Tag: Pop

Nick Drake – Bryter Layter

Bryter Layter

Nick Drake – Bryter Layter Island ILPS 9134 (1971)

If you will bear with the analogy a bit, Nick Drake’s music in some ways represented an alternate path from that of Neil Young.  Both artists represented ways of dealing with the failure of the 1960s counter-cultural movement.  In Young’s case, he did two main things.  One, he played scuzzy, grungy electric guitar in a way that scared off those not attuned to the counterculture.  That approach proved difficult to maintain though the drug-fueled hedonism of the 1970s.  He made a good go of it though!  Second, he incorporated country music into his sound, suggesting that he looked for support beyond urban environs, toward the rural dispossessed.  All these things had Young carving out a separate space away from mainstream culture.

Nick Drake approached conventional pop music unabashedly.  In a way, he was adapting to and working with mainstream pop.  But he was also reformulating it.  Bryter Layter, frequently described as an extension of his debut Five Leaves Left and the most hopeful of his three albums, comes closest to radio pop.  But his attitude toward mainstream pop is to wonder about his place in it.  His pop music innovation is his reflexive approach to it.  Most of these songs are about the hope and promise of the future, approached with trepidation and uncertainty.  Drake sings with a breathy, waif-like voice.  He seems to pursue a very radical christian program of fighting his battles with weakness.  But unlike Neil Young, Drake heads right for mainstream music with his deeply personal take on it.  What links the two seemingly disparate performers is that neither can accept the extroverted world as it is.  What differentiates them most is the lack of catharsis in Drake’s music — that is kind of the defining trait of Young’s music.  Making music seems almost to deplete Drake, but he makes his music anyway.

There are a few songs on this album that seem a bit saccharine: “At the Chime of a City Clock,” “Bryter Layter” and “Hazey Jane I.”  But there are more that weave a richly compelling sonic fabric: “One of These Things First,” “Northern Sky,” and “Hazey Jane II.”  Drake may have the qualities of a poor little rich kid, but his music also stands as an example of the best that can come of such circumstances.  This isn’t Drake’s best album — that would be Pink Moon.  It is still a pleasant one, and Drake doesn’t have a bad album to his name.

Nick Drake – Pink Moon

Pink Moon

Nick Drake – Pink Moon Island ILPS 9184 (1972)

Nick Drake was an overlooked but extremely talented individual.  Pink Moon is his most intense and ultimately best album. Sweet pop melodies and deep, intelligent songwriting are Drake’s trademarks. His refreshing approach moved far beyond simple love songs, with breathtaking but sad results.

The interaction between a man, his words, and his expression are profound. Gone are the lush strings and grand arrangements of his past work. Yet Pink Moon is incredibly expansive for just a singer with an acoustic guitar.

Where his previous release, Bryter Layter, looked towards better days ahead, Pink Moon begins by evaporating all hopes of happiness and grasps a bleak reality. The title track signals the break from his earlier work, and is the only track featuring piano. “Place to Be” then settles into blind depression. The brilliant guitar work on “Road” fills up space. While others may dream, Drake can only continue his static existence. He struggles just to understand his situation.

Drake is powerless to change himself or his world. On “Which Will,” he is a pawn held under someone else’s control. The instrumental “Horn” breathes a lingering sigh. He has not yet reached the point of acceptance. Side one ends with the cold observations of “Things Behind the Sun.” From a detached viewpoint, he collects thoughts and experiences.

Side two represents Nick Drake’s dawning awareness. “Know,” with just four lines of verse, evidences a new approach to life. The self-hypnosis of his guitar and chanting demonstrate his commitment to change. “Parasite” is one of the most gripping songs on the album. He finally opens his eyes wide and finds his place in a larger order. True to character, Drake portrays himself like an infection dragging failure to foreign places. Passing through a self-imposed exile, he sinks deeper into sin and despair. “Free Ride” is a plea for help, but “Harvest Breed” finds Drake freed to exist as an isolated oddity. He calmly stands in the face of his insecurities.

Concluding with “From the Morning,” Drake looks back on his travels. He takes his lessons on a final journey. His story ends in wry reflection. Nick Drake died a few years later, only 26, from an overdose of anti-depressants.

Pink Moon is a choreographed dance. A brilliant autobiography of genius, this was Nick Drake’s last gasp. Falling squarely between a comedy and a tragedy, in the classical sense, Pink Moon is ultimately an unassuming fragment of universal truth. It would be hard to say any other singer/songwriter ever produced such an immaculate album.

