Pretty Goes with Pretty

My Listening Hours: The Rest of April–June

With so many albums purchased in a short amount of time, you can imagine that some albums spent less time in my iPod than others. These are the albums—some quite good, others mediocre—that for whatever reason simply didn't latch onto me all the way. As for the worst of the bunch, come back a little later today and I'll run down that list too.

The Fiery Furnaces, Widow City
Kim Gordon put it pretty well when she was asked for her current playlist by the New York Times a couple weeks ago:

“Widow City” feels like a song cycle, the way some things repeat themselves. One song seems to lead to the next, almost like an opera.... This record is incessant, it’s so wordy and dense, it wakes you up. It’s almost annoying and irritating to listen to, but it’s also compelling. The lyrics seem kind of obsessive. It pulls you along with it. The lyrics are fragments of meaning that you could maybe relate to, but I don’t mind that I don’t know what the heck she’s talking about. The lyrics are very filmic. There are images that don’t make sense. It’s kind of an act of suspended disbelief listening to it...

Really, there's not a whole lot else to say. Okay, I'll say this: I think Widow City is bordering on totally brilliant. I would say I was obsessive about this record except for the fact that it is (intentionally) a little irritating and a lot difficult. It's not an easy listen. I actually have interior arguments with myself about whether or not I want to put it on: "I can't get 'Philadelphia Grand Jury' or 'Clear Signal from Cairo' out of my head! I should put this album on!" "Jesus, don't put this album on. It is exhausting; it doesn't know if it wants to sit or stand." I've only had the album for a couple weeks now; perhaps if I'd owned it longer it would have made into yesterday's batch of albums. It's difficult for me to tell, at the moment, whether I'll keep coming back to this album or whether, ultimately, I'll never go back to it again.

• The Fiery Furnaces, The Philadelphia Grand Jury

The Little Ones, Terry Tales & Fallen Gates
I like this album—I swear!—though I do wish it were just a hair better. I still eagerly look forward to the full-length, to be released some time this summer, supposedly. I am confidently optimistic that their best tunes are still ahead of them—hopefully just a month or two ahead of them.

• The Little Ones, Unlock the Door!

The Byrds, Dr. Byrds and Mr. Hyde
The Byrds are probably my #1 favorite pre-1980s band. (Getting into all-time rankings, off the top of my head, they gotta start wrestling with R.E.M. at the very least.) They’re a relatively new discovery for me—my brilliant wife turned me onto Younger than Yesterday about four years ago—but in the last couple years I’ve slowly been picking up their albums in chronological order. Hence last year you've seen me going on about The Notorious Byrd Brothers and Sweetheart of the Rodeo. Now I’m officially out of the original-lineup territory. Dr. Byrds was the first album for which Roger McGuinn assembled an entirely new band—and rather hastily, I might add. Their resulting first outing is… okay. The title of the album refers to constant shifting between the country direction they’d been heading in over the last two albums and a more psychedelic sound closer in intent to Fifth Dimension. The genre-jumping isn’t too jarring—that’s not the flaw. It’s just not that special. I hear it gets better (then worse). Untitled is next on the list, as soon as I see it used at Amoeba.

• The Byrds, This Wheel's on Fire

R.E.M., Accelerate
So, given what I just said above, you can imagine I was in line for the new R.E.M. My expectations were in check, though. I’d heard “Supernatural Superserious” and thought it was okay but not amazing. It’s difficult to talk about a new R.E.M. album without addressing the albatross that is everything post-Bill Berry, so just for the record: I like most of the post-Berry stuff just fine. Sure, Around the Sun was 90% turd, but Up and Reveal—especially Reveal—get a huge bum rap. So my approach to a new R.E.M. is not “will they ever halt their downward slide?” but rather “I hope their one and only crap album was just an aberration.”

That said, Accelerate. It’s perfectly solid and totally mediocre. I won’t skip the songs when they come up on shuffle—does that count for anything? It gets HUGE props for avoiding anything resembling “The Outsiders,” the trainwreck of a collaboration with Q-Tip from the last album which by the way was the lowest point in the band’s history. At the same time, there’s nothing on this album that is better than “The Ascent of Man,” which was the high point of Around the Sun. Points for rocking, but I’m not convinced they mean it. The suit doesn’t quite fit like it used to.

