Musicians mature and progress all the time, honing their craft and tweaking their style from album to album in order to explore new territory, broaden their audience, or both. Kurt Vile has certainly done all that on Smoke Ring For My Halo, and yet it also feels like he’s done something even more transcendent, like he’s taken one or two giant leaps along a Noble Eightfold Path toward some kind of Slacker Nirvana.
On his previous albums (including 2009’s Childish Prodigy, which I recommended right here) Vile wrote some superbly catchy ’70s-baked pop-rock tunes, tailor-made for cruising the USA by car or train, and he sang them in a voice too-cool for technique yet undeniably charismatic. He then submerged those tunes in waves of lush lo-fi noise, his guitars and vocals glimmering and bleeding like streetlamps painted by French Impressionists. The only big drawback of those earlier albums is that they tend to lose focus as they unfold, shaking their grips off the hooks and eventually sinking way too far into murky depths of shapeless sound. With Smoke Ring For My Halo, however, Vile has cleaned up his act a little without abandoning his hazy, unpolished charms. The songs are much tighter, and Vile’s words are no longer soaked in reverb and distortion- just kind of moistened- as if he’s more confident in the wit of his lyrics and less shy about his thin, untrained voice. Not surprisingly, this all results in his best album yet.
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Since 1997’s OK Computer- perhaps even since a few moments during 1995’s The Bends- Radiohead has excelled in conveying our ongoing love/paranoia relationship with technology. Machines: Can’t live without ‘em, yet their relentless onslaught will gradually drown what’s left of our humanity by the end of the 21st century. Right, folks?
But while most of Radiohead’s post-Bends material seems to take place within ultra-modern civilization- in hazardous metropolises, in hi-tech supermarkets, in aerodynamic luxury cars, in undeveloped sectors of cyberspace- The King Of Limbs appears to exist in a remote neck of the woods. The cover art leads us into a deep, dark forest (albeit one haunted by some kind of graffiti-drawn Pac-Man ghosts). Several song titles and some of the more discernible lyrics describe a realm inhabited by sprawling plant life, feral creatures, jellyfish, dragonflies, and thieving magpies.
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It was either Frank Black or Shakira who said, “You don’t have to understand 1970s British politics to understand that London Calling is great.” Or something like that. I remember reading that quote like 10 years ago in some print magazine that’s apparently dead and doesn’t archive its back issues online. Nevertheless, Frank Black or Shakira made an excellent point. Social commentary is all well and good for ambitious musicians, as long as the tunes are strong enough to transcend the current events that inspired them.
After 7 albums of impassioned, goth-shaded songs about love, lust and loss, PJ Harvey has released Let England Shake, an impassioned, goth-shaded reaction to the present state of her nation. I know this because on the album she says “England” so often it’s like she’s the Dean of England Studies at the University of England. But fortunately for someone like me who isn’t exactly hip to the modern English zeitgeist, the music on Let England Shake is stirring and chilling enough to overshadow all the sociopolitical statements, however astute (or awkward) they may be.
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Deerhoof is like some fantastic genetically-engineered creature with the head of Hello Kitty, body of brontosaurus, agility of mongoose, brain of dolphin, and invincibility of cyborg, which occasionally shoots fluorescent bottle rockets from its nostrils. Starting with 2002’s Reveille, the albums this band has made with its current core members (guitarist John Dieterich, bassist/singer Satomi Matsuzaki, and drummer Greg Saunier) have either been quite good or goddamn phenomenal.
Perhaps because I first saw Miyazaki’s Spirited Away around the same time I started getting into Deerhoof, the band’s music often reminds me of that movie. They both blur the line between “precious” and “sinister” so much that the words become practically synonymous. They both seem to flow according to an ancient dream-logic that’s utterly bizarre and yet, somehow, totally sound. And both are so full of creativity and invention that no matter how many times I experience the same old parts, they often fill me with the sense of childlike awe that I thought I’d lost forever.
The band’s most recent release, Deerhoof Vs. Evil, offers plenty of those hallmarks. Yet it feels less like an illustration of Deerhoof’s greatness and more like a constellation, a bunch of spaced-out bright spots which form a lopsided outline of the mythical being it’s supposed to represent.
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Small Craft On A Milk Sea feels like it drifts aimlessly for way, way, way too long toward the end. But for the first 40 minutes or so it’s glorious and vicious, a seductive dystopia with a mind of its own. Worthy of a full 10 Listens review for sure.
