I’m going to make up some statistics on the Cloud Nothings’ Attack On Memory in an attempt to downplay what you’ll read about it. Their efficiency rate on this record is around 78.3/min, their +/- is +7.5 and they are 17% darker in the paint this record than the the last one. All of this number crunching is to say that this record is a little different from the last one. It’s an “aural assault of the heart” according to Time, so it has to be different from the frivolous-sounding self-titled jam. Only, it really isn’t. In fact, I’m contending that this record is essentially a continuation of a slow-evolving sound. Of course, the first record is poppy and the second one is angry. I’m just not convinced that the songwriting is dramatic or that Cloud Nothings write aural assualts. These are punk rock songs, plain and simple, and they speak to the angry misbegotten soul like punk rock is supposed to.

The emphasis of Attack on Memory has shifted from bright-guitars and complaints to minor chords, dark lyrics and a sharper philosophical sense. If there’s anything to believe on this record, it’s the record itself. Obsessively bleak, the lyrics are cleverly pathetic pandering to the release of personal turmoil. In this, Cloud Nothings has not changed. Instead, they’ve molded their musicianship to match their hopeless facade. Moreover, the opener “No Future, No Past” is a basic building song that ends with a multiply-screamed title of the song. The lyrics, en total, are: “Give up./ Come to./ No Hope./ We’re through. No Future/ No past.” The repeated commands are a warning shot for what becomes a recurring theme: life sucks, bros. Like, it totally sucks. Having belabored this point before, the capitulated methodologies might be boring if not for the presentation changes throughout Attack. “Wasted Days” is a haunting force on the record. The rumble of low-end, the clean guitar, and the motion of the drums are the most combined effort this band has seen. “I thought I would be more than this,” is repeated until 3 minutes in when the band breaks into a noise-infused build set to overly simple drum-and-bass. The big, angry ending isn’t so much endearing as it is a shock to the listener’s system before the bounce-back. “Wasted Days” is effective because it breaks down the usual balance between Cloud Nothings and the audience. The 9-minute jam basically breaks the third wall.

The gentler, more status quo tracks that follow are some of the best on the album. “Fall In” is a pop-gem, “Stay Useless” is a short complaint-rock hit. While the initial reviews are praising the melancholy of Attack on Memory, Cloud Nothings are still churning out simple point-of-phrase pop-punk gems: “I need time to stop moving/ I need time to stay useless” could have been written in 1997, but it feels perfectly in place for the winter of 2012. The best part is how each song is catchy but not overly anthem-like or penetrating. Even the repeated phrases feel like lessons in restraint rather than slogans. Honestly, I don’t know how or why these songs are so usefully catchy– perhaps their personal slant and non-political phrasings? Either way, the album progresses to a harder and louder sound without an eye roll, without a misplaced word or phrase, but with the listener in tow.

“No Sentiment” earmarks that louder, cymbal-bashing sound the record will be lauded for, but the chorus’ straightforward pounding beat and throaty vocal creates an odd crescendo. Attack is oddly self-aware as it ends: the guitars feed back, the drums hit harder, but the message remains clear. There is still no hope, no light. CN are in the next room listening to loud records on their headphones, their parents worried, but it’s cool. Brooding is a defense mechanism just like everything. Meaninglessness is not the opposite of meaning: “No one knows our plans for us./ We won’t last long.” It’s not as simple as “ashes to ashes” but it’s still an methodical understanding of tough times. CN will still come to the dinner table with their nice face on, their snarl and sad-sackery hidden for an hour.

“Cut You” ends a marvelous record the way we all expected. It’s a jealous, bitter post-break-up jam and it rules. This was the problem all along– one so simply stated but tough to define. “Do you feel safe with him?/ Did he give you everything?/ Is he gonna work out?” Questions. “I miss you ’cause I like damage. I need something I can hurt.” Answers. No, these aren’t the answers to the specific questions set forth, but it’s unclear if anyone really wants to know those answers. As the album ends, we notice how fragile this album really is; how damaged the psychological make-up of the songwriter can really be. If their early work is really all that different, how come I am reminded of the questions they asked in the past? How come I feel like this latest work is an extension of how nothing has made sense despite the clever exterior?

Let’s put it this way: if you use Jon Connor in a mashup, you’d have to make a new, good beat and start from scratch. He’s basically rapping over mashup material, like, it’s a pre-mashup. “Inside of You” is possibly the creepiest hook ever. “Place on Earth” is literally– and I mean the literal interpretation of literally– The Bangles’ song “Heaven is a Place on Earth” with him rapping over it. Seriously. And Connor goes in. He’s killing every song even though some of these songs are killing him. It’s not only that he’s too good for this, not only that he suffers from “every song gets released” diseases, it’s that I feel like I can hear him wincing his way through these watercolor producers. Dude’s an artist, he needs a proper canvas. This shit is parchment, my man needs some walls for murals.

There would be no bad if it weren’t for the good, obviously. “No Apologies,” “No Thrillz,” “The Boom Bap Symphony,” “Gonna Make It” (f/ Freeway) and others show how good Connor is when he gets proper production work. It’s few and far between, but when Connor clicks, it’s magic. Busta says it after the opening track “Someone Like Me”: ‘Ya’ll better get ya’ll bars right.” Busta is wise and Busta is right. If Connor figures out the balance, he will crush the game. He’s hungry, angry and good. That’s a big deal. The best combination of soulful, talented and conditioned to destroy beats, Connor could stand out, but he may have to stand on a pile of rejected beats to get there. I’m waiting impatiently for the time to come.

Sharon Van Etten’s voice is one of the loveliest things in music right now, a bright October sunset with a teaspoon of grit.  (It’s even better when she does harmonies too.)  Her voice would feel right at home on a wobbly stool in an East Village cafe, or on stage at the Grand Ole Opry, or sprawled atop a grand piano like Michelle Pfeiffer in The Fabulous Baker Boys.

One thing Van Etten’s voice does really well is sigh, and I love that about it.  I sigh a lot myself, mostly out of fist-clenching frustration, but also, of course, from fatigue, satisfaction, melancholy, and bemusement.  Yet Van Etten’s latest album Tramp sighs way too much, even for me.

