Albums That Are Totally Worth It: The Q3 Report

Groove Armada are on a boat.

End-of-year lists keep creeping earlier and earlier, and I'm as offended as the next guy. But once list-making season arrives, I'll probably be tied up with a Christmas program of some sort. So, before the deluge, I will put my ducks in a row.

CAVEAT: I can't claim to be definitive. That said, you might find stuff on here worth checking out. So far this year I've consciously processed 164 albums, including reissues and late '09s I missed, which is way more than any sane person needs to hear. However, this barely touches what most of my more esteemed colleagues have heard, and it's roughly ONE TENTH OF ONE PERCENT OF THE ALBUMS THAT'LL BE RELEASED THIS YEAR. Do you believe that? According to the esteemed Mr. Kot, 2008 saw the release of 115,000 albums, only 6k of which sold over a thousand copies.

I have not been picky! My main method of hearing new CDs is the library system, which lets me reserve up to 25 albums at a time for inter-library loan. I regularly go through the list of what's available and reserve what sounds interesting, what other people are repping, or what genres I need to brush up on. Occasionally I just reserve stuff willy nilly, which is how I heard a Christian bachata CD. (Ug.) Some worthwhile jazz and metal I've bought from eMusic on the recommendations of Phil Freeman. I've also received a trickle of promos and listened to MSN Music's Listening Booth.

Of those 164 albums, 69 or so are Worth It. What's that mean? You know it when you hear it, but mostly an album is Worth It if it doesn't feel like a chore to sit through again. Usually "being surprising" and "exceeding genre expectations" play a part. Doubtless my taste will change, and some of my Worth Its and Not Worth Its are pretty borderline. For example, the new Erykah Badu didn't do much for me, but I wouldn't hate you for liking it. Ariel Pink is a different story.

Of those 69, 12 are Totally Worth It. That is, I'd be disappointed if I didn't get to vote for them on a year-end Top 10 list. Thus do I guarantee myself disappointment. Here they are:

Top 12 (Totally Worth It):
Cathedral--The Guessing Game (Nuclear Blast)
Ke$ha--Animal (RCA)
Diana Reyes--Amame, Besame (EMI Latin)
WASP--Babylon (Demolition ‘09)
Sleigh Bells--Treats (Mom + Pop)
Frightened Rabbit--The Winter of Mixed Drinks (Fatcat)
Sho Baraka--Lions & Liars (Reach)
Groove Armada--Black Light (Cooking Vinyl)
Drive-By Truckers--The Big To-Do (New West)
Various Artists--Next Stop Soweto: Township Sounds from the Golden Age of Mbaqanga (Strut REISSUE)
Vampire Weekend--Contra (XL)
Henry Threadgill Zooid--This Brings Us To, Vol. 1 (Pi '09)

You're probably wondering whether you should trust me. (Or maybe my Ke$ha love gave you your answer.) To examine where my subjective interests lie, I've applied some specious statistical analysis to my Worth Its. If we assign each Worth It a point, and each Totally Worth It two points, and divide by 164 total albums, we get a batting average of .494 (synchronistically, also the number of my address). This means that fewer than half of the CDs I listen to are things I'd wanna hear on a regular basis. Given the array of genres in question, I'm sort of surprised it's that high. From there, I've broken my lists down by genre and figured up the batting average of each genre, along with their deviation plus or minus .494. Rap won.

Top 6 Rap (17 albums, .706 avg. +.212):
Sho Baraka--Lions & Liars (Reach)
The Roots--How I Got Over (Def Jam)
Rick Ro$$--Teflon Don (Def Jam)
Meth, Rae, & Ghost--Wu-Massacre (Def Jam)
Big Boi--Sir Lucious Left Foot... The Son of Chico Dusty (Def Jam)
Daddy Yankee--Mundial

I still need to hear Curren$y. Please comment and let me know about other things I need to hear, too. Yes, that is a lot of Def Jam albums. And yes, a Christian rapper made a better album than any of 'em.

Next up is the awkwardly named genre of Melodic Electronic Dance Pop That's Not Rap (MED Pop?), which I assumed would win, before I started factoring in stuff that's like Four Tet but not as compelling.

Top 6 MED Pop (Non-Rap) (20 albums, .700 avg., +.206):
Ke$ha--Animal (RCA)
Diana Reyes--Amame, Besame (EMI Latin)
Sleigh Bells--Treats (Mom + Pop)
Groove Armada--Black Light (Cooking Vinyl)
LCD Soundsystem--This is Happening (DFA/Virgin/EMI)
Kylie Minogue--Aphrodite (Astralwerks/EMI)

That list should probably include salsa albums too, but I don't think they occupy the same space in my listening psyche. Next up, country:

Top 6 Country (21 albums, .619 avg., +.125):
Drive-By Truckers--The Big To-Do (New West) (They object to being called country, so we'll include them in the indie rock list too.)
Jerrod Niemann--Judge Jerrod & the Hung Jury (Sea Gayle/Arista)
Trace Adkins--Cowboy's Back In Town (Show Dog/Universal)
Gary Allan--Get Off On the Pain
Chely Wright--Lifted Off the Ground (Painted Red/Vanguard)
Intocable--Classic ('09)

CAVEAT: I'm still working on Jamey Johnson's The Guitar Song. Right now he occupies the same mental space as Midlake's The Courage of Others: sounds cool when it's on, especially on overcast days; expertly recorded; sort of sounds like the interstitial sections of an art-metal CD; and I don't particularly wanna hear it. This doesn't bode well for his inclusion on my list, but I doubt he cares. Wouldn't be surprised if he walks off with a Grammy for Album of the Year, actually.

Speaking of metal, I haven't yet heard enough to make it a statistically significant genre, so I'm throwing it in with indie rock. (If Phil Freeman actually read this, I'm sure he'd be thrilled.) Yes folks, that's WASP with the second best indie rock album of the year.

Top 12 Indie Rock (Including Metal) (44 albums, .523 avg., +.029):
Cathedral--The Guessing Game (Nuclear Blast)
WASP--Babylon (Demolition ‘09)
Sleigh Bells--Treats (Mom + Pop)
Frightened Rabbit--The Winter of Mixed Drinks (Fatcat)
Drive-By Truckers--The Big To-Do (New West)
Vampire Weekend--Contra (XL)
LCD Soundsystem--This is Happening (DFA/Virgin/EMI)
The Like--Release Me (Downtown)
New Pornographers--Together
Art Museums--Rough Frame
Ludicra--The Tenant
Grong Grong--To Hell 'n' Back (Memorandum '09 REISSUE)

Do LCD Soundsystem count? Even though they have major label distribution? I don't understand how these things work.

Our final marginally positive genre is Latin! This includes regional Mexican subgenres like norteno and duranguense, along with Caribbean dance genres like reggaeton and salsa. It'd also include straight-up Latin pop/rock if I'd heard anything good. Diana Reyes and Luis Enrique probably come the closest, and Tito "El Bambino" has some good songs.

Top 8 Latin (18 albums, .500 avg., +.006):
Diana Reyes--Amame, Besame (EMI Latin)
Daddy Yankee--Mundial (Latin)
Los Cuates de Sinaloa--Puro Cartel (Sony Latin)
Adolescent's Orquestra--Sellos de Mi ADN (Venevision/Universal)
Los Titanes de Durango--Los Locos del Corrido
Intocable--Classic ('09)
Luis Enrique--Ciclos (Top Stop Music/Sony)
Los Tucanes de Tijuana--Retro-Corridos

With a few exceptions, the Christian music marketed as such has sucked. Good stuff still exists, though. Yes folks, that's WASP with the best Christian album of the year.

Top 6 Christian (17 albums, .471 avg., -.023):
WASP--Babylon (Demolition '09)
Sho Baraka--Lions & Liars (Reach)
Marvin Sapp--Here I Am
Various Artists--Fire In My Bones: Raw, Rare & Otherworldly African-American Gospel (1944-2007) ('09 REISSUE)
Nneka--Concrete Jungle (Christian)
Gary Lucas and Dean Bowman--Chase the Devil

And then there's jazz. You really shouldn't seek my advice for jazz, except when I tell you that library jazz is a dire scene. These are likable, though.