The voice that stars in Cotton Jones’ lovely Tall Hours In The Glowstream sounds like he was born in a small American town about 60 years ago. He was raised there until he turned 18, when he and his high school sweetheart moved out to a cabin at the edge of the Western Pennsylvania wilderness. They lived happily for a few years, but then his young wife died after a brief and mysterious illness. He never remarried. He just kept living alone in that cabin- hunting, fishing, chopping wood, praying, listening to the AM radio, driving his truck 20 miles to the nearest town once a week to buy whatever goods that nature couldn’t provide. He was happy to live the rest of his days as a hermit, not like some crazy Luddite Unabomber or anything, just an old-fashioned guy who savored his solitude.
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When I heard that The Old 97’s were releasing a 2-Volume album, I was secretly hoping it would be a more-epic-than-epic Use Your Illusion-style project, packed with 9-minute power ballads and maybe a couple of profanity-riddled rants against the jerk-offs in the music press. But basically, they just recorded a bunch of really good country-rock songs in a short period and wanted to spread them out over a few months. Not that I’m complaining, of course. This band is so great that listening to any given Old 97’s album means you’re guessing which tracks will end up on their next Greatest Hits compilation. On The Grand Theatre, Volume One, the Greatest Hits sound like “The Grand Theatre,” “Every Night Is Friday Night (Without You),” “Champaign, Illinois,” and “A State of Texas,” which I hope will make an appearance on the upcoming season of Friday Night Lights. The rest of the songs are still really good (except perhaps “Please Hold On While The Train Is Moving,” which is as silly as its title suggests). The Johnny Cash-like “You Were Born To Be In Battle,” sung by bassist Murry Hammond, really stands out. So does Rhett Miller’s whispering on “Let The Whiskey Take The Reins.” And the closer, the quietly dark “Beauty Marks,” is a fantastic teaser for Volume Two, seducing me and leaving me wanting so much more. I’m certainly going to listen to this album a bunch of times, but I feel like doing a full review is unnecessary. It’s an Old 97’s album. It’s great. Listen to it already.
As Epic begins, a simple minor-key acoustic guitar riff mopes along while the singer sighs: “To say the things I want to say to you would be a crime/ to admit I’m still in love with you after all this time.” Sure, the melody flows nicely, and her voice has an unmistakable allure- bold and confident but not showy, with a subtle cutting edge. But in spite of these attributes, it’s hard to hear those first few bars without thinking Christ, not another humorless, heartsick, self-pitying folk singer.
Then at the end of that first verse, the singer pulls off a neat trick. She tells her ex that, instead of admitting her shameful, lingering feelings, she’d rather let that old flame “seduce me with your charms until I’m drunk on them/ go home and drink in bed/ and never let myself be in love like that again.” It’s not so much the lyrics that get me, but the way she sings them. That line goes on much longer than the previous phrases, to the point that she practically sounds out of breath by the end, and all the while the melody sinks lower and lower until it seems to hit rock bottom. In other words, she takes a cliched sentiment but finds a clever way to mimic the seemingly endless downward spiral of an unhealthy on-again/off-again romance. As a whole, the song is not extraordinary, but that aforementioned moment, along with that gorgeous voice, convinced me to give the rest of Epic a chance. And I’m glad I did.
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I consider Clinic one of my favorite bands, and most of the songs they’ve ever recorded are on my iPod. Though to be perfectly honest, if I were to listen to all those Clinic songs on random shuffle, I’d only be able to identify maybe half of them. Their albums tend to have a few standout tracks surrounded by songs that sound awfully similar: minimally pulsating garage rock rhythms, pointy guitars, eerie organ and melodica riffs, and singer Ade Blackburn mumbling through his teeth like he’s either gonna wet his pants or slit your throat. But the thing about all those Clinic songs that sound like the same Clinic song is that it’s a really cool song. Sometimes I just want to hear that song for a half-hour straight.
The band’s 6th full-length album Bubblegum is a small but significant departure. The typical Clinic record sounds like a pleasant dream being swallowed whole by a vicious and sexy nightmare. With Bubblegum, the pleasant dream is generally in control…it’s just that every so often the demons pop back up and Bubblegum has to eat a few more Prozacs to even things out. I probably won’t give this record 10 listens anytime soon, but most of its tracks will make welcome additions to the ever-growing Clinic playlist on my iPod.
So much of this album is musical comfort food to me: the effortless, sing-along melodies; the swinging, laid-back, Music From Big Pink vibe; the sporadic flashes of religious carny spirit, like the ghost of Neutral Milk Hotel; the ample layers of nostalgic soft-focus reverb, to match the vacation slide cover art. That’s why I’m not quite sure: are these songs really the timeless gems they initially appear to be, or was I merely distracted by charms that will fade after a few more listens? I think I might examine this one a little more and find out…