“Weird Al” Yankovic – The Essential “Weird Al” Yankovic

The Essential "Weird Al" Yankovic

“Weird Al” Yankovic – The Essential “Weird Al” Yankovic Legacy 88697-58543-2 (2009)

Weird Al has forged a career much longer than anyone would have guessed when he first started making parody songs in conjunction with the Dr. Demento radio show.  The essential character of his music has been to appeal to individuals, mostly young men, whose aspirations and expectations extend beyond their realistic chances for social advancement in life.  He appeals to people with more time and (pop) cultural interests than money, whose lives tend to be dominated by people and forces outside their control — his career tracks pretty closely a time when a gap expanded between worker productivity and real compensation and his popularity came when the gap proved to be a real long-term trend (plus his biggest commercial successes were after the 2007-08 financial crash around the time this collection was released).  His humor tends to play on an awareness of the base and trifling nature of consumer pop culture.  It kind of stops there though.  He winks with his audience in making fun of trashy mass media artifacts, all the while resigning himself to the dictates of that mass media and all its whims.  Al’s music kind of resigns itself to the pop culture ghetto, and in many respects breeds dependency on it.

He performed parody songs but also wrote original comedy songs.  Those who like Weird Al best always express a fondness for his originals.  Some of this songs are more medleys of popular songs, done in a novelty manner.  Take “Polka on 45”  (from his second album In 3D).  He does a medley of mostly pop/rock songs played as polkas with his accordion.  This sort of mashup of the “hip”, contemporary pop with passé and all-to-ethnic polka might be compared to some of Robert Mapplethorpe‘s photography, or other such “high” art, but no one does.  Al gets a laugh from the incongruity of throwing the different styles together that normally appeal to mutually exclusive audiences who listen to certain genres of music to separate themselves from the other genres, obliterating those attempts at social distinction.  “One More Minute” (from his third, and maybe best album Dare to Be Stupid) is a retro rock/doo-wop romantic put-down tune in the style of The Mothers of Invention (like “Go Cry on Somebody Else’s Shoulder” from Freak Out!), but pushed to absurdist extremes in its lyrical exaggerations.

Over time, Al kind of got formulaic.  That isn’t to say his music ever got bad.  But the early material was something a little new.  There were no guarantees that it would be popular, any more than a passing fad.  Al’s kind of self-aware musical irony was a way to normalize and humanize the vacuousness of pop culture.  Over time, that seemed less daring and more of a favor to the institutions of the music industry.  There are many stories of celebrity musicians being proud that Weird Al parodied one of their songs.  That sort of confirms Al’s insider status.  This was the same problem the pop/punk band DEVO faced.

Weird Al is kind of a great musician for kids to listen to, because his self-awareness provides good lessons for young people.  Yet adults should, in theory, kind of move on to deeper, more informed critiques of pop culture.  That isn’t to say this music can’t be enjoyed by grown-ups.  It can.  This collection, which was selected by Al himself, if nothing else proves how good Al’s band was, how astute his awareness of the nuances of pop culture was (including which songs were worth parodying), and how his broad humor managed to avoid quickly dated jokes based on easily-forgotten current events.  This particular collection isn’t exhaustive, and it omits multiple albums.  But it still makes a decent introduction to his career.

“Weird Al” Yankovic – Mandatory Fun

Mandatory Fun

“Weird Al” Yankovic – Mandatory Fun RCA 88843-09375-2 (2014)

“Weird Al” Yankovic is kind of a cheerleader for capitalism.  The cover and liner notes of Mandatory Fun utilize communist kitsch imagery, but that is only to underscore that Al puts himself on the side of the capitalists.  In a way, the title “Mandatory Fun” implies authoritarianism — long associated with communist regimes during the cold war (when Al grew up) — though (perhaps unintentionally) it now connotes both the command to “enjoy” at the heart of modern times in the capitalist world and the competitive imperative to have a faculty with pop culture to seem aware and cultured.  Al himself even noted that the title refers to “an oxymoron that I’ve always been amused by. It’s used a lot in corporate retreats and, I’m told, in the military.”  References to business, corporate and marketing jargon reach a pinnacle in “Mission Statement” (recalling the frankly superior satire on the 1998 episode “Joshua” of the defunct TV show “Space Ghost Coast to Coast,” with a tune reminiscent of Crosby, Stills & Nash folk-rock).  But you might notice the absence of any parodies of socialist realist music on the album — Al doesn’t seem familiar with that music or the cultural forces behind it.

