KingEd

KingEd

The New Modest Mouse Is Hard to Love, But Even Harder to Hate

 Posted by
May 012007
 

This review originally appeared in Phawker.com.

Whew! My head hurts from all the time I’ve been spending with the latest Modest Mouse album, We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank. This thing’s hard work. When did the world get so smart that they all get it and I’m not sure I do? This band’s moving units, right, and you can’t attribute their appeal to hot looks and sweet hooks. In an act of brutal self-analysis, I persevered. And yes, I’m a better man for having done so.

For the first few spins of this new Modest Mouse album, all I could think of was why I find this band so difficult to like. Their angular funk marches, which are nevertheless not very danceable, aren’t too far removed from the noisier side of XTC, a band I went so far as loving to defend the excessive-by-their-standards The Big Express. At times, such as on the hit single “Dashboard” and “We’ve Got Everything”, those angular funk marches verge into the ‘80s Bands Reunited territory of The Fixx as interpreted by Dave Matthews Band. Fair enough, but no reason to feel tormented by this record.

The sea chantey choruses of songs like the opener, “March into the Sea”, could not set this fan of Pere Ubu’s “Caligari’s Mirror” over the edge. Not at all. In fact, if I had my druthers the production of this album would allow for the clanging guitars to fight for space with singer Isaac Brock’s hectoring yelp. And no, hectoring yelps in an of themselves, I kept telling myself, are by no means deal breakers. But something about Brock’s yelp had me playing the first 4 or 5 songs over and over, never feeling the slightest bit satisfied beyond the brief, rare, melodic Flaming Lips-styled elfin interludes of songs like the opener and “Fire It Up”. Then it came to me: When did Bobcat Goldthwait get reborn as an indie rock singer? To carry on, I would have to steer clear of the deadly Bobcat segments.

Not the worst trip I’ve ever been on

Early on, “Florida” gave me some hope, sounding like one of those hopeless bids for a hit single off a Fontana-era Pere Ubu album. When I finally made it to a track called “Missed the Boat”, the seas began to part. With chiming guitars; choral vocals; and a brief, melodic guitar solo, this number went down easy. How I needed to get my bearings straight.

The album ends with a string of songs that display challenging arrangements; hectoring, good natured, self-critical verses and grand, anthemic choruses; undanceable funk marches; and those damned segments in which Brock channels Bobcat. A song called “Steam Engenius” had me scratching my head with a bad case of “What the hell does this remind me of?” until I remembered the verses to Led Zeppelin’s “Southbound Suarez” mixed with an early XTC backing vocal device. Land ho! The punishing journey of trying to find a way to like this album had paid off. I want to go home.

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Wanted: Arthur & Yu Fans (Profile of the Cliched Indie Rocker)

 Posted by
Apr 182007
 

In the introduction to a streaming audio of the new Arthur & Yu album, my good friends at Phawker wrote:

WARNING, ONLY HIT PLAY IF YOU LIKE: The Velvet Underground, Lee Hazlewood & Nancy Sinatra, Margo Guryan, Karen Dalton, Harry Nilsson, The Everly Brothers, Joe Meek, The Hollies, Serge Gainsbourg & Jane Birkin, Them, Bobbi Gentry, Leslie Gore, Velvet Underground, Skip Spence, Silver Apples, United States of America, Donovan, Leonard Cohen, The Soft Machine, Vashti Bunyan, Marianne Faithful, The Vaselines, The Flaming Lips, Neutral Milk Hotel, The Zombies, Nico, Tonight’s the Night, Don’t Look Back, All Things Must Pass — if not, we feel sorry for you.

Now, I know we’re all supposed to feel sorry for Mr. Mod’s goat having been got, but what about mine?

  • Lee Hazlewood & Nancy Sinatra? Proto-Thrifty Music turd!
  • Serge Gainsbourg & Jane Birkin? Merde!
  • Bobbi Gentry? Yeah, I like big, lacquered hair too.
  • Skip Spence? Bargain-bin keeeeee-raaaaaaaa-zzzzzzy!

I could go on, but how much longer do we have to live with having these third-rate, dollar-bin oddities pushed down our throats as serious influences by the Indie Rock Community? It’s like saying you books or movies are influenced by ’50s pulp fiction and kung fu movies. What’s it lead to? Tarrantino! We’ve fostered musical Tarrantinos long enough. Can’t these guys grow up and get into jazz or classical music already? It’s getting so I miss the days when every Tom, Dick, and Harry finally got around to discovering The Kinks’ golden age.

I’ll check out this album and report back. I encourage you to do the same, whether you fit this profile or not.

