This is a collection of writings on popular music, past and present. The featured artists and albums are selected purely on their interest to me personally, particularly if they provoke strong opinions or emotions. Hopefully, these "reviews" can sufficiently interest and persuade the reader to give them a listen, and form an opinion for him or herself.
On the one hand, The Suburbs is a commendable album. On the other hand, it has several critical flaws that undercut its brilliance. Coming a generous three years after their sophomore album Neon Bible (2007), it certainly sounds like what we’d like Arcade Fire to sound like. Pop the CD in your player (if you’re old-fashioned like yours truly), and there’s no mistaking: that signature dry/dull “indie” drum sound, the bawled vocals of Win Butler, the occasional orchestral flourish and some majestic choruses are all present and accounted for. As the cover and track titles indicate, this is somewhat of a concept album, with several two-part suites and numerous references to some sort of civil war breaking out in and between the suburbs. Are Arcade Fire cementing their critical success with a grand statement, or are they reaching too far and not quite up to task yet?
The Suburbs has some brilliant songs, intriguing at first, and memorable after two or three listens. The first three songs make a strong opener, each flowing into the next while preserving a unique quality. The two “Half Light” songs are beautifully epic, sounding like sweeping soundtracks to some imaginary epic film about the Napoleonic Wars. At the same time, songs like “Wasted Hours” showcase a looser, more laid-back sound that was also put to good use on the often bombastic Neon Bible. 1980s style synthesizers have started to make an appearance as well (“We Used to Wait”, “Sprawl II”), showing Arcade Fire are not immune to following trends, rather than setting them.
A few tracks on the album immediately leap out at the listener, especially if he or she is familiar with the previous two albums. “Month of May” rocks harder and faster than anything they’ve attempted before. Another one that is impossible to ignore is “Sprawl II”, with its synth-led “dance” aesthetics. These are brave tracks on an album that for the most part sounds exactly like what we’ve come to expect of Arcade Fire. Apart from these two tracks, The Suburbs is a step back from Neon Bible’s great leap forward, once again embracing the bleakness of 2004’s debut Funeral. Whereas some bands might have relegated these “novelty” tracks to mere B-sides, or a side-project, The Suburbs embraces this diversity. There’s just one problem: the tracks sound too “forced”. “Month of May” sounds exactly like Marilyn Manson’s “We’re From America”, released the previous year. In fact, it sounds like Manson’s “America” with Neon Bible’s own “(Antichrist Television Blues)” played on top of it. The likeness is just too strong to ignore, being a bit off-putting. A similar problem afflicts “Sprawl II”. This track shamelessly mimics Blondie’s “Heart of Glass” by way of Baccara. In a world where lesser offenses are mercilessly punished, Debbie Harry's lawyers should have enough reason to start filing. “Rococco”, for all its interesting rhythmic elements and instrumentation is blessed with one of the most banal choruses of the past decade, along with toe-curlingly self-referential lyrics about “the kids”.
These anomalies aside, the volume of good material is commendable. However, it must be said that The Suburbs is at least three, and possibly four songs too long. At one hour and four minutes, it is some fifteen minutes longer than their previous releases. Sadly, the album suffers through it. Arcade Fire aren’t quite ready to do their The Wall yet; they have the ambition but as of yet they lack the mature songwriting (not to mention much-needed variation) necessary to lay down more than an hour of music. The album is miles ahead of the competition, but its size makes it unpalatable and weighs it down. It especially nosedives after “Month of May”, two or three songs as an epilogue would have been more than enough. Arcade Fire should have taken a leaf out of Radiohead’s and MGMT’s book(s), keeping their latest albums short and extraordinary, rather than falling to the temptation of piling on the songs.
Arcade Fire’s grandest statement yet is commendable for its ambition, scope and sheer volume of eccentric, high-quality pop-rock music with a twist. Not many bands combine the bombast of U2 with a human element, and certainly not in such a thrilling way. The issues with its most outstanding (in the literal sense of the word) tracks somewhat undercut their worth, as does the album’s overall length and somewhat monotonous nature. A flawed masterpiece indeed! Let us hope Arcade Fire manages to surprise next time around, perhaps “pulling a Kid A” before finally making a definitive statement once the band’s experience matches its ambition.
Not many musicals end with a sing-a-long “I’m going to stop wasting my time/somebody else would have broken both of her arms”, but then again no one can accuse Lou Reed of being like Andrew Lloyd Webber. Berlin is one of those albums that is criminally underappreciated upon release, and only slowly gains its status after many decades of critical revisionism. Berlin was a slap in the face, coming after Reed’s defining Transformer (1972), with its toe-tapping classic ‘Walk on the Wild Side’, and the singalongs ‘Perfect Day’ and ‘Satellite of Love’ all wrapped up in a Bowie-produced poppy production. Conceived as a “Sgt Pepper for the 1970s”, Berlin was the antithesis to the single-packed Transformer, forming a cohesive story with each song adding to the narrative.