There was certainly plenty of sighing on Van Etten’s previous record Epic, which I enjoy as much as ever.  But I enjoy it largely because, aside from Van Etten’s pipes and some really good songs, Epic also has spritzes of piss and vinegar among the sigh-clouds, and it refuses to take itself too seriously for very long.  Tramp, on the other hand, wants to do little else but take itself way too seriously.  (Should’ve seen this coming back when Van Etten drained all traces of joy from Fine Young Cannibals’ “She Drives Me Crazy.”)  Saddest of all, the songwriting tends to be downright uninspired.

A few songs offer flashes of greatness, then resign themselves to mediocrity about halfway through.  “Warsaw” kicks things off promisingly, with a verse full of enticing melody and jangly-dangly guitar.  By the time Van Etten starts singing “I want to be over you,” however, it’s apparent the song’s treading water just like its protagonist.

“Serpents” feels like it’s gonna be a killer for about a minute, only to flat-line around the chorus.  There’s a bunch of ratta-tat-tat snare fills, perhaps designed to propel the song into the stratosphere, though it’s more like they’re nail-gunning the track to the carpet.  The lyrics aim for acrid indignation (”you enjoy suckin’ on dreams/ so I will fall asleep/ with someone other than you“) but the music and the spirit hardly summon a sneer.

“We Are Fine” is occasionally catchy and pleasant, yet it never quite overcomes the abundance of humdrum foreshadowed by its title.  The beauty of “All I Can” gradually fizzles, Coldplay-like, into something that could score an episode-ending montage of a sappy TV hospital drama.  You know, where we see how all the characters are still suffering heavy emotional turmoil, but they each have these faint gleam in their eyes like by golly, we’re gonna get through this, one day at a time. Worse yet, it all builds to a climax where a lyric like “we all make mistakes” is framed like some kind of epic revelation.

Not every track is a melodic, rhythmic, and emotional bummer.  “Leonard” offers some bona fide self-deprecation (”I wanted to try for you/ wanted to die for you/ dramatic things…“) and rises to a swirling, celestial bliss that starkly contrasts its refrain of “Well/ I am bad/ at loving.”  The sultry “Magic Chords” also provides some relief as it shuffles with dark, jazzy allure- though it could use a 10% reduction in sluggishness.

Alas, most everything else on Tramp could be summed up by the part in “Ask” where Van Etten repeatedly sulks, “It hurts too much to laugh about it.”  Now sure, everyone’s allowed to be in that place now and then, that point where tragedy’s still too fresh to become comedy yet.  That place isn’t usually fertile ground for songwriting, though.  Poetry comes from emotion remembered in tranquility, as Wordsworth said, and to that Stephin Merritt added, “You have to be scientific about it. Never try to write a song when you’re actually feeling the emotion.”  I have no idea whether Van Etten actually wrote Tramp’s songs from deep within her sad place, but they sure do sound that way.

Look, it’s fine if an album wants to be spun on rainy afternoons, but a rainy afternoon album can and should still have life in it.  Sharon Van Etten’s voice insures that all the songs on Tramp sound pretty on the surface, but inside, most of those songs are awful homely.  These aren’t merely “sad ballads.”  They’re more like woeful dirges exhaled by meek, passive mope addicts.

I really wanted to like Tramp.  That’s why I gave it 10 listens in the first place.  But it was obvious by the 3rd listen that I’d probably never like Tramp; by the 7th listen, it started making me angry how bored I was.  Especially in the penultimate song, when Van Etten sings “Tell me I’m funny/ even when I’m not.”  As a listener, that line just felt like a slap in the face.  I’d be like, No! That’s one of our biggest problems here, Sharon! Once upon a time you were kind of funny and really cool but now you’re just floating in a swamp of despondency! Well, what’s done is done.  Tramp is done.  So OK, fine: Sharon, you’re “funny.”  Now would you please snap out of this funk and go back to writing wittier, more dynamic songs?

Every lyric’s a gruff whisper, like he’s uttering dying words.  “I’ve got no future/ I know my days are few/ the present’s not that pleasant/ just a lot of things to do.” He carries each tune fine enough, though he needs his shooby-doop backup singers to show just how sublime those tunes really are.  Like so many old men he can be happily stubborn, but unlike so many old men, he sounds legitimately virile.  He lounges amid the kind of shamelessly artificial, occasionally cheap-sounding synth-pop and lite jazz backdrops that sounded dated even in the ’80s, and he instills them with dignity simply by being Leonard Fucking Cohen.  “Old Ideas” indeed, but they still work wonders.

They work their wonders mostly because Cohen’s at the top of his game poetically, his words embodying every adjective we should all hope to be should we live that long: tender, crabby, romantic, dirty, mournful, grateful, spiritual, irreverent, humble, rugged, needy, ready-to-die, and willing-to-live.  Wouldn’t be shocking if Old Ideas wins Cohen his “Time Out Of Mind” Grammy for Album Of The Year.

Out of 10 tracks, only the faintly-charming but forgettable “Anyhow” fails to leave much of an impression.  A couple of light-hearted songs flirt with slightness but manage to stick thanks to memorably surreal imagery: “Banjo” has its “broken banjo bobbing/ on the dark infested sea,” while “Lullaby” has “the mouse ate the crumb/ and the cat ate the crust/ now they’ve fallen in love/ and they’re talking in tongues.”

The rest of the tracks could claim rightful places among the Greatest Hits, or are at least worthy of slots on future set lists.  “The Darkness” might be the most fun of the lot, with Cohen strutting to a lithe, bluesy groove.  The minimal, acoustic “Crazy To Love You” most closely resembles his early work, and probably has the most potent mix of sweetness and bluntness (”Had to go crazy to love you/ You who were never the one/ whom I chased through the souvenir heartache/ her braids and her blouse all undone“).  “Show Me The Place” endears against incredible odds, considering Cohen appears to treasure his own slavery.  In “Going Home,” he channels a cheeky, puppet-master god and has some self-referential, third-person fun with the idea of The Prophet Leonard Cohen (”He will speak these words of wisdom/ like a sage, a man of vision/ though he knows he’s really nothing/ but the brief elaboration of a tube”). “Amen” drifts from kindly-pleading gypsy-jazz shuffle into a softly approaching apocalypse, led by a red-fog trumpet and brief premonitions of horror (”Try me again/ when the angels are panting/ and scratching at the door to come in…tell me that you need me then…”).

