It Works On So Many Levels

NASA Knows My Weakness

Space-baseball. STAY ON THE BASEPATHS NEIL, JESUS CHRIST.

Luka Bloom: Eleven Songs

The Irish troubadour Luka Bloom made his name on the back of his unpredictable and electrifying live performances -- a fact that seems almost hard to believe, listening to the polite and peaceful vision represented on his new record, Eleven Songs. You know the stuff: spare, echoing strings and keys, shuffling brushed drums, occasional flourishes of concertina or xylophone, melodic protestations of love and heartsickness and the impossible beauty of it all. It's a familiar formula, to be sure, but it's one that’s been used to great effect by people like Leonard Cohen, Aimee Mann, John Darnielle, etc... The problem here is that Bloom doesn't have enough personality to make such formulaic proceedings feel interesting or relevant or new.

It's all pleasant enough. Bloom's lovely and supple (if somewhat characterless) voice settles back into the mellow acoustic surroundings, tepidly trying to seduce you or sing you to sleep (in the world of folk-rock balladeers there's not always a difference). The record's few strong moments are the ones that take advantage of the singer’s off-handed, casual vibe; "I Love the World I'm In" is wonderfully understated, slithering in on eerie tom-toms and a furtive, snickering bass line. The prosaic lyrics can't diminish a track this underhandedly atmospheric, and if Bloom spent more of his time trying to hypnotize you with his dreamlike sound, we might have had a good album on our hands. Instead, he relaxes mostly into a half-hearted mid-tempo groove and just lies there, inert.

He can apparently be stirred out of his afternoon nap only in service of some larger social cause, so we get the token rocker "Fire," a forced, cringe-inducing piece of protest music with laughable lyrics like, "We know that we were lied to for another stupid war,” and “Everybody's gone online where nothing is real."

Awful as they are, at least the lines above are startling in their badness -- they make you notice them. The rest of Bloom's words feel cut-and-pasted: portentous and the clichéd, filled with generic pastoral images, inscrutable epigrams, extended metaphors, and more uses of the word "love" than anybody singing love songs should be allowed.

Belittling this album brings me no joy. It feels like Kurt Vonnegut’s description of criticism: donning a full suit of plate-mail to attack an ice cream sundae. If there were ever an innocuous, ingratiating album, undeserving of scorn, Eleven Songs is it -- well arranged, earnest, skillfully recorded, pretty, melodic and graceful. Bloom's talents – his soothing songs, the warmth of the acoustic space they inhabit, his lilting, melodic brogue -- are not insignificant, they're just mundane. You need real strength of personality to pull this stuff off. You need to be saying something or struggling with something -- you need to be able shake people, to make them hear something besides yet another Irish lullaby. Otherwise you end up like Luka Bloom: shooting for Van Morrison, landing on Damien Rice.

Arctic Monkeys: Live at the Apollo

The Arctic Monkeys first appeared on American shores acrest a tidal wave of hype. They were the Band that Blogs Broke, scruffy Scouser kids who'd found a way around the record label payola machine that favored the packaged and processed over the immediate and honest. They'd distributed their album for free online, garnered a few well-placed fawning reviews, played a series of triumphant, sold out London shows, and suddenly they were the latest and greatest Saviors of Rock. With a little help from the independent label Domino, they'd proved that an enormous amount of publicity could be generated almost free of charge. They were the gleeful, punkish David to the lumbering, sickly Goliath of the record industry. Suddenly it seemed that grass roots could grow into tall wheat overnight.

