Continuing with the prescribed listening order from Townsman Kpdexter, it’s time I catch up on my overdue record review of Boston Spaceships‘ third release of 2009, Zero to 99. The first few times I spun this album it was among my least-favorite of the batch of 2009 Pollard releases that my man sent me, but over time some of the things I initially perceived as impediments to my enjoyment of the album became points of entry.
Unlike the first two Ships (as hardcore fans call them) album, Brown Submarine and The Planets Are Blasted, Zero to 99 is less focused and a bit noisier, more like what I’d come to expect from a typical Guided By Voices album. The opening track, “Pluto the Skate,” is the kind of brief F-U that Pollard left behind on the first two Boston Spaceships albums. “Trashed Aircraft Baby” revives use of his beloved Radio Shack mic. What sounds like some cheap bobo bass straining the limits of an early ’80s model Peavy amp stomps all over “Psycho Is a Bad Boy.” As I got acquainted with this album after listening to the first two I found the tight-ass in me missing the Quality Control processes that helped those first two albums go down so easily. Continue reading »
When news of this album first hit I was surprised that Pollard was starting a new band. After all, hadn’t he released 203 albums with Guided By Voices and another 144, since the waning days of GBV, as a solo artist? Why not continue on the solo route, I thought. If he was going to have a new band I was hoping it would be a full-blown prog-rock affair, a launching point from one aspect of his large body of work that would allow him to fully explore that side of his songwriting. Someone interesting needs to don the dashiki and tackle that beast before too long.
As it turns out, Boston Spaceships would present a streamlined take on a lot of what I liked best about GBV: the forearm-pumping rock anthems with a touch of Who Sell-Out-inspired psychedelia. A track entitled “Psyche Threat” particularly satisfies Pollard’s interest in that aspect of The Who’s sound with fast-moving chord intervals and a hint of what sounds like one of John Entwistle’s french horn parts. Quick-strummed, Diddley-esque acoustic guitar rhythms propel “Ate It Twice,” wrapping up with a little Yardbirds-style rave-up. As on the band’s later 2009 release, The Planets Are Blasted, drummer John Moen keeps spry, focused rhythms. In some ways this makes Pollard’s music sound more “normal,” but considering that he seems like he’s been trying to make a form of Classic Rock since the last few GBV albums, if not earlier, why shouldn’t the rhythms gel more consistently than they used to?
Another thing that strikes me about these Boston Spaceships albums is that Pollard’s voice doesn’t sound as if it’s running through a Radio Shack mic and cheap, ’80s digital delay, as I grew accustomed to hearing it on countless GBV releases and his first couple of solo records. Pollard doesn’t couch his voice in any new aural dressing, but his voice projects just fine without it on a poppy, straightforward song like “You Satisfy Me.” What I’d really like to hear one of these days, on one of these more-focused Pollard releases, is a lead guitar player (or other musician) who can dig in and “create his own shot,” to use a basketball analogy. The lack of a soloist is not missed on a Buzzcocks/Beulah tune like “Ready to Pop,” and Mick Ronsons aren’t falling off trees, but with all the power chording Pollard favors in his music I’d like to hear someone in his band grab the fretboard and go for the gusto more often. The album-closing “Go for the Exit,” for instance, hints at a steppin’-out guitar solo, but it’s buried. The rhythms are there, Bob, now let it rock!
In my 2009 year-end review with my managing editor, Mr. Moderator, one of my stated objectives for 2010 was to more aggressively pursue reviewing new releases. It’s now May 2010, and I have not kept up my end of the bargain. Mr. Mod has funneled me a stack of new releases, and what have I done with them?
Thanks, Mod, I should have my review ready by Wednesday!
Cool, I’ve got a couple of things cooking, and then I should be able to hop on this one on Thursday!
Busy weekend ahead, so I’ll try to knock this out for you on Friday!
Man, I can be full of shit! I’m sorry, Mod, and I’m sorry Townspeople. I’m way behind on my scheduled reviews. To get back on schedule I pledge to – finally – tackle a box full of 2009 releases from Robert Pollard, maybe the hardest-working man in rock ‘n roll and surely a man whose wealth of output puts my own scant contributions to the Halls of Rock to shame! In the coming weeks I’ll finally catch up with my thoughts on Pollard releases by Boston Spaceships, Cosmos, and under his own name. I will follow the order prescribed by Townsman Kpdexter, who graciously supplied us with these releases and went as far as suggesting where I sit in relationship to my speakers while listening to each album. Kpdexter, you are the man!
For all the ways I’ve procrastinated and kept Mr. Mod off my back, the one thing I’ve consistently told him that has been true is that I’ve been listening to these records. Unlike my typical Insta-Reviews, which I crank out under great pressure and shame seconds before my extended deadline is to expire, I have a good handle on these albums and am confident that I can provide insights nearly justifying my 3-month delay in providing my reviews.
