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Morrissey
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Morrissey
Years of Refusal
(Lost Highway, 2009)
More has probably been written about Morrissey’s public persona than his music. While the two are inextricably enmeshed, there is just something uniquely fascinating about an ambiguously sexual, unabashedly British, gladiola-loving 49-year-old (!) loner. He remains a paradox. His lyrics let us know he’s painfully alone, while his boastful croon let’s us know he’s confident—awesomely, arrogantly confident.
At this point in his career, it’s easy to accuse him of self-parody. Anytime a dude who is almost as old as my dad sings about how “nobody wants my love”, like he does on the lead single “I’m Throwing My Arms Around Paris”, I become a little incredulous.
But let’s not play the authenticity card here. That would detract from the real issue at hand: Relevance. As long as there are 16-year-old kids alone in their bedrooms lamenting their lack of a prom date, Pretty in Pink style, as long as there are shy collegiate girls in cardigans studying their weekends away in library basements, as long as there is someone out there feeling remotely inadequate, this guy will be relevant. Morrissey’s career endures because our personal lives do not.
His recent millennial career resurgence continues with Years of Refusal. His vocal prowess is stronger than it’s ever been, and his backing musicians sound less and less like a Smiths tribute band and are coming into something of their own as well. This translates to an even higher, and more paradoxical, level of confidence. For the most part, the album is composed of tight bursts of catchy rock songs with the lyrical quips we’ve come to rely on for over the past 20 years. And chances are, fans will fall for these battle cries of confident loner-ism all over again.
Years has got him dizzied up in a fiery black cloud. The rampage of “Something Is Squeezing My Skull” and the spaghetti Western pizzazz of “When I Last Spoke to Carol” suggest Morrissey-the-persona is beyond pissed per usual at the trappings of his loner status. For “there is no love in modern life, it’s amazing I’ve made it this far” he dramatically declares. There’s no doubt that tried and true fans will eat this shit up.
But before you know it, three tracks later, what do you know, surprise, surprise (that’s sarcasm folks), Moz is reveling in his self-imposed exile, throwing his arms around Paris with flamboyant aplomb. For only “stone and steel accept [his] love.” Later, on the album closer, he tauntingly sings, “I’m okay by myself / And I don’t need you or your morality to save me.” But whom he’s taunting remains unclear. The joke, however, is probably on all of us. After all, Morrissey has made a career invoking our insecurities, while simultaneously relying on that audience to elevate his existence to living sainthood. With an artist and audience so inextricably linked, no one is okay alone. So he’s not stopping now. He won’t. He can’t. Not when all we need is him.
Listen: Various Tracks [at myspace.com]
Death Magnetic: Better, Shorter, Cut
Metallica
Death Magnetic
(Warner Bros., 2008)
On September 2nd, 10 days before its official release date, a French record store began selling copies of metal giant Metallica’s ninth studio album, Death Magnetic. As can be expected in our day, directly thereafter the record proliferated across person-to-person file sharing networks. So unsurprised by the leak was Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich that the notoriously fiery critic of file-sharing met the news with resignation.
“By 2008 standards, that’s a victory. If you’d told me six months ago that our record wouldn’t leak until 10 days out, I would have signed up for that,” Ulrich said in an interview with USA Today. “We made a great record, and people seem to be getting off on it way more than anyone expected.”
Ra Ra Riot
Ra Ra Riot
The Rhumb Line
(Barsuk, 2008)
Violin and cello have always had a very humanistic quality to me; these are instruments that can sound weepy and melancholic, but also dramatic, flourishing, and exuberant, reaching manic depressive extremes of emotion, all within the scope of a single song. These strings can take music to a human and emotive place—rock bands that can tastefully embrace the sound of these wise old instruments can even reach a level of transcendence that stirs up depths of emotion and dizzying concoctions of collective energy shared between them and their audience. Though this translates best in a live capacity, threads of this force are undeniable on record for a band that has camaraderie and knows how execute their material. Enter Ra Ra Riot.
Over the past two years, this young sextet out of Syracuse have become known for their expressive brand of chamber pop, and their debut album, The Rhumb Line, released on Barsuk, is an appropriate follow up to their EP (four of the six tracks from their self-titled EP are also on this album). Young, bright, and vigorous, Ra Ra Riot crafts building, rousing melodies with some darker tones beneath their dramatic surface—just as soon as they introduce some tearful violin and cello, they take on an uplifting pop song, and all of it’s done with appropriate levels of melody, searching lyrics, and an ability to use their violin and cello to take the songs to soaring heights or whispering valleys.
