Music
Section By Jeb D.
THE FINAL FRONTIER
Iron Maiden
I suppose if metal is going to remain associated with adolescent fantasy wish-fulfillment, better kings and talismans than the endless drone of suicide and rape that fuels a lot of what I have to listen to every week to prepare this column. Bruce Dickinson gives with the shrieks and sobs, and Murray and company deliver the expected ration of power chords with arpeggios signaling impending doom. There’s less pointless slash-and-burn to the expert guitar work than is the case with so many of their peers: these guys know exactly where every solo is headed. It’s almost as though they let cover model Eddie and his monstrous pals handle the juvenile aggression and grossout aspect of things, so they can just get on with the music.
NO BETTER THAN THIS
John Mellencamp
On the upside, John Mellencamp is as sincere as the day is long. Downside? He pushes. Guy can’t help himself. So he can’t simply accept the inevitability of his move out of the pop music spotlight (“I am done being a rock star,” he proclaims, with no trace of irony), he has to aggressively go the opposite way by not only once more recruiting T-Bone Burnett to get him all rootsy, he has to cut this new album live, in a series of venues associated with great musicians of the past (just going to Sun Studios isn’t enough– he has to go to an actual hotel room where Robert Johnson recorded!)… and records the damn thing in mono! Age and wear have thickened his voice appropriately, and it’s virtually impossible for Burnett to turn out an album that doesn’t sound great, so fans of T-Bone’s recent efforts with Plant or Costello will find this easy on the ears. But as a songwriter, Mellencamp’s always been too derivative for his own good, and his noble social intentions are expressed in on-the-nose lyrics that range from forgettable to condescending. It’s really pretty simple: you try to cut him some slack–he means well– but he aspires to a place in the rock hierarchy that his talent just doesn’t warrant. Not a crime, but not a compelling reason to buy his albums, either.
CATCHING A TIGER
Lissie
Anyone can try to ape the Ramones’ punk sound, but it takes a sharp ear to actually lift one of their melodies (“Stranger”). Elsewhere, this Brit-transplanted corn-fed Midwestern blonde is the beach girl of Brian Wilson’s dreams with some U.K. snap laid atop the California sun; she’s even got some of Wilson’s wacked-out sensibility (“Record Collector” suggests that a female God should be keeping better track of things, and includes my favorite stanza of the week: “There I was with a choir of bees / They were all a-buzz / Oh my, how amusing“). There’s also a more polished sheen to the production than on her somewhat folkier-sounding EP from last year. Given the assembly line of corporate pop thrushes that advances upon us almost weekly, it’s nice to hear someone who can deliver the fun of pop without lowest-common-denominator tedium.
BRIAN WILSON REIMAGINES GERSHWIN
Brian Wilson
Given that Wilson once wrote a song positing a more or less direct lineage from Gregorian Chant to rock and roll, you don’t naturally trust him to step outside his established pop strengths. And, at first, you think this is going to be a dismissable experiment as a vocalise snatch of “Rhapsody in Blue” gives way to “The Like I Love in You,” one of two songs Wilson wrote around song fragments that the Gershwin estate let him have; it’s musically a bit bland, and lyrically Wilson at his most awkwardly hippy-dippy. But just as you’re about to give up on the project, Wilson wraps his voice around a sublime version of “Summertime.” I wouldn’t put it past the guy to engage in a bit of studio trickery, but whether it’s some kind of manipulation, or just good living, his voice sounds stronger and more supple than it has in years, stressing the song’s melancholy opposition of lyric and melody. Even stronger is “I Loves You Porgy,” from a time when gender-switching narrative in music was unremarkable. And while the rest of the album has both weak points and strong, Wilson’s singing is a consistent delight. There’s a few places where the arrangements sound right out of the Frankie Valli playbook, but there’s plenty of musical delight and sheer off-the-wall invention: “‘S Wonderful” is a sleek Bossa Nova; “Someone to Watch Over Me” bounces along like a missing b-side from Summer Days (And Summer Nights!), “I’ve Got A Crush On You,” is lush doo-wop, and the album peaks in a cascade of Beach Boys harmonies on “I Got Rhythm.” Maybe my favorite is the bubbling, joyous instrumental version of “I Got Plenty of Nuttin;” which would have fit perfectly at the end of Pet Sounds. Over and over Wilson freshens these chestnuts, putting his own stamp on them every bit as much as Ella Fitzgerald or Frank Sinatra ever did.
