Earn This

“Silence is the enemy.”

At some point on this past August 11^th, at Jiffy Lube Pavilion in Virginia, it all went away.  At some indefinable moment, while realizing that time had seemed to stop as Green Day obliterated tedium on their way through a legendary, two-hour-and-45-minute show, while observing that Billie Joe Armstrong is a frontman in ways that few are today, while deducing that this band had become much more expansive and adventurous than their critics would admit, all of the Green Day hate that I used to store up in my head had drifted away.  It had been eradicated by the firework-propelled opening of the title track to their last album, by the seamless transition from songs written 16 years ago to ones written less than 16 months ago, and by the connection and genuine love felt from the audience to its entertainers.  There was nothing left but admiration.

In my formative music years, I had to deal with an internal Green Day disapproval meter that pointed to red less because of actual knowledge than from some nebulous perception that they were too popular.  I wasn’t enamored with many of their songs that enjoyed radio love, and so, outside of “Basket Case,” I gave their music little attention.  When the trio teamed up with U2 to re-make “The Saints are Coming” for the New Orleans Saints in preparation for the 2006 NFL season, I loathed the pairing.

Shortly after that, I felt inexorably drawn towards something I had tried to resist.  “Saints” turned out better than I expected, but, mostly, Fugazi happened.  I wore out their discography in that fall of ’06 (my freshman year of college), and Dookie was next in my iTunes library.  Every time I got to the end of The Argument, I would prepare myself to stop the music…until I heard “I declare I don’t care no more / I’m burning up and out and growing bored,” heard the band start running, and suddenly the pause button was the furthest thing from my mind.  The revolution was underway, propelled by the inescapable fact that over a half-dozen songs off that album had implanted themselves in my mind without conscious intention—indeed, probably despite some conscious intention.

And so, for much of college, my interest in Green Day slowly expanded, albeit reined in by the cognitive dissonance engendered by that fall and the knowledge of my earlier distaste.  As such, it took until the last 12 months to see them as more than a one-album band.

When 21^st Century Breakdown was released last May, I was compelled to listen only because a friend played it for me.  My initial thought concerned my inability to get “Know Your Enemy” out of my head after just two listens, and then I observed other details about the album that didn’t jibe with Green Day stereotypes—that songs were often broken down into sections with disparate sounds, that the band was incorporating elements from all sorts of musical genres—and some that should always have been apparent—namely, that Billie Joe has one of the most underappreciated gifts for melody of our time.

Rolling Stone put it well in their review of Breakdown: “What’s more bizarre: the fact that they sound so ambitious and audacious on their eighth album, or the fact that they even made an eighth album?”  And therein lies Green Day’s walking contradiction; punk bands simply don’t last as long as they have.  They don’t evolve the way they have.  Dookie dropped just weeks before Kurt Cobain killed himself; what other bands of their genre are still relevant?

And a large part of Green Day’s evolution has been their thematic interest.  American Idiot shocked everyone; the joke went something like, ‘Wow, things are so bad, even Green Day are writing protest songs.’  Yet, paradoxically, that album was the most ‘punk’ of their career.  And the rants against the Bush administration and 2004’s political climate enlivened critics and fans alike, cultivating a career renaissance that happened even without a sharp decline.  Without a massive change in sound or a fall from grace, their seventh album redefined their career, a more impressive feat than you’d imagine.

In fact, Idiot became so recognizable that I longed for more people to go back and listen to their earlier work, to understand that 2004 wasn’t the first good year of their lives.  And before this month’s concert, I hadn’t even bought the album, my youthful resistance still holding a bit of ground.  But the show did many remarkable things, not least of which was converting me to Idiot.  In the last couple weeks, I’ve determined it’s indispensable to own alongside Breakdown, both because the latter naturally follows the former and also simply because the former is stellar.

Both these albums’ strengths were amplified live; Green Day and Billie Joe, now at least, convince you that they take themselves and their music seriously.  In an age of insouciance and apathy, bands that do so stand out; this is a substantial reason why the Arcade Fire are the new media darling.  Green Day’s contradiction can be summed up as such: they a shit—about the world around them, with or without Bush in office—and don’t give a shit—about people’s expectations for them, about their genre’s constraints, about their history.  I mean…9-minute, 5-part suites?  Over a minute of quiet piano slowly introducing songs? 

The show also furthered a key point of Breakdown—how far the band has progressed from their punk roots (in all ways except their politics).  The genre’s ideology emphasizes minimalism; it would never approve of the elaborate, sweeping show GD put on, not the lengthy interludes during songs or the flames bursting forth during the loudest moments of the most impassioned numbers.  Billie Joe channeled the spirit of all great frontmen by running around like a controlled drunk, always emphasizing inclusivity.  Someone threw me a lei?  Sure, I’ll put it on.  Want one fan on stage?  Why not 30?  It all worked, splendidly, and it proved to be done by a band living on its own terms.

