fact that two songs are the same performance played at different speeds (!). Best buried treasure: the hopping "It Don't Take But a Few Minutes," one of the best early Berry songs missing from The Great Twenty-Eight. An essential package for fans.

***

Kaki King
Dreaming of Revenge (2008)
(Velour)

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED * Kaki King's largely instrumental releases differ by degrees in their approach and execution, but that doesn't mean they aren't all terrific. This is probably her best -- a vibing, whispering plunge into a warm Eno-like abyss that features some of the most idiosyncratic, graceful guitar playing on record. And on "Pull Me Out Alive," she proves as capable of an immersive and straightforward pop song (with words) as she is with crafting atmosphere.

***

Kaki King
...Until We Felt Red (2006)
(Velour)

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED * Slower, dirgier, weirder, longer, more sprawling, more elaborate, somehow even more of a trance. She also sings more, which isn't a bad thing. To be honest, these days King's music fits my lifestyle in a manner I can vouch for with few other performers. Absolutely can't get enough.

***

Kendrick Lamar
Section 80 (2011)
(Top Dawg)

RECOMMENDED * Before delving into the dense, extremely busy and complicated To Pimp a Butterfly, I felt I should get to know Lamar's very first record a bit better. The same mild criticisms that apply to most of his work already bloom here -- the music does bend and break itself based on where Lamar's preoccupied, constantly moving heart and mind are headed, which makes his work an unmistakable document of artistic brilliance but also hard (for me) to get lost in. His albums require intense concentration, not just to critique but to merely listen. He is major, and this is hardly a mere rehearsal for his later efforts -- already a master storyteller with almost overwhelming complexity. And so damn young here.

***

The Avett Brothers
Four Thieves Gone (2006)
(Ramseur)

RECOMMENDED * Played this expecting a challenge of my former convictions about this briefly beloved unit's agile, emotive upholdings of country traditions. But in fact it's actually quite engaging and soulful, a reminder that they weren't always toothless Rubinites. "Matriomy" is a good taste -- tough, uncompromised, tortured. The tortured part is what I miss in most modern country music, and honestly in the last couple of Avetts albums.

***

Killer Mike
PL3DGE (2011)
(Grand Hustle)

Good politics, good flow, shakier beats than later.

******

The Avalanches: Since I Left You (2000)

(Modular/Sire)

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Though a more nebulous entity at times, the Avalanches during the period when they recorded their first (and so far, only) album always primarily consisted of Darren Seltmann and Robbie Chater; the two of them pieced together thousands upon thousands of samples to craft one of the most seamless cut-and-paste jobs in the annals of dance music. Since I Left You is a liberating, timeless delight that renders virtually every other entry in the mashup subgenre, including the famous ones, all but pointless. Its only serious peer is probably Moby's Play, which can boast nothing like its layered detail.

The album is divided into eighteen cuts, some short and some medium-sized, but more than most endless-disco records of its breed, it feels truly like one song with several interludes that build, fade and build again. It doesn't come off simply as a collection of beats and hooks that segue into one another but a more complicated overlay of themes, ideas, musical touchstones surrounding and laid atop one another, with an almost logical wisdom and precision -- there are recognizable songs being created, sure, but more than that what we have is a group of obscure tidbits melded into a larger whole with a specific ebbing, flowing mood. It's a party record -- really it's designed in such a manner that it starts when things are fully heated and eventually wanders out into a sweet, quiet abyss with the last few people left -- but it's also incredibly malleable, suited to an unknowable variety of moods and even dark nights.

Still, what the duo primarily communicate is real joy -- the album, the title cut, the mutation of it in "Stay Another Season" and the finale are all built on a simple concept of absolute, resonant personal freedom: "Since I left you, I've found a world so new." The quote is from a song by the Main Attraction; like most of the album's samples, it was little known prior to its use here. But when the unfettered, carefree weightlessness of that sentiment rings out, it signals an album that is to eventually feel like a vacation away from everything. Welcome to Paradise, indeed; in contrast to so many other records similarly formatted, this isn't merely about beats or prolonging a physical impulse. It's also lilting, nostalgic, sweet -- and a valentine to recorded music itself.

