Friday, January 27, 2012

Reflections From 2011 the Pearl Jam Edition: Vs./Vitalogy/Live from the Orpheum Theater/20

2011 was a year of numerous anniversaries. U2 celebrated Achtung Baby's twentieth anniversary. BloodSugarSexMagic by the Red Hot Chili Peppers should have. The Strokes' Is This It is offically ten years old. But one band seemed to be more celebratory than the others. Pearl Jam released 20, a documentary with an accompanying soundtrack and book as well as the re-issues of Vs., Vitalogy and the heretofore unreleased Live at the Orpheum Theater, Boston, April 12, 1994. As such, that's a lot of material to cover and material that should be covered wholesale, not piecemeal. As a band, they took the longview and in order to truly appreciate it, you should too.

I myself saw Pearl Jam live four times over the course of their first ten years. I can easily say that two of those shows were brilliant- better, even, than most bands have a right to be. The other two were quite possibly some of the most incredible experiences I've ever witnessed. One because of the fans. The other because it changed my life. That was October 1993. I was a freshman in high school. Vs. had just come out and I, like a lot of my peers, would start a garage band not much later.
At times, it's hard to explain the view we held of Seattle. You kind of had to be there and even if you were, chances were good you couldn't stand me or my ilk. Still, Seattle came to be a cultural mecca for a generation of us garage brats as we were convinced that it was natural, a right even, to have local scenes. Additionally, we were convinced that scenes were built to be co-ops in which all bands took an interest in seeing it succeed. Competition was encouraged, sure, but so was solidarity and brotherhood and communion.

It's close to twenty years later, and even though I spend less and less time in the garage, I'm still clearly affected by this time in my life. I hear it in the isolated but gleeful ennui of James Murphy's LCD Soundsystem. I feel it in the kick drums of Gogol Bordello's gypsy punk. I drink to it with every beer soaked chorus by the Hold Steady. For better or worse, Pearl Jam and their comtemporaries fixed an ideal in my head and my heart as to what music was supposed to be. For better or worse, they made music my religion and I, for better or worse, am still devoted.

Unlike my other obsessions (see U2, R.E.M., the Clash), I witnessed the construction of the mythology from the ground floor up. There was no catching up to the current album or navelgazing about missing the band after the fact. Pearl Jam was, by comparison, a contagion for which we had no anti-bodies and I caught the fever for the first album just in time to get excited about the second one. With twenty years hindsight, it seems more like being on hand to watch a controlled demolition in reverse. With Vs. and Vitalogy, of course, being the dynamite and blasting caps.

Given the monolithic enormity of Ten's impact, it's easy to forget what a fireball of an album Vs. really was. Looking back, though, it's easy to see how this album reperesented any number of things; a band on top of the world but uncomfortable with their position, a band unwilling to sell out or compromise, a band determined to grow something sustainable out of a fleeting opportunity. More than anything, however, this was a furious and defiant reckoning for the lost souls that populated Ten. Where Ten sought guidance, Vs. offered only retribution and a settling of scores. The old ways didn't work anymore and the only way forward was armed with youth and hope. Eddie Vedder would go on to say as much on "Leash."

"Delight in our youth," he snarled just breaths after screaming "Drop the leash, we are young, get out of my fucking face." As missions statements go, it was less than taciturn. But as anthems go, it was the feathered cap for an album full of anthems written by a band at war with everything. From the first invocation of Nemesis in "Go," the band rails at each other ("Animal"), conservative politics ("Glorified G"), the establishment ("WMA"), our parents ("Daughter"), the media ("Blood"), human nature ("Rats") and the past ("Rearviewmirror").

None of this would have been possible if not for the addition of drummer Dave Abbruzzese. His style was more refined than predecessor Dave Krusen and more explosive than successor Jack Irons. Only (current drummer) Matt Cameron has ever offered so much potential and, even then, it's impossible to imagine another drummer who could have filled the kit so capably when Pearl Jam lived with their backs to the wall.

The addition of Brendan O'Brien as a producer is also worth noting here. He brought a clarity and focus to these records that was missing from Ten. Whereas Ten opened with the murky "Music for Cows" before exploding into "Once," Vs. started immediately with a muscular hi-hat/snare workout by Abbruzzese. Propulsively taut, it clearly defined the agenda for the next twelve tracks.

