Beyoncé (2014)

(Columbia)

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

From the beginning -- from a hard-won origin hinted at throughout her stellar, inventive fifth solo album -- Beyoncé Knowles has been an immaculate example of a self-possessed artist. Not for her, ever, was the invariably shining spotlight a reason to lay her cards out or to expose her every idea and secret maneuver -- in the earliest videos she made with Destiny's Child, her control over your own impressions of her was paramount. She was already thinking beyond the bounds of her or any group; you could see that in her with little effort. There's always been the sense that she was deliberately hiding something, deliberately waiting, deliberately only letting you witness and hear and notice what was necessary in the moment. In the olden days when it seemed so much more acceptable to commodify this business, we called it quality control. It's reductive to pretend that Knowles is selling herself as a brand any more than Prince or the Beatles or Dusty Springfield were -- the selling wizardry has been and will continue to be in service of the music -- but it's also silly to pretend that her imagery, her persona, her determined full-scale self-presentation is irrelevant.

Knowles is really an old-fashioned entertainer in a very real sense, which is likely the key reason her records get more crossover attention than others in her genre, from Ciara to Dawn Richard to Kelela, who deserve it just as much. No, no, it's not the cult of personality, it's not her marriage -- post-Magna Carta, does anyone really believe Jay-Z is helping his wife out by making his requisite cameos on her singles? -- and it's only partially musical prowess. This is one brilliant record, but it didn't create Beyoncé the Untouchable, and none of her prior LPs, while they all featured incalculably perfect songs and moments, have been nearly this consistent or fearless. Nah, it's because of pure showmanship; like Prince, she does it all -- dancing, singing, producing, writing. Like the Beatles, she's allowed her feel for the eccentric to meld beautifully with her populism until she can release something genuinely weird and everyone joins up. As a performer, Knowles evokes direct memories of Gene Kelly; they both exhibit a profound level of tight control over their movements and voices that can come across sufficiently clearly and full-bodied as to be intimidating, yet they also are brilliant at producing the image of looseness, the humanity underneath the expertise. That control has fused finally with an audience's trust and this grand, enormous stage has room for a bold and singular risk, clad in black and issued with refreshing nonchalance on iTunes in the middle of the night.

Sexuality shouldn't be analyzed at length at the expense of the pure pop mastery in play here, but sex is a major matter at hand. This many years into an established superstardom, it's very crucial that Knowles doesn't need to have an outside world address or legitimize her sexual independence, that she'd be asserting it regardless. That's specifically addressed on this album, but it nevertheless is an event that at this moment in time, a person of her stature who happens to be a woman would create something as uncompromised and blunt in its sensuality as this -- would indeed encompass therein a direct assault upon a world of anti-woman, anti-feminist blindness and injustice by sheer art of subtle omission. She never addresses the idea that she is not permitted to express herself as a woman, never acknowledges the idea of shame or of subsuming herself to unequal partnership. There is simply no weight given to the opposition. In deliberately, artfully avoiding the political fallout of allowing young girls and women who buy this album to believe that they in fact are permitted to take ownership of their bodies and sexual inner lives, she creates one of the true political albums of this decade in America -- and a courageous victory in the culture war upon the individuality and expression of women. Beyoncé, without question, came -- unexpectedly -- at the perfect moment.

"Pretty Hurts" has been interpreted as a manifesto, a statement of purpose, but this would make it an act of preaching. Plenty of other pop stars, male and female, have gone that route. The reason this song sets the stage for this full-length embodiment of who Beyoncé is at this moment in time, and the perspicacious recognition of where her audience in this specific diagram, is that it is a personal venting: a collected, scathing, quite mournful wake-up call. It's musically adventurous enough but the voice in all its nuance registers all across a scale from command to pain to want. Knowles is just 32, but she is already savvy in regard to the demands placed upon women in her industry as well as probably most; "pageant the pain away" is an apt phrase in the craftily presented collection of large grievances in regard to plastic surgery, the pressure not to age, the pressure to "be happy." It's not that she's unaware this act of protest will resonate everywhere, it's that such an endpoint is incidental to her need to record it, indeed to record it without obvious radio-friendly flourish or structure. That's the first sign that this album is for her but we're welcome to be there, and far from constructing something (like so many successful rock bands) out of tone-deaf flaunting of the vagaries of fame, her sensibilities remain stirringly human.

That's clear enough from her presentation of sex all across the record. Fucking is addressed as a physical manifestation of desire and, more importantly, as fun; that's more radical than you probably think it is. Even Prince, wonderful as his songs about Nikki's castle full of the 1984 equivalent to HMWs and jacking u off with them were, tended to imply freakiness as an eternal player in some larger conflict of sex and God, sometimes even as a punchline rather than a warm facet of being alive and being in a (serious or not) relationship. Oh, like any great blues or rock singer, Knowles talks about her prowess a great deal and quite convincingly, and she's more than entitled to do so, but the orgasmic joy is something in which we participate, feeling -- like in the earliest rock & roll -- no need to dress up beautiful base needs with pretension or psychodrama. Despite the absolutely incompetent Jay-Z verse, "Drunk in Love" is the most blatant celebration of absolute want and absolute lust to be so enthusiastically co-opted by the mainstream in decades. The unashamed expression of power and desire on Beyoncé's part that is not presented solely for straight male pleasure, valid as that may be, is so important. It's not just lyrically or vocally that the track seems overtaken with steam; even the "pop" moment sets down a vague, adventurous backing track over which Knowles scats and pauses as much as she lets loose. But no, no one else probably ever has made "all night" and "surf-board" sound like the kinkiest of private dialogue.