Part of the album's resonance -- and perhaps the reason it has only grown in stature since its release, with the populace awaiting with bated breath a follow-up release that may never happen -- is its use of the unfamiliar and idiosyncratic to create its settings and build to its crescendos. There is the wonderful moment with the muffled bassline of Madonna's "Holiday" bleeding through from somewhere in the distance, which perfectly captures the arm-waving drunken atmosphere of an effortless good time, but for the most part the album's effective because the Avalanches create excitement using acrobatic vinyl manipulation without falling back on cultural familiarity. Instead of being an actual party set, it's a sort of impressionistic variant of one, which hands it a remarkably durable "found art" element. Its freshness stands undiminished. Like any crate-digging DJ worth their salt, they can't resist the two most alluring oddities of the analogue era: easy-listening Beautiful Music and novelty records, both of which they make something of. "Frontier Psychiatrist" is the graveyard for all of the oddball comedy pieces they managed to find, but even it achieves by its parrot-scratching climax a sense of wonder.

The Avalanches may never move onward from this; half of the pair is now long gone in the frustration of endless legal hangups and false starts. A revolving door of other personnel creeps through their twenty-year history. There were remixes and EPs after this, spawning what may be the group's best song ("Everyday"); there were disastrous headlining tours that somehow seemed to invariably culminate in physical injury. But whatever the future may hold, a future that seems maybe permanently out of their reach now, Since I Left You is likely to always remain the most humane and therefore the best of all mashup records. Its fusion of mad genius and fat-and-happy relaxation is utterly irresistible.

Q- Are We Not Men? A- We Are Devo! (1978)

(Warner Bros.)

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

What do irony and sincerity have in common, besides that each can often be mistaken for the other? Well, after a while, both of them get old -- in a pop music platform if not an artistic or real-world one, both are affectations and neither is a suit you want to wear permanently. So the ironic Devo concept, as with every band built on a concept, has almost nothing but limitations in the same way that the Alarm or Elbow can't speak to most of us for the opposite reason. In the late '70s these Ohioans got compared to Talking Heads a lot, which now seems kind of bizarre; the Heads used irony to probe and find the hidden and the human, moreover to approach familiar things and ideas from a subversive and often charming angle. Devo was a sociopolitical gag, dreamed up by college students who'd read a lot of sci-fi, that fit well in with the kitschy self-help era, the new wave era, the post-Nixon era. That was the extent of it all. There's a reason you've probably only heard two or three Devo albums plus a handful of singles. Once a simple but salient point about massacred souls and empty coconut shells of human heads in front of screens is made, however prophetic it might seem in some detached way, what more is there to really add?

But the ironists have one thing on the rest of us, at least -- the ability to sustain a conceit perfectly, smoothly, with no crack in its arch sensibility. Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo (including its outrageous cover art) is, in a literary sense, a flawless work of popular art; if you're attempting to make a serious point altogether seriously and straightfaced-like, you open yourself up to widespread mockery if you don't allow a little bit of doubt or tempered enthusiasm to creep in. Devo had no such obligation -- their sarcasm is a thing of beauty, icily expressed and unyielding. For this reason, across the length of this debut album they are rock gods: an attitude subsumes you, empowers or digusts you, and becomes impossible to explain to those who don't immediately trust it, nor in turn are those on the outside to be trusted. That is why this is rock & roll, and maybe the most hardened and pointed punk rock artifact of all.