Lyrically, however, the old modus operandi of Ten would still rear its head from time to time. "Daughter," certainly the biggest song from the album, underscored the wounded isolation of adolescence with a knowing sense that liberation comes with time. Given the longing regret of "Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town," however, one had to wonder if that sense was wrong. But the most compelling character of the album had to be Vedder himself as he defined his agenda (and that of the band's) in "Indifference."

"How much difference does it make," he asked repeatedly to no consequence. The question was rhetorical as "Indifference" was not an ode to apathy. It was a clear manifesto that no matter what he endured, he would not be stopped, he would be heard. It was as defiant as "Leash" before it in the knowledge that youth's optimism trumps all if you demand it.
Vitalogy arrived doggedly on the heels of Vs. at little more than a year later. In this time, Kurt Cobain's body was found dead from a self inflicted gunshot wound. With Nirvana effectively ended, expectations from the media and fans grew to epic proportions and nobody bore the brunt of this more than Pearl Jam. Vitalogy delivered a lyrical meditation on mortality, suffused with religious and historical imagery that bore heavy implications of temptation and personal loss. It was impossible at the time to ignore the spectre of Kobain and, to a large degree, Seattle as a scene.

Despite being Pearl Jam's strongest debut yet, the album was deemed more dour than usual and the band seemed more miserable. One couldn't help but start to wonder if the engine was throwing rods. Initially, what seemed like a creative struggle between Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament on Vs. soon turned out to be friction between Vedder and Abbruzzese. And while that conflict defined Vs. in combustive ways, it was starting to wear thin.

It was starting to become clear that this wasn't a band. It was a creative warzone with the largest conflict taking place between Eddie and the world at large. Pushing back against the demands of fame, Vedder's lyrics centered around individuality and self determination. Musically, he was just as determined to confound when he pushed the band's hard but radio friendly sound straight into hardcore abrasiveness.

The effectiveness of "Spin the Black Circle" and "Tremor Christ," a split lead-off single, invited scrutiny. But as a harbinger of the weirdness to come, their efficacy left no doubt. "Spin the Black Circle" was a hardcore thrash anthem to the lost love of vinyl and "Tremor Christ" was built around serrated guitar chords, martial drum beats and Mephistophelian imagery. Nevermind that there were actual ballads on the album like "Betterman." Who needed a hit when you had song sketches like "Pry To," "Bugs," "Aye Davenita" and "Foxymophandlemama?"

Unlike later experiments that would reveal Vedder as a hidden Talking Heads fan, these songs were solely disruptive- they were the sound of the band pumping the brakes on their rocket to stardom. Had theses songs actually been excised, Vitalogy could have been a truly dynamic modern rock masterpiece. Balanced between their "man" ballads ("Better" and "Nothing"), their full throttle rockers ("Spin the Black Circle," the pro-choice "Whipping") and their anti-fame anthems ("Not For You" and "Courdoroy"), Vitalogy could have easily lived up to the 1-2 punch of their first two records.

Internally, this was the true emergence of Eddie the guitarist. The possibility of Pearl Jam as a three headed guitar monster had been suggested on Vs. with "Rearviewmirror" but Vitalogy made that a reality with Vedder deciding more of the band's direction. Morose, anti-social and just plain weird, his agenda seemed clear: find another bandwagon, posers, this one is being circled by the pure of heart, the punk rock faithful, the kids. And as erratic as his direction may have seemed at the time, he revealed it to be more than petulance in album's defining anthem "Not For You."

"All that's sacred comes from youth," he sang half pleading, half testifying, "dedications, naive and true... I still remember. Why don't you?"

The fifteen year old in me took this to heart and still remembers. As a result, this is the Pearl Jam that I remember most fondly- the one that took herculean efforts to keep the world at bay while simultaneously shouldering all of its burdens and occasionally bitching about it. This is the Pearl Jam that changed my life, that set the expectation to be young and daring. And while I mean no disrespect to the group or their subsequent artistic visions, this was a dangerous, unpredictable and inspirational Pearl Jam. Which is why, of course, they couldn't last. Abbruzzese was fired, Jack Irons was hired, Jack Irons quit, Matt Cameron joined and a few albums were made that never came close to selling what they used to. But for a time, they got to be the Who.

Live at the Orpheum Theatre is a pretty accurate reflection of that band. It's also a pretty accurate reflection of how I and many other music obsessed, angst riddled teens remember that band in our hearts. As teens, we voraciously traded bootleg after bootleg amongst ourselves and the inclusion of both "Sonic Reducer" and "Fucking Up" is a gracious mea culpa to that. They may not be studio versions, but beggars can hardly be choosers, especially when those beggars have rubbed the heads off their old tape decks.