Top 6 Jazz (18 albums, .389 avg., -.105):
Henry Threadgill Zooid--This Brings Us To, Vol. 1 (Pi ‘09)
Mikrokolektyw--Revisit (Delmark)
Sun Ra--College Concert Vol. 1: The Complete Nothing Is... (ESP REISSUE)
Terje Rypdal--Crime Scene (ECM)
Carlos Barretto--Labirintos
Matthew Shipp--4D

What’s This? A Good Major Label Rock Album?
David Bowie--A Reality Tour

And finally, because it includes the long-awaited-on-CD Bert & Ernie Singalong, one of the most delightful albums ever recorded, here's the list of top reissues.

Top 10 Reissues (Music Made Before ‘09):
Various Artists--Next Stop Soweto: Township Sounds from the Golden Age of Mbaqanga (Strut)
David Bowie--A Reality Tour
Original Cast--Sesame Street Old School Vol. 1 [including Bert & Ernie Singalong]
Various Artists--Fire In My Bones: Raw, Rare & Otherworldly African-American Gospel (1944-2007) ('09)
Sun Ra--College Concert Vol. 1: The Complete Nothing Is... (ESP)
Youssou N'Dour--Music from the Motion Picture I Bring What I Love
Grong Grong--To Hell 'n' Back (Memorandum '09)
Nneka--Concrete Jungle
Was (Not Was)--Pick of the Litter (1980-2010)
Various Artists--Minimal Wave Tapes

Oh yeah singles, about which I'm hardly authoritative, except to say that these are all really good; and also most of them are actual singles! I checked. (Can you spot the one that's not?)

Top 10 Singles:
"Vida en la Noche"--Daddy Yankee
"All the Lovers"--Kylie Minogue
"Your Love Is My Drug"--Ke$ha
"Paper Romance"--Groove Armada
"Baby"--Justin Bieber feat. Ludacris
"Get Off On the Pain"--Gary Allan
"Praise You Forever"--Marvin Sapp
"Babylon"--Congorock
"Soldier of Love"--Sade
“Alles Neu”--Peter Fox

That's it for today! More will follow at the appropriate time, but I wanted to get that out of my system. Will rap maintain its lead? Will a major label release a decent rock CD recorded in the past year? Will chillwave and crabcore please go away? Stay tuned...

This Sho Baraka Album is Totally Worth It!

Sho Baraka
Lions & Liars
(Reach)

How good a rapper is Sho Baraka? Sho Baraka is such a good rapper that you can't even tell he's doing Christian rap. (Unless you listen to the words, then you can tell.) Sho Baraka is such a good rapper he won a record eight golds in the Olympics' new "rapping while pommelhorsing" event, and he made the judges pommelhorse for him. Sho Baraka is so good they named Barak Obama after him. Sho Baraka is such a good rapper that his tongue turned into a sword and struck down the nations. (At least I think that was him...) He’s so good that when LL Cool J said Hey, I want my flow back, Sho Baraka's tongue sliced out LL's abs. With precision that was DIAMONDLIKE. (When LL’s abs hit the floor, they totally bounced.) Sho Baraka is SO GOOD that, when he raps at Carnegie Hall, Carnegie Hall asks How do you get to Sho Baraka? But then Carnegie Hall realizes that, even if it practiced practiced all day every day, it'd still suck because it's a building and not SHO BARAKA. Sho Baraka is so good that he made Fiddy lie down with Diddy, in the Biblical sense. Sho Baraka is such a good rapper that Sonia Sotomayor upheld a ban on him in the state of New York. (You can still buy him on St. Mark’s Place, though.) In spite of all that, it was Sho Baraka's stunning testimony that got Sotomayor confirmed to the Supreme Court. That, plus he threatened to slice out Jeff Sessions's abs with his diamondlike tongue. Sho Baraka is so good, he got Five Mics from the one and only SOURCE. (By which I mean GOD.) Sho Baraka is such a good rapper, you’d let him get away with a line like that.

In other words: the guy’s good. He’s got the swagger of LL before LL went all NCIS. (And anyway, JAG was originally a spinoff of SHO BARAKA.) He can make his words spill over the beats and then he’ll land the next phrase like there’s nothing to it. He’ll change up his flow during a song with the offhand virtuosity of a Williams sister on the court. Since Sho knows he’s good, no national tragedy is too big for him to appropriate, in the service of a pretty love song:

“You were patient with your boy in the worst case/
I was like 9/11, the worst date.”

Then he classes up the Civil Rights Movement by comparing it to his love life:

“You can be Coretta, I can be your King/
We can get together, we can have a dream.”



How refreshing to hear a rapper, Christian or otherwise, talking the way real-life husbands and wives talk to one another--skirting the boundaries of taste, winking intimately. Sho’s OK with being slick, another lesson learned from Mr. Smith, but he also knows how to dig deep with his words. (All that oil in the Gulf? Sho Baraka did that.) The “pretty love song” in question is “We Can Be More,” a fidelity ode that opens its third verse, “A lifelong fight, that’s what marriage is.” How many other rappers could make that sound like an endorsement?

Sho’s even better delivering the kind of armchair sociology that only rappers can serve up with swagger. The hard rocking “Revolutionary Died” and “Oh Well” are incisive like Arrested Development or the Coup, but Sho’s revolution involves fewer guns and more Bible study. He can get preachy, no doubt about it, but it’s hard to name a rapper who’s NOT preachy about something, if only his own microphone supremacy. In fact, the job descriptions for “rapper” and “preacher” have so much in common, it’s weird that Christian rap hasn’t come up with more great MCs. I had high hopes for Kanye circa “Jesus Walks” and “All Falls Down,” but he has since switched his style up and watched the money pile up, with mixed results. Like early Kanye, Sho forcefully critiques rap’s empty materialism--and he’s a way better rapper.

Production-wise, Kanye still has the edge on Christian rap. While his talent and cheek have plenty to do with that, so does his ability to bankroll a lot of unique samples. Meanwhile, Sho is one of only four artists on Reach Records, a tiny independent label that’s nevertheless one of the leaders in the genre. Whatever its budget, the Christian stuff has rarely sounded better than it does here. (Sho Baraka is the mother of invention.) Lions & Liars features all kinds of cool synth effects, loud guitars, and the great voice of Erica Cumbo singing over some martial snares. The producers bring a variety of great big beats and hooks that equal anything on mainstream rap radio. (Etiquette dictates I mention Between Two Worlds, the June release from Sho’s labelmate Trip Lee. It features many of the same producers and some decent songs, but it’s not as good.)

Lions & Liars’ most endearing song might be its second one, “Lions’ Anthem,” in which Sho rattles off a great company of everyday saints while making ridiculous puns on their vocations: “Ming works for the law firm out in Las Vegas/ But his favorite thing to do is that Cross examination;” the shoe salesman tries to save “soles,” that kind of thing. Like I said, you have to be a great rapper to get away with that stuff. Sho is, and he does. Mostly it’s the electrifying way he stalks the beat, all ominous boom-BAP and terse guitar. He barely cracks a smile while chewing off his jokes. Yet there’s relief in knowing that this guy, so good at his calling, is willing to celebrate the humdrum callings of other people’s lives, which turn out not to be so humdrum in Christ.

How good is this guy? Sho Baraka is such a good rapper, he might make you appreciate your day job.

Best Thing I Heard Today: Trace Adkins doing "Hold My Beer"

If you're willing to brave the wilds of Myspace, you can stream the whole pretty good Trace Adkins album, Cowboy's Back In Town.   Once there, or at least as soon as you buttress your computer against cookies and pederasts and pederasts named Cookie, you should play the widely-acknowledged highlight "Hold My Beer".  Says the nation's record-critic-of-record Jon Caramanica, "The comical 'Hold My Beer', this album’s high point, revolves around a day of drinking rudely interrupted by the wedding of those doing the drinking."  The song was cowritten by Casey Beathard, at one point BMI's Songwriter of the Year, who's also given us the ace novelties "Drinkin' Bone" (Tracy Byrd), "Cleaning This Gun" (Rodney Atkins), and the Sarah Palin theme song, "Don't Blink" (Kenny Chesney).

