Hammersmith Odeon, London ’75

Album, 2005

In his retrospective of The Arctic Monkeys’ first three albums, Grant cites a theory about artists’ third albums.

It’s not a perfect rule, but it’s interesting to think about bands’ trajectories after their first three albums, especially artists whose legacies we more or less already know.

Grant listed Born to Run, Bruce Springsteen’s third album, as an example of a standout third effort. I’d go one step further and call it the ultimate third album. That’s not to say it’s the best third album of all time — Rolling Stone lists it as the second best behind London Calling – but it epitomizes and perfects everything that’s special about third albums in an artist’s creative trajectory.

Let’s look at Bruce’s first three albums and the career arc they set up:

• Greetings from Asbury Park – Bruce sounds like a Dylan knockoff, but shows off his prodigious aptitude for romantic poetry and profound rock. He concerns himself with adolescent passion.
• The Wild, The Innocent, and The E-Street Shuffle – A magnificent sequel. Suddenly, he’s less of a troubadour and more of a groundbreaking, jazzy bandleader. He sentimentalizes youthful idealism as he bids it adieu. His sonic palette verges on sprawling.
• Born to Run – Bruce leaves behind his youth and its over-optimistic ideals. But instead of abandoning romance, he recaptures it with a “last-chance power drive” — a willful exultation of passion. The music matches the theme, carefully constructed and monumental.

It’s almost too perfect a three-album arc. Where does he go from there? As it turned out, he had plenty left. Maybe that’s the point of third albums; they demonstrate an artist’s proclivity for developing craft and building something meaningful over time.

And so we find Springsteen at this crux for his first trip concert trip to Europe. Springsteen is very likely the most notable and influential American artist of the post-Beatles era, but he was greeted with skepticism in England, the hotbed of rock greatness.

It’s difficult to call this time frame Springsteen’s “best era” as he’s re-peaked many times since. But, for my money, Springsteen was never better than the he was at the release of Born to Run. He would later plumb some mighty dark, mighty American depths. But never truer, purer, better. Never as melodic or romantic or intoxicating.

Hammersmith Odeon, London ‘75 records Bruce’s first ever concert in Europe, if I’m not mistaken. It’s hard to imagine anyone, even the most skeptical listener, leaving that concert hall with any doubt that Bruce Springsteen had earned his hype.

Bruce sounds irrepressible on every track. He captures the spirit of every song and delivers it in an exciting package that sometimes closely resembles the studio version, sometimes doesn’t. Almost every song is improved over its studio original. The complete absence of a lull in quality is very impressive.

There’s music that I like, but that I understand if people don’t get. I think Lady Gaga’s first two albums are genius. I think Be Here Now is damn close to five stars. I think the Grease soundtrack is a masterpiece.

You could present solid reasoning and convince me out of any of those assertions. And I wouldn’t begrudge you for it. All of those claims are disputable. You might not get that music, just like I don’t really get Kashmir by Led Zeppelin or Sympathy for the Devil.

But Hammersmith Odeon, London ‘75, anything less than great? I wouldn’t buy it. I can’t think of anyone I know who would dislike this album. It’s the single most concise, most accessible account to Bruce’s ability to transcend genre and entertainment into art. If you don’t understand Bruce’s hype after this album, chances are you won’t ever.

If nothing else, the live album earns this spot because of the stripped down rendition of “For You.” The new arrangement transforms the song into a heartbreaking climax of love. It’s a top 100 track for me, eight and a half minutes of perfection.

On the other hand, I wouldn’t call the entire album “perfection.” It’s too sprawing and complex to have smooth edges. Thirteen minute jams, like “E-Street Shuffle” here, are, by their very nature, imperfect. But if not perfect, every inch of Hammersmith Odeon, London ‘75 is indispensable and dazzling.

Previously: #10 Adventureland

Up next: An epic conclusion, an end of an era

Look, Jews et al., any occasion you can come up with is fine — Scientologists have Freedom Day to look forward to on the 30th — just find a reason and make sure you’ve got The Whole Shebang ready to tap on New Year’s Eve.  This is the 2011 release from Audiostrobelight, a bunch of energetic speakerbusters from Virginia Beach, and it is going to stay up all night with you.  Remember fun?  Remember loud, dance, party, and rock-out?  Those guys remember you too, and they want you to buy Audiostrobelight’s album.

If you’re too busy to read this article, just check out the band’s own promo.  (Also, quit your job, you’re wasting your life!)  You’ll hear immediately what you can expect from The Whole Shebang: driving pop-punk that’s stuffed to the liner with hype, and not the empty kind.  Every song has that classic tug-of-war between fast, danceable rock and half-time breakdowns when you get to jump up and down and pump your fist and taste the sweat flying off the girls and guys all around you.  Did you see in the promo when they dropped the balloons on the audience, or the confetti and streamers?  If you aren’t into that, we can’t be friends.

