Author Archive for Joe O'Brien

Adam Yauch / MCA (1964 – 2012)

Joe O'Brien, May 4, 2012 in Essays and Criticism. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

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The nasal, wise-ass tones of Adam “Ad-Rock” Horovitz and Michael “Mike D” Diamond dominated the Beastie Boys’ high-chemistry Globetrotter flows, but the raspy growl of Adam “MCA” Yauch grounded everything, and added a half-ton of menace.  Ad-Rock and Mike D were a couple of hip-hop Joe Pescis, and MCA was their DeNiro.  No wonder that when the band picked up instruments, it was MCA who laid down those thick, groovy basslines.  (So many great ones to choose from, but my favorite’s gotta be the breakdown of “Sabotage:” Right after you think the song’s just napalmed itself into ash and rubble, MCA slides in and lays the foundation for one more round of punk-rap fury.)

When I was 6 years old, I bought my first cassette: Once I heard “Paul Revere,” I had to own Licensed To Ill. “Paul Revere” may be a violent tale of thuggery, but for at least 2/3 of its running time, it’s obviously goofy posturing.  Ad-Rock and Mike D, as slick and funny as they may be, sound more crazy and deluded than tough.  The track only sounds remotely dangerous when MCA grabs the mic (”My name is MCA, I got a license to kill/ I think you know what time it is, it’s time to get ill“).

The band’s early objectification of women never felt genuine to me- even at my more tender ages, “Girls” sounded way more like parody than philosophy.  Still, the Beasties were kind enough to atone for their youthful frat-boy antics, and managed to evolve into more enlightened musicians without sacrificing their edge or irreverence.  In 1994, when grotesque misogyny was really starting to plague mainstream hip-hop, MCA devoted a couple lines during the first track of the hotly-anticipated Ill Communication to call out the chauvinists:

I want to say a little something that’s long overdue
the disrespect to women has got to be through
to all the mothers and sisters and the wives and friends
I want to offer my love and respect to the end

Yet MCA remained just as much the jester as his bandmates, directing many of the band’s super-fun, silly-loving videos. Fittingly, his last directorial effort is arguably his cinematic masterpiece: 2011’s hilarious, star-studded short film “Fight For Your Right Revisited.”

Along with Run-D.M.C., the Beastie Boys were largely responsible for blasting rap music into American suburbs.  With Paul’s Boutique, the Beasties (with plenty of help from the Dust Brothers) drastically expanded hip-hop’s horizons.  For over 25 years, they’ve been one of the most respected and reliably amusing bands in pop music.  All three Beasties deserve props for what they’ve accomplished.  But Adam Yauch was the group’s heart and their rock-solid center.

Jack White: Blunderbuss

Joe O'Brien, April 20, 2012 in Music Reviews. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

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For as long as he’s been a rock star, Jack White’s been a curious web of contradiction.  He slathered The White Stripes in gimmicks to get people to focus more on their music.  (But hey, it worked like gangbusters.)  He claimed 2003’s Elephant lamented the “death of the sweetheart” in American culture, then a few months after that album dropped, he pled guilty to pounding Jason Stollsteimer’s face.  Now, as he’s releasing Blunderbuss, his first solo album, he says this to NPR:

“When you put something out there into the world, there’s all these words you don’t want to hear, that you hope people don’t say…anything that starts with ‘re’ — like retro, reinvent, recreate — I hate that. It’s always like living in the past — copying, emulating.“

Which is funny, because while Jack makes vibrant, fresh-sounding music, he’s always had one foot firmly entangled in the extremely retro roots of American blues, folk, country, rock, punk, and R&B.  And on Blunderbuss, he’s arguably more old-timey than ever.  His 21st Century guitar fuzz barges in only sporadically.  It’s all over the very White Stripes-like garage stomper “Sixteen Saltines,” as well as the very Dead Weather-like mad science of “Freedom At 21.”  But elsewhere, aside from a riff here or a solo there, that’s about it.  No, despite the fact that its title refers to a kind of rifle, Blunderbuss is not generally loud or explosive.  It rocks hardest in “Sixteen Saltines,” which is track 2, then it spends most of its time jazzing, waltzing, and boogeying.

