Weezer – Pinkerton (1996): What could you possibly see in little old three-chord me?

November 4, 2009 By 4 Comments

This is Grant’s half of the Pinkerton point-counterpoint review. Read Dan’s half here.

Pinkerton is the sound of a band afraid to become great.  Representing a comeback after the hiatus Weezer took in response to their debut album’s surprise success, it doesn’t so much as reinvent the band as push their less desirable attributes to the forefront.  Weezer’s early work embraced its quaintness and made no effort to appear polished, but much of Pinkerton turns the aw-shucks charm into something far worse—childishness.  The album sounds unfinished, amateur, and slight, a noble effort from a high school garage band, but not one with such a devoted following.  That’s not to say that it doesn’t have its moments—it does—or that Rivers Cuomo forgot how to construct a tune—he didn’t—but that it has a horrible tone and message, and even the better songs convey annoying problems.

Said debut album, Weezer (rechristened The Blue Album because of its cover) was a critical album in emo’s transition from Rites of Spring-style punk to 1990s power pop and careening vocals.  But it’s Pinkerton that seems to anticipate the rash of wimpy, whiny bands that subsequently sprouted up under the term’s guise.  The melodies are by and large listenable, but there’s an effeminate undercurrent to everything, both in the slight and repetitive music and, more importantly, in the lyrics of Cuomo, who sings as though he’s been castrated.

The band keeps things moving on tracks like “Tired of Sex,” but Rivers cobbles together an embarrassing set of lyrics that threatens the dignity of almost every song.  Conveying an even greater sense of immaturity than the music, he whines about the impossibility that girls could ever like him, punctuating the theme with “What could you possibly see in little old three-chord me” in the otherwise charming “Falling for You.”  Likewise, when he whines “Why bother? It’s gonna hurt me / It’s gonna kill when you desert me” on “Why Bother,” one can’t possibly agree with him that it’s a crying shame that he’s all alone—it’s what he deserves, especially if two bad break-ups have sucked the life out of him.

Rock bands from here to eternity have sung about relationship problems, but of all the avenues from which to approach the issue, the I’m worthless-so-what’s-the-point one conveys the greatest immaturity.  Even “Tired of Sex” runs into this problem.  Songs such as The Cure’s “Siamese Twins” have described feelings of regret over sexual encounters, but they’re more credible when addressing a specific situation.  When Rivers simply says “I’m tired of having sex,” without any more context or elaboration, he sounds, well, prepubescent.  This sentiment, when combined with the rejections of relationships expressed elsewhere, leads to one simple thought: Grow a pair.

Because of this feeling, when he switches course and later extolls the glories of shakin’ booty or touching yourself, he sounds patently ridiculous.  By that point in the album, he’s lost credibility with the listener on the topic.

Sonically, Pinkerton songs rely heavily on similarly tossed off, amorphous shards of guitar that don’t sound heavy enough to be so caustic.  Weezer, on this album and their debut, don’t exactly exude sonic beauty, which makes their albums sound much better in small doses.  Several of the songs are hummable (“No Other One” especially), though the band tends to fall into predictable, vague grooves.  Cuomo nails the bridges of  “Falling” and “Across the Sea,” but if that makes you pay attention to his lyrics—both of which, interestingly, center around the word “Goddamn”—you’ve lost the war.  “The Good Life” has the album’s best melody, but, again, with his chorus he sounds like a little kid.

Pinkerton isn’t a difficult listen by any stretch—only “El Scorcho” is truly unlistenable—so long as you don’t expect much and ignore the lyrics.  Yet it’s so caustic after ten tracks that you’re searching for a way out.  Rivers wrote a few reasonably catchy melodies, and “Pink Triangle” is a perfect summation of Weezer at their pre-Make Believe best—off-center but endearing—but the specter of childhood looms over every moment.  Listening to Pinkerton, one hopes that Rivers and company will grow up, both in their playing and in their minds.

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Weezer – Pinkerton (1996): “Fall in love all over again”

November 4, 2009 By Leave a Comment

This is Dan’s half of the Pinkerton point-counterpoint review. Read Grant’s half here.

I have this funny image in my head of Rivers Cuomo, the bespectacled frontman and songwriter of Weezer, performing the music of his first album in neatly trimmed suit with a smile. Then, just as the fans start yawning “novelty” and move on with life, he goes into Incredible Hulk mode, and starts smashing his guitar and all of the band equipment.

Pinkerton, the sequel to their self-titled debut smash, is basically Rivers revealing all of the humiliation he feels in his life. It’s a sad, emotional album, but also a perversely hilarious one. It’s like when a friend tells you his most embarrassing story. Part of you wants to laugh at him, and part of you wants to comfort him. And both parts of you have a point.

Those dual extremes of Pinkerton gel incredibly well with a power pop sound to become Weezer’s masterpiece. The guitars range from fuzzy to jangly, but are constantly loud and melodic. There’s also an off-the-cuff feel to the music that’s the opposite from the polished, rehearsed feeling to Weezer’s debut.

Really, though, the album’s success hinges on its ten songs. Each one is mix-tape good on its own, but as a package, they’re mesmerizing. The flow between comedy and tragedy — often both simultaneously — is incredible.  Consider one ten-second clip of El Scorcho when Cuomo compares affection first to professional wrestling then to Cio-Cio San’s doomed love in the opera Madam Butterfly. Brilliant.