• R.E.M., Houston

The Beau Brummels, Triangle and Bradley’s Barn
The Beau Brummels were a group of also-rans from the the 60s California scene. Perhaps if they'd moved south from San Francisco to Laurel Canyon they might have had a little more success. Their music fits in well with that scene—a mixture of rock, folk, and country (the latter more apparent on Bradley's Barn than on Triangle). Sal Valentino's voice is the defining trait of the band's sound; it's a deep voice with a natural vibrato (think a more masculine Devandra Banhart), up front in the mix and seldom layered with any harmonies. It's a unique voice but iit can also become a little wearying after a full album. I'm finding that I like the BBs most when I hear single tracks pop up on shuffle, rather than listening to ten in a row.

• The Beau Brummels, Are You Happy? (from Triangle)
• The Beau Brummels, Deep Water (from Bradley's Barn)

Chris Bell, I Am the Cosmos
When I became enamored with Big Star’s #1 Record, I had no idea just how much of that was due to Chris Bell. I guess I just didn’t get how much of a presence he was on the album (it doesn’t help that his and Alex Chilton’s voices are not that distinct from each other). Thankfully a few of you commenters steered me to Bell’s one and only solo album. Any Big Star fans out there who, like me, love #1 Record but are cooler on Radio City and Third/Sister Lover, seek this one out. It’s by no means a perfect record—there’s a lot of religiosity that puts me off, and some of the 70s-isms just don’t work—but when Bell goes soft, as on “You and Your Sister,” it’s like returning to the best ballads of Big Star’s debut. Over the long haul—I’ve had the album for almost three months now—I don’t feel drawn to keep putting it on; but I’ve made a little Fantasy Big Star album, made up of my favorite tracks from this, Radio City, and Third/Sister Lover, which does a good job of simulating the ideal follow-up to #1 Record.

• Chris Bell, I Am the Cosmos

Bob Lind, Since There Were Circles
I came across this album via a post by Brendan at The Rising Storm, where I fell in love with the country-inflected "Loser." Lind's voice occupies similar territory as Neil Diamond or Lee Hazelwood—which I'm inclined to describe as "sandpapery." Lind isn't as creepy as Hazelwood or as robust as Diamond, though. He's got a little more ache in his delivery. The majority of this album is solid if not spectacular, with both "Loser" and the title track being the biggest standouts. I get a real kick out the chorus to the latter: "How long have I loved you? Since there were circles." Wow. That's a really long time. In all seriousness, though, I think the song has a real gravity to it. His love is not lighthearted, nor is it stalkerish; he's simply not joking around. 

• Bob Lind, Since There Were Circles

Fairport Convention, Unhalfbricking
This was my first Fairport Convention album, though they've been on my radar for quite a long time. I'd been advised in the past to begin with Liege & Leaf, but darn it if the library didn't have that one. So Unhalfbricking it had to be. No matter: I quite like the album, or half of it at least. To some degree it's still sinking in with me; I don't feel like I've fully digested it yet, despite I-don't-know-how-many listens. The freer, looser material resonates with me a lot more than the Ye Olde Traditional stuff. Hence I think "A Sailor's Life," with its rustling rhythms in the beginning morphing into a guitar/violin jam are fantastic, while the more traditional folk style of "Cajun Woman" is, for me, less compelling.

• Fairport Convention, Who Knows Where the Time Goes

The Tough Alliance, A New Chance
Not a bad record, though a little repetitive (and cheesy as all get out). I wish the singer had a little more range or knew a few more melodies, as the tracks get harder and harder to differentiate as the album goes on. That said, not a bad workout record, though it's really just not where my head is at right now. Can you tell I'm not the one in the family that picked this album up? I'm ambivalent.

• The Tough Alliance, Looking for Gold

 

Other Voices: Will Rigby on Big Star, Ned Raggett on Neu!