Pearl Jam has always been a phenomenal live experience and there are numerous live albums that will testify to that much. But this is the crucible that made them so. And while most bands aspire to playing as if their lives depend on it, this is one of the few bands that I actually believed were. Certainly, they were the only ones that I worried about afterward. Their playing was violently cathartic, like kids pushing their joyride into the red and beyond. They pushed on regardless of whether or not they could turn the corner, forget about what was beyond it. As high wire acts go, they were the most thrilling one out there and, now, all the more so for having survived the experience.

As such, Live at the Orpheum Theatre is a nice postcard from the bootlegs that defined my adolescence almost as much as the music that was on them. Recorded between Vs. and Vitalogy, it covers a period of the band that has never really been captured on their live releases to date. Pearl Jam's major label live release was more like a greatest hits package live and the band was still a few years away from recording and releasing bootlegs of their own shows.
When they made the decision to record and commercially release their own shows, they effectively legitimized the bootleg culture in a way that not even the Grateful Dead had managed to. As a result, Cameron Crowe's love letter to the band, 20, had an incredibly deep well to draw from for live recordings.

Crowe's love affair with the group goes way back to their beginning. He interviewed the band for their first Rolling Stone cover and this was after he cast them as Citizen Dick in Singles. Emotionally invested from the start, Crowe makes 20 more than a soundtrack to its namesake documentary and book. Stocked with live performances and demos, it could easily be seen as the ultimate insider's bootleg. But Crowe, their biggest and oldest fan, goes beyond that to lovingly deliver the ultimate mixtape to his brethren.

As an overview, 20 becomes the Mother Teresa of lost singles as it makes compelling case after case for songs that may have fallen flat or just to the side on previous records. In particular, Binaural's live take on "Nothing As It Seems" opens up in a smoldering fashion. "Faithful," "Thumbing My Way" and "Just Breathe" show a mature band capable of functioning without the sturm und drang that they once made so fashionable. Every fan has a favorite that never got the proper time or attention and Cameron Crowe has compiled them all here.

It would be cynical to suggest "Crown of Thorns" as the obvious selling point for 20 but, then again, it would be naive not to. There's a certain mythological wish fulfillment that arrives with Vedder singing the most celebrated song of the tragic MotherLoveBone. Frankly, they were never my cup of tea to begin with as I was too young to see the irony of Andrew Wood's GnR rock poses. That being said, "Crown of Thorns" is the obvious sellling point here. It's the only performance you'll find of Vedder singing the song and it serves as a nice reminder of what a nuanced singer he is.

The other song that jumps out on this collection is "Black" from their appearance on MTV Unplugged. It's opening chords are instantly memorable as that specific performance is well weathered and burned into my brain. What was Michael Stipe mumbleese on record became very clear and real in performance if not absolutely gutwrenching. Here was a man, ripping his heart out and baring for all to see as he wailed "we belong together." In one heartbreaking performance, he brought a sincere if not cathartic pathos to a whole generation. The ideal of how not to sell out was congealed in our hormone addled, confused and collective consciousness.

I imagine it was a turning point for them as artists as much as it was for me as a listener. The eventual payoff of playing Unplugged is easy to hear in the anthems of "Daughter," "Elderly Woman in a Small Town" and the Sweet Relief rarity "Crazy Mary." This was grunge?

Looking back on the records that I loved as a teen makes me think back to the joy of discovering my father's old records. It makes me wonder if there's a comparable joy to teens today. And I don't mean to gloat, but then a part of me wonders if they're capable of handling our old records at all or if their little teenage hearts would be atomised by the rampant emotion of it all. Mine was. And because I remember the power of hearing those records for the first time, it still is.

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

BLACKOUT


Hi. I know today is a pretty contentious day for a lot of us that live here on the internet. So let's speak plainly for a moment.

I like stuff. A lot of stuff. A lot of weird stuff as some of you who have been reading here can probably attest to. And I pay for all of it. All of it.

Why? Glad you asked.