Over the course of the nearly 3 hours, GD pulled, by my count, four tracks from Breakdown (the singles: title track, “Enemy,” “East Jesus Nowhere,” “21 Guns”), several from Idiot, occasional quirky deep cuts like “King for a Day,” and, of course, juicy Dookie standouts.  I would have loved me some “Nice Guys Finish Last” or “The Static Age,” but the band threw out more than a few bones, namely “She” and Warning’s “Minority.”  Would I have preferred one or two additional songs to be played in lieu of some of the mid-song interludes?  Perhaps, but it’s hard to complain about anything in the presence of such energy, such ferocity, such charisma.  GD have entrenched themselves as a peak live band of our time, possessing the ability to transport audience members into another world, the way great films and books do.

Really, though, a look back on the band’s discography reveals a few patterns that might have clued us in to their potential longevity.  The music and lyrics are consistently smarter than one would imagine, every song managing to sustain independence from its brothers while yet maintaining propulsive drive. (Dookie, for example, is one of the great energizing albums out there, but it has a heart and soul.) Throughout their career, they’ve written indelible breakneck rockers (“Burnout,” “Nice Guys,” “Idiot,” “Enemy”), effortlessly smooth power ballads (“Having a Blast,” “Redundant,” Worry Rock”), and then occasionally pulled back for change-of-pace slow-burners (“Good Riddance,” obviously, plus “Are We the Waiting”: “Last Night on Earth” still blows, however).  Their albums are typically too long, over-loaded with trimmable filler, but that’s sort of the point: with nothing to lose and nothing to prove, they always seem to be tossing off ideas just to see what sticks.

Billie Joe’s lyrics, from 1994 until now, are stronger than casual critics will give him credit for (Dookie wrings humor and mischievousness out of nothing, and the last two have many quotable lines), and his gift for hooks is borderline criminal (“Basket Case,” obviously, but also “Coming Clean,” “Scattered,” “Jesus of Suburbia,” “The Static Age”).  But it was only Breakdown that allowed me to see all of this, that allowed me to go back and listen to everything that came before, to realize that there was much more there than meets the eye.  That album’s staying power, frankly, stunned me; but it shouldn’t have, not with its diversity, smooth flow, and abundant creativity, hooks, color, and intelligence.

They’ve just never hit these peaks before—the epic bridges of “Static Age,” the second “Gloria,” “21 Guns”; the release when Billie Joe cries, “My generation is zero / I never made it as a working-class hero!”; the titanic drum lead-in back to the final chorus of “Enemy”; the passionate, inimitable Green Day gallop of the first “Gloria,” “Christian’s Inferno,” and “American Eulogy.”

On Nimrod’s “Worry Rock,” they declared, “Promise me no dead-end streets / And I’ll guarantee we’ll have the road.”  Well, Billie Joe, you should never fret about not having that road.

Boys Like Girls (2006) – 2.5 stars

Love Drunk (2009) – 4 stars  

In the mid-to-late 00s, Boys Like Girls have piggybacked onto the pop-emo scene trail-blazed by bands like the (the infinitely more talented) All-American Rejects.  A genre that has now almost completely abandoned its Rites of Spring roots, emo’s path of change has traversed Sunny Day Real Estate and Weezer and Jimmy Eat World, coming to rest somewhere in between Fall Out Boy (ugh) and AAR, with an eye turned ever towards mainstream acceptance.   

In between those two is BLG, whose self-titled debut proved that there was a healthy market for such music, one likely appealing most to teenage girls.  A fair number of them ate up the predictably over-the-top emotions expressed on said album, which featured a couple sharp, exhilarating tracks that lifted off (“The Great Escape” and “Five Minutes to Midnight” most prominently), but which sank without a trace by the end. 

A 12-song work that should have been 2-4 shorter, with that many more re-worked, Boys Like Girls, at its nadir, exemplifies the worst traits of this kind of schmaltzy pop-rock.  The lyrics sustain that kind of immature, woe-is-me attitude—“Who said it’s better to have loved and lost? / I wish that I had never loved at all,” etc—that, apparently, people still find poignant.  When the melodies fade away, there’s not much left in the songs’ originality or sturdiness to make up for it, and lead singer Martin Johnson’s voice just gets thinner and thinner.  The aforementioned two opening tracks, plus a couple more, are worth downloading, but that’s about it.

All of which makes their 2009 sophomore release, Love Drunk, that much more surprising.  This is a massive step forward, though not via a significant musical shift.  Indeed, it’s merely the other end of the spectrum, projecting the best feelings in emo-pop.  This is what they should have always gone for, the kind of loud, hyper-melodic, blood-pumping, Top Gun-style-campy music that’s best belted out loudly from the car.  When they sing “We’re heading for a heart, heart, heartbreak” or “I used to be love drunk, but now I’m hung-over” or “I wish that I could turn this car around, but she’s got a boyfriend now,” they sound carefree instead of overly caring, closer to delighted than despondent, loose rather than lost. 

And THAT is the critical distinction—and the philosophical bent that really makes the album work.  Self-misery would have sunk this project—and it wouldn’t have fit with the music—but the freewheeling thoughts blend together perfectly with the anthemic choruses to actually uplift you.  When I saw some of these song titles (particularly “She’s Got a Boyfriend Now”) I nervously foresaw some Pinkerton or Narrow Stairs-esque lyrics; instead, they treat such situations as opportunities for freedom and novelty.

