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.
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Monday, February 26, 2007
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.
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.
Monday, January 15, 2007
3rd Bass – The Cactus Cee/D
I had already downloaded two great songs from this album: “Sons of 3rd Bass” and “The Gas Face”, so I was excited that the rest of the album might be a treasure trove of late-80s white hip-hop goodness. It wasn’t. The rest of the album isn’t bad, it’s just not that great. For starters, there are skits or jokes in between every song. This means that the impressive-looking track listing on the back of the CD is half filler. I can’t wait to unclick those songs on my iTunes so they’ll never make it to my iPod. The tracks that are actual songs are pretty respectable, but the production is a little lazy, and the two rappers never drop any really memorable lines. One thing I kept hearing was when the producer used two different samples in the same song, and they were just a little out of tune with one another. That has always bothered me. (Notorious B.I.G.’s “Unbelieveable” comes to mind.) It’s something you rarely hear today, because the ProTools wizard on hand will fix it with a computer.
The bottom line: this CD is reassuring proof that pre-Eminem white rappers weren’t all lame-ass Vanilla Icicles. There are 3 or 4 solid songs. It’s worth cherry-picking them song-by-song on iTunes.
The bottom line: this CD is reassuring proof that pre-Eminem white rappers weren’t all lame-ass Vanilla Icicles. There are 3 or 4 solid songs. It’s worth cherry-picking them song-by-song on iTunes.
Thursday, January 4, 2007
Average White Band – AWB
Previously on this blog, I reviewed the Average White Band album Cut the Cake. I thoroughly enjoyed that record. This record, AWB, was released only a year prior to Cut the Cake, but it simply doesn’t compare.
Too often on this record, the band sounds over-produced. It’s too slick. It reminded me of Chicago. For a funk band, to be mistaken for easy listening/lite rock/elevator music is a serious problem. The main problem seems to be the vocals. Singer Alan Gorrie is trying to do too much with his voice, the lead vocal is too prominent in the mix, and the lyrics are pretty inane. Here’s a sample from “Person to Person”, a song about how badly Gorrie misses his lady when he’s on the road and how their long-distance phone calls don’t do the trick: “Wish you could be with me / There would be no problem / Our communication’s bad / And I want to see you again.” WHAT? It sounds like a whine set to music. It doesn’t even rhyme! Look, for white Scotsmen, these guys are funky. But they’re not funky enough to pull a James Brown and write lyrics that don’t rhyme.
But “Pick Up the Pieces”, the only instrumental on the album, succeeds for two reasons. First and most obviously, there are no vocals. This is a classic case of addition by subtraction. Second, this might be the tightest, funkiest composition by anyone, ever. (It’s certainly in the top 10.) The mix is terrific, and the band is in lockstep. Listening to the song, I wondered how many takes it must have taken to get it so perfect. The arrangement is complex, but there isn’t a note that isn’t right in time, with feel. A quick listen to the live version of the song, included as the final track of the album, shows just how sloppy the song can get. The studio version must have taken weeks.
I was already familiar with “Pieces” from its use in the guy movie Swingers, where director Doug Liman used it for an L.A. driving sequence. Coincidentally, that’s exactly how I listened to it: driving home from work on Sepulveda Blvd. While other aspects of that movie (the Sinatra worship, for one) haven’t aged as well, something tells me that this song will never feel dated.
The bottom line, however, is that you can find that one great song elsewhere. Don’t buy this album.
Too often on this record, the band sounds over-produced. It’s too slick. It reminded me of Chicago. For a funk band, to be mistaken for easy listening/lite rock/elevator music is a serious problem. The main problem seems to be the vocals. Singer Alan Gorrie is trying to do too much with his voice, the lead vocal is too prominent in the mix, and the lyrics are pretty inane. Here’s a sample from “Person to Person”, a song about how badly Gorrie misses his lady when he’s on the road and how their long-distance phone calls don’t do the trick: “Wish you could be with me / There would be no problem / Our communication’s bad / And I want to see you again.” WHAT? It sounds like a whine set to music. It doesn’t even rhyme! Look, for white Scotsmen, these guys are funky. But they’re not funky enough to pull a James Brown and write lyrics that don’t rhyme.
But “Pick Up the Pieces”, the only instrumental on the album, succeeds for two reasons. First and most obviously, there are no vocals. This is a classic case of addition by subtraction. Second, this might be the tightest, funkiest composition by anyone, ever. (It’s certainly in the top 10.) The mix is terrific, and the band is in lockstep. Listening to the song, I wondered how many takes it must have taken to get it so perfect. The arrangement is complex, but there isn’t a note that isn’t right in time, with feel. A quick listen to the live version of the song, included as the final track of the album, shows just how sloppy the song can get. The studio version must have taken weeks.