With these songs, Weezer pioneers the ‘emo’ genre, but does the style better than any future band could hope to. There’s a pathos and self-loathing here, as would become the sub-genre’s norm, but Cuomo is at heart too funny and charming for the angst to become a burden. Whether he admits it or not, it’s clear he’s having some fun here: “I’m dumb, she’s a Lesbian, I thought I had found the one” — sorry, Fall Out Boy, but emo peaked with that one line.

Any notion from the debut that Weezer was simply a novelty act, not a ‘real’ band is dispelled quickly: There’s so much cooperation on a deep level here. This is a band with a mission and a vision and real chemistry. You can’t fake the sweeping notions and gestures that fill Pinkerton: The Good Life’s pulverized pride, Across the Sea’s lonely lament, Butterfly’s ashamed absolution.

But the most enduring charm of Pinkerton is that its emotions and motivations are ambiguous enough that it’s impossible to take the same thing away from it each time I listen to it. How much of this is genuine pain, how much of it simply acerbic wit? It’s a fine line. When Cuomo rhymes “Jello” with “cello” in El Scorcho, there’s clearly some playfulness. When he climaxes the song with “Maybe you’re scared to say ‘I’m falling for you,’” I doubt there is any. For rest of the song, it varies with each listen. The flux in tone — from sad to silly to self-parody — constantly shifts.

You can debate whether the sound of Pinkerton is as enjoyable or interesting as any of Weezer’s other albums, but what makes Pinkerton their best album is that it’s their most personal and honest. Despite its angst, it connects with me in ways most other albums can’t. Most days, I can’t think of twenty albums I value more than Pinkerton, and some days, I can’t think of five.

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Cursive: The Ugly Organ (2003) – Scared of finding beauty in art, but finding it nonetheless

October 23, 2009 By 1 Comment

The Ugly Organ

Rating: 4 stars (out of five)

Arriving on the heels of the definitive Domestica, The Ugly Organ finds emo rockers Cursive perched on the edge of stardom—and that doesn’t sit well with them.  Organ is an album full of lamentations not just of pain, but of pain expressed in art.  Domestica was the album to listen to after a break-up or divorce; the first half of Ugly Organ explores what it means to turn those feelings into songs, before launching back into the personal agony that propels the second half.  It all makes for an unorthodox, involving listen that we’ve come to expect from the band.

Ugly Organ opens with the prototypical throwaway first cut (the first hint the record will be more flexible than its nine-song predecessor) but starts in earnest with “Some Red-Handed Sleight of Hand” and “Art is Hard,” which barely give the listener time to catch his breath in between cathartic shouts.  Ugly Organ could use more of those songs, though, as it teeters back and forth between punk charges and calmer fare.  Midtempo “The Recluse,” following the aforementioned pair, isn’t bad, but the meaningless “Herald! Frankenstein” is.  And both “The Butcher” and “Gentleman Caller” are succeeded by songs that don’t match their intensity.

The melodies of Ugly Organ are a hair below those of Domestica, thus requiring repeated listens to get to the core of the songs, the best of which restlessly shift their dynamics musically and blend together their lyrical themes. “Butcher the Song” fluctuates expertly from quietude to fury throughout, whereas the gentle and lovely outro of “Gentleman Caller” is hardly recognizable compared to the compelling thrash of the beginning. 

Lyrically, especially on “Hand,” “Art,” and “Butcher,” what’s so compelling is the way frontman Tim Kasher blurs together the line between artistic and personal feelings.  “Try and fail and try again / The comfort of repetition / Keep churning out those hits / Till it’s all the same old shit,” he exclaims on “Hand,” whereas “Butcher” addresses a lover:  “Rub it in / In your dumb lyrics / Yeah, that’s the time and place to wring out your bullshit / And each album I get shit on a little more / Who’s Tim latest whore?”  When he cries “I can’t forget what’s been said / And this guilt I can’t shed / It still rings in my ears” he sounds wholly committed to the material, as though he’s reliving it at that very moment—the kind of intense Cursive moment that few do better.   

Kasher dominates the album more so than Domestica, which had a more consistent musical palette.  The success of the slower fare in the middle is inconsistent, while “Bloody Murderer” and “Sierra” are standard punk charges, albeit with strong choruses.  But anyone doubting their creativity will eat his words after the closing number, which, quite simply, comes out of nowhere.  Generally, when a band writes one long song for an album, it mirrors the others in sound and tone (e.g.: Death Cab’s “Transatlanticism”), but “Staying Alive” shelves Cursive’s bitterness and raucous energy in favor of an anthem as grand and majestic as anything U2 ever recorded.  The middle section, when the drums start to pound and Kasher and fellow guitarist Ted Stevens alternate between thick blasts of noise and Placebo-style shimmering licks and Gretta Cohn’s cello provides a melodic underpinning as Kasher belts “I’m stayin’ aliiiiiiiiiive,” marks a new high point for the band—even if the song, as a whole, could probably use a few minutes off the end.