And what a narrative it is: unlistenably depressing was the critical consensus at the time of release, even grimmer than the Velvet Underground at their most debauched. Following a small exposition in the form of ‘Berlin’, a remake of a track from Reed’s solo debut the year before, the narrative kicks in with ‘Lady Day’. Here, the character of the insecure Caroline is introduced (though not by name), and her habit of singing at bars and being the centre of attention is explained. The setting is mentioned, a grim Berlin “hotel that she called home”, with a “bathroom in the hall”. The bombastic arrangement, particularly the organs, is immediately reminiscent of producer Bob Ezrin’s later work on Pink Floyd’s The Wall. ‘Men of Good Fortune’ paints a picture of working class misery and impotence, presumably a background piece for the other protagonist, Jim. The men of poor beginnings “just drink and cry”. Lou Reed’s narrator dryly comments “and me, I just don’t care at all”, although this could just as easily pertain to Jim’s inner dialogue.
‘Caroline Says I’ is the first up-tempo song, though “upbeat” isn’t a quality that it possesses. It shows Jim and Caroline’s dysfunctional relationship. Caroline’s sayings whittle away at Jim’s self-respect, questioning his manhood, being cruel and vile (“just like poison in a vial”), but Jim thinks he can cope. She’s “still [his] Germanic queen”. This might be a recollection of their first conversation in which she lures him into a masochistic relationship. Jim puts up with Caroline’s comments, for now at least. Near the end of the song, manic drumming accompanies glammy guitar playing as the orchestral arrangement comes to a crescendo and the chorus of the play hovers in the background. ‘How Do You Think It Feels?’ latches perfectly onto the last note of ‘Caroline Says I’, with a bass hook that refers to ‘Walk on the Wild Side’ (so much so that on the 2008 live album, the crowd cheers disproportionately loudly upon hearing the opening notes). The lyrics describe the growing paranoia within the relationship; one of the two seems to be asking the other to quit running over town for days on end (“speeding and lonely”, on some kind of binge), “making love by proxy” and being “afraid of sleeping”. Presumably this is Jim’s inner dialogue, addressing Caroline and her promiscuous barfly behaviour as established in ‘Lady Day’. Caroline’s fear of sleeping hints at her inner demons confronting her when she can’t take her mind off of them. By ‘Oh Jim’, his inner dialogue takes a more active pose. All of Caroline’s friends are “shooting her up with pills”, throwing her on the stage “for a laugh”. Jim is filled “up to here with hate”, and has resigned himself to beating her “black and blue” to get her straight. The song has an appendix from Caroline’s perspective, asking Jim how he could “treat me this way”, while “looking through the eyes of hate”.
2008: the 66 year-old Lou Reed plays a harrowing 'Caroline Says II' on national television, including unambiguous references to spousal abuse.
Side 2 opens with the haunting ‘Caroline Says II’. The song is a rewrite of the Velvet Underground’s then unreleased ‘Stephanie Says’, with all the levity squeezed out of it. Presumably by this point, Jim and Caroline have met up again. “Caroline says/as she gets up off the floor/why is it that you beat me/it isn’t any fun”. She tells Jim that he ought to learn more about himself, and that he can beat her all he wants but she doesn’t love him anymore. Following their confrontation, Caroline puts her fist through a window pane, “she’s not afraid to die”. ‘The Kids’ further details Caroline’s escapades. Her infidelity and promiscuity increases openly, further enraging Jim. The couple’s children (or more precisely, “her children”) are being taken away from her, due to her being unfit for motherhood. The song mentions her drug abuse and unspeakable acts in alleys and bars (“that miserable rotten slut couldn’t turn/anyone away”). Jim is “happier this way”, but he is a “tired man”. The song has a truly disturbing appendix of distraught children screaming for their “mummy”. Different stories exist of how producer Bob Ezrin’s children were “coaxed” into their performance, the most widely cited being that he told them their mother had died. Another version has him locking his children out. In reality, his children’s instructed calling for their mother got a bit carried away, while the crying heard simultaneously was a recorded domestic incident without any specific provocation. [Source: Lou Reed’s collected lyrics]
Bob Ezrin, pictured with Lou Reed, taking a break from making his children cry.