I was already familiar with “Pieces” from its use in the guy movie Swingers, where director Doug Liman used it for an L.A. driving sequence. Coincidentally, that’s exactly how I listened to it: driving home from work on Sepulveda Blvd. While other aspects of that movie (the Sinatra worship, for one) haven’t aged as well, something tells me that this song will never feel dated.
The bottom line, however, is that you can find that one great song elsewhere. Don’t buy this album.
Herb Alpert & Tijuana Brass – Whipped Cream & Other Delights and Definitive Hits
I like these albums and I like this band. I first discovered Herb Alpert through the Christmas Album they made in the late 1960’s. I really like their Latin-jazz approach to Christmas standards. So I looked into these two albums to complete my picture of the band. The problem with this music is that for all the imagination, the innovative arrangements, and technical ability involved, the music is really lightweight. There’s a reason these songs have been used as game show themes and elevator music: they’re one artistic rung above commercial jingles. This isn’t music I could ever listen to on my headphones with my eyes closed. It’s music made for the background of cocktail parties.
That said, Herb Alpert and the Brass succeed at that task admirably. Definitive Hits covers every notable song from the 1960’s, plus a few from the 1970’s and 80’s that I guarantee you’ll skip. Whipped Cream is their most popular and (probably) best album. Basically, if you like mariachi lounge music from a more optimistic era, you will like these albums.
That said, Herb Alpert and the Brass succeed at that task admirably. Definitive Hits covers every notable song from the 1960’s, plus a few from the 1970’s and 80’s that I guarantee you’ll skip. Whipped Cream is their most popular and (probably) best album. Basically, if you like mariachi lounge music from a more optimistic era, you will like these albums.
Wednesday, December 13, 2006
OK Go – Oh No
This album is a lot of fun. It fits pretty comfortably into the New New Wave, skinny-tie, modern dance-rock genre that’s become common recently, but the music doesn’t sound hackneyed and familiar. Unlike, say, the Killers, there’s a sense of playfulness here. The members of OK Go genuinely seem to be having a fucking blast playing the music on this record.
There are plenty of good songs. Most people are familiar with “Here It Goes Again” because of the now-famous choreographed treadmill dancing video. “Invincible” and “A Million Ways” are the most obvious nods to today’s popular dance-rock. “A Million Ways,” in particular, borrows the bouncy energy and angular basslines of Franz Ferdinand. The rhythmic sway of “Oh Lately It’s So Quiet” seems tailor-made for the ending montage of a network TV drama, but the song is so catchy that its overuse on television will be easy to excuse.
The real stunner, however, is “No Sign of Life”, an anthem carved from a solid block of awesome. This song is bigger than anything else on the album, and it practically begs for a pyrotechnic display (I think there might actually be PT stage direction in the liner notes). Following a simple, repeated riff and an enthusiastic yelp from some computerized background singers, this song lumbers to life. It’s not in any hurry, because it wants to rock you thoroughly and the faster it goes, the sooner it’s all over. God knows what this song is about, but when he sings that he could “hear his heart beat / and beat and beat and beat and beat” I can no longer keep from singing along.
Buy this record.
***FULL DISCLOSURE: I didn’t actually buy this album. I borrowed it from my friend Dan, who liked it but didn’t love it. His complaint was with the lyrics. I think he meant that they were trying to be too clever. Which might be true. Singer (and presumably lyricist) Damian Kulash uses words like “politesse” and “urbanity”. But for me, that doesn’t distract from the fun.
There are plenty of good songs. Most people are familiar with “Here It Goes Again” because of the now-famous choreographed treadmill dancing video. “Invincible” and “A Million Ways” are the most obvious nods to today’s popular dance-rock. “A Million Ways,” in particular, borrows the bouncy energy and angular basslines of Franz Ferdinand. The rhythmic sway of “Oh Lately It’s So Quiet” seems tailor-made for the ending montage of a network TV drama, but the song is so catchy that its overuse on television will be easy to excuse.
The real stunner, however, is “No Sign of Life”, an anthem carved from a solid block of awesome. This song is bigger than anything else on the album, and it practically begs for a pyrotechnic display (I think there might actually be PT stage direction in the liner notes). Following a simple, repeated riff and an enthusiastic yelp from some computerized background singers, this song lumbers to life. It’s not in any hurry, because it wants to rock you thoroughly and the faster it goes, the sooner it’s all over. God knows what this song is about, but when he sings that he could “hear his heart beat / and beat and beat and beat and beat” I can no longer keep from singing along.
Buy this record.
***FULL DISCLOSURE: I didn’t actually buy this album. I borrowed it from my friend Dan, who liked it but didn’t love it. His complaint was with the lyrics. I think he meant that they were trying to be too clever. Which might be true. Singer (and presumably lyricist) Damian Kulash uses words like “politesse” and “urbanity”. But for me, that doesn’t distract from the fun.
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