“I’m writing songs to entertain / But these people, they just want pain,” Kasher sings on “Butcher.”  With Cursive, sometimes one is the other.

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Interpol: Turn on the Bright Lights (2002) – What do they actually want, light or darkness?

October 22, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Turn on the Bright Lights

Rating: 2 stars (out of five)

All bands are indebted to others from the past, but there are some who seem unavoidably linked to one particular influence.  Interpol is one such case, as one can’t ever read more than about two lines of a review without hearing the name Joy Division pop up.  They have been an integral band in the post-punk/new-wave revival of the 2000s, but while bands such as Franz Ferdinand and The Arctic Monkeys have leaned towards a danceable version of the latter, Interpol tries to stick firmly in the post-punk, Joy Division-esque sound.

The problem with this, though, is that, while they do sound like Joy Division, they don’t really sound like Joy Division.  The comparisons are not terribly misguided, but Interpol simply lacks the sonic innovation, lyrical depth, and sheer originality of their forefathers.  Joy Division was always intensely dramatic; yet Turn on the Bright Lights, Interpol’s widely-praised debut album, lacks sufficient dramatic heft–the critical failing.  The album sounds too slight, too small, too superficial for its dark sound, and lead singer Paul Banks’s lyrics veer towards amateurish.

All of this contributes towards the listener wanting to experience Bright Lights as a poppier version of post-punk, but that goal is ruined by the utter lack of melody found on the album.  Banks is trying to force a melody on songs like “Obstacle 1,” “Say Hello to the Angels,” and “Obstacle 2,” but there’s nothing there.  Even a pretty ending, such as that of “Roland,” is ruined by the horribly muddled rest of the song.  In short, Interpol are caught in no-man’s land, too tentative to approach the starkly dramatic heights of their idols but too nondescript and amelodic to produce something more casually enjoyable.

Though Interpol’s sound is suitably “dark,” it’s not foreboding and overwhelming the way Joy Division’s is.  One reason for this difference, perhaps, lies in the efforts of Banks and fellow guitarist Daniel Kessler.  The beginning of opener “Untitled” sounds like Explosions in the Sky; at other times (“PDA”) the guitar parts recall Coldplay.  In other words, the icy, oppressive, spacious style of JD’s Bernard Albrecht gets pushed aside in favor of more modern styles that don’t fit the rest of the band’s sound.  It’s this critical distinction that is partially responsible for the insignificant feel of too much of the album.

The most frustrating track is “NYC,” which starts off pretty but is soon muddled behind a weak chorus too often repeated, poor and incomplete lyrics, and an overall feeling that we don’t need to take the song seriously enough.  Banks’s lyrics in particular grate; he claims that he’s tired of being lonely, yet someone who did everything for him did not impress him.  Such a seeming contradiction might be possible to understand with more explanation; but otherwise, we’re simply left confused.  

I couldn’t ever shake that feeling with Turn on the Bright Lights that, by sometime around the eighth song, it all started to blur together—similarly amelodic songs, with a vague undercurrent of darkness but no distinction or muscle.  Interpol simply doesn’t possess the musical originality to make up for its other flaws.

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Three Days Grace: Old Music, New Marketing

October 21, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Twenty-five percent of the songs on Three Days Grace’s debut album ended up Top-5 singles.

Twenty-five percent of the songs on Three Days Grace’s sophomore album ended up Top-5 singles.

Do we understand each other?  There is no room to question the credentials of Three Days Grace.  As Canada’s premier alternative-metal missionaries, they bring the rasp in their voices, guitars, and outlook.

Last month saw the release of album number three: Life Starts Now.  The single “Break” is holding steady at #7 in its 6th week on the charts.  If it rises no higher, is that a letdown?  Would you say the guys are losing their touch?  To even ask the question reinforces how impressive their career has been from the very outset.  And no, it’s not a letdown.

Since Barry Stock was recruited in 2006 to relieve singer Adam Gontier of lead guitar duties, the band has been a quartet, and their increase in number has continued to represent an increase in sonic energy.  Life Starts Now shows not only meatier arrangements – the kind of rock music that expands to rattle every corner of a room – but also technical improvement on the part of each musician.  Focus on their craft has enabled more engaging drumwork and widened the range of pitch and timbre accessed during guitar solos.  Even the bass, normally the band’s weakness, has advanced to a level of competence.

Minor deviations from the normal songwriting framework make themselves known without disrupting the consistency of the band’s corpus.  Odd meters are subtly present and there is a greater emphasis on solo work than on previous offerings.  Still, verses and bridges are right where you expect them to be, you can scream along to every chorus, and an iconic guitar hook remains the raging heart of every song.

Two probable attempts at ballads remind us (and hopefully remind Jive Records) why the self-titled album didn’t have any.  “Lost in You” simply isn’t believable, as an honest Gontier can’t hide the anger that composes his soul despite lyrics bordering on sensitive and clean guitars resolving suspended 6ths into warm-and-fuzzy major triads.  The listener is given more credit by “Last to Know” as unplugged strings and a piano lead us through a tale of depression springing from frustration without hope.

Three Days Grace has a formula that works.  Life Starts Now shows an increase in talent with no drop in raw appeal.  By this time next year the hard rockers may have another set of Top-5 singles for their collection.

