Legends run the risk of becoming gimmicks. When Aretha Franklin, befitted in her enormous hat, is trotted out at Obama's inauguration to sing the National Anthem, the effect is less musical than it is contextual. It's not about Aretha singing the anthem, it's about "Aretha" singing the "anthem." A voice that's iconic and unique and immediately recognizable can actually become a weakness. The voice will never be subsumed into the music, supporting and communicating the song. You will always be a celebrity first, and an artist second.
Willie Nelson has chosen an odd but effective strategy to combat this mummification of his image: debasement. If he duets with anyone and everyone in earshot, his singing can never become sanctified or inert. In a way, it's a canny strategy. The "legend" tag, while entirely earned and deserved, has always been somewhat at odds with Nelson's low-key persona as the ramblin' singer and guitar-picker, lover of life and devoted pot-head. So he just does everything, devaluing his myth by singing with Rob Thomas and Snoop Dogg, appearing in the Dukes of Hazzard, and campaigning for Kinky Friedman. It takes the pressure off and keeps the mothballs at bay.
His life looks like a hell of a lot of fun, but the resulting art isn't always good. His new album with western swing revivalists Asleep at the Wheel is a nice ride, as far as it goes. It sounds lively in the background -- all swingin' horns and jazz guitar underlying Willie's quicksilver voice -- but there isn't much there to listen to. There are a handful of great moments -- the brass-band carnival on "Hestitation Blues," the goofball joy of hearing Nelson sing lines like "I ain't gonna give nobody none of my jelly-roll" -- and Willie's in rare form throughout, loose as ever, richly amused, making the most unusual phrasings sound natural and obvious. But the album's ultimately predictable, polished, even a little phony. It has nothing to do with the outlaw country that made Nelson a star. It's great stuff for middle-aged people to put on at cocktail parties. I intend this as less of a condemnation than it probably sounds, but I don't mean it as a compliment.
To be fair, there are one or two terrific performances -- "Bring it on Down to my House, Honey" is a legitimately great hootenanny, freewheeling and alive -- but Willie and the Wheelcould have used more of the DIY, punky spirit of Springsteen's Seeger Sessions, which deflated what could have been a staid tribute by cranking everything to eleven, by playing it wild and loose. Asleep at the Wheel are far too expert for all that. A lot of the fun feels like "fun" -- studied, polished replicas of the kind of music that people loved without taking too seriously when it was organic and new. On "Oh! You Pretty Woman," When Jason Roberts sings "she made my heart go boop-boopy-doop" squeaking goofily on the last syllables, it sounds pandering, po-faced, like the mugging, forced mirth of a children's entertainer. It sounds self-conscious; It sounds like a recreation.
Respect and seriousness are poison to this kind of music. There's an almost finger-waggingly schoolmarmish quality to the goings on here, as though we're being told to eat our vegetables, when this stuff should be cotton candy, disposable, lighter than air, teeth-rottingly delightful. Willie brings everything he's got to bear, acquiting himself admirably in an otherwise miscalculated effort. He's the ideal singer for this sort of material -- but a magical voice like his just doesn't belong in such mundane, stilted surroundings.
Thursday, August 13, 2009
Sunday, August 9, 2009
500 Days Of Summer
500 Days of Summer is another entry in the catalog of indie-rock movies that, were any of them old enough to join "My Best Friend's Wedding" on the broadcast TV circuit, would be labeled [Comedy/Drama] with [Hipster Themes]. The movie consciously self-defines as a paen to the nostalgia and hip self-awareness of TV and music literate millenials everywhere.
Summer Finn [Zooey Deschanel] and Tom Hanson [Joseph Gordon-Levitt] connect over memories of Knight Rider and boozy karaoke [Here Comes Your Man, by the Pixies] and the film follows their romance through comfortable tropes of twenteen existence: do-nothing jobs that we all suspect are beneath us, but are too lazy to leave. A trip through the Scandinavian depths of Ikea, including a detached, "scenes-from-a-normal-life" tour of the superstore's display rooms. And, of course, record stores.
Let me be clear: I've seen both Transformers movies, and I'll see the G.I. Joe movie--not because I expect (or expected) them to be good, but because they are the touchstones of my childhood. I'm moderately-to-severely annoyed in a summer featuring both a Transformers and a GI Joe movie, neither Arthur Burghardt (Destro, Devastator) nor the shambling corpse of fellow Jersey Boy Chris Latta (Cobra Commander, Starscream) were able to get any work. But, hey, Michael Bay gave Devastator some Trucknutz (tm), so there's that.