“Okay,” you say, “Mr. O.,” because you and I aren’t on a first-name basis, “but the fast electronic dance-rockcore pop-punkadelia scene came and went, and hasn’t been heard from since 2005!  So why make such a big hubbub about one on-the-rise revivalist band?”  Two reasons off the top of my head.  First, I wasn’t done with that scene yet when it died.  Second, Audiostrobelight fits into the leading edge of that movement, not the middle, and looks set to evolve it into something more expansive.

Just check out their line-up:

• Bass, guitar, guitar/keys, drums.  (Ho-hum.)
• Dual vocalists.  (Okay, standard fare for the genre.)
• Electric violin/mandolin.  (Now we’re talking!)

And, since you mention Yellowcard, that’s an apt comparison.  Some of these songs would’ve fit perfectly on Ocean Avenue, and Audiostrobelight also gives us plenty of Fall Out Boy’s Infinity on High, Cartel’s Chroma, and the rowdiest bits of Simple Plan’s No Pads, No Helmets… Just Balls.  But we also get rhythms that sample the escapist banner-waving of Less Than Jake’s ska-born Anthem and the alt-metal demolition drive of The Receiving End of Sirens’ Between the Heart and the Synapse.  Variety is packaged in to keep your body parts moving four or five different ways every song, which adds significantly to The Whole Shebang‘s replay value.  Plus, Yellowcard didn’t have a mandolin.

Combine this ability with the kind of live show that the band themselves describe as “ridiculously debaucherous,” and you can see how, on the strength of their State of the Art EP from 2009, these guys have developed a ravenous fan base who gives them a run for their money in passion.  Along with Warped Tour credentials, Audiostrobelight has opened for Cobra Starship, Red Jumpsuit Apparatus, Anberlin, and the aforementioned Fall Out Boy, to name a few.  While they’re not national headliners yet, take them seriously when they sing, in A Fifth of Feelgood, “This town won’t be the death of me!”  (“This town” being VA Beach, which fits nicely when you remember how Less Than Jake was always repping Gainesville, FL.)

Hey, is that the first lyric I’ve dropped?  Let’s open up these seven tracks.  Because it’s always worth mentioning when a band starts their album with a song called You’re Not Funny, You Stupid Clown.  It’s well positioned: when Audiostrobelight makes it big, you’ll be able to listen back to this one and hear “Give me the chance / Give me the time,” “We ain’t on top but we ain’t bottom,” and “We’re gonna reach for the stars / We’re gonna look past mountains.”  I’d love to see that premonition come true.

A Fifth of Feelgood lays all their cards on the table.  Keys are featured, the violin is used as an effective instrument and never a gimmick, and we get smacked in the face repeatedly by the JE-JUN, JE-JE-JE-JUN, JE-JUN in the bass and drums.  They’re singing the same adolescent dreams that we were crooning along with half a decade ago.  Whether they’re giving a friend a long hard send-off in Anchors Aweigh or begging for another chance with an “old flame” in Argyle, the constant in Audiostrobelight’s pushes and pleas is emotion.  All the bands they learned from used to be called “emo,” didn’t they?

While Drop the Act is the most anthemic shout-along, those last two songs I mentioned might be my favorites.  Argyle gives the band the chance to show that they’re perfectly capable of bringing things down and singing sweetly; they’re just happier when it’s all about “Going pound for pound / I bring the noise like your nightmare sounds.”  And the album closes on a fade-out at the end of Anchors Aweigh with three layered vocal lines carrying three strands of feelings.  Two-man harmonies assure “You’re better off without me” while the lead undercuts the sentiment with “I never want to trace this back / And let the record show I’m happy once again” and the gang vocals chant “Anchors aweigh, my friend!”

Where the f*** are they???

Audiostrobelight caught my attention by throwing back to beloved bands gone by, but what really hooked me was the depth of The Whole Shebang.  Every turn on my iTunes shows new traces of a band I didn’t know they had in them.  Excellent arrangements reward a careful listener, who will find every instrument playing a carefully crafted role to make you answer the call: “Let’s go / Let me see you put ‘em up right now / Tonight we’re gonna have some fun!”

Do yourself a favor this holiday season and pick up a copy for yourself.  The Whole Shebang also makes a great gift for anyone on your list who doesn’t suck.

In 2009, shortly before being absorbed into the same media conglomerate that runs Kim Kardashian’s website, PureVolume gave a big bump to a couple of kids from Tacoma, Washington playing under the moniker He Is We.  Twenty-four hours and tens of thousands of plays later, Rachel Taylor and Trevor Kelly were on someone’s radar.  Because no matter how many indie/emo kids “graduate” and start putting PureVolume in a corner, the leaders of the music industry always save it a dance.  In December of 2010, He Is We’s debut album My Forever was released on Universal Motown.

They go with a modern casual-meets-dirty-hippie look.

For me, it’s tough knowing whether to appraise My Forever as an album or as a collection of songs.  Not that every record needs a unifying concept; but artists are made great in my eyes by their ability to produce a cohesive whole in which it sounds like all the parts grew in the same garden.  He Is We displays a precocious knack for arrangements that bring out the best in every song, with the drawback that the differences between songs are all the more pronounced.