Most beautiful of all is “Come Healing,” which, at the risk of hyperbole, is what I think God’s Love might sound like if God’s Love exists.  A thousand more Jeff Buckley disciples could very well turn this song into another “Hallelujah.”

It’s a great relief that Old Ideas ends with a track like “Different Sides.”  For most of its running time, the album feels like a gracious goodbye to a life well-spent.  And while that gracious goodbye is rich with humor and happiness and other pleasures,  it’s bitingly bittersweet.  The closing track, however, shows Cohen frisky and utterly unconcerned about things like numbered days.  “You want to change the way I make love,” he grunts. “I want to leave it alone.”  Atta boy, Leonard.  He won’t go gently into that good night, but just in case, he thought he’d drop off this exquisite Thank You Card.

There’s something uncanny about The Lion’s Roar from the very beginning, when there’s nothing more than minor-key acoustic guitar and a will-o’-the-wisp flickering between the trees.  A tender yet hardened young woman sets the scene (”The pale morning sings/ of forgotten things”), and the air’s already thick with mythology.  It’s the feeling you get when you look to the west- so beautiful it’s profoundly unsettling, and so profoundly unsettling it’s beautiful.  There’s witchery afoot, and slavery, and plagues.  Can’t blame us too much for being such goddamn cowards and fools, but God damn us anyway.  And while God’s at it, God can damn itself for taking so much of our innocence before we could muster enough courage and wisdom to fill the void.

*   *   *

“Swedish Americana” makes a lot of sense.  Sweden totally gets America when it comes to pop, at least more so than other countries where English is a second language.  America may not always get what Swedish pop has to offer us, like Robyn for instance, but Swedish pop sure gets us, all right.

First Aid Kit (sisters Johanna and Klara Soderberg) highlights just how kindred our nation’s Country Western & Southern Gothic spirits are to the land of ABBA.  It’s not surprising that Flannery O’Connor’s friends thought she’d enjoy the films of Ingmar Bergman.  So how great would it be if Loretta Lynn covered “Knowing Me, Knowing You”?  And wouldn’t it be cool if Linda Ronstadt did an album of Jens Lekman songs?  “Swedish Americana” ought to be a slightly bigger sub-genre than it currently is, and The Lion’s Roar ought to be a cornerstone of that sub-genre.

Inspirations are flaunted relentlessly throughout The Lion’s Roar. First Aid Kit are still Co-Presidents of the Fleet Foxes fan club, as well as subscribers to the Joanna Newsom newsletter.  They love Bright Eyes so much they end the album with a very Bright Eyes-like ditty featuring Conor Oberst himself.  They reference Emmylou Harris, Gram Parsons, June Carter and Johnny Cash in a single chorus.  Wearing all these influences so boldly on their Paisley dresses could potentially be cloying, distracting and self-sabotaging.  But First Aid Kit are so ridiculously good at singing and songwriting, they can get away with it every step of the way.  Much credit should also go to Mike Mogis’s tasteful production, which sharply spotlights the Soderbergs’ voices and knows exactly how to surround them with centuries of American folk.

Seriously, this album is stunning, even if you don’t dig Fleet Foxes.  The first time hearing it, I felt like I knew each song was gonna be good before the first measure had finished, and I was right every time.  More than a dozen spins later, The Lion’s Roar is still as beautiful as the night we met- every toothsome melody, every scintillating harmony.

*   *   *

When you love someone for years and years, inevitably you’ll take that person for granted a bunch of times.  Occasionally you may even forget why you loved them in the first place.  The reassuring part is, sometimes you can just look at someone and instantly remember why you love them, and you treasure them more than you ever did before, at least until the cycle starts again.

When Johanna (born 1990) and Klara (born 1993) voice these sentiments in “This Old Routine,” they sound like they know from decades more experience than they could possibly have.  Their voices are emotional yet subtle, favoring restraint and reaching for the stars only when the tune calls for it. Also, their twangs are suspiciously convincing.  I wouldn’t rule out that these young girls are the reincarnations of obscenely graceful Southern-American women, blessed and grizzled by lifetimes of love.

Then again, the Soderbergs aren’t totally immune to the charms and follies of youth.  “I know I am naive,” they sing, “but if anything, that’s what’s going to save me.”

*   *   *

One of my favorite things about The Lion’s Roar is the kind of moments when they make you think you totally know what word is going to end the lyric, and then at the very last second, they screwball you.  “Now I guess sometimes I wish you were a little more predictable/ that I could read you just like a book/ For now I can only guess what’s coming next/ by examining your timid…” Look?  Nope!

“…smile!“

]]> http://10listens.com/2012/01/23/first-aid-kit-the-lions-roar/feed/ 0 http://10listens.com/2012/01/12/of-bathgate-and-buckner-and-i-transitions-from-personal-to-impossible/ http://10listens.com/2012/01/12/of-bathgate-and-buckner-and-i-transitions-from-personal-to-impossible/#comments Thu, 12 Jan 2012 19:49:14 +0000 Jeff Laughlin http://10listens.com/?p=2780

During my break from 10L, I didn’t stop listening to music. I didn’t stop caring. I just stopped writing about it. I laid in bed and ate fried chicken (more like friend chicken, youknowhatImean?) and read stories from the NBA Lockout. I tried to care more about college basketball. I drank some and didn’t drink a lot at the same time. Hell, I’m not sure that I did much of anything else. Milk and vegetables spoiled a lot more than I wanted them to because I overshot my mornings by a mile and spent the days lamenting.

If anything actually offered me solace, it was the occasional jam with Chris Bathgate’s Salt Year and trying to figure out if I really liked Richard Buckner’s Our Blood. My relationship with music isn’t always as complicated as it is with Buckner, as Bathgate’s catalog can attest. I am drawn to every Richard Buckner album with delirious haste. Listening and re-listening, I’m hooked by the opening riff. Then, I lose something each time I finish the record. Is Our Blood to be appreciated in small doses? Is the listener really to dismiss the catalog each time he/she hears a new song? The challenge of ignoring an artist’s past is really on trial here*. There’s nothing really different about this record as compared to the last few releases, but is that such a bad thing?