Because I like my weird stuff. Let me use a recent subject as an example: the Twilight Singers. Chances are, a good portion of you are here because you followed a link to my page from their Facebook feed (for which, I thank you Twilight Singers and thank you internet for all the love). I anxiously look forward to every release Greg Dulli and company put out- whether its the Twilights, the Gutter Twins, the Afghan Whigs or some other project. I know its going to be an enjoyable allocation of my resources. And because I made my contribution to the cause, its a little more likely that everyone doesn't have to go back to a shitty dayjob. They get to make music a little longer and I get to enjoy it and so on and so forth. Its like the opposite of a vicious cycle. Its like, let's say, an awesome cycle.

So. Do it. Buy the download, buy the album, buy the t-shirt. You're investing in something you love.

End of lecture.

As for the government: please, do not be so disingenuous as to think that any of us believe you're doing this for anybody other than big money interests. Nobody believes, for a moment, that this is going to be beneficial to the "artistic" class (or any other class for that matter) that has garnered so much attention with Occupy Wall Street, et al. You have stacked one more card in favor of those that already have unimaginable amounts of power. You have turned our country into a "battleground." You are legislating the populace to death. And you have been lucky that the populace has been patient.

But I have to ask, what have you done FOR us, lately?

More Reflections from 2011, the R.E.M. Edition: Part Lies, Part Heart, Part Truth, Part Garbage 1982-2011

I hesitate to start off by committing assault and battery on a dead horse but, honestly, digression has never been my strong suit.

The manner in which R.E.M. broke up earlier this year has yet to cease shocking and amazing me but, more to the point, it horrifies me beyond belief. It's the music nerd equivalent to the existential crisis that is watching one of your parents die peacefully after a long and happy life. As opposed to the usual acrimony that is a band's breakup, this is not the long and drawn out divorce that takes place long after the homefires have cooled and the knives have been drawn. Even in the face of diminishing sales, we always assume that our most beloved of bands will simply fade into the ether at some point, returning only to release a new album once or twice a decade before they trot out "Satisfaction" for the umpteenth time on the road.

The truth is, it never even occurred to me that bands can amicably shake hands, call it a day and have dinner later without the impetus of a business disguised as music. It's a gutsy thing, to be sure, and all the more daring because it doesn't involve holding out to the last breath when nobody cares and everybody hates each other. But more than that, it sets a troubling precedent for this fan who likes a number of bands with longer careers behind them than in front. One can only imagine that U2 is somewhere in Dublin releasing a huge sigh of relief.

"That's it," Larry Mullen is exclaiming as he wipes the sweat from his brow, "They've done it. We can quit now!"

Admittedly, R.E.M. failed to pack the punch they used to both commercially and creatively. But even their duff albums had more gems than most and it's a sad reality now that I can no longer look forward to discovering them. As sad as I feel about this, the far reaching implications are even more grim. R.E.M. paved a number of paths in their career. People forget that they're the band that made it cool to be indie, made it okay to sell out and made sense out of touring only when they wanted to. Now, they're the band that have made it okay to call it a day for no reason other than wanting to. Could U2, who have blazed a very parallel path, be far behind? Could Radiohead and Pearl Jam, both bands that took notes on the self determination of the Athens Four, also see the point in calling it quits? As a music fan who came of age in the Alternative market boom, R.E.M.'s retirement looms apocalyptically large over my record collection.

As a lovely parting gift, however, they've left us with Part Lies Part Heart Part Truth Part Garbage 1982-2011. It spans forty tracks, thirty-seven of which have been previously released and three that have not. It follows them from their independent days at I.R.S. to their last hurrahs at Warner Bros. And as hard as it is to sum up their career succinctly, seeing the YouTube promo alone gave me hope. All the familiar guitar riffs, drum fills and hooks are there with the appropriately iconic imagery. As such, the respective collection turns out to be a well rounded look back at a career full of hits, near misses and left turns.

What follows are forty thoughts for forty songs. Numbers respectively represent tracklisting placement and disc one or two.