At the moment, there is a peripheral matter that catches my interest.  Maybe the aging and unchanging sound of the band concerns Jive, maybe Three Days Grace is trying to compensate for the recession, or maybe the guys just had a cool idea and made it happen.  For whatever reason, the band’s website is advertising a colorful variety of options for purchasing their new record.

For the iTunes-fed, blossoming young gorger of all things mainstream, “exclusive behind the scenes video downloads” are packaged with the digital download to entice a purchase directly from the website rather than through, oh, I don’t know, BitTorrent, which tends to be cheaper.

For the collector who doesn’t roll with headphones growing out of his pocket and around his ears like ivy, a hard cd can be ordered – again, with bonus media as thanks for cutting out the middle man.

For real fans, the kind who come out to shows and tell their friends about Three Days Grace, a limited-edition t-shirt can be shipped along with the album.

Beyond that, things get interesting.  The “Deluxe Package” (now sold out) is priced at $60 and includes a pile of swag – half physical, half digital – compelling enough to merit serious consideration even from teenagers living on an allowance or fast-food wages.  Towering above at $100 is the “Super Deluxe Package,” replete with bonuses from a cd signed and numbered by the band to a “smashed piece of a Three Days Grace guitar.”  That’s as exclusive as it gets.

I recently saw a similar gradient of offers posted by progressive rock outfit Spock’s Beard.  In an attempt to raise funds for their self-released tenth album, they put the album on presale before going to studio to record it.  Merchandise options included packages similar to those marketed by Three Days Grace, headed by a $200 “Ultra Package” with an intangible premier benefit:

“…And finally, [you will get] your name written into the lyrics of a new Spock’s Beard song.  This track will include a vocal section where your name (or someone you choose) will be sung by the band.  This will be a full band, fully-produced song that requires a long list of names be sung as part of the lyric.”

Deals like these intrigue me.  Have other groups been making crazy offers and selling their new releases in such intense tiered packages?  Ten years from now, if the economy is back to prime form, will we still see offers like these for the most ravenous fans?

The answers likely depend on whether the music industry follows overall market fluctuations or diverges as the onward march of the digital age changes the game.  Personally, I’ve got my fingers crossed that this is a trend with some wings, ready to take off.

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Green Day – 21st Century Breakdown (2009): The music, if not the message, still inspires hope

October 13, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Rating: 4 stars (out of five)

Green Day offer up 21st Century Breakdown having done their fair share of conquering in both this and the previous century.  They dominated the alternative landscape of the post-Nirvana 90s (breakout album Dookie dropped just weeks before Kurt Cobain’s suicide) and then shocked the world with 2004’s concept album American Idiot, wherein Billie Joe Armstrong silenced those critics who assumed he couldn’t write about anything besides masturbation and boredom by tapping into Bush-era dissatisfaction.

Breakdown, arriving five years later, continues the concept album theme, even though there’s a new president and a little more optimism within the country.  But enough of that—what’s really worth paying attention to is the band.  The majority of these songs, especially the rockers, sound epic and alive, bursting with blood and vigor; Billie Joe sings with conviction, and the band sounds fuller than ever.  Though most of the slow songs sag (the flaccid “Last Night on Earth,” whiny “Restless Heart Syndrome,” and well-sung but cliché-ridden “21 Guns”), overall there’s a strong success rate among these 18 tracks.  Standout “The Static Age” has a perfect ear for tension/release.  “Before the Lobotomy” is filled with juicy melodies (and seems to give a shout-out to “Basket Case” with the line “I’m not stoned, I’m just fucked up.”)  Lead single “Know Your Enemy” is propelled by a heavy yet ferociously catchy, foot-stomping chorus and a titanic drum lead-in from the bridge.  The band hits remarkable peaks in the soaring bridges of “Little Girl,” “Static,” and “Guns” that elevate each track.

As is usual for Green Day albums, 21st Century Breakdown is long–too long–though the difference here is that the length allows for more diversity, making room for extended piano intros on songs like “Viva La Gloria,” a Middle Eastern-vibe on the groovy “Peacemaker,” and Queen-style drama on the title track, “Lobotomy,” and others.  “Last Night on Earth,” as Rolling Stone noted, sounds like Air Supply (not that this works), and of course several tunes invoke past, Dookie-esque grandeur.  Thankfully, the sonic doodling doesn’t sound forced; it just feels like the band, with little left to prove to the pop-punk audience, wants to experiment with new material to see what sticks.

What’s perhaps most notable about the musical variation is the way the individual songs themselves often contain distinct sections.  Sometimes this works—“Christian’s Inferno” opens with a thick, industrial-sounding drum intro before giving way to a purely Green Day chorus—but most of the best songs here (“Static,” “Little Girl,” “Murder City”) tell us that Green Day is better off keeping the sonic changes within songs to a minimum.  The title track starts off magnificently—you’d be hard-pressed to deny the power of Billie Joe’s line “My generation’s a zero / I never made it as a working class hero”—but after the second chorus devolves into an amelodic mess.  And, conversely, both “Gloria” and “Lobotomy” could stand to have their first segments cut; the latter is especially invigorating once it gets going, but that takes far too long.