We’re going to start with Boston Spaceships’ The Planets Are Blasted. Boston Spaceships is Pollard with our old interview subject and Friend of the Hall, Chris Slusarenko and John Moen from The Decemberists. In 2009, this core trio managed to release 3 – count ’em 3 – albums! Pollard’s managing editor doesn’t need to get in his grill about lack of output. Continue reading »
Robyn Hitchcock & The Venus 3‘s Propellor Time is an understated release that was recorded, mostly live, in a week’s time in 2006, between the recordings for two prior Venus 3 releases, Ole Tarantula! and Goodnight Oslo. Never having been the world’s greatest Robyn Hitchcock fan, I can’t be sure of the pulse of his fans today, but if anyone’s expecting a collection of jangly songs about the sexual lives of insects and fishes, prepare for a letdown.
Hitchcock does not abandon his silly, creepy crawly motifs, such as the verse in “Afterlife” that describes the monarch butterfly’s secretion of “royal jelly,” but he seems more willing than usual to scratch beneath the surface, to the true themes of his work – love, sex, death, and all that good stuff – and address them directly. In “Star of Venus” he provides the image of a skeletal couple driving well beyond the point when death has done them part, the man’s arm around his wife’s shoulders: “And that’s true love,” he sings, “they’ve still got the radio on.” It’s a sweet image that he resists spraying with 10cc of jelly.
For years Hitchcock played in trios and jangly quartets that had the musical range of his jangly trio: high end to higher end. I’ve got a nasty, thoroughly unfair theory about musicians who spend too much time leading trios: with the exception of an unmatched talent like Jimi Hendrix, it tells me the bandleader does not play well with others. This is what I figured was the case with Hitchcock until the mid-’90s, when Young Fresh Fellows mastermind Scott McCaughey (who also serves in the Oliver role for REM) recruited Hitchcock to be part of the pop collective The Minus 5. McCaughey and the other American, Minus 5 collaborators who make up The Venus 3, Peter Buck and Bill Rieflin, help Hitchcock swim with the current rather than against it. Propellor Time is loaded with other cool contributors, who sound like they’ve simply “dropped in”: Nick Lowe, John Paul Jones, Chris Ballew, Morris Windsor, and Johnny Marr, among others.
Perhaps Hitchcock’s been getting to the heart of the matter for a lot longer than I’ve paid attention – sorry, Robyn, if that’s the case – but with one exception whenever I revisit the albums Hitchcock released in the ’80s and ’90s I quickly recoil from the dimestore Syd-isms and sophomoric, cosmic observations. Sonically, the high-end jangle of his band-oriented albums never helped, and for some reason it felt to me like he was laying on the British accent a little thicker than necessary.
Element of Light has always been the exception for me. Hitchcock isn’t so nervy, sly, and hectoring. The music is more lush. He makes more references to John Lennon than Syd Barrett, and with the richer-than-usual backing tracks his multi-tracked vocals sit atop the mix like Brian Eno. I can listen to tracks like “Winchester” and the funny/sad “Ted, Woody, and Junior” a half dozen times a day – and often I do.
From an interview on his website, Hitchcock mentioned that he couldn’t have made this album 10 years earlier:
I didn’t have the stew of people, or the philosophy in the songs. Perhaps I had the wrong kind of wisdom then. You lose speed and you gain depth.
No wonder I like about this album more than most Robyn Hitchcock albums I’ve bought. He’s got a supportive stew of friends who keep him from rushing ahead and offering glib, shorthand observations on the order of the cosmos. As with Element of Light, there’s more Lennon at the heart of this album than Syd, and a little Dylan. If you’ve lived this long you can aspire to Lennon and Dylan. Syd was fantastic in his own way, but he’s a dead-end. Maybe Hitchcock has figured this out. “We love you, sickie-boy,” he and his sickie friends sing toward the end of an album, rallying around each other – and us.
Recently Townsman E. Pluribus Gergely has begun his summertime Rock Town Hall duties, which include monitoring the films of Al Pacino; giving grief to the likes of Hrrundivbakshi, BigSteve, and yours truly; and pooh-poohing the collected works of Elvis Costello, Lou Reed (Mistrial excepted), and other high school favorites post-1983. Some of what my man Gergs will say in the coming weeks will hurt. In some cases it will be the pain of a cowardly stab in the back; in other cases, the pain you feel will be the result of his occasionally piercing insight. Wherever the pain registers for you, I encourage you to take it like a Townsperson and give it back to the man as you see fit.
To help EPG re-establish his footing in the Halls of Rock, I feel compelled to SUMMON him to comment on the following tracks from Elvis Costello’s new album, the one with some overblown title and produced by T-Bone Burnett. I have not yet heard these songs myself. Maybe these will be initial spins for you as well. Don’t put all the burden on E. Pluribus to comment, and please be candid when you share.
Before I deliver this stern message to Stereolab‘s Chemical Chords album can you help me work through my reactions over the past 2 or 3 months? Since buying this CD I have spun it a good dozen times at work and in the car? Townspeople have helped me in the past in such moments of utter befuddlement, and I hope you can help me now.
