Pop – Page 10 – Rock Salted

Carpenters – A Song for You

Carpenters – A Song for You A&M Records SP-3511 (1972)

The Carpenters have a reputation for being safe popular music. How wrong! Like F. Scott Fitzgerald‘s The Great Gatsby (1925) is so often described as telling the story of the empty heart of the jazz age, so the Carpenters made music that revealed dark and empty places inside a lifestyle with all the appearance of success. Loneliness, heartbreak, alienation are the hard core of that success. As another reviewer put it, “Not only does Karen Carpenter sing like a wounded angel through out, but their famously exquisite harmonies both purr and soar like you wouldn’t believe.”

A Song for You is considered by many fans to be the duo’s finest album. The first side is for Karen. Her voice is the centerpiece. This, however, is no surprise. Her voice was always the most brilliant feature of all the Carpenters’ hits. Side two, though, is for Richard. He was a talented arranger. Across the album, without being showy or gratuitous, he manages to work in a saxophone solo, a flute solo, an electric guitar solo, layers of acoustic piano and Wurlitzer electric piano, strings, and more. As to the “more,” his biggest stroke of genius is the use of an oboe and cor anglais. Playing sweet melodies, as on “Goodbye to Love,” the woody yet sour timbre of the instruments are the ideal expression of the emotional tone of numerous songs on the album. The instrumental “Flat Baroque” builds from (as the title implies) a baroque chamber pop song to include touches of light jazz. Later on, “Crystal Lullaby” has more Euro-classical orchestration. Then “Road Ode” displays a faculty for convincing contemporary, orchestrated pop jazz (like Antonio Carlos Jobim‘s Wave). “Top of the World” is country — this album version sounds more country than the single version. If there is a glaring flaw anywhere, it is the latin easy listening horn arrangements that arrive in jarring fashion in a few places.

Maybe it is because I was reading Pier Paolo Pasolini‘s St. Paul: A Screenplay, which somehow counseled listening to A Song For You, but there is a way to consider this as a “concept album” statement in atheism. This is especially pronounced when listening to “Goodbye to Love”. Intellectuals have adopted this idea that atheism takes on specific meaning when it comes from christian teachings — these people sometimes call themselves “christian atheists”. Martin Scorsese‘s film The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), based on Nikos Kazantzakis‘ book, ends with this sort of a view. Jesus, dying from crucifixion, asks, “Father, why have you forsaken me?” Then he dies, without being saved from death by a god that doesn’t exist, realizing — and teaching — that everyone must learn that no god will guarantee meaning to our lives and we are each alone with our own freedom. This is precisely what “Goodbye to Love” can be read as saying. “Love” is, of course, the foundation of christian faith and religion, a resolution for an abyss of unknowing. And A Song For You has references to christian themes in other songs like “Top of the World,” “Interlude” and “Bless the Beasts and Children.” So, it is fair to read this song as referencing christian values of love. The songs lyrics include: “No one ever cared if I should live or die . . . So I’ve made my mind up I must live my life alone . . . From this day love is forgotten, I’ll go on as best I can.” What is this, Samuel Beckett? There are traces of agnosticism in the lines, “What lies in the future is a mystery to us all / no one can predict the wheel of fortune as it falls / there may come a time when I will see that I’ve been wrong / but for now this is my song and it’s goodbye to love.” But, still, the core of the song deals with how to live without love, without resolution to the “years of useless search” to know what “god” wanted (or wants) from the protagonist. After all, the lyrics already suggest that “no one ever cared,” which must be treated as saying not even “god” cared. If this is the devastating, subjective destitution of “Goodbye to Love,” then it is important to look to the rest of the album to find out what use this atheistic freedom is put to use toward. I think it comes through on side two, and especially from the reprise of the title song concluding the album.

It is significant that “Goodbye to Love” is, aside from a brief half-joke hymn in “Intermission,” at the close of the first side of the album. It represents the final loss of faith that was tested and crumbling already. So, the song “Hurting Each Other” follows “Top of the World.” There is no doubt that “Top of the World” is about finding love. It is the most buoyant song on the entire album. But, it is immediately followed by “Hurting Each Other,” which is about a kind of broken relationship, going on while the couple wounds each other. Then “It’s Going to Take Some Time” implies a breakup, with questioning as to how amends could be made. By the time we reach “Goodbye to Love,” there is a crash, a shattering that plays out to take away the faith that was once present. Side two of the album is about a search for something to take the place of that absent faith. “I Won’t Last a Day Without You,” “Bless the Beasts and Children” and “Road Ode,” even “Piano Picker” too, are interesting in this respect. They sort of pull together aspects of things that were present before the crisis of faith, but gives them new significance in the absence of faith. “Piano Picker,” with Richard singing, may be the clumsiest of them, but the song deals with a re-framing of what was in his childhood and young adulthood considered a lack — not being a popular “jock” athlete but instead being alone practicing the piano — and reconstitutes it as a core of what makes the protagonist someone with something to objectively contribute to the world. “Bless the Beasts and Children” and “Crystal Lullaby” both kind of map out aspirations to care for future generations and animals, the most meek and vulnerable (classic themes from christianity).