And the story was true, as far as it goes. But despite all the hyperbolic reviews and opinion pieces using the band as an exemplar of how The Internet Will Change Everything Forever, there's not much that's particularly fringey or independent about the Artic Monkey's sound. It's the same brand of fast, sneering guitar rock that's always dominated the post-Libertines UK. Their impressive Horatio Alger story is weakened by the fact that they're precisely the sort of group that would likely have had great success under the the traditional label system -- it just would have taken a little longer. They write catchy tunes with clever lyrics, slam out stiff rhythmic chords on electric guitars, and deliver the goods with a cheeky bounce. And so now, one LP and one EP out from their debut (which the unremittingly hyperbolic, almost self-parodying magazine NME declared the fifth best British album of all time), the fervor has largely died down, leaving a solid, unassuming lad-rock band standing in its wake. And on their newly released DVD, "Live at the Apollo," they come home to Liverpool, still blinking the stardust from their eyes.

Let's give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they're still a bit addled from the sudden rush of fortune and glory. Despite all the playful charm of his lyrics and the sardonic sneer of his vocals, lead singer Alex Turner displays exactly zero stage presence, staring blankly out at the crowd, casually tapping his foot with the beat as though he's waiting for a crosstown bus. Director Richard Ayoade seems to be under the impression that Turner has some kind of star quality, because he mostly keeps the camera fixed firmly on the frontman as he stands there, inert. I'm not looking for Pete Townsend windmills and powerslides, here -- is the occasional smile or sneer or shimmy to much to ask? Some bands can be forgiven for aloof, frosty temperaments, but this isn't Radiohead or Sonic Youth or Leonard Cohen -- we're talking about blistering British pop-punk here. A little showmanship and energy are called for. Even when they speed up the tempo to a breakneck pace, it feels less like they're tearing it up than rushing slap-dashthrough their set-list, eyes firmly fixed on the afterparty. "Thank you," Turner mumbles between songs. "I really enjoyed that. No, I mean it. I really mean it." He convinces no one.

It's a shame, because the music isn't half bad. Turner has a way with a stuttering staccato melody and a gift for the clever, biting turn of phrase. The subject matter -- run-ins with cops and classmates, dancefloor hookups, hometown claustrophobia -- is the shallow and adolescent stuff that's at the pulse of rock 'n roll. Turner has a writer's eye for detail and a sharp ear for tuneful storytelling, and he brings both to bear in his up-tempo odes to the gloriously stupid nihilism of youth. It’s a mature and observant mind turned to immature and fleeting subject matter, and the band commits to it, bringing you into their world. For the moment, though, their world seems like a jaded and empty place. Glorious stupidity without pleasure is just joyless yammer. The Arctic Monkeys have been through the full cycle of hype, from fawning to yawning, and they’ve come out the other side hollow and hesitant.

Alex Turner is twenty three years old. What’s that in blog years?

Lenny Kravitz: Let Love Rule

I prize innovation far less than most music critics. Though those who push boundaries are to be admired, newness in and of itself has very little to do with quality. In these very pages I have recently praised both Ian Tyson and the Black Crowes for albums that simply execute generic tropes very well, offering nothing new. Novelty is by definition transient. A good album sounds good today, and it’ll sound good in twenty years.

So why do I hate Lenny Kravitz so much? This is the question I pondered as I listened to the 20th anniversary re-issue of his debut album, Let Love Rule. The passing of time should be kind to an inveterate thief like Kravitz. Pop history has a way of blurring in the rearview mirror – what came first and who influenced whom seem to matter less and less. Time often reclaims groups that once seemed shallow and fleeting – it seems almost hard to believe that in their day the Beach Boys, Buddy Holly, the Bee Gees and Burt Bacharach were widely considered disposable. Kravitz is a tremendously skilled instrumentalist and an expert showman – he seems like the kind of guy who’s ripe for a critical reappraisal. So why, with each passing year, does his music sound more plastic, inert and – to use a word that invites accusations of rockism – phony?

His virtuosic musicianship might be part of the problem. Kravitz is a one man band and a notorious control freak, rarely allowing other musicians to appear on his albums. Listen to his bluesy piano trills on “My Precious Love,” or his jittery drums on “Flower Child” – the dude can flat-out play. (“Flower Child,” I should note, is actually quite a good song.) He’s a particularly terrific bassist, building his Prince-lite grooves from the ground up. (He may have missed his true calling when he became an eclectic superstar auteur instead of a bad-ass bassist for a grimey funk band.) But for all the monstrous talent on display, his songs feel inorganic, constructed from a blueprint instead of emerging organically. Where Prince is raw and slithering, Kravitz is calculated, clean and precise. If good artists borrow and great artists steal, Kravitz rents by the hour.