Independent of those questions is the importance of how good the songs are. Two examples: “Traitor” opens on a dark note to lead into the lighter, folkier “Escape.” Both could be placed firmly in the Buckner canon without digression from the mean, but they both stand alone as disciple-worthy. If this was your first time hearing RB, the stand outs are all there: the scattershot lyrics over repetitive instrumentation. Buckner’s brooding voice creating everyman stories while seeming vague enough to be his own variance. “Let’s waste the night/ pay the price and get out of here/ It’s not enough/ Backing out just to disappear.” All the ‘we’ and ‘they’ and ‘you’ and ‘them’ in the place of names are there. The listener could easily feel like he/she is any one of those pronouns, a part of the larger picture of Buckner’s specificity. That is his specific gift, involving the listener no matter how cold and separated the music may seem.

There are some reaches on the album: “Collusion” has a long-winded outro that collides with “Ponder’s” instrumental dreamscape. Buckner’s not exactly known for these kinds of long, vocal-less stints and it shows he can back away from his conversational lyricism quite nicely. I don’t love them on the album, but I like the songs theoretically. It’s a halftime from human folly that seems much-needed though not necessarily fantastic. The difference in the two albums I can’t get over: when Buckner does something different it is forced rather than focused. Perhaps being a veteran has its flaws. Bathgate has a seamless transitional quality. Neither singer has terrific range while both know how to use their voices to accentuate their music effortlessly. Buckner just seems more repetitive this time around– albeit with a flair and gusto still missing from most songwriters’ catalogs. I can forgive him for repetition; for knowing his niche and staying safe? I’m still, so far, undecided despite my own aformentioned foray into the unspectacular safe zone.

Of Bathgate: some fiddles, some loops, some questions, some piano, some acoustic, some electric, some lyrical playfulness, some answers, some serious, some graciousness, some long, some short, some songs, some album. Bathgate doesn’t really have any peers since no one is doing what he does. He’s a student of the folk game; wants to severely change it without destroying it. “No Silver” is a classic that could just as easily be sung at a stranger’s campfire jam session as it could on a stage to no one in particular. “Poor Eliza” is a song of predestinated sentience and, like most of his work, showcases how a storyteller can learn as a song progresses. The buildups in this song are a catalog of what is to come: each song is a perilous warning, a story and an overall test of will.

Throughout Salt Year, Bathgate vacillates between heavy details and a light moroseness. “Levee” and “Borders” are persona-to-object rockers: they are clever songs that bring us to conclusions without conclusions themselves. “Borders” in particular is an anti-work song, but you’d never know it if you just let the riff wash over you. I admit to doing that a few times. The title track offers a drifting quality– pedal steel floats you through 17 years of wasted youth and forlornness. Bathgate creates his songs from a mold unlike any other songwriter I’ve experienced. It was the same way I felt about Richard Buckner years ago.

That said, Bathgate took a chance with Salt Year. It is dissimilar from his catalog: more rock-n-roll than the predecessors, yet lonelier. The listener is not really invited to be a part of the story like Our Blood. We are left to figure out our place in the album. Instead of closing our eyes and being one with an all-too-well-known evening amongst the thresholds of important decisions– classic Buckner– we’re placed just outside the story and have to fight our way in. Buckner’s pathos vs. Bathgate’s ethos: this is the battle that brought me to both. There is nothing inherently wrong with either songwriter’s approach. They both created solid albums that I will revisit. Both have solid footholds in my want. Both have flaws. Neither can be blamed for those flaws because they are the greatest flaws in storytelling. Emotion is impossible to convey, yet these men did so with great effort and aplomb. Buckner’s flaws are heavier because he has always had them. Bathgate’s are new and unstable. Thus, Buckner’s flaws are forced but they are subtle. And neither has done the listener a great injustice here.

Me? I’ll be alright. There’s some cans of unspoiled black beans marking my efforts to grocery shop. I’ve got professional basketball back. I’ve got a philosophical argument to settle re: Buckner v. Bathgate. I may never publish the results. I’ve made my peace with Buckner’s repetition and Bathgate’s exclusions. I know, especially now, how inexplicably powerful the call to create is. And you create as best you can with the gifts you have, showcase them with the clarity they deserve and position yourself for the transition to either success or failure. It’s so rare to understand anything other than success or failure. Not to say I didn’t try to understand either in Salt Year or Our Blood, it’s just that some arguments should be settled, some should remain unresolved and others should have never surfaced. In this case, I’m better for having argued and for having given up arguing to enjoy the accompanying soundtracks.

*-A rule at 10L, not focusing on an artist’s past gives us a chance to write about an album instead what created it or our personal biases.

I’m not a genius by any means. I’m an average bro with a slanted opinion. I’m a half-wit, a writer’s writer, a stylist without a popular canvas. I know Girls and Watch the Throne and Wavves. I know Katy Perry and Lady Gaga. I know Kanye and Cudi. I know all the cool jamz people gravitate toward. I know them and I often like them. It’s just that, and I know I am not entirely alone, I tend to allay my hopes on the forgotten, misunderstood albums that receive little fanfare. For example, one of my favorite albums of all time, Jets To Brazil’s Orange Rhyming Dictionary is an audible eyesore– a series of strange canvases and literary intentionality. My love of later Superchunk albums (and early ones for that matter) isn’t necessarily wrong, it’s just doesn’t matter. Problem is, the unintentional consequence of seeking the destitute and unloved albums in American music drives away readers as quickly as it allows self-satisfaction.

So what was different about 2011? The music was, but that’s to be expected. My attitude toward life? Not really. I changed locales, came to grips with some personal issues, etc. I didn’t change tastes, though. There wasn’t even a subtle shift. I like the same records now as I did then, just more of them. That said, I really do believe that three records absolutely stood out for me in 2011 for their styles, their movements, their irrepressible charisma, their difference engines in creating artistic masterworks. These albums bent genres, created new walls and unburdened a strange year for music as a whole. Think about it, 2011s most popular rap album may well have been made by one of the best producers in the world and he didn’t make the beats. Skrillex is nominated for grammys. Tom Waits put out an at-best mediocre album. Bon Iver became Bonnie Raitt (not a knock, that album rips in spots). All the while, Storms, Grails and Cymbals Eat Guitars created intimidating, challenging, beautiful records to little response.