“I Won’t Last a Day Without You” could be the most problematic song for my interpretation of the album. It follows the very atheistic theme that the scariest thing in the world is the otherness of strangers. But the refrain goes: “I can take all the madness the world has to give / but I won’t last a day without you.” From one angle, this has the trappings of a Jesus song. Yet, if we commit to my interpretation of the album as a whole, maybe the song can be read along those lines, as being about the sense of collective emancipatory potential in non-divine personal relationships. That is, the power of two is collectively greater than what the power of one, alone, can withstand. In a foreword to an edition of the Pasolini St. Paul screenplay, philosopher Alain Badiou notes:

“In our world, in fact, truth can only make its way by protecting itself from the corrupted outside, and establishing, within this protection, an iron discipline that enables it to ‘come out’, to turn actively towards the exterior, without fearing to lose itself in this. The whole problem is that this discipline . . . , although totally necessary, is also tendentially incompatible with the pureness of True. Rivalries, betrayals, struggles for power, routine, silent acceptance of the external corruption under the cover of practical ‘realism’: all this means that the spirit which created the Church no longer recognizes in it, or only with great difficulty, that in the name of which it was created.”

In the song, at least the line “when there’s no getting over that rainbow” might confirm that we are dealing with human social relations, and not divine interventions. Still, this can be viewed as forming relationships for protection, in pursuit of something greater. In the christian world this is the “holy spirit”. If the album makes this point somewhat inconsistently, then it may be the expression of just what Badiou sees as the inconsistency in Pasolini’s St. Paul.

All of this comes full circle at the close, reprising Leon Russell‘s “A Song for You.” A song reprise or prelude can often be a lazy attempt to extend the appeal of a single song through rote duplication. But here, the closing “A Song for You (Reprise)” is more than that. It opens with Karen’s voice, eerie, echoed and only faintly audible — it almost requires turning the volume up to even hear it at all. It soon enough swells to the familiar song that opens the album. Yet the context is now entirely different. After all these songs about crushing pain, heartbreak and loneliness there is still room to return to “singing a song for you.” Significantly, the reprise omits the first part of the song lyrics that first speak of having “ten thousand people watching” but turning away toward a situation in which “we’re alone now.” It instead goes straight to the end of the song, dealing with “when my life is over remember when we were together / we were alone and I was singing this song for you.” Only here, at the end of the album, can the meaning of the opening song be grasped. It was only after the loss of faith, and the recognition that there is no external force to supply meaning, can the protagonist find meaning in being with others and singing. By doing this in a way that returns to the opening song, a cycle is explicitly created. We return to where we began, but with new understanding after the exhaustion and failures contained within the cycle. So even though the album opens dealing with personal relationships, and ends dealing with personal relationships, it goes from being about false, empty relationships to at least understanding better what makes for meaningful, real ones. It allows, at the core, for a process of recognizing a lack of (meaningful, real) relationships, and sets out to try to provide them, if only symbolically.

Didn’t think there was so much to find in a Carpenters album, a group often dismissed as saccharine, safe and boring? In a way, this is revolutionary music. There is definitely more to the brother-sister duo than appears upon a quick glance at their publicity photos that always assure the viewer of their protestant modesty. Look at the liner sleeve that accompanied the original album pressing, printed on “100% recycled paper” as “an anti-pollutionary measure” and replete with slightly ironic cartoon illustrations paired with some of the song lyrics. The real-life Carpenters didn’t manage to hold out the way this album suggests (it is play acting, as the line about going off to the bathroom in “Interlude” establishes). But, indie-rock band Sonic Youth‘s bassist Kim Gordon — an unabashed Carpenters fan — wrote a posthumous open letter to Karen Carpenter re-printed in Sonic Youth etc.: Sensational Fix (2009). She asked, “Who is Karen Carpenter, really, besides the sad girl with the extraordinarily beautiful, soulful voice?” Karen famously died from complications of an eating disorder. Richard had drug problems. Much like Elvis, the Carpenters were crushed under a weighty touring schedule. And just like Pasolini’s view of St. Paul forming the christian church, touring robbed the Carpenters of the music that was their truth and purpose to begin with. But, as listeners, we should not overlook what was there at the start, the kernel of emancipatory potential wrapped in the clothes of the most claustrophobic, conformist MOR pop music of the early 1970s. If this music can appeal to listeners who want sentimental music while at the same time have substantial value under a totally unsentimental interpretation, then A Song for You does transgresses boundaries in a radical way.