In other words, I'm the target audience for 500 Days of Summer, and I enjoyed it. While Zooey Deschanel plays the movie's eponymous character, the real star is Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Summer remains a cipher, a cardboard cutout standing in for every quirky, good-looking girl you've ever dated. An early sequence goes to great lengths to establish her as the object of widespread (but undoubtedly non-derivative, authentic, indie-pop-loving) desire. We never really find out why that's the case, and the subtle objectification of Summer is one of the lingering flaws of the movie. As a result, we never truly understand the bond between the two characters; Summer exists as a commodity to be won, enjoyed, and (when lost) recovered.
To some extent, these are flaws inherent in the genre. The schematic of a human relationship is rarely an interesting document, and often lacks the sort of broad appeal that translates into box office success. 500 Days of Summer falters when it tries to straddle that divide, offering both the comforting architecture of a comedy/drama and an elusive whiff of authenticity. The result is jarring--moments of brilliance undermined by a structure that can't quite support them.
Summer Finn [Zooey Deschanel] and Tom Hanson [Joseph Gordon-Levitt] connect over memories of Knight Rider and boozy karaoke [Here Comes Your Man, by the Pixies] and the film follows their romance through comfortable tropes of twenteen existence: do-nothing jobs that we all suspect are beneath us, but are too lazy to leave. A trip through the Scandinavian depths of Ikea, including a detached, "scenes-from-a-normal-life" tour of the superstore's display rooms. And, of course, record stores.
Let me be clear: I've seen both Transformers movies, and I'll see the G.I. Joe movie--not because I expect (or expected) them to be good, but because they are the touchstones of my childhood. I'm moderately-to-severely annoyed in a summer featuring both a Transformers and a GI Joe movie, neither Arthur Burghardt (Destro, Devastator) nor the shambling corpse of fellow Jersey Boy Chris Latta (Cobra Commander, Starscream) were able to get any work. But, hey, Michael Bay gave Devastator some Trucknutz (tm), so there's that.
In other words, I'm the target audience for 500 Days of Summer, and I enjoyed it. While Zooey Deschanel plays the movie's eponymous character, the real star is Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Summer remains a cipher, a cardboard cutout standing in for every quirky, good-looking girl you've ever dated. An early sequence goes to great lengths to establish her as the object of widespread (but undoubtedly non-derivative, authentic, indie-pop-loving) desire. We never really find out why that's the case, and the subtle objectification of Summer is one of the lingering flaws of the movie. As a result, we never truly understand the bond between the two characters; Summer exists as a commodity to be won, enjoyed, and (when lost) recovered.
To some extent, these are flaws inherent in the genre. The schematic of a human relationship is rarely an interesting document, and often lacks the sort of broad appeal that translates into box office success. 500 Days of Summer falters when it tries to straddle that divide, offering both the comforting architecture of a comedy/drama and an elusive whiff of authenticity. The result is jarring--moments of brilliance undermined by a structure that can't quite support them.
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
Modest Mouse: No One's First and You're Next
Modest Mouse’s fourth album, 2004’s Good News for People Who Love Bad News, appeared at an odd, off-kilter moment in pop history. The walls between the mainstream and the underground had come unexpectedly tumbling down. Suddenly the freaks were storming the gates and such unlikely stars as the Arcade Fire, the Walkmen and Death Cab for Cutie were garnering radio play and album sales. The cause is unclear – it’s possible that the teen melodrama The OC is a much greater cultural arbiter than most of us would like to admit, or else it’s just a cyclical thing, no different from the grunge explosion that had the record-label suits raiding the Pacific Northwest, signing everybody in a flannel shirt and dirty jeans, or the early seventies, when the hippies and weirdoes reigned supreme. In any case, we had such a moment about five years ago, and it led to the supremely weird spectacle of slouch-eyed, misanthropic indie heroes Modest Mouse being covered by the entire cast of American Idol in a Ford commercial.
Singer Isaac Brock and his band of unmerry men walked right into the bright lights, unblinking. Good News… happened to be their catchiest and most accessible album, but it didn’t represent a major departure from their jerky sound or ramshackle aesthetic of millennial dread, speedball anxiety and gut-bucket poetry. It did boast the single "Float On", an ice cream cone of a song, their most delicious and hopeful track to date, a magical pop number by a little indie band that improbably found its proper home on the radios and in the ears of millions of listeners. But "Float On" was an anomaly – becoming the owners of a smash hit single didn’t turn Modest Mouse into a pop group. By the time their next album, We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank, debuted at #1 on the Billboard charts (!) they were largely back to their old miserablist antics.
Their new album, No One’s First and You’re Next, is a collection of odds and ends, recent singles, B-sides and outtakes. These are leftovers? They don't sound like castoffs to me -- they sound like album tracks. Half of the songs here are as good as anything on We Were Dead…. Impressively, these eight songs that didn’t make it onto the LPs could serve as a primer for Modest Mouse, showing a skillful and idiosyncratic band at the height of its powers.
