This is terrible, this may be the worst attitude I’ve had about a new release in years. It’s been 2 weeks since I purchased Nick Lowe‘s new album, The Old Magic. I’ve yet to spin it. As anyone who knows me and my Insta-Reviews can tell you, “KingEd don’t sit on new releases for 2 weeks.” OK, I sat on a pile of Robert Pollard-related releases sent to me by Townsman kpdexter for too long, but that was because life was crazy busy, not because I had a bad attitude about listening to Pollards then-latest 19 albums.
I’ve got a real bad attitude about this new Nick Lowe album. Let’s start with the first contributing factor:
Ever read that book Alive, about the Uruguayans who crashed in the Andes and were so desperate for food that they resorted to cannibalism? I suffer like that once in a while as well. Sometimes I get so hungry for something new to listen to that I’ll plop just about anything on the turntable, literally anything: The Damnation of Adam Blessing, The Beacon Street Union (Boston, by the way, is hands down the all time worst town for rock and roll), The Fort Mudge Memorial Dump, etc. It’s been ages since I’ve unearthed a single gem. There’s damn good reason why all those obscure psych bands never got anywhere. They blow. The world would be much better off if some kind soul would root out all that crap and bury it in a landfill. Too much precious time is wasted trying to find studs of corn in those turds.
About a week or so ago, I decided to call it quits with the whole psych thing to spend time with a bunch of records that did well on the charts but never made it to my turntable. Hence, my visit with Nilsson Schmilsson. Over the years, I’ve had the thing for sale at least 30 times. It always sells. I just assumed it had to be bad based on the fact that Nilsson was responsible for it. Simply put, Nilsson meant “dogshit.” For years, I told myself I wasn’t gonna get screwed by him again. I pissed away good money on his first two records based on the fact that John and Paul high fived the efforts. They were both yawners, filled with lots of neat sounds that didn’t add up to anything.
That said, I loved and still love “One” and “Everybody’s Talkin’.” How can you not think those songs are absolute winners?
Probably because I was too tired to look for anything else as well as the two winners cited above, I decided to remove the Nilsson Schmilsson ultrafloppy RCA Dynaflex disc from its jacket and give it a spin. What follows is my take on the thing:
Artists who followed in the stylish, world-weary tradition of British art rockers David Bowie and Bryan Ferry painted, or hair-gelled, themselves into a corner, including the leading lights of this style of music. Early ’80s New Romantics and the extended Bauhaus scene of musicians also come to mind. Once you’ve seen and done it all, rocking European-cut suits to boot, what’s left to reveal? Who buys modern-day Bowie in 100% unbleached cotton shirts and jeans? Bowie, who strikes me as a mature man who is as comfortable as he’s ever been in such garb, is forced to carry on a public persona that taps into his Thin White Duke elegance. What is the sound of an all-cotton Bowie, Ferry, or Adam Ant, for that matter?
Weird Hot, the latest band led by our very own Townsman Shawn Kilroy, may help to answer that question on their new album, Casimir. Kilroy and his mates deliver nine elegantly crafted, European-tailored art-pop songs that are unburdened by living up to some Kilroy legacy of jet-setting, high-life proportions. Without going “country” or resorting to any other deliberate stylistic device the band manages to strip down a sound rooted in UK art rock and deliver their goods in as straightforward and “grown up” a way as an artist working in a more “traditional” vein, like Nick Lowe, has manages to do. It as if the gently poppy undertones of a band like Love & Rockets figured out how to on with the times. On a song like “Mimeograph” it’s as if Spoon finally drops the self-aware pervasive smarm that annoys me and delivers the straight-up take on Bowie’s whiteboy-alien funk-pop that they have in them, complete with an appropriately ’80s-style guitar solo (a phrase I never thought I’d say). Then there’s “Jealous,” which drops the attention-grabbing, self-absorbed histrionics that marred even the best of Elegant UK Art Rock for hopelessly gimme-some-truth me.
I dig Kilroy and Weird Hot. It’s music that looks you square in the eye.
In this week’s edition of Saturday Night Shut-In Mr. Moderator dips, almost exclusively, into the New Releases bin, spinning records he’s never before heard by bands, in some cases, he’s never previously heard. See whether Mikey likes any of them. See if you do too.