Bobby Darin – You’re the Reason I’m Living

Bobby Darin – You’re the Reason I’m Living Capitol ST-1866 (1963)

You’re the Reason I’m Living has Bobby Darin crooning over pop country treatments, something experiencing a cross-over surge since the prior year thanks to Ray Charles — people from the traditional pop world like Dean Martin, Steve Lawrence, Eydie Gormé, and Darin were trying to capitalize on the fad. Darin had already released one country single (“Things”). Much of the time, a mid- to late-career country recording is a condescending effort to reach out to the rural slums when fickle tastes of urban elites start to pass by a once mighty star, or some equally lame reason (just a few later examples: Nashville Skyline, We Had It All, Almost Blue, Hanky Panky, Honeycomb, …). Of course, Darin sings nicely. He always did. But the music behind him, especially on side two, is no more than an extremely lazy amalgamation of cliches and stereotypes. The horn charts are all homophonic blasts of energy, without any sort of modulation, or for that matter any real purpose specific to these songs. The strings seem to offer only one texture, pointlessly tacked on to a number of songs in a way that smacks of pure happenstance. The vocal chorus backing (“You’re the Reason I’m Living,” “Release Me,” “Here I Am,” “Please Help Me, I’m Falling”) is also that over-used male/female mashup of Gregorian chants and barbershop quartets that soiled recordings a-plenty for many years after WWII. On the plus side, the Hank Williams song “(I Heard That) Lonesome Whistle” is not the bleak loner tune it usually is, but an original Icarus-like reading that portrays a dumbfounded big shot tumbling from great heights. “It Keeps Right A-Hurtin'” has a nice soulful country walk that lets Darin sing with as much longing as possible. There is some decent pedal steel guitar (“Now You’re Gone”), and honky tonk piano (“Be Honest With Me”) too. Elsewhere he’s stuck awkwardly between the terrain of a country-tinged, clean-cut heartthrob like Ricky Nelson and a Vegas-style approximation of “Country & Western” music that a showtune star like Debbie Reynolds might have tried. What really drags, though, is the way Darin starts to sing every song the same way. After almost every line, he finishes the last word with the same brooding, sly melisma, stretching and bending the last syllable of each line for heavy-handed emphasis. This is felt most strongly on “Who Can I Count on.” The effect seems like a profoundly calculated and circumscribed attempt to add hints of polite, socially acceptable swagger and palpable, seductive charisma. Unfortunately, though, it comes across at best as an overused affectation and at worst as a crippling limitation on his stylistic range. All that aside, the biggest problem with this album is that it never presents a convincing case for adding glitzy pop orchestration to country songs. It would seem that the producers thought that was what Darin fans expected, even when he was doing a country album, so they are added in without any further deliberation. That rationale, inasmuch as it was consciously or unconsciously used, is specious. Darin, himself, is sort of exactly what he sets out to be: someone who doesn’t respect rigid genre boundaries. That ends up being kind of cool and kind of creepy, actually. His near obsession with awkward, unexpected twists and stylistic combinations is creepy! Anyway, Darin was an interesting character, though much of what he did was sort of a journeyman version of Scott Walker‘s career.

Perfume Genius – Too Bright

Perfume Genius – Too Bright Matador OLE 1028-2 (2014)

Eclectic pop that moves freely from art rock in the style of Mark Hollis (“Fool”) to heavier stuff (“Queen”), plus plenty of somber yet driven ballads almost like Rufus Wainwright. Mike Hadreas, the man behind the Perfume Genius moniker, has an adept faculty for switching styles song-to-song while sounding convincing with each of them — something of a trend of late among many different artists, like Kishi Bashi on Lighght. Well done.

The Persuasions – On the Good Ship Lollipop

The Persuasions – On the Good Ship Lollipop Music for Little People R2 75794 (1999)

Yes!