And then there are the lyrics. Oh God, the lyrics. The titular “Let Love Rule,” the single that launched Kravitz’s tremendously successful career, informs us that “Love is gentle as a rose, and love can conquer anyone. It’s time to take a stand – brothers and sisters join hands. We’ve got to let love rule!” It’s almost always unflattering to quote song lyrics out of context, but man, it just goes on and on. Six minutes of this tripe? Really, Lenny? He just takes John Lennon’s soggiest epigrams and multiplies them exponentially, with none of the counterbalancing effect of Lennon’s brutal, bloody-sleeved honesty. Twenty years into his career, it’s still the only thing Kravitz has ever sung about: Love is good. We should love. More love please. He seems to believe that this is some kind of radical sentiment. (His last album was the clunkily titled It Is Time For a Love Revolution. Kravitz is apparently as staunchly anti-contraction as he is pro-love.)

This re-issue is a quickie money-maker, without notable bonus features or new songs. The six extra tracks consist of random demos and rough mixes of songs that appeared in better versions on the album proper (do we really need three versions of the interminable “Let Love Rule”?) and a horrifying castrated version of Lennon’s viciously truthful “Cold Turkey.” Where Lennon sings “Cold turkey has got me on the run,” Kravitz amends it to “Cold turkey has got me on the FUCKING run.” And that’s Kravitz in a nutshell – his vision of transcendence is mewling about love, and his vision of edge is dropping an F-bomb.

The Black Crowes: Warpaint Live

The Black Crowes were the unwitting victims in a minor scandal last year, when Maxim magazine, in a remarkable display of true journalistic integrity, somehow managed to review Warpaint , an album that the band hadn't yet finished recording. When accused of fraudulent reporting, Maxim offered the ridiculous defense that their review was an "educated guess."

While distasteful and unethical, this lapse is somewhat understandable for two reasons. For one thing, I assume that the Maxim offices are filled with distractingly jigglesome fake boobs. (In my imagination they're not even attached to people -- they're just bouncing arbitrarily around the room, like that Star Trek episode with the tribbles.) And for another thing, the Black Crowes sound (as well as their clothes and hair) have been almost completely changeless since the group first appeared. Hilariously, Maxim's uninformed and dishonest review happens to be a fairly accurate assessment of Warpaint .

And now it falls to me to write a review of an album that I really COULD discuss without ever listening to it: Warpaint Live. As the title indicates, it sounds just like Warpaint , except live. (And dressed up with a few covers and back-catalogue tunes.)

Whether you’ll like it depends on whether you like the Black Crowes’ thing: it’s forever 1974. The last 30 years of pop music never happened. The sky is thick with incense, and hippified country-rock rules the airwaves.

I will say, though, that advancing age and a diminishing fan base suit these guys – they began their career affecting the pose of the grizzled, drunken road warriors of rock, and have gradually earned the reputation to which they once pretended. Two and a half decades and a dozen albums deep into their workmanlike careers, they’re as good as they ever were – maybe even a little better.

When they get their hands on a good melody, as in "Josephine," they play the living hell out of it, all earnest, unembarrassed rock-star passion. A warm and pleading vocal is welded to a powerfully simply guitar line, and they speed the whole thing up into a wild Freebird jam at the end. Sure, you’ve heard it before – it sounded good then, and it sounds good now.