And they marry such sentiments to songs whose ability to withstand repeated playings, I’ll be honest, stunned me.  Thanks to the playfulness and energy, the vastly improved hooks, and the fact that the songs are now drenched in color rather than projecting the same boring hue, they’re able to stir up that feeling of grand romanticism to which many similar bands only aspire.  Despite re-using some elements (start-stop basslines, falsettos), their previously-dormant sense of songcraft masks flaws: Tracks like the opener and “Chemicals Collide” are as good of stress-relievers as I’ve heard. 

No, Allmusic, “Two is Better Than One” (sung with Taylor Swift, but whatever) isn’t the worst of the ballads on here, for at least it has some punch and a decent grip on melody.  It has tangible flaws, to be sure, but the real penetrating stares should be directed at the tracks that most recall the second half of their debut: “Someone Like You” and “Go,” which commits that crime of all music crimes, the limpid album closer. (Why, oh why, don’t bands just dance with what brought them?  I’m looking at you, Jawbox.   And Placebo.)

So, on some level, Love Drunk is what it is, but deep down, it’s not.  Much as the snobby will hate it, this kind of music can be bad or good, depending on its execution, just like all rock can be.  Their career has proved that.  But for the most part, this is very well-executed—and fun.

In a lot of ways, this kind of music compares with country.  There’s not a ton going on, musically, which redirects attention onto the vocals and lyrics.  And, perhaps for that reason, the attitude and philosophy of the genre—the culture, if you will—is presented so forcefully as to feel like it’s being shoved down your right.  Your appreciation, therefore, will be highly dependent upon your approval of that culture.  But if you’re OK with it—and you’re finished with all 3 All-American Rejects albums—turn here.

Rating: 3 and a half stars (out of 5)

Neon Trees opened for The Killers in 2008, inviting a natural comparison to a band they clearly respect.  A couple years later, the Trees are playing a gig at the upcoming Lollapalooza concerts, their lead single “Animal” gets some radio play, and…they’re also plugging Las Vegas vacations.  OK, so they haven’t become Killers-level huge yet, but there’s enough on Habits, their debut LP, to suggest they can.  

Whooshing through in a breezy 29 minutes, Habits is a fairly by-the-books dance-pop-rock album, with lots of nods to imperfect relationships and some endearingly catchy hooks.  Yet the Trees manage to sound both mainstream and independent—like they’re doing their own thing, and it just happens to sound like this.  “Animal” is suitably indie-quirky, with dance-friendly synths and a come-and-get-me refrain—“Oh, oh, I want some more / What are you waiting for? / Take a bite of my heart tonight”—but it tends to grate a little under heavy repetition.  Fortunately, quality-wise, it’s really only in the middle of the pack here. 

The real stand-out is the follow-up, “Your Surrender,” where U2 meets Rooney, with a hint of the Arcade Fire thrown in underneath. (If this sounds as appealing to you as it does me, buy this album; otherwise, don’t.) It works primarily because the refrain eschews that annoying sense of worthlessness found in too many of these songs, adopting instead the same kind of mischievousness as “Animal,” but with more confidence—“How long till your surrender?”

What truly sets Habits apart from its contemporaries in the somewhat-amateurish danceable post-punk scene, what makes it sound less pre-packaged than you’d expect, are the surprising shades of gray lurking underneath the songs.  Neon Trees manage to infuse these songs with more than a few traces of muffled darkness, as though coming from just under a pillow, a technique that works effectively against their natural pop leanings.  Songs like “Sins of My Youth,” “Girls and Boys in School,” and “Our War” bring forth cloudier arrangements than one might expect, which helps them sustain repeated plays.  Of most interest is closer “War,” a touching near-ballad both uplifting (particularly in the vocals) and tantalizing, as one can envision it having been further developed at the hands of a more refined band.

Other worthy tracks include “1983” (sometimes, they don’t hide their influences all that much), with legitimately striking twists and turns; but, the thing is, with an eight-song album, you’d better have a very high batting average.  Allmusic calls “Love and Affection” pure Bloc Party, but all it sounds like to me is a forced melody and those aforementioned irritating attitudes—the “I just don’t understand why my love isn’t good enough” kind. 

That’s the only truly skippable song here, but a fair number of tracks combine traits with faults (formulaic ‘soaring’ choruses, uninspired lyrics, similar sounds); they’d do well to freeze-frame the “Fuck all the rest and forget the rules!” coda of “Girls,” their strongest boundary-pushing moment here.  In the meantime, though, if you have an itch for this kind of music—and especially with Rooney’s Eureka looking like a disappointment—feel free to enjoy Neon Trees for what they are, rather than asking them to be something else.

Arcade Fire, EP (2003) – 2 stars

Funeral (2004) – 4.5 stars

Neon Bible (2007) – 4.5 stars

Within seemingly 5 minutes of breaking onto the music scene, the Arcade Fire lost anonymity.  David Bowie immediately proclaimed himself a major fan, festivals like Lollapalooza snapped them up, and U2 not only asked them to share stages on their Vertigo Tour but also played one of their tracks as the lead-in to every show.  This acclaim within the industry was matched by the feelings felt by both critics and the public towards the band’s debut album, which currently sports a score of 90 on Metacritic.