‘The Bed’ acts as the story’s denouement, mentioning the pivotal moment of the story in retrospect and without too much attention. Its dry, tender and repetitive nature represents Jim’s conflicting feelings as he comes to terms with Caroline’s inevitable suicide. Jim tells himself he wouldn’t have started the relationship, had he known how it would end, but that he is nevertheless not at all sad at its conclusion. ‘Sad Song’ is a perfect closer. Its epic qualities and rather literal title make a conceptually strong and lyrically sound conclusion to the story. Continuing on from Jim’s inner monologue in ‘The Bed’, he wonders how things went wrong. “Staring at [his] picture book”, once again comparisons to royalty are made (“she looks like Mary, Queen of Scots/she seemed very regal to me”), just as they were at the beginning of the story (‘Lady Day’, “my Germanic queen”). The song shows his determination to continue, convincing himself he did the best he could, adding twistedly that “somebody else would have broken both of her arms”. Reed strains his voice for the high notes in this song, sounding as vulnerable as the saddened but resolute Jim’s thoughts. A full-blown orchestra accompanies this final hurrah. Melodically, the song owes a lot to ‘Satellite of Love’, as many of Reed’s ballads would for years to come (‘Heavenly Arms’ from 1982’s The Blue Mask, for one).
In production terms, Berlin combines a lush score with the bone-dry vocal “talents” of Reed. He talk-sings in a detached manner, using it to great effect on the more disturbing songs (the latter half of the album). The album could almost be classified as “progressive rock”, considering its elaborate instrumentation, sequencing and literal storyline. Going from poppy glam that flirts with the debauched (Transformer) to truly disturbing, depressing grand statements on Berlin would be Reed’s commercial undoing. Reviewers would hate it, and Reed would have journalists for the rest of his career. Even his own record label used the album against him in court to prove what filth Reed would come up with, left to his own devices. Later in 1973, Reed would tour, reverting to the persona he had established for himself with Transformer. Some Berlin songs made it into the glam-rock set in a stripped down, funked up version with howled vocals. The live albums Rock n Roll Animal (1974) and Lou Reed Live (1975) chronicle this highly commercial period that seemed designed to please crowds and overshadow the Berlin debacle.
Touring in 1973: Lou Reed camps it up as the glam rocker the people wanted to see. The Berlin material would lose its subtlety and grace, and soon be forgotten.
More than thirty years since the release of Berlin, Lou Reed scored a personal victory by excavating the album and performing it as intended. Involving a crack touring band, a full choir and orchestra conducted by original producer Bob Ezrin and backing vocals of Antony “and the Johnsons” Hegarty, the production faithfully recreated the LP, fleshed out with a few extended musical passages. The 2006 performances were released to festivals in 2007 though Julian Schnabel’s eponymous film. In 2008, the soundtrack was released as Berlin: Live at St. Ann’s Warehouse.
A remarkably "ripped" Lou Reed adorns the cover of his most recent album.
The 2006 production, as well as the quality of the musicians breathes new life into Berlin, giving it an urgency and immediacy that was somewhat lost in the original mix. Guitars are much more dominant in this version, with even Reed taking part in exchanging some lead solos despite only playing some acoustic on the album. Reed sings with as much passion as his 64 year-old voice can manage, although sadly he indulges his career-long tendency to sabotage the songs by “soulfully” singing either two seconds ahead or behind of the rest of the music, destroying the melody and pacing in the process. The concert was rounded off with the inclusion of ‘Candy Says’ from 1969’s The Velvet Underground, a recent song ‘Rock Minuet’ which matches the tone from Berlin remarkably well, and rounding off the concert with crowd favourite ‘Sweet Jane’ (Loaded, 1969).
'Sad Song', the album's last track in its 2006 guise. From the 2007 film Berlin.
“ ‘Country and Western’? Wanna hear a country song? I’ll do this song, it’s a little novelty tune.” Responding to a drunken audience request during an impromptu gig at the Bottom Line club in New York, May 16th, 1974, Neil Young launches into “Roll Another Number (For The Road)” from the yet-to-be-released Tonight’s The Night (1975).
A full-band rendition of “Roll Another Number”, played on the Tonight’s the Night tour of 1973.
That might be how Neil Young looked at Country and Western in the early 1970s, but some ten years later, it had become a serious matter. Hawks & Doves followed hot on the heels of the all-conquering Rust Never Sleeps multimedia extravaganza Young undertook with Crazy Horse, finishing the 1970s with a bang. By contrast, Hawks & Doves is one of the shortest albums in his catalogue, over in less than thirty minutes. Six of the nine songs are under three minutes, most of them even closer to two minute bursts. What is carried on from Rust Never Sleeps is the division into two conceptual LP sides, in this case corresponding with the title. The “Doves” side is a casual grouping of several previously-recorded songs, some going back five years to the abandoned Homegrown project. The “Hawks” side is newly recorded material, whose 5 songs flitter past in thirteen minutes. The similarity between the new songs makes Side B more of a conceptual suite than a collection of songs.