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Maps & Atlases: Beware And Be Grateful

Joe O'Brien, April 13, 2012 in Music Reviews. 0 Comments Tags: , .

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Maps & Atlases took a giant leap toward the mainstream with Perch Patchwork, their excellent full-length debut.  The band’s early EPs were thick with sinewy, mathematical grooves that were also excellent, just harder to listen to for more than an EP’s worth of time.  But such grooves were thinned out significantly to make room for bigger hooks, deeper emotions, and poppier structures on Patchwork.  For their second LP, Beware And Be Grateful, Maps & Atlases take a small step closer to the mainstream with one foot as the other foot steps back toward their dense, intricate roots. It’s pleasing to hear the band widen their stance, and only in one spot does the delicate balance start to wobble.

As always, Dave Davison leads with his strangled, soulful voice; guitarist Erin Elders fires off riffs that show off his fleet fingers as well as his sharp hook-sense; and bassist Shiraz Dada & drummer Chris Hainey remain one of the best rhythm sections in America.  The textures on Beware are cleaner and sleeker than usual, but the structures are looser and jammier again.  The meat of the album, as with Patchwork, sounds like lean-muscled, Cat Stevens-fronted Tropicália (”Winter,” “Silver Self,” “Be Three Years Old,” “Bugs,” “Old Ash”).  The vibe may be familiar, though there’s plenty of dazzling novelty scattered in there, like the deliciously squiggly riffs of “Winter,” the hyper-doodle solo sprawling across the second half of “Silver Self,” and Davison’s throat-scratching passion in “Old Ash.”

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Lonely Weekend Singles Club #6: Maps & Atlases’ “Winter”

Joe O'Brien, March 29, 2012 in Initial Response. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

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Maps & Atlases became one of my new favorite bands in 2010, when their full-length debut Perch Patchwork floored me with its blend of intricate virtuosity and accessible pop songcraft.  So I’ve been awaiting new music from this band the way comics geeks have been awaiting The Dark Knight Rises. “Winter” is the first single from Maps & Atlases’ forthcoming album Beware And Be Grateful, and to me, it feels like a nice teaser more than an exciting trailer.  It’s got me a bit more hyped to hear the new LP, though I can’t help but hope they’re just saving the real fireworks for later.

Singer Dave Davison’s vocals and melodies aren’t quite as soulful or venturesome as most of the ones I fell for on Perch Patchwork, but I’m OK with that.  They’re catchy enough to keep me humming along, and besides, the instruments pick up more than enough slack here.  Bassist Shiraz Dada and drummer Chris Hainey are as springy, propulsive, and lockstep-tight as they’ve ever been, while Erin Elders’ guitars fill in the blanks with plenty of squiggly hooks.  If “Winter” proves to be one of the stronger tracks on Beware And Be Grateful, it should still be a solid and satisfying album.  But I’m crossing my fingers that “Winter” is merely a hint of what’s to come, and that it turns out Maps & Atlases have pushed themselves to greater heights yet again.

Lonely Weekend Singles Club #5: Latyrx’s “Call To Arms”

Joe O'Brien, March 16, 2012 in Initial Response. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

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The Occupy movement isn’t in the news nearly as much as it was before Zuccotti Park allegedly became a health hazard, and Mayor Billionaire’s Brute Squad evicted the protestors in the dead of night without any of those pesky journalists getting in the way.  But Occupy is still a thing, and it could still come roaring back any day now.  Especially with the weather getting warmer, and with the distribution of wealth remaining ridiculously and unfairly lopsided.  And if Occupy does come roaring back, it’s gonna need some kick-ass protest anthems if it really wants to take this shit to the next level.

“Call To Arms” isn’t just Latyrx’s first official single in the 15 years since their excellent debut album, it’s also an eager attempt to be one of those sorely-needed Occupy anthems.  Or an athem for whatever protest movement that may rise up in Occupy’s place, should it fail to carry on, since “Call To Arms” doesn’t explicitly name-check any particular organization.  Nor does the song have a very specific agenda.  It basically asks, “Are you angry about all this bullshit?  OK cool, let’s march” (albeit in much more lyrical ways).  The chorus has Karyn Paige screaming “What do we want?”, and she doesn’t sound angry as much as she sounds like she’s just trying to be heard above the clamor.  Lateef and Lyrics Born, along with special guest Boots Riley of political hip-hop veterans The Coup, respond with “Anybody, everybody, everything.”  When Karyn screams “When do we want it?“, the answer is “Right the fuck now.”