Brock's trademarks -- his half-swallowed yawp, his catchy little melodies that get bitten off before they're able to resolve -– have been slightly toned down, but they’re still ever-present. "Guilty Cocker Spaniels" is one of the best showcases yet for his charming bozo squawk -- he yelps the talk-song at you, lending the shaggy-dog lyrics a palpable urgency. Brock sounds like the cranky drunk at the end of the bar, holding forth hilariously and slightly annoyingly on his philosophies and grievances, until, out of nowhere, a battalion of Johnny Marr’s buzzing guitars storm the place, nearly drowning out the semi-coherent rambling. It’s an unexpected moment, two unrelated songs suddenly colliding like ships in the night, neither willing to give way to the other; they somehow carry on together, half broken, sailing slowly off into the dark as the pieces fall away.
The rollicking, melodic “Autumn Beds” proves that even on auto-pilot, Modest Mouse can deliver the goods. Armed with little more than a lovely meandering banjo figure, a mellow country-rock rhythm and an endlessly repeated lyric ("We won't be sleeping in our autumn beds."), the track is unassumingly beautiful, pretty in a way that the group rarely is. Brock's increasingly willing to lay down his quirky vocal tics and just sing, reaching for something elegiac and lovely, if only for moments here and there. It’s a track that reminds you just how little these people need in the way of tools. Their usual moves – Brock’s anxious staccato guitar lines and odd vocals, Jeremiah Green’s rubbery, jazz-influenced drumming, strengths on display throughout the record – are conspicuously absent for this one track, and it’s one of their best. Maybe that explains the little grace notes, the sly smiles, the hints of increasing mellowness and accessibility that have begun seeping into Modest Mouse albums. Growing more comfortable with their talents, maybe they’re learning that you don’t always have to work so hard and worry so much. Sometimes, you can just float on.
Singer Isaac Brock and his band of unmerry men walked right into the bright lights, unblinking. Good News… happened to be their catchiest and most accessible album, but it didn’t represent a major departure from their jerky sound or ramshackle aesthetic of millennial dread, speedball anxiety and gut-bucket poetry. It did boast the single "Float On", an ice cream cone of a song, their most delicious and hopeful track to date, a magical pop number by a little indie band that improbably found its proper home on the radios and in the ears of millions of listeners. But "Float On" was an anomaly – becoming the owners of a smash hit single didn’t turn Modest Mouse into a pop group. By the time their next album, We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank, debuted at #1 on the Billboard charts (!) they were largely back to their old miserablist antics.
Their new album, No One’s First and You’re Next, is a collection of odds and ends, recent singles, B-sides and outtakes. These are leftovers? They don't sound like castoffs to me -- they sound like album tracks. Half of the songs here are as good as anything on We Were Dead…. Impressively, these eight songs that didn’t make it onto the LPs could serve as a primer for Modest Mouse, showing a skillful and idiosyncratic band at the height of its powers.
Brock's trademarks -- his half-swallowed yawp, his catchy little melodies that get bitten off before they're able to resolve -– have been slightly toned down, but they’re still ever-present. "Guilty Cocker Spaniels" is one of the best showcases yet for his charming bozo squawk -- he yelps the talk-song at you, lending the shaggy-dog lyrics a palpable urgency. Brock sounds like the cranky drunk at the end of the bar, holding forth hilariously and slightly annoyingly on his philosophies and grievances, until, out of nowhere, a battalion of Johnny Marr’s buzzing guitars storm the place, nearly drowning out the semi-coherent rambling. It’s an unexpected moment, two unrelated songs suddenly colliding like ships in the night, neither willing to give way to the other; they somehow carry on together, half broken, sailing slowly off into the dark as the pieces fall away.
The rollicking, melodic “Autumn Beds” proves that even on auto-pilot, Modest Mouse can deliver the goods. Armed with little more than a lovely meandering banjo figure, a mellow country-rock rhythm and an endlessly repeated lyric ("We won't be sleeping in our autumn beds."), the track is unassumingly beautiful, pretty in a way that the group rarely is. Brock's increasingly willing to lay down his quirky vocal tics and just sing, reaching for something elegiac and lovely, if only for moments here and there. It’s a track that reminds you just how little these people need in the way of tools. Their usual moves – Brock’s anxious staccato guitar lines and odd vocals, Jeremiah Green’s rubbery, jazz-influenced drumming, strengths on display throughout the record – are conspicuously absent for this one track, and it’s one of their best. Maybe that explains the little grace notes, the sly smiles, the hints of increasing mellowness and accessibility that have begun seeping into Modest Mouse albums. Growing more comfortable with their talents, maybe they’re learning that you don’t always have to work so hard and worry so much. Sometimes, you can just float on.
