Some Songs Considered - Posts Tagged 'alternative rock'

March 1, 2009

[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

“Future 40’s (String of Pearls) (w/ Michael Stipe)” – Syd Straw
(Words/music: Jody Harris and Syd Straw, available on Surprise, Virgin Records 1989)

If you’re an R.E.M. fan and “Future 40’s” sounds familiar, you probably recognize it from the Tourfilm concert movie. Michael Stipe prefaces a raucous version of “I Believe” with a sizeable chunk of “Future 40s” as the crowd claps along inconsistently (and yes, it gets on my nerves, I’m sorry). Having heard this version dozens of times, I finally chased down those lyrics to find Syd Straw’s song. Straw collaborated with Stipe with the Golden Palominos, and Stipe (in addition to other Palominos) helped her on her solo debut. I also found that Straw and Stipe share another “collaboration” – both guest starred on The Adventures of Pete and Pete (Stipe was an ice cream man, Straw was Big Pete’s math teacher).

Appropriately, the vocal interplay takes center stage in this song. Straw lets her voice slide up and down her register throughout the song, letting a phrase in a lower range catapult her towards the higher notes, singing at both ends of the register with the same clarity and emotional emphasis. Stipe provides the perfect vocal foil as he emerges throughout the song. At points, the duo sing together, while other moments one will hold a note slightly longer, and at other times Straw and Stipe sing entirely different phrases. This constant vocal movement creates constant interest, and thankfully the arrangement keeps the vocals right in front. That’s not to say the backing track is lacking – specifically, that repeated guitar riff is terrific, and the way the rhythm guitar follows the bass drum’s punch in the last minute gives the song the perfect bite in the final minute. While there’s no mistaking Michael Stipe’s voice in this song, Stipe’s content enough to let Straw have all of the moments in the spotlight. His heavier voice lets Straw perform her vocal acrobatics, letting the notes dance off wherever she feels like sending them.

More on Syd Straw: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm

February 14, 2009

[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

“About You” - The Jesus and Mary Chain
(Words/music: Jim and William Reid, available on Darklands, Blanco y Negro 1987)

Two decades after their debut, much of the Jesus and Mary Chain’s reputation revolves around their early incarnation – today, they’re best known for the buzzsaw distortion on Psychocandy and their early shows laced with a defiant stretches of feedback and belligerence. However, a closer listen to many of the Reid brothers’ songs reveals their ability to write a killer pop song (and anyone who needs convincing should start with the last eighteen tracks on their 21 Singles collection). The genius behind the Jesus and Mary Chain was less in how loud they could play, but rather in how loud they could play their 60s inspired melodies. Even still, they’re more than the Beach Boys run through a distortion pedal; there’s a sweetness and beauty to many of their songs.

While Darklands doesn’t have the same bite as Psychocandy, the songs and performances are much stronger. It’s easy to overlook how early fans would have been disappointed with Darklands’ smoother production when looking at the band’s work after they disbanded, but the best songs are on par with the best tracks on their debut. While “April Skies” and “Darklands” are among my favorites in their catalog, the final track “About You” sticks out to me with its minimal arrangement. A song with just acoustic guitars and tambourine was inconceivable after hearing the wailing wall of sound on Psychocandy, but it sounds right at home at the end of their second album. It’s unmistakably a JAMC song – the guitar style and chord changes recall a number of their other songs – but “About You” slows down the tempo, letting Jim Reid’s voice fill the air like a warm summer’s fog. His long phrasings and lower register gives the song, an homage to finding warmth in a loved one, just a touch of melancholy. If “Just Like Honey” is the obvious mix tape song in their catalog, “About You” is the song to include when you want to send the “I’m into you” vibe without being blatantly obvious.

More on The Jesus and Mary Chain: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm

February 10, 2009

[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

“Stars” – Hum
(Words/music: Hum, available on You’d Prefer an Astronaut, RCA 1995)

It’s simple math – there’s lots of music out there worth hearing and not enough time to listen to all of it, so there will be songs, bands, albums, and occasionally genres that I don’t know as well as I should (or as well as I would like to know). Still, I’m bewildered when there’s a song that it seems like everyone else know that I don’t know. This happened my first month at college – “Stars” kept popping up places and I didn’t really understand why. At the time, I was fairly sure that I knew most of the late-90s alt-rock radio staples – so when a wide variety of people kept bringing up “Stars” as a favorite – my first college radio show partner, a friend I took my first college road trip with, and other new acquaintances – I didn’t really know what happened. Yes, “Stars” was a modern rock radio success, but it’s not like it was a Green Day like mega hit.