This music tries to use rapport building to win over its audience.  Take Al’s use of the accordion.  He plays the instrument precisely because it is considered passé in dominant culture.  So he plays it anyway, ironically.  This way the audience gets to be in on the joke, so-to-speak.  They are privileged to know that it is not the accepted instrumentation in an era of guitars (still) and electronics.  They can enjoy transgressing the silent injunction regarding the “proper” instrumentation for pop music.

Yankovic’s early work is fantastic, at its best.  It still holds up decades later.  And through the years he has continually proven to be an astute and dedicated observer of popular culture, translating those observations into ironically witty musical comedy songs.  Many of his songs are parodies, but some are originals.  Sometimes the originals are the best ones, like “Sports Song” here, which skewers the vapid, substanceless “us vs. them” hoopla around the big business of sports.  His vocals are set against the sorts of marching band “fight song” music today reserved for collegiate football (and sometimes basketball) games.  Al’s take on sports seems implicitly centered around (American) football, though the way he approaches the mainstream sports culture it hardly seems different from pro wrestling “sports entertainment” with aggressively flamboyant announcers and good guys vs. heels in the ring.

In an episode of the cable TV show “The Big Interview” featuring Yankovic, host Dan Rather commented that Al’s music (and associated comedy) is very good-natured.  This is an easy position to adopt because Al is not really opposed to the status quo.  He jests about the nature of present society, but he never challenges it.  The way he goes about that appeals to the least successful participants in the rat race.  It’s a bid for knowing moral superiority for people who probably aren’t succeeding on other — especially economic and political — terms.  He caters to an underclass that doesn’t want to admit it is an underclass.  With the decline of the power of working people in an age of austerity politics it kind of makes sense that Al’s career has only grown through the years.  Mandatory Fun was the best-selling album of his long career, earning critical praise and awards as well.

Frankly, this isn’t Al’s best.  Much of its commercial success comes from timing.  Yet it’s not a bad album either.  It has always helped that his longtime backing band is pretty great.  Plus when Al parodies songs that are pretty good to start with (like the “Tacky” parody of Pharrell‘s “Happy”) you get most of the benefits of the original song.  But Al has not expanded his palette much in decades.

Arthur Russell – Calling Out of Context

Calling Out of Context

Arthur Russell – Calling Out of Context Rough Trade RTRADCD161 (2004)

Overlooked disco maverick Arthur Russell left large amounts of material unreleased at his death in 1992. Calling Out of Context pulls together songs from an unreleased album (tentatively titled Corn — though a later archival released titled Corn had entirely different contents), and some works-in-progress from the later part of Russell’s life. Confident in his eccentricities, Russell still cultivates enough dance mojo to blanket the nation under a groove. This was a different kind of groove though. Disco and dance could be different. Arthur Russell made it different.

Ewa Demarczyk – Ewa Demarczyk śpiewa piosenki Zygmunta Koniecznego

Ewa Demarczyk śpiewa piosenki Zygmunta Koniecznego

Ewa Demarczyk – Ewa Demarczyk śpiewa piosenki Zygmunta Koniecznego Polskie Nagrania Muza SXL 0318 (1967)

Frequently compared with Édith Piaf, it seems like a better comparison for Ewa Demarczyk’s singing is somewhere between the sing-speak folk/pop style of chanson à texte singers like Jacques Brel (especially his most dour songs like “Amsterdam” and “Ne me quitte pas”) and the scrappy, punky cabaret theater music of Lotte Lenya — this album reminded me of one of my favorites, Lotte Lenya Singt Kurt Weill.  The emphasis is on dramatic recitations of poetry, set to dark, almost minimalist orchestrations.  Demarczyk was part of the group of performers at the Piwnica pod Baranami (Cellar Under the Rams) theater in Kraków, Poland.  She was nicknamed “The dark angel.”

This album was a big success in Poland.  Demarczyk would gain further international renown as a recording artist in the 1970s, when she worked with the Soviet state-owned record label Melodiya (remember that at this time Poland was part of the Soviet Eastern Bloc).  While her later albums sold better, thanks to better distribution and promotional support from the Soviet government, it was this, her debut full-length album, that seems to garner the most critical praise, even decades later.