The aptly titled "Blow" and nearly as aptly titled "Rocket" are more explicit yet than "Drunk in Love." The former is a tricky, intimate, filthy groove that seems to futz around with the inside of your head, its hook delightfully nasty and circular, suggestively rhythmic in its "keep me coming keep me going" insistence. What she does to stretch, sweeten, darken, thin out her voice here would be fascinating if you weren't too caught up in the song to think much about it intellectually. (I heard the song maybe half a dozen times before I noticed there's a horn in there somewhere.) Like so many of these songs, "Blow" seems to abruptly become something entirely different from the bridge onward, and in clashing sweetened eagerness with winking perversion ("I can't waaait till I get home so you can tear that cherry out"), lush, pillowy bump and grind with minimalistic funk, the track seems to compress an LP's worth of ideas into five minutes. "Rocket" is a bit more direct, a pure Princely slow-jam, but Beyoncé's vocal command of each moment in it recalls him less than Marvin Gaye, especially in her relationship to the arrangement and the playful, jazz-derived way she slides through it on her own rhythm. Sarah Vaughn didn't sing about being a "bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad girl," but if she had... And more than once, with her soft laughs, her low-key intonation asking if you wanna touch it, her "hard. rock. steady. rock." and post-orgasmic "damn," and on the peak, babe, time just cuts out and quits.

Both "Blow" and "Rocket" could, unlike "Drunk in Love," be about sex between anyone -- casual partners, forty-year marrieds, teenagers, good friends, newlyweds, or people who would get in big trouble if anyone found out they were doing this -- but Beyoncé arguably gets at harder truths when it specifically addresses marriage. "Jealous" is perhaps the least musically effective cut on the first half of an admittedly front-loaded record (the first ten cuts are noticeably superior to most of the back third) due to its slightly overwrought "keeping your promise" hook, but lyrically it may be the most accomplished piece of them all, full of telling and troubling details. It's a justified rant of real adult pain that addresses the potential imbalances and chaotic interludes of a long-term emotional and sexual partnership, the agony of cooking a meal for someone naked and waiting for them to show up when they don't. The marriage or relationship it talks about sounds unhealthy, badly one-sided, but it could be nothing more than a moment -- what matters is that it captures this pain flawlessly. Some of the same could be said for the urgent "Mine," immediately timeless despite another weak moment (the "good girl" bit), which makes a big deal out of the little things, says we should be married, and lets it all out enough to admit that the woman laying herself bare isn't feeling like herself "since the baby." This conversational tone, these wisps of detail, are the background that fuels romance, sex, confessional, heartbreak, the substance so often missing from pop music dialogue.

But the towering "No Angel" is the more heartening example of Scenes from a Marriage narrative; interestingly gathering up a highly modern trap sound but also the '90s dance pop you might've heard a lot at the mall a decade and a half ago, its monosyllabic sensuality is significant because it captures a moment of raw, unexpected connection and the turning point in an idiosyncratic, unusual relationship -- which you'll probably agree, most relationships are. It's the document of a pair whose crimes, indulgences, kinks (that's the implication) are equal and are only now discovering it. Knowles slams the door and demands "Tell me I'm a problem" but when the truth sits in an ugly lump before her comes the revelation: "I love you even more than who I thought you were before." It's as startling and sexy as those fireworks in To Catch a Thief, when Grace Kelly wonders: "Ever had a better offer in your whole life? One with everything?"

As mentioned, Beyoncé peaks early, but its conclusion isn't a major downturn. "XO" is the album's darkest-night melodramatic peak, "Superpower" is a conventional slow-burn soul track (the best moment is provided by an ingratiating series of "doot doot doot doot doot doot"s) but that's something. The power ballad "Heaven" raises itself above other power ballads mostly by virtue of being sung by Beyoncé. "Blue" is a step up, a good strong melody that -- thanks to a guest spot from the singer's daughter -- invites comparisons to Stevie Wonder's untouchable "Isn't She Lovely" and is perfect for her voice. These cuts are all fine and would have fit in nicely on Beyoncé's previous efforts without much change, and if the entire album was in their league it would still be worth hearing.

Beyoncé is more than worth hearing, though, it's a treasure, and three of its strangest, wildest songs exemplify a level of ingenuity seldom heard in such quantity and with such assurance, and even more seldom to result in such massive popularity. Though he has many collaborators, the heretofore-mysterious Boots is a credited producer on all three, and if he is indeed (with Knowles) the link across them, he can be looked upon as edging closer to avant garde in pop than anyone since perhaps Missy Elliott (whose frequent associate Timbaland also worked on one of these tacks). Besides boasting one of Beyoncé's best-ever hooks (which doesn't appear until 2:50 in), "Partition" is another act of sexual assertion matched here with a club song -- brutal beat, astounding vocal workout, bzzz bzzz bzzz bzzz bzz, and so horny he want to fuuuh. Heyyy Ms. Carter, indeed.