Naturally, I assumed “Stars” must have been something new, and to a degree it sounded like something that could have been on the radio around the turn of the millennium. When the song starts chugging along during the second minute, the chugging riff sounds like it could be one of the better riffs produced by those faceless nu-metal bands with those screaming singers. However, “Stars” runs deeper than this drop-D riff – there’s a gorgeously distorted melody line beneath that loud rhythm guitar attack, and even though the drums are aggressive and cymbal-heavy, they’re recorded superbly. A lot of the derivative alterna-metal bands over mix the drums to the point where they sound like they were recorded in a box, but “Stars” keeps the drums balanced in the mix without yielding any intensity. Then there’s the vocals – shy, understated, and content to let the music carry the muscle; while many of the bands that came after Hum concerned themselves with cultivating an angst-ridden image (I’m thinking that “I hate everything about you” song that still gets played on the radio from time to time), it always seemed like the obvious and literal lyrics were over-compensation – the kind of thing sending the message of “I’m not sure you’ll understand how I feel unless I directly scream it at you.” It’s kind of odd to say that a song with as blunt of a riff as “Stars” is “subtle,” but there’s a lot going on underneath all of these distorted layers.

More on Hum: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm

TAGGED UNDER: hum | 1995 | 1990s | RCA | alternative rock | track analysis | admission of gaps in my knowlege of alt-rock |

February 4, 2009

[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

“Lithium” – Nirvana
(Words/music: Kurt Cobain, available on Nevermind, DGC 1991)

If you really want to know, I have two “first albums” because I bought two at the same time. If given fifteen minutes and a calendar, I could probably pinpoint the exact day I bought them as well. October 1997, I was a freshman in high school and had been listening to the radio for the better part of a year. I’d make tapes off the radio, sitting with my boom box in my room with my finger ready on the red record button, ready to commit the next song to one of my Maxell 90 minute tapes (which I have shoeboxes of). I consumed radio (and MTV, and to a lesser extent VH-1) as much as I could until waiting to hear songs on the radio simply wasn’t enough. So while on the way home from a family get together and a stop at a Borders’ Books, I bought an old record and a current record. The “current” album was Oasis’ Be Here Now, a record that’s unfairly maligned even if it’s not as good as the first two, and the “old” record was Nevermind. Looking back, 1996-1997 wasn’t that far removed from the whole grunge thing, so Nirvana still received regular play on modern rock stations (hell, they still get their fair share these days), so it makes sense that I’d buy an album that had been on my radar for years (I remember where I was when Kurt Cobain died, even if I only had a casual understanding of who he was).

Today I own an embarrassing amount of music (I measure my iTunes by months now), but back then when my money came from birthdays and babysitting my neighbors, new music never came frequently enough. This, along with the obsessiveness of my teenage years, led to me living with albums for a prolonged period of time, and Nevermind is one that I did a considerable amount of living with. I probably listened to it on an average of three or four times a week for the first two years I owned it. I taught myself how to play the drums with the first half of Nevermind, and to this day I instinctively start moving my hands and feet along to certain phrases in the album (not to mention a collection of broken drum sticks from trying to play like Dave Grohl). I haven’t listened to some of these songs in ages, but I probably know them better than songs I’ve heard multiple times in the last month as they trigger something – emotional memories, muscle memory, who knows – in me when I hear them. This is probably one of the reasons I rarely listen to Nevermind anymore – it’s so loaded with personal associations of those painfully awkward years that’s it’s hard to hear the songs without my own personal context rising back up.

