Reviews by verlainemorrison96

As 'Lost Vigilantes' starts, you'd swear you'd heard that from some early Beatles record ('Love Me Do,' or is it 'I Want to Hold You Hand'?), but the lyrics, which are a tongue-in-cheek analysis of a vet returning home from Nam, are almost mockingly American, placing you in some weird meeting-ground for Bruce Springsteen (Born in the U.S.A.) and The Kinks (Arthur). The rest of the record, which is very good, but not as stunning as the first track ('Elegia' is a beautiful but meaningless instrumental), is an alloy of the tormented accents of Robert Smith and Blondie's ironic-not-so-ironic take on dance-rock. Not as grand as Power, Corruption, and Lies, which boasts the perfect 'Age of Consent,' Low-Life is nonetheless a classic of its time.

'I propose a toast / To the memory of the horse who carried King Tut and his gold'; 'And she nicknamed him her teardrop / For the tattoo by his eye.' What's so functional and perfected about this record is its Americanness, the way the band manages such a gorgeous tribute to this country's self-defining features. And it's American in a way that Woody Guthrie or Bruce Springsteen aren't: this is pure symbolism, pure imagery, and pure history. That would have its limitations if it weren't for Phillips powerful singing, his heavy guitar-playing (matched by Joey Peters's percussive instincts), and his uniquely poised lyricism. Underlying the project is a flimsy obscurity & a lack of direction, but for the most part, this succeeds concretely, wholly.

In a vacuum, this is a great live recording: the sixties is now a baggage of associations for those of us who didn't live thru it, and even for some of us who did, and this does as good a job as anything in recreating what it must have felt like to be alive during that seminal decade. Aesthetically, I dig the transition from acoustic to electric on its own terms. It's a nice structuring element as well as a notorious event that occurred. Dylan's playing, and in particular his singing, is inspired, approximating something that's natural + ritualistic, invigorated by spirit and invention. And yet, this one is known for its historical significance more than the music itself: 'Judas - I don't believe you, you're a liar.' For some reason, that bit is cut out - kinda annoying, no?

As always with the best reggae, I actually learn something - the history of a Jamaica I wouldn't know w/o this music: 'They sold Marcus Garvey for rice, ooh / I'll never forget, no way / They turned their backs on Paul Bogle, hey, hey.' I didn't know who Paul Bogle was - National Hero of Jamaica and one of the leaders of the 1865 Morant Bay protesters - and now I'm happy I do. But also like the best reggae, these tracks aren't essayistic, post-colonial diatribes, but ventures into the depths of the feel-good, especially on the second half of this record. While Exodus does not electrify me as much as Catch a Fire, my favorite Wailers album, this is still very good. My only cavil is that a few of the tunes attain the sensibilities of too-tepid easy listening.

This rivals X-Ray Spex as the great political punk of its time. 'It's at the end of the rainbow (there may be oil) / The happy ever after (under rockall) / It's corked up w/ the ether (there may be oil).' I know that all punk is inherently political - even the Ramones, w/ their goofy suburban insights, are at heart a political statement - and that the British interpretations, heralded by the Sex Pistols and The Clash, are immersed in national politics, but what Gang of Four managed is critique, not just protest or revolt. 'All this talk of blood and iron / Is the cause of all my shaking.' And that critique happens to be a viscerally enjoyable thing to take in, as these guitars and drums embrace a full spectrum of punk possibilities and therefore look forward to post-punk.

'Late at night when I want you / I lock you in my room'; 'And how I miss your quiet, quiet, quiet heart'; 'I'm not a playboy or a poet / There's no cool water from the well.' McLennan is an unexpected, subtle lyricist, unfolding a penchant for the improbable word and the standalone phrase. And yet, these tracks are admirably simple pop songs, w/ a whole lot of heart and a good deal of needed optimism. Contemporaries of the Australian Triffids, the Scottish Blue Nile, and, most notably, the British Smiths, this band, I've gotta say, is a notch above. At the very least, they're more interesting: I'll grant that Morrissey and Marr wrote more iconic songs. So cool tho: they at times feel like The Mekons, at others like The VU, some like Television.

In a sense, post-rock went where prog never could, i.e., besides the best of Floyd or King Crimson, the progers were too early to the party of strange & experimental notions. Tho 'rock' was still a possibility at the time Tortoise emerged, following the lessons of Talk Talk, the group understood that it could all now be reengineered. In reality, this record has next to nothing to do w/ rock, being more of a conflation of techno, jazz, and European forms, and really only the ideas of those genres. Even when the electric guitar is the most predominant instrument, I think of Sun Ra more than Jimi Hendrix. And yet, tho I respect and enjoy this more than records by ELP or Rush, it ultimately suffers from the same defects: it's boring, it's dead, it's snooty.

