What’s Your Humble Album?
Not all rock bands who’ve been around and in the limelight for sometime make one, but the Humble Album can be a welcome respite for the band’s dedicated rock nerd fans. This is the album in which our larger-than-life rock heroes take a step back, whether by design or default, and put out an album that falls a bit flat for the general public but, over time, satisfies the longings of rock nerds hungry for that next underappreciated album that only the chosen few will ever get.
Although The Beatles self-consciously tried to Get Back and Let it Be, perhaps rock’s first Humble Album was The Rolling Stones’ Between the Buttons. In aping bits and pieces of the pot-smoking Beatles, The Kinks, Dylan, and other contemporaries, the Stones produced a ramshackle, oddball album that, briefly, put aside the American R&B workouts and, instead, sounded like something an honest-to-goodness 2nd-rate British Invasion band might release as the highpoint of their humble career. I believe it’s the humble nature of Between the Buttons that makes it so effective despite its obvious shortcomings in light of the band’s Rock Legacy.
The Kinks struck critical gold with its extended Humble Album period, culminating in the most humble of Humble Albums, The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society. Here, rock was brought down to scale, to the general apathy of hormonal rock fans but the delight of lonely outsiders fanning the flames of Rock’s True Potential fo Intimacy.
Bob Dylan’s Humble Album, John Wesley Harding, is another personal favorite of your Moderator. Supposedly recorded during a retreat following his mythical motorcycle accident, the album is no less opaque than earlier Dylan albums, but he’s dropped the cynical visionary vibe for something more…humble. I can’t get enough of this album. I never feel the need to lift the needle over objectively great songs that, nevertheless, often bore the snot out of me and/or beat me into submission (eg, “Ballad of a Thin Man”). The songs on John Wesley Harding don’t scream for my attention.
Although the Humble Album may have led to rock’s first truly Humble Band, The Band, and then countless British rock stars who would dedicate their careers to humility (George Harrison, Eric Clapton, Traffic, Fairport Convention), the Humble Band and Humble Rock are different than the Humble Album. The Humble Album is just a phase. The bands making their humble album will eventually snap out of it and return to flexing their Rock Superpowers. Van Morrison’s Veedon Fleece, however, is humble.
Surely bands would continue to release Humble Albums. Did one of your favorite bands hit on a Humble Album? I’m curious to hear some of the Humble Albums I’ve missed over the years. I look forward to your responses.
Mutations by Beck. It’s the only album of his I’ll still listen to.
Perfect suggestion, Shawn! I FINALLY got around to buying a copy of that just last week. I’d had half the songs downloaded and figured I might as well have them all.
Let’s get on a roll, peeps.
The string of albums following Brian Wilson’s breakdown benefit from a humble approach.
This new Wilco album is a contender.
Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci’s The Blue Trees.
Maybe Paul Westerberg’s Stereo/Mono.
Some albums find a band or artist “stripping things down” but still feel like “major statements,” sometimes due to the band/artist’s inherent, intractable attachment to big ideas. I’m thinking of Elvis Costello’s King of America and Blur’s self-titled album, where the humbling has almost proctomusicology bent to it, as in “Look how humble we can be!”
Great points, Oats, regarding King of America and that Blur album! I had considered something similar when I ruled out KoA. I sense that Costello is incapable of releasing a Humble Album. Nick Lowe, on the other hand, has benefitted greatly over the past 10 years or so by going exclusively humble. I doubt he’ll get off the Humble Train in the coming years, so this is no longer considered a phase he’s going through.
Here’s a question: I considered giving The Who Sell Out as an example of an early Humble Album. I think it is, with the emphasis on “little” songs and Townshend singing a higher percentage of lead than he ever would again, but I’m not sure if you would agree.
Oats – oh! great pick for humble, one of my top five bands and a really fantastic album. R.I.P. Gorky’s. Also, how about William Bloke by Billy Bragg; it was his softest album because he just became a new father to a baby boy and a lot of his lyrics cut away from the political because he felt inspired by his son Jack rather than winning any political arguments. He even changed his lyrics around that time to ‘A New England’ whenever he played it live to reflect his current life. Right after that album his single for ‘Take Down the Union Jack’ was released from his album England, Half English. Back to the political.
I always thought the most modest Kinks record was Muswell Hillbillies. And the Stones Beggar’s Banquet is fairly modest as well. Also Led Zeppelin III.
I agree with you on Led Zep III, Good Dr. – good one – but I ruled out Beggars’ Banquet for similar reasons as I ruled out King of America: it seems self-consciously modest and humble. Meanwhile, Jagger and Richards really pile on the – believe me, newcomers to RTH, there’s nothing I care to do less than introduce the phrase I’m about to introduce here for the first time (vets of the old list will know what I’m talking about and feel my pain) – “blackface” on this album.
Re: Blackface and Beggar’s Banquet
Good points. Yet rock has always used blackface, as any number of people have argued. There is nothing authentic, then, about rock that could be tarnished by its stealing from other sources. In fact, that is what defines it.
What bothers me more about BB is its clumsy articulation of “rock for the common man.” Salt of the Earth really bugs me in this regard.
For me, a lot of Van Morrison albums fit the bill of the humble album, starting first perhaps with His Band and Streetchoir, but I feel that way about some of his early 80s albums like Beautiful Vision.
