Tag: Rock

Courtney Barnett – Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit

Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit

Courtney Barnett – Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit Mom + Pop MP221-2 (2015)

Courtney Barnett’s first full-length album trades in some of the dense yet laconic wordplay of her first two EPs for more refined guitar sounds.  This is definitely a fuller, more developed production than here earliest recordings.  The rhythms are crisp and everything is in tune.  The trade may take away some of the quirky charm, but it makes up most of that ground with assured rock textures.

Barnett has long worked with a kind of pastiche of old alt rock styles, everything from underground rock of the early 1970s (The Velvet Underground‘s Loaded), to witty underclass poetry with almost incongruously contemporary pop-rock backing (Ian Dury & the Blockheads’ New Boots & Panties!!), to slacker punk (her song “Avant Gardener” from How to Carve a Carrot Into a Rose, with its deadpan vocals, is a dead ringer for “You’re Gonna Watch Me” by the short-live Cleveland punk band Pressler-Morgan One Plus One).  This album, though, is less a grab bag of influences worn on her sleeve than an integration of influences into a more streamlined package.  Take that as you will.  She’s consolidating what has been done before, expanding it to fit her purposes.  Is it wrong to say she’s domesticating this stuff?  Probably!  Anyway, she takes the counter-culture and kind of makes it seem lived-in, and roomy enough to accommodate just about anyone, in a low-pressure kind of way — the sonic equivalent of going to a friend’s place (but not your best friend’s place) and “crashing on the couch.”  This probably won’t knock anyone over, but it may just grow on you if it doesn’t seem immediately appealing.

SoKo – I Thought I Was an Alien

I Thought I Was an Alien

SoKo – I Thought I Was an Alien Because Music BEC 5161067 (2012)

A respectable collection of twee chamber folk music.  Though at times this threatens to overplay the sheer preciousness, particularly with the vocals that sound almost like Björk but without the same lurking shrewdness, because the best moments are when this breaks out of the almost timid yet clever self-reflection with bursts of almost incongruous gregariousness.  Shows much promise.

Flipper – Album: Generic Flipper

Album: Generic Flipper

Flipper – Album: Generic Flipper Subterranean SUB 25 (1982)

“Ever look at a flower and hate it?” (“Ever”)

Well, ever hear an album and instantly love it?

Flipper grew out of the remnants of the punk scene.  They formed in San Francisco.  Not exactly the epicenter of punk, but their distance from the leading proponents of that movement probably helped them forge their own unique sound.  Most Flipper tracks follow a similar format, with guitarist Ted Falconi scratching out abrasive, atonal guitar noise and one of the bass players (Will Shatter and Bruce Lose [AKA Bruce Loose] — they alternated singing and playing bass) carrying what passes for a melody.  The singing sort of creates its own melody, not always in sync with the bass line melodies, and not really “sung” either, so much as shouted and groaned in almost a monotone.  The drums (Steve DePace) thud along in a kind of plodding way, lo-fi and sort of distant and sometimes with added echo effect, yet also deceptively varied compared to most punk and hardcore of the day.  This was an early form of “sludge rock”, taken up later by bands like Black Flag (My War) and The Melvins.  The sound is very heavy.  As confrontational as the band was, and as much as they are totally incompatible with being part of some sort of upper crust of society, their driving, powerful sound doesn’t reveal any guilt about acting like they fucking own the world as much as anyone else.

“Life” has the brilliant lyrics “life, life, life is the only thing worth living for.”  This empty turn of phrase utterly robs desire of all its power, in a wonderful way.  Basically, by excluding all other things as being “worth living for,” it relegates all other worldly desires to the status of worthless shit.  This is basically what psychoanalysis says too, incidentally.  What is left, is just life itself.  You either find a way to make that worth it, or not.  Flipper turn this into an anthem!  The chord progression on the song is indeed one of the few on the entire album that has any sort of ascending, happy-sounding resolution.

“Who needs cancer, it’s boring” (“Living for the Depression”)  Well, if that line doesn’t do it for you, the band conveniently lets you know that “this song rhymes.”  But they also call out the listener, ending the song by shouting about “a real cheap fucker like you, copout!”

This is an album of solidarity.  Either you appreciate the band avoiding what most people would find enjoyable, hell, acceptable, or you don’t.  This means only the most like-minded remain.  Well, there is plenty to love here.  A big reason a lot of people loved (and still love) Flipper is that they had the guts to actually go out and make music like this.