Let’s start with commonalities, to give you a basis.  Lyricist and vocalist Rachel brings a Sara Bareillesque strength and a rock sensibility, like a modern-day Michelle Branch.  (I’m being told that Michelle Branch is still making music.  We’ll see how that pans out for her.)  Tie that in with all the romanticism of a Colbie Caillat or a Taylor Swift and you’ve got… you know, for all the chicks out there on the mic, Rachel might be fitting into her own little slot!  That’s certainly true of her quick poetry: it flows like water, better than anyone else on the pop market.  Rachel’s voice is what defines the sound of He Is We.

The music is based around straightforward, classic song structures featuring whatever instrumentation works on a song-by-song basis.  You’ll hear some songs with a deeper bass than you’d expect, including “And Run”, where the bass is featured and foundational.  Guitars and pianos vie for playing time across the album while multi-tracked vocal harmonies float in the background more often than not.  The use of orchestral strings is effectively tied to the drama of each piece.  Occasional timpanis and concert bass drums give you the impression that there’s actually an orchestra involved, not just a bunch of session violinists.

As much as the diversity of sounds enhances each track, it’s where I start to wonder about the cohesion of My Forever as a whole.  “Love Life”, a slow-and-fast break-up ditty, brings in a brass section for the final minute.  There is exactly one duet, “All About Us”, in which Underoath’s former drummer and “clean vocalist”, Aaron Gillespie, passes verses back and forth with Rachel.  Poor Aaron was replaced when, in August 2011, a new version of the song was released featuring Owl City singing the boy parts.

From the charming lovey-doveyness of “Forever & Ever”, “Everything You Do”, and “Happily Ever After” to the frustrated adolescent stirrings of “Blame It on the Rain” and “Fall”, the overall quality of the writing and production maintains a ready-for-radio standard.  Normally I’d expect track 2 or maybe 3 to be the anchor, ready to hit shelves as the lead single.  Here it’s not so clear.  If anything, I’d expect the sing-along “Happily Ever After”, a manifesto of hopeful love if ever there was one, to be the fan favorite, but it’s all the way back at track 5.  And the bonus acoustic track – which I admit was an eyebrow raiser for me on a debut album – is a reprise of track 4, “And Run”.  It’s hard to grasp the logic behind the sequencing, though I guess it’s a moot point if each song is terrific individually and most iPods are tuned to Shuffle anyway.

So let me get to the one song that is just from a completely different place from the rest.  Right in the middle of the album, before the tunes about being single and after the tunes about being adorable, is a song about a double murder.  “Kiss It Better” tells a story of a vengeance kill after a man’s wife is shot, from the perspective of the surviving subject who is sharing a prison cell with his overwhelming memories.  No reason for the initial action is given.  If we can handle the lyrics, the music itself alternates between sparse acoustics and haunting full-orchestra crescendos.  My impression of the album as a whole would change radically if this emotive elegy were the final track and the final thought we were left with, so different from all that came before.  As it is, the mood it creates so tangibly is difficult to shake when we return to tra la las and oh, oh, ohs.

We can’t know for sure who’s responsible, but I’d like to credit the atmosphere and musical realism of “Kiss It Better” in part to producer Casey Bates, whose work with Pacific Northwest bands like Portugal. The Man and Gatsby’s American Dream I have loved for a long time now.  Casey worked on “Blame It on the Rain” and “Fall” as well.  Aaron Sprinkle, another of Washington’s best producers (see his work with Eisley, Anberlin, Acceptance, etc.), did his magic with “All About Us” and “Prove You Wrong”.

I’m still not sure where Rachel and Trevor were coming from as they pieced together My Forever.  Their artistic focus is something we might get to see develop over time.  But their ability and quality is already ahead of their age.  To find out for yourself, go ahead and stream their whole album for free off MySpace.  Or take a look at their PureVolume, where they’re streaming 40 tracks and giving away eight and where, at the time of this writing, they’re getting ready to ring the bell for their 5,000,000th play.

To the founder of our feast: a piano ditty written at age 16.

Forget everything you know about Vanessa Carlton.  Realistically, forget the one thing you ever knew about Vanessa Carlton – the “da-da-da da-da-da dum” song from those five-year-old Zales commercials.  The voice you heard in “A Thousand Miles” belonged to Carlton, as did the melody; but the orchestra, the overproduction, and the publicity that made us love the song all the way to three Grammy nominations were largely handiwork of hitmaker Ron Fair.  Now forget everything you know about Ron Fair.

What would it sound like if Vanessa Carlton made her own album?

Answering that question required a transformation. Carlton spent two years as a recluse, she says, absorbing and moving internally but not creating much of anything.  Then came the instrumental pieces “that probably no one will ever hear.”  Only when a personal reflection chanced to grow into a fully lyrical song did the veil draw back and the possibilities of a return to the album format as an artistic outlet become possible.