The trap lift "***Flawless" is better yet, the album's most gigantically uncompromising series of "what the fuck" stunts, with sped-up voice manipulation and twin key phrases: "bow down bitches," of course, and the sneering, perfect "don't think I'm just his little wife." That it takes time to include -- on a mainstream pop album, remember -- a lengthy, brilliant, stirring speech on feminism by the writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie during the instrumental break is a sign not just that we are living in a welcome new cultural moment but that Knowles has every intention to contribute to it, to live and operate within a revolution of hearts and minds. In some ways, rather than anything Knowles does, it's the climax and key to the record, rendering it a selfless decision on her part to step aside in such a way.

But "Haunted" is ultimately the album's greatest moment, and Knowles' most original and breathtaking track to date. It's the sort of creation that seems intriguing at first blush but becomes more staggering, more fascinating the more carefully one listens to it. Opening as calmly possessed spoken word (the intensity of a repeated "9 to 5 just to stay alive" steely in its purpose), this quickly shifts to nocturnal, hazy club music somewhat in the vein of (far lesser talents) the Weeknd and AraabMuzik. Knowles stirs dance with paranoia here, and she and Boots even let the song become completely stagnant, cloudy, strange when the beat falls away -- she even goes so far as to smirk that she's not gonna make any money off this. "Oh, well."

The song doesn't stop being magically shapeless when the chorus and hook arrive after three full minutes -- here comes "my wicked tongue," then the beat again -- it just turns into a metallic monster, stunningly vital and confident despite its madness, and such an impression is deliberate, underscored by how it loosens up just a bit at the end and starts to flash when she coos and drops her robotic fervor. It's a masterfully bizarre recording from one of the world's biggest stars, and to have it positioned not merely as the second song on a blockbuster album but placed between the populist, impression-making "Pretty Hurts" and the instant hit "Drunk in Love" can be regarded as a grand proclamation that Beyoncé Knowles, even though she's one of the key cultural figures of her era, is led by nothing save her own tastes and impulses -- which makes her potentially one of the defining American artists of the coming decade.

***

[This was released in December 2013, after I was too far into compiling my year-end '13 stuff to even listen to it more than once, which made things especially hard when I knew almost right away it would have made my already overcrowded top ten for last year. So for cataloging purposes, the incorrect year sits at the top of this post and it will be eligible for my lists and things at the end of 2014. If this drives you crazy, feel free to send harshly worded letters of complaint to my home.]

Camera Obscura: Underachievers Please Try Harder (2003)

(Merge)

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

With their second album, Glasgow's second finest (we may as well be frank here) soar past their obvious origins. It's true Camera Obscura continue to walk through doors opened by Belle & Sebastian, their debut Biggest Bluest Hi-Fi having essentially been an official homage, but in certain places Underachievers Please Try Harder is something of its own: a modern baroque classic, suggesting Nico, Dusty Springfield and even Leonard Cohen as much as any of the group's peers.

Although the band's songwriting would reach its peak a few years after this, they have taken here a gigantic step forward. The music breathes more than previously, able to get lost in a slow, folky strum with a sweet lilt, taking it at times as far as pure country, but also in the sonic mysteries of the best '60s pop, never melodramatically asserting itself or making ill-advised attempts to turn fixation into gimmickry. The arrangements are focused, the melodies are meant to invite surrender, and it's all Sunday nights, and the last dance of the prom -- and the joys, agonies, mornings-after in between.

Yet as so often with this band, the performance that leaves you reeling is that of Tracyanne Campbell, whose voice is the source of every emotional revelation and achingly human pratfall documented here. She seems to be reliving everyone's young heartbreaks at once yet with a thoroughly adult longing and wit, both because they come from the good-humored place of someone modest enough to falsely claim she doesn't know her elbow from her arse and because she, like so many of us, is sufficiently introspective to have gone over this stuff over and over and over again in her head. She spends Underachievers dealing with pretentious types, from man-children and fake feminists to Mike Leigh-quoting mean girls to boys "who went from Mod to Ted."

There's self-deprecation, like when she deals with a crush on a teacher in the hypnotic "Suspended from Class," but there's mostly the coolheaded wisdom that no one in their adolescence is capable of and that every adolescent needs to hear. We find her resigned and reflective when dodging a drug-addicted ex on the stunningly beautiful "Keep It Clean," calm but subtly broken when pep talking an indie rocking younger sibling on "A Sister's Social Agony." Consistently Campbell's words and vocals alike are beautiful and tough, deeply felt, raw and in-the-moment -- like the best of those singers this band clearly idolizes. There's nothing artificial about their throwback; if anything, the likes of Phil Spector and Marianne Faithfull taught them how best to expose the rawest emotions to the broadest collection of people.

The record unfortunately screeches to a bit of a standstill when, on four cuts, Campbell steps aside and lets John Henderson sing. He isn't bad, actually, but sounds so thin and weak next to Campbell's outrageous brilliance as a performer that it's almost always a buzzkill when he steps up. Listen enough and eventually you get a kick out of the Songs of Leonard Cohen pastiche "Your Picture" and the sweet, swinging "Lunar Sea," but his songs undoubtedly peak when, toward the end of "Before You Cry," Campbell steps in to offer her most devastating bit of optimism ever: "You feel a little sad tonight but you'll be all right."

