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.
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
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.
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.
Thursday, May 21, 2009
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.
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.
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Ian Tyson: Yellowhead to Yellowstone
It's been an awfully long time since Ian Tyson, as one half of Ian and Sylvia, had a huge hit with the folk-rock ballad "Four Strong Winds." Soon Sylvia left, the record sales dropped, he bought a ranch in Alberta and soldiered on. Thirty five years and over a dozen albums in to his solo career, he releases his new Yellowhead to Yellowstone and Other Love Stories to little fanfare. His voice is muzzled, perpetually tormented by a catch hanging in the back of his throat. He sounds gravelly and raw to the point where you begin to worry about his health. Though there's no indication that Tyson is ill in any way, he sounds like Townes Van Zandt on Sanitarium Blues -- an unassuming country singer in his final days. There's nothing particularly impressive about the album, no pyrotechnics on display. The production is basic and workmanlike and sometimes overly slick. The lyrics aren’t full of wordplay or beautiful imagery. (Some of the lines, in fact, land with a clunk.) And yet somehow Tyson's harrowing, weathered voice and simple, sturdy sensibilities tie the whole thing together into much more than the sum of its parts. The songs are sentimental, but his voice is flinty and unflinching, haunted by ghosts and yet undistracted from the task at hand. It's an unassuming album in praise of unassuming virtues: devotion, resiliency, commitment, care. It's honest and defiant and lovely; it deserves more attention than it will receive.
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Golem: Citizen Boris
It’s an increasingly familiar technique: take some traditional form of music, crank up the volume, season with snarling punk rock intensity. What the Pogues did with Celtic balladry, O'Death does with Appalachian hillbilly bluegrass, and Hank Williams III does with his grandfather's flinty country music, the Brooklyn-based group Golem does with that old-time Hebrew sound. To their credit, they stir up a considerably more jumbled concoction than the aforementioned bands. Incorporating Romany folk, accordion-driven klezmer songcraft, and bits of Russian dance-pop, they spit and belt their lyrics in a semi-coherent mix of Yiddish, English and various Slavic languages. (Lead singer Annette Ezekiel seems to be at least septa-lingual.) Their breakneck delivery ends up sounding less like Israel than New York City, or more specifically Brighton Beach -- an atavistic, self-segregated and yet diverse corner of the melting pot.
I've never seen Golem perform, but, based on their albums, I'd wager they put on a hell of a show. Their combination of manic wildness and instrumental density is compelling, and their Jewish/Euro-folk salad approach provides a wide enough variety of moves and textures to keep you guessing. Still, as with many of the bands that use the old folk/punk dialectic, they suffer from being pressed onto compact disc. While live performance favors musicianship, attitude and theatrics, records demand a level of songwriting that Golem can’t quite deliver.
Which is not to say that their new album, Citizen Boris, is entirely free of hummable tunes. “Train Across Ukraine” rides in on rolling drums and wonderfully discordant horns that summon up the chaos of an overcrowded immigrant train-car. “Zingarella,” the world’s most ominous and murderous wedding song, builds to a vicious climax and Aaron Diskin’s voice, sometimes gratingly histrionic, sounds howlingly desperate. There are some fairly half-hearted concept album trappings here about an Eastern European man journeying to the US, but the conceit never quite takes hold, and seems to be dropped halfway through the record. That, really, is indicative the album’s fundamental flaw: though there’s tremendous musicianship on display here, and many moments are joyful, funny and even glorious, in sum the thing feels a bit thrown together, unfinished, half-formed. And their new emphasis on English lyrics, probably intended to garner a wider audience, is ultimately a mistake – it draws attention to the weakness of those lyrics, and underlines what I’ll call the Borat Factor: a creeping feeling that this might all be some kind of condescending joke. (Are the accents fake? I can’t tell, but I’m suspicious that this be an American group doing a skit.) When a band names one of their albums Fresh Off Boat, it’s hard to feel that there’s not a wink lurking somewhere in the background.
They're at their best when they quit it with all the mugging, stop shoving their thick moustaches in your direction, and let their alternately thrilling, menacing and adrenal music carry them away. On the beguiling and lovely Yiddish/English ballad "Come to Me," vocalists Diskin and Ezekiel trade pick-up lines and rebuffs, propositioning one another and dancing off into a haze of shuffling drums and mysterious modal brass melodies. They can't resist carrying every idea to its logical conclusion, though, so they spoil the delicate sensuality and tension of the song by blanketing the ending with Birkin & Gainsbourg-style orgasmic squeals. It’s this relentless need to please, this urge to reach for the nearest punch-line, that likely makes them a riveting live act. It also, unfortunately, prevents Citizen Boris from being much more than a mediocre album.
Rating: 3.5/10
I've never seen Golem perform, but, based on their albums, I'd wager they put on a hell of a show. Their combination of manic wildness and instrumental density is compelling, and their Jewish/Euro-folk salad approach provides a wide enough variety of moves and textures to keep you guessing. Still, as with many of the bands that use the old folk/punk dialectic, they suffer from being pressed onto compact disc. While live performance favors musicianship, attitude and theatrics, records demand a level of songwriting that Golem can’t quite deliver.