Dave Stewart & His Rock Fabulous Orchestra
Dave Stewart & His Rock Fabulous Orchestra
The Dave Stewart Songbook, Volume One
(Surfdog, 2008)
Record producers, songwriters, and anyone in music who toils behind the scenes of the image-conscious pop music machinery no doubt secretly pines for their own moment in the warm glare of the public spotlight. In the distant past, producers like George Martin, Alan Parsons, and Phil Spector either released albums under their own names, or, as in the case of Parsons, formed their own highly successful group. Nowadays, the role of the musician-producer, performer-producer, and all the permutations of rappers, mixers, DJs, and the like have blurred the distinct lines that long ago existed between songwriters, performers, musicians, and producers. The evolution of the producer as artist makes Dave Stewart’s new project both a quaint throwback to the past and a not unusual concept. Dave Stewart was, of course, one half of the Eurythmics with Annie Lennox (the two previously fronted the short-lived neo-psychedelic band the Tourists). He was the group’s de-facto producer and principal songwriter. After the two split and Lennox pursued her highly successful solo career, Stewart continued to write and produce for a surprisingly diverse mix of artists. What they have in common, though, is that, like Lennox, they are mostly truly great singers. What they all have in common with Stewart is the ability to make extremely high quality music that, for all its sophistication and artistic integrity, has been commercially successful. Also, many of the biggest hits that Stewart wrote and produced for those artists were heartfelt love songs.
However, they were no ordinary saccharine love songs, but were instead passionate ruminations on the complexities of modern love. For Stewart to even tackle his new ambitious project took guts. To attempt to not so much recreate, but re-imagine the hits he wrote just for the Eurythmics alone would be risky at best. Add to that re-cutting songs he worked on for Tom Petty, Bryan Ferry, Sinead O’Connor, and Sarah McLachlan, and what you have is a recipe for either a disaster or an invitation for criticism.
Randy Newman
Randy Newman
Harps and Angels
(Nonesuch, 2008)
The serious Randy Newman has a lot left to say.
And the cynical Randy Newman fears he may not have much time left to say it.
Darker My Love
Darker My Love
2
(Dangerbird, 2008)
After spending some time as hired guns for the lineup of the Fall, guitarist and vocalist Tim Presley and bassist and vocalist Rob Barbato are refocused on Darker My Love. The simply-named 2 is a layered endeavor in ethereal sonics that rarely comes up for air. The press release advises critics not to “talk about shimmering guitars and fuzz boxes or psychedelic nonsense.” So we’ll try not to. You probably already know about the band’s shimmer, fuzz, and penchant for the psychedelic anyway.
The atmosphere on this record is made up of tight vocal harmonies, strings, organ, lots of reverb, shaker, tambourine, and so forth. On paper it looks like a mess, but producer Dave Cooley, who has worked in both the realms of cut-n-paste hip-hop (Madlib, J-Dilla) and orchestral rock (David Axelrod) has the ear and skills to keep this behemoth balanced.
Brazilian Girls
Brazilian Girls
New York City
(Verve, 2008)
In the late ’70s, a musical ripple known as world beat started in the San Francisco Bay Area and spread throughout the country. Many groundbreaking and adventurous artists from Africa had settled in Oakland and Berkeley, including Highlife legend O.J. Ekemode, the late Congolese dance teacher Malonga Casquelourd, Babá Ken Okulolo from King Sunny Adé’s band, and Professor C.K. Ladzekpo, a master drummer who trained several generations of American musicians in African percussion at UC Berkeley. The origins of the “world beat” tag are hazy, but it fit the moment and went on to become the tag applied to any music (at first largely made by Anglo-dominated bands) that combined African influences with rock ‘n’ roll. Eventually it was applied to Talking Heads, Peter Gabriel, and in particular, Paul Simon, whose Grammy-winning 1986 album Graceland made world beat big business.
Needless to say, cross-cultural pollinations were nothing new. Cuban music, one obvious example, was a hybrid created when African rhythms brought to the New World by African slaves collided with the Spanish music of the slave masters. (Spanish music had a notable Arab component from the years the Moors ruled the Iberian Peninsula.) Cuban music entered the US through New Orleans and became one of the building blocks of jazz and rock ‘n’ roll. In the ’80s, Africans and Arabs were also busy blending American music, especially rock, jazz, and hip-hop into their traditional forms. Artists like Senegal’s Touré Kunda, Mali’s Salif Keita, and Algeria’s Khaled, as well as the Indian Bhangra bands of London, blended American, British, African, Jamaican ska and reggae, and Arab music into something new. Soon the world beat tag seemed unwieldy. Rachid Taha and Manu Chao upped the ante by happily plundering music from around the world, creating what can only be called global pop, a genre-bending, cross-cultural sound that gives us a hint of what pop music will sound like in future years.