Other Noteworthy 8/17 Releases
NOFX, Longest EP. The jokes were always better than the music, but, then, the jokes were pretty strong, as was their nakedly humanistic outlook. Here’s the band’s history neatly summed up in a couple of dozen tracks, with an extra batch of rare/previously-unreleased stuff.
Karen Lovely, Still The Rain. Producer/songwriter Dennis Walker, who helped craft distinctive musical personalities for both Robert Cray and Bettye Lavette, takes on a woman he calls “the most talented singer I have been associated with since my early days with Robert Cray.” And she’s absolutely got the pipes; still working on the personality, though: near as I can tell, she’s a bad mama. Noted. And…?
American Hi-Fi, Fight the Frequency. Can’t wait a few weeks for the new Goo Goo Dolls? This should tide you over: earnest, somewhat catchy, occasionally toe-tapping. The best part? According to Amazon, this group possesses “A breadth and vision nearly untouched in modern jazz except by the likes of Wayne Shorter and Bill Frisell.” So there’s that.
Hey Monday, Beneath It All. The most remarkable thing about this album is its description as “pop-punk.” Singer/songwriter Cassadee Pope strikes me as being about as “punk,” as iCarly, and not quite as interesting.
Toadies, Feeler. Whether or not (as the band suggests) it was a crime against art that this album was rejected by its initial label, it crunches along just fine in its post-grunge mode, and even includes a fond tip of the hat to Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms.
Nils, What The Funk?. When a guy is described has having been nominated as “Best Jazz Guitarist for the American Smooth Jazz Awards in 2010,” do I really need to tell you what the album sounds like? He tosses in “Sara Smile” for you covers collectors.
Eliza Carthy & Norma Waterson, Gift. Waterson is arguably the greatest folk singer Britain ever produced; Carthy, her daughter, inherited all the right genes. The material ranges from familiar folk (“Wayfaring Stranger”) to the vintage weirdness of the English music hall (“Boston Burglar”), and never attempts to compromise or update its sound; it’s a bracing shot of historic musical tradition.
Boris & Ian Astbury, BXI. Because The Cult were just too poppy.
Esperanza Spalding, Chamber Music Society.”Chamber music” defined as modern trio jazz underlying one of the most technically amazing and annoyingly showoff vocalists since Minnie Ripperton.
Filter, The Trouble With Angels. New guitarist = comeback? No reason why not: it’s as hard-hitting as the band has ever sounded, with a few years of raised eyebrows and added perspective (“Drink it, take it, snort it, smoke it… every little thing I love about it“).
John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers, So Many Roads. You can argue that Mayall only released two genuinely great albums in his career (Bluesbreakers and The Turning Point, and I might be over-valuing the latter). Which is why forty years of cherry-picking is no bad thing. I’ll grant that the point could probably have been made with half as many tracks, but the guy who, among other things, helped Clapton find himself, birthed the rhythm section of Fleetwood Mac, and gave the Stones the natural successor to Brian Jones is worth the time, even if there’s a helluva lot of pretty basic I-IV-V going on here. Plus, with four disks to work with, there’s room for such discoveries as the funky wah-wah on “No Reply” and the seven-minute rant of “Television Eye” that would have been omitted from a more selective overview. Still, for all his historic importance, Mayall has been out of whatever limelight he was ever in for some time now, so a bit of a price break would have been welcome.