The Exploding Hearts – Guitar Romantic

Without the rough punk sound, the songs on this record would be ridiculously dopey. Just about every song is about love in its various stages, and most include lines that rhyme “girl” with “world” and “gone away” with “here to stay”. That said, I didn’t mind so much. Between the inventive melodies and jagged guitar fuzz, this record was a lot of fun.

Apparently (and I have no idea if this is true), the manager of the band called them “the best band in America” shortly before they crashed their tour van, killing three of the four band members. Of such provenance, rock legends are born, and I was sort of expecting the Exploding Hearts to be the greatest thing I’d never heard. They weren’t that, but they were an entertaining listen with at least 4 quality songs. I suspect they would have been fantastic live. Sadly, I’ll never know.

(FYI: The songs I liked were “Modern Kicks” and the very catchy “I’m a Pretender” which start the album, and “Sleeping Aides and Razorblades” and “Rumors in Town” which fall right at the midpoint of the record. The second pair of songs, especially, rocked my world.)

Pete Rock and CL Smooth – Mecca and the Soul Brother, The Main Ingredient

This golden age partnership released a demo EP in 1991 called All Souled Out, which was followed the same year by Mecca and a few years later by Ingredient. Then they parted ways. Pete Rock is still producing records, but CL Smooth has mostly disappeared. It’s a real shame, because they were a force together.

I was excited about Mecca because I knew “They Reminisce Over You (T.R.O.Y.)” as a certified b-boy classic from back in the day. Clearly, the rest of the album couldn’t be as good or “T.R.O.Y.” wouldn’t have been a standout track, but I was expecting the record to be a little stronger than it is. The production is great, but it not all the songs got my head nodding.

I wasn’t expecting as much from The Main Ingredient, and I was pleasantly surprised. This is the record I thought Mecca would be. Pete Rock’s drum track finds a heartbeat groove and doesn’t stop for 60 minutes. CL Smooth never sounds out of place or in over his head. There are simply no mistakes on this album. Whereas Mecca takes a lot of chances artistically (and pays for them, in my opinion), Ingredient isn’t as ambitious. It’s just about droppin’ that beat. Word.

OK Go – OK Go

A few months ago, I reviewed OK Go’s album Oh No, one of my favorite albums of 2006. (OK, technically it came out in 2005, but who was listening to it then?) This is the preceding (and debut) album, and while it’s interesting to recognize some of the same style and bombast, it’s equally clear that Oh No was a huge leap forward for the band. This record is for fans only.

There are certainly songs I liked. “Get Over It” starts the album off really well. It sounds a lot like “No Sign of Life” and “Invincible” from Oh No. I also enjoyed the fun vocal delivery of “C-C-Cinnamon Lips”.

But in general, the songs are slower and longer than on Oh No. The band started to remind me of Fountains of Wayne or Spacehog. That is, smart pop, but without the rocket sauce. People who were attracted to the momentum and energy of Oh No will be disappointed.

Lupe Fiasco – Food & Liquor

Few debut MCs get the kind of praise that was showered upon Lupe Fiasco in 2006. Music critics couldn’t slurp this guy fast enough. “Here’s a young, talented rapper who’s not rapping about cocaine! Jackpot!” Some of it is warranted. I like that he’s a socially conscious Muslim. I like that he’s literate and articulate. I like that he’s only fleetingly associated with Kanye West (if only to prevent West from cornering the market on socially conscious hip-hop).

But you know what? I didn’t really enjoy the album. It even took me a few listens to like the single, “Kick, Push”. Appreciating this record just seems like work to me, and that’s not what I look for in music. I can tell that Lupe can rap. (He’s much better here than on Kanye West’s “Touch the Sky”, where I hated his verse before I knew who he was.) He creates some complex structure and internal rhymes in his lyrics. He’s definitely skilled. It just isn’t, for lack of a better word, fun.