Well, this guy has a whole lot of fun, which is a part of the success and the failure of this record. I don't doubt his zeal for a good time, but freestyling this whole thing, which it appears that he's doing, doesn't make for a very dynamic experience. While I prefer this to the goof-off-and-jerk-off-tunes of the Chili Peppers, lyrics such as 'Upside your brain, knock down your liver / Like hot tamales, I start to simmer' do not inspire much more than a fratty appetite for a keg and a blunt. Besides, the blues and hip-hop fusion isn't all that original: the Beastie Boys managed it more convincingly on the '92 Check Your Head and The Roots would come out w/ Do You Want More in '95. And if you covet a more contemporary version, Vulfpeck will satisfy.

'Sometimes I don't thrill you / Sometimes I think I'll kill you.' Dinosaur Jr. is a slacker headache, which doesn't mean it's only languorous noise, tho it does mean that what predominates is the outcry of folk who care and make their problems felt thru their instruments rather than their vocals. J Mascis doesn't sing - Lou Reed is more a singer than the Amherst native. He's not even a talker or a moaner: he appears to produce sounds from his mouth b/c someone told him to. Even on 'Don't,' which features a let-loose J, the guitars and drums are heavier. He's almost a great lyricist - 'Not sure now what's left inside me / So I've taken to napping' - but what I get out of this thing, which I admire but do not love, is a taste for instrumental blowups.

'I'll always love you tho New York'; 'So when does the plane go down? / 'Cause I'm gonna ride it 'til it hits the ground'; 'And I hold you close in the back of my mind / And raise my glass 'cause either way I'm dead.' Adams is more than just a convincing assortment of Dylan, Springsteen, Young, and Yoakam, tho that is kinda where it starts and ends w/ him: he has his voice and songwriting knacks, but ultimately he's just an impossibly and seamlessly gifted artist who's apparently absorbed the entire spectrum of the rock, folk, + country world. These songs effortlessly roll off the tongue b/c it feels like he merely rolled outta bed to write them. It's indeed so easy for him that I'm moved to deduct points: his talents approach a robitism.

I love Oasis. I used to wonder why I'm one of their few American fans, but for now I'll just say it's a wonderwall that I take to them as I do. I even used to think, at a subconscious level, I was being difficult and ironic: allow me, the lover of all things un-Oasis, play their first two records at high volumes and cling to their corny lyrics and less-than-basic pop melodies. But that simply isn't how it is. Besides, I can't, as I don't think anybody can, get all that much outta music/(art) ironically - and I've listened to this one and the debut more times than it would take to satisfy an insincere admiration. So I'll just go on digging their swagger, which is at once a throwback to their Liverpool-heroes and something else entirely: futuristic? biblical? serene?

Neither strange nor particularly weighty like cargo, this is zone-out-w/-ya-sack-out-music: it's for the gamer w/o even a desire to beat the level. The main effect of this record is the hapless feeling that you're stuck, and stuck for good, not in a loop, which can be pleasurable, but literally in one dumb spot forever. It makes me want to do bad things and then confess my sins to a fucker w/o god's warrant to redeem. It's not big like The Chemical Bros or trippy like Massive Attack and Portishead - the best it has to offer is not a good time, or an interesting one, but something that borders on solace but is far too bland for that: makes me think that those of us who want uplift & spirit need some added chaos. +, I hate Orbit's pseudo-eastern gestures.

No matter how much I try to bask in the gloomy beauty of The Cure, Robert Smith just isn't interesting to me. Perhaps that's part of the deal as well as the appeal: to be goth is to despair of ennui rather than trauma or tragedy, i.e., to go to the mall and feel the oppression of boredom and averageness. And I have to admire the band for their unqualified sincerity/romantic stains - 'There was nothing in the world / That I ever wanted more / Than to feel you deep in my heart'; 'However far away / I will always love you / However long I stay / I will always love you.' No, I don't hate this, and I concede that 'Pictures of You' is a memorable (tho not glorious) single, but I am mostly underwhelmed and informally depressed. I just don't feel 'got' - you got it?