"Hold My Beer" features Adkins in the comic role of a bewildered preacher / JOP / nautical captain ("UhhhhI now pronounce you... Y'all."), who notably coins the word "monogamony."  He documents all the wedding's vital aspects, racing through the ceremony to get to the party, where even hillbillies do the macarena.  When the bride crashes into the groom's old flame (about as abruptly as Myspace'll crash yer Flash plugin), she cheekily turns her former rival into a cupholder.  Everybody has a great time, not least the band, who play some cool stutter chords during the final chorus while they shout along:

Hold my beer!
This won't take long.
I want it back, 
And I don't want it gone!

Those words are set to music of the most exultant yearning.  (Can you yearn exultantly?  Sure; you exult in the fact that you have beer, and you yearn for that beer while you're apart.)

Best Thing I Heard Today: Sleigh Bells doing "Riot Rhythm"

And it wasn't in a Honda ad!  (Although I tell ya, things being what they are, it's nice to see musicians getting paid.)  No, it was in the car, listening to album-of-the-year contender and future Kidz Bop cornucopia Treats.  The Sleigh Bells' appeal is so broad that a certain five-year-old who's supposed to be napping in the next room is instead singing the lead riff from "Riot Rhythm", which he heard emanating from my speakers:



That riff'll really cut through a crowd!  Sort of like Idina Menzel's voice.  (They should cast her in Les Miz, and then people wouldn't fall asleep.)  "Riot Rhythm" is one of the first four songs on Treats, none of which have any chord changes to speak of.  The guitar, vocal, and synth lines sometimes imply other chords, but everything hovers around that big TONIC, which, as often as not, is also only implied by the melodies.  Like Prince's "When Doves Cry", "Riot Rhythm" has no bassline.  The bass drum sound, which I assume is a synth, resonates enough that it establishes the key at the beginning, even before Alexis Krauss's vocal melody jumps in to help.

As bang-you-over-the-head simple as the Sleigh Bells sound, they're fairly canny composers.  Take our new friend the "Riot Rhythm" riff, which you'll now sing all day long.  The first two notes of the riff are the natural third and fourth of the key; later in the riff, we hear the flat third and flat sixth, which sound unnatural in the key.  If this song had any chord changes -- if that big resonant bass drum started sounding a sixth or a fourth or any other note in the scale -- those two flat notes would make the riff sound like a blues riff, or at least blues-derived.  (You can imagine performers from Irma Thomas to Robert Goulet scatting the first half of the "Riot Rhythm" riff, swinging it, maybe winking and asking about people's hometowns.)  But that doesn't happen, because the Sleigh Bells don't change chords.  Over their inflexible TONIC, the flat notes have no blues connotations at all, and neither does the riff as a whole.  Rather, the riff sounds severe, unbeholden.  It exists in a musical world inhabited only by the Sleigh Bells.

[Concerned parents note:  five-year-old is now asleep.  Soon I need to wake him for his first piano lesson.]

Mark Richardson in Pitchfork: "[A]n even greater source of [Treats's] appeal is how it doesn't sound especially referential...  [Sleigh Bells] gather up bits from all over and use them to create music that puts you squarely in the present moment."  I wish I could put a finer point on that statement because I think I see what he's saying, but we needn't create a dichotomy between "sounding referential" and "putting you squarely in the present moment."  Think of Britney's "Toxic":  a whole song full of blatant musical references out of the past, but it still sounded au courant in, what, 2003?  (Probably still would today.)  Like Sleigh Bells, "Toxic" "gathers up bits from all over and uses them to create music that puts you squarely in the present moment."  Unlike the Bells, "Toxic" does indeed "sound especially referential."  What's the difference?  I'm not sure.  Just as "Toxic" asks us to revel in its Bollywood strings and surf guitar, "Riot Rhythm" asks us -- blatantly, without disguise -- to revel in its metal lead guitar and drumline rhythm.  ("You gotta march!")  But "Toxic" actually sounds like fake Bollywood music with surf guitar, and "Riot Rhythm" sounds like Sleigh Bells.  One's not necessarily better than the other; I just haven't pinpointed the compositional technique that separates the two. 

So, you know, leave comments and whatnot.

Best Thing I Heard Today: Cathedral doing "Funeral of Dreams"

The human brain may be insufficiently developed to digest this song's grandeur.  Loyal readers, if you enjoy smokin' multipartite songs about secular humanist revelations imparted by scarecrows (!), here's your freakin' single of the year:



Here's the blow-by-blow:  our allegorical friend Lee Dorrian, ex-Napalm Death, sets off on a chugging Foo Fighterish journey through Fields of Innocence, when he unexpectedly encounters a Scarecrow (!!) who makes him recite Word Jazz (!!!).  Inspired by this meeting, Dorrian builds a House up in a Tree from whence he can view reality and either an "avatar" or "abattoir" of his mind.  (I totally hope it's the latter!)  He sees that we're all enslaved inside the Matrix, basically, and then the background chorus comes in to chirp "Laaaa, lalala Laaaa!"  How lovely to be enlightened.

Ooh, but then comes Verse 2:  THE EVIL PRIEST!  The priest, a slave to worldly wisdom, misinterprets the beatitudes and tells poor Dorrian that he should submit to the powers that be and sign up for the draft.  Or something.  It's all very "Fortunate Son" at this point, and I'm sure Dorrian would tell me that I shouldn't blame the priest, it's the flawed philosophy of Christianity that's to blame, and the priest is correctly toeing the party line.  Well, whatever.  (The point of "Blessed are the meek" is not that you submit to the first powermonger who tries to exploit you; it's not that you strive to be meek because if you're not meek you're doing something wrong.  No no no, Lee Dorrian--the point of "Blessed are the meek" is that, when you find yourself meek, AND YOU WILL, you also find yourself in a state of blessedness.  If you know where to look.  So next time you're feeling meek, AND YOU WILL, I don't care if you're, um, Bill Gates or whoever, just take a deep breath and read some beatitudes, relax your mind and let your conscience be free and watch blessedness reveal itself to thee.)  Whether you agree with Dorrian's exegesis or not, you cannot deny the searing solo that obliterates your very mind right after this verse, FOLLOWED by the thundering drums + riffs that rock like a mastodon herd.  And then the mastodon beat continues, WITH A MOOG.

In Verse 3 the Scarecrow returns to stage a war protest and pass around drinks.  (I think.)  The song ends with a real scorcher of a coda.  Aside from all the freakiness and multipartiteness that these dudes put into their music, the thing that really stands out is their devotion to great sound.  And not just one great sound, like "oh yeah that's Santana's guitar sound" or something.  No, in addition to their great guitar sounds, Cathedral add goofy sound effects during the Word Jazz parts--mallet percussion and a flourish that sounds like a sitar.  They also like background vocals and keyboards.  There's so much color and play on this album, it's really a worthy successor to Sabbath's Sabotage.  "Funeral of Dreams" is a standout, but the whole Guessing Game album is worth hearing, and possibly the best album you'll hear all year.  Just check out those Youtube comments:

"I can't stop listenning to this album. The only downside is that nobody, not even Cathedral will ever be able to surpass this."

"These guys must really like ELP. This is one of the weirdest songs i have ever heard and it is a work of pure genius."  [Come on, AN ELP COMPARISON!  What else do you need?]