Elvis Presley – From Elvis Presley Boulevard, Memphis, Tennessee (Recorded Live)

Elvis Presley – From Elvis Presley Boulevard, Memphis, Tennessee (Recorded Live) RCA Victor APL1-1506 (1976)

When people see the late-career Elvis as a bloated, cliched wash-out, they probably have recordings like From Elvis Presley Boulevard, Memphis, Tennessee in mind. Recorded in the campy “Jungle Room” of his own Graceland mansion with mobile recording equipment, these songs reflect a tired soul retreating to a safe haven, away from the world. Mostly lonely heartbreak ballads, these are bleak songs. You can feel Elvis’ connection to the mood. Yet, the main limitation is the slapdash quality of the instrumental music behind The King, offering mostly a cookie-cutter countrypolitan sheen with treacly strings that bowl over the nuance in the vocals. In a way, the backing tries to take depressing songs and make them cheerier, which is entirely counterproductive. Elvis’ band members were already seeking other opportunities. It seems like supporting him was becoming a low priority for them. Though in fairness Elvis provided little direction and the cramped recording locale hardly helped. The net result is to make this album a little dull. It won’t convince anyone of the real depths of the man’s talents. Yet, if you make an effort there are some worthwhile things here, and Elvis does sing reasonably well.

It’s fascinating to compare the careers of Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash. Both came from rural origins and both broke through on Sam Phillips‘ Sun Records in Memphis. Both developed drug problems in the face of grueling touring schedules and the enormous pressures of the entertainment industry. Elvis became a movie star and then jumped right back into music full time with a fascinating TV special. Cash hosted his own TV musical variety show and then toured with a large revue show not unlike Elvis’ breakthrough Vegas act. By the end of the 1970s both stars had faded. Cash made a comeback in the 1990s, while Elvis had made one himself in the late 60s. Of course, the two stars couldn’t have had more different personalities. Cash had a reputation for always insisting on doing things his own way, while Presley was timid and non-confrontational when it came to his career.

When Johnny Cash made his comeback, it was by mining the darker elements of his music, with faddish attempts to sound “current” taken away to leave just a raw, “authentic” folk sound. In a way, Elvis was also mining the darker aspects of his music shortly before his death, but his handlers didn’t seem to understand how to deal with that kind of approach. Someone should go back and strip out the harps, string orchestration, stuffy horns, and some of the backing vocals (much like what was done on Naked Willie), and maybe even re-record new backing instrumentals (the approach of Guitar Man), because there is definitely something to be found in Elvis’ performances here of value, if separated out from everything weighing them down.

Willie Nelson – Always on My Mind

Willie Nelson – Always on My Mind Columbia FC 37951 (1982)

Willie’s star soared in the late 1970s and early 80s. Red Headed Stranger was a big hit, but Stardust blew it away with multi-platinum sales. Riding high on that success Willie even began an acting career, culminating in a starring role in the film Honeysuckle Rose. However, after Stardust he had released mostly soundtracks and niche albums like a holiday one, a gospel one, a tribute to Kris Kristofferson and an assortment of duet/collaboration outings. He also issued what remained for a long time his definitive “best of” compilation: Greatest Hits (& Some That Will Be).

Always on My Mind proved to be Willie’s highest-charting album, and one of the best selling releases of his entire career. He still had chart-busters left in him, but this represented the high-water mark of his popularity. It also marked another departure for him, in a career that always veered (or some might say lurched) in unpredictable directions. This was the arrival of Willie the 80s pop singer.

Producer Chips Moman comes on board. He would work with Nelson a lot in the coming years. Moman has an uneasy legacy, in hindsight often criticized for his clinical, overproduced destruction of numerous albums, from Townes Van Zandt in the late 1970s to The Highwaymen and Johnny Cash in the 1980s. But, that legacy aside, Always on My Mind is among his more durable efforts (eclipsed of course by Elvis‘ From Elvis in Memphis). He lets this ride on the strength of the performances rather than a suffocatingly synthetic layer of studio and mixing gimmicks. Willie is singing lots of pop and rock fare, tending toward lighter, slow-burn ballads and torch songs. These are much much more contemporary tunes than on Stardust. He takes somewhat of a cue from Elvis, who recorded the title track, Simon & Garfunkel‘s “Bridge Over Troubled Water” and “Let It Be Me (Je t’appartiens)” during his 70s comeback. Willie possibly edges out The King on the title track, though Willie hits the top of his vocal range on “Bridge Over Troubled Water” and noticeably can’t go as high as he seems to want to go (no pun intended). Much of the material is well-selected, like “Do Right Woman, Do Right Man” and Procol Harum‘s “A Whiter Shade of Pale.” A couple of obligatory re-recordings of old Nelson hits make appearances as well. One can forgive, somewhat, the fact that Moman seems to be pushing a few too many of his own songs because they happen to work, particularly the opener with its guest appearance by Waylon Jennings. But this album does exhibit some serious lapses in judgment. When a saxophone enters on “Let It Be Me,” it is as if Gato Barbieri stumbled into Nelson’s recording session amidst a marijuana haze and thought he was redoing the Last Tango In Paris soundtrack, or somebody was warming up for the “Lethal Weapon” soundtrack. That sax (from John Marett) is probably the album’s biggest liability. It is unredeemable.