It is interesting to place this album in the context of the Brezhnev era as well as in the continuum of periphery/core tensions in cultural production.  Many reviews, particularly from Poland, describe this album and Demarczyk’s work more generally as being uniquely Polish.  Around the same time, the Brazilian tropicalists were engaged in a similar sort of debate about their work and its cultural significance on an international scale.  In Brazil, there was a clear tension between the irreverent kitsch of the tropicalists and the rigid literalism of the nationalists.  Many of Demarczyk’s supporters tend to fall prey to nationalist chauvinism, or at least their descriptions belie a desperation in trying to break out of the orbit of Western cultural dominance.  Much like fellow Piwnica pod Baranami performer Krzysztof Komeda, whose work drew heavily from that of Miles Davis, Demarczyk’s work had obvious precedents.  Unlike the tropicalists, though, it is harder to see how her music presented any sort of radically new formulation, as opposed to being (merely) excellent performances that subtly expanded existing forms within their established paradigms.

As to the Brezhnev angle, it might be said that this is a Stalinist work.  Now, immediately, this claim will probably draw some concerns.  Isn’t Demarczyk work part of a “dissident” tradition?  Well, yes, but that is precisely what makes it Stalinist.  After the so-called Khrushchev Thaw, Brezhnev re-introduced a more Stalinist line. There was a resurgence of Stalinist thought. “Wiersze Baczyńskiego” is a good example of an attempt to find confirmation of meaning in life:

“Only take out of these my eyes
the painful glass mirror — image of days
which roll white skulls
through burning meadows of blood.
Only alter this crippled age,
cover the graves with the river’s robe,
wipe from hair the battle dust,
The black dust
of these angry years.”

Here it is useful to ask whether Demarczyk’s music more closely resembles the writings of Andrei Platonov or Mikhail Bulgakov.  While she does modulate her voice across a range that must be characterized as singing, her nearly monotone recitations of poetical texts emphasize a “protest” attitude.  That is what Bulgakov did, and Stalin called him up once to talk — Stalin was known to do this, and to hang up the phone mid-conversation when asked to validate the other speaker’s concerns.  The question is whether artists have internalized the Stalinist ethos and self-police themselves to advance the regime, or whether they look toward something else.  Bulgakov’s novel The Master and Margarita has been described as being an expression of Stalinism rather than — as is commonly assumed — a critique of Stalinism.  It is kind of a form of hero-worship, a belief in some sort of dynamic actor who can break out of constraints on behalf of others.

Platonov, in contrast, developed a more ambiguous stance toward the Soviet government.  He recycled the standard government lines in a kitschy way that ridiculed the perverse aims of the political sloganeering as betrayals of socialist ideals.  One reviewer has described his writing as being rich with examples of musical, elegant prose while also embracing the crude, the dirty, the obscene.  In his novella Happy Moscow, the protagonist Moscow Chestnova is a parachutist (a glamorous occupation at the time) who suffers an accident while building the Moscow subway, then aligns herself with the most hopeless and destitute of the city.  The novella comments on how the socialist revolution leaves intact certain inequalities and vestiges of class, while emphasizing how existential concerns about finding meaning in life proceed in parallel and quite separate from the material concerns of creating socialism in one country.  The challenge is how to find meaning in the increasingly unprecedented realities of modernity.

Zygmunt Konieczny provides the orchestral music here, which is always respectful.  Eastern Bloc countries had ridiculously easy access to symphonies and classical music performers.  It was a type of music largely supported by communist governments.  The use here of orchestral accompaniment is entirely respectful and deferential.  There is really nothing ironic or cynical about it.  The backing music is performed earnestly and literally.  The textual recitations, however, often stand in contrast.  Because of the use of a lone individual standing against the force and weight of the orchestra, the “dissident” attitude is felt most strongly.  At the same time, the use of ornate orchestral accompaniment belies a kind of sophistication.  Demarczyk forged her performing career out of a collegiate environment, centered around the oldest medical school in Poland.  This is clearly a kind of elitist music.  It isn’t about solidarity or the triumph of the workers, or any sort of other kind of socialist realism.  This is about individual grandstanding in the name of The People.  This is Stalinism!  And the censors were pretty smart.  This music got past them precisely because it is line with Soviet politics of the time.

In a way, think of this music as the Polish equivalent of the urban folk movement in the United States, and the bourgeois chanson of Western Europe.  It is pretty good.  It revels in the same sort of quest for individual recognition through showy, ostentatious performance nominally disguised as being for a larger cause.