Even though old target George Bush can no longer be used as a piñata, Armstrong hasn’t exactly embraced Obama-style optimism.  The conceptual theme this time traces two lovers, Christian and Gloria, as they make their way through this age with confusion, anger, fear, and some resolve.  Billie Joe skewers a few obvious targets (religious hypocrisy) and some less-obvious ones (prescription drug reliance) in his quest to find something truly meaningful.  There’s certainly no mistaking his feelings when he yelps, “Violence is the enemy / So give me, give me revolution!”  There are few great insights in the lyrics, but it’s nice to see that he’s continued to branch out a little, and despite an over-reliance on simplicity, he occasionally finds a nugget: “Do you know what’s worth fighting for / When it’s not worth dying for?”; “The traces of blood always follow you home / Like the mascara tears of your getaway.”

One wonders, however, whether his now ever-present world-weariness drags down his otherwise great sing-along choruses on tracks like “Century” and “Static.”  He’s flirting with Bono syndrome—sometimes, you just want him to forget about the world’s problems and sing about something enjoyable, relieving the ambivalent feelings that are engendered by energetic but polemic songs.

That feeling of slight hesitation getting in the way of a full-fledged adoration of the record has company.  Simmering gently below the visceral excitement that a listen provides is the desire to make tiny tweaks all over the place.  Man, if they just killed “Song of the Century” and “Last Night on Earth,” you think, how much better would this flow?  Why couldn’t “Breakdown” have kept going the way it started, “Lobotomy” have opened right at the 1:20 mark?  Why couldn’t Billie Joe have gone a little easy on the clichés in “Guns” and really made it a doozy?

If all that happened, then you’d have a stupendous album.  But that’s sort of always been Green Day’s M.O.  Their albums are typically overly long and sprawling, cathartic, flawed, and usually highly enjoyable.  21st Century Breakdown offers up more of the same.

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Ursa Major was released in August, 2009

September 17, 2009 By Leave a Comment

I have no right to review Slippery When Wet.  I can’t break down Born to Run.  To me, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and Pet Sounds are beyond approach.  I lack the bona fides to critique such eternal landmarks, not least of all because I wasn’t there to experience them.  Awareness of the musical zeitgeist of a decade is no substitute for being a part of a movement.  I want to be there when the next album that defines its time drops.  Maybe, I thought, maybe Ursa Major will be that album.

This was wishful thinking from the start.  Third Eye Blind already had their breakout.  The self-titled debut sent fully a third of its tracks coasting into the Top 20, including Semi-Charmed Life, the No. 1 hit famous for the shock it creates when your sing-along is shattered by the realization of what the verses are describing.  Still, the six-year hiatus that followed their third release (throughout which there were no signs of a break-up) served to infuse the band with mystery and hype.  Maybe, I thought, maybe Ursa Major will be that album.

Available only by digital download, the Red Star EP heralded a return to the band’s true form.  Then a new website appeared, 3eb.com, that put community interaction at the forefront.  The fan-centric aesthetic and an “Assembly” full of blogs, along with claims from frontman Stephan Jenkins that the upcoming album would be their most political yet, steered the hype away from melody.  Why would a band whose cornerstone was a song with overlooked lyrics and a hook for the ages predicate their overdue return to the limelight on opinion and activism?  New grounds trembled in anticipation of breaking.  Maybe…

“I want a riot, yeah!”

The rallying cry of the lead-off track has my fist in the air!  The guitars are surging back with familiar energy.  The pitch is rising, so I crank the volume and get caught up in the rasp of passion in Stephan’s voice:

“Yes I am dying to be freaked!”

Yes, I am d– wait, what?

Instantly I’m back in 1997 reliving the shock.  So, what kind of riot was he talking about?  A quick check of the lyric liner tells me the whole song is open to at least two interpretations: grassroots firepower or a plea for sex.  Alright, Stephan Jenkins, you got me.

But the music goes on.  Brand-new hooks revive with full confidence the old Third Eye Blind swagger.  Rolling snares and bam-bam rhythms lead you in and carry you like a wave from verse to verse.  The slurred lilt of the vocals are so instantaneously familiar that I had little trouble singing along not just on the first listen, but even at the first iteration of a chorus.  Then again, I was a pretty big fan.

Weren’t we all?  Who among us, born on the far side of the great divide that is the year 1990, wouldn’t hop on board at the first chord of Jumper?  Thank your lucky red stars, because fully a third of Ursa Major could have coasted into the Top 20 at the end of the last millenium.  Not to delude you; without the full promotional force of a major label (they recorded on their own as Mega Collider Records), these singles won’t see multi-platinum sales.  Besides, kids today are much more taken by their angry Seethers and their dreamy Jason Mrazs.

But the punchline is missing.  The melodies are what we all want, but this was supposed to be an intellectual firestarter!  Members of the Assembly may dissent, but what I heard was less a call to action and more what I’ll label “forward-dating.”

Through lyrics that remain as fluid and deft as ever, Stephan Jenkins has attempted to emphasize that he is here and now.  Explicit references to online dating, flat screen tv, and mp3 players appear distinctly unromantic amidst the surrounding metaphors and emotional outpours.  An entire song about “trying to flip butch chicks” and (elsewhere) an isolated mention of “Africa where life is cheap” might equally elicit groans from apathetics who find vocal activists oppressive.  Opening the cd case, you run into an advertisement for Third Eye Blind ringtones before you find the cd itself.  But all of these prove to the listener when Ursa Major was written.  Right now.