Over at Boogie Woogie Flu, Will Rigby of the dB's reminisces about loving Big Star in the 70s, to the point of making a pilgrimage to Memphis to find the essence of the band. [via Setting the Woods on Fire]

It seems quaint now to have gone 600 miles in search of the secret of a band that had barely existed, got almost no radio play, and had no impact on the marketplace. We didn't want to go to Graceland, or Al Green's church, or the Stax studio; we did try to re-create the photo on the back of Radio City, at its original location, TGI Friday's.... There was no essence to be found.

Lots of obituaries for Klaus Dinger went up around the web yesterday, most of them sounding like they were written by people who have never listened to Neu! but know how to search Wikipedia and YouTube (not that I claim to be an expert). Ned Raggett's post is the exception.

[Michael] Rother’s work deserves its own attention—the sounds he coaxes out of his guitars are breathtaking—but Dinger’s playing is... truly that of a man-machine. It certainly helps that the brilliant Conny Plank's engineering captured it beautifully—Neu! is tactile music, Plank’s clear but warm sound a near womblike cocoon holding it all in—but the point is, it’s Dinger who gets the balance right. The striking thing about his performances—whether the brisk down-the-autobahn rumbles or the slower and steadier songs like "Weissensee"—is how beautifully Dinger is simultaneously man and machine, precise as hell but given to wonderful fills, breaks and other twists on the basic beat that never once disrupt the core flow. It helps to remember that this is in an era of drum machine and rhythm box infancy as well, and in contrast to that relentless focus Dinger showed a way that drumming and percussion could embrace minimal simplicity while still holding some amazing flair.

My Listening Year: Best Discoveries of 2007 (Blind Spot Edition)

2007 was a great year for new releases, but even better for all the blind spots I filled in. I unintentionally had a very 70s year—seventeen out of my twenty-eight blind spot purchases were released in that decade. That's a good thing. Talk about blind spots: as a whole, I think the 70s were one of the least represented decades in my collection until this year.

Elvis Costello, Imperial Bedroom [mp3: "Human Hands"]
Hands down the biggest surprise of the year for me. I'd already made my mind up about Costello—I like him, but I don't like him like him. So when I picked up Imperial Bedroom and This Year's Model, it was really a matter of "eh, why not?" I was so ambivalent about it that I didn't even listen to Imperial Bedroom right away. Good thing I finally did, as the album turned out to be among my most-listened-to albums of the year. Like I said about Armchair Apocrypha last week, this is one of those wonderful albums where every song, at one point or another, is your favorite song. For the first time I consider myself a fan of Costello's, and will likely pick up more of his albums in the near future (starting with those from the same era as Bedroom.)

Big Star, #1 Record [mp3: "The India Song"]
As with Costello, I had no real expectations for Big Star, and picked up #1 Record/Radio City on a lark. Based on Third/Sister Lover, I thought I'd already made up my mind. I'm so thankful I gave these guys another chance! I've been listening to #1 Record pretty obsessively since getting it a couple months ago. My sense is that this might be the only Alex Chilton album I really need, however. The other Big Star albums, to my ears, descend in quality (Radio City is pretty good, not great, and Third/Sister Lover is unfocused). Somebody help me out—does his solo material change tack?

The Byrds, The Notorious Byrd Brothers [mp3: "Wasn't Born to Follow"]
Going into 2007, I knew it was going to be a year for the Byrds.  And it was: I picked up three Byrds albums total, in addition to the three I already owned. They were all great, each in their own way, but The Notorious Byrd Brothers sets itself apart in my eyes. For all the accolades Sweetheart of the Rodeo gets, Notorious is a far more interesting fusion of country and rock because it is more subtle. Gram Parsons's contributions to Sweetheart are fine, but they're also totally transparent, in that they simply are country and bluegrass, sharing album space with McGuinn's folk-rock tunes. Notorious is, from beginning to end, a Byrds album which has integrated the lapsteel and largely set the twelve-string acoustic aside. Crosby's excellent harmonies are still there, and neither Parsons nor Dylan's fingerprints are anywhere to be seen. It's not the perfect Byrds album (in fact, I don't think there is one), but it's the most interesting. It's still the Byrds, but you can hear, quite obviously, that the band was growing artistically. Sadly, it was the swan song for the original lineup, so there's no telling where the group would have gone if they'd stuck it out.