"This album is incredible. May go over most people's heads, but I really dig it."  {Well, THAT'S a little smug.  Surfing in Babylon does not, of course, think The Guessing Game will "go over" your pointy little heads.  At least, not any more than does Ke$ha.  On the other hand, the human brain may be insufficiently developed to digest this song's grandeur--I do not exempt myself.}

Surfing in Babylon Attends Jazz Fest: Henry Threadgill's Zooid

I keep wanting to ascribe all these naturalistic metaphors to Henry Threadgill's Zooid. And not just zooids! Thickets. Copses of trees. I kid you not, there was a moment during the first song, when Threadgill started playing his flute in the midst of his band's impeccably pointed counterpoint, when I thought I was watching Stan Brakhage's art house classic The Wold Shadow, which, if you haven't seen it, is a silent three minute look at a clearing in a forest that is gradually overtaken by paint applied directly and liberally to the film stock itself. It's meant to represent The Spirit of the Forest, I believe. Whatever, it's strange and beautiful. And Zooid were strange and beautiful. Just as colonies of zooids are strange and possibly beautiful, if you consider them in the right frame of mind, preferably after having read some profound literature re G-d's residence within all, even those things that look like giant spongy goiters.

My main man KGY thinks each Zoooid plays an individual riff or theme for an unspecified length of time, leading to unpredictable aleatoric structures that nonetheless avoid the stink of pure unbridled happenstance. (He described it so much better.) Then they switch to a different riff, but not at the same time, so what you've got is a constantly shifting web of unified sound. The drummer is in the groove, or "pocket," swinging like a gigantic bryozoan sucking the life out of an eel held by a curious child on holiday at the lake, trying to impress his little-seen cousins with his sense of heroic derring-do, because remember, bryozoans are poisonous if you release the wrong juices from their innards, although "innards" is a relative term because we're really talking about a bunch of little organisms stuck together in an apparently homogenous colony for the benefit of all, so whose "innards" get to be "poisonous"? -- I guess what I'm driving at is this: I don't know how bryozoa work, and I dunno how Zooid work, but they work unlike any band I've heard.

Delicate! -- but with the ability to build to a hard-charging unison riff with wild sax solo, in a way that doesn't seem forced at all. Everything they do has been calibrated to present the illusion of freedom, the freedom of nature, which is also an illusion -- you and I are governed by unchanging laws, buckaroo! Without overstating my case (which'd sound something like "Zooid get to the heart of the Free Will Vs. Determinism argument more surely than anyone since Lost"), I can tell you that Zooid sound premeditated and seat-of-their-pants all at once, which, when you think about it, is what most excellent bands and performers are striving for. Isn't that the goal of a Bach prelude -- to make it sound extemporized and perfect all at once? Wasn't that the goal of Weezer's Pinkerton -- to make it sound like Rivers's brain could fly apart at any moment, while leaving that impression marked indelibly on listeners' brains through its use of perfect songcraft? Isn't that what the Stones, the Stooges, Everclear hit over and over? And so! Threadgill has hit upon his own solution, which involves notated counterpoint (we don't know exactly how it's notated), solos by the flute the sax the trombone the cello and the EXTREMELY clean guitar, and an unending but everchanging groove laid down by everybody who's not soloing. Except Threadgill. Threadgill spent large portions of the show sitting down and beaming at the exquisite chaos he'd orchestrated. Then he'd get up and play his flute or his sax, and his lyricism or fire (respectively) was the paint of the Wold Shadow that put us, the listeners, directly inside the copse or the thicket or the goiterous poison blob. As I told the KGY after Song #1, I could've listened to these guys do their thing all night.

Best Thing I Heard Today: King's X doing "Over My Head"

King's X had bigger hits, but "Over My Head" is their signature tune: it's funky and catchy, everybody sings, Doug screams, and Ty plays a killer guitar solo, split into two parts by a breakdown that demonstrates how impossibly tight they were. Naturally, they left all that off their Greatest Hits album, opting for an inferior live version that demonstrates how impossibly long-winded Doug can get when you let him talk.



It won't embed, but you should really watch the video they made for this song. Notice that during the guitar solo, starting around 1:30, there are no apparent overdubs. (Of course you can hear that as well, but it's especially clear when you watch them play.) Even so, there's no loss of momentum or texture; Doug's ringing bass tone covers the riff, Jerry crashes the cymbals strategically, and you don't even miss Ty's chords. They played that way all the time; my high school classmate David, a guitarist, singled out that strict three-part texture as their most salient feature. It reminds me of those amazing Led Zeppelin live recordings where the sound remains huge, even during Jimmy's solos. Except with King's X, all three instrumentalists also had to sing.

This 20-year-old King's X album is THE MOST WORTH IT ALBUM IN THE HISTORY OF WORTHITNESS

Or so I hector at the ever-lovin' Burnside Writers' Collective, in a review that reads only slightly like a crazy person on the train.  Oh yeah, it's a review of Faith Hope Love.

Surfing With Steel Pulse

In 1979, with punk and Margaret Thatcher looming over the nation, the British reggae band Steel Pulse pulled off something unexpected:  an exuberant ode to suffering in the face of tyranny.



"Babylon Makes the Rules" must be the bounciest song to contain the sentiment, "You've brought fire on my head and now you must pay."  (Don't mind if I do!)  "Babylon" is a call and response between David Hinds and his bandmates.  Hinds is great, but his backup singers and their Pips-ish cheer sell the song.  Resisting Babylon is gonna be tough, they seem to say, but what we really want to do is SING!  And oh yes, have you tried the Jah herb?

The words of "Babylon" are uncompromising; plenty of reggae's Babylon songs advocate passive protest, but Steel Pulse don't mess around:

And now I say we must create a scene
(WAR, WAR, create a scene!)
We must recapture our culture by any means
(Recapture our culture!  Recapture our culture!)

 They sound like the Moral Majority, with their belief that direct political action can take back The Culture.  (Not so much with their communal pot smoking.)  Even so, the song swings wildly back and forth between force and resignation.  No matter how fired up Hinds and his mates sound during the verses, they always return to the more subdued, minor-key chorus:
 

Babylon makes the rules
Babylon makes the rules
Babylon makes the rules
Babylon makes the rules
Where my people suffer ...

The only attempt at resolution comes at the end, when Hinds starts singing "Jah love... will carry I home."  Well, sure, but that still doesn't tell us how to deal with Babylon in the meantime.  Do we put up with Thatcher until we can vote her out, or do we order her to Stand Down?  The sound of "Babylon Makes the Rules" offers an even better option:  SING!  Preferably with one another.

Best Thing I Heard Today: Janet Jackson doing "This Time" and "New Agenda"

Assisted by Kathleen Battle's vocal impression of a theremin, Janet gives one of her most forceful performances:



Janet's never had the biggest voice, and her production team, Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis, perversely bury her inside their enormous productions, so that it's often hard to understand what she's singing. (To their credit, those productions sound fabulous.) This time they let her soar; we hear a litany of complaints about Janet's cheating boyfriend and all his "nasty hoes." Team Janet enliven their unremarkable breakup song by letting Janet's voice pop out of the mix, and by setting the breakup inside some sinister concert hall, replete with an orchestra and Battle's "opera solo."

Here's how it went down: heartbroken Janet hired the ensemble for the sole purpose of humiliating her man. She rented out the hall, invited her unsuspecting boyfriend to join her for an evening of forbidden pleasure (maybe she sang him "You Want This" over the phone), and then ambushed him with a bunch of stern musicians wearing opera masks. (Wearing only opera masks?) Since this is Janet we're talking about, the boyfriend was also trampled by an exquisitely choreographed dance troupe. By the time she could say, "You're dismissed," he lay bloody on a stretcher. Don't cheat on Janet.

Because it's Friday and I can't decide and Jam & Lewis make the best drum sounds known to man, here's Janet's happiest social justice song, "New Agenda". At least, I assume it's a social justice song; her voice is buried inside an enormous production. (Sounds great!) The song features Chuck D and it's called "New Agenda", so what else could it possibly be about?

The Flowtation Device Prezentz: Kanye's "Gold Digger"

How do you get to be the second- or third-biggest rap song of all time?  That's the question the Flowtation Device will ponder today as we consider "Gold Digger", Billboard's 49th biggest hit.  Among raps and semi-raps, only Flo Rida's "Low" and the Usher/Luda/Lil' Jon behemoth "Yeah" have placed higher on the all-time list.  Without considering those two for now, the FD would like to propose that Kanye's rapping was an integral factor to the song's success.  Obviously FD is biased, but consider the argument while you listen.