[audio:https://www.rocktownhall.com/blogs/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/RTH-Saturday-Night-Shut-In-19.mp3|titles=RTH Saturday Night Shut-In, episode 19]
[Note: The Rock Town Hall feed will enable you to easily download Saturday Night Shut-In episodes to your digital music player. In fact, you can even set your iTunes to search for an automatic download of each week’s podcast.]
I’ve made a pledge for 2011 to listen to and comment on more NEW MUSIC. It’s important to listen to NEW MUSIC and see if any of it’s good, if any of it makes me want to continue to seek out more NEW MUSIC. Right? Without further ado, here are some very quick hits, to see if I can’t kickstart a year of NEW MUSIC reviews!
Destroyer, “Kaputt”
Destroyer, the band led by New Pornographer Dan Bejar, has a new album out called Kaputt. It’s getting a lot of feature reviews, all of which focus on synths, sax, and—one potential saving grace—late-period Roxy Music. I like Roxy Music enough to have dug their later period almost as much as their middle period (but not half as much as their first 3 albums). I associate Bejar’s typical sound as being “Bowie-esque,” so that should be close enough to make a venture into late-period Roxy Music gelatinous funk-lite worth checking out. Let’s see… Here’s the title track from Destroyer’s latest.
Analysis: This video is funny and ridiculous, but is this guy concerned with anything but outdoing the telegraphed video smarm of Andy Samberg? The lyrics are really stupid (and stupid for trying to be funny), and there’s little of musical value. And the song is over 6 minutes long! Ha, ha. This is a decent joke. Fuck you, Samberg.Continue reading »
I went to see an old friend’s band last week and ended up staying through the end of the night to see not only my friend’s band but the stylishly suited opener and the final band on the bill, a young Brooklyn outfit called Apollo Run. No offense to the first two bands, who delivered the kind of fine, traditionally rocking sets I’ve come to expect of them, but I want to focus on Apollo Run.
As they started their set with some mellow songs along the lines of the first YouTube clip here, loaded with rug harmonies, I was both impressed by the band members’ ability to harmonize on nonsense syllables and a bit bugged by the fact that some of the songs reminded me of that Fleet Foxes appearance on Saturday Night Live last fall. As with Fleet Foxes, I was impressed by how deftly and specifically Apollo Run bugged me that way I was bugged by rug pioneers like Crosby, Stills & Nash. I thought there was a point when I would live long enough to never have to hear a certain type of music again, but I was wrong. Rug harmonies are back.
Then the band began to loosen up a bit. Their opening song’s promise of some Police-like dynamics resurfaced along with more rocking dramatics along the lines of Queen and poppier late-period prog bands, like Asia or something (super-cute, engaging singer/keyboardist/guitarist/trumpeter John McGrew would have killed leading a progressive arena band from the late-’70s). More modern influences, surely, came to the fore, influences I could not identify if my life depended on it. They were so anthemic and “1980s,” at times, that I had visions of young, buzz-cutted Tom Cruise and Val Kilmer high-fiving over their soaring harmonies. It was terrifying, but it made me regret some of what I might have missed out on during my too-cool-for-school youth.Continue reading »
Last week, as I set Keith Richards‘ memoir, Life, cowritten by novelist and friend James Fox, on my nightstand each night after an hour’s worth of reading I couldn’t help but reflect on the back-cover photograph of a gleefully shambolic Keef, in a pose very similar to the one atop this post. “It must be nice to see yourself in this way,” I thought, “and think, Yeah, that’s the shot for the back cover of my memoir!”
This is probably why I can’t stand having my picture taken. I’m nowhere near as comfortable in my skin as Keef is in his. His comfort with himself also comes out in the writing of this book, which is laid back, down to earth, sometimes rambling, a bit self-satisfied, and surprisingly sweet. Who would have thought Keef was so into cuddling? There’s a brief bit in which he discusses all the women of Mick Jagger who inevitably end up crying on his shoulder. He tops it off with something to the effect of, “No one thinks of me as ‘Uncle Keith,’ but that’s a side of me.”Continue reading »
