Arctic Monkeys: Same Skill, Different Day

June 25, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Suck It and See: 4 stars (out of 5)


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.

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Arcade Fire – The Suburbs: I’m moving past the feeling

October 16, 2010 By 2 Comments

Rating: 2 and a half stars (out of 5)

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.

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Neon Trees – Habits (2010): ‘Always the same thing,’ but you shouldn’t mind

July 16, 2010 By Leave a Comment

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.

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Spock’s Beard – X (2010): Riding High on a Second Wind

June 11, 2010 By 6 Comments

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.

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Relient K – Forget and Not Slow Down (2009): More backstory, more catharsis

June 6, 2010 By 4 Comments

rkmattrkshan

This is part 8 of the Relient K retrospective

(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 implicated [edit: this link is dead, I'm looking for another version of it, because this is the crucial piece of the puzzle] 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 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 substance.

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 I interpreted the album broadly, its songs as 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 specific shame and regret and recovery than as a detached meditation of these concepts.

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. He doesn’t shy away from the fact that he did something wrong, but he considers that the most therapeutic option is to move on rather than linger on his guilt. There’s also some nice imagery of absolution there (“Pour over me and wash my hands”) which reflects a lot of passages in the Bible.

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)

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Relient K – Forget and Not Slow Down (2009): With one shake of the mane, regain the throne

May 22, 2010 By Leave a Comment

rk-forget

This is part 7 of the Relient K retrospective

Rating: 4 stars (out of 5)

A lot happened to Relient K between Five Score and its follow-up LP, 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 critics 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 best 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.

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Relient K – The Bird and the Bee Sides (2008): Making the best of what won’t quit

May 21, 2010 By Leave a Comment

rk-birdsbeesThis is part 6 of the Relient K retrospective

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 followed Mmhmm). 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 goodmoments, even if these throwaways are good slices of catchy fun.

The one song here that I unconditionally recommend is the reinvented “Jefferson Aeroplane,” a track that was initially 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 tracks ever 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 them 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.

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Relient K – Five Score and Seven Years Ago (2007): On the up and up

May 20, 2010 By Leave a Comment

rk-5score

This is part 5 of the Relient K retrospective

Rating: 4 stars (out of 5)

Sorry, Relient K. Five Score and Seven Years Ago is just an awful title for an album — which, aside from the name, is quite good and another creative leap forward for the band.

The most striking element of Five Score is how diverse its sound is. Mmhmm was marked with a very consistent sound except for a few flourishes; banjos and harmonicas occasionally peeked through the glossy coat of guitar and drums. Five Score draws from a wider variety of sounds (*). There’s some synthesized parts, more keyboard than ever, flirtations with folk influences, extensive use of brass, and more. There’s even an a capellasong.

(*) According to the album liner notes, the album features these instruments: guitar, drums, bass, piano, banjo, organ, trumpet, french horn, trombone, baritone horn, bells, toy piano, and penny whistle.

Another distinctive trait of Five Score is how ambitious it is. Dense and disorienting, these fourteen tracks cover a wide variety of themes and structures. From the conspiracy theory about the death of Abraham Lincoln that opens the album (perhaps to justify the bogus album title) to the eleven-minute epic about life and death and Jesus that closes it, there’s a lot happening in Five Score.

One gem is “Forgiven,” which mourns original sin then breaks free from it with a soaring chorus and punchy piano. It’s one of many songs that is challenging both intellectually and spiritually. But the album never eschews accessiblity; lyrical cleverness and sing-a-long choruses keep the music enjoyable. It’s nice to see an album tackle profound themes cogently but not make the mistake of thinking weighty themes require convoluted tunes.

At the same time, the album still has moments of levity. It seems Thiessen listened to a few of the critics and fans who complained that Mmhmm, while a great record, was missing some of the joy of previous albums. Scattered in are a few of the happiest numbers ever recorded by the band. The standout is “Must Have Done Something Right,” the most straightforward boy-girl love song Thiessen has written. It almost sounds like a throwback to Two Lefts.