Over the years I’ve heard some other albums by Stereolab with songs that make some sense to me, but this new album, Chemical Chords, which reviews and blog postings I’ve seen indicate that longtime Stereolab fans dig just fine, sounds to me like an endless stream of Target ads. I’m reminded of the opening scene of Fight Club, with the Ed Norton Jr. character in his Ikea catalog-like apartment, with the descriptions and price tags popping up all around him. I feel like I’m being sold something, like a neon beanbag. Do I need a neon beanbag?
This song title catches my eye with its hints at postmodern art and the use of single quotes within the standard song title’s double quotes. The song title would look great on my glass and chrome coffee table…if I had a glass and chrome coffee table! Actually, if I had such a coffee table and this slight song was playing atop it I’d half expect Alex and his droog buddies to break in and smash my living room to bits. I know, like, and greatly respect many of you who like Stereolab. The stuff you’ve played me over the years is usually interesting. Do you like this new album, or have I been reading the reviews and blog postings of ass-kissing Cool Patrol wannabes? Tell me, my friends, that you know what I’m talking about – or point out the error of my ways.
Here’s another song with a museum-piece title that, at best, makes me horny for tastefully tarted-up 35-year-old women spending their newly acquired excess cash at an upscale department store. Is this what I’m supposed to be feeling while listening to the new Stereolab album? Is this what they’d consider “mission accomplished” and high-five, or celebrate through whatever polite variant would suit their style?
I’ve been giving this album a sincere try. I’ve been trying to get inside of the mind of someone who might fancy this platter, and all I can think of is catalog blurbs, slim models, and my credit cards. I badly want to dash off the following note to Stereolab’s new album:
I am not for sale!
Before I do, can you help me check my line of reasoning? Thanks.
Each new release by Lou Reed promises a mix of beauty, truth, horror, and mostly unintended humor. That’s a big part of why I’ve hung in with the guy through so many stilted, hectoring albums, such as the spiritually rock-bottom Rock ‘n Roll Heart, the squirm-inducing Mistrial, and the critically prematurely acclaimed New York, an album that within a few years of its release played like a grainy rebroadcast of an outdated CNN current events show.
Reed never ceases growing up in public, and when we catch him at a relatively fruitful stage in his development he’s still loaded with so many rough edges that even his most ardent fans disagree about the fruitfulness of a given album. Reed’s 1973 rock opera, Berlin, is a good example of this. Following his breakthrough, David Bowie-produced Transformer album, Berlin was panned by many critics as a bloated, forced, doomfest. Rock fans hoping for a catchy hit single to follow “Take a Walk on the Wild Side” were ignored. Slowly the ornately arranged album gained a better reputation, first through its “train wreck” appeal, then perhaps, through a grudging acknowledgment that although the album is a bloated, forced, doomfest, so are hopeless relationships of the variety of the album’s down-and-out protagonists, Caroline and Jim. I never understood the appeal of mopey bands like The Smiths, but I do my share of moping, and in my book Berlin is as good as any album for working through a case of the bad vibrations.
In 2006, Reed announced that he was going to perform Berlin in its entirety at Brooklyn’s St. Ann’s Warehouse with a monster band of loyal Reed contributors, including Fernando Saunders, Rob Wasserman, Antony, and one of the original Berlin guitarists, Steve Hunter, best known as half of the legendary Hunter-Wagner guitar duo from early Alice Cooper and Reed’s live Rock ‘n Roll Animal band! It was a night that no Reed fan within a 90-mile radius should miss, and of course I missed it. Luckily, this release is a document of that show and accompanies the release of a Julian Schnabel-directed DVD of the proceedings, Lou Reed’s Berlin.
This grand, hyped-up live staging of an ancient, already grandiose rock opera easily could have been a disaster as a live CD, but it’s not. The band stays true to the album’s arrangements, but minus the album’s ’70s studio thud, some of the more visceral parts of the arrangements, especially Hunter’s guitar fills, are allowed to breathe. This adds a lot to the brassy numbers, like “Oh, Jim,” which threatens to break into a mid-70s Stones coda, and “How Do You Think It Feels,” one of the original album’s at-best guilty pleasures. The limited, declining quality of Reed’s voice and the need to project cuts both ways. Quiet, introspective songs that benefitted from the lush mush of Bob Ezrin‘s cluttered studio production don’t translate as well. The biggest disappointments for me are “The Kids” and “Men of Good Fortune,” on which the live-audience performing Reed can’t manage to sound as isolated, bitter, and paranoid as he manages to sound on the album’s “head mix.”
The payoff moment for me, however, is the live performance of “Sad Song,” always my key song on the record. Reed struggles with the tender opening lines, but all is forgiven when the bombast of the band backs up the chorus’ succinct couplet, “I’m gonna stop wasting my time/Somebody else would have broken both of her arms.” The care Reed, Ezrin, and the band take in preserving the album’s arrangements make this affair work as a night of finally fulfilled rock opera.
This album is now playing in streaming audio on Phawker Radio. Click the link at the top of this entry to link to Phawker.