Listening to “Lithium” now, it strikes me as the perfect example of the “Nirvana sound.” Sure it has the soft/loud/soft dynamic that everyone points out (and yes, that the Pixies did first and probably better), but there’s so much more that makes this song work. The slinky guitar line through the verse stands out immediately as it snakes through Dave Grohl’s bright sounding ride cymbal and Krist Novoselic’s minimal yet perfect bass line. Cobain sings in a clean and (relatively) bright sounding tone (at least compared with some of the other songs on Nevermind). Then, with a quick click of the distortion pedal, Cobain’s guitar becomes a wave of distortion, Grohl starts bashing at his ride cymbal (the only way to get those deep, violent crash sounds), and Novoselic’s bass becomes instantly more melodic. Meanwhile, Cobain switches from his bleak poetry to a sea of “yeahs” – content to let his melody alone ride the cresting waves of sound without words. Some might think it’s a copout to have a lyric-less chorus, but it takes a tremendous amount of faith that the melody will keep things interesting (and it does), but it also continues with the contrast in the dynamics; the verses are subdued and somewhat morose, but when the chorus hits the mood shifts to joyous and sing-songy (almost like, uh, taking lithium as an antidepressant?). Cobain comes out of the chorus declaring his conflicted moods – he likes it, misses it, loves you, kills you, all while declaring that he’s “not going to crack.” After his suicide, it’s convenient to declare “Lithium” as a portrayal of Cobain’s own fragile mental state, but it’s really a case in excellent songwriting where the music and the words work together to tell a story and convey emotion. No wonder a teenager would latch on to this.

More on Nirvana: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm

January 29, 2009

[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

“Feel to Believe” – Beth Orton
(Words/music: Beth Orton, appears on Central Reservation, Arista Records 1999)

Today’s post goes out in tribute to Freaky Trigger’s 10th Anniversary. I offer the shout out at the beginning of the post for two reasons. First, I hold FT’s Tom Ewing in high regard and consider him one of my favorite writers and critics today. His Poptimist columns for Pitchfork are among my favorite pieces of criticism and always make me look back at my own taste as a consumer of culture. Also, I’d be remiss if I didn’t thank Tom for linking to me, as I’m sure there’s a considerable amount of you who would not be reading me otherwise. (Also, I hope Tom isn’t bothered by having a Beth Orton song “dedicated” to him!) Additionally, as part of FT’s retrospective, Tom linked to his first entry – a “mission statement” of sorts that certainly dovetails with my own philosophy as a critic and still applies a decade later. This is fortuitous because I’ve been planning on using tomorrow’s Some Songs Considered post to write about my philosophy of music (at least in how it applies to this blog). Reading Tom’s first post and then thinking of a song that served as important to my taste in 1999 (I was 16 in ’99, for the record) gives me the opportunity to give a bit of a preview to tomorrow’s post.

Today, I consider my taste fairly broad; I’m not as versed in the “poptimist” label as I should be, but I imagine that I would have more in common with them than not. The first two axioms in his “Triggerism” post – “there’s a stunning amount of worthwhile music out there” and “music isn’t confined by time or genre” – are statements I couldn’t have put better myself. Even looking at the (somewhat odd) collection of songs so far this past month and realizing that this is only scratching the surface of my music collection reinforces my broad tastes. I find that in different eras and different musical movements, there are worthwhile songs and worthless songs, and that the best songs transcend genre, era, and circumstances.

Still, I haven’t always felt this way.

When I first got into music (relatively late, for I didn’t listen to music until the summer before my freshman year of high school), I was a strict rockist – it could be the angry alternative rock of the late 90s or the crushing classic rock of the 70s, but if it wasn’t played with guitars, I wanted no part of it. This meant marginalizing a lot of wonderful music that I’m still catching up on. To a degree, I think this is a natural evolution of taste – once we find something that speaks to us (whether it really resonates with us or we just want it to because it’s what we have access to – that’s an entirely separate debate) we take it and run with it. Throw in the uncertainty of teenage years and many of us look for anything we can identify with (or, alternately, define ourselves by) while everything else is in flux. For me, it took until sometime in college (and going through the punk rock rabbit hole) before I could start to embrace things outside of my “expertise.”

That’s not to say there weren’t a few cracks into my rock and roll armor. Somehow, in 1999, Beth Orton’s Central Reservation album found me. It was probably hearing the kind of guitar driven single “Stolen Car” on 120 Minutes that led me to the album, but the rest of her songs run the gamut from jazzy ballads to naked confessional folk to hazy, spaced-out electronic pieces. It certainly was not like the Foo Fighters (one of my favorite bands at the time), but I loved it. I used to listen to this album on repeat all the time when I wanted to hear something different (because one man can only listen to Nirvana’s MTV Unplugged so many times). Could I resolve it with the other louder records? Well, maybe with something like R.E.M., but at least R.E.M. had their “rock” moments (I also, quite accidentally and only in retrospect, found that this album brought me much more interaction with girls. Unfortunately, I was too awkward and clueless to capitalize on that). Still, it became part of my taste; Central Reservation proudly sat in my CD wallet with my Led Zeppelin and Rancid CDs, and I proudly defended it when my fellow rockist friends asked me why I owned something so “wussy” (an issue I ran into when I wrote music reviews for my high school paper and included a couple of less popular “pop” albums that I thought the high school audience at large would enjoy in 2001).