Once the first official “riff’ of Grails Deep Politics hit, I knew I wasn’t reviewing the album. I don’t know how to describe the riff, what instrument is really involved, where the influences truly lie. Are they in love with Sergio Leone? Or do they love world music? Are they becoming more obtuse or are they expanding their palate? Is it both? Why do they insist on playing a detuned piano and why does it sound so damned good? There’s more questions than answers. Deep Politics‘ excellence is the only reward.

Effectively, post-rock is supposed to be the antithesis of story. The challenge of reviewing post-rock is to ignore describing it. Describing a Grails song is worthless: the swirl of guitars, the soft background noise, the Native American flutes and tinkering piano riffs are impossible to hand to someone unless in spiritual or musical form. I contemplated writing “Just get lifted and listen to this, guys, 10.0″ and that being the whole review. I really don’t know how else to sell it. DP is atmosphere defined by inward being rather than emotional triggers. Where Explosions in the Sky or Mogwai of their contemporaries succeed in manipulating volume and emotion, Grails leave a cold, dead trail of dependency. The record is morose by accident; the scientific arrival of parity in musicianship. Grails are equals with any other post-rockers or instrumental outfits, but they are on some next-level jams simultaneously. Describing Deep Politics is as impossible as listening to it without trying to figure out how to describe it.

This conundrum exists in instrumental music without the lyrical fallbacks. There’s no other guidance than the imagination. Left alone, a listener tries to create the sympathies and travails. Certainly, Grails welcomes this, but challenges the listener to be destitute in blank space. There is nothing, the can be nothing. How, then, do Cymbals Eat Guitars create the same dead weight in Lenses Alien? CEG provide a wealth of lyrics on a myriad of angular topics set to waves of noise-and-drone feedback offset by loud pop riffs. The stories are at times dark, at times sentimental, but oddly inaccessible. I’ll never know if this is intentional since I want them to be mysteriously ineffectual. With each lyric’s consequence comes a random observation. With each beginning to the story comes an arrival to nothingness. For every “guy who killed a state trooper” there’s a “dirty hypodermic needle in the seat cushion of the movie theater.” It’s a confusing, tangled mass of treasonous behavior, control-issue barrages of noise and effortless musical superiority.

And that’s just the surface area. The real mass of Lenses Alien surreptitiously collides throughout the album. The lyrics often devolve into wails and caterwauls over grating noise before arriving at distinct moments of musical clarity. Their style is assaulting, purposefully. They are not the first to adopt sonic substructures to terrorize the listener. CEG are not defining anything. Conversely, they are the passive sentence construction. Lenses Alien meanders toward absence of meaning but never fully arrive in meaninglessness. They never fully arrive at perfection. It’s sloppy, slovenly cleanliness; hungover eyes roving a church service for likeminded sinners. Like Grails, they are an unpolished explosion of perilous clarity for those who are keen enough to notice. Each incomplete riff, polished bit of noise and overtly misanthropic lyric is a jewel for the occidental listener. Where Grails detune and deconstruct, Cymbals Eat Guitars self-destruct.

Both albums are beautiful and neither band have put out a bad product. Even the early Grails albums, though entirely different in scope and sound, were astounding. The first CEG record kills (and their cover of Superchunk’s Detroit Has a Skyline is a full-circle example of how things change but stay entirely the same, as stated earlier). I don’t think either band tried to be a musical dissident or contrarian in song, much like I don’t think I was trying to find the less-loved records as my favorites of all time. This isn’t nature-vs.-nurture, it’s rock music. While each band is as inaccessible as they are brilliant, they still desire to be heard, to be exposed and to write the song that inspires a listener. Deep Politics is a treasury of unlikely instrumentals and Lenses Alien is a treasury of unlikely sounds/lyrics. Directly in between them lies an experiment, a bridge between repetitive sound, vocal melodies and long-winded breathlessness. Directly between the rigidity of Grails and the experimental Cymbals is Storms’ Lay Your Sea Coat Aside.

Suffocating in simplicity and beauty, Storms debut album is the only album of the three that I reviewed this year. I won’t re-review it, but this struck me as an important point:

“More than a series of songs or a sum of parts, this record relies on the strength of the entire body of work. The songs don’t exactly bleed directly into one another, but each builds beautifully off of rhythmic guitar and layered vocals. Oftentimes, long instrumental leads fill voids in the image-driven lyrics. These are the silences of nature and the nurturing hand Storms provide to guide you.”

I accidentally defined the whole point of this article back in March. No, music isn’t nature-vs-nuture, but creation of music is. When an album is as good as this one, I’m led directly to its origin point. The songs guide you rather than direct you. There are no harsh reminders of imperfections. The imperfections fit in. Storms didn’t write a great record because they are great musicians. Sea Coat is consistently imagistic in the same way that Grails persist with odd textures and Cymbals use their off-kilter layering. The lulls and sways of each album are intentional and interpolating. Storms, with expansive simplicity, pursue a different idea of music yet they do so to the same end. They meld folk and foreign sounds to create the music, the myths of the sailor and the swells of the ocean with the same clarity I spoke of earlier. The fact that they do so more directly does not make this record accessible. It only makes Lay Your Sea Coat Aside brilliant. Grails does not make post-rock like Cymbals Eat Guitars are not indie rock like Storms did not create a debut folk record.

The difference in my favorite three records of 2011 wasn’t my attitude or surroundings. The difference wasn’t style or substance. The difference was that the creators manipulated their creations so well. Grails purified post-rock. Cymbals Eat Guitars invoked insouciance into a normally emotionally charged canvas. Storms vacillated between storyteller and artist. Each band defined their records perfectly despite their ill-fitting genres. The difference lies in significance which can be more important to me than slick styles or cleverness. Such roughshod elegance cannot be calculated by the masses, either. I’m not particularly popular in my love of music, but I know that these records are good. These albums aren’t going to sell millions of copies, create memes or hashtags, get me laid by writing this essay, or otherwise stimulate tumblr conversations with cool folks. They will, however, be astounding examples of how popularity and context rarely mingle and why I will continue to listen and preach, audience be damned. They are only defining me and my ever-evolving opinion.