The album closes with Relient K’s spiritual opus, “Deathbed.” It feels a little bit like a concerto or a rhapsody in that it’s broken down into distinct segments but has a recurring musical theme. It weaves a tale of descent, guilt, suffering, and — ultimately — redemption. For a band whose focus is so pop-oriented with little classical or progressive work, the band skillfully constructs a knotty composition that builds to a moving climax. It also reminds us of Relient K’s undying Christian streak and hopefulness.

But even including “Deathbed” and “Must Have Done Something Right,” the best track on the album is “Faking My Own Suicide.” It’s not only one of the darkest songs Thiessen has ever written, but one of the warmest. The band’s official line on the song is that it’s a re-telling of the old black comedy Harold and Maude, purportedly Thiessen’s favorite film. Keen listeners will notice, though, that the tale parallels the death and resurrection of Jesus. The closing line is a classic: “Our love is so alive.”

Of course, there’s another side to the complexity. The music, while still accessible and pop-like in structure, has lost a bit of its immediacy and urgency. The intricate sound has come at the cost of a bit of Relient K’s usual energy. Simply, with the exception of “Must Have Done Something Right,” the songs here just aren’t as catchy as those on other albums, particularly Mmhmm and Two Lefts.

But Five Score is overall a major success and another key step forward in the Relient K’s development. It features a much wider array of sounds and styles that would expand even further in the band’s next studio album.

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Relient K – Mmhmm (2004): Reach out to me, make my heart brand new

May 19, 2010 By Leave a Comment

rk-mmhmm

This is part 4 of the Relient K retrospective

Rating: 4 and a half stars (out of 5)

The success and quality of Two Lefts caught the eye of Columbia Records who signed the band to major deal. The ensuing album, Mmhmm, is lean and muscular. Capitol Records effectively focused the band towards heavy-hitting sound and serious lyrics.

Song for song, Mmhmm is Relient K’s strongest album to date. “Be My Escape” is a microcosm of almost everything great about Relient K: an emotional honesty, a prayerful edge, propulsive guitar, and tight melodies. If they ever compile a greatest hits album, “Be My Escape” should be the leadoff.

The close runner-up is “Who I Am Hates Who I’ve Been,” with some of the band’s best hooks and an opening lyric that deserves to join the pantheon of opening lines: “I watched the proverbial sunrise coming over the Pacific.” Six years and three albums later, “Be My Escape” and “Who I Am” are still the band’s two crowning jewels.

With a big budget studio polishing the band’s performances, the sound is more colorful and evocative than ever before. Even songs that seem designed as throwaways — “My Girl’s Ex-Boyfriend” or the wordy “The Only Thing Worse Than Beating a Dead Horse is Betting on It” — have a sparkle that makes them worth revisiting again and again.

Along with the new sound comes a slightly different attitude: These tracks are darker and sharper than the playful sprawl on previous discs. I wonder how much of this was Thiessen’s vision as opposed to Columbia pushing him to target the “emo” crowd. Regardless, the approach works for the most part. Thiessen is adept enough at writing to convincingly play the love-battered ex-boyfriend. [Edit: I later heard that this album was written in part as a response to his breakup with Katy Perry. Aside from perplex me at that improbable romance, that factoid dispels my concern that Thiessen was writing what he was told, not what he felt.]

The backbone of the album is the two-part suite, “Which to Bury, Us or the Hatchet?” and “Let it All Out” which show two different takes on a breakup: angst and ache, respectively. “Hatchet” sears with suffocating drums and pained background wails. “Let it All Out” simmers quietly with piano and wood block. The latter also throws in a brilliant and brief harmonica part that works well enough in the song that I wish there was more of it.

For all the great music and writing — and every track is lyrically astute — there is something detectable missing. A lot of the band’s appeal from their early days was a sense of humor and playful observation. I’m all for deepening and expanding their artistic scope, so I don’t entirely mind the shift, but the reflective tour de forces had to take the place of something. The wit is not entirely gone — probably five or six songs have smile-worthy wordplay — but it’s somewhat absent in the name of improved craft.