If Always on My Mind represented some of the worst tendencies of Willie Nelson’s music in the coming decade, it would be hard to tell from this evidence alone. At its best, this ends up being one of his stronger pop outings. Aside from some slight unevenness, it delivers a classic in the title track and has enough other successes to keep things interesting. Warts and all, this is probably something that will appeal to casual fans of pop music, even without any particular interest in the artist, and ranks as a worthwhile second-tier Willie Nelson effort for the fan.

Willie Nelson – City of New Orleans

Willie Nelson – City of New Orleans Columbia CK 39145 (1984)

This turd of an album went platinum, which is more an indication of Willie Nelson’s overall name recognition in 1984 than the quality of City of New Orleans in and of itself. Willie is in easy listening mode, again. Chips Moman produces, and he ruins yet another recording with oppressively sterile sound. Listeners won’t doubt for even a second that this album was from the mid-80s. In truth some of the performances — like the title track — aren’t bad. But does anyone need to hear Willie do “Wind Beneath My Wings?” Ever?

Willie Nelson – A Horse Called Music

Willie Nelson – A Horse Called Music Columbia CK 45046 (1989)

More pop than country, A Horse Called Music finds Mr. Willie Nelson mastering the synthetic sounds of 1980s pop. That’s right. This one is much more of a pop record than a country one. There are strings and lush background vocals on much of it, returning to country briefly, such as for yet another rendition of his “Mr. Record Man” and the opener. This thing fairly reeks of the 1980s, yet, the songs are by and large much better choices than on so many of his other albums of the era. He’s also singing fairly well. “Is The Better Part Over” was written five years earlier about Nelson’s third marriage to Connie, the wife his band liked best. “Nothing I Can Do About It Now” was the hit, Nelson’s last really big one until a duet with Toby Keith more than a decade later, but it’s really one of the lesser cuts on the album. The best stuff here is actually the orchestrated traditional pop. It does bear mentioning that this has one of the most amazing album covers on any Willie Nelson album, and the title is quite funny too.

DEVO – Pioneers Who Got Scalped: The Anthology

DEVO – Pioneers Who Got Scalped: The Anthology Rhino R2 75967 (2000)

Well, Pioneers Who Got Scalped is a real mixed bag. Disc one starts out great, but listening to disc two is a real chore. In their early days, DEVO had sharp songwriting skills and a clever, absurdist sense of humor. People call them a punk band, but I see them more as a disco band strongly influenced by punk rock–not that those genre distinctions really matter. The band’s earliest recordings that open disc one satirize popular culture, often by way of clever new arrangements of well-known pop songs that frequently deploy mechanized, angular rhythms. However, all that didn’t last. By disc two, though it is apparent towards the end of disc one as well, the band just ran out of ideas. Their recordings were still well-crafted but their songwriting became confined to unremarkably generic 1980s synth-pop, their sense of humor common. I suppose it becomes difficult to skewer pop culture the more you become a part of mainstream pop culture. And looking back it is hard to see DEVO as anything but a part of mainstream pop culture, from “Whip It” onward at least.

Brandi Carlile – Bear Creek

Brandi Carlile – Bear Creek Columbia 88691 96122 2 (2012)

This album is all over the place. At least she got through the checklist of styles drawn up before recording this… A good part of it resides in the same indie/alt-country territory as the likes of Neko Case and Jenny Lewis with the Watson Twins. But it also swings over to the realm of synthetic indie pop a bit like Metric. Oh, and more than that. Her vocals have the same white girl singing like a black gospel/soul singer vibe that Amy Winehouse, Adele (whatever her last name is), Elton John and others have used. “That Wasn’t Me” is the minor hit, and it’s good. “Save Part of Yourself” works well too. But much of this seems unable to offer anything on its own, instead burdened with having to cover as much territory as possible. The biggest liability is how this was recorded, in a way that takes the edges out and remains non-committal. Carlile might have some potential if a great producer took her in and guided her to stronger material and a sound of her own.