The Hawks side presents the listener with the most uncompromising Country and Western Young had recorded up to that point. Of course the soft rock mega seller Harvest (1972) had already included some country tones, banjos and even a song with “country” in the title. Comes a Time (1978) had also served up a healthy dose of acoustic finger picking, harmonising and slide guitars, but the glossy sheen makes it more of a folky , slick soft-rock album. The closest comparison can be made with American Stars ‘n Bars (1977), in more ways than one. It too breaks the record into a previously-recorded odds and sods side (also in part from the Homegrown sessions), and a newly recorded side. The latter is also distinctly country and western, albeit in a more tightly produced and slick manner than Hawks. Hawks unleashes Young’s newly matured country twang and croon to full effect, fiddles are played and most worryingly for his liberal fan base, the genre’s reactionary politics are embraced.
A 1984 performance of the title track. This tour was also a “country and western” affair (see below), so the arrangement is similar to the album version released four years previously.
A sample of lyrics from the above title track: “I’m proud/to be living in the USA/Ready to go/willing to stay and pay/USA/USA”. “Got rock ‘n roll/got country music playin’/if you hate us/you just don’t know what you’re sayin’.” The same anti-establishment singer from “Southern Man”, “Ohio”, “Campaigner”, “Revolution Blues” and “Pocahontas” was now standing up for the silent majority. The material was not even written as a character piece to fit the Hawks concept; Young’s interviews of the time show a frustration with a soft post-Vietnam US foreign policy, the Iran hostage crisis in particular. For an in-depth analysis of the themes, as well as an unusually positive review of the album, Robert Christgau’s 1980 review gives a good contemporary take on Young’s shift in career. Other songs on this side of the album are similar in style, referring to unions (in this case the musician’s union), the “working man”, a lot of references to the collective “we”, and the state of the country. “Union Man” even has a jokey call and response part, with the usually charmingly Canadian-accented Young adopting a faux redneck twang (“ ‘Live Music is Better’ Bumper stickers/should be issued!”).
The first side of the album is the aforementioned pieced-together collection of session leftovers from the previous decade. Rather than start with the more homogeneous (and current) country material and padding out the rest of the album, therefore also matching the album title, the rag tag collection opens the album. This makes it a mirror of American Stars ‘n Bars, both albums theoretically making a double LP with country music bookending on sides one and four. Because Stars ‘n Bars was given the first pickings of unreleased material, its country material was expanded with “Like a Hurricane”, one of Young’s best; “Will to Love” and “Star of Bethlehem”. The barrel was in need of scraping for Doves; “Captain Kennedy” is a typical folk ballad in the traditional “Scarborough Fair” style; “The Old Homestead” is a plodding, cryptically deformed half-brother to Rust Never Sleeps’s beautiful “Thrasher”; and “Lost in Space” has tuned vocals that foreshadow the hit-and-miss Trans period of the early 1980s. “Little Wing” is a suitably “dovey” opening to the album, a remainder of the ambition to record songs with the same title as well-known songs by other artists.
Critical reaction was understandably muted when Hawks & Doves was released in 1980. The messy, unremarkable first side and the reactionary, rather monolithic second side added up to a remarkably brief, underdeveloped album. Gorged on the remarkable Rust Never Sleeps, Live Rust and solidly commercial Comes A Time in the previous two years, the brief Hawks and Doves is extremely underwhelming. Its marginal and flawed status is perpetuated by the history books; Jimmy McDonough’s Shakey dedicates a paragraph to H&D and an entire chapter to Tonight’s the Night. It only transpired many years later that Young was suffering in silence throughout the early 1980s. His second son was born with severe disabilities, and Young and his wife were preoccupied with the round-the-clock care and therapy his formative years required. This would explain the lack of attention given to Young’s albums in this difficult period, as would the lack of an accompanying tour.
Hawks & Doves, despite its obvious faults, is not entirely without its charms. They can be found in its inevitably scrapbook-like quality, and are more of a biographical than artistic nature. The conviction and harshness with which Young broke with his peacenik image (the Dove) and embraced his “Republican” side is thrilling to listen to, and as a genre exercise the Hawks material is played spiritedly and is quite enjoyable for the thirteen minutes that it lasts. Young would return to country and western in the mid-1980s, threatening to never play rock music again until his record company (Geffen) would stop interfering and pushing for commercially viable material. Hawks & Doves is an accessible taster of this style of Young’s material, and quite an intriguing mess.
Blur had something to prove with this, their “last” album. Having had a commendably stable four-man line-up for all of their 13-year career, guitarist Graham Coxon was more-or-less forced out of the band in 2002. Recordings proceeded, however, as did a tour. How would the band fare without the man who defined much of their sound through his distinct guitar-playing, backing vocals, glasses wearing and occasional singing-songwriting, like on the fantastic “Coffee & TV”?