So, what exactly was it about this album that spoke to me. Well, thinking back, I know I was drawn in by Beth Orton’s unique voice, and the whole thing didn’t quite sound like any singer-songwriter I knew at the time (again, I was fairly sheltered – the internet was in its infancy and most of my knowledge of anything that wasn’t on the radio came from reading magazines and books). Above all, I’d like to think that it was the power of these well-written, well-performed songs that transcended genre. Today, “Feel to Believe” stands out to me as one of the less ordained songs. There are no late ‘90s electronic flourishes or strings or jazz brushes on snare drums to adorn the song – just Orton and her guitar. It’s the kind of simplicity that seems like the kind of thing I could pull off only to realize that it takes a tremendous amount of talent to sound that effortless. Listening to it again today, I’m taken by a moment about halfway through the song when Orton’s voice distorts slightly during the phrase, “each have got their own limit.” Like on the last Kanye West album, it’s distortion as a signifier of emotional expression; however, while Kanye turned to technology to achieve these moments of distorted catharsis, Orton’s is a product of (what appears to be) technological limits as the microphone can’t contain the full weight of her voice. It’s a fitting moment on Central Reservation, an album that uses a lot of late ‘90s technological aid well, that the most emotionally powerful moment comes as a result of a technological hiccup.

So tonight I’m raising my coffee to Freaky Trigger, wishing it another decade of success while wishing that I knew about it ten years ago when I needed to realize that there’s a lot more to music than three chords and some distortion.

More on Beth Orton: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm

January 28, 2009

[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

“Crazy Mary” – Victoria Williams and Lou Reed
(Words/music: Victoria Williams, appears on MTV’s 120 Minutes Live, Atlantic 1998)

To know Victoria Williams’ music is to know her story too. In 1993, Williams was diagnosed with MS and because she made a living as a singer/songwriter, lacked health insurance. Thus the Sweet Relief Fund was born, and through two compilations (the first consisting of covers of Williams’ songs) and other efforts raises money for musicians who cannot pay their medical bills. Having endured a gap in health insurance coverage myself, I can attest that it’s not cheap for a healthy person, let alone someone with something like MS requiring plenty of treatments. Still, what seemed like a tragedy became a triumph as Williams still writes songs and performs over fifteen years after her diagnosis.

Still, it’s the story in her song that’s more important. “Crazy Mary” reads like a character sketch or a barebones short story. I’m somewhat reminded of the oddball characters Flannery O’Connor created in her stories (although I’m still not 100% satisfied with that comparison – help me out in the comments if you have a better match). The title character is the strange hermit woman in her town - if she lived in your town, she’d be the subject of childhood legends and dares to go knock on her door. Unlike the stereotypical urban legend, the narrator has seen Mary and even met her on a few occasions. Still, Mary’s voice is silent in the song – she waves her arms frantically and has “wild eyes” but never utters a word. We don’t know what drove her to the outskirts of the town or rendered her silent (and if it was a story, we’d have a slight back story at least) and we don’t quite know what happens to her at the end.

I’ve always been struck by how Williams sings the song in this version (from a compilation of live performances on MTV’s now defunct 120 Minutes). Like many, I first heard Pearl Jam’s version from the original Sweet Relief compilation and they do an admirable job with the song, but Williams tells the story like she lived it first hand. There’s the clever turn of phrase spelling out “loitering” followed by “a-llowed” and how she enters into a Crazy (Mary)-like shriek near the end of the chorus. It’s the first verse after the chorus where Williams’ performance makes the story; she quickly speaks the first two lines of the verse (kind of like her duet partner Lou Reed might have done) before leaning into the word “dreaming” just for a split second longer than any other word. Her voice lifts slightly higher just at the part where the narrator shares her dream of flight into Mary’s home. At the end of the verse, Mary’s “rising up above” her run down shack, and after hearing how a car crashed into her house in the final verse, it seems like Mary’s ascended from life into the afterlife. I might be reading too much into the biblical connotation of her name (which would strengthen the O’Connor comparison), but there’s a certain collapsing of the story onto itself at the end as the dream and reality blur. The lines repeated right after the discovery of the accident – “that what you fear the most / could meet you half way” is vague enough to refer to Mary (who despite her exile from town met her demise from one of the citizens) or the narrator (who empathizes with Mary and thus probably sees something of herself in the demise) but pointed enough to pierce the song open, leaving the scars as a reminder of Mary’s story.