Overreaction?  Hardly.  The group’s early EP didn’t show much promise, but 2004’s Funeral is the kind of album that everyone should like and yet doesn’t feel tailored to the masses, one that revels in its influences and yet still sounds utterly original, one that makes earnestness and sincerity cool again.  Full of heart and bluster and pain and energy, it’s one glorious and dramatic journey into…death?

Well, yes, as the album’s title, and overall thematic breadth, reflects the passing of several family members within the band, which is headed by Win Butler and his wife Regine Chassagne.  Joined by a bevy of other musicians and vocalists, they create soundscapes with a host of orchestral instruments.  Minimalist, they are not; and their ambitions are so wonderfully refreshing in a age of simplicity in music.  Starting things off is the first of 4 “neighborhood” passages that reflect the band’s wistfulness; on the opener, stately piano underscores Win’s gradually crescendoing vocals about the hope of children to escape family strife through friendship.

The band clearly wants immediacy, wants to cling to something positive, wants respite from torpor and sadness.  A couple songs submerge songcraft for instrumentation that’s too hard to parse (the second “Neighborhood,” for example, doesn’t stick in the mind); but the revelatory power put forth on tracks like “Neighborhood #3 (Power Out)” and “Rebellion (Lies)” uplifts listeners, no matter how ambivalent the subject matter—yes, the Fire has that men-from-the-boys quality of being able to make darkness life-affirming.  Butler eschews the kind of detached, stoic cool that pervades much of 2000s music and hit peaks of intensity instead: when he cries on Power Out, “Is it a dream, is it a lie? / I think I’ll let you decide / Light a candle for the kids / Jesus Christ, don’t keep it hid” the feeling is overwhelming.

And then there’s “Wake Up,” the U2 fade-in that inspires no reservations whatsoever about that band’s taste.  An epic, pull-back-on-the reins rock anthem, filled with color and energy, it’s one of those songs that sounds as though it could have been written anytime in the last 30 years—or the next 30.  As he does on “Rebellion,” Butler encourages people to persevere through tragedy, once again expressing nostalgia for foregone innocence (“Now that I’m older / My heart’s colder / And I can see that it’s a lie”).

A few years in the making and less grandiose, 2007’s Neon Bible imparts a cloudier, murkier hue upon listeners, replacing epic feelings with more down-to-earth ruminations.  Like on all great sequels (Joy Division’s Closer, the second and third Bourne movies, etc), they’ve accurately determined just what to include and what to change.  You can hear Joy Division in its (occasionally) cavernous darkness, you can hear U2 in the earnestness and anthems, you can hear Bruce Springsteen (“Antichrist Television Blues”), but you can also hear no one.  Just as with the first album, Neon Bible doesn’t really sound like anybody.  It’s just The Arcade Fire.

I vividly remember my first listen to Bible, being blown away by the effect of the added atmosphere, not believing how macabre and gloomy and thrilling those first four songs sounded.  “Black Mirror,”—there’s your Joy Division ominousness, given liftoff—and “Keep the Car Running,” unleashing mandolins and all kinds of exuberant fun, eliminate any possibility of a let-down.  And when the bottom drops out of the breathtaking “Intervention,” at the 2:01 mark, the same thing will happen to your jaw.

In a somewhat similar vein as Funeral, the band still gets into trouble with their propensity for limpid, virtually guitar-free mood pieces (“Neon Bible” in particular; the best of these is “Ocean of Noise,” in no small part thanks to the excellent line, “You’ve got your reasons / And me, I’ve got mine / But all the reasons I gave were just lies to by myself some time.”)

Indeed, Butler’s lyrics have a way of covering up the band’s minor imperfections.  They’re a little broader than on Funeral, but still personal, still vivid.  The “Power Out” vocal intensity comes on “Intervention”—“Been working for the church while your life falls apart / Been singing ‘Hallelujah’ with the fear in your heart.”  But not every song matches them appropriately; when “Windowsill” accelerates, he cries, “The windows are locked now, so what’ll be it be / A house on fire / Or a rising sea?” an image that conjures up far more emotion than the instrumentation—they need a little less gray, a little more guitar.

But that line resonates with the listener, in part because it’s surprisingly reflective of the band’s career.  Funeral is the house on fire, Neon Bible the rising sea; but they’ve always taken their dystopia with a different bent than most.  Their worldview is best summed up by the top line on ATB: “Into the light of a starless sky / I’m staring into nothing, and I’m asking you why.”  Rather than simply reflecting misery, they’re always asking why, and always staring ahead, irrespective of what looks back at them.  With their pivotal third album set to be released this August, the world cannot possibly predict what they will see next.

Americans today don’t give a hoot about progressive rock.  Our parents grew up on Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd; the lucky ones collected vinyl from Kansas, ELP, and King Crimson.  Those heirlooms have clearly not trickled down yet here the way they have in experimental music havens scattered around Japan and Northern and Western Europe.