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Music That’s Better with the Sound Turned Off: Devo

 Posted by
Mar 292007
 


The great thing about Devo was that you didn’t have to listen to their music to love them. Their appearance on Saturday Night Live, where they performed “Satisfaction” and “Jocko Homo”, complete with the coordinated robot moves, the Booji Boy routine, the yellow HazMat jumpsuits, and a fuzz box mounted directly on one of the guitar players’ guitar, was the atom bomb of the rock ‘n roll age as we knew it. With that appearance, the release of their album, and their spectacular, absurd videos, they launched the eventual MTV/hip-hop-era attack on the value of Brill Building-based song structure, the blues tradition in rock, and perhaps music itself.

Did anyone really listen to a Devo song for the song itself? Sure they had some catchy songs and put a minimalist, repetitive spin on the classics, but without the arch theories and choreographed stage and video presentations what are they but Neil Young’s Trans? Lord knows a generation of rock nerds has wasted time trying to defend the merits of that album the way that generation’s rock nerd big brothers wasted time defending the merits of The Beach Boys’ Love You album, but that’s neither here nor there.

Try turning down the volume on a Devo video someday – turn it all the way down – and tell me if the images onscreen aren’t just as powerful and the song isn’t just as good. Try listening to a Devo record with the volume turned all the way down. Just look at the album cover and read an old interview with Mark Mothersbaugh about the philosophy of de-evolution. The album is just as good as if you had it cranked up.

Turn down the sound to the following video before watching, and see if you can calculate how little enjoyment you lose.

In the decades that would follow the appearance of Devo, the music itself would become secondary, then tertiary to the marketing campaign, the video, the overall buzz. Justin Timberlake puts out a new album, pop culture feature stories and cover shots are booked, the little girls understand, old white guys at laptops hammer out praise using ’00s hipster lingo, and JT videotapes himself live at the GRAMMYS! This is the onanistic world Devo imagined and helped usher in. They accepted our necessary de-evolution and aided nature in having her way.

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Shake Some Action: An Evening with Funhouse

 Posted by
Mar 292007
 


During the first week of freshman year in college I immediately bonded with a fellow supercharged, true believer in rock ‘n roll named Doug. The kid had a raw nerve quality that fed into my own need for letting it all hang out. With a wiry build, a head full of thick curls, and a jagged nose, Doug talked in quick spurts, in deep grunts. His days were spent on a teeter-totter of partying his ass off at night and then spending the following morning jogging off the ills of the previous night. In those days I maintained a more even-keeled dedication to destructive behavior, so I rarely saw Doug while the sun shined.

We’d get together a couple of nights a week to do bong hits and examine the grooves of our favorite records. We’d each pull out 3 or 4 records the other guy didn’t know or may not have fully appreciated and then spend a couple of hours pointing out all the transcendent moments, all the while gauging each other’s reaction and calculating “turn-on points” we might be collecting. (Looking back, no wonder we weren’t getting laid nearly as much as we would have liked.) One record we both loved that we agreed required exclusive examination was The Stooges’ Funhouse.
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Growth Chart: Oasis

 Posted by
Mar 272007
 

Gerry Todd’s recent All-Star Jam, which drew comparisons between an Oasis song and an old number by The Stranglers got me thinking about the 2005 album from Oasis, Don’t Believe the Truth. It’s not a bad album, but that’s not what I care to discuss.

It’s never been a secret that Oasis has lifted hooks from the great works of others, but what’s been overlooked in reviews for their last few albums is that the band is branching out in its recycling of classic rock riffage. Here’s a song that demonstrates the band’s newfound skills. Let me know what you’re hearing in this one – the lifts may be multi-faceted – and in coming days I’ll roll out some other examples of what passes for growth.


Oasis, “Mucky Fingers”

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Minute-by-Minute Review of Wilco’s Sky Blue Sky

 Posted by
Mar 202007
 

If you don’t have it yet or haven’t found another place to check out Wilco’s latest, Sky Blue Sky, you can listen to a streaming version here. As you listen along, I’ll provide the thoughts inside your head.

The opening number, “Either Way”, is a tasty, mellow nugget, isn’t it? They don’t make cascading guitar solos like the one in this song any more – or they didn’t until now. What more can I say – what more can you say? Fine opener!

“You Are My Face” worried me for a minute. I thought they were opening their album with two mellow songs, which is OK if you’re someone else, but you and I like a little fire within the first 8 minutes of a new album. Sure enough, a spark is struck about a minute and a half into this bad boy, when a patented Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere guitar tone shows up and Tweedy and the rhythm section pick up the next verse as if under the direction of Rick Danko. Bring us down, faux Garth, and suddenly we’ve got Simon & Garfunkel doing the quiet verse from “The Boxer”. Now, take us out Garth-like organ player.

“Impossible Germany” is not pleasing us from the git-go. It sounds like some mush that might have come out of our radio circa 1975. I keep waiting for Mickey Thomas to take over the leads for a verse. Do I have time to grow my pinky nail longer, so I can do coke off it? Ooooh, check out Craig Chaquito on lead guitar! And here’s more. I feel a summer breeze. I hope these guys had shit-eating grins while recording this one.
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