She determined to fund this “arts & crafts” project herself to avoid any label’s influence until it was done.  Under the guidance of voices from the 70′s, she sought to record the entire thing to tape to enable a true classic vinyl experience.  All of the songs were written and arranged by Carlton herself explicitly for this album and never drawn from a well of old material.  This was to be the album she had always wanted to make.

The names and places who contributed to the recording are a cabinet full of gems.  The producer is Steve Osborne, who brought to life Doves’ “Catch the Sun”.  Musicians Patrick Hallahan (My Morning Jacket) and Ari Ingber (The Upwelling) appear as players while the legendary Stevie Nicks – Carlton’s friend, mentor, and occasional collaborator – sequenced the tracklist.  Most of the work was done at Peter Gabriel’s Real World Studios, while the world-famous Capital Children’s Choir worked at Abbey Road to lend their talents to four tracks.

I guess by now you might be wondering what the album actually sounds like.

Art by Jo Ratcliffe.

Rabbits on the Run kicks off with an unassuming piano line and soon echoed, multitracked vocals are layered on top of it.  Track one is the single , “Carousel”, which features hopeful lyrics, plenty of uplift in the chords, the soft heartbeat of a bass drum, and just a little bit of Osborne’s mellotron that is absolutely flute-like.  At the bridge, “Carousel” opens into a grand canon led by the children’s choir with many of the instruments taking up their parts.  It comes off as charming that this song is centered around a hook that is nothing more than an ascending C-Major scale.

Later songs like “Hear the Bells” build an unabashedly creepy atmosphere.  A rich darkness surfaces and resurfaces throughout the ten tracks, always receding again to a more driving melodic sensibility that faces forward with its chin up.  Gone are the childish attachments and dependencies that haunted older material like “Pretty Baby” and “Rinse”, replaced wholesale by stories of acceptance: of wrongs, of destiny, and of the unknowable.

While an ambient spirit claims the early and late tracks, the same lyrical approach is taken to more rocking and romping tunes in the middle, especially the infectious “Dear California” and follow-up “Tall Tales for Spring”.  “Get Good” stands out to me as a campfire song that begs for a country-style cover.  I’d pay good money to hear what Tim McGraw and his missus could do with that sheet music.

Through the album’s progression, Osborne’s mastery of expansive and engrossing soundscapes shines.  His own instrumental contributions match Hallahan’s in their cleanness and frequent subtlety.  Carlton herself has an effortless, almost conversational voice that is however not the most pure.  (She once said she used to smoke and drink whiskey just to make her sound more “leathery.”)  Some listeners may wish they could hear the vocal qualities of a Carole King or a Norah Jones on some verses, myself included.  But her speech, like her songwriting and fingerwork, is not lacking for beauty; and this is, after all, her record.

Stevie Nicks must have had an easy time choosing the closing track, “In the End”.  Musically, it is a slowed-down sample from “Tall Tales for Spring” that glows with an eerie electricity.  What few words there are come out muted, buried ominously beneath the sounds.  The dearth of lyrics is unsettling in itself, as if the songwriter abandons us to groaning emptiness as the album “disintegrates back into nothing.”

The creative process behind the album fed on inspiration from Richard Adams’s Watership Down, Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time, and the Tolkienian mysticism of the village of Box, Wiltshire, where Real World Studios is located.  Carlton has had an occasionally uncomfortable time promoting the immensely personal album; making the late-night talk show rounds was visibly less enjoyable for her than conducting one-on-one interviews with people who actually remember who she is, and you can see a back-and-forth between these modes in her brief appearance on Fox’s “Good Day LA”

The experience of making Rabbits on the Run was a gift for Vanessa Carlton.  But the album itself was intended for anyone who likes to be wrapped in a blanket of beautiful music; for anyone who misses the classic approach to analog recording; and, of course, for the fans who have stayed with Carlton through her fall from the spotlight and even through her quietest years.  She has a special name for these last ones:

Dear Phantom Friends,

The album, the collaboration, the arts and crafts project that is Rabbits on the Run, is a vault of melodies, philosophies, and questions that will forever preserve the past three and a half years of my life. A chunk of time that has reshaped who I am and has humbled me. The process of making the record was restorative and prickly and shook me out of a ten year slumber. It was also magical. I made this record with a group of artists that I never thought I’d get to work with. On the eve of this release, as I type in to black buttons, and stare at a glowing screen in my hotel room, I feel grateful that I’m able to create music and send it out into the world like some sort of ship on the sea. It is how I connect. It is how I stay alive. I realize now that this record isn’t mine anymore, it belongs to the hearts and brains of those that connect with it. And I humbly hand it over. I hope that it brings you to life in the way that it brought me to life.

Love

Vanessa

Rating: ★★★★★ (out of 5)

There’s a beautiful scene near the end of the 2009 movie Adventureland in which Jesse Eisenberg takes a bus-ride to New York City, peering out of the window. He soaks in the bright lights and city sprawl, and it rejuvenates him after a summer spent cooped up in the dingy theme park he work at.

Turnstiles is a lot like that bus ride: It witnesses Joel’s departure from his brown, sparse west coast life to the dense, colorful comfort of his home state. In turn, he channels equally a Broadway flair and a towering, Born to Run sonic sprawl that leave in the dust his musty James Taylor/Elton John impression of his first three albums.