The answer is: “remarkably gracefully”. Not surprisingly, the band is much more oriented towards Damon Albarn’s whims than before, being an unopposed bandleader and creative force. This is also the first Blur album since Albarn’s huge success with the Gorillaz project, and its shadow is clearly felt on Think Tank. A “world music” aesthetic permeates the sound as well, a nod to Albarn’s personal interests (his Mali Music project had come out the year before). It sounds like a recipe for disaster: take a britpop band, add some totalitarian leadership and ill-advised new directions, and watch it sink in the 21st century.
But it must not be forgotten that Blur were much more keen to experiment than their 1990s peers (apart from perhaps Radiohead). Already in 1997, when Oasis released Be Here Now, perhaps the ultimate anthem to Britpop stagnation, Blur had taken a left turn and “gone indie” on their self-titles album. Under creative direction from Graham Coxon, the band had taken American indie rock to heart, taking a more overdriven guitar-led approach. The next album, 1999’s 13 took the hinted-at trip hop influences of its predecessor and combined them with freeform song structures, sensitive ballads and the aforementioned “Coffee and TV”. Blur had released a Kid A album a year before Radiohead.
Compared to 13, Think Tank is much more conventional. It has proper songs, some of them even catchy to the point of being single material. The opening track in particular, is very strong:
Moody, ambitious and with plain lyrics. The instrumentation creates a soundscape that’s as desolate as the Banksy cover artwork. As the dub-like bass plods along, the drum part hints at faraway machinegun fire. Textures are added as the song progresses, finally including saxophone, backing vocals, organ, and several guitar parts. “Out of Time”, the second track, is clearly another strong one, following traditional album sequencing rules of putting the catchy, strong stuff up front to impress the buyer/record company. On this track, the Moroccan instrumentation that shows up on many tracks is heard for the first time. Partly recorded in Morocco, the setting and proposed production duties by Norman “Fatboy Slim” Cook were points of conflict for Albarn and Coxon, in part leading to the latter’s departure.
Nowhere is the ghost of Fatboy Slim felt more plainly than on “Crazy Beat”, the third track. This turd of a song almost ruins the album, cynically retreading the already interminable and omnipresent “Song 2”, but with added synths and a novelty voice that cuts through all the beauty and subtlety of the first two tracks. The paradoxically overweight ghost will make a further misguided entrance on track 12, “Gene by Gene”, although surprisingly not on the equally “high energy” (read: Song 2 retread) “We’ve Got A File On You”. The shock of “Crazy Beat” is considerably softened by the aptly titled “Good Song”, a mellow, dreamy ballad that ranks among Blur’s best. The next several songs are the most characteristic of Think Tank; beat-driven songs, with a certain club element. “On The Way To The Club” lyrically hints at Alice in Wonderland, while also half-citing a certain other major English recording artist with the line “My eyes are blue/and there’s nothing I can do”. “Sweet Song” is an apt companion piece to “Good Song”, a dreamy electric piano-led piece.
The album could not hope for a better ending than “Battery in Your Leg”. It is the only track that is partly credited to Graham Coxon, and the only one on which his playing is heard. It is a melancholy and self-referential piano ballad with epic guitar work that ends the album on a dizzying low, just like “This Is A Low” did on Parklife. It would also end the band’s recording career.
The album received mixed reviews upon release, which is understandable considering the disjointed impression the album leaves on listeners and the negativity surrounding Coxon’s departure. It remains sorely underrated in Blur’s catalogue, although its legacy received a welcome nod when Blur reunited in 2009. Whereas some revisionist bands, like the Red Hot Chili Peppers, shun all material recorded in the absence of certain key members, Blur played “Out of Time” with Coxon on their tourdates.
“Out of Time”, along with “Good Song” and “Battery in Your Leg” also featured on the newly released career-spanning compilation Midlife, an excellent release featuring many album tracks and omiting a few singles. Thankfully, it also spares us from “Crazy Beat”. Think Tank is proof of a band’s ability to transcend its inner difficulties, innovate at a later stage in its careers and produce something intriguing and listenable. While hit-and-miss, its better songs stand the test of time, and show that Blur had plenty to offer in its “terminal” phase.
A reshuffle of a band’s line-up has often taken bands into new directions. Members who were more in the background step in to fill a creative void (think Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters after the departure of Syd Barrett), new members are brought in and either faultlessly emulate their predecessor or add their own spin. When Ronald Jones, the Flaming Lips’ lead guitarist left in 1996, the remaining three members decided to continue without looking for a replacement. A new experimental phase was initiated for the Oklahoma threesome, one that would yield some of the best music of the 1990s.