Saturday, July 25, 2009
The Waifs: From The Union of Soul
The Waifs are changeless. Their sound -- seemingly born in the dirt, forged on long dusty roads -- emerged fully formed: weathered, lovely and durable. Aussie sisters Vikki Thom and Donna Simpson have a little of the weird old America somewhere in their bones, and multi-instrumentalist Josh Cunningham textures their haunted roots music without flourish, underlining and coloring their powerful yet delicate voices and loose, graceful songs.
There's no formal play, no experimentation, no clever hook. This music is extremely conventional, which is the kiss of death for folk-rock in the freak-dominated aughts. In the nineties pretty pick 'n strum stuff like this had a shot on commercial radio, and the Waifs would fit more comfortably between Sheryl Crow and the Dixie Chicks (though they're far better than either of those) than between Devendra Banhart and Joanna Newsome. Their strengths are their versatility, their sincerity, their beautiful melodies, their sweet and strong singing -- unhip virtues all. Despite an acclaimed (in Australia) career stretching back for a decade, and a tour opening for Bob Dylan, a search for their name on Pitchfork turns up no results at all. The Waifs have missed their moment. Barring some sudden reinvention of their sound or unexpected shift of the musical tides, they will become no more popular or wealthy than they are this very minute.
On their new live album Live From the Union of Soul they sound less than concerned. To the contrary: there's something valedictory about the tone of the concert, and deservedly so. The Waifs have never garnered the audience they might have, and they probably never will, but over five albums and thirteen years they've built an impressive and wide-ranging catalogue of songs that aspire to be nothing more than beautiful and affecting pieces of music. Their show has a casual and intimate feel, despite what sounds like a fairly large venue. The Simpson sisters are funny and relaxed – they sound utterly at home on the stage, off-handedly improvising new melodies, chuckling mid-lyric, shifting effortlessly between genres and moods.
They make it all sound so easy. A haunting, heartrendingly delicate folk rendition of Paul Kelly's beautiful Australian protest ballad "From Little Things Big Things Grow" sits comfortably alongside the jazz-inflected honeydew-sweet torch song “Stay,” which could have been written at any point in the last hundred years, and the radio-ready country rocker “Take It In.” Their generic pastiche might be scattershot if it weren’t for their tremendous vocals. There's nothing waif-like about these full-throated voices, earthly and belly-deep, haunting and wispy or wild and free. They make modern Americana without bothering to hide their outback inflections. It reminds you just how similar are the American and Australian mythologies: the wide open spaces; the cowboys; the hard livings carved from unforgiving land; the bounties of God and the toll of labor. Just as well that the Waifs have missed their moment: they sing for a vanishing world.
There's no formal play, no experimentation, no clever hook. This music is extremely conventional, which is the kiss of death for folk-rock in the freak-dominated aughts. In the nineties pretty pick 'n strum stuff like this had a shot on commercial radio, and the Waifs would fit more comfortably between Sheryl Crow and the Dixie Chicks (though they're far better than either of those) than between Devendra Banhart and Joanna Newsome. Their strengths are their versatility, their sincerity, their beautiful melodies, their sweet and strong singing -- unhip virtues all. Despite an acclaimed (in Australia) career stretching back for a decade, and a tour opening for Bob Dylan, a search for their name on Pitchfork turns up no results at all. The Waifs have missed their moment. Barring some sudden reinvention of their sound or unexpected shift of the musical tides, they will become no more popular or wealthy than they are this very minute.
On their new live album Live From the Union of Soul they sound less than concerned. To the contrary: there's something valedictory about the tone of the concert, and deservedly so. The Waifs have never garnered the audience they might have, and they probably never will, but over five albums and thirteen years they've built an impressive and wide-ranging catalogue of songs that aspire to be nothing more than beautiful and affecting pieces of music. Their show has a casual and intimate feel, despite what sounds like a fairly large venue. The Simpson sisters are funny and relaxed – they sound utterly at home on the stage, off-handedly improvising new melodies, chuckling mid-lyric, shifting effortlessly between genres and moods.
They make it all sound so easy. A haunting, heartrendingly delicate folk rendition of Paul Kelly's beautiful Australian protest ballad "From Little Things Big Things Grow" sits comfortably alongside the jazz-inflected honeydew-sweet torch song “Stay,” which could have been written at any point in the last hundred years, and the radio-ready country rocker “Take It In.” Their generic pastiche might be scattershot if it weren’t for their tremendous vocals. There's nothing waif-like about these full-throated voices, earthly and belly-deep, haunting and wispy or wild and free. They make modern Americana without bothering to hide their outback inflections. It reminds you just how similar are the American and Australian mythologies: the wide open spaces; the cowboys; the hard livings carved from unforgiving land; the bounties of God and the toll of labor. Just as well that the Waifs have missed their moment: they sing for a vanishing world.
Friday, July 24, 2009
Man And Ball: An Existential Crisis
This can't be happening! Are you real? Am I? Is this just a dream? A nightmare?
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Monday, July 20, 2009
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