Occupy caught some criticism for not having enough focus or offering enough solutions, and the same could certainly be said of “Call To Arms.”  (It also offers a dubious philosophy or two, such as “Long as we show up/ we’ve already won.”  If only.)  Of course, protest songs don’t necessarily need 10-point plans for correcting the wealth gap and reducing unemployment, they just need to inspire revolution.  In that respect, “Call To Arms” succeeds modestly.  It’s also noteworthy because it adopts an unusual tone for the kind of song it wants to be.  Protest music usually comes in the form of quiet Dylan-esque folk or raging Public Enemy-style noise.  But since Latyrx is always about positivity and throwing all-inclusive parties, “Call To Arms” takes the form of a reasonable, mid-tempo party jam with some decent hooks and a hot bassline.  It aims for the chip on your shoulder, and the fury in your heart, but mostly it aims for your cerebral cortex and your booty.  It may not be the musical Molotov Cocktail the 99% needs, but at least it’s a spark.

Lonely Weekend Singles Club #4: Guided By Voices’ “Keep It In Motion”

Joe O'Brien, March 10, 2012 in Initial Response. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

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“Keep It In Motion” feels much longer than it should be, and yet not nearly long enough.  Longer than it should be because Guided By Voices (especially in their current Toxic Alien Blood lineup) typically don’t let a song go on for 2+ minutes if it only has about 30 seconds’ worth of ideas.  The simple structure of “Keep It In Motion” makes “Blitzkrieg Bop” sound like “Paranoid Android.”  Bob Pollard nestles with a beautifully easy melody and sings, “Keep it in motion/ keep it in line/ keep it in motion/ keep it on time/ walk it down the line/ walk it all the time/ keep it in line.” Then Tobin Sprout joins the next couple go-rounds basically to echo what Pollard’s singing.

Despite how much it milks itself, “Keep It In Motion” makes me want to listen to it dozens of times in a row, or however long until I get my fill for the foreseeable future.  It’s uncannily comforting.  The driving beat, the floating guitar, Pollard & Sprout’s awful bliss, the strings or synths or string-like synths: together it all rolls along like “Don’t Panic” in skywritten calligraphy.  It doesn’t rock very hard, but it somehow reassures me that rock n’ roll will never die.  Sometimes I wish it went on for like 20 minutes, but ultimately I’m glad it ends every 2:17.  That’s about how often I need the one electric guitar chord at the end, boinging in out of nowhere and giving the track that big “yeah!” it quietly wishes for the whole time.

“Keep It In Motion” is the first single from Guided By Voices’ forthcoming album Class Clown Spots A UFO, due to drop in about 3 months.  Yes, Guided By Voices dropped a new album less than 3 months ago, and it was pretty good.

The Magnetic Fields: Love At The Bottom Of The Sea

Joe O'Brien, February 29, 2012 in Music Reviews. 0 Comments Tags: , .

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The Magnetic Fields’ Stephin Merritt is always eager to prove there are infinite realms of love waiting to be revealed by pop music; that, if written well enough, love songs will never lose their power to touch us and tickle us and break our hearts in totally new ways.

As the title of Love At The Bottom Of The Sea implies, Merritt has set out this time to explore some of love’s murkier, slimier habitats.  In past songs, he’s stabbed lovers and fantasized about pushing them off cliffs, but now he’s a bit more twisted than that.  The narrator of “Your Girlfriend’s Face,” for example, hires a hitman to shoot her cheating man’s girlfriend in the face, and then that woman scorned is gonna bury the guy alive while he’s tweaking on crystal meth.  Another cuckquean in “My Husband’s Pied-a-Tierre” also wishes deadly revenge on her unfaithful man, only this time she’s singing from a loony bin after discovering her spouse’s “bachelor pad.”  As is often the case in Magnetic Fields songs, the results are much more charming on record than on paper: the delivery is always delightfully deadpan, and the melodies are a fine mix of familiar and novel.