Joni Mitchell, Court & Spark [mp3: "Free Man in Paris"] and Blue [mp3:  "Carey"]
If anything, my Byrds fascination has grown to a near untenable obsession with their entire scene. in addition to steadily tracking down all of their albums, I've begun delving into the Laurel Canyon scene of the 60s and 70s. That's brought me to Buffalo Springfield and Joni Mitchell so far, with a long list of others I want to pick up. Mitchell in particular has turned out to be a terrific discovery for me (actually it was my brilliant wife who picked up Court & Spark).  I didn't fall immediately in love with this album, or with Mitchell in general. The first half was immediately engaging, but it sort of fell off after the midway point. Mitchell, left by herself, has some tics that were/are repellant to me, particulalry on first listen. Mostly it's the way her voice jumps into the upper register almost at random, or the way she seems to squeeze as many syllables into her lyrics as she damn well pleases, meter be damned. It's offputting. Nevertheless I liked enough of Court & Spark to give another album a chance. So I bought Blue. On first listens I was disappointed to find that this was a sparser album, none of the full-band treatment as on "Help Me" or "Free Man in Paris." But as time goes by I'm finding Blue to be the stronger album, and I'm coming around on all of Mitchell's quirks. There's still something kind of antagonistic in my listening relationship with Mitchell, but that's precisely what keeps me coming back to her.

My Listening Hours: The Rest of October–November

The Byrds, Fifth Dimension
I'm not sure why it took me so long to pick up Fifth Dimension. Back when I first realized how much I liked the Byrds I went on a downloading spree, and everything I picked up from this album was excellent—"Mr. Spaceman," "5D," "Hey Joe," and of course "Eight Miles High," arguably (and a great argument it'd be) the best song the band ever did. Unfortunately my expectations were dashed when I finally picked up the album. Turns out this is the most inconsistent of the Byrds albums I've heard (i.e., all the albums prior to Roger McGuinn taking sole ownership of the band). There were a couple of great tracks to be had in addition to those I already owned, especially David Crosby's songwriting debut, "What's Happening," but otherwise Fifth Dimension probably has the largest quantity of questionable tunes—particularly the ghost-of-Hiroshima-narrated "I Stand at Every Door" and the nosediving trio of tunes closing out the album, "Captain Soul," "John Riley," and "The Lear Jet Song."

That this album could have some of the band's best work as well as some its worst is interesting to me. This is the first album without Gene Clark, who was the primary songwriter on the first two releases. For most bands this would have been a bigger blow, but the Byrds' overall sound was too strong.  This goes back to my post from last month, "the song vs. the sound." I was watching a documentary about 60s bands on VH1 Classics the other day and McGuinn explained the Byrds' vocal sound on the first two records: although Clark wrote most of the originals, he and McGuinn would double the lead vocal. Crosby was the only one singing harmony, but he did so in a way that he floated between thirds and fifths, not sticking to one harmonic area as, say, a Beach Boy would. Thus what was essentially a two-part harmony sounded much fuller. It makes sense then that Clark's absence, sonically, is barely noticable on Fifth Dimension, but that 5D is also the weakest of the Byrds albums in terms of songwriting (it's worth noting that "Eight Miles High" is chiefly Clark's song, too—though it's McGuinn who's playing that brilliant guitar solo, which sounds like the aural equivalent of scribbling crayons). On the other hand, since the Byrds had always loaded their albums with covers, most of which were interpreted by McGuinn, they ultimately survived Clark's departure, apparently, without too much trouble. (And on their next album, Younger Than Yesterday, bassist Chris Hillman, who'd been there all along, suddenly blossomed into the best songwriter of the bunch!)