That sentence could be the Camera Obscura manifesto, and gets beautifully to the essence of their appeal. This album happens to contain most likely their two greatest songs. The theremin doodle "Teenager" is very much in the mold of a Beautiful Music dilution of a 007 theme, but its melody lets Campbell launch into the stratosphere with all of the scolding, yearning and frustration its title implies. By the time its chorus hits, it seems increasingly to be belted not just from her heart but from yours. "Books Written for Girls" may be even stronger; slowed down and minimal, rolling its eyes at poseurs but here placing extra emphasis on how the coldness and calculation of the tragically hip hurts other people as it chronicles the messy self-evaluation after the end of a relationship with a prick, it is rumored in some quiet quarters to be an attack on Stuart Murdoch, stating independence against any attempt to make Campbell and her band proteges of Murdoch's almost assembly-lined peculiarity.

I'm not sure that I believe that, frankly, but it's possible, and what's relevant to us is that indeed Camera Obscura achieve something that Belle & Sebastian never has on this record and their next one: they launch, like few other bands aside from Everything But the Girl, into a level of genuine human maturity that actually justifies the fawning melancholy of their throwback-heavy music. There's nothing quite like the soul-crushed but empowering way Campbell sings "he will disappoint you" and "I think separation is okay" and "you're not a teenager, so don't act like one." It's melancholy in a way that, like all such sonic thrill rides, is a joy to hear and to use within one's own life, but there is much more brimming underneath -- anger, hurt, pain, fear, want. It's pretty, precious even, but it's never cute. Not if you listen carefully enough.

[SEE ALSO:]
Biggest Bluest Hi-Fi (2001)
My Maudlin Career (2009)
Desire Lines (2013)

Curren$y: Jet Files (2009)

(Amalgam)

RECOMMENDED

Hailing from the last year in which Curren$y could justify calling himself really "underground," just before Def Jam released his two Pilot Talk records, Jet Files isn't even as heavy with internet favorites and supposed singles as This Ain't No Mixtape or, for that matter, the man's mixtapes. But surprisingly enough and despite being barely released or noticed in 2009 (a CD version was delayed by two years), this stands easily alongside the best moments of Curren$y's varied and inconsistently but occasionally dazzling career in the current decade.

Curren$y's best talent may be his taste for a great beat, or at least the knowledge of where to get them. Production here is divided between alternative rap names Big Chop and Whitey, but both are informed by a distinguished polish and an awareness of the sound of great and hedonistic radio hip hop, a context in which these tracks were doomed never to appear. Upholding the artist's reputation as the ultimate hip hop stoner, the record is a breezy listen heavy on pop and retro (with citations of synthpop, lounge, quiet storm, video game music, even jazz fusion) but the songs are more varied and distinctive than on even Pilot Talk, at least for the first three quarters or so.

Big Chop's talents are especially prevalent on the breathless ballad "The Pledge (In and Out)," almost a tease at just 2:17 that cuts out suddenly after a sweet build of piano and drama -- you almost expect it to turn into "Dark Fantasy" any second. Whitey, on the other hand, gives perhaps the most detached-cool evocation of Wings' "Band on the Run" humanly possible on the terrific "Smoke N Maintain," one of numerous Curren$y cuts that sounds like it honestly could be the guy's signature.

You gotta give it up to him, though -- he may be almost too relaxed at times, and he certainly has more limited preoccupations that almost any other rock star I can name, but something like "Smoke N Maintain" just would not work without Curren$y flowing the hell through it like it's on the most blissed-out cloud in the sky. As already noted, taste is his strong point, and that includes the tastefulness of knowing when to get out of the way, and when to guide the dance and the mood onward. It's significant that while all of his records so far -- and his mixtapes, to a lesser extent -- have had deliberate and specific vibes, no one would call them "mood" rap. He's starting to become a bit of a monster here composition-wise too, even if the only really hugely impressive moment is the wildly catchy "On My Way," built on an obscure sample (of Johnson / Hawkins / Tatum / Derr's "You Can't Blame Me") and soaring to an incredibly powerful chorus. By contrast, he can overreach easily with both the drugged-out dreamy shit and relatively weak writing and structuring somewhere like "Stay Up," though even it indicates a bit of political consciousness otherwise disregarded on this record.

Curren$y's delivery itself is already nuanced even if his writing isn't the best yet. "Sleepless in New Orleans" shows that he knows both the full-hearted and flippant way around a relationship song; his steely focus and confused, unreliable-narrator perspective on slash participating in male angst more than vaguely calls Nas to mind. That won't surprise fans of his Def Jam and Warner Bros. albums, but "The Seventies" will -- he's never come across so furious again, spitting the thing out in rare form. But my favorite moment, performance-wise, on this delightful album is the terrific "Bring Her Home," a threesome song that more than compensates for David Crosby's horrendous pop-music take on the subject in "Triad." The song follows Curren$y reluctantly visiting a strip club with his lady; they catch each other checking out the same babe at the same moment and have an "are you thinking what I'm thinking?" exchange that culminates in a Prince-worthy liaison wherein -- thankfully -- the pleasure of the women involved is as noteworthy as the protagonist's. Curren$y may or may not see it as a jokey novelty, given his amusingly zombielike read of the verses, which lead fabulously into a frenetic chorus then dissolve at the moment of his hilariously cheeky, sheepish read of the forbidden word itself. The way he says "threesome," it's almost like he's asking a tentative question rather than living out a classic fantasy.

Curren$y's lyrics are almost not even worth mentioning at this point, though the drug dealing to record-making analogy on "I'm Just Dope" is sort of classic. His words often barely rhyme, or don't rhyme at all, unless you think "tablets" and "toe-up" have a similar ring. But he's so good at putting it all across you almost don't notice or care. In one of his better lyrical jabs he offers the perhaps premature boast "Earned my spot, I'm one of New Orleans' flyest rhymers / I make a faithful house-wife into a two-timer." Curren$y still hasn't peaked yet, he's still plugging along like this is his job, and I bet no one would dispute him on this point now.