Not many bands are lucky enough to have a drummer who also happens to be a guitar and keyboard virtuoso. Lucky for the Lips, Stephen Drozd could step into the breach and help make their most ambitious music yet. For their first few albums, The Flaming Lips had made what can best be described as “Freaky Punk Rock”, an acid-fried version of US punk as it was developing in the early 1980s. In the early 1990s, they rode the alternative wave, having a minor hit with “She Don’t Use Jelly” in 1993. Their last album with Ronald Jones, 1995’s Clouds Taste Metallic showed more ambition in their arrangements, hinting at new directions. Losing their guitarist heralded in a phase of great experimentation. Rather than continue as a functional band, the Lips bunkered down in the studio and worked on producing loops of textures, samples and other creations. Spread across dozens of tapes that were meant to be played simultaneously by a participating, conducted audience, new directions in music were explored. The idea was that different pre-prepared parts would yield a sound greater than the sum of its parts due to being slightly out of sync and coordinated on the fly. What started as the “Parking Lot Experiments” snowballed into the “Boombox Experiments” and eventually became Zaireeka, a four disc set meant to be played simultaneously for eight-channel living room mayhem.
The rich, layered sounds that were developed in these sessions would find their way onto the Flaming Lips’ next, “proper” album. Zaireeka had been greenlighted on the condition that it wouldn’t count toward the records that the band owed their label under their deal. What emerged in 1999 is a timeless album that can hold its own against other 1990s classics like Nevermind and OK Computer. The cover, a two-tone image cropped from a 1966 Life feature on the increasing use of LSD among the American population, already somewhat prepares the listener for the contents.
Fig 1: a spread from the original 1966 article in Life magazine.
Any album that opens with the verse “Two scientists are racing/for the good of all mankind/both of them side by side/so determined/locked in heated battle/for the cure that is the prize/but it’s so dangerous/but they’re determined” is bound to be something special. That euphoric opening track, “Race For the Prize” immediately sets the tone for the rest of the album: lush, ambitious, and with a drum sound that is compressed to the size of a pancake. “A Spoonful Weighs A Ton” takes it further, with oboes and harps clashing with synthesized choirs and electronically treated bass. The second verse uses a tinny Run DMC style drum machine to great effect, guiding Wayne Coyne’s “straining Southern choir boy” vocals beautifully. After the two energetic opening tracks, “The Spark That Bled” is the first of several “proggy” suites. Vibraphones and brass parts that have been said to recall (to the chagrin of the artists themselves) the Beach Boy’s Pet Sounds give the first parts of the song a symphonic “tropical” quality, whereas Drozd’s lead guitar piece towards the end recalls the country music prevalent in the band’s native Oklahoma. Various experiments in sound give way to “Waitin’ For A Superman”, one of the first tracks that shows a maturity in Wayne Coyne’s songwriting. Its earnest tone and frank lyrics foreshadow the band’s later hit “Do You Realize”. A logical climax to the loose narrative of the album is “The Gash”, a Wagnerian march that creates a sonic battlefield and urges the listener to contemplate the nature of his weakness. The resolution of the cycle is the utterly breathtaking “Feeling Yourself Disintegrate”, a tear-inducing song that soars as guitars melt among heavenly choirs.
In order to tour with the new material, the band took full advantage of turn-of-the-century technology. Rather than try to recreate the studio masterpieces with a pieced-together touring band, Stephen Drozd recorded drum tracks for the songs, leaving him free to play guitar and keyboards. The demented orchestras, choirs, effects and slide guitar pieces were also left on the backing tracks, blurring the distinction between the studio and the stage. The Beatles found it impossible to recreate their new sounds live on stage and retired from touring; the Flaming Lips brought the studio to their audience. Tightly playing along to a backing track allowed for accompanying video presentations projected onto a Floyd-esque screen at the back of the band. This also allowed videos of Drozd’s drum parts to be played in the background while he played guitar live on top of them. This is a particularly powerful effect in “A Spoonful Weighs a Ton”. [YouTube, embedding disabled.]
Though the band would struggle to deliver another statement as cohesive and focussed as The Soft Bulletin, its reputation as a daring band capable of incredible sonic feats would never dissipate. Their most recent offering showcases the band’s refusal to rest on its laurels and continue their journey into sound. The Soft Bulletin has stood the test of time, and will set the benchmark for all spacey rock albums for years to come.
After the last article’s exploration of the “return to form”, this review tackles another peculiarity in the music industry: the “difficult second album”. Especially in recent years, where artists are expected to produce saleable albums and less commercial work is discouraged or even blocked by record companies, an artist’s second album is often make-or-break. The albatross around the artists’ necks is particularly cumbersome if their first album was a hit. It raises expectations, interest and subsequently pressure. A standard solution to making a second album involves largely continuing the vibe of the original; coasting along with the original formula but with higher production values. Often, this is a good time to introduce synthesizers or orchestras to take the band’s sound to the next level. The second album often contains a single that sounds suspiciously like the first album to assure the public that the artist is still in shape. A large problem with second albums is the fact that all of the artist’s life experiences were distilled into the first; the second stereotypically deals with the newfound fame, or some kind of disillusionment following the previous album. Some notable “second albums” are Room on Fire (2003) by the Strokes, which largely follows the blueprint of its successful predecessor and Favourite Worst Nightmare (2007) by the Arctic Monkeys which keeps the atmosphere of the first, but beefs up the sound with more sonic layers.