Two discs of this stuff, though, starts to feel a little repetitive and formulaic. Verse! Chorus! Pseudo-Page guitar solo! There are a lot of great moments along the way, but the Crowes would do better to follow their myriad influence a little farther down the highways and byways of Aquarian pop. They steal a lot of terrific stuff from the Byrds, the Grateful Dead, Sly and the Family Stone and the Flying Burrito Brothers, but they blend it all into their familiar Allman/Zep/Skynyrd axis of searing guitar rock. They've worked hard to perfect the Black Crowes sound, but perfection and complacency are two sides of the same coin.

They're at their best when they lean harder on the Allman side of the equation. The Robert Plant rock star posturing feels a little tired, but the plaintive white-boy soul of Chris Robinson's voice is compelling and enveloping. Tracks like the lovely heartsick ballad “Locust Street,” which sounds for all the world like a great lost Gram Parsons song, makes you wonder why rock bands don’t still write songs this mournful, emotional, and yet restrained. Rich Robinson’s guitar sound is vocal and expressive in a way that’s unfashionable, anachronistic and still moving. The lack of froofy artistry and self-conscious innovation is refreshing – they’re more craftsmen than auteurs. And yet, their arena rock never feels calculated or impersonal; despite their adherence to formula, nothing feels rote or tossed off. After all these years they still play it like they mean it, and that’s saying something.

Hoots and Hellmouth: The Holy Open Secret

Who needs a drum kit? The Philadelphia rock/alt-country/gospel outfit Hoots and Hellmouth generally eschew any percussion that can’t be easily transported to the front porch, choosing washboards, tambourines, spoons and footstomps over the usual snare, bass and high hat, yet their sound is no less raucous or irresistibly danceable for the substitution.

Their second album, The Holy Open Secret, is a worthy follow-up to their barn-burning first record. Producer Bill Moriarty has become something of a local Phil Spector, svengali-like in his ability to steer acclaimed homegrown acts to the cusp of national attention. His records with groups like Man Man and Dr. Dog elevated them from the house party and church basement circuit to appearances on network television and reviews in Rolling Stone. In the process he’s developed an idiosyncratic Philadelphia indie rock sound, characterized by constantly shifting instrumental textures, rich harmonies and dense arrangements that somehow still sound chaotic and wild – complex houses of cards, always on the verge of glorious collapse.

Moriarty’s arrangements are a perfect fit for Hoots and Hellmouth’s odd hodgepodge of influences. Despite the tossed off hootenanny atmosphere they cultivate, their songcraft is extremely ambitious, almost schizophrenic in its breadth and reach. “What Good Are Plowshares if We Use Them Like Swords” is a hard, razor-edged Motown single, chugging along on a viciously simple and ominous guitar riff, before segueing into the laughing Tom Waits kitchen sink stomp of “The Family Band.” “You and All of Us” is a wonderful mess: imprecise harmonies, an impossibly catchy, almost rag-time guitar line, and drunken, woozy hollering. The songs come at you from twelve directions at once, and your defenses are useless. They win you over.

The album wrings a lot from the tension between the band’s two songwriters and vocalists, Sean Hoots and Andrew "Hellmouth" Gray. Hoots’ songs are generally the better ones. His melodies move in more unexpected directions -- the soulful gospel vibe and bluegrass rhythms seem to be his contribution. In comparison, the Hellmouth tracks -- mostly contemplative singer-songwriter ballads -- seem very routine and predictable. Still, with Hoots throwing such a wide variety of sounds into a blender and coldly snarling his way through oblique lyrics, there's something warm and personal about Hellmouth's delivery, his broad chords and dusty melodies, the creakily expansive, oaken timbre of his voice. Amidst all of Hoots' tight arrangements, falsettos, bible quotes and whiplash key changes, a well sung, simply stated lyric like "in this kitchen all I see are a thousand dishes and me" isn’t just prosaic -- it's intimate, familiar, true.

Gray doesn't possess even half of Hoots' impressive talent, but his well-worn folk holds an important place on the record. Without it, Hoots' hyperactive musical imagination and surplus of ideas might grow wearying, even unpleasant.

Hoots is the kite. Hellmouth is the string. The Holy Open Secret tugs you skyward.