That makes it hard for Spock’s Beard, the international superstars from L.A. now in their eighteenth year, left standing as the proverbial prophets not accepted in their homeland.  Things seemed even bleaker in 2002 when frontman and brainfather Neal Morse departed from the group after six albums.  But now, with the release of X, the stalwart boys look to reclaim their crown as kings of the formerly-and-elsewhere-beloved genre.

Naturally, as their tenth album, X references their fifth: V.  Having run out their record deal last year, the band opted not to re-sign with any label just yet.  Instead, they funded and produced the album themselves and with the help of established friends in the industry.  Most of the money for the endeavor came from hopelessly devoted faithfuls like me who willingly shelled out up to $200 for various pre-ordering options offered before any recording took place.  Now that the finished piece of work is in our hands – 10 months later – was it worth it?

Ha.  “Worth it” would be an understatement.  This is the first post-Neal album that merits favorable comparisons to the band’s earlier work.  And that is the highest praise available.

Understand that this brand of prog comes with intricate time signatures, some eccentric keyboards, and long songs.  (The 8 tracks on X add up to over 78 minutes, near the capacity of an audio CD.)  Neal Morse was primarily a singing keyboardist, so, upon his departure, resident Moog master Ryo Okumoto attempted to maintain the key-centric attitude of the band to mixed results.  Drummer-cum-replacement-lead-singer Nick D’Virgilio then spent an album pretending he was a rock star before the guys managed to find their feet post-reconstruction.  This new album shows them gelling like never before and finding excellence as a fundamentally bass-driven band.

Two featured 16-minute tracks on the record are subdivided into movements.  Both “From the Darkness” and “Jaws of Heaven” are odd in that they forego the sort of blazing introductions or overtures that the band has historically employed to signal an incoming epic.  They hop right into things, the former beginning with a hard rock feel and the latter as a mournful western ballad.  At four movements apiece, though, the songs have plenty of time to pass through various moods and genres.

“From the Darkness” suffers slightly from a cut-and-jump approach to transitions that, while not disorienting in execution, leaves one feeling that they have just listened to four disconnected songs.  The abstract and vague lyrics (arguably a problem on half of X‘s tracks) don’t imbue any greater sense of unity in the story D’Virgilio spins.  Vastly superior in this regard is “Jaws of Heaven,” whose segues are fluid and whose movements feel related by recurring motives while each exhibits a unique musical character.  The third movement is particularly compelling: stirring far-off drums complement sparse guitar strokes and a soft voice, all held together by the persistent and understated bass.

Both suites conclude in powerful fashion.  Either would have been perfectly suited to end the album, an honor granted to “Jaws of Heaven.”

Four-stringer Dave Meros contributes his writing talents to “Edge of the In-Between,” a modest tune at 10 minutes long.  While not demarcated into sections, the song moves through a progression of passages with entrancing continuity.  The listener is never jilted by the undercurrents moving from a rollicking 4/4 chorus to an expansive 7/4 jam to a slowed-down bridge that alternates between dainty piano and sludgy bass.  The recapitulation that follows is reminiscent of the grand effect captured in “At the End of the Day” on V, a compliment not to be taken lightly.

Meros on bass and D’Virgilio on drums click so well that it’s easy to get the impression they are featured in every song on the album.  Soaring keys and crunching guitars are thus enabled to reach their full potential on every lick.

A strong case can be made that the standout track is “The Emperor’s Clothes,” nearly the shortest at under 6 minutes, beating out only the shifting and dramatic instrumental romp “Kamikaze.”  Written by guitarist Alan Morse (with added touches by his brother Neal!), it is a perfect example of great lyrics perfectly matched by effective musical arrangement.  The song tells the first half of the well-known story from the point of view of the tailor who has never sewn but has a plan to cash in: “Well you’ve never seen clothes / Like you won’t see those… ‘Cause the fabric’s so fine / It’s like it’s not even there.”

Bursting and driving trombones ring in the song and are later joined by french horns, a string quartet, and a number of wonky synthesized sounds to complement the core rock instrumentation.  Besides all this, there is a cheery a cappella section in the middle ended by a frenetic xylophone run.  Tempo jumps add to the effect of a song that is thoroughly fun.  Even the basic beat seems to recreate a circus parade!

Finally, a nod must be given to “Their Names Escape Me.”  The perfectly eerie mood created, so befitting of a song whose lyrics tell of a judgment and inquisition (“Tell us the names of every traitor who / Took up arms against the nation…”), continues and grows in tension as the band first sings the song proper, then moves into a list of names.  D’Virgilio captures in the tune my name and the names of every other contributor to the recording fund, all the while keeping legitimate music going underneath.  As the names are sung, the key raises steadily and the arrangement thickens until the eventual unearthly fade-out.

Led by Meros and D’Virgilio, with all intellectualism and virtuosity intact, X is a highly melodic and engaging product.  Finally, Spock’s Beard has recreated epics better than past efforts penned by Neal such as “Flow” and “The Good Don’t Last.”  Attempts to do so have been made on every record since his departure; only here have they paid off.  It is thrilling, after eighteen years, to see the boys raise the question of whether their greatest work lies behind them or ahead.

(I wrote a review of Forget and Not Slow Down about a week ago. Since then, I’ve been doing some research on the album’s origins, and I believe the results make it much more moving and devastating.)