'Well, most of all nothing much / Ever really happens / And God rides high up in the ordinary sky.' Cave's religious existentialism - b/c that's what this is, á la Kierkegaard and co. - would be totally unbearable and pretentious if it weren't also adorable and consolatory. Cave philosophizes, clearly, b/c he needs to - that's what separates him from an ally like Tom Waits, who's an indifferent anthropologist of religion rather than a seeker. What severs him from the lousy lot of Bono/Christian rockers is a bluesy temperament, big drums (Sclavunos/Wydler), soulful-backers, and a healthy dose of well-read-pride: 'You searched thru all my poets / From Sappho thru to Auden / I saw the book fall from your hands / As you slowly died of boredom.' Aww.

Not exactly self-effacing, but ultimately unassuming, Ms. Dynamite makes sure you know that she's a dynamiter out of self-defense: 'But the more that I learned / I found a guidin' light / That showed me the need to fight.' It isn't clear what she's fighting against, but I have no reason not to believe her, and when she's schooling her sister on the ugly ways of men ('Put Him Out'), I'm moved to join the anthem. She's more a dependable family-first + chicks-before-dicks kind of lady than she is an explosive character, tho her moniker suggests otherwise. The problem is that her voice and song-writing abilities aren't singular ('Dy-Na-Mi-Tee' is the only treasured find). And the bigger problem is that Amy Winehouse would emerge a year later.

'Then we tried to name our babies / But we forget all the names that / The names we used to know.' Miraculously, and this is the band's saving grace, Arcade Fire isn't soft. In fact, they're hard, but not b/c they have a generic relationship to grunge or metal: they're indie-folk, or whatever, thru & thru. They're hard b/c they're loud and have soul - even at lower volumes, these tracks have a fighting spirit, punching their way for a place in the cosmos. Win Butler not only sings as if he's got something to say, but as if these are the last moments of his life to cry his heart(s) out. 'W/ my lightning bolts a glowing / I can see where I am going.' This is wake-up music - not a slap in the face or a warning sign, but an ecstatic, realistic parade of funereal fire.

The truest heirs of The Kinks, The Jam is about Britishness and money. As a lyricist, Paul Weller, like Ray Davies, engages a satirical and economic realism, i.e., he's a practical bloke: 'Artistic Freedom / Do what you want / But just make sure the money ain't gone'; 'And the bread I spend / Is like my fame / It's quickly diminished'; 'The noise flows me along, as I catch falling cans / Of baked beans on toast, technology is the most.' The songs on this thing are punk qua pop rather than pop-punk: appetizing and yet not worthy of seconds or thirds. In the tradition of Strummer and Costello, The Jam is not as masterful as those icons. I find myself agreeing w/ Buck Mulligan: 'God, these bloody English. Bursting w/ money and indigestion.'

'The lady gloom and her hornets / Circling 'round is now before us.' I'm not sure what Rufus wants, but he seems to reach for some kind of amalgam of Queen + Radiohead, achieving the theatrics of the former and the droning philosophy of the latter. To be fair, he's a better lyricist than Yorke, and has the righteous desire to be understood, but he's still an obscurantist and an aesthete at heart. Clearly an ultra-talented maestro, w/ virtuosic vocals + an aptitude for composition, he yet doesn't know how to write a song that gets into your soul. It isn't that he's trying to outsmart the listener, but he constantly outsmarts himself, and writes/sings tracks that are a half-step from his truth. The best song, 'Gay Messiah,' is regretfully facetious. Meh.

Before Madlib, MF Doom, and RZA, Byrne/Eno were the first incorporators of vocal snippets that engender a kind of immersive and documentarian experience: from Ray Taliaferro of KGO Newstalk AM 810 to Reverend Paul Morton and Lebanese singer Samira Tewfik, these samples prompt worldly perceptions w/o committing the crimes of a poacher like McLaren. The two were also able to sustain enuf funkiness throughout to engage my dance-wise senses. However, what I love about the Talking Heads, especially w/ Eno, as well as Brian's solo work, is missing here: this is nerd music, plain and complex, w/ almost no emotional depth. I feel it percussively, and I can dig its influence, but the two of 'em made far better records than it. Nerds!

Eight years after License to Ill, the Beasties continue to be hysterically and wholesomely allusive, in this case w/ quite a few basketball references: 'Bill Laimbeer, motherfucker, / It's time for you to die'; 'I got my hair cut correct like Anthony Mason'; 'See, I've got heart like John Starks.' Released in '94, Ill Communication confirms that the white-boy group was able to survive a rapidly changing hip-hop scene better than most 80s acts. Think about it - in this year, we get Illmatic, Ready to Die, The Sun Rises in the East, To the Death (M.O.P.), Resurrection, Creepin' on ah Come Up, + Outkast's debut. What room was there for the pioneers? And yet, this trio, w/ a melange of punk, jazz, funk, + hip-hop, not only stayed relevant, but self-augmented.