Carly Rae Jepsen – E·MO·TION

E•MO•TION

Carly Rae Jepsen – E·MO·TION Interscope UICS-1296 (2015)

Well-crafted synth pop.  A decade or so ago this is exactly the sort of thing Kylie Minogue was doing.  Jepsen’s producers actually gravitate more toward the sound of classic Michael Jackson recordings though.  That is a wise move.  Admittedly, I didn’t get all the way through this one.  While it does what it does well, it is necessary to question what it tries to do.  This album is all about reinforcement of gender roles: men are supposed to be athletic, aggressive, competitive; women are supposed to be emotional, meek, nurturing.  This sort of stuff needs to be identified and called out for what it is, which is a regressive distraction.

Tom Zé – Tropicália lixo lógico

Tropicália lixo lógico

Tom Zé – Tropicália lixo lógico Passarinho PASSCD0001 (2012)

The late sociologist Pierre Bourdieu said, “I believe that if the sociology I propose differs in any significant way from the other sociologies of the past and of the present, it is above all in that it continually turns back onto itself the weapons it produces.”  A similarly reflexive position is taken in certain psychoanalytic/philosophical discourses (dealing with “permanent self-questioning”).  Tom Zé’s self-released album Tropicália lixo lógico (crude English translation: “Tropicália Logical Waste”) kind of follows a similar approach to music.

Zé is a kind of musical analyst (most likely a logical-intuitive introvert, just like cinema’s Jean-Luc Godard).  This album draws on Zé’s past in the late 1960s Tropicália movement, without being beholden to it.  This is a fairly mellow collection of music, much like his prior studio album Estudando a Bossa: Nordeste Plaza.  He is ironically using bits of popular music, some old, some newer.  What is different here is that unlike recent efforts his appropriations are in a way more crude, less nuanced.  This is kind of the point!  What made Zé’s misadventures in Tropicália decades ago so unique is that they dissolved many of the contradictions of straight-up cynicism.  When he appropriated bits of mass culture he didn’t do so just to cheaply trade on a kind of guilty-pleasure enjoyment in kitsch but to elevate the appropriation in relation to the content, honoring the sources without becoming beholden to them.  That last part was always the key.  When rudimentary cynics like Frank Zappa do things like this, they tend to prove in the end that they are really beholden to the past and can at most recall it to reinforce its underpinnings (and try to show off in the process).  Zé, on the other hand, robs the past of its coercive force, opening up the future to other possibilities.  He’s doing that again here.  But this man is in his late 70s!

Tropicália lixo lógico is an excellently produced album.  Much like Jogos de armar (Faça Você Mesmo), this is as conventional and approachable a production style as you will find anywhere from Zé, while also retaining the man’s essential weirdness and edginess.  There are hints toward indie rock, bossa nova, and so forth, with fewer and softer angular rhythms than on his most experimental recordings.  But he still has tricks up his sleeve.  One of his best devices is to cut off many of the songs.  Rather than fade out, or reach some kind of clear resolution, many of the songs are cut off mid-verse and the next song abruptly begins.  Consider this a litmus test.  If something like that sounds absurd to you, perhaps it is time to move along.  If the idea of cutting off the ends of the songs to refuse any sort of resolution sounds kind of interesting, then buckle in for a lifelong fascination with one of Brazil’s most fascinating musical figures — this probably won’t be your last Zé recording.

Frank Sinatra – Sings His Greatest Hits

Sings His Greatest Hits

Frank Sinatra – Sings His Greatest Hits Legacy CK-65240 (1997)

This album makes an excellent introduction to Frank Sinatra’s music.  It’s not a perfect collection, but it features some great songs from the 1940s and early 1950s.  There are a few alternate versions and previously unreleased tracks included. I would recommend this album over the more popular Sinatra Reprise: The Very Good Years if you only want a single disc Sinatra collection, and also over the bloated box set The Best of the Columbia Years 1943-1952.  However, The Capitol Collectors Series and Frank Sinatra’s Greatest Hits are also good collections for later time periods (picking up both of those along with Sings His Greatest Hits would provide a fairly complete overview of his entire career — they cover basically non-overlapping periods).

Interesting aside:  did you know that “The House I Live In” was the title song to short film Sinatra starred in that was organized by the communist party?  Or that as a consequence of those sorts of activities he was barred from performing for troops during the Korean War?