The five members of Devo -- Mark & Bob Mothersbaugh, Bob & Gerald Casale and Alan Myers -- were driven by their contempt for the American cultural hivemind, a loathing that sadly seems eventually to have extended to their own fanbase when they became (inevitably) a cult item that prefigured what we'd now call geek culture, or at least the commodification of it. No doubt the band was born of righteous outrage -- over Kent, so they say, making this a longer reply than the CSNY song -- but also of a kind of post-adolescent smugness that you can hear unmistakably on this record. (Try "Shrivel Up" with its condescending Big Brotherisms.) I've no doubt they grew out of it and came to appreciate their place in the world. But aside from betraying a certain snobbishness -- the kind of sensibility that these days would go on about "sheeple" or whatnot -- Devo's misplaced anger also made them startling performance artists. The compilation The Mongoloid Years gathers, among other things, one of the most confrontational live shows I've ever heard by anyone, wherein drunken Sun Ra fans (!) start expressing open hostility to a band that absolutely eats up the animosity with a fork and spoon. Dylan goes electric, Sex Pistols in the South, Yoko Ono playing in front of whatever idiots don't get her, bah humbug -- this is a moment that sounds actively dangerous somehow.

They got cuddlier later (1980's Freedom of Choice, which spawned the satirical hit "Whip It," is a wonderful albeit far more typical new wave LP) but as of 1978, Devo remained more than a little scary even if you didn't regard them as an important satirical concoction. This brings us back to irony, surrealism and their unwavering commitment to it. David Byrne's voice always expressed frustration with the limits of life out of the spectrum of civilized warmth and comprehension of other humans, peaking with the resignation then bitterness of "The Big Country," and when he attained something like grace on "Take Me to the River" and "This Must Be the Place" you could hear all that resolving itself in a lovely, unmistakably familiar way. That narrative is real and moving. Mark Mothersbaugh's voice resembles Byrne's a bit, at least superficially in its slightly grating yelp, gurgle and shout (both men unmistakably model their singing voices on Buddy Holly, the very first rock star who seemed to be on the outside looking in), but Mothersbaugh never allows himself to be entreated by love, hope or -- least of all -- sex. The band means very much to resemble robots and Mothersbaugh for his part delivers the goods on his dispassionate delivery of lyrics like those in "Praying Hands" ("relax and assume the position / go into doggie submission"), wherein he deadpan-mocks evangelism and masturbation with weirdly equal fervor. Or "Space Junk," which buries the lede with uncomfortable nonchalance -- "She was hit by space junk / she was killed by space junk" -- but not before a bizarre and disturbing bit of incongruous defensiveness: "I never touched her."

Musically, Devo sounds most like a renegade band designed to delight basement nerds and annoy beer-guzzling rednecks on two songs here. The first is the utterly wild "Jocko Homo," a rant and rave in 7/8 time that lends the album its title and sounds indeed more than any other rock song up to the late '70s like the creation strictly of machines gone amok. Sure, it has guitars and unmasked human voices, but none of them are doing anything that sounds normal, mortal or comforting. Like some chant among mole people out of a Corman movie, it marches its oblique march in a way bound to endear itself to alienated types who thrilled at pop concepts as far away as possible from the mainstream of the time. It's hard to reconcile the world of this album with the world simultaneously producing hit albums by the likes of Toto, Elton John, Kansas and Wings, a fact emphasized on the other major cut here, a broken-down, mutated-beyond-recognition cover of "Satisfaction" which all but robs the song of any hook and melody and instead transforms it to a stuttering, atonal bark. The word "rockist" wasn't really around in 1978 but the people now described by the term are the ones Devo's Rolling Stones deconstruction hopes to piss off. It flies in the face of staid, established rock "mythology" far more potently than the lyrical jabs at famous '60s bands from the Clash and such, and by whittling a legendary Boomer-beloved single down to its utter absurdity ("when I'm watching my TV / and a man comes on to tell me / how white my shirts could be / but he can't be a man cause he does not smoke / same cigarettes as me" may as well be a Devo original, really) it says all it needs to without actually verbalizing anything.