[SEE ALSO:]
Pilot Talk (2010)
Pilot Talk II (2010)
Weekend at Burnie's (2011)
Return to the Winner's Circle (2011)
Verde Terrace (2011)
Muscle Car Chronicles (2012)
with The Alchemist: Covert Coup (2011)

Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup: Complete Recorded Works Vol. 2 (1946-49)

(Document)

RECOMMENDED

First of all, don't even ask the reason for this, of the four volumes in this collection I've discovered I seem to own numbers two and three only, perhaps because they were all I could find about ten years ago when I looked. Could've set out to correct that, but in trying to learn about Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup, the second volume of this exhaustive Complete Recordings series is the one to jump to immediately, as it includes one of those shot-heard-round-the-world sides so rare in rock & roll and blues alike, "That's All Right." Of course, as you know, it was made an important record not by its own composer and performer, Crudup, but by one Elvis Presley a decade later.

Presley was always a champion of Crudup and had a world opened up by his records, which has turned out to be arguably his major claim to fame -- though "That's All Right" is hardly the only song he wrote to become a blues standard, it's certainly the one that rings loudest outside of circles familiar with the American blues of the '40s. Crudup never returned Presley's affection and mostly was bemused by the extra exposure, which couldn't and didn't translate into money and personal success for those cursed by the royalties system in those days.

To one who is not Presley, even one who is a bit of a budding aficionado for this music, Crudup can initially seem an indistinct performer in the Delta blues universe. Listening to this compilation front to back one is struck by the sheer sense of repetition; every song he recorded on the day in the late summer of 1946 that produced "That's All Right" has the same melody, as do many of those presented from later sessions (stretching over the following three years). Beyond his limits as a composer -- his moments of inspiration are scattered -- Crudup isn't much to listen to as a guitarist. It can seem that his influence outpaces his passion and accessibility.

But with further exposure, Crudup's sides begin to sing a bit -- quite literally. His great strength (besides consistently solid lyrics) is his voice, which is imbued with constant passion and enthusiasm that sets him apart. Scholars have wondered for over half a century now what it was about Crudup that so affected Presley, but the answer may be here: the way that even when his songs lapse into laziness or apathy, Crudup still swings and gallops and growls with such verve, presence, sensuality. The more one listens to the disc, the more he becomes a pleasure to hear. The chronological arrangement is perhaps the sole reason it's initially a tough sell; start instead with "That's All Right," which you know, "Hoodoo Lady Blues" and "Lonesome World to Me" and you will be reeled in faster.

That said, the very first song included here, "Crudup's After Hours," feels even more like a rock & roll powerhouse than the more famous selections to follow -- bopping and urgent and even fierce, it moves beyond acoustic blues and indicates a depth of talent that deserves further-spread recognition. Crudup is so different from his peers like Muddy Waters, Elmore James and John Lee Hooker and yet bursts forth with a sense of quiet, calm innovation. This isn't a great introduction to Delta blues, but it is an essential document -- and eventually, a pleasurable and pure experience -- in large part because Crudup and his two sidemen, Judge Riley and bassist Ransom Knowling, have such chemistry. Knowling's connection with Crudup is particularly audible in the latter's shouts of encouragement. They feel like a real band, Riley's drumbeat as vital as Crudup's stabs and strums, and they help make this a relaxed, surprisingly cohesive listen but also one that burns quite hot once you give it the time.

Crystal Castles (2008)

(Last Gang)

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Why is this collection of itchy earworms -- really a sort of Never Mind the Bollocks in its haphazard arrangement of by-now-familiar singles that'd gained cult popularity in the prior year or two -- so damned satisfying? Partially it's just personal taste, for while there's considerable variance to be found here, it's mostly just drawn out in categories: roughly a third pure atmosphere and beats ("Magic Spells," "1991," "Reckless," "Black Panther"), a third deliberate obnoxiousness ("Alice Practice," "Xxzxcuzx Me," "Knights," "Through the Hosiery"), a third things that are almost songs, or even songs. Hate the sound of bloodcurdling Alice Glass screaming distorted over what sounds like someone dying a terrible death in a game of Berzerk for Atari 2600 and there isn't much chance that this maverick duo's interpretation of abrasively pretty EDM, darkened and curious even at its most inviting, will warm you up much.

Perhaps that's really the point. Crystal Castles, at least early on, made now-familiar avant and pop forms seem dangerous again. When hearing the immediate signature "Alice Practice," its clone "Love and Caring" and the bubbly "Knights," there's this magical sense that you're exposing yourself to something that's bad for you. Glass sounds demented, she sounds bloody and vile, she sounds like an uncontrolled unpredictable being, and the music she and Ethan Kath create has an unresolved, maddeningly uneven nature that's both troubling and sexually provocative. For some listeners, all the screaming in the world can't make it unpleasant. For others, no amount of immediately pleasurable dance music can puncture the sense of theatrical, Gothic rock-star agony. In other words, you might think it's bullshit, and the rest of us will think you're just scared of it but really you're just over it. And that's okay.