Gene Clark, No Other
As Gene Clark was the first Byrd to go solo, it seems right that his should be the first solo album I check out. Based on a lot of good things said at ILM, I assumed No Other was the place to start. Settling in to hear some post-Byrds folk rock, I was surprised to find that this was more along the lines of bloated 70s MOR rock—full band replete with a bevy of backup singers, meandering seven-minute epics mostly concerned with rivers and ravens; even a near-Vangelis closer. There are a few songs I like—the opener, "Life's Greatest Fool," for instance (the end kinda reminds me of Bowie's backup vocals on Lou Reed's "Satellite of Love")—though most of the album is just average. My error was assuming that this was an early Clark album. In fact he'd done four albums prior to this one—two folky solo albums and two country-influenced albums with Doug Dillard. Based on the strength of his contributions to the Byrds, I'm not done with Clark; I just need start over, in chronological order.

Dennis Wilson, Pacific Ocean Blue
Speaking of 70s MOR... I had a twofer this month. I had a few songs from Dennis Wilson's out-of-print Pacific Ocean Blue lying around my iTunes, but after reading this Popmatters article I sought out the rest. Don't believe the hype: this album isn't bad, but it hardly deserves to be mythologized. It's ambitious, it's not commercially viable, it's by a troubled Wilson lad—the one who died, no less—but it's just not that good. There are some serious bright spots—"River Song" for instance—but POB also suffers from too much navel-gazing, no real hooks, and Wilson's gravelly, often downright shitty voice. It's actually hard to believe that this voice belongs to a Beach Boy. I'm glad I heard the entire album, especially because I do like a handful of the tracks, but there's nothing truly illuminating here.

Bob Dylan, Blood on the Tracks
What does it say about me that I'm a huge Byrds fan yet I’ve never found my way into Dylan? Something about him—maybe it's his voice, maybe his delivery, maybe the way his cultural importance has been forced on me since I was a child—has kept me from enjoying his work. A few years ago my wife bought Blonde on Blonde and I just couldn’t feel it. Thinking it was time to try again, I picked up Blood on the Tracks. For a few minutes there—“Tangled Up in Blue”! “Idiot Wind”!—I thought I might have finally found my point of entry. Alas, after a few days the urgency calmed down and I haven’t really gone back to digest this album any further. It made a dent—I don’t dislike Dylan—but I’m still not crazy for him.

Fleetwood Mac, Rumors
I want to like Rumors more, but the fact is many of the songs here simply don’t belong to me. “Don’t Stop,” “Go Your Own Way”: these belong to my parents and their generation. They belong to Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign. They belong to a bunch of assholes who think they don’t make music like they used to, cluelessly not understanding that a lot of their music sucks. What gets me about Fleetwood Mac though is that they do just enough songs that I like—usually thanks to Lindsey Buckingham. Buckingham is really the saving grace of this band; songs like "Second Hand News" and "Never Going Back Again" are interestingly crafted pop songs. I’m curious to hear the Buckingham/Nicks album that preceded their joining FM, though it’s out of print. And in the comments to yesterday's post I'm told by blckdgrd that Buckingham's post-Mac albums are also worth checking out.

Jonathan Richman & the Modern Lovers, s/t
Spiritualized, Lazer Guided Melodies
Pink Floyd, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn
I can say the same thing about all three of these albums: they're all great, each in their own way. I know that I will go back to each of these albums continually. They're the kind of records I'll just keep putting on when I'm not in the mood for my personally more obvious choices. But in the meantime—maybe because I just had too much other stuff to listen to—these ultimately didn't stick to my iPod as much as I'd expect. I recognize that I like them but I'm not running out the door to tell my friends about them (anyway, my friends already know about them). I do intend to pick up more albums by each band, though (not Pink Floyd, but Syd Barrett).

Big Star, Radio City
Sorry Radio City, I just couldn’t stop listening to #1 Record long enough to give you a chance. And when I tried, I spent most my time wishing you were as good as #1 Record.