These stand out because in reality, most of Devo's music is fairly conventional. The scattered moments of avant garde perversion are mostly provided by producer Brian Eno, who as it happens would soon begin a legendary and long-term association with Talking Heads. Eno apparently saw Devo the same way John Cale saw Squeeze*: as an outlet for his most left-field ideas of what a rock band could be in the '70s. Devo and especially Mothersbaugh ironically didn't much care for Eno's treatments, which are most prominent in the bizarro, busted-toy synthesizer interlude in "Too Much Paranoias," in the spacious rhythmic chaos of the terrific "Gut Feeling," the repeated sound of dying tape decks on "Sloppy (I Saw My Baby Gettin')," but most contentiously on "Space Junk." The bridge of that song is a rattling off of location names -- "Texas" memorably given Mothersbaugh's most absurd southern accent -- with a repetitive guitar riff, which Eno promptly skewers with hypnotic, ghostly echo until it seems to fade into some spacey oblivion while the vocals stay prominent. It has nothing to do with anything, which seems typical of Eno's interest in the project, but it also sounds perfect and is a good fit with Devo's own philosophies and aesthetics, a tilted pinball machine set to music; the band reportedly understands it now and wishes they'd let Eno go further. (At various stages in the album's progress, it was apparently a good deal weirder.)

"Space Junk" stands out because it's a fairly normal-ish rock song that Eno manages to get his hands on; the bulk of these songs are surprisingly conventional even with his slight flourishes, a factor which itself doubles down on the irony -- how better to protest the emptiness of rock & roll than to imitate rock & roll, or better yet: how better to express anyone's naive or sage concerns about the world than through this particular medium, which for all its limits has proven so unexpectedly elastic now for decades? That's why "Uncontrollable Urge" is a great garage-rock banger for the ages and why they rewrite the Joe Jones (by way of the Rivieras) classic "California Sun" as the absurd guitar piffle "Mongoloid" and make it transcendent somehow. Because what Devo means to do in the end is lay down some good old rock & roll. They just wouldn't admit it. Maybe they didn't even know it. But goddamn if that's not what they did.

***

* One of my favorite tangential music anecdotes, actually, and since I'm not a big Squeeze fan (they're all right) I will recount it here and now in case you don't know it: Cale recorded Squeeze's debut album and inexplicably wanted to rename the band and/or the record "Gay Guys" and insisted that the album art would consist of stock photos of circa-1970s muscle-magazine bears. He won one argument and lost the other.

I may be young but I'm ready: December 2014 albums

Fatigued from the year-end rush which I was already late on, I took a long break from music writing but was still plunged into my usual investigations. In this curiosity-driven post we'll be exploring prior releases by some established artists who unexpectedly enchanted us in the last few years, plus some older materials.

Beyoncé
4 (2011)
(Columbia)

RECOMMENDED * The title officially represents that this is her fourth solo record -- the one where she supposedly courted the alt-rock press with songs that sounded like St. Vincent ("Countdown" and "End of Time") -- but it could just as well refer to the four juggernaut, masterful singles it encompasses: "Love on Top" is throwback spiritual awakening with gymnastic key changes to die for; the glorious "Party" is our own time, our own anthem, our own confident assertion of a generation's sexuality; "Dance for You" is gratitude and romance in the context of a sensual Prince-like lapdance; and "Countdown" is just tremendously strange, wonderful and radio-perfect. Bey is in amazing, full-bodied voice on all of the above. There's at least one other cut that nearly stands on a platform with those: try "Schoolin' Life" on your next joyous drive downtown, freak all day and wish to be 21 so you can get you a drink. Hell, try the entire album, made for placidly exuberant life on a Saturday afternoon, but be warned that it's very front-loaded. Nothing is bad -- lots of Something to Remember-style ballads with subtle hooks and engaging production, but nothing throttles you like the synthy, deliriously engaging hits. I love the lyrics to "Best Thing I Never Had" so much I wish the song was better; I like the hook on "Rather Die Young" so much I wish its lyrics weren't so disturbing. So it goes.

Ciara
Basic Instinct (2010)
(LaFace)

RECOMMENDED * Her voice and attitude get shut out of the driver's seat on even the best of the singles. A shame because it's a hell of a voice, even if the material is inconsistent. Solid pop work, at least for the first two thirds, undermined by backward production and label foolishness that led to her departure from LaFace to create her outstanding debut on Epic three years later.