For example, certain people claim that James Joyce’s Ulysses is a work of staggering genius and possibly the best book ever written. But it’s so appallingly dense and obtuse that only a few people ever read it. What good is it that you wrote the best book ever, if you can only share it with a handful of dorks with the patience and resources to appreciate it?

Now, clearly, Food & Liquor is not Ulysses. It’s not so opaque as to be completely impenetrable, and it’s probably not the best record ever. But the same problem plagues this record. If I need to listen to this record another 4 times, paying strict attention, in order to appreciate it, is it worth it? Maybe I’m lazy, maybe I have a short attention span, maybe I have a philosophical aversion to Great Art, but I say no. For my money, Fishscale was the best hip-hop album of 2006. Even if I’m uncomfortable (and fascinated) by Ghostface Killah’s depictions of violence and drug trafficking, the music is more urgent, organic, and accessible.

Superdrag – In the Valley of the Dying Stars

I’m in love with Superdrag’s 1996 album Regretfully Yours. I bought it as a teenager for the “buzz” single “Who Sucked Out the Feeling?” and immediately put it on infinite repeat. The album is a power-pop masterpiece from an era that neglected that sort of music. It’s dense with hooks, and every song has at least one. Best of all, there’s a real commitment to melody. Predictably, Superdrag didn’t get much promotion and nobody bought the record. Nobody but me, that is. For a decade, I’ve been sneaking solitary tracks onto mixtapes I’ve made, secretly hoping someone would ask about them and I could share this record with another person.

Oddly, despite how much I adore Regretfully, I never looked for a follow-up until a few months ago. Based on my familiarity with their debut, I had high hopes for In the Valley of Dying Stars. It’s not as good as Regretfully Yours, but it’s a solid rock record. I found that after a few listens, I could sing along to parts I remembered, which is a good litmus test for power pop.
I will definitely seek out the other 2 albums they recorded since Regretfully Yours—A Head Trip in Every Key and Last Call for Vitriol.

Common – Like Water for Chocolate

The only song I really liked was “The Light”, which was the only song I already knew. Seems like the A&R guy that picked the single knew what he was doing. Forgettable.

The Hold Steady – Boys and Girls in America

One interesting distinction between popular music and books is that music is usually inward-oriented and books are not. The vast majority of songs are written from the singer’s perspective and deal with the singer’s feelings and relationships. The first several examples I can think of (and seriously, this took 5 seconds):
The Rolling Stones – “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction”
Stevie Wonder – “I Wish”
The Beach Boys – “Wouldn’t It Be Nice”
Cheap Trick – “I Want You To Want Me”
I could go on and on. I would guess that 95% of the popular music at any given time reflects this perspective, which makes sense if you think about it. Writing and performing a song is a very personal endeavor.

Books, by contrast, are “extrospective” as often as or more often than they are introspective. This is especially true for good books. While a rock songwriter might get away with detailing his love for a groupie for three and a half minutes, an author would be hard-pressed to do the same over 200 or 400 pages (the non-sex parts of romance novels being the notable exception). Books typically require more than one character, so unless an author has a good ear for how other people speak, and an eye for how they act, his writing will seem phony. Consequently, you see more books written from the “Third Person Omniscient” perspective than from the “First Person”. (And regardless of how often authors claim that even books written in the third person are very personal, or how often one of the characters is modeled after or is a stand-in for the author, that typically only applies to one of the several characters a book needs.)

This is essentially the distinction between poetry and prose. Song lyrics are poetry. They usually rhyme, they often employ metaphors and similes, and they have a particular meter (based on the rhythms of the songs they accompany).

This distinction is why Bruce Springsteen’s music interests me. His songs, even when they’re sung from his perspective, typically include other characters. Springsteen uses lines or even whole verses describing these characters and relating the experiences they’ve had. That sounds like exposition, a hallmark of prose. Take Springsteen’s song “Glory Days”, for example. This song is about how Bruce’s best days are behind him, but it’s more nostalgic than bitter. It’s not just about Bruce, however. Each verse has him meeting up with other characters, each with a past of their own.

Anyway, lots of the songs on this album are like that.