Four of the eight tracks reference either New York or his departure from California in their titles. He reminisces about his time away (I’ve Loved These Days) and notes that life is still not perfect (Summer, Highland Falls) but makes it clear that New York is where he wants and needs to be (New York State of Mind).

The second reason Turnstiles is a turning point for Joel’s recording career is that he, for the first time, used his touring band in the studio. It makes a world of difference; these tracks are energetic and moving over large stretches in a way that previous albums could achieve for fleeting moments or single tracks.

I’ll go over this a bit more when I discuss his live albums, but Joel has never received enough credit for being an excellent band leader and talent organizer. Joel’s live act never matched the notoriety of legends like Springsteen, but the talent of Joel’s act nearly matches the likes of the E-Street Band. Listen to Songs in the Attic and tell me otherwise. The group’s skill and synergy manifests itself brilliantly on Turnstiles.

There’s not a weak track among the eight here. From the opening Phil Spector impression to the closing piano fade-out, Turnstiles is varied and compelling. Beyond the more diverse inspirations that came from Joel’s change of scenery, this album benefits from Joel reaching a melodic and emotional peak in his writing craft.

A few prominent themes take place during these tracks. One is the idea that life is spent in alternating extremes. “It’s either sadness or euphoria,” notes Summer, Highland Falls, one Joel’s greatest ballads. Say Goodbye to Hollywood observes that “life is a series of ‘hellos’ and ‘goodbyes’ / I’m afraid it’s time for goodbye again.”

As with Joel’s previous albums, maturity is another big topic here. But for the first time, we sense Joel may have done a bit of it himself. All You Wanna Do is Dance — another nearly forgotten gem — gently critiques someone who’s having too much damn innocent fun to grow up. There’s a tone of jealousy in the words.

Joel also straddles the line of maturity in Prelude/Angry Young Man. It works both as a self-skewering and a self-defense. We sense that there’s a bit of self-analysis when he describes the Angry Young Man in the third person, but he also takes the first person as he notes that “I believe I’ve passed the age / Of consciousness and righteous rage,” showing that he’s attempting to move beyond his angriest days (Piano Man).

Another track that considers maturity is James, which sports the most forgettable melody here (though that is not saying much at all). The song a letter to a former friend who gave up his musical career to face the real world. Joel remains skeptical that James made the correct decision: “Do what’s good for you or you’re not good for anybody.” This struggle between practical reality and youthful dreams would come to a head an album later.

The only song which doesn’t really contribute much to the album’s emotional complexity is the closing track, Miami 2017 (Seen the Lights Go Out on Broadway), a bizarre apocalyptic tale of a concert that goes up flames. It’s silly but raucous enough in the right live setting to be an excellent listen..

Still, Turnstiles is Joel’s most lyrically ambitious and successful album thus far. Yet it’s the music, which matches the words point for point in improvement, that really steals the show.

One obvious highlight is Joel’s individual performance work. From the mind melting 128th notes that start Prelude/Angry Young Man (he’s playing them and the accompanying piano notes by himself) to the sweeping beauty of New York State of Mind, Joel’s piano-work would never be better than it is here. His vocal work is excellent, too, covering a variety of tones with accuracy and strength.

But the arrangements and performances are, in general, very strong. The biggest improvement from past albums is the drumming, which Liberty DeVitto, a new addition who would remain a Joel stalwart, uses to bring the tracks to life nearly as much as Joel’s piano does.

To pick a most impressive musical accomplishment, or even a short-list, on this album is challenging. New York State of Mind is one of the most enduring, virtuosic tributes to the Empire State ever recorded. But you can also make a strong case for Summer, Highland Falls as a perfect Joel ballad, Say Goodbye to Hollywood as a spine-tingling Spector (or, rather, Be My Baby) tribute, and Prelude/Angry Young Man as Joel’s manifesto.

Turnstiles rarely sees the love or radio play of Joel’s upcoming stretch of albums, but it marks the beginning of that peak and ranks among Joel’s finest works.

Rating: ★★★ (out of five)

Piano Man is such a satisfying album in part because it’s so obviously a full-hearted, emotionally-draining effort. That makes it less surprising — though no less disappointing — that Streetlife Serenade sounds exhausted and depleted.

Streetlife Serenade crystallizes the faint western hints on Piano Man and ends up with a loose concept album about life on the west coast. But where Elton John’s western album told tales of cowboys and guns and saloons, Joel chronicles the modern frontier: 9-to-5 work life and Los Angeles indulgence and suburban routine. It’s as unromantic as it sounds.

Joel headlines the album with two ill-conceived attempts at profound social observation. The title track (rather, the almost-title track Streetlife Serenader) outlines the theme of everyday encounters that the rest of the album would largely follow. It strives too hard to be profound and fails to redeem itself with a memorable tune.