Camouflage
Rewind: Best Of (1987-95)
(Polydor)

RECOMMENDED * Cute OMD ripoff with a couple of major, fiery singles, in particular the immortal goth-club banger "The Great Commandment" -- numerous priceless remixes not included here. Also not included is my favorite performance by this German collective: their cover of Depeche Mode's early Martin Gore classic "Tora! Tora! Tora!", worth seeking out. What's here is fun anyway.

Daft Punk
Human After All (2005)
(Virgin)

Robovoiced minimalism, ineffective against skeptics -- mostly magnifies the worst tendencies of Discovery without nearly so much evidence of popcraft.

***

Arthur Lee
Vindicator (1972)
(A&M)

!! CAUTION !! * Aside from what's included on the Rhino compilation Love Story, I haven't investigated much of Love's post-Forever Changes output; after that album they essentially became a vehicle for Lee's impulsive fits and starts. That set included one solo single of his, "Everybody's Gotta Live," which I quite enjoyed. But the full album is dreadful classic rock wank, appalling coming from this source. You almost can't even recognize Lee in it, though the most trifling little joke-skits are arguably the one thing that identifies it as being from the same mind that once wrote "Live and Let Live." Song titles make it sound like a Seeds LP.

Danny Brown
XXX (2011)
(Fool's Gold)

RECOMMENDED * Already a fully formed personality with great rhymes and a bumpy, worrisome vibe. Brown's established, hyperactive, even squeaky voice will potentially drive you nuts; it did me at first. But he's lower-key even on this first album than I remembered, and a more careful listen than I afforded it before reveals thornier beats, more harrowing drama, lots of oral sex. (Listen to how he modulates his personalities against terrifying dystopia on "I Will.") A worthy companion to Old.

Lou Reed (1972)
(RCA)

RECOMMENDED * Nearly all these songs were recorded at one point or another by the Velvet Underground and, while unreleased officially for decades, the results are all arguably better-known and superior to what's here. It's still surprisingly interesting to hear Reed take on these songs with then-stylish overproduction and semi-glam methodology, and no one can argue these aren't terrific numbers. "Lisa Says" and "Ride into the Sun" are a lot of fun and everything has spirit, even if it lacks the warmth and charm of the VU.

The Good Feeling Music of Dent May & His Magnificent Ukulele (2009)
(Paw Tracks)

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED * I was admittedly and perhaps undeservedly infatuated with this album back in '09, and I stand by my original feeling that May is a hell of a writer and an engaging, amusing entertainer ("Oh Paris!", "Howard" and "Love Song 2009" remain highlights) but of course this isn't as cute as it once seemed. I've changed a little and, to be honest, knowing how limited and somewhat banal May's gifts would turn out to be has tempered my enthusiasm. Also the fact that my life has now led me to conclude that the mocking song about alcoholism is damned offensive. But I'm reluctant to change the high grade because it's still the best ukulele-driven party record of all time, especially if you tack on his utterly transcendent b-side cover of Prince's "When You Were Mine." Prince did all the work of making that one of the most durable songs in the pop repertoire, but May still sings it gorgeously.

Dale Hawkins
Oh! Suzy-Q (1957-61)
(Chess)

RECOMMENDED * Hawkins sang and played rockabilly but he was signed to the blues-centric Chess Records at a time when it embodied the music of black America. He's credited with inventing "swamp rock," a label that makes little sense until you take a long listen to his signature single and greatest achievement "Susie-Q." Forerunning "Shakin' All Over," "I Heard It Through the Grapevine," CCR and Screamin' Jay, it sounds like it was recorded from across a dank pond full of danger and secrets. Despite such an alluring sound, Hawkins' primary subject was the usual: lust, cars and his own prowess as a musician and a man. This compilation gathers the entirety of his debut album, notable mostly for its great distorted rhythm guitar sound, and includes some great rock & roll: the youthful verve of "Tornado" and "Baby Baby," the latter brilliantly covered by Mike Waggoner and Bops, and some great rollicking takes on standards -- "Liza Jane" and the relaxed, soulful variant on Willie Dixon's "My Babe." The most engaging of the more obscure material is "Don't Treat Me This Way," as swampy as the hit. Hawkins has less personality than the other rockabilly giants; he's wimpier, more tentative, but his guitar technique is extremely evocative of later heroes like Duane Eddy. This is a valuable historical collection that makes for pleasurable listening.