I generally like to keep my nose out of other people’s business, but because  Forget and Not Slow Down is such an emotional album, I figured it could be valuable to try and figure out what events caused these emotions to better relate to its often abstruse lyrics. My poking around was not in vain. Here’s the story, as I understand it, but feel free to disagree with my speculation and assessment. I’ve linked to all the sources I used in reaching my conclusions.

Back story:

Matt Thiessen is generally known as one of the nicest dudes in music. He takes his Christianity seriously. Everyone was thrilled when he proposed in a most adorable way to radio host Shannon Murphy. She used her blog to keep her friends, and the world, updated on their engagement. But a few months later, she revealed that the two had split after she discovered “a few things about Matt that I just simply could not handle,” though she noted that she still believes he has an “amazingly huge heart.”

The break-up went down pretty quietly until Murphy got a new gig and started talking about an ex-boyfriend who cheated on her. Though she declined to use a name and vocation to identify who she was referring to, people made the connection.

Towards the end of the next year, Relient K’s sixth studio album came out. Thiessen says he wrote it when we went to a cabin in the woods for a couple of months to do nothing but reflect and pray and write. Forget and not Slow Down was the result, and it came out to pretty strong critical acclaim, with few media sources rating it worse than 4 out of 5 or the equivalent.

On the morning of the release on Shannon’s radio show, she directly implicated [ignore the two buffoon co-hosts and the morons on the phone, just listen to her] him as a cheater, although she noticeably avoids saying anything else negative about him. She also reveals some tidbits that add some serious poignancy to the album: the couple always used to travel to Savannah, GA — and there’s a song on the album called “Savannah.” Perhaps most devastatingly of all, “Baby,” a 40-second outro to Savannah, was the song Thiessen originally wrote for Murphy to play to her at their wedding.

Over the next few weeks in interviews, Thiessen frequently expanded on the album’s meaning, though he declined to delve into specific details regarding his personal situation. Of course, some fangirls refuse to believe Murphy is telling the truth because Matt is, like, so amazing. Others have taken a more reasonable view that neither of them are saints, and it’s pretty clear Matt likely betrayed her trust in some way, and they were not a perfect match anyways.

I suppose it’s theoretically possible that she’s completely BS’ing and slandering Thiessen, but he’s never really disputed her claims of adultery, and a few passages in the album more or less confirm her claims. So how does this information affect the listener?

Re-interpretation

More than anything else, these details of Thiessen and Murphy’s break-up make Forget and Not Slow Down a personal and powerful album. My initial reading of the album was as a broad, over-arching look at the concept of saying goodbye and pressing on. But, after hearing Murphy talk about the album, I think there’s a lot of value in the album as a reflection on their specific relationship.

If Thiessen in fact perfidiously caused the end of his relationship, then the words of the album carry much more weight — particularly considering his saintly public image before the scandal broke out. I think there’s something poignant and almost ironic about the leader of the most spiritual and positive of bands committing an act of great betrayal, then having to dealing with the consequences. It gives the album very high emotional stakes and some genuine heft.

Other great RK albums have been reflective and regretful, but on smaller levels. Forget and Not Slow Down is paradigm-smashing for the band in its gravity. This was evident to a certain extent when the album was interpreted broadly, its songs abstractions. But, with this new backstory, it’s clear that never before has Relient K been so acute, specific, and painful. The album works much stronger as a look at Thiessen’s shame and regret and recovery than as a detached conetmplation.

A few of the most telling passages:

A lion on his side was it the lying or his pride which brought him down?
Once the king of beasts but now they feast on the thoughts beneath his vacant crown
Trying to decide was it the lying or the pride which brought it down?
To be alone to be dethroned, believe me I know all about it now
from “Sahara”

This passage works as a general image of pride and sin, but works especially well considering the scandal and isolation surrounding Thiessen’s life. As the king of Christian rock (in terms of both quality and mainstream success), and one album removed from his biggest and happiest album, he sank to his lowest, and he’s still not sure if it was “lying or his pride which brought him down.”

Baby
It’s all that I can do to
Thank you
Cause every time you wrapped those arms around me
I felt I was home cause
Everything made sense when you were with me
from “Baby (Outro)”

Tossed off as an outro, I dismissed “Baby” as generic post-breakup pining until I learned the song’s origin as the song Thiessen wrote for Murphy to play at their wedding. What a harrowing inversion of the song’s initial concept: a bittersweet farewell at the abrupt conclusion of their relationship instead of at the beginning of their marriage. Thiessen has said in interviews that recording this album was overall a positive experience, but I can’t imagine that was true for “Baby.”

I’d rather forget and not slow down
Than gather regret for the things I can’t change now
If I become what I can’t accept
Resurrect the saint from within the wretch
Pour over me and wash my hands
Pour over me and wash my hands
from “Forget and Not Slow Down”

“Resurrect the saint from within the wretch” is the key line of the album, I think. It best sums up the album’s tone: regretful and defeated, but still looking for the right way to respond.