Music writers keep referring to the current Guided By Voices reboot as the “classic” lineup, almost always with that word “classic” in quotation marks, like they need to remind us that “classic” is just publicist-speak.  I prefer to distance myself from that “classic” label as well, if only because “classic” feels like such a mundane way to put it.  “Classic” is for blue jeans and Coca Cola and Treasure Island and radio stations that play “Whole Lotta Love.”  Not that those things can’t be cool, but the 1993 – 1996 lineup of Guided By Voices is a peculiar animal, and therefore it needs its own adjective.  I think John Wenzel is on the right track when he talks about GBV’s 1994 album Bee Thousand:

It is perfect, in the same subjective and tautological way that all great works of art are perfect.  Its quality cannot be overstated, but it can certainly be overanalyzed, and that I usually try to avoid.  Let its mystery lie, like the alien corpses rumored to exist in Wright-Patterson Air Force Base’s Hangar 18.  Perhaps that’s where the album’s magic came from, some toxic alien blood infiltrating the water table of Northridge, somehow birthing a modern classic in the mind of a beer-fueled ex-jock schoolteacher.

from Marc Woodworth’s 33¹ ⁄ ³ book on Bee Thousand

John can’t avoid using that “classic” word near the end, but the “toxic alien blood” phrase is what I’m talking about.  From here on, I’ll refer to the recently reunited version of Guided By Voices as the “Toxic Alien Blood” lineup (that’s lead singer/songwriter Robert Pollard; assistant captain Tobin Sprout on guitar, piano, and occasional lead vocals; guitarist Mitch Mitchell; bassist Greg Demos; and drummer Kevin Fennell).

The Toxic Alien Blood lineup of Guided By Voices must have known they were lofting their fans’ expectations when they announced they wouldn’t just go on tour playing their mid-’90s highlights, but that they were also going to release a new album of original material.  The pre-’93 and post-’96 lineups released some good albums and scores of great songs, thanks to Pollard’s gifts as a songwriter and talent scout.  Any of those lineups- perhaps even a fresh new lineup- could have re-established the Guided By Voices brand and generated buzz, as long as Pollard was involved.  Getting the Toxic Alien Blood band back together, however, seemed to offer an implicit promise that they were feeling the same kind of alchemy that forged Bee Thousand and 1995’s Alien Lanes, and to a lesser extent, 1996’s Under The Bushes, Under The Stars.  As if the Toxic Alien Blood hadn’t totally evaporated, and the band had found some traces left in a vial in Robert Pollard’s cellar, and they were able to synthesize a few more pints.

Let’s Go Eat The Factory is the result of this promise, and it doesn’t disappoint.  Yes, it’s a blatant attempt to recapture the Toxic Alien Blood magic of days long past.  But it never sounds desperate, sad, or stale.  Sure, there’s plenty of what we might expect from these guys.  We get songs with melodies so gorgeous and voices so tender they warm the heart despite their poppycock lyrics (”Doughnut For A Snowman,” “My Europa,” “Chocolate Boy”).  Tobin Sprout’s at the bottom of a manic-depressive well, singing to a pinhole of sunlight, just like Alex Chilton on Big Star’s third album (”Who Invented The Sun,” the second half of “Spiderfighter”).  The 90-seconds-or-less song fragments that had been completely phased out by the time of the band’s 2004 break-up are back with a vengeance (”The Head,” “How I Met My Mother,” “Go Rolling Home,” “The Room Taking Shape”).  A few triumphant pop-post-punk anthems amp up the sing-along factor (”Laundry And Lasers,” “God Loves Us,” “The Unsinkable Fats Domino,” “Either Nelson”).  Occasionally everyone staggers about like they’ve been hypnotized by German Expressionist villains (”Hang Mr. Kite,” “The Big Hat And Toy Show,” “We Won’t Apologize For The Human Race”).  The tunes often fade into each other like channel-surfing daydreams, and the sound quality is only slightly better than a waterlogged 4-track.  In other words, just like the good old days.

Yet amid all the familiar hallmarks, pleasant surprises abound.  Like the organ that comes out of nowhere in the middle of “The Head” and joyfully smothers everything in its path.  Or the chilling power of the neon-noir synths & violin combo in “Hang Mr. Kite.”  Or the didgeridoo pulse of “Waves,” cozy and toasty like an old flannel quilt, yet cool and refreshing like a late April convertible cruise.  Or “Old Bones,” apparently some kind of Irish folk ballad filtered through nitrous oxide and Brian Eno’s Another Green World.  Or my personal favorite, “Imperial Racehorsing,” which bursts with destruction, fanfare and “Helter Skelter” voodoo.

I still have a hard time believing that Let’s Go Eat The Factory is as wonderful as I think it is.  While I eagerly awaited this album, I also tempered my anticipation with what I thought was cold, practical wisdom.  Lightning doesn’t strike the same bottle twice, I told myself, especially after 15 long years.  I thought I’d be lucky if I enjoyed this album a fraction as much as I enjoy Bee Thousand and Alien Lanes, which, if I haven’t made clear by now, are two of my all-time favorite things.  Now when I listen to Let’s Go Eat The Factory for the 25th or 26th time, I love it so much I think it must be trickery.  I assume I must be under a powerful and deceitful spell cast by the Toxic Alien Blood lineup.  This can’t possibly be my third favorite Guided By Voices album ever.  It just doesn’t make sense.  I’m in utter disbelief.  Then I remember the end of “The Unsinkable Fats Domino,” when Pollard orders us to “Make disbelief unthinkable.”  Then I listen to Let’s Go Eat The Factory for the 26th or 27th time, and I realize it must be true.  It’s simply too good not to be true.

…a broken heart is blind.

The Black Keys, “Little Black Submarines”

When it comes to love and music, I’m a big, gooey romantic.  The only difference is that in love, I’ve basically been a serial monogamist, rarely hesitant to jump into a new committed relationship even if I just had my heart wrecked by an old committed relationship.  With music, of course, I’m free to swing.  Radiohead won’t get jealous if I also fall in love with Clinic, just like I won’t get jealous sharing my love of The Fiery Furnaces with some of my bros.

When I fell in love with The White Stripes though, it was something extra-extra-special.  I was hearing them for the very first time through a pair of puffy listening-station headphones in the 4th Street & Broadway Tower Records, and as “Fell In Love With A Girl” finished whupping my ass and screeched to a halt, I felt like I had found The One. I had loved many other bands before then, but the first 4 tracks of White Blood Cells felt like practically everything I loved about American music rolled into one ultra-wonderful Voltron that I never realized I always wanted.  Jack & Meg continued to be my main musical squeeze from that moment on, and when they called it quits last Groundhog Day, it crushed my tender music-loving heart.