Destroyer
Trouble in Dreams (2008)
(Merge)

!! CAUTION !! * Dan Bejar's work with the New Pornographers is usually fun. I thought Kaputt was brilliant. But without the novelty of its throwback production eccentricities, I just can't deal with more than a couple of minutes of this... even though his wordplay remains fascinating, his voice admirably weird. It's too dense and proggy.

Autechre
Tri Repetae (1995)
(Warp)

An influential ambient record but one that fades in and out of my consciousness without its innovations ever becoming really audible.

***

eels
Hombre Lobo (2009)
(Vagrant)

RECOMMENDED * Perfectly serviceable mope-rock, reminding us that he wasn't always so self-indulgent; his classicist vibe remains engaging even this late, even if the songs have mostly left him.

Fantasia
Back to Me (2010)
(J)

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED * A hodgepodge from the American Idol winner suffers from mediocre production, only fitfully worthwhile writing. And the miracle is -- none of that matters even a little bit. A pedestrian single like "Bittersweet" or the adult-contemporary hop "I'm Doin' Me" is so enthusiastically and thrillingly performed by Barrino that we can truly say she delivers the goods on this entire, economical, exuberant album all by herself. Produced and written by committee, maybe, but the appeal is all hers and the result is kind of a stunner; with solid throwback material and a showpiece stage persona, she exudes confidence and charm.

Fatboy Slim
You've Come a Long Way, Baby (1998)
(astralwerks)

I don't think this is much stronger than its predecessor, which I loathe, but it has gradually gained the added benefit of immediately calling to mind exactly what life felt like in 1999 -- hooks that blared nonstop and unaccompanied off the radio back then now bring a bit of a tear to the eye. The hard times and the good, indeed.

Fiona Apple
Extraordinary Machine (2005)
(Epic)

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED * We won't be talking about this album's troubled history here; it's well-trodden ground, the so-called "Jon Brion version" (a work in progress that got leaked) having prompted a probably unnecessary campaign to facilitate the release by Sony of Fiona Apple's third record from limbo-prison. Yeah, the released version loses a little bit of rawness and bite, but it gains plenty besides. The emotive qualities of her writing and voice make a noticeable leap here from 1999, and it's not like she was any slouch then; your breath can get taken by how high and low she gets in both senses, and every moment of every song that results has character. The elaborate arrangements and production were decried as distractions by some, but the theatrical setting is perfect for someone who's good at being uncomfortable, better at spreading herself around, and really better than most of us at processing the emotional dilemmas and labyrinthine navigations of Being an Adult. Best moments are "Red Red Red" and "O Sailor" -- the former a string-laden conversation that doesn't just express alienation but embodies it, the latter a drunken barroom singalong of self-sabotage with the mission statement: "everything good I deem too good to be true, everything else is just a bore." But we could go on: the delicate, witty title cut; the bottom-heavy, threatening murder ballad of revenge and self-criticism "Get Him Back," the tricky, playful, wicked-nuts "Tymps," the stop-start drama "Not About Love." Taking it all in shows you one of the most empowered, definitive relationship song cycles, but you don't even have to do that to comprehend the depth, character, beauty in her modulation and sense of timing. What she wrings out of a line like "every man I see reminds me of the one that disappointed me"? I don't just hear Joni Mitchell, I hear Billie Holiday. Oh and incidentally, I start to doubt my expertise in regard to this silly stupid pasttime of mine when I wonder why the fuck I was listening to anything besides this back in 2005. (I did hear it, I just didn't hear it.) Possible new #1 favorite of that year.