First, let's ask this:  what rap songs do you have memorized?  If you're anything like the Flowtation Device--i.e., a casual rap fan for most of your life--the answer is probably Vanilla Ice's "Ice Ice Baby" and Young M.C.'s "Bust a Move".  FD attributes this to a couple factors.  First, these songs hit when FD had way more time to devote to pop radio, and way fewer pop songs already cluttering the brain.  Second, their flows are in the simple "sung" style of most early rap--the couplets fall at regular intervals, and the syllabic patterns stay pretty much the same from one line to the next.  Obviously, Young M.C. raps with ease and authority:

"*.*.*.*this / =here's=aJAM_FOR_ / ALL.THEfel=las*tryin' /
=toDO_WHAT_THOSE_ / LAdies=tell=us="

--while Vanilla Ice sounds like one of the proverbial Retarded Cousins:

"TAKE.HEED.*causeI'Ma / LYRicAL.PO_ETmi /
AMi'sONtheSCENE.JUSTin / CASEyouDIDn'tKNOW_IT"

Oh, I kid Vanilla Ice!  He actually gets off some lovely syncopations in that song, whose complexity has been wholly underrated.  (Vanilla Ice, on the whole, has not been underrated.)  The point is this:  "Bust a Move" and "Ice Ice Baby" are easy to memorize because their rhymes occur at regular intervals, because their slang isn't terribly esoteric, and because, when they do alter their rhythmic patterns, they do so in ridiculously catchy ways.  Witness:

"WILLitEVerSTOP.YO. / *iDON'T.KNOW"

Chances are, if you're FD's age and someone near you says "Will it ever stop?", you'll have "Ice Ice Baby" running through your head the rest of the day.  Likewise this nursery rhyme sing-song cadence from "Bust a Move":

"O.K.SMART_Y. / GO.TOaPART_Y"

These songs are full of non-melodic hooks that dig into our brains and don't let go.  Both were big hits, though neither was as big as "Gold Digger".  Now, "Gold Digger" also places rhymes every two bars, but it's much more lyrically complex than those earlier songs.  Syllabic patterns change several times per verse; Kanye employs many more internal rhymes than did Vanilla Ice or Young M.C.  As the simplest and funniest verse, Verse 2 is closest to those precursors and also the easiest to memorize.  It contains several ear-puncturing hooks that break from their surrounding patterns, namely:

"EIGH_TEEN_YEARS_*. / EIGHteen=years=sheGOT. /
ONEofYOURkids=gotYOUfor / EIGHteen=years"

and,

"*.*.*.IFyou / AIN'Tno*punk*.HOLla /
WEwant*pre=nup*. / WEwant*pre=nup*yeah"

--which reprises Vanilla Ice's strategy of having a bunch of burly guys shout out a memorable line.  At verse's end, we get to hear "EIGH_TEEN_YEARS" again.  Catchy!  But then, virtually everything Kanye says in this song is catchy.  Other highlights include, from Verse 1:

"ASSlikeSERe=na=tri / =na*.JENniFERlo / =pez=fo'=kids"

--and from Verse 3:

"but / WHILE_YA'LL_WASH_IN'watch / *him"

Basically, anytime Kanye changes up his flow pattern, he adds another hook to the song.  This is why, when people complain about Kanye or Vanilla Ice being poor rappers, it doesn't really ring true--at least not as far as the aforementioned hits are concerned.  (As I say, Vanilla Ice isn't usually underrated.)  Even if they don't conjure up mindbending displays of lyrical dexterity, a la Nas or Eminem, they're capable of creating three verses full of rhyming couplets that people around the world have effortlessly memorized.  That's some kind of feat.

Kanye gets more credit for making tracks than for rapping, and this song is a prime example of why that's so.  His* beat bounces thunderously--how'd he manage that?--and the synth bari-sax under Verse 3 is funny and irresistible, as is usually the case with bari-saxes in pop music.  The Ray Charles sample is also gold.  Quite simply, there are more catchy elements in "Gold Digger" than you find in the entire Billboard Top 10 some weeks, and it hit #1 the day after FD's boy was born five years ago.  The Flowtation Device has no problem considering this the 49th best pop song ever.

"Low", on the other hand, is a different story--one that we needn't discuss today.

*see commentz

Cathedral and Grong Grong are Worth It! Ariel Pink, Toro Y Moi, and the Newsboys just plain suck.

Cathedral
The Guessing Game
(Nuclear Blast)

Determined to exploit every conceivable nook of Prog, pseudo-Prog, brutal Prog, and (this being Nuclear Blast and all) Prog Metal possible, this bunch of British vets have created a double disc album-of-the-year contender that sounds effortless. They're Prog because their songs are shape-shifting organisms with new elements busting out all over, ignoring conventional song structures. (Also there's a Mellotron.) The pseudo-Prog is audible in their weird debt to jazz rock shuffles and Ken Nordine. You can hear the brutality in Garry Jennings's crushing doom riffs, though the band use that sound more for the joy of its sonic kickassery. And the Metal holds it all together. Leader Lee Dorrian (ex-Napalm Death) ensures that every fill, solo, and flourish sounds as good as what's come before it, all the while drawling out his sprechtstimme with a sense of detached cool. Ultimately, the whole thing is a celebration: of how much ground you can cover with a rock band, and, in closing song "Journey Into Jade," of what such a band can mean to the world, even if it's all ultimately a guessing game.

Grong Grong
To Hell 'n' Back
(Memorandum reissue)

This '80s Australian sicko-punk band had a pretty good sense of what they WANTED to mean to the world; they just had a strange way of going about it.

Guitarist Charlie Tolnay on Grong Grong's songwriting process:
“It was just so simple. Dave [Taskas] would think of a bass line, or I’d think of a guitar line, then we’d put drums to it, and then think of some lyrics and that would be it.”
Maybe the weirdest thing about Grong Grong--aside from their lurching monoriff "songs," tin can production values, and squawl that sounds like guitar strings scraping the scales from a screaming eel--is the fact that they actually had some showbiz acumen. Singer Michael Farkas might have barked out every grotesque image that popped into his head, but he also hired a sax player and led his combo to a Battle of the Bands victory on the radio. Amid the odes to "Vlad the Impaler" and a "Meat Axe", they made room for a band theme song ("Grong Grong") and a dedicated show opener ("Club Grotesque"). As far as it's possible for a group like this, they almost hit the big time, derailed only by Farkas's overdose and subsequent coma. (He recovered, partially paralyzed.) Like most good post-punk bands, they had arresting grooves and a singer who could bellow like nobody else. So God bless Memorandum for this collection of live stuff and demos. It sounds great driving through a summer heat haze or trying to endure a bad campground.

Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti
Before Today
(4AD)

These guys are prog too, right? Because they keep changing time signatures, and they let their cleverness get in the way of their tunes? The disjointed songs sound like they'll fall apart any second, which may be what Ariel Pink was going for. Only, where sometimes that's a good thing--like with Cathedral or early Weezer--here it's pretty terrible. Cathedral thunder like the carousel-gone-wild at the end of Strangers On a Train; the Haunted Graffiti sound like wet tissue paper in a fan. Mr. Pink's voice and his drummer hardly bother to show up. "Butthouse Blondies" at least has the courtesy to rock--for almost half its running time!--but nothing else is compelling, even when the band manages to land on a pretty chord. When Pitchfork's Mark Richardson calls "Round and Round" "one of indiedom's most unifying and memorable songs in 2010," and also "endlessly replayable," I honestly have no idea what he's talking about, unless he means it's replayable as a torture device for some common enemy. So, while I'd be happy to blast it Cusack-style outside Sarah Palyn's window, I'd be sure to demand some earplugs for my trouble. Indiedom can do better.