Part Lies
7/1. "Driver 8" - Fables of the Reconstruction has long been reputed to be an album of Southern legends. Recorded in London by a homesick R.E.M., this song proves it to be less Dixie mythology and more the sound of a band lost at sea.
9/1. "Begin the Begin" - Singing "the insurgency began and you missed it," Stipe may as well have been addressing audiences which were beginning to swell beyond their college demographic. Truth was, with producer Don Gehman's mainstream studio polish, the insurgency was just beginning.
10/1. "Fall on Me" - Accompanied by a video in heavy rotation, this was often credited as the first big environmental song. This is most likely apocryphal, even if global warming is just the new acid rain.
11/1. "Finest Worksong" - Known mainly for the jangly sound of his early playing, Peter Buck turned in a heroic punk rock effort with the neo-liberal angst that filled Document. As manifestos go, few bands could do better and this was the first shot fired across the boughs.
13/1. "The One I Love" - Proving that people don't actually listen to lyrics, this was a wedding reception staple for years. I'm guessing they missed that part where Stipe refers to his love as "a simple prop to occupy my time." Or maybe people did listen to they lyrics, you never know.
18/1. "Losing My Religion" - Universally misunderstood, conventional wisdom pegged this song as a crisis of faith. Apparently, it's just a southern expression for an infatuation so bad that it seems to test your faith.
19/1. "Country Feedback" - The sour that defines the sweet on R.E.M.'s true mainstream breakthrough, Out of Time. Layered in waves of pedal steel guitar, Stipe's sublime and mellifluous voice rings through with the desperate exasperation of love's failings.
20/1. "Shiny Happy People" - Long since dismissed by the band as a fluffy piece of pop naff, I endured childhood through the Reagan eighties and still refuse to frame it in my mind as anything other than a riposte to such superficial times.
2/2. "Man on the Moon" - Forget the drummer jokes, Bill Berry was a large contributor to R.E.M.'s songwriting process. Both "Man on the Moon" and "Everybody Hurts" were said to be instigated by Berry and his departure in '98 made reinvention essential, not preferable.
9/2. "Imitation of Life" - Imitation of R.E.M. was more like it. Building off of the classic formula set by "the Great Beyond," this was the obvious single for Reveal. In retrospect, the album bore more sonic resemblence to the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds than anything in R.E.M.'s catalog. And as obvious as this single was, there's still a gloriously symphonic beauty to all the electronic bells and whistles added here, especially that low synth sound in the bridge.

Part Heart
3/1. "Talk About the Passion" - Curious after Out of Time and hooked after Automatic for the People, I became obsessed after my best friend in mid-school gave me the I.R.S. retrospective Eponymous. I gorged on it during a visit to my grandparents place not long after. As a result, this song always sounds like traveling through the Ozark countryside of Arkansas to me- it sounds like a distant home.
5/1. "So. Central Rain" - Even though the rest of the song makes little to no sense for me, there's that chorus of "I'm sorry" that comes through clear as day. Like most angst filled teenagers, I'm sure I felt that deeply even without any idea of what I had to be sorry for. Kids.
6/1. "(Don't Go Back to) Rockville" - We used to cover this in one of my old bands years ago. We replaced the honkytonk piano with a dirty Social D sorta guitar sound, so I guess our redneck requirements were met. Which means, for a few years, friends thought we wrote it. I wish.
8/1. "Life and How to Live It" - One Christmas, shortly after Automatic had come out, my brother gave me a copy of Fables of the Reconstruction. Good thing, too, as I'm not sure my high school self would have bought it. And then I would have missed out on this and "Wendell Gee."
1/2. "Everybody Hurts" - Based on the video for this song alone, this song quickly became parody bait. But still, it was a sweet thought from Stipe to generation angst and, lest you forget, John Paul Jones (the bloke from Led Zeppelin that didn't play guitar, sing or die) arranged the strings for this.
3/2. "Nightswimming" - Haunting, beautiful and simple, this song dwells on the threshold of the past. Listening to it always creates a sense of phantom nostalgia for me and I really wish, a band or two ago, we'd learned to cover it.
5/2. "New Test Leper" - This song, which revolves around love, decency and hypocrisy, sums up every anxiety and personal conflict I've ever felt about being religious (or not) that I've felt in thirty plus years. And it does so gorgeously in five and a half minutes.
11/2. "Leaving New York" - An ode to post 9/11 New York City, there's a mournful quality here that recognizes grieving, even in the face of futility. And even more brilliantly, it does so without mentioning 9/11. This song came to me at a time when I really needed it.
13/2. "Supernatural Superserious" - Between those bare Joe Strummer-like guitar chords and Stipe's lyrical waxing, it's too easy to think of this song as the sound of adolescence. But really, it's the sound of how we wished were in adolescence- articulate, heartfelt and hungry.
14/2. "Uberlin" - One of my favorite songs to come out this last year. Period. And I'm very glad they chose to include it here. I'm not sure if the narrator in this song is falling apart from the inside or just needs a nap, but I imagine the sight of his exhausted reflection in the mirror before he heads out into the world for the day.