The second of these is Los Angelenos at least provides a strong melodic background. But it stumbles just as hard as Streetlife Serenader in its attempts at incisive observation. Perhaps a more precise, explicit chronicle of aimless indulgence could have worked along the lines of Captain Jack.

The next track, Great Suburban Showdown, captures a hazy warmth and succeeds slightly more than the opening tracks at chronicling a way of life. It also seems to be a thinly veiled dismissal of his roots on the east coast – “I’m gone with the wind and I won’t be seen again.” It’s a bit ironic then that his homecoming would provide a creative spark two years later.

In all, the opening three tracks feel like a misfire. They foreshadow Joel’s continual failure to be a poet laureate for his age, or really for anyone but himself and Long Island (both of which he’s served well).

Fortunately, the later tracks redeem the package from being a complete disaster. After a brief instrumental detour (more on instrumentals later), Joel unleashes five straight compelling tracks. The best of these is The Entertainer, a song that succeeds on a few levels.

First, it serves a nice complement to Everybody Loves You Now, with Joel now the one “at the center of the stage.” And how does he find it? Just as ungratifying and lonely as he projected. The Entertainer is a brilliant trashing of the music industry: himself, the labels, even the fans.

Particularly memorable is the verse where he reflects on Piano Man’s title track: “It was a beautiful song / But it ran too long / If you’re gonna have a hit / You gotta make it quick / So they cut it down to 3:05.” It recalls the frustrating release of the Piano Man single, summarized here.

The Entertainer is also the most sonically panoramic track Joel had yet recorded. It showcases Joel’s first prominent use of an electric keyboard and features a number of different instruments jamming in the background of each verse.

Its strong melody paired with compelling lyrics and sonic expansion make it the jewel of Streetlife Serenade and one of the better tracks of Joel’s early career.

Another strong track on the album is Roberta, the fifth track on the album. It covers a narrative that’s almost a cliche at this point — falling in love with a prostitute or a stripper — but does so with grace and one great line after another. It’s one of Joel’s few tracks where the lyrics are much more compelling than the song itself.

A few tracks later, Joel really nails the western vibe for the first time in a pair of songs, Last of the Big Time Spenders and Weekend Song. The former is a pretty generic love song and covers a well-trod Joel theme: I’m not rich or fancy, but I can give you my time, music, and love.

The latter, though, is a great example of why it’s worthwhile to go through each of Billy Joel’s albums, not just greatest hits discs. I don’t want to overstate Weekend Song’s greatness, but it’s a track that should have been a single. The song blends a honky-tonk melody and earnest lyrics to a strong effect.

To close out the excellent five-song stretch is the shortest track Joel ever recorded, Souvenir, which clocks in at 1:59. It has a spectacular finality to it: “Every year’s a souvenir that slowly fades away.” In many ways it captures Joel’s struggle for significance that’s defined much of his career. For years, he closed every concert with this song, and I can’t think of a more fitting finale.

Souvenir would have been a perfect album capper, but Joel goes ahead and ruins the close of the album with the inclusion of another instrumental. Here’s my issue with the instrumentals: They’re just taking up space that would have been better used by full songs.

The more defensible of the two instrumentals is Root Beer Rag which seems to echo the ragtime stereotypically played in old west saloons. It matches the western feel of the album. But The Mexican Connection, which closes the album, really makes it sound like Joel just ran out of time to write lyrics. It detracts from an impressive closing stretch on the album and leaves you with a bad taste in your mouth.

In all, it just feels like there’s less music and fewer ideas on this album than Piano Man — subtract the instrumentals, and you’re left with eight short tracks, one of which runs less than two minutes. And the overall quality of the songs is a grade below the songs on Piano Man in spite of a few gems.

Fortunately, the peak of his career was just on the horizon, and Streetlife Serenade ends up an inconsistent oddity, barely a blip on the radar, rather than a harbinger.

This post is part of The Month of Billy Joel series.

One of these days, Alex Turner and the Arctic Monkeys will release a bad album.

At least, that’s what history and convention would tell us.  One might have predicted that the mediocrity would have come with Favourite Worst Nightmare, the follow-up to their debut monster Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not.  Or on the dreaded ‘transitional third album.’  Or, now, by album #4, a time when bands have gotten their label from the media and public and can do precious little to change perception.

And yet, it never happens with them.  Five years after Whatever turned the U.K. on its side, Turner and co. calmly drop Suck It and See on us and sit back with their arms folded, content to let their work stand on its own.  There’s no radical change like on 2009’s Humbug, but instead a supremely assured, don’t-need-to-prove-anything-to-anyone feel.

Suck It And See occupies a middle ground between the Monkeys’ early sound—manifest on the first two albums—and the ominous, slower Humbug.  And thanks largely to Turner, the balance works splendidly—there’s a dark vibe here, but the rousing melodic flourishes keep it alive, make the darkness analogous to the chic metallic black of a luxury car rather than a storm cloud.