—————————-
PS – I can’t decide if Lou Reed adds or subtracts to this version. I like the lead guitar he’s playing throughout the song, and at times it sounds like whimpering or wailing. His lead part sounds like a strange mutation of the blues – distorted, disoriented, and slightly disturbed. Still, his spoken (and sometimes out of time) backing vocals are kind of distracting. I almost wish they turned off his microphone and just let him play the guitar solo.

January 20, 2009

[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

“Cuyahoga (Live in Mansfield, MA – 13 June 2008)” – R.E.M.
(Words/music: Bill Berry, Peter Buck, Mike Mills, Michael Stipe, originally appears on Lifes Rich Pageant, IRS 1986)

When I saw R.E.M. this past June, Michael Stipe offered this song to Barack Obama. The choice is interesting because aside from the opening lines (as his dedication suggests), it doesn’t seem like an obvious choice; if I were to have guessed which song they dedicated, I would have probably guessed one of the more recent Bush-fueled political rants (like the ho-hum “Final Straw”) or one of the more overtly political songs (like “These Days” from the same album). The ban even played “I Believe” (key line: “and change is what I believe in”) in South America the night of his election. Sure, the song references the polluted Cuyahoga river - a cause that the environmentally friendly candidate would emphasize with, buy it still seemed like an odd choice (one I didn’t complain about that night, however, as it’s one of my favorites).

Thinking about it months later, I’m immediately drawn back to the lines that Stipe highlighted in his introduction – “Let’s put our heads together / and start a new country up.” It captures the sentiment of Obama’s “change” mantra as well as his message of unity. After watching the sea of humanity in Washington, D.C. this morning, it seems that his message of unity, hope, and yes, “change,” enticed millions of Americans. Appropriately, Obama’s inaugural address hit on the theme of working together – it’s not Obama or his party creating the “new country,” but everyone in America. It’s a refreshing change of message for someone like me, who has heard nothing but partisan dogma for almost a quarter century of life.

So as I thought about this earlier today, it seemed more and more appropriate. After all, many of R.E.M.’s songs blurred the lines between the personal and the political, as the Obama administration at least begins by stressing the individual’s role in government. “Cuyahoga” isn’t just about the death of a river, but about the narrator’s personal memories attached with the river. The song’s filled with “we” and “our,” to the point that the Cuyahoga is less a call to recycle more but a symbol of a proud and highly personal past that’s been corrupted (as the river now “runs read over it”). Even more importantly, the song focuses on gathering friends and moving towards reclaiming their pride rather than lamenting the death of their icon. It’s an appropriate song to dedicate to a man who wants to promote community, even at the national level.

_______

PS – Even though R.E.M. is one of my favorite bands (and, if pressed, probably the most important band to me), this will probably be the only post on one of their songs (I might pick one more at some point, but that would be it), in part because of Matthew Perpetua’s wonderful Popsongs 07-08 project, where he writes about these songs with eloquence and insight that I could only dream of possessing. I’d be remiss if I didn’t say that this site (along with the other excellent work he does on the web and in print) is a major inspiration for what I want to do over the next eleven and a half months. Here’s a relevant quote from Matthew’s entry on “Cuyahoga” from July ’07:

“Cuyahoga” may be a lament, but it’s also one of the most optimistic politically themed songs in the R.E.M. songbook. Even better, its optimism is not cheap and facile. The lyrics make a point of acknowledging the fact that we need to collaborate and work hard for change, because without that effort and emphasis on community, we stand to lose so much.

More on R.E.M.: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm

About the Blog

Search Posts

SSC on Shuffle

Follow SSC On:

Elsewhere on the web

SSC on Twitter

Meta