But wait, there's more! Apparently Mr. Pink is a big influence on:

Toro Y Moi
Causers of This
(Carpark)

As a work of production prowess it's pretty flawless, seamless, facile, all that kind of stuff, and I SUPPOSE could serve as swank mood music for your next Espana y Gaul dinner party, because Lord knows the musical substance wouldn't distract anybody from their conversations. (Trust me: when you're proffering educated opinions on the new Rick Bayless restaurante or your latest homebrewing discoveries, you don't wanna be derailed by the crass sound of a hook!) T Y M is the nom de glo of Chaz Bundick, who's part of this new chillwave scene that WE WILL ALL STILL CARE ABOUT NEXT YEAR, assuming nothing else happens between now and then. I enjoy my hazy '80s memories as much as the next huppie, but I prefer to re-enact them by chilling to actual pop songs, whether by Groove Armada, Diana Reyes, my beloved Kylie, even the ol' Vampire Weekend boys. And strangely enough, all those schlockmeisters boast more interesting "soundscapes" than Toro Y Moi. So there!

Newsboys
Born Again
(Inpop)

At this point the NEWSBOYS are only 1/4 Australian, and sound NOTHING like Midnight Oil. Or Grong Grong.

CD's called Born Again, and it's a concept album about Nicodemus. JUST KIDDING! You'd like that, wouldn't you, people who don't read this blog? (That's OK, you don't have to start.) First song sounds like ALL OTHER MODERN ROCK SONGS FROM HOT ac RADIO STATIONS LIKE 101.9 "THE MIX"--Michael Tait (formerly of DC Talk) is putting it all out there to let us know "where he stands," i.e., that he's a Christian, like we didn't know. Now the guitar solo. That was a guitar solo? The guy played one note. What is he, the Edge? (Answer: no he is not.) Yeah, that song sucked. Wellness does not bode.

"HEY!" They're excited, you can tell. OR CAN YOU? (No I cannot.) Tait seems to be singing about how he came up in "the industry" now. You've only got ONE SHOT--to prove what you're all about! That's a harmful message to send today's youth--isn't the message of the God of Grace that you get shot after shot? That, while our missioning message should be fueled by an existential urgency, we need no longer fear the grave, the ever-rolling stream of time culminating in DEATH, because Christ has conquered death and the grave forever and ever? (All around the world every boy and girl!) What would Grong Grong do? (WWGGD?)

"Even though you brought this world to shape/ You love me in a personal way." I guess I'll let 'em get away with that--that's sort of one of the crucial paradoces, right? (I just noticed that "crucial" is derived from "crux.") Mr. Tait is seeking something "way beyond [him]self." Though storms come his way, though Kid murder Play, though bishops be gay, Tait will persevere. "Like the wind that moves the leaves, Lord you move me to my knees." This is an awful CD, by the way.

Here's the one where God gives us strength. The strength to waltz, apparently. You ever try to waltz? It's a strenuous endeavor, I gotta say, especially if you're supposed to be leading. (With G's help, Tait can "do the impossible.") Anyway, waltzing. You gotta know where you're going and be keenly aware of spacial relationships, because it's not just YOU that's gotta stay out of everyone's way, it's HER too (or HIM, if you're a gay bishop), and S/HE will be more keenly embarrassed than you if you ram into another couple. There's not much that can save face in that situation. If you're lucky, nobody's hurt and you all head over to the punch bowl, which some punk kid has (again luckily) spiked, and then you can imbibe and jibe, and maybe bribe the picture-taking lady to erase any record of this humiliating incident. As I say, luck plays a big role. We can call it "providence" if you prefer.

Whoa, new song! They don't mean to brag, don't mean to boast, but... actually, that's pretty much it. "When the boyz light up, who gets the praise, who owns the show? We ain't nothing but the conduits." This is where Tait and the boyz deflect the inevitable adoration of their audience to the One who has so blessed them with the ability to rock bellz. I refer, of course, to Hal Leonard. His influence is immense.

Ooh, now we're chuggin' like Muse. Not quite as dramatic, but still, best or second-best riff on this turd.

Do the guitarists know how to do anything other than play chords? Or play rhythms that aren't straight eighth notes? There's no modulation or variation or amelioration or animals-we-ation of anything here. Well, I guess they DO get soft and then they get loud again, whoop-de-doo. Tait's running to God, fantastic.

Does God like this music? Well, look, you can't really put God onto that plane--the "music-digging-or-not" plane, let's call it. God hears music. God doesn't hear music. God is music. God is not music. (I'm doing my non-personifyin' exercises; they're like kegels for the soul.) Whether God does or not, I DON'T. And I don't say that about all Xian rock, you know that, whoever nonexistent reader you are. "Get on your knees!" bellows Tait. HE MUST WIN US OVER. HE IS CONDUIT (for sale).

Here's my dilemma. I really don't want to listen to any more of this album, but they're going to cover DC Talk's "Jesus Freak," which is a really good song and it'll be either the best thing on here or a train wreck beyond comprehension. So I've gotta stick it out. (Current song sux, stopped keeping track. Mountains, mighty like you know who...)

Here it is. Why is "Jesus Freak" better than anything else that sounds remotely like it? Better riff, for one thing. We'll see how the rapper does. Sounds pretty good, gives me chills. Why do I have no control over my senses when I hear this song, even a remake of this song? Probably because I have a history with it, plus some sense of its historical significance. Please, God, let that be the end of the album.

Surfing With Avantasia

We've surfed with Tobias Sammet before.  When last we sailed with him through the frothy white seas of Babylonian iniquity, he was singing lead for Edguy and raising towers of untold height.  Such hubris!  Well, the world hadn't seen nothing yet:  Sammet went on to form power metal's pre-eminent supergroup, AVANTASIA.  What's that?  You thought all power metal bands ALREADY sounded like supergroups, with everybody trying to outsing and outshred their fellow soul-patched lifers?  Just try listening to this with a straight face:



Think nothing of it, friends, that's just Jens Johansson of Stratovarius tickling the ivories at 3:20!

In Edguy's "Babylon," Sammet joyfully proclaimed that nobody could stop him from raising towers to Babylon, no matter how much the old ladies in town frowned upon such a practice.  It was an homage to hubris as happy as any song you're likely to hear.  (HACHOO!)  In "Angel of Babylon," Sammet contrasts Babylon with Paradise, a conception that's pretty common.  (Indeed, if I ever get around to editing and compiling all these ramblings, Babylon As Hell will get its own chapter.)  But the question remains:  how does our friend Tobias imagine his Hellish prison of despair?

1. Its entrance is marked by a "tower in the night, up to the sky."  This got me wondering, what would Freud say about such a tower...?

2. Babylon's relationship with Paradise is expressed in curiously intimate, and consistent, terms:  it exists on "the back side of light," it's "the snake in the backyard of heaven," and when you visit Babylon, "Venus" guides you "to the back door of love."

3. While peering at Babylon through the shadows, Tobias and his supersinger friend Jorn witness "iniquity galore."  Do they run away in terror and disgust?  Hardly!  "Been worth a detour and some more," they crow.

Well!  It kind of makes me wanna go to Babylon, how about you?  Tobias's Babylon sounds less like a Hellish gauntlet of fire, and more like a delightful, if not completely sanitary, bathhouse.  This may be an important wrinkle in the story--the symbolic oppositional society that dare not speak its name.  I wonder how that OTHER Tobias would read it...?

Surfing With Pajama Party (they titled this blog!); and also Amy Grant, sort of

About time!  "Surfing In Babylon" is from Pajama Party's wonderful 1989 freestyle album Up All Night.  It follows the monumental "Yo No Se" and pales in comparison--though really, MOST songs pale in comparison to "Yo No Se."  "Surfing In Babylon" also has the distinction of not really being freestyle, but something closer to "rock."  Not that you hear many "guitars" on the song; there's something like a distorted guitar on the chorus, but it cuts off so abruptly I suspect it's a synth.  (The credits do say there's a rhythm guitar somewhere.)  There's also a wailing electric guitar solo that may or may not be an actual guitar--we have no reason to believe otherwise.  But anyway, even a synth guitar sound signifies Rock Music in the context of a freestyle album, so there you have it--this is PJ Party's rock song!  As such, fans of the group have largely overlooked it.  Listen and love here.