The Assembly – in fact, the overall intent and form of 3eb.com – now makes perfect sense.  Third Eye Blind is not retrieving the roots of political rock and roll by emerging from their hiatus reborn as Bob Dylan in three persons.  Instead, they’re eschewing the traditional way in which musicians relate to the public.  This record wants to kick off a new era; not of what music is, but of how it is communicated.

Thoroughly modern issues feature alongside buzzwords that are neutral but strictly contemporary in order to engage the listener.  We are meant to feel that Ursa Major is our album.  And to leave posterity with no doubt as to the exact date of its release, Jenkins sings: “Wanna be hustler school M.I.A. / Make a paper plane and then you fly away,” a shout out to last year’s multi-platinum single.  He even slips in “I’m your mega collider” which, as I mentioned, is the band’s invented label.

Finally, notice that the website tries to use open membership and encourage blogging and forum posts in order to hand over the reins of Third Eye Blind’s web presence to the fans.  This is our album, because the focal points of our daily lives make guest appearances in the songs.  This is our website, because we provide 95% of the content, unedited.  This is our time, defined.

Maybe, I thought.

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U2 – How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb (2004): I prefer the U2 that drops bombs

September 12, 2009 By 1 Comment

Today marks the beginning of the second leg of U2′s 360° Tour and the tour’s first shows in America.  In honor of such an occasion, let’s examine U2′s biggest hiccup and an effort from a band who will be opening for several shows of this leg, Muse.

HTDAAB: Not even the cover art inspires hope.
HTDAAB: Not even the cover art inspires hope.

 

Rating: 2 1/2 stars (out of five)

Having successfully entered their third decade together with 2000’s acclaimed All That You Can’t Leave Behind, U2 may have been forgiven for thinking they didn’t have any challenges left.  Having already changed up their sound enough times to stay relevant and popular for over 20 years, they’d silenced the Pop naysayers and once more inserted themselves into the national consciousness.

Such contentment, indeed, may be responsible for the limpness of How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb.  Despite arriving after what was to date the longest layoff of the band’s career, Bomb represents the most uninspired, superficial, and, quite frankly, boring record they’ve ever made.  They’ve lost both the interesting sound of their past and the songs themselves (ATYCLB at least had the latter).  The unfair reaction to Pop has apparently compelled U2 to distance themselves from their experimental 90s as much as possible, but in the process they’ve forgotten what made them great.  AllMusic Guide hit the nail on the head in saying, “They’ve overcorrected for their perceived sins, scaling back their sound so far that they have shed the murky sense of mystery that gave The Unforgettable Fire and The Joshua Tree an otherworldly allure.”   

The sound on Bomb, thus, invokes generic, meat-and-potatoes rock that has never, ever been U2’s specialty.  Producer Steve Lillywhite was behind the boards for the taut and fierce War, but now that they don’t write songs with the passion of “Sunday Bloody Sunday” or “Like a Song…” the straight-ahead production doesn’t serve them well.  The songs need the post-punk influences evident on Boy, the wintry atmospherics of The Unforgettable Fire, the wide-open desert feel of The Joshua Tree, or the danceable but dark stylings of Achtung Baby, Zooropa, and Pop.  They don’t do meat-and-potatoes well, at least not anymore.  The Edge isn’t captivating enough, nor is Bono, who’s voice has never sounded worse and yet is placed too far forward in the mix.

Meanwhile, the rhythm section is relegated to the distant back, as Lillywhite and the band have apparently forgotten that most of U2’s best songs feature memorable contributions from bassist Adam Clayton and/or drummer Larry Mullen Jr.  At the end of the first verse of “Miracle Drug,” you can feel the rhythm section trying to kick in, but they’re buried too deeply in the mix that you can hardly hear them over Bono’s cries.

Yet, as ATYCLB proved, sonic innovation is not a pre-requisite for a successful album, but this collection of tracks is without question the weakest U2 has ever put forth.  The songs lack heart and energy, relying on recycled sounds and those repetitive bridge solos.  “A Man and a Woman” informs us—in case anyone was still straddling that fence—that U2 should never attempt an R&B crossover.  Everyone sloughs his way through the turgid “Love and Peace”; and “One Step Closer” and “Yahweh” have neither the lyrics nor the melody to justify their instrumental minimalism.  

Our esteemed frontman, for his part, does little to quell concern (at least in myself) that his ever-increasing amounts of public activism have degraded the band’s music.  The band has acknowledged that Bono’s studio time has decreased over the past few years; and although they claim that his absence isn’t a problem, he—not the Edge or anyone else—is the band’s heart and soul.  Without him in top form, little else matters.      