Which is not to say that their new album, Citizen Boris, is entirely free of hummable tunes. “Train Across Ukraine” rides in on rolling drums and wonderfully discordant horns that summon up the chaos of an overcrowded immigrant train-car. “Zingarella,” the world’s most ominous and murderous wedding song, builds to a vicious climax and Aaron Diskin’s voice, sometimes gratingly histrionic, sounds howlingly desperate. There are some fairly half-hearted concept album trappings here about an Eastern European man journeying to the US, but the conceit never quite takes hold, and seems to be dropped halfway through the record. That, really, is indicative the album’s fundamental flaw: though there’s tremendous musicianship on display here, and many moments are joyful, funny and even glorious, in sum the thing feels a bit thrown together, unfinished, half-formed. And their new emphasis on English lyrics, probably intended to garner a wider audience, is ultimately a mistake – it draws attention to the weakness of those lyrics, and underlines what I’ll call the Borat Factor: a creeping feeling that this might all be some kind of condescending joke. (Are the accents fake? I can’t tell, but I’m suspicious that this be an American group doing a skit.) When a band names one of their albums Fresh Off Boat, it’s hard to feel that there’s not a wink lurking somewhere in the background.
They're at their best when they quit it with all the mugging, stop shoving their thick moustaches in your direction, and let their alternately thrilling, menacing and adrenal music carry them away. On the beguiling and lovely Yiddish/English ballad "Come to Me," vocalists Diskin and Ezekiel trade pick-up lines and rebuffs, propositioning one another and dancing off into a haze of shuffling drums and mysterious modal brass melodies. They can't resist carrying every idea to its logical conclusion, though, so they spoil the delicate sensuality and tension of the song by blanketing the ending with Birkin & Gainsbourg-style orgasmic squeals. It’s this relentless need to please, this urge to reach for the nearest punch-line, that likely makes them a riveting live act. It also, unfortunately, prevents Citizen Boris from being much more than a mediocre album.
Rating: 3.5/10
Monday, February 16, 2009
Rusty Truck: Luck's Changing Lanes
There are at least three very good reasons to hate Rusty Truck's album Luck's Changing Lanes without ever listening to it.
1. It's a vanity project from celebrity photographer Mark Seliger, a brazen attempt to cross the line between member of the media and actual celebrity.
2. It's studded with unearned guest appearances from icons like T Bone Burnett, Sheryl Crow, Jakob Dylan, Lenny Kravitz, Willie Nelson, Rob Thomas, and Gillian Welch. Any album with liner notes that read “Sheryl Crow: Accordion” is not one I’m particularly eager to listen to. It implies that showing off your famous buddies is more important than, you know, finding an actual accordion player. Also: Rob Thomas?
3. Finally, it's the "second album" from Rusty Truck despite containing almost the exact same material included on their debut, Broken Promises. A couple of new songs are tacked on, a bonus disc of music videos is thrown in, and viola! A sophomore album. The decision to repackage the same material under a new title is inexplicable at best, and cravenly calculating at worst. It's hard to think that Seliger's label Rykodisc isn't hoping get a few extra purchases from Rusty Truck fans who don't realize they're buying the same album for a second time.
With all of this weighing against it, I did my best to hate this album. I’m sorry to report that the album ain’t bad. It’s not exactly good either, and it nearly buckles under the weight of Mark Seliger’s Amazing Superfriends, but there’s a fair amount of pleasure to be taken in these melodic, unassuming country songs.
Seliger has a way with a vocal hook and a melancholic turn of phrase. It’s all simplistic, derivative in the extreme, but that somehow becomes a strength. A song like “Never Going Back,” driven by soft pedal-steel and high, lonesome vocals, feels both generic and eternal – it could as easily have been sung by Townes Van Zandt, Conway Twitty, or Garth Brooks. It’s a microcosm of the album as a whole: what it lacks in originality it makes up for with warmth and familiarity.
Still, there’s a bizarre feeling of wealth and excess that’s entirely at odds with the mood of these songs. The sound is slick and crystal clear, when these songs would be better served by a sort of hazy back porch low fidelity. Seliger’s high and tuneful voice is rather thin, and producer Jakob Dylan overcompensates by repeatedly overdubbing the vocals, effectively thickening them up and stripping them of immediacy and personality.
And while most of the celebrity cameos are successfully subsumed into the album’s mood – Ms. Crowe, it turns out, plays a perfectly fine accordion – there is one disastrous misstep: on the lovely, heartsick ballad “A Thousand Kisses,” he attempts to duet with Willie Nelson. The moment when Seliger’s voice is replaced by Nelson’s effortlessly affecting twang and jazz-like phrasing, a shiver runs down your spine. And, if you have any taste at all, you suddenly wonder what you’re doing listening to this middle-of-the-road pablum when you could just dig out your copy of “Red Headed Stranger” and crank up the volume on the genuine article.