MGMT spare us the wrestling about whether their second album is a suitable or worthy successor to 2008’s Oracular Spectacular by creating something almost incomparable. Oracular Spectacular was a somewhat patchy affair, but became a big hit in the months following its release through catchy, danceable “indie” singles like “Time to Pretend”, “Kids” and “Electric Feel”. The rest of the album showed a more experimental side, referencing 1970’s soft rock influences (particularly on “Of Moons, Birds & Monsters”), but the complete album is hit and miss. The logical and commercial thing to do at this point is focus on the pop songs, launch a second album with an instantly recognisable catchy lead single and hope to cross over to more mainstream audiences. Instead, the first song released from Congratulations was a psychedelic romp without a clear structure, chorus or even title, accompanied by a bizarre video:
When the album was released shortly after (generously still available for streaming on the band’s website), it became clear that none of the other tracks had much pop sensibility either. Where were the catchy analogue synthesizer hooks, indie drumming and disco beats from Oracular Spectacular?
MGMT has taken a left turn. The opening track (aptly titled “It’s Working”) features a harpsichord, cor anglais, a pounding rhythm section, Queen-style harmonies and an increasingly intense layering of the various elements. Andrew Vanwyngarden’s falsetto takes on more than aping Bee Gees disco hits this time around, as his echo-heavy multi-tracked lead vocals soar over the arrangement. The track recalls Arcade Fire in their more epic moments. What follows is a brief suite of energetic, inventive songs that provide the necessary ups and downs required to lure the listener into the rest of the album. This stretch of songs also includes the aforementioned “single” “Flash Delirium”, not one bit out of place in between its peers.
Track six, “Siberian Breaks” ends the run of short songs, and would presumably be the first track of the second side of the imaginary LP. By now the band’s 1970s influences are taking them through a prog phase, one that “Of Moons, Birds & Monsters” had only hinted at. The various parts of the twelve-minute song lull the listener through various permutations and dreamy sonic landscapes while never getting bogged down in the trappings of the prog rock genre (think of tights, celestial choirs and subdivided “movements”). It is rudely followed by the high energy thrust of tribute song “Brian Eno”, casting him as some kind of electro wizard villain (“we’re always one step behind him/Brian Eno!”). Surprisingly informative (it even mentions Eno’s “Oblique Strategies” cards used in Bowie’s Berlin Trilogy), this is one of the few songs that could be considered single material, in that it has a proper verse/chorus/verse structure. Its exhausting tempo and geeky subject matter disqualify it somewhat, however.
MGMT cannot be commended enough for crafting Congratulations as their difficult second album. They gave their inspiration and influences free reign, resisted the urge to cash in on their pop success and produced what can already be considered one of the highlights of 2010. Congratulations indeed!
A very specific genre of albums invariably exists in every recording artist’s back catalogue: the “return to form”. Clichéd as it is, the label is often appended by record companies hoping to recover sales figures after an artist’s (less commercial) experimental whims. By this logic, Zuma breaks the downward trend that Neil Young’s career had taken after the success of 1972’s soft-country rock album Harvest, which contained the massive hit “Heart of Gold”. As Young would put it himself in the liner notes to the mid-career compilation Decade: “Heart of Gold put me in the middle of the road. Travelling there became a bore so I headed for the ditch. A rougher ride, but I saw more interesting people there.” The three albums that followed; Time Fades Away (1973, out of print), On the Beach (1974) and Tonight’s the Night (1975) are known as the ditch trilogy, distinctly uncommercial, therapeutic howlings that were recorded in a haze of mourning, weed and tequila. Needless to say, their commercial appeal at the time is inversely proportional to their subsequent acclaim. These albums are widely cited as Young’s strongest work.