Conor Oberst
Conor Oberst
Conor Oberst
(Merge, 2008)
It’s no review of a Conor Oberst record without bringing up the ongoing critical discourse of his career thus far and the looming questions of whether or not he will remain indispensable over time. If there’s a lasting artist or another adorable face in front of us, if he’s really our generation’s standalone spokesperson as he’s been so often compared, if he can shed the somewhat whiny adolescence of his early Bright Eyes days to mature into a vital, elder singer-songwriter statesman—these questions seem ever suspended above each song he writes. Having already had a profound impact on a mass level over the years while also generating the appropriate amount of backlash, Oberst remains in a position where he’s looked upon with grave critical eyes feasting on his very evolution. And oddly enough, in a way, all of these prevailing variables become almost meaningless as they alone keep him in a position of constant relevance. Each time there will be those who love what he does and those who don’t, and the debate will go on to orbit infinitely in people’s minds. Of this, I feel sure.
While he’s performed for and under various monikers (Commander Venus, Park Ave., Desaparecidos, and Bright Eyes) Oberst now steps out from behind a band name to release a self-titled record with his birth-given name. New label, too. Thirteen years ago he was releasing solo material as a necessary means to get his music heard (on cassette tape, no less). Now the move to go at it solo again appears to be out of necessity—like a snake, he’s shedding old skin as part of the growing process—and, according to this, his latest release, he’s left behind more than his outer coat.
Paul Westerberg
Paul Westerberg
49:00
(Self-released)
Of all the various ways I could have experienced Paul Westerberg’s new album for the first time, headphones plugged into a PC didn’t even make the list. I stopped around #112: Hearing 49:00 muffled through my neighbor’s wall while trying to extract a rusty fish-hook from my finger. That would have been an experience. That would have been memorable. But for me, as I suspect it was for many others, the first time came pumped directly into my cochleae from the same box to which I am tethered day-in, day-out.
It should be pointed out to those that have been on holiday in Antarctica that the method of my initial exposure was not chosen by me; rather, it was chosen by Paul Westerberg. In an effort to side-step the usual label fiasco that surrounds all new releases, Westerberg has casually made 49:00 available exclusively by download. If it were anyone other than the guy that wrote “Sixteen Blue” and “Bastards of Young”, personally, I wouldn’t have bothered. But the thing that allows Westerberg a pass is the music, and once again Minnesota’s finest has delivered.
Ex Post Facto: Tiny Tim, I’ve Never Seen a Straight Banana – Rare Moments: Vol. 1
by: Denise Sullivan
I’ve Never Seen A Straight Banana – Rare Moments: Vol. 1
(Collector’s Choice Music, 2009)
Once upon a time, 16-year-old fanboy Richard Barone persuaded Tiny Tim—the unusual falsetto/vibrato singer, ukulele player, and a 1960s musical phenomenon—to make a record. Now that I’ve Never Seen A Straight Banana has finally surfaced after 33 years on the shelf, it sounds as strangely beautiful, naïve, and sophisticated as the combination of its two musical forces would suggest.
In the ’60s and early ’70s, the long-haired, flower-peddling Tiny Tim was ubiquitous. Guest shots on the popular comedy series Laugh-In, a hit single with “Tiptoe Through the Tulips”, and a marriage to a woman mysteriously named Miss Vicki performed on live television to a record number of Tonight Show viewers are the highlights as I recall them. A long-haired, slightly gender bent peace-freak with a thing for old time music didn’t seem an anomaly in the culture, though his appearances occasionally lead to giggling and eye-rolling among the straights. And yet, children especially loved Tiny, and he even released some songs, For All My Little Friends, just for us kids. Prior to his 15 minutes in the late ‘60s, Tiny had enjoyed a Greenwich Village moment on the scene with Bob Dylan and recorded with the Band, all appreciators of his knowledge and devotion to music from the early part of the 20th Century—Al Jolson, Rudy Vallee, Eddie Cantor, and singers with names more obscure. But when Barone, a budding musician in his own right, caught up with Tiny Tim, he found him on the dreaded lounge circuit, home to many skilled musicians in their 40s and 50s trying to stay alive in the mid-’70s. Performing at a Travelodge outside of Tampa, the underage Barone couldn’t actually see the show, but following the set, Tim invited the young man and his friends up to his room for a private audience. By the end of the evening, the teen had talked Tim into recording an album with him.
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by: Denise Sullivan
published: March 10, 2010
in column: Ex Post Facto
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