It doesn't help that Crystal Castles, the first of so-far-three albums of the same name, is too concerned with the experience of listening to function as a real dance record -- it interrupts itself too much, even on delights like "Untrust Us," the absolutely perfect "Crimewave," and the Kath-led "Vanished." That restlessness is the strongest sense we get of Crystal Castles as a band rather than a studio entity. "Crimewave" is certainly a carefully written and produced piece of work, impossibly catchy yet vague, repetitive but absorbing, and its greatest fascination lies in how it sets up cute keyboard trills, turns them upside down and examines them until they grow foreboding. Evil even when it's pretty, this record's still bad for you! All the unpredictable androgyny, the '80s fantasy porn ("Reckless"), the cold starkness and urgency ("Black Panther"). This is not the bliss of a night out -- it's the paranoia.

Allow as they might for drugginess, though, Glass and Kath can be warm and pleasurable; the wall of vocals on "Air War" breaks down into a strange "Computer Blue" synth-glow, the cheerleading "Courtship Dating" is almost a Yeah Yeah Yeahs chorus, and "Vanished" is no more than three steps away from being the most sinister Jock Jam ever recorded. The two of them thrill to all this unease -- they like that you don't predict they'll close on a Cocteau Twins slowdance or sample, of all things, Drinking Electricity and make it sound like "The Loco Motion." They get a kick out of being divisive and spewing something in the faces of everybody that some will love, that some will hold in contempt. It's a little frightening, or it wants to be, but there's also joy and sensuality in it -- and sometimes this particular scary is where you want a sickeningly late night to be headed.

[SEE ALSO:]
Crystal Castles (2010)
(III) (2012)

Yo La Tengo: I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One (1997)

(Matador)

!!! A+ RECORDING !!!

Fuck defining the times. Yo La Tengo never were revolutionaries or some telling element of "the zeitgeist." It was always, in a strange way, musical hedonism -- a freewheeling snowball of influences and idiosyncratic fascinations that formed them into a singular, strangely warm entity. Early on, even on a masterpiece like the mostly-covers album Fakebook, it was like you were listening to your friends play music. That wasn't because those records weren't crafty, it was because the group could barely contain how much of a blast they were having playing together and forming their weird impulses into songs, singles, albums (and live shows, where they were really a force to be reckoned with even then). Little surprise that this was already by the mid-'90s one of the most acclaimed alternative-rock underdogs since R.E.M. slipped over to an arena rock phase at Warners.

Something changed, though, with the band's 1993 move to Matador Records and -- just earlier -- their acquisition of permanent bass player (22 years and counting, now) James McNew. On their first four, arguably five albums, this band was the stage for guitarist and screamy everydude Ira Kaplan's fixations and, well, we can't really say demons, but whatever the polite version of demons is. Though drummer and sometime singer Georgia Hubley was prominent in the mix, it really seems to have taken McNew's presence for either of these two to find their unfettered and confident voice, and certainly for their collective voice to become undeniable. Without ever really worrying too much about the design or direction of all this, the trio just melded together and formed into a unit with almost frighteningly flawless synergy. It seemed that they found one another at the perfect time to initiate a creative zenith that, at times, appeared destined to go on forever.

So I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One is not their first great record, or even the first great Yo La Tengo record in this particular cycle, but it is perhaps the most dramatic artifact to place against their first two recordings, the smarmy and tentative Ride the Tiger and the genuinely delightful low-key folk rocker New Wave Hot Dogs, and realize that the greatest achievement is in both what's changed and what hasn't.

There is never a sense of formalism to the band's work, and there arguably never would be. It still has a casual, tossed off quality in both composition and performance; it never seems as if it's the work of people who don't care, just people who have no interest whatsoever in putting on airs. This music is almost deceptively approachable -- deceptively because as calm and collected and friendly as it may be, it is eye-wideningly, gut-splittingly brilliant. It invites or requires no excuses of homespun pleasantness -- it's music so fiercely restless it simply doesn't have time to be arrogant about it. Expect some statement about this from them and Yo La Tengo are more likely to form their grandness into some sort of a sheepish joke. They define the idea that the worst thing you can do to your creativity is talk about it -- they just do it, taking it all very seriously, and never look away from straight ahead.

I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One builds on the prior album, Electr-O-Pura, mostly in the quantity and size of its performances, as well as its ruthless eclecticism. There are covers and experiments and strange rambling instrumentals in addition to real honest-to-god songs. Parts of it were recorded live in the studio to capture some of the electricity of the band's stage presence, and while judicious editing is sometimes their strong suit, Hubley, Kaplan and McNew mostly err on the side of overwhelming bigness and sprawl here. The idea is that the record is romantically and emotionally varied enough to hypnotize you, and snap you out of your strange trance at key moments, thus giving the entire album the quality of a wonderful drone -- even on the songs that don't actually drone. They drone when they need to.

Most would say it remains the quintessential Yo La Tengo record, certainly square one for most new fans. It was about a year and a half old when I first heard it. We had a mediocre modern rock station in my town and toward the end of the night they would play this thing called "The Final Hour" and "My Little Corner of the World," of all things, showed up and hooked me. As mentioned in the piece linked there, a teenage rock fan expects things to fall into a certain alignment; you have to retrain yourself to even accept the idea that a band can sound like themselves without having "a sound." Once you understand, somehow it's the most enchanting thing.