The hooks—simple at first, complicated later—propel tunes like intriguing opener “She’s Thunderstorms” and the title track.  Musically, they continue Humbug’s slower paces, but guitarist Jaime Cook offers up juicier licks this time.  They still shine at keeping songs just off-center enough to remain compelling (“All My Own Stunts”), but, really, Suck It succeeds by confirming—for anyone who somehow hadn’t realized it yet—that Alex Turner is a premier lyricist of our generation.

Most of the time, he doesn’t make it easy on the listener; lines like “Somebody told the stars you’re not coming out tonight / So they found a place to hide” and “She looks as if she’s blowing a kiss at me / And suddenly the sky is a scissor” might make you pause in contemplation for a moment before you fall for them.  Similarly, on the effortlessly smooth title track, he fawns over a girl who’s “Rarer than a can of dandelion and burdock / And those other girls are just post-mix lemonade.”

On the other hand, sometimes he keeps it straightforward and incisive, as with, “You talk the talk alright / But do you walk the walk or catch the train?” or “I called up to listen to the voice of reason / And got his answering machine.”  If anyone out there has never felt like this, kindly return to your home planet before you scare any small children.

On Humbug, Turner began to express a desire for mature, adult connections, and that continues here—nowhere more so than on the exquisite “Love is a Laserquest.”  This is 2011’s “Cornerstone,” and while that one remains their all-time peak, “Love” finds Turner expanding his range like Bono did when he jumped from his laconic 80s love songs to the dense 90s ones.  Over a haunting bed of music that recalls Bruce Springsteen’s “One Step Up,” Turner spits out Conor Oberst-worthy lyrics about a failed relationship: “I can’t think of there without thinking of you / I doubt that comes as a surprise / I can’t think of anything to dream about / I can’t find anywhere to hide.”

Turner’s voice has never sounded more full, and yet you’re surprised that they’d go so sad, so deep; lines like “When I’m hanging on by the rings around my eyes / And I convince myself I need another / For a minute it gets easier to pretend that you were just some lover” almost make you think you’re listening to the Red House Painters.  Likewise, the breathtaking final verse of the album’s second-best track, “Black Treacle,” features the unexpectedly depressive lament “I tried last night to pack away a laugh / Like a key under the mat / But it never seems to be there when you want it.”

Of course, Turner maintains his playfulness much of the time.  “I’ve been feeling foolish / You should try it,” he teases on the opener, one of those Monkeys tracks that you think is a love song but keeps you in suspense.  Later, he hits with, “If you’re gonna try to walk on water / Be sure to wear your comfortable shoes.”  But the aforementioned moments on Suck It and See make you wonder how intense he’ll go in the future.

As on Humbug, a couple missteps keep this album from attaining the kind of legendary status their debut deserved.  Clunky lead single “Brick by Brick” irritates me for the simple reason that I can imagine a noob hearing it on the radio and saying, “Hmm, they sound kind of boring,” which makes me want to kill someone.  The last couplet of “Library Pictures” sneers with gleeful menace, but the track slides between fast and slow too many times.  A couple memorable lines help us overlook that “Reckless Serenade” and “Piledriver Waltz” are pleasant, but little more.

Yet, by the last three songs, you’ll have forgotten about these flaws.  You’ll have been taken in by the sound, their refusal to fade away, and Alex Turner’s remarkable lyrics.  The concluding trio constitute a thematic climax nearly comparable to the ‘suite of death’ concluding The Joshua Tree or the three-track travel through the end of days on Joy Divison’s Closer.

American listeners might infer the title track’s suggestion as a brawny middle-finger—and I have no problem with that—but the lovely harmony on that chorus hints that the band probably intended to invoke the British meaning of the phrase—‘Give it a try.’  “That’s Where You’re Wrong” deserves its New Order comparisons, as few other bands do smooth, bass-heavy, mid-tempo ballads quite like this.  Then again, Bernard Sumner, for all his gifts, never approached the lyrical prowess of Alex Turner.  When the latter sings, “There are no handles for you to hold / And no understanding where it goes…Don’t take it so personally / You’re not the only one that time has got it in for,” with an ecstatic guitar break in between and a sinewy melody holding it all together, you’ll be grateful that his conflicted youth means there are probably many, many more productive years to follow.

Sigh.  It was all set up. The Arcade Fire could have stamped themselves as a legitimate nominee in the category of ‘best band debuting in the last decade.’  Certainly their first two albums revealed originality, intensity, and passion.  But, as I’ve noted before, a band’s third effort can be a critical one; and 2010’s The Suburbs, a 16-song, hour-plus masterpiece-by-design, does indeed seem to mark a discouraging transition.

Oh, to be sure, stretches of this album are OK, particularly if you truncate the final 6 (!) songs, but the entire work leaves you wondering three devastating questions: where’s the rock?; where’s the melody?; and what, in the world, is up with Win Butler’s relentless criticism of modern suburban life?

The last point occupies such a central place on the album that it’s worth addressing before any sonic details.  As this band’s first two albums proved, Butler was never a particularly optimistic fellow, although relegating him to the category of pure doom and gloom would be lazy, as his songs often snuck in a bit of nostalgic hopefulness amidst the tragedy.  Indeed, such complexity kept his sentiments from coming off as fatalistic.  Here, however, the lack of such complexity, combined with the shift towards an undeserving target of criticism, make his lyrics a prominent weak point.