After the self-conscious ambition of their first record, I think much of the rest of the Feelies’ music also fits this bill for me.
Nick Lowe’s “mature” trilogy? Not quite, because the restraint is actually key to what’s ambitious about these records compared to his earlier output.
Although it’s by comparison to Jefferson Airplane, the self-titled live debut Hot Tuna record contains tasteful, understated playing and timeless tunes not marred by the Airplane’s tendency to overreach.
Similarly, Mr. Mod, I think part of the virtue of Morrison Hotel is the way it scales back on the overreaching ambition that often defines The Doors. It rocks harder, sure, but it’s also more humble somehow.
I was thinking, by the way, about who defines the humble impulse in rock–and I’m just trying this out, but who would second my vote for Buddy Holly?
I’m down with that idea, Mark. I’d also put a nod in for The Everly Brothers.
Buddy Holly wasn’t humble — ever. What are you guys smoking? He was ambitious as hell. Now KISS’ “Music From the Elder”… *there* was a Humble Album!
C’mon, hrrundi. We’ve been through this before. Buddy Holly was ambitious as a carreer choice, but his musical personna and song delivery had a lot of humility in it. besides which, humility isn’t the opposite of ambitious. Look at Ghandi! If we were talking about unambitious people, which a bunch of grown-ups sitting at terminals half the day tend not to do, that would be the time to make your point.
Yep, the General is right. Someone whose work DEFINES the humble impulse in rock and roll would have to be ambitious as a person.
A question for Mr. Moderator: How — if at all — do “humble albums” differ from “small rock,” which is my term for (usually indie-)rock that deliberately eschews The Power and the Glory in favor of humbler — but no less laudatory — aims.
Many responses at once:
Townsman Mark: Good points re: Nick Lowe, The Doors, and Hot Tuna, although the latter may not qualify because – as Hot Tuna – they are inherently humble (this will get to Tonwman Oats’ question). My…just thinking about the humility of Morrison Hotel makes me wish I had it for the car ride home.
Buddy Holly is a good choice for an early maker of Humble Rock; however, he did not release as Humble Album, as such. Again, this gets to Oats’ question.
To answer Oats’ question, I tried to set up the Humble Album as its own thing. Part of the deal was that this album was an anomaly. I think what’s special about the Humble Album
and what allows “true” fans of the artist making the Humble Album to like it more than it might, indeed, deserve being liked is that it allows for empathy. Often the Humble Album is a “failure”; people like us can handle the truth. It’s the others – those fans raising the lighters at concerts – who can’t handle the truth. The Humble Album is a glimpse behind the Wizard’s Curtain, and we feel better about the Wizard for having caught this look.
The fact that small rock “deliberately eschews The Power and the Glory” puts it more in the camp begun by the likes of The Band. This is a reactionary form of rock, that means to make a Statement, even if with a lower care s. The first Humble Rock album, Between the Buttons sounds the way it does by default. We gain empathy for it because of its unintended effect. Soon enough the Stones would reapply their SuperPower Capes and resume their World Domination. The further they got from this rare instance of humilty – with Charlie Watts even playing many of his own drum parts – the more we appreciate that album.
Good stuff, people. Keep it coming!
Got it. Thanks for this thoughtful response, Mr. Mod!
Well, on the Stones, how about Goat’s Head Soup?
has anyone mentioned “The Velvet Underground”? Definitely reeling it in there…
Jim, you say “buttons” is the first humble album ever, but what about “Beatles for Sale”?
oh dear, what can i do,
art
How about the Traveling Wilburys album?
a jeff lynne production…and it sounds like one…
but still, i see what you mean. it has that feel of an album where everyone puts their egos aside for the sake of the song.
Apple Venus, Pt. 1
Isn’t that a cobbled together US release – not a real album? Regardless, it is a good, humble album. It’s got a bit of a defeated vibe. If that one came first, so be it.
Sammy, I wouldn’t have considered Apple Venus, Pt. 1, because who would think one of rock’s ultimate Prock musicians could go humble, but that’s actually a good one.
i’ve heard “beatles for sale” described both ways…but normally, i hear it described as the batch of songs they recorded after a particularly long and arduous tour…
but hey, whatev…you’ve got it right: defeated. there’s where the embrace of the acoustic really begins…not rubber soul.
i agree with your assessment of “buttons”: humble is the right word.
the stripped down sound of the white album makes it sound humble, especially on the heels of the pomp of “mystery tour”.
i think the t-heads “little creatures” is an attempt at a humble effort after their “shark jump” period (from about “the name of this band is…” to “stop making sense”). of course, the press went nuts for it, and jumped their own shark.
My choice for this category is Mummer. After releasing 3 albums in a row that fans and critics still point to as their best, this was Andy Partridge’s post-breakdown album. It was quiet, pastoral and feels like a deliberate stepping down from the ambition of English Settlement. For whatever reason, it’s held up really well for me and it’s one of my favorite XTC albums.
I’m also surprised that no one’s mentioned John Wesley Harding and/or Nashville Skyline.
Oh and Oats, I wouldn’t put Stereo or Mono in there because while they’re certainly humble in how they were recorded, I view them as great comeback albums and also a “return to the roots” effort as well, which are both separate categories. I like your points about the faux-humbleness of King of America and Blur (an album I’ve never been able to appreciate, incidentally).