In exploring rock music you run into some performers that can't be pinned down, and almost invariably, those are the ones worth listening to. People always mention the Velvet Underground, and it's fair in the sense that both bands are enormously vital, warm and restless. Having known the Velvets only through aesthetic means -- unable then to sense the weight of their literary and raw imagination -- I favored clearer comparisons. My Bloody Valentine was clear from the single "Sugarcube," and MBV mastermind Kevin Shields remixed their "Autumn Sweater" for an EP this same year. I could sense Pavement a little in "Stockholm Syndrome," the Byrds in "Return to Hot Chicken," the Beach Boys on "Center of Gravity" (for its spirit if not its sound, and more on the "Little Honda" cover in a bit).

The line of description I've come to favor is probably not a popular one, but the truth hurts. Continuing legacies is not what rock & roll is about, and let's be entirely clear on this: Yo La Tengo is an outstanding band, maybe the best one running today, and they are a completely original voice. That's precisely why, despite their small-scale indie context, I think of the Beatles when I hear them. If you have trouble with that, start with both bands' cover versions. On Live at the Star Club, the Beatles threaten to destroy the eponymous venue with a roaring "Sweet Little Sixteen," a song that -- while wonderful and full of life on Chuck Berry's single -- doesn't explode to half that magnitude in its original incarnation. Compare "Little Honda," an intricate and playful Brian Wilson production for certain, but Yo La Tengo seem to inhabit it, transferring it to a CBGB's shoegazer-Velvets hybrid, taking in a lifetime of rock mythology to complement an outstanding composition. No matter if the Beach Boys classic (or the Hondells single, which prompts Kaplan to snarl "champ" instead of "matchless") remains definitive, because whatever the results, the point is that in their moment, Yo La Tengo are more at one with the song than they are paying homage to it.

So continue on to their originals, all of them exhibiting lyrical wisdom and musical subtlety that still jumps out and bites you when it desires. They can make the sweetest pop songs you've heard in years -- china-delicate "Shadows," grinning-heartbreak bossa nova "Center of Gravity" -- or they can squeal with ten minutes of the intense instrumental "Spec Bebop." I think about the way Beatles singles like "Day Tripper" and "Rain" exploded with pop warmth yet always included something off-kilter and bizarre that made the songs all the more endearing. This band does it without hesitation, understanding the appeal of adventure and the joy of oddity, and I Can Hear offers an album-size expansion of these ideas, which is why it is the ideal starting point for anyone who wants to know what the hell this group "sounds like."

It's not out of restraint, though, that this forms probably the most accessible point of their output. I think just about every decade offers some LP that reveals an artist at some kind of peak, willing to try anything and not afraid to put it all out in the open comprehensively. What's more, everything the performer tries not only works but redefines boundaries and musical ideas. The '60s and '70s are obvious -- the White Album, basically undeniable, and the Clash's London Calling, which may as well be considered the seminal LP-sized statement of rock prowess. The '80s are tougher, but I nominate Sign o' the Times, Prince's most fully realized and eclectic effort. The '90s? In case you couldn't figure out where this paragraph was headed, I'll present the evidence.

"Moby Octopad" clashes electrofunk grooves with morbid vocals and guitar wheezing plus a loopy instrumental break; "Sugarcube" is the rock statement, with Kaplan's guitar heroics but soft-as-snow vocals; "Deeper into Movies," named after a Pauline Kael book, stars Georgia Hubley at the top of her lungs over a galaxy of noise that fills a room; "Shadows" follows mournful marital woes with the glimmer of hope in an electrified trumpet. And if you like, there's the massive "We're an American Band" (not the Grand Funk song), throwing it all into a single package. It's here that the record climaxes, and as Kaplan's space-rock solo soars into oblivion, louder and more beautiful than anything you can remember in that moment, lyrical like Verlaine or Coltrane, it's one of those moments when your love for a performance or a band can seem so absolute that you don't know how to express or respond to it. Truthfully, there's no moment of ear-popping otherworldliness like this anywhere else in the band's catalog; this is a collection, in some ways, of singular ideas and moments.

But to mistake mere singularity (or innovation) for greatness would be a crime indeed, and what marks those songs is -- here's where Lou Reed comes in -- the same thing that marks "Head Held High" or "Rock & Roll" or any of the Loaded-era conventional bids for commercial justice: they are simply beautifully written and will never leave your head. Instant standards like they made back when Leiber and Stoller were there to produce 'em. So let's cruelly pinpoint things and say that "Stockholm Syndrome" -- McNew's first lead vocal on an LP with the band -- is classic Brit-Invasion-derived acoustic indie, with that almost classicist structure of the awesome electric solo in the break -- if so, it jumps directly to the front of the pack anyway to become, in all honesty, one of the finest songs of its era.

Or maybe you've heard "Damage" before, certainly if you've given Loveless a careful listen -- almost a dirge, full of atmosphere and echo and airy Eno percussive effects amid an omnipresent wall of feedback. But its tale of communication breakdown is full of such clarity and perceptive strength that, on conviction and pure beauty (Georgia's background cooing) alone, you have a song that in many ways is superior to anything Kevin Shields has written. It's just that Yo La Tengo's attention span is not made for a record like Loveless As soon as the point is made, it's on to the next idea like "Train in Vain" seguing into "I Will" seguing into "Forever in My Life," each as sincerely meant and imaginative as the other.