Illustration 1: The Pacific Coast Highway, just above Zuma Beach and Sea Level Drive, where Young resided while recording Zuma. [Courtesy of Google Maps' Streetview]
A direct cause for Young’s ditch trilogy, and particularly Tonight’s the Night was the passing of Crazy Horse guitarist Danny Whitten, who overdosed on heroin just after being laid off rehearsals for the Time Fades Away tour. The hole this left in the band meant that Young would collaborate with the other members on his subsequent albums, but not under the Crazy Horse moniker. Zuma marks the first time in 6 years that the Horse played under that name with Neil Young, thanks to the recruitment of Frank “Poncho” Sampedro as the second guitarist intrinsic to the Crazy Horse sound. Here then, do we encounter this fabled “return to form” for the band: the new line-up could continue where “Cowgirl in the Sand” left off in 1969. It must be conceded that Zuma shows a happier band, allowing for a less post-apocalyptic sound than its trilogy of predecessors. Young had finally finished with his wife, Carrie Snodgress. The relationship had fuelled the optimism of Harvest and the despair of On the Beach and the unreleased Homegrown (1975, unreleased). Feeling free, rejuvenated by his new band, Young and his entourage set up shop in the beautiful setting of a home on Malibu’s titular Zuma beach. The drug use continued, but in a more positive vein than on Tonight’s the Night. “Poncho’s such a cool guy. […] I went down to Ensenada with him and we had a great weekend. Drinking beer and tequila at Hussong’s Cantina. Got completely shitfaced. So drunk we could barely walk. My hair caught on fire. Jesus Christ.” Young would nostalgically recall some fifteen years hence. [Jimmy McDonough, Shakey, 490]
Illustration 2: Hair distinctly not on fire: Neil Young and Crazy Horse, 1975. Newcomer Sampedro second from right. [Source]
And yet, Zuma is more than Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere pt. II. Yes, it is a return to more conventional hard rock, with two guitars, bass and drums, but its soundscape and attitude is unique. The loose playing bears only a little resemblance to Everybody Knows This is Nowhere, indebted as that album was to the sounds of the 1960s. This is an update of Crazy Horse in a mid-1970s setting. Rather than becoming as slick and bland as the Eagles, the Horse uses technical advances to sound more ragged and unadulterated than ever. Thankfully, this new set of songs is also arguably the strongest released by Young on a single album. “Don’t Cry No Tears” is an immediately cheery opener to the album, giving a clear indication of the new page being turned. What follows is one of the album’s two “epic” tracks, “Danger Bird”. Presumably somehow related to the album’s crude cover (a rough drawing that was immediately selected by Young before it could be further developed), the seven-minute track is an instant highlight, showcasing the new chemistry between the two guitarists. Beautifully recorded, and presented in nicely separated stereo, the rhythm and lead guitar by Sampedro and Young respectively create a delicately woven wall of sound that intertwines into a gloriously messy crunch. The loose extended jam is entirely led by guitars; drums and bass do not dictate the pacing and only follow. The rhythm guitar crunches along with the plodding bass, leaving Young’s lead free to add flourishes. The occasional soaring background vocals paint the picture of the bird flying despite its wings having “turned to stone”. “Pardon My Heart”, originally demoed with CSN, is the sole acoustic respite to the amplified onslaught on Zuma, a delicate track that would not have sounded out of place on On The Beach or Homegrown. Reflecting Young’s new single life in Malibu, “Lookin’ For A Love” is a remarkably cheerful self-examination, imagining himself moving on with life with a new lover. The flipside of the Malibu experience can be found on “Barstool Blues”, a drunkenly slurred (and not entirely un-Youngly screeched) up-and-down ramble about booze and women, backed by ragged guitar interplay.
Side two opens on a real standout track. “Stupid Girl” is menacing in its duality. It erases all memories of the Stones’ 1966 song and Mick Jagger prancing around Carnaby Street in striped drainpipes and winkle pickers. Ostensibly about Joni Mitchell, guitars dominate this track, creating a seesaw rhythm and an offbeat rhythm lick. Young’s vocals are double-tracked; screeching high and threateningly low. “Drive Back” is a remarkably unremarkable stomp, the kind of macho posturing best left to spandex-wearing lunatics. A centrepiece of the album, “Cortez the Killer” is a fan favourite, and the second of the “epic” tracks. Its introduction lasts some three minutes before the vocals start (just like Bowie’s Station to Station, released the next year). The track fades out around the seven minute mark, before the narrative can reach a proper arc. This is due to the fact that the recording engineer had run out of tape as the band played. “Through My Sails” serves as the album’s epilogue, as if the credits roll by accompanied by CSNY’s soothingly harmonized near-a cappella nursery rhyme.
Illustration 3: "Cortez the Killer" performed by Young and Crazy Horse, 1978. From the Rust Never Sleeps film, 1979.
Young would tour briefly with Crazy Horse, presumably a spectacular show, though with little documentation. Hopefully the imminent second volume of the Archives will shed light on this period. [Update 31/7/10: It has been announced that a 1976 concert recorded in Japan will be released as part of the Archives 2 set.] Young would unexpectedly shapeshift, leaving Crazy Horse without its leader for the umpteenth time. He joined Stephen Stills for an unremarkable album, and a disastrous tour that Young had to escape from midway in 1976. Zuma represents a career highlight; it feels fresh thanks to the new blood in the band, it closes off a difficult period for Young (no matter how productive) and it delivers sensational country-hard-rock in a dense package.