Ultimately, Mmhmm is an important step in the band’s development. Thiessen and co. showed hints of becoming more sophisticated musicians with Two Lefts, but they fully embrace their maturity on Mmhmm. The cover of Mmhmm shows a flower in bloom, and it’s around this time that Relient K the musicians began blossoming into Relient K the artists.

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Relient K – Two Lefts Don’t Make a Right… But Three Do (2003): So simple, but so beautiful

May 18, 2010 By Leave a Comment

rk-twolefts

This is part 3 of the Relient K retrospective

Rating: 5 stars (out of 5)

Two years and a forgettable EP later, Relient K released their third and best album to date. Two Lefts Don’t Make a Right… But Three Do — besides making the band 2 for 3 on awful album names — took all of the enjoyable elements of the first two releases, amplified them, weeded out most of the bad, and put it into a fun, messy, exciting product.

The sound, aside from feeling significantly more polished, is not drastically different from Anatomy: it’s still straightforward pop with a “punk” edge to it, along the lines of Blink 182 or Sum 41. But the band’s touch is much more deft this time. The riffs are less repetitive and grating, the performances are stronger, and the band just gels together a little bit better.

What really makes Two Lefts great, though, are the songs. Every song deals with some sort of coming-of-age theme, yet most of the tracks retain their fun. It’s a tough balancing act to pull: The music here is at once accessible, reflective, and substantial. And the writing has aged well; seven years later, Thiessen’s humility seems more relevant than ever.

My favorite trick of Thiessen’s is his knack for hiding some broad observations and repressed emotions behind little images and sly jokes. Take, for instance, “In Love With the ’80s,” the album’s fifth track. On the surface, it’s a bunch of cultural references. But, underneath that surface, the song warns of the danger in fixating on the past (e.g. “Live without a care / what could possibly go wrong?”). It’s a small touch, but a key one, because it gives the song a place in the album’s thematic arc.

The band repeats follows this pattern of adding meaning to the silliness on numerous occasions on Two Lefts; “Mood Rings” is about illogical emotion (courtesy of females), “Gibberish” is an extended “shut up” gag that makes a commentary on the importance of healthy communication, etc.

Among the album’s standout songs are “Chap Stick, Chapped Lips, and Things Like Chemistry,” the opening track, which is three minutes of perfection. Thiessen riffs on theme parks and cell phones and relationships and back again, all with stellar guitars, drums, and “na na na” harmonies.

“Forward Motion,” which slows down after a passable intro guitar solo, also excels. Aside from the clever lyrics (“Experience the bittersweet / to taste defeat then brush my teeth / ’cause I struggle with forward motion”), the song rocks harder than anything on the band’s first two albums, yet ends on a gentle piano riff.

Those two, “In Love With the ’80s,” and ballad “Getting Into You” — which is just as good as Anatomy’s “For the Moments I Feel Faint” without going straight for the Jesus jugular — are among the strongest tracks here. But there’s hardly a weak track in these 14. The whole album coheres into a lament of the pitfalls of suburbia — or, more generally, complacency and shallowness. Even the joke track at the end of the album is strong, the funniest the band’s ever done.

What’s most refreshing about Two Lefts is that we get our first peek at Thiessen being a true sage, a bona fide lyrical maestro. His lyrics are incredibly shrewd in spite of the silliness. Humility and spirituality, which come from Thiessen’s roots as a Christian worship leader, give the album a warm, contemplative center that lends his music  poignancy 1. Three albums in, his writing was pretty strong, and it would only grow better with time.

The band would soon grow more sophisticated and polished, but Two Lefts remains Relient K’s masterpiece. It retains their early exuberance but packs an emotional punch as strong as their more recent work. The transition between quirky, small-time band to major-label artist is captured here, and it has the best of both worlds.

Notes:

  1. The genuine writing in the songs is a stark contrast to the sort of writing that usually accompanies “pop-punk” music, a genre known for shallowness and phoniness. ↩
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