None of this is to say that Bomb is unlistenable.  Indeed, the feeling provoked by a casual listen easily supersedes the lingering, unpleasant aftertaste.  “City of Blinding Lights” is so far and away the standout that it feels as though it belongs on different album, a gorgeous, elegiac song the likes of which they’ve never written before.  “Miracle,” about a paraplegic former high school classmate of the band who was able to write poems with the help of drugs, features similarly pretty chiming guitars and an ecstatic-sounding bridge.  Yet, besides “City,” all the pleasures here are moderate—“Vertigo” may get your toe tapping, but its best environment remains that fantastic 30-second iPod commercial; “Crumbs From Your Table” pleasantly meanders; and “Original of the Species” has the album’s prettiest melody but suffers from its words. 

Indeed, though I would take stronger melodies for a start, Bono’s lyrics unquestionably dampen the album, as he spits out lines that make you want to tear your hair out.  The subtlety and genuine emotion from earlier in his career have been completely wiped away.  Nonsense lyrics are fine on “Vertigo,” but by the time you’ve heard “Freedom has a scent / Like the top of a newborn baby’s head,” or “Some things you shouldn’t get too good at / Like smiling, crying, or celebrity,” or found Bono trying to rhyme choice and tortoise, romance and distance, you’ll want out.  (What, exactly, would be wrong with being too good at smiling?)  13 years ago, he wrote on “So Cruel,” “I gave you everything you wanted / It wasn’t what you wanted.”  Now, he writes “I’ll give you everything you want / Except the thing that you want.”  The first is poignant; the second, faux profound and merely contradictory.
 
The most surprising misfire, however, is “Sometimes You Can’t Make it On Your Own,” the ballad written in memorial of Bono’s late father that took up the most studio time and garnered the most hype.  For Bono, and some fans, it was the heart of the album, but it’s remarkably uninviting.  Their love songs now all sound too calculated and safe, lacking the quality lyrics and/or musical elements necessary to ensnare the listener.  It’s hard to say whether U2 will ever find that part of themselves again.  One can only hope they haven’t completely lost the desire to be different—an ambition that took them to the top in the first place.

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Muse – Absolution (2003): I still feel dirty

September 12, 2009 By 1 Comment

absolution 

Rating: 2 1/2 stars (out of five)

You can’t read eight words on Allmusic’s biography of Muse without reaching the word Radiohead; and given lead singer Matthew Bellamy’s obvious love for Thom Yorke, that’s not a surprise.  Musically, though, Absolution, the band’s third album, doesn’t really resemble any Radiohead discs.  There are hints of The Bends here, but with its dark stylings and heavy dose of drama, Absolution reminded me more of Placebo.  The problem, though, is that Muse, a relatively unknown band quickly gaining in prominence, sounds like Radiohead- and Placebo-lite, without the skill to transcend their influences. 

Absolution is filled with Bellamy’s paranoid and stark observations about the future of the world lined up next to the band’s oppressive sound.  The two forces fit each other, there’s no doubt about that, but the combination just doesn’t work.  This is largely because the music, and the production, sounds horribly claustrophobic.  The songs are not allowed to breathe whatsoever, and by mid-way through the album, the listener craves a break.  More talented bands and producers have created albums that are depressive and/or haunting, to be sure, but here Muse miss that target and end up sounding swampy and muddled.  The production further becomes a problem because there is very little melody anywhere to be found here; these two facts leave Muse playing intense but indistinctive and sludgy rock.

Fans of alternative rock may find enough to like here, especially on “Time is Running Out” and “Falling Away With You,” but repeated listens reveal too many imperfections in the songs and the lyrics.  Tracks like “Stockholm Syndrome” arrest attention on first listens, but after a while they don’t seem to hold together, simply fading away into irrelevance in the listener’s mind.  “Blackout” sounds appealing at first, but by the end of the song, Bellamy’s words starts to grate.  He moans uber-pessimistic lines like “This love’s too good to last” without ever really telling us why.  “I’m too old to change”—really?

Elsewhere, he rants that “This is the end of the world!” and “The end is all I can see,” which represent the tone of the entire album, but none of it registers much of an emotional impact.  As “Blackout” makes clear, Bellamy doesn’t take the next step of telling us why he’s so paranoid, what makes him so pessimistic, what perspective he can offer us besides apocalyptic visions.  He also slips up lyrically on “Falling Away,” where a multitude of absolutist clichés (“I’ll love whatever you become”; “I know I won’t forget a thing”; “All of the hopes we cherished fade”) de-mystify an otherwise stately song.

“Time is Running Out” deserves keeping around, possessing both a melody and a skillful build of tension.  The mischievous lyrics—easily the album’s best—express that undeniable but often unexplainable interest in unstable relationships (“You’re something beautiful, a contradiction / I wanna play the game, I want the friction”). They’re less successful at relating to the album’s overall theme (as expressed in the song’s chorus and title) that we’re all doomed, as Bellamy likely wanted them to, but they work in the four engrossing minutes of the song.

But ultimately, Absolution, despite being just 12 earnest songs (two brief Morning Glory-style instrumentals not included), feels overwhelmingly long, a fact traceable to the oppressive sound and unmemorable songs.  Rolling Stone’s Album Guide describes an album by Scott Walker as “top-heavy with pretentious abstraction, self-consciously difficult and often actively unpleasant,” which sums up my feelings on Absolution pretty much to a T.  In small doses, Muse’s music works better, but they have a long way to go before an entire album is worth listening to.