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Lonely Weekend Singles Club #3: Jack White’s “Love Interruption”

Joe O'Brien, February 22, 2012 in Initial Response. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

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There’s masochism, and then there’s whatever the hell “Love Interruption” is.  He wants love to stab him, bite him, betray him, kill his mother and send her wherever, he doesn’t seem to care.  If love hurts like a mother-killer, then it must be the real deal.  The chorus is where things get a little hazy: “I won’t let love disrupt/ corrupt or interrupt me/ anymore.”  Is he finally starting to outgrow his masochism?  Or is it the opposite: what if love has been so painless, innocent, and acquiescent for so long that it has, in fact, become disruptive, corruptive, and interruptive- which is what’s driving him toward pain and humiliation in the first place?

I’m not looking for answers here.  There’s much beauty in such stark ambiguity.  Jack’s and Ruby Amanfu’s vocals get it just right, too: fearful and fragile, yet curious and bold.

The song works just fine without drums, yet sometimes I feel like it begs for drums, and Jack adamantly refuses to give it any drums.  It’s Jack’s first solo single now that he and Meg have officially disbanded, and there’s a big, gaping, percussion-less hole inside.  Coincidence?

Django Django: Django Django

Joe O'Brien, February 17, 2012 in Music Reviews. 0 Comments Tags: .

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If you ask me, a worthwhile trip should have plenty of kaleidoscopic whimsy, but also a sense of menace lurking in the shadows.  A trip that’s all rainbow butterflies and pinwheel treetops is nice and all, but where’s the challenge in that?  If, on the other hand, you can skip through cotton candy meadows and marvel at the cosmic beauty in a single dandelion spore for hours on end, while at the same time courageously swatting every mischievous imp that periodically tries to pounce on you from the abyss of your subconsciousness, well then you’ve exercised a tremendously valuable real-life skill, haven’t you?

Django Django’s frequently great, extremely promising self-titled album knows how to balance the light and the dark in the realm of psychedelia.  The boomba-boom drums sound like dancefloors quaking beneath the feet of 1,000 candy-flippers at the rave of the century, yet they also sound like ancient hunters chasing you through a midnight forest.  The melodies are jaunty as London fops, yet squirmy as easily-agitated eels.  The guitars bubble and groove when they’re not plotting your demise.  The synths propel neon trails across the sky, right before they charm pits of venomous cobras.  The lyrics blend the idyllic (”Look at the hills/ they look so green/ the horizon is the place that you always dream“) with perilous interstellar overdrive (”Stars shine in the night sky/ you light up like a solar flare/ watch us burn up on contact/ as we enter the atmosphere”).

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Whitney Houston (1963 – 2012)

Joe O'Brien, February 12, 2012 in Essays and Criticism. 3 Comments Tags: .

“The Greatest Love Of All” was already a punchline by the time Sexual Chocolate got a hold of it in Coming To America, and maybe it was a punchline for several good reasons.  But certainly none of those reasons are anything Whitney Houston brought to the song.  She sold that junior high graduation hymn better than any mortal could ever expect to.  Bette Midler could belt the heck out of “From A Distance,” and Mariah Carey could make your mom cry with “Hero,” but neither ever convinced me they were really, truly feeling it.  Whitney made “The Greatest Love Of All” schmaltz we can believe in.

Maybe a bit of Desert Storm-fueled jingoism helped Whitney’s Super Bowl “Star Spangled Banner” hit #20 in 1991…but a decade later, in the weeks after the 9/11 attacks, when we needed not just patriotism but hope and comfort, we put her “Star Spangled Banner” back on the Billboard chart, and we put it there 14 spots higher than last time.  (Hell, in 2001, Whitney’s “Star Spangled Banner” charted in gosh-darned Canada.)  To date, her version is the only version of our national anthem ever to hit Billboard.  Hendrix’s Woodstock version never charted, and they played some out-there shit on the radio back in ‘69.

Now take a moment to consider just how many singers have sang “The Star Spangled Banner” in the 54 years we’ve had Billboard charts.

Yes, along the way Whitney lost her power. They could- and they did- take away her dignity.  But it’ll be much harder to take away her many, many Moments in Time, when she was more than anyone thought she could be.  And I absolutely realize how saccharine this all sounds as I write this, and yet when I hear Whitney sing it, I believe it, because I believe she believed it.