It’s not fair, perhaps, yet unavoidable, far as I’m concerned, for me to talk about The White Stripes so much when I should be reviewing the new Black Keys album.  Thing is, I never got into The Black Keys before precisely because of The White Stripes.  I’d hear The Black Keys now and then, watch them play a tune on a late night talk show, and I’d think, These guys rock all right, but I guess I only have room in my heart for one duo that stands in the shadows of Motown with warped blues guitars and cave-stomp drums. But now that The White Stripes are gone (at least until the inevitable reunion), it’s The Black Keys that have done the most special thing a band has done for me in a very long time.  Maybe not extra-extra-special, but special enough.  But first, back to The White Stripes.

In the immediate aftermath of the break-up, I was sad, of course, but I found ways to ease the pain a little.  I sought solace in the arms of old flames that first sparked in my adolescence: PJ Harvey’s dark, twisted embrace comforted me for a time; then, to a lesser extent, so did Radiohead’s; I even spent some blurry weeks partying with the dudes in Urge Overkill, which I never thought I’d do again.  For a while I chilled with Kurt Vile, a more recently-borne infatuation of mine, but it was a hazy, bemusing month.  I also got to know a teenage phenom named Dominique Young Unique, but I decided to keep my distance, lest I turn into a skeezy old man.  By the time summertime rolled around, though, the Stripes-sized hole in my heart didn’t feel any smaller.

The more I realized this, the harder I tried to fill that hole with new, exciting sounds.  I flirted with The Weeknd’s free downloads, but their post-ecstasy-fueled-one-night-stand-comedown-R&B quickly filled me with an unbearable lightness of ennui.  Most of my friends said Bon Iver was moving them, but I couldn’t shake the suspicion that they just wanted to dig Justin Vernon as much as Kanye does.  When a lot of those same friends raved about M83’s Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming, I soon discovered that record was basically my least favorite shades of Animal Collective, Passion Pit, Phoenix, and several other bands I’m ambivalent about, all pulsating through a strobe light that doesn’t know the party’s been over for like half-an-hour already.  The breezy power-pop of Real Estate’s Days sounded pleasant enough as I listened to it, but ultimately, to my ears, the songs had the sticking power of damp Colorforms.

So I ran back to more long-time loves, only to remain unfulfilled.  Eleanor Friedberger’s solo debut left me with a couple of memorable tracks, but overall the album felt like a safely quirky late-summer fling.  The Ivory Tower Penthouse vibe of Watch The Throne left me cold after a couple spins.  The first 4 tracks of Wilco’s The Whole Love reminded me why I love Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and A Ghost Is Born, then the last 8 tracks reminded me why I didn’t pay much attention to Sky Blue Sky and Wilco (The Album).  I gave Wild Flag a chance, but ever since Carrie Brownstein became a sketch comedy star on Portlandia, I can’t really listen to her wobbly, affected singing voice without thinking she sounds like someone she’d make fun of on her show.  Worst of all, 2011 turned out to be the year where Jack White, instead of writing and releasing dynamo rock n’ roll, focused on producing comedic novelty singles by Stephen Colbert, John C. Reilly and the Insane Clown Posse.  Not that they didn’t mildly amuse me, they just left me feeling like a die-hard Bulls fan must’ve felt when Michael Jordan retired to play minor league baseball.

Just when it seemed like my mostly-cloudy year of music was going to end in a long, frustrating drizzle, along came a technicolor rainbow in the form of The Black Keys’ new Danger Mouse-co-produced album El Camino.   I can’t tell you how El Camino compares to other Black Keys albums, ’cause like I said, I never really got into them before now.  But I can tell you that every morning this week I’ve woken up psyched that I can strut around listening to this album again.  (And again and again.)  This album makes me choose listening to my iPod and doing nothing else during my 45-minute subway commute- not writing, not reading books, not solving crossword puzzles, not attempting to meditate in spite of the obnoxious mariachi band that nobody invited.  It’s been a while since that’s been the case.

I get giddy every time I start up “Lonely Boy,” hearing that mid-tempo see-saw riff that ends like a reel-to-reel tape drooping to a pause…hearing Patrick Carney’s drums slam on the gas and abracadabra, that very same mid-tempo riff is now a speeding shiny red go-kart, setting the pace for the non-stop 37-minute shindig to come…hearing those Danger Mouse trademarks in a whole new context: the dusty, crackling keyboard licks; the joyful, gospel-esque chorus awesomely elevating Dan Auerbach’s husky soul-blues vocals; the boiling sense of urgency propelling everything headlong into the future.  (The phantom synthesizers and plinky glockenspiels and sprightly hand-claps will be arriving shortly.)

The rest of El Camino’s first half rocks just as hard as that excellent opening track, if not harder.  I still can’t get over how “Gold On The Ceiling” starts like any old ZZ Top Texas blooze stomp, but then the zippery riffs start taking weird little left turns until we end up at the hippest strip club in town.  When the lovelorn, acoustic first half of “Little Black Submarines” gives way to an arena-rattling second half, it may be a trick at least as old as Led Zeppelin, but damn it gets me every time.  Whenever I hear the talkbox solo of “Money Maker” I can taste the spittle splattering all over the mouth tube, and I savor every fleck.  “Dead And Gone” and “Run Right Back” may not have any extraordinary features, they’re just exactly what they need to be: simple, catchy, sweaty, radio-friendly rock songs.

El Camino’s poppier second half doesn’t rock as hard as the first, but it’s just as much fun.  “Sister” and closing track “Mind Eraser” are a couple of disco jams, yet the jagged guitars and punchy drums make them disco jams with teeth and muscle.  In between those, there’s three tracks (”Hell Of A Season,” “Stop Stop,” “Nova Baby”) that remind me how Gnarls Barkley had so many other great songs besides “Crazy,” and make me wish Danger Mouse would pull Cee-Lo away from The Voice and back in the studio.

So thank you, El Camino.  You’ve slapped on a happy to ending to my very gray year of music.  More importantly, you’ve helped me learn how to love new albums and new bands again.  I’m not just rebounding, I swear.  I’m not saying I love The Black Keys just yet, but I definitely could.  I’m already planning a hot date with their back catalog.  And I promise I won’t just be fantasizing about The White Stripes.