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Jupiter Sunrise, Band X, and the Wooden Beam in Your Eye

August 27, 2009 By 2 Comments

Pop rock is a huge umbrella. Elton John, Something Corporate, Kelly Clarkson, Fall Out Boy, and Jason Mraz all play pop rock. It’s pop music (melody-driven music with catchy hooks that prominently features vocals and follows expectable structures) with rock instrumentation (a lead guitarist/keyboardist and his sidekick rhythm guitarist/keyboardist riding over a bass guitar under the direction of a drummer). Pop rock is a perfectly good term that, while it truly isn’t the largest branch of music, encompasses a vast share of today’s radio playlists. By contrast, terms such as “alternative”, “emo”, and “indie” have been applied willy-nilly to anyone and everyone and thus stretched beyond utility.

Jupiter Sunrise plays pop rock. I gave the explanation above so that you could understand two things from such a simple classification — because a good description of any band will include labeling them with one or several genres, and it’s important to know what to do with that information. When I say Jupiter Sunrise plays pop rock, you should first recognize that they will probably sound “just like Band X” to you. They have elements in common with every other pop rock band. Odds are they’ve got 90% in common with at least one other band, if not bunches.

But this band’s name is Jupiter Sunrise, and copyright lawyers tell me that proves that this band is unique. So the second thing to realize is that they don’t play the same songs as Band X. Their songs might fit perfectly on an album by Band X and vice versa. But the bands have different members and different songs. Even having 90% in common means being 10% unique.

Without question, the most important lesson ever driven through my head was that people use music differently. Some people use music for energy while they jog, some people need a beat to bump ‘n grind to, and I study best when I’ve got the post-metal stylings of Pelican keeping me company.

In conversation, these preferences of use are often expressed as judgments of quality. Someone who never plays sports might say that Remember the Name by Fort Minor is “a bad song.” A teenage sophomore who drives her father’s mustang to high school in Orange County might say that “country is crap.” This is a misrepresentation below the level of consciousness. The truth is that the way someone uses music guides the parts of music they pay attention to.

Hip-hop does not stereotypically focus on building original melodies out of notes. (Not to say that it doesn’t happen; but notice that one common recourse is the use of sampled melodies to complement original content.) What if you like adding your voice to soaring soprano choruses on long road trips, not bobbing your body to the rhythm of a spoken beat?  Dismissing the genre as something short of real music is naive at best.  Recognizing that the strength of the genre lies in elements you instinctively ignore gives you insight into why anybody ever tunes in to that station.

So if the 10% that is unique about Jupiter Sunrise is the 10% that you are most aware of as you listen – because it is the 10% most relevant to a way in which you use music – then you will find them much more unique. If your personal focus lies elsewhere, then they might sound to you 100% like Band X, because the differences are not of a kind that naturally registers with you as you listen.

This same rule applies, of course, to whichever friend of yours (or whichever professional critic) is describing the band to you. This is the most crucial bias of which you must be aware, both in the speaker and in yourself. This puts things into perspective and explains how all of a band’s fans can seem so stupid and wrong when you hear the music for yourself.

It is the purpose of a review, or casual explanation, to draw up comparisons and contrasts and thus examine the whole of a band. But the most interesting part tends to be that unique 10%, so a lot of words are spent identifying something that a large number of people will autonomously overlook.

That is today’s lesson. Now, quickly, I present: Jupiter Sunrise – Under a Killer Blue Sky (or Heavy Things).

Mark Houlihan and Ben Karis each wrote about half of the songs on this album and each guy sings his own songs, giving Jupiter Sunrise a split personality. Mark has low songs with a gleam of hope and writes personal lyrics:

I went up to John St. Park and there I met an old lady feeding ducks. The back of her hand had been bleeding and she didn’t even know it. She told me I’d be more handsome if I smiled. So we talked about the weather, she told me about her family and she said I should meet her granddaughter, and I smiled.

Ben has happy songs with a twist of wistful and writes stories:

We’re wondering what you’re thinking, Arthur Nix. ‘Cause ever since you rode your bike into that car and were quickly whisked away by ambulance, you’ve been so pensive and quiet. Did your arm heal faster than your heart did, Arthur?

Each has his own distinct, but pop-rock-certified, vocal style. Jupiter Sunrise’s forte is in giving each verse and chorus a different feel through instrumentation and arrangement while the vocals show little variance within each song. Typically, not just the volume but the rhythm, style, or number of instruments playing will be dynamic during a verse, and the next verse will be a novel variation on the same organic idea. There’s plenty of instrumental play in intros and interludes as well. Oh, and it’s worth noting that this is a guitar band – keyboards make a minor appearance on each of two tracks and are otherwise absent.

Jupiter Sunrise laid low for years after UKBS, their only true album to date. Recently they’ve popped up for a few live shows. A Twitter acount christened in April 2009 and occasional new songs on their myspace stand as signs of new progress. However, the lineup listed on their website has two different categories for “current members” and “members who played on Under a Killer Blue Sky.” So it’s possible that they are an entirely different band now than they were five years ago when UKBS was made.

Who knows, maybe they’ll sound the same. Their currently defunct website once told me that all four band members were vegan, so maybe change is good.

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