The album’s title accurately reflects Butler’s area of concern, as most of the album finds him bemoaning the corrosive influence of modern suburban life.  Clearly, childhood was so much more stimulating and invigorating when he was growing up; now it’s all just “endless suburbs stretched out thin and dead,” where “all we see are kids in buses longing to be free.”

What’s the cause of such numbing oppressiveness?  Aside from vilifying shopping malls, Butler never provides one, although he makes it clear that the offspring of modern suburban life bears the marks of its flaws.  The kids, nowadays, “seem so wild but they are so tame,” declares the annoying “Rococo”; and on “Month of May,” he laments that “the kids are still standing with their arms folded tight,” evidently implying that we just don’t appreciate beauty and art the way they used to.

As multiple songs indicate, Butler wants more “wasted hours,” lazy days like when he “spent the summer staring out the window.”  But by failing to specify what’s so deleterious about modern life, and couching his depressiveness in bland near-clichés, he makes the critical error in persuasive discourse—he pushes us towards the opposite viewpoint.  Wasted hours are all well and good, but summers spent in contemporary society, with iPods the soundtrack for Skype chats, can be pretty damn fun, too.

Butler’s worldview, sadly, tarnishes even the more successful tracks here.  On “Half Light II (No Celebration)”, he ponders, “This city’s changed so much since I was a little child / Pray to God I won’t live to see the death of everything that’s wild.”  The latter sentence, in particular, expresses a viewpoint that’s by and large reasonable—poignant, even.  But here we see why the album has so much negative synergy; given Butler’s attitude expressed elsewhere, the unstated implication that he thinks he might indeed live to see the death of everything that’s wild tempers one’s enjoyment and appreciation.

Given these problems, it becomes incumbent upon the music and the melodies to make us forget about the lyrics; unfortunately, they only marginally succeed.  I read more than one proclamation from the nearly-universally adoring critics that The Suburbs is the hardest-rocking AF album to date, which makes me wonder whether I was mailed a different album from everyone else.  Everything after track 10 suffers from overwhelming flaccidity, desperately requiring some of that Funeral-esque piquant guitar.  Considering the band’s reputation for orchestral bombast , it’s surprising how many passages suffer from sounding sparse and repetitive.  The opener, about twice as long as necessary, saunters along like a leaf blowing idly on a lake; “City With No Children” (redeemed only by the killer line “Do you think your righteousness can pay the interest on your debts?”) clunkily plods through its bass-heavy instrumentation; and the strings on tracks like “Half Light I,” rather than enhancing anything, merely kill time.

Even the best tracks suffer from similar problems.  “Empty Room” begins, to be sure, spectacularly: pulse-pounding drums and a guitar that sounds like a train whistle bursting their way through rhythmic strings; but then everything stalls.  Overall, it’s still the most propulsive track here, but the melody falls off with the insipid chorus, and by the two-minute mark, when it should be hitting a new gear, it’s already beginning to fade away.  The same could be said for “Month of May”—a mercifully jaunty change of pace, but its riff needs changing up after about a minute, and that never happens.

This band has never minded dramatically switching gears within a song (see “Wake Up,” “Black Wave/Bad Vibrations,” “The Well and the Lighthouse”), and there are so many instances here when a song sounds ready to explode…and it doesn’t.  That’s most painfully true on the underdeveloped “Suburban War.”  It’s an acceptable track, but even when the piano and guitar pick it up, everything sounds too restrained, and the band members are done no favors by Butler’s overly-unassuming vocals.  Likewise, “Ready to Start” carries with it initially a groovy, dominant bassline, but by the midpoint, the sparse instrumentation and forgettable chorus have soured us; and “Modern Man,” pleasant despite more simplistic pessimism, builds up its bridge section to…quietude.   So bizarre.

Where, oh where, are moments as spontaneously invigorating as the “Oooohs” in “Keep the Car Running” or the introduction of “Wake Up”?  Now, it’s as though Butler, so intent on delivering  his somber criticisms, just can’t open up.  Apparently with so much ‘suburban war’ going on, no one can have any fun.

It’s important to note that I’m not inherently averse to bands addressing problems they see in modern life; I’ve recently been praising Green Day left and right for how effectively they’ve done this in the 00s.  But Billie Joe conveys the message that he’ll fight for the best possible society, that he’s just tired of people fucking things up; Butler sounds like he wants to be transported back to the 1950s, a yawn-inducing, narrow-minded worldview that merits no counterpoint.  Likewise, the Arctic Monkeys’ Alex Turner has had great fun chastising modern, obnoxious teenage prepsters, but he’s done so with wit, exceedingly clever wordplay, and a sense that he doesn’t actually believe the world is collapsing.

And, perhaps even more importantly, those successful bands surround their observations with cathartic tunes and the sort of melodic grip barely present on The Suburbs.  Putting those pieces together is the Arcade Fire’s next challenge.

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.