1. It's a vanity project from celebrity photographer Mark Seliger, a brazen attempt to cross the line between member of the media and actual celebrity.
2. It's studded with unearned guest appearances from icons like T Bone Burnett, Sheryl Crow, Jakob Dylan, Lenny Kravitz, Willie Nelson, Rob Thomas, and Gillian Welch. Any album with liner notes that read “Sheryl Crow: Accordion” is not one I’m particularly eager to listen to. It implies that showing off your famous buddies is more important than, you know, finding an actual accordion player. Also: Rob Thomas?
3. Finally, it's the "second album" from Rusty Truck despite containing almost the exact same material included on their debut, Broken Promises. A couple of new songs are tacked on, a bonus disc of music videos is thrown in, and viola! A sophomore album. The decision to repackage the same material under a new title is inexplicable at best, and cravenly calculating at worst. It's hard to think that Seliger's label Rykodisc isn't hoping get a few extra purchases from Rusty Truck fans who don't realize they're buying the same album for a second time.
With all of this weighing against it, I did my best to hate this album. I’m sorry to report that the album ain’t bad. It’s not exactly good either, and it nearly buckles under the weight of Mark Seliger’s Amazing Superfriends, but there’s a fair amount of pleasure to be taken in these melodic, unassuming country songs.
Seliger has a way with a vocal hook and a melancholic turn of phrase. It’s all simplistic, derivative in the extreme, but that somehow becomes a strength. A song like “Never Going Back,” driven by soft pedal-steel and high, lonesome vocals, feels both generic and eternal – it could as easily have been sung by Townes Van Zandt, Conway Twitty, or Garth Brooks. It’s a microcosm of the album as a whole: what it lacks in originality it makes up for with warmth and familiarity.
Still, there’s a bizarre feeling of wealth and excess that’s entirely at odds with the mood of these songs. The sound is slick and crystal clear, when these songs would be better served by a sort of hazy back porch low fidelity. Seliger’s high and tuneful voice is rather thin, and producer Jakob Dylan overcompensates by repeatedly overdubbing the vocals, effectively thickening them up and stripping them of immediacy and personality.
And while most of the celebrity cameos are successfully subsumed into the album’s mood – Ms. Crowe, it turns out, plays a perfectly fine accordion – there is one disastrous misstep: on the lovely, heartsick ballad “A Thousand Kisses,” he attempts to duet with Willie Nelson. The moment when Seliger’s voice is replaced by Nelson’s effortlessly affecting twang and jazz-like phrasing, a shiver runs down your spine. And, if you have any taste at all, you suddenly wonder what you’re doing listening to this middle-of-the-road pablum when you could just dig out your copy of “Red Headed Stranger” and crank up the volume on the genuine article.
Saturday, February 7, 2009
Today in Awesome, Terrifying Science
Have you ever looked at a cobra and thought, "Okay. I get it. You're creepy, slithery, have big-ass fangs, and your skin makes for some kickin' boots. But you, snake, are simply insufficiently giant-sized."
Well, Gentle Imaginary Reader, your prayers have been answered, presuming you either own a time machine or are reading this blog from the early Cenozoic era. Because scientists in Columbia have discovered the bones of a snake that weighs as much as a car.
Yes, at forty-two feet long and over a ton, the Titanoboa cerrejonensis (Latin for "super evil megasnake of bed-wettingly nightmarish proportions") makes an excellent pet for those of us who look at the Sphinx and see a potential housecat, or look at a beluga whale and see a nice midnight snack. The upside of all this is that we now know what became of the Mayor of Sunnydale.
Seriously, guys, this bastard is huge. Over a ton! A ton is two thousand pounds, which is many, many more pounds than usual for a snake. I bet even you don't weigh that much, Gentle Imaginary Reader, and everyone knows that you're really, really fat.
In conclusion, I want these motherfuckin' snakes out of my motherfuckin' prehistory.
Well, Gentle Imaginary Reader, your prayers have been answered, presuming you either own a time machine or are reading this blog from the early Cenozoic era. Because scientists in Columbia have discovered the bones of a snake that weighs as much as a car.
Yes, at forty-two feet long and over a ton, the Titanoboa cerrejonensis (Latin for "super evil megasnake of bed-wettingly nightmarish proportions") makes an excellent pet for those of us who look at the Sphinx and see a potential housecat, or look at a beluga whale and see a nice midnight snack. The upside of all this is that we now know what became of the Mayor of Sunnydale.
Seriously, guys, this bastard is huge. Over a ton! A ton is two thousand pounds, which is many, many more pounds than usual for a snake. I bet even you don't weigh that much, Gentle Imaginary Reader, and everyone knows that you're really, really fat.
In conclusion, I want these motherfuckin' snakes out of my motherfuckin' prehistory.
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