The rock n’ roll was perfect.  The rock n’ roll was excellent.

- Wesley Willis, “Urge Overkill”

What the heck happened to Urge Overkill?  I mean, aside from the drugging and the feuding?  More specifically, what the heck happened to public opinion of Urge Overkill?  Their fingerprints are all over some of the biggest rock bands of the past 15 years, whether those bands meant it that way or not: Queens Of The Stone Age, Foo Fighters, Guided By Voices (after they went hi-fi) and The White Stripes to name a few.  All these bands made huge, arena-ready, Camaro-friendly rock that was as fun as ’80s party metal but not nearly as dumb, and as cool as early-’90s grunge but not nearly as suicidal.  Urge Overkill nailed that formula on 1993’s Saturation, which boasted a couple of buzz-worthy tracks (”Sister Havana” & “Positive Bleeding”) at a time when humorless mope rock was all the rage.  Then came ‘94, when Kurt Cobain shot himself and the kids decided maybe fun wasn’t so lame after all.  Urge hit the Billboard Hot 100 by covering Neil freaking Diamond in Pulp freaking Fiction, and by the end of the year the kids had officially anointed the mud-flinging jesters of Green Day as rock’s Next Big Thing.  In ‘95, Urge released Exit The Dragon, a slightly darker, more emotional follow-up to Saturation that nevertheless brought more than enough sharply-written songs with kick-ass riffs and brilliant hooks but bombed anyway.  The kids ultimately decided that Urge Overkill wasn’t for them.  Perhaps the band wasn’t pogo enough for the punk revivalists, wasn’t heavy enough for the metalheads, wasn’t gloomy enough for the grunge holdovers, wasn’t hard enough for the industrial goths, wasn’t lovably dorky enough for the Weezer geeks, wasn’t scrawny enough for the Matador Records collectors, wasn’t mellow enough for the H.O.R.D.E. festival circuit, wasn’t beige enough for whoever was patronizing The Gin Blossoms and Collective Soul, was too American for the Britpop buffs, was too mainstream-sounding for the art-school junkies, was too cheeky for the Classic Rock purists.  Who knows?  But for whatever reasons, Urge Overkill fell through the cracks and hasn’t been a significant part of the conversation for more than a decade and a half now.

Only time will tell if Rock&Roll Submarine will correct this injustice, but it damn well should.

It’s nothing groundbreaking, to be sure.  In fact, after a few seconds of underwater sonar blips (’cause we’re in a Rock&Roll Submarine, and no other reason really, especially since the title song isn’t until track 2, but sure, why not?), Urge picks up pretty much where they left off 16 years ago and simply does what they do best for the next 40 minutes.  But when it comes to consistency, they do it better than they’ve ever done it before.  Whether a song is led by Eddie “King” Roeser’s scorched snarl (”Effigy,” “Little Vice,” “End Of Story,” “Niteliner,”) or Nash Kato’s suave swagger (”Poison Flower,” “Thought Balloon,” “She’s My Ride,” “The Valiant”), or both (”Mason Dixon,” “Rock&Roll Submarine”) the band fills practically every measure with seemingly familiar yet novel licks and melodies that make me wonder either A) Did they steal that from somewhere? or B) How has no one else done that before? All the while, bassist Mike Hodgkiss and drummer Brian Quast (who admirably fills the massive drum throne vacated by Blackie Onassis) form a stalwart rhythm section that can flick on some extra pyrotechnics when the need arises.

Considering how Rock&Roll Submarine arrives in the wake of a hiatus that included a rift between Kato and Roeser, it’s fitting that strong undercurrents of resentment and reconciliation propel much of the songs.  Roeser’s songs in particular tend to smolder with the ire of long-borne scars.  When he roars “I don’t want an apology/ I want an effigy,” his voice and his Crazy Horse guitar rumble with bracing fury.  On “Quiet Person,” the album’s lone ballad, his pain is touching without wallowing in self-pity (”I was always a quiet person/ what kind of person could walk all over me?”).  Yet in spite of all the bitterness, Roeser and Kato’s undeniable, unforced chemistry seem to confirm that all is forgiven.  Of course, maybe none of these songs are about Kato and Roeser’s rift at all.  But wherever they came from, these sentiments give Rock&Roll Submarine substantial depth.  They provide some contrast for all the lyrics that are just there to sound cool (”Do I have to spell it out again/ this time with attitude?”), as well as anchoring the album’s bounty of instantly gratifying hooks.

Although while those hooks offer instant gratification, they also have a peculiar subliminal, phantom-like quality.  After the first listen or two, it’s like the hooks couldn’t quite stick, could never get past the tip of my tongue.  Like, initially after hearing each song I’d think, wow, that main riff and that chorus were excellent… wait, how did they go again? Then later I’d hear the album again and each song would sound 200% better when I reminded myself what all the great hooks were.  After 3 or 4 spins over a couple days’ time, though, the tunes had been emphatically branded into my eardrums, and they’re not going anywhere anytime soon.

I honestly enjoy every inch of this album, but I could probably single out a few favorites: the title track, especially with the way its guitars sound like they’re reverberating off the rusty hulls of an actual submarine; the fiery stomp of lead single “Effigy;” and “Thought Balloon,” where Kato makes the refrain “You could be my thought balloon” sound awfully sweet before plunging into a showstopping Who-style interlude with quiet acoustic guitars punctuated by exclamation points of power chords and drum fills.

Conceptually though, my favorite track might be the closer “Touched To A Cut.”  Musically, it’s nothing spectacular, just a solid track buoyed by a rigid, Devo-like bassline.  And lyrically, it’s rather disturbing, sung from the point of view of someone who’d kill you if it weren’t so painful to live without you.  The thing I love about it is that it’s short and anticlimactic, sneaking out the back door before you realize it’s gone.  In a way, it’s like these shameless showmen know enough not to hang around too long, even after a 16-year absence.  They don’t just leave me wanting more, they lead me to believe there most definitely will be more, with a closing track that all but whispers, “to be continued…”  I very much hope that’s a promise, regardless of how the rest of the kids welcome Rock&Roll Submarine.  Music is a conspicuously better place with a band like Urge Overkill around- a band capable of pumping out such perfect, excellent rock n’ roll.