I met the devil and I stared her in the eyes
Her hair had scales like silver serpents
I, a statue, stood there mesmerized
I took the fire escape and made it out alive

Yeah I still burn from time to time
But I’ve a healing hand against my side

Blisters on my feet I crawled back home
Frozen from the sleet burned sand and stones
Nourished back to life by life alone
With one shake of the mane regain the throne
from “(If You Want It)”

These are the closing lyrics of the album, and they’re most beautiful Thiessen’s ever written, in my opinion. That first stanza is about as poetic and archetypal as any admission of guilt, and he follows it up not only with a re-affirmation of faith and healing (second stanza) but that dazzling coda. Those last four lines call back the lion image from “Sahara.” They also present an idea unusual in the modern rock-and-roll landscape, which tends towards angst and self-deprication: That the very act of living, even in misery, is valuable.

That’s how Forget and Not Slow Down is still a distinctly Relient K album, even as it confronts a major transgression by the band’s leader: It stays rooted in optimism and an a love for life more unquenchable than ever.

Revised rating: 4 and half stars (out of 5)

I’ll be completely honest: Most of the reasons I write for Earn This or any other publication or site are selfish reasons: I love being able to express myself and see my writing out there and get comments and feel like an expert.

But there are moments when I feel like at least a small portion of my work provides some service. For example, I feel like I’ve done the world some good by sharing my love of Relient K, a band that is greatly under-appreciated and that more people would love if RK wasn’t pigeonholed as a “Christian” band.

Today is another example of me actually feeling like I’m doing the world some good by sharing my love for maybe the most expressive singer of the past quarter century. I don’t have to do too much writing here because her career is pretty thoroughly chronicled on the sites run by her family and a small group of passionate fans, and her music speaks for itself.

Eva Cassidy was a singer from Maryland who died of melanoma only a few years into her professional recording career before ever making it big. One of her albums caught a bit of posthumous fire across the pond, but in America, she remains largely forgotten.

The Washington Post — who covered her in part because she mostly performed around the DC area, not far from my hometown — wrote not long after her death in 1996 that “she could sing anything — folk, blues, pop, jazz, R&B, gospel — and make it sound like it was the only music that mattered.” Pretty succinct, if you ask me.

Cassidy was destined to never make it big because of her adherence to a more traditional set of musics. Her most popular and most moving songs were slow and mellow and almost painfully beautiful. She covered dozens of blues songs but also a small sample of pop songs. Many of these recordings are nothing more than grainy recordings of her singing with an acoustic guitar, but her voice just knocked the songs out of the park.

You can read a bit more about her life and growth as an artist — including her overwhelming stage fright early in her career — by googling her name. Her official page run by her parents at www.evacassidy.com is a good starting point for background info and a look at some of her visual art.

But, honestly, it’s all about her music. I highly recommend her moving pop song covers. A few favorites:

• Time After Time
• Over the Rainbow
• Ain’t No Sunshine
• Imagine
• Fields of Gold
• And, my favorite of all, Bridge Over Troubled Water

If you like what you hear, give some of her less ubiquitous tunes a listen, too.

This is a a reflection on the first ten years of Relient K’s dynamic career from Christian pranksters to ambitious artists. It’s broken down into seven parts, by each of their LP’s.

Relient K (2000) – 2 stars

The Anatomy of the Tongue in Cheek (2001) – 3 stars

Two Lefts Don’t Make a Right (2003) – 5 stars

Mmhmm (2004) – 4.5 stars

Five Score and Seven Years Ago (2007) – 4 stars

The Bird and the Bee Sides (2008) – 3.5 stars

Forget and Not Slow Down (2009) – 4 stars

Forget and Not Slow Down, re-interpreted – 4.5 stars

Note: This week, I’m reviewing the discography to date of Relient K, one album per day. At the end of the week I’ll make a “retrospective” post linking to all of the reviews. This is the band’s sixth album.

Rating: 4 stars (out of 5)

A lot happened to Relient K between Five Score and its follow-up, Forget and Not Slow Down. Along with some personnel changes, their contract with both Gotee Records and Columbia expired.  But Gotee offered the band creative control of one of its defunct imprints, Mono Vs Stereo. This provided Thiessen and Relient K total freedom in the construction of their next album. The band also signed a deal with Jive to get the record out to a larger public.

So Thiessen went to work, free to explore the depths of his creativity, isolating himself in a cabin  in the woods following a rough breakup to write his next batch of the songs. He later said the experience allowed him to focus on producing thoughtful songs; he’d sometimes spend nine or ten hours following a single train of thought to its conclusion. Accordingly, Forget is a cerebral and ambitious album.

The theme of Forget is moving on — which has caused some writers to oversimplify it as a “break-up album” — and Thiessen’s large emotional vocabulary meshes well with the complicated, mixed-up feelings of saying goodbye. The album strikes a variety of tones — melancholy, desperate, wistful — both musically and lyrically, often at the same time.

The album takes on an unconventional structure, too. The track list shows 15 songs on the album, but it’s really more like nine or ten mini-suites, with a bunch of intros, outros, and thematically paired songs. Most of the band’s albums have had little deliberate flow, but Forget is an example of the whole surpassing the sum of the parts. I hate the term ‘concept album,’ but I think Forget‘s blending tunes and interwoven images earn it.