Part Truth
1/1. "Gardening at Night" - People forget, assuming they knew in the first place, that R.E.M. carried the torch for American music in the eighties. Of course, there was always Bruce, Madonna and Prince but they were the emphatic part of the eighties. R.E.M. was the part that inspired a bazillion garage bands with jangly guitars and poor enunciation. That starts here with this song.
2/1. "Radio Free Europe" - Along with "Gardening at Night," this was the face that launched a thousand ships. More than any other song in their catalog, this brought R.E.M. as close to actual punk as they would ever be. At the same time, this also solidified numerous characteristics that became synonomous with R.E.M.: indecipherable lyrics, Byrds on speed guitars and staccato bass lines.
12/1. "It's the End of the World as We Know It (and I Feel Fine)" - Like every other high schooler who was an R.E.M. fan, I knew every single word of this at one point. It didn't help me in karaoke, though. They had the wrong words! Still, I never change the radio when this comes on.
17/1. "Orange Crush" - Using a call and response vocal attack, they took what could have another one of Green's memorable pop songs and dipped it in menace. This was the end result: an agit pop indictment of the military industrial complex that poisoned its own forces with Agent Orange. Of course, I'm not sure how many people remember that now.
4/2. "What's the Frequency, Kenneth?" - I remember the first time I heard a backwards guitar solo. It was in "London Calling" and I found myself wondering what the hell had just happened to my ears. A close friend explained that the guitar solo had been written and then recorded in reverse. That way, when they flipped the recording, it sounded like an underwater missile. Knowing that, I still find myself wondering what's happened to me every time I hear this song and. that. solo.
6/2. "Electrolite" - As the closing song on New Adventures in Hi-Fi, Stipe's last refrain of "I'm outta here" always seemed more cheeky than prophetic (drummer Bill Berry would not return for the next album). Still, that little moment has always been one of my favorite vocal moments ever and was my voice mail greeting for a good year or so.
12/2. "Living Well is the Best Revenge" - After Up's sullen ambience and the midtempo sunshine of Reveal, surely the arrival of Bill Rieflin (of Ministry fame) on Around the Sun meant a rockin' record, right? Well, at least they got there on Accelerate and nowhere was that more apparent than this opening shot. Still a thrill to hear, even amongst all these other hits.
15/2. "Oh My Heart" - Apocalyptic landscapes have long been a recurring theme in Stipe's lyrics. It wasn't until Hurricane Katrina that he had a real one to write about. And he hardly seems fine.
18/2. "We All Go Back to Where We Belong" - A look back filled with memories, dreams and other imaginings. It's unclear if this is simply reminiscence or an actual parting of ways but Stipe's voice is so sweet it hardly matters.
19/2. "Hallelujah" - It would be all too easy to record another version of Leonard Cohen's classic via Jeff Buckley via Rufus Wainwright. Instead, the band throws everything they have (acoustic and electric guitar, strings, Mike Mills' backing vocals and whatever other weird sounds they can find) before one final chorus that soars. "Amen" is more like it.