Thankfully, PJ Party fan Chuck Eddy has not overlooked it!  In The Accidental Evolution of Rock 'n' Roll, Eddy interprets the song this way:

"[J]ust because disco lets the party be the main thing doesn't mean the terror's not there...  [T]his is a song about a girl trying to get her friend to try something dangerous--heroin maybe, or lesbian sex.  Or maybe just a cigarette.  Guitars and strings add noisy ornamentation as the singer stands 'on the edge.'  Her pal says 'jump in, the water's fine,' but as soon as the singer dives into iniquity, the friend disappears.  Surfing in Babylon means playing with fire, and getting burned."

It's sort of an abstracted version of Decadent Babylon, a place we've seen before.  Whatever "dangerous" thing the PJ Party girls are doing--we can imagine it's lesbian sex, if you want--it runs counter to the norms of what they perceive to be correct society.  NOT Surfing In Babylon would mean--what?--falling in love and getting married.  Eating dinner at the table with your family, playing a board game together, and going to bed at a reasonable hour.  Filing your taxes correctly.  This straw-society ignores all the intricacies and vagaries that color individual lives, but no doubt there are people who strive for just such a life, and people who strive to get as far away from that life as possible.

People like... rock stars!  Maybe the most interesting thing about "Surfing" is that it posits the Babylon symbol as more a "rock" thing than a "disco" thing.  Jim Klein, who produced the album and co-wrote the song with Peggy Sendars, must've made it sound like rock for SOME reason--he sure didn't make it sound like surf music!  And a symbol like Babylon isn't endemic to the disco or freestyle genre, Boney M notwithstanding.  A PJ fan on Amazon sez, "I know the title of this song sounds a little unusual, but it's a catchy pop song.  It's not too bad at all."  Whew!--I was expecting it to sound like Celtic Frost or Faster Pussycat.  (The latter of whom did wear fabulous animal prints, much like PJ Party.)  I'm guessing that for a lot of freestyle fans in the '80s--or at least in the context of their expectations for a freestyle album--rock music was also sort of a dangerous "other," the same as what Babylon represents in Western culture.  Not that freestyle fans didn't dig rock, and not that freestyle didn't incorporate rock elements--or, indeed, rock harder than a lot of rock music of the time.  But there's no question they were different, and that rock had more of a dangerous stigma.

(This song reminds me of another pop song that incorporates screaming guitar as a rock signifier:  Amy Grant's "Good for Me," from 1991.  In Amy's case, the rock guitar doesn't signify danger, but it still signifies an "other."  It contrasts with the shiny synths that play the main riff, and within the context of the song, Amy is the synths and her husband is the squealing electric guitar.  Or vice versa.  The point is, they're different but good for one another.)  (I wonder if this move, from rock guitar signifying "dangerous other" to rock guitar signifying simply "other," indicates that rock music became totally toothless from '89 to '91.)  (And then Nirvana came along and saved us all.)  (Or something.)



To recap:  Pajama Party sang a song about Decadent Babylon, abstracted; they sort of made it sound like rock music, since that's where Babylon lives; and some yak co-opted the title for his blog.  Two of these were great decisions; jury's still out on that last one.

Best Thing I heard Today: Nas & some Marleys doing "In His Own Words"

It sure wasn't anything off that Ariel Pink CD, I can tell you that!

Distant Relatives, the recent collaboration between Nas and Damian Marley, deserves its own Babylon analysis. The album's equal parts reggae and rap, so Babylon comes up quite a bit. For now though, here's a pretty tune with Stephen Marley on the hook, Damian on beats and toasting, and Nas doing a couple verses:



Nas barely reveals what he's capable of, but he does have some interesting lines. For instance, he sees God's face in the shapes on his vintage designer clothes. Must be nice. He also sees God in the billboards, which is a little better but further evidence that Nas is often high--a suspicion backed up by this couplet:

"Through my perspective I can see Jah reflection/
In the highest definition getting high with my brethren"

OK, so we don't turn to Nas for dogmatic Christian orthodoxy. Probably not even dogmatic Rasta orthodoxy, if such a thing exists. But Damian! If you ever need beats, turn to Damian. The guy's catchy as all get out, and he comes up with a number of memorable creations on this album. I like how the acoustic guitar in "Words" starts stop-starting during the final refrain, reminiscent of Madonna's "Don't Tell Me" and probably lots of other stuff.

Distant Relatives isn't perfect. Nas, while still sounding better than 75% of other MCs, is fairly humorless and doesn't do anything astounding. There are too many slow, uninteresting reggae songs, but at least they're dispersed throughout the album, and there's enough good tunes to recommend it overall. Definitely stronger than that Ariel Pink CD.

P.S.-- I do take issue with the highly rated Youtube commenter who observed of this song, "Amazing man, to hell with mainstream rap!!!!!" You might not hear anything from Distant Relatives on the radio, but it's on Universal and debuted at #5 on the main Billboard chart, and #1 on the Rap, R&B, and Reggae charts. If that's not mainstream rap, I dunno what is.

Surfing in Babylon Leaves Home: Swell Season! Lightning Bolt! Kid Sister! Urinetown!

In what's surely been a banner period for witnessing live music not performed by myself, I've been to several performances of the stuff in the past week. Whaddo they call 'em? "Shows"? Of course, in two instances I couldn't really see the performers, so the "show" part consisted more of watching my fellow music afficionadi. To wit:

The Swell Season at Ravinia, Wed. 7/14/10

My wife's more of a fan than I am; their albums make me sort of sleepy. The movie Once, which notably starred Swell Seasoners Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova, was a delight, and Glen is a real charmer live. When we saw them last December at the Auditorium Theatre, Glen kept shouting out to the cheap seats, the area where you could've guessed we were sitting, if you have ANY understanding of my monetary policies. Glen told story after story. Some were moving, some were funny; all showcased his shambling appeal as a performer. We were his. I didn't want the show to end.

This Ravinia show, we were OK with it ending. Ravinia's cheap seats are a lawn with no clear view of the stage; they have a big TV, but it's less compelling. Throughout the concert, wife and I marveled at the people around us who were dining and conversing while giving little attention to the music being piped through the trees. Hadn't they paid good money for these tickets? I could see if you're going to Ravinia for Shostakovich quartets or something and you paid ten bucks, maybe you take a walk and play with the kid while listening to beautiful music in the background. But somehow a pop show demands more of your undivided attention, even if the music doesn't require close listening like a string quartet. The performers interact more with the audience, and the tickets cost more.

Unfortunately, charming Glen seemed to realize that he couldn't see 3/4 of his audience, and he seemed a little cowed by it. The stories were missing, the funny little bits of stage patter gone. A couple Swell Season songs require that the audience sing backup vocals, and Glen had no hope of communicating that to his unseen fans. He and Marketa and their band, the Frames, performed well, but the communal spirit of the Auditorium show was missing. In hopes of beating the rush to the shuttle bus, we left during "Falling Slowly," their big Oscar hit; but we did get to hear my favorite song of theirs, "When Your Mind's Made Up" (got big applause):



Lightning Bolt and the Catacombz at "The Spot," Friday 7/16/10

Against all odds, Lightning Bolt are probably my favorite band of the '00s. They put out four really good albums last decade--who DOES that? (The Beatles, the Stones, Led Zeppelin... the list is not long.) Lightning Bolt are a two-piece noise band, with Brian Chippendale on drums and Brian Gibson on bass, and they're ridiculously amplified. I mean, these guys are SO amplified, you feel them in your chest before you hear them. Before the show, everybody starts stuffing their ears with earplugs or ripped-up pieces of paper. It's ominous, like the rippling glass of water in Jurassic Park. (The trick, if you're planning on seeing them, is to find the earplug sweet spot where you can still hear plenty of treble from the bass and the cymbals. If you stuff it in too far, all you can hear is chest vibrations and snare drum thwack.) Lightning Bolt have a sound all their own, and they're slavishly devoted to that sound. In fact, in The Wire, Gibson spoke of the attention they've given their live sound:

"Cause it's so much distortion and bi-amped all this sub-low coming out of the 18s, anything I do has so much force, it's really nice. I do think that's such an important thing, that's the problem with most bands that I see, is actually getting your equipment to sound good live. It just seems like people neglect that, and they think way more about what they're playing and what's happening in the song, in theory, but I think the reality of it is that people are gonna be just hearing something initially that's purely sonic and either sounds when it hits you or it doesn't."