R.E.M., Around the Sun
I am a fan of post-Berry R.E.M. albums, honest. I think Reveal is vastly underrated and Up gets a little draggy toward the end but is still a worthwhile album. Thus I didn’t approach Around the Sun with the assumption that it would be total crap, as most mentions of this album would have me believe. In fact this album does have some very nice moments; it starts strong and has a compelling final third ("The Ascent of Man" plods a little but I like it anyway), but the middle of this album… ugh, it really does hit some of the lowest points in R.E.M.’s history. “The Outsiders,” with special has-been Q-Tip, has got to be the most misguided songs—certainly the laziest—in the band’s discography. It’s almost bad enough to ruin the entire album. As a completist, I’m glad to finally get this album, though I don’t feel bad for taking two years to pick it up. It is easily their worst album. Unlike a lot of other naysayers, however, I feel like this is an aberration in an otherwise strong catalogue, not further evidence of a steady decline. I remain optimistic for the next one.

Beirut, The Flying Cup Club
Despite my first impression, The Flying Cup Club turned out to be a fine album. It is certainly the best thing Beirut has done thus far in his brief career, and I remain optimistic for his next album, provided he heeds my advice.

Radiohead, In Rainbows
Here’s something weird. I listened to In Rainbows pretty much nonstop for two weeks straight. And then one day, I stopped. And I don’t feel the need to listen to it again. And I don’t foresee myself needing to listen to it again in the future, either. [previously: my full review]

Iron & Wine, The Shepherd's Dog
I have little to say about this one right now, as I just picked it up a day ago and haven't really digested it yet. I will say that it's immediately obvious that this is Iron & Wine's best album, and that it will likely make my end of the year list.

My Listening Hours: The Best of October–November

Big Star, #1 Record
Last year I picked up my first Big Star album, Third/Sister Lover, after hearing for years how influential they were and how wonderful they were and how up my alley they were. Upon listening, I didn’t get it. I tried and tried but just could not unlock that album. Happily, I was encouraged by a fellow Readervillian to pick up #1 Record; he said the genius was there, not here. At the library a few weeks later, there it was.

This album is possibly the discovery the year for me—it’s neck and neck with Elvis Costello’s Imperial Bedroom and Andrew Bird’s Armchair Apocrypha for my most-listened-to album of 2007. Like both of those albums, on first listens I thought it was more of a hit-and-miss affair. It alternates between rockers and ballads like a fork in the road—veer left for Elliott Smith (“Thirteen,”), veer right for Boston (“Don’t Lie to Me”). I was immediately ensnared by all the soft songs, and anxious about the rest. With more listens, the rockers became more enjoyable—even “In the Street,” of which I’ve almost erased visions of Topher Grace and Ashton Kutcher from my mind as it plays.

Previously I only knew Elliott Smith’s (faithful) version of “Thirteen,” but the original wins out; it doesn’t hurt that I’m in the middle of experiencing Freaks and Geeks for the first time; the song sounds like the perfect soundtrack to a lovelorn montage on that show (picture it: the first verse follows Sam as he gets the guts up to ask Cindy out on a date; the second verse shifts to follow Nick pouring his heart out to Lindsay… it works, almost too well).

Meanwhile, my favorite song on the album is "The Ballad of El Goodo." As with nearly every other of my favorite songs in the last couple years, I’m a sucker for the harmonies.

Jens Lekman, Night Falls Over Kortedala
Since my last string of My Listening Hours posts I’ve purchased three more albums made in 2007. Two of them I’ve talked about already—Radiohead and Beirut—but the third hasn’t gotten a mention yet in these parts: Jens Lekman. Ironic, too, because I like this album way more than those two. It’s not a perfect album, which is slightly disappointing, since I thought for a minute there that I might have a contender to unseat Andrew Bird in my top of 07 list, based on the perfectly crafted and forever enjoyable "A Postcard to Nina," and the slightly inferior “Opposite of Hallelujah.

The best and worst thing about Lekman is that he sounds like he could have stepped out of any of the last six decades. Sometimes his smooth voice sounds like 50s crooner; sometimes it sings fey platitudes over a 70s disco beat; other times—often—his lyrics are wry, nuanced, and packed with detail, laid over a kind of diy orchestral pop, giving comparisons to Belle & Sebastian or Magnetic Fields. All this hopping around keeps things interesting, but it also sets Lekman up for the occasional misfire. Nevertheless the highs far outpace the lows (and the live show was something to see, too). Expect to see mention of this album again in a couple of weeks in these parts.