If the instrumentals on this record can be written off as mood pieces, it's at the price of a good bit of the album's impact on the listener, the way it absorbs and seduces with detail. I've heard people call "Let's Go Away for Awhile" a mood piece too, you know. "Return to Hot Chicken" is like falling into bed or waking up slowly, and the transitional "Green Arrow" is a stirring atmosphere of lonely steel guitar that could go on for far longer than it does. And this wouldn't be a Yo La Tengo record without the big long jinx moment, "Spec Bebop." It's a joy to revel in all three, and they all belong.

It's tempting to skirt over "One PM Again" and "The Lie and How We Told It," but it's the little things that count. Maybe these seem initially like undistinguished tidbits, but they take their time, and once "One PM Again" reaches you you'll be glad. And "The Lie and How We Told It" is subtly indicative of the band's secret weapons: their voices. Here and on the tremendous closing harmonies of "Moby Octopad," they find as much lyricism in their wordless whispering (McNew epecially) as Kaplan does in that emotional fit at the close of "American Band." As for "My Little Corner of the World," well, we need a closing statement, don't we? And this one says an awful lot in its gentle way.

Most of Yo La Tengo's albums prior to this one -- and many since -- dive into one of their characteristics to uncover a world of nuance. For this album, they exposed their every impulse and created something divine that sits apart, certainly in their catalog, but equally in the heart of modern pop music: it's a moment to the breathtaking beauty in its own chaotic loudness, the pained complexity in all things that seem initially smooth and sweet. Nothing here seems simple, or arrived at accidentally.

Hearing it again to put this post together I played it on headphones and was gobsmacked all over again -- just thinking trite things about what a powerful, creative and absorbing band this is, how gigantic the album is even at its gentlest. Playing it on tiny computer speakers last night it seemed to keep me company and take me back to the times when I fell in love with it. And on vinyl tonight, played as loud as I could get away with, it applied itself perfectly to right now. We had a winter storm the last few days and as I got home, the wet white mush was falling from the roof in blocks of ice (hitting the ground and crumbling like sugarcubes) and strange-looking liquid drips. A strange heat seemed to drift from all this, like spring was physically starting to appear. When the nervousness of "Autumn Sweater" and the wounded moving-on of "Stockholm Syndrome" blared forth, I remembered again that this album's moment won't pass. It defines my times, I don't know or care beyond that.

[Expanded version of an essay I posted about this album somewhere else roundabout 2005.]

[SEE ALSO:]
Popular Songs (2009)
Stupid Things EP (2012)
Fade (2013)

Chatham County Line: IV (2008)

(Yep Roc)

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

No doubt there are bluegrass purists who'd object to something or other that Chatham County Line does on their most consistent and emotionally rich album. If there's anyone who can argue with the steady, straight-ahead production of the great Chris Stamey or the airy but tight acoustic arrangements, though, it's hard to understand how. When they're playing together as a band, there's no denying or minimizing their direct command of their form and their adventurous interpretation of it. They can surprise you, as Route 23 had already proven, but they can also break your heart. That's just musically.

It's in songwriting terms that the band seems a cut above, but it's also inevitably here that they will be seen by some as a compromised entity. These are pop songs, through and through. In contrast to the bulk of bands that have been labeled "alt-country" over the last decade or two, including some very very good ones, CCL doesn't really attempt to directly ape traditional songforms or structures. What they do instead, particularly through the contributions of the guitarist and chief composer Dave Wilson, is create immaculately crafted songs that happen to sync brilliantly with their musical interests. (It doesn't hurt that Wilson has one of the most beautiful and instantly appealing voices in the genre.) The hard-won optimism of "Thanks" or the simplicity and beauty of "She" could serve their considerable resonance just as well outside of the confines of the band's traditional sound. That doesn't mean they don't deserve kudos for sticking to what they do well, just that these are not just good recordings, they're great songs. And for a pop lifer who only dabbles in modern country and folk, that makes a big difference.

The songs that most clearly resemble the fine Route 23 are fun and tough-minded. Closer "Thanks" is all gruff, sweet hard-won optimism with a touch of the sardonic, "Country Boy/City Boy" has bounce and sting like the songs that likely led you to them in the beginning, "Let It Rock" reminds that the simple pleasures of beat and swagger know neither age nor genre, and Chandler Holt's contribution "Whipping Boy" makes clear that there's more than one gifted singer and writer in the band (but we knew that). Truthfully, these songs are even the best place to hear how splendidly the band plays together -- I'm still kicking myself for missing them live (twice now!).

But when the record lays everything on the line for pure melody and lyricism, it moves beyond simple floating of skill and grace, and becomes breathtaking. "Birmingham Jail," about the 16th Street Baptist Church Bombing, is almost certainly the best song about the Civil Rights era that a white person will write in this century -- full of sober and novelistic imagery, empathy, journalistic wisdom, and an edge-of-seat intensity from the band. It has the gravity, the rage, the absence of look-at-me flippancy to feel like a potential folk classic.

And yet the smaller, more intimate ideas and recordings are just as moving in their fashions: the alcoholism lament "Sweet Eviction" is the rare folk song that gives a sense of setting as strong musically as verbally ("Stumble by the cathouse / Where the women dance for dollars you made while dreaming"). The melodic permanence, intimacy, wit of "The Carolina" and "Chip of a Star," one driving and gorgeous, the other clipped and warm (and somewhat reminiscent of Sky Blue Sky-era Wilco), connect to us almost automatically, without falling back on the alt-country tropes of cheap machismo and down-home cliché. You feel an urge to carry these songs with you, to know them back to front. And it doesn't take very long.

[SEE ALSO:]
Wildwood (2010)