Trust me--when Lightning Bolt plays, IT HITS YOU.



That said, the show was just a little disappointing. Predictable. In '05, Frank Kogan argued on an Ashlee Simpson ILM thread that Lightning Bolt didn't sound like they might "potentially veer out of control." And it's true, they don't. And I think part of the expectation at a Lightning Bolt show--where you've got all this NOISE NOISE NOISE, and you might go deaf, and the band's in the middle of the audience, and hairy people are moshing and crowd-surfing, and everybody's sweaty and touching--is that the band will create, using only their music, a situation that might possibly veer out of control. But no, there's little chance of that. Lightning Bolt are well-rehearsed and they have hooks. You can recognize distinct songs from their CDs, even if I'd be hard pressed to tell you the titles of those songs, apart from "The Faire Folk." They're very polite after showtime, greeting fans with handshakes. And despite all the apparent flailing, all their songs have a basic pulse of either 60, a resting heart rate, or 100, a "Stayin' Alive" beat. They should play Lightning Bolt at CPR seminars!

So what, they never threatened to cut themselves with glass or electrocute the crowd. That's probably for the best. For ten bucks (and even if it'd cost considerably more) they put on a great, energetic show, full of guitar effects you're simply not gonna hear from any other band. See 'em before you die.

And before Lightning Bolt came tha Catacombz! Fairly loud Milwaukee four-piece that combined noise energy with classic-rock and motorik song structures--they were blasting Creedence at their merch table. These guys surprised me in ways that LB didn't, if only because I'd never heard their shtick before. Few have. I believe they've only got cassette releases right now, and their shirts are secondhand tees with the Catacombz logo spraypainted on. Catch 'em while they're hot!

(Special thanks to Chi-town's own Castro, aka Idol Threat, for getting me outta the house!)



Kid Sister at Millennium Park, Mon. 7/19/10

Hometown! Actually, I was more hoping to catch the amplified thumb piano groovez of Konono No. 1, but we missed them, so Chicago rapper Kid Sister had to do, and indeed she did. My four-year-old spent most of her show dancing and running around. The crowd, an assortment of hippies and other-people-who-like-free-live-music, seemed to be into her--they, too, danced and ran around. Sound was good, stage patter a little awkward but genuine, new songs fit right in, and all the rhymes were spot-on. In fact, Castro and I discussed her flow on the way to the LB show, and while I was claiming that, like Ke$ha, Kid Sister's flow came out of L'Trimm and Fannypack, I now think I was mistaken. Kid Sister is squarely in the GILLETTE camp of aggressive syncopation, whereas the other girls are a little cutesier and girlier, with more on-beats. (THE FLOWTATION DEVICE will get on this shit, if we ever stop horsing around.)

Anyhow, here's the lovely "Daydreaming":



Urinetown: the Musical at College of Lake County, Friday 7/23/10

"I DIDN'T KNOW TWO HEARTS COULD BEAT AS ONE!"

Urinetown is one of that prevalent recent genre, "Musicals That Dwell On The Fact That They're Musicals." Along with The Drowsy Chaperone, this one has a shot at outlasting our cynical era. Ironic? Unlike Chaperone, which is steeped in its love of musicals, Urinetown is relentlessly cynical. Every song is played for laughs, whether a death song or a love song--like the lovely, complex "Follow Your Heart":



There are moments in Urinetown where you start to care about the characters or the plot mechanations, and then the musical simply makes fun of you for caring. In the end, the hero dies, the heroine ruins civilization, and the audience walks out laughing uncertainly, envisioning mankind engulfed in a river of pee. At least I do. I then try to conserve water for a week or so. While I refrain from flushing, I get the feeling that Urinetown is laughing at me even more.

What these live performances have in common, I don't know. I suppose they teach us the lesson that great music can come from anywhere, whether the local community college (which outperformed that link I posted), the big city immediately to the north or south, a different state, or a different country. But we already knew that, didn't we? So probably it's more like this: my synchronicity is your coincidence, my nights on the town are pretty humdrum. Which is fine. My wife just handed me a coconut macaroon that she made (we've been baking all day for the county fair). It's good, and I'm set. But it was nice to get out of the house.

This Frightened Rabbit album is WORTH IT!!

You guessed it: me at the Burnside Writers' Collective, jauntily. These guys seem to inspire jaunt, maybe in spite of themselves.

Surfing With Sugar Minott (RIP)

Sugar Minott worked three different reggae styles in the late '70s/early '80s, and actually originated one of 'em--studio dancehall. After starting a singing career in 1969, he spent about a decade doing roots reggae, like "Mr. Babylon Man" from 1979's Black Roots album. It's a simple plea for the agents of Babylon to leave him and his Rasta brothers (and sisters?) alone:



Around that same time, Minott started innovating. Working as a session instrumentalist at the fabled Studio One in Kingston ("the Motown of Jamaica"), Minott and his boss discovered that Minott had a knack for singing original tunes over the tracks of other songs. Now, before he started singing, Minott had come up through the sound systems of Jamaica, where DJs would spin records and audiences would party. Since 1970, some of the DJs (notably U-Roy) would toast along with the records they played, rhythmically exhorting people to Get Up On It and whatnot. (New York's pioneering hip-hop DJ Kool Herc came out of this scene, so we have these guys to thank for much of today's pop radio.) U-Roy had recorded his toasting act in studios, but Minott was arguably the first to sing new songs over existing riddims. Throw in some very au courant synth drums, and you've got the sound that'd be known as "dancehall." Here's "Rough Ole Life (Babylon)", a 1983-ish (maybe) track based on one of the most popular Jamaican riddims, the "M-16":



These riddims make up a unique oral culture in Jamaican reggae music. (Somebody, probably not me, needs to write a comprehensive study of the relationship between all the songs based on the same riddims.) U-Roy himself used the M-16 in the late '60s, for the song "Scandal"--you can hear the difference between his toasting style and Minott's singing style, over what I BELIEVE is a Sly & Robbie rhythm track.

Minott's third style was the lover's rock reggae of England, where he lived for a bit in the '80s. I don't think any Babylon songs came out of that period, but this Michael Jackson cover sure did!



As you can hear, the guy was smooth whether he was singing love songs or raging gently against the machine. His anti-Babylon stance was one of faithful presence and quiet resistance. At the end of "Rough Ole Life," starvation and jubilation coexist, and Minott seemed to accept that duality as the lot of Jah's follower, working inside Babylon system.

Best Thing I Heard Today: Trip Lee doing "Snitch"

Christian Rap: It's Competent Now! (My marketing services are available for a fee.) Actually, it may have been competent for a while; da t.r.u.t.h. is, I've been out of touch. But Christian rappers aren't out of touch. Foor proof, here's a new song that sounds like six-year-old Timbaland:



"Snitch" is a clever co-opted gangstaism. Mr. Trip Lee, you see, is snitching on himself. So he's in his confessional booth, or in the Protestant version of same--his mind--and busily hating his sin. Unfortunately, he doesn't snitch to his listeners what he's been up to, which might make the song more interesting.

Based on this song and the rest of his new album, Between Two Worlds, Trip's a pretty good rapper. He's able to change up his patterns in subtle ways, and he's got nothing against syncopation, ptl. He's also got an appealing southern twang that kind of reminds me of a reined-in Weezy, without the craziness and wit.

So, not great, but refreshingly GOOD. Actually, I probably prefer this LL song with an actual, similar Timbo beat:



Play 'em at the same time!