Thiessen’s words are more imaginative and mature than ever, albeit more obscure. The songs here do a good job transmitting the overpowering difficulty of a split that anyone who has ever parted ways with a serious love will recognize.

The title track is the catchiest and best moment of the album, even if it doesn’t quite fit in with everything else here. The propulsive singalong sounds like it belongs on Mmhmm or Five Score though the lyrics effectively set the tone (of optimism battling emotional adversity) for the rest of the album. It’s one of the band’s better singles ever, only a hair behind “Be My Escape” and “Who I Am Hates Who I’ve Been.”

Among other distinguished moments on the album are the mini-epic “Savannah” and the gut-wrenching, two-part finale of “This is the End” and “(If You Want It).” None of the songs are bad, however, and it’s more difficult to choose highlights on this album than any previous RK album because of how connected each track is to the one before and after it.

Even more than Five Score before it, Forget lacks the immediacy and pop hooks of Relient K’s early moments. But the brilliant and more subtle songwriting grows on you the more you listen to it. There’s enough happening here, sonically and emotionally, to warrant repeated visits. With each listen, I’m tempted to bump my rating up a half star, so I wouldn’t be surprised if I put this album in rarefied 4.5 or 5 star range at some point down the line.

Note: This week, I’m reviewing the discography to date of Relient K, one album per day. At the end of the week I’ll make a “retrospective” post linking to all of the reviews. This is the band’s diversion between their fifth and sixth albums.

Rating: 3 and a half stars (out of 5)

Relient K has consistently released one limited-print EP alongside — usually a few months before or after — each album. But they’ve never done anything quite like The Bird and the Bee Sides, a 26-track double-EP that serves both as a 13-track set of new content and a collection of remastered rarities and B-sides. It’s really one of the great fan services I’ve ever witnessed from a band.

The first thirteen tracks of the disc are all new songs and are subtitled the “The Nashville Tennis EP.”  As the (quite clever) name suggests, it has a little bit of a southern, rootsy undercurrent to it. An acoustic and country instrumentation gets some rotation with the usual guitars, bass, and drums. But aside from this — and the resulting sonic texture that’s very amber and warm — the thirteen songs here have little in common.

It’s clear that most of them are leftovers from the Five Score sessions: Most of the tracks are good ideas that didn’t quite develop or tracks that are novelty or somehow on the fringe. A few of the tracks were written by members of the band other than Thiessen (“No Reaction,” “The Last, The Lost, and the Least,” and “You’ll Always Be My Best Friend,” a cute ballad co-written by Thiessen and bassist Matt Hoopes). A few are underdeveloped (“Beaming”) or ideas that have been tossed around for awhile (“There Was No Thief,” a reinvention of “The Thief” from “The Apathetic EP” that followedMmhmm). And a few are just not as compelling as the songs on Five Score (“The Lining is Silver”).

My favorite tracks from the “Tennis EP” are “At Least We Made it This Far” a melancholy love song that bemoans the difficulty of long-distance romance, and “Where Do I Go From Here,” which could easily pass as a solid Mmhmm track if not for the banjo intro.

I also want to call out “Bee Your Man,” a novelty/comedy track that rounds out the first half of the disc. I love it not for jokes, but because of how good it actually sounds. It’s a bluegrass/country spoof that, for the twenty or so seconds it’s a straight-face performance, is really good. Relient K could really make a great country-pop album. Some of the best moments of recent albums (“Faking My Own Suicide,” “At Least We Made it This Far”) have been folk and country-tinged.

The second half of the disc is subtitled “The Bird and the Bee Sides” — yep, the same name as the full package — and it’s a bunch of demos, old EP tracks, and acoustic renditions of album songs. Every song, except for a couple of the acoustic cuts and maybe a demo or two, predates Mmhmm, so there’s lots of vintage RK silliness packed into these tracks. Most of them are not worth more than a single listen, but I appreciated having access to them nonetheless. Fans more obsessive or nostalgic than I, particularly those disappointed with the band’s recent releases, might find this set extremely valuable, but little here matches the band’s best moments even if these throwaways are good slices of catchy fun.

The one song here that I unconditionally recommend is the reinvented “Jefferson Aeroplane,” which was tucked away as the last track on Two Lefts. There, it was a solid but understated way to close a really strong album. Here, it’s fleshed out with acoustic guitar, a more interesting percussion part, a re-write of the meandering ending, and beautiful vocals. This alternate version of “Jefferson Aeroplane” ranks as one of the best ever tracks by the band.

What I really love, though, is that Relient K would put in the effort to not only collect these dusty records — the type that fans unfairly obsess over simply because they’re hard to find — but that they’d put in the effort to get it remastered and sounding just right. Particularly welcome are the four songs on The Vinyl Countdown EP, an older disc (aptly) only available on vinyl. The Bird and the Bee Sides, while not as essential as the band’s real studio albums, is not an empty cash in.

Some of the remastering adds an excessive layer of texture to the really early, simplistic B-sides (“For the Band,” I’m looking at you). But it’s great to see a band putting forth a fan-first project like this.