Part Garbage
4/1. "Sitting Still" - Due, I'm sure, to the numerous qualities they share, this song has always seemed to be eclipsed by "Radio Free Europe." That being said, I still get caught up on that chorus of "Up to par and katie bar."
14/1. "Stand" - I was still a few years away from being a fan when I first heard this and I remember, even then, finding it quite odd. Even at that age, I could recognize something different taking place. By the time they used it as the theme song for a Chris Elliott sitcom, I was devoted. But I still regret it's association with Chris Elliott in my mind.
15/1. "Pop Song 89" - This tests even my love for R.E.M. cheese. It's so embarassingly catchy it makes me uncomfortable. But I guarantee you'll still catch me singing along if I'm not thinking about it.
16/1. "Get Up" - Another one of their unabashed pop songs, this one seems to somehow skirt the cheese factor. I'm not sure if its the way Peter Buck counterbalances his guitar hits against the backing vocals or the deliriously daft chimes in the bridge. Either way, this song has always seemed criminally underrated next other singles off of Green, such as "Stand" or "Orange Crush."
21/1. "The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonight" - Featuring one of the band's more interesting chord progressions as Stipe apes the classic "Lion Sleeps Tonight." There's talk of black eyed peas, the cat in the hat and a phone booth and... wha...? The sidewinder is a homeless woman?
7/2. "At My Most Beautiful" - Off the incredibly underrated and unfairly maligned Up. Had that album been by a new band, it would have been huge. This is the one song I skip when I listen to that album as it's straighforward arrangement makes it a little out of place on a lo-fi electronic record. But here, it fits in perfectly.
8/2. "The Great Beyond" - A redux of Automatic's "Man on the Moon," this was written for the Andy Kaufman bio-pic of the same name. As such, they straddled the line between Up's ambient beauty and Reveal's sunny melodicism. In doing so, they defined a "classic R.E.M." sound that many found lacking from the rest of their output at the time. To their credit, however, it would have been easy to write a dozen of these every four years and cash in on the tour but the band resisted.
10/2. "Bad Day" - As a throw-away single for their Warner Bros. retrospective In Time, this gave fans hope that the next album would be all furious fists and memorable hooks. Sadly, that was not the case but it was fun for the four minutes that this song lasted.
16/2. "Alligator_Aviator_Autopilot_Antimatter" - One last blast of the whirling dervish word vomit that R.E.M. did so well, with Peaches on the backing vocals no less. If they'd been this much fun on Monster seventeen years prior, I would not be explaining to younger friends why this band is such a treasure.
38/2. "A Month of Saturdays" - Sometimes, the sillier this band is, the more I love them. Their silliest song since "Chance," an Automatic for the People era b-side. When Stipe sings "I wanna take all the Saturdays, I wanna stay up late," I imagine this is the sound of retirement and it sounds like fun.

Friday, January 6, 2012

The Story Thus Far 2011 Edition: Dynamite Steps/Live in New York by the Twilight Singers


Long gone are the days when the Twilight Singers seemed like a consolation prize to fans distraught over the dissolution of the Afghan Whigs. Originally conceived as an outlet for Greg Dulli between records, it became the singer songwriter's focal point immediately following the breakup of the Whigs. Five albums in now, Dynamite Steps presents a seemingly small but significant shift in artistic vision. If Dulli's modus operandi has been, up to this point, to create audio equivalents to indie crime flicks, then this is his most accessible effort yet. It's popcorn Dulli writ large: a widescreen cinematic vision that's everything you ever loved about the Twilights and then some.

Elements from throughout their multi-faceted career can be found here: the smoky electronic ambiance of Twilight as played by..., the bleak nihilism of Blackberry Belle, the reeling introspection of Powder Burns. More than any of that, however, there' s the virtuostic soulman swagger of She Loves You. Dulli's trouble man punk rock persona is pushed up to eleven here but only for affectation. Instead of being the usual clearinghouse for Dulli's demons, Dynamite Steps really comes off much more as a celebratory showcase for his band. Road tested, rock hard and true, a genuine band seems to have emerged after years of going out and touring these songs night after night. Even though the usual suspects (Mark Lanegan, Petra Haden and Ani Difranco) all still abide, the true glory belongs to this crack team of musicians that have evolved into a fit and trim fighting unit over the last decade.


And while Dynamite Steps is a vastly effective diorama of the Twilight's strong points, their road tested cohesion translates better to Live in New York. Unlike the smouldering to incendiary performances that backed 2006's Powder Burns, this is a band on fire. Punching like a boxer running out of time, they play as if their lives depend on it with the knowledge that any fight may be their last. If Dynamite Steps was an implied threat then Live in New York is their roiling suckerpunch.

"Whenever you're here you're alive," Dulli coos over the simple piano refrain that starts the album, "the devil says you can do what you like." It's "the Last Night in Town" and the simplest sort of exhortation that lies at the heart of his career: do what you want, damn the consequences, damn the torpedoes. And like that, they're off for the next nineteen tracks. It's a marathon sprint through their career, played with more ferocity and deftness than most young bands muster these days. Almost as if to say, they're the motherfucking Twilight Singers and they're not above reminding you every chance they get.

Such self assuredness hardly comes as a shock to anyone familiar with Dulli's career but here it carries over to more than the recording. The sound quality, raw and lacking studio polish, brings a feeling of actually being in the club. And while the lack of overdubs guarantees that flubs are preserved forever, there is a more genuine feeling of who this band is- blemishes and all. That is the epitome of self assuredness.


essential listening:

Dynamite Steps-
Last Night in Town
Blackbird and the Fox
The Beginning of the End

Live in New York-
She Was Stolen
Candy Cane Crawl
Teenage Wristband