The “hit” was “Sex Bomb.”  Here’s a song that has probably the most degenerate horn section around (actually just two saxophonists).  Like string orchestration, horns are kind of a capital-intensive way to make music.  To set one against some guys in a degenerate rock band yelling nothing but “Sex bomb, my baby, yeah!” for minutes on end is a daring way to defile everything that such elements usually mean.  This takes the sort of tools of the powerful and makes them crass, ugly and unsuitable.  This is a glorious musical revolution (of “kynicism“).  There was a time, just before the Great Depression, when around the world musicians were doing this sort of stuff (chronicled in Michael Denning‘s book Noise Uprising).  It is also a bit like industrial rockers Rammstein would do with fascist iconography years later, because it reduces capital-intensive musical accoutrements to simple pleasures that are put in the service of something else, that here at least seems deeper.

Tom Waits – Closing Time

Closing Time

Tom Waits – Closing Time Asylum SD 5061 (1973)

Tom Waits’ debut went in a direction he never really revisited.  Only “Midnight Lullaby” points to what he would do on his next few albums, though the style is not yet fully formed.  People look to “Ol’ 55” as one of his better songs, but I find it a bit ho-hum.  It leans a bit too much on the prevailing “California soft rock” fad, which was in full swing at the time.  That sort of sums this up. The album doesn’t always play on Waits’ strengths.  So it could be said he was still finding his voice.  But this album still has some charm.  “Old Shoes (& Picture Postcards)” is among my favorite Waits songs — usually my only reason for returning to Closing Time.

The Mahavishnu Orchestra – The Inner Mounting Flame

The Inner Mounting Flame

The Mahavishnu Orchestra With John McLaughlin – The Inner Mounting Flame Columbia KC 31067 (1971)

A great debut from one of the foremost jazz fusion outfits.  This one is much more rock-oriented than the later albums.  In fact, this one sounds more like a rock band exploring some very complex jazz themes rather than a jazz band incorporating rock rhythms, guitar riffs and the like.  The group’s next album, Birds of Fire, would take a very different approach and utilize purely rock instrumentation to achieve a symphonic sound within the auspices of jazz fusion.  Later albums would take a more prog-rock approach, with actual symphony orchestration set against more rock-centric noodling.

The Mothers of Invention – We’re Only In It For the Money

We're Only In It For the Money

The Mothers of Invention – We’re Only In It For the Money Verve V6 5045X (1968)

This is hands-down the best album to come from The Mothers of Invention (it is often inexplicably filed under bandmember Frank Zappa‘s name in many record stores).  It’s the one time their goofy, satirical sense of humor materialized on record in a way that both stayed true to its nonsensical sentiments and coalesced into a consistently moving body of songs.

In a way, this is the group’s Triumph des Willens [Triumph of the Will].  If that seems an odd comparison, know that the cynical attitude here is kind of what allows the band to forge on.  The title may be “We’re Only In It For the Money” and that is supposed to be a joke, but aren’t they in it for the money in the end?  The way the group skewers Yippie/Hippie culture is kind of an attack on what was the greatest threat to concentrated elite control of society since the labor movement and the associated threat of the collapse of capitalism from the Bolshevik Revolution through the Great Depression.  Anyway, just like Triumph of the Will, this is still a great album because of the total conviction of what it is about, and the excellent execution.

Bob Dylan – The Bootleg Series Vol. 10: Another Self Portrait

The Bootleg Series Vol. 10: Another Self Portrait (1969–1971)

Bob Dylan – The Bootleg Series Vol. 10: Another Self Portrait (1969-1971) Columbia 88883 73488 2 (2013)

Drawing primarily from the years that produced Self Portrait, Dylan, and New Morning, but also touching briefly on The Basement Tapes, Nashville Skyline, and the new material from Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits Vol. II, this tenth edition of the “Bootleg Series” focuses on a crucial turning point in Bob Dylan’s career, when for the first time he was drawing criticism and seemed to be making missteps.  But set that all aside. The first disc of this collection is mostly rather excellent, and stands all on its own.  From this evidence, Dylan had not run out of ideas.  He had plenty.  He was also capable of touching, heartfelt performances.  But somebody, Dylan, his managers, the label…one of them, or bunches of them, seem to have conspired to present Dylan in the worst possible light back at the time of the original releases. This collection give everyone a second bite of the apple, so-to-speak.  It finds Dylan doing something akin to the folk that he made in the early/mid 1960s.  But by the dawn of the 1970s, commercial interests were looking west toward the burgeoning singer-songwriter movement that utilized more ornate studio embellishments than the kind of spare, acoustic folk Dylan was still frequently recording.  This gives the impression that it was (stupidly, in hindsight) decided that Dylan needed to do something else.  So he did.  Dylan’s albums from the era ended up flawed, even dreadful at times.  The songs on the first disc here are demo versions, unreleased outtakes, alternate versions, and a few versions that appear to be the released versions stripped of some or all original overdubs (akin, somewhat, to Willie Nelson‘s Naked Willie).  The latter discs add more of the same, plus some live recordings.  The deluxe edition includes a full disc of “The Complete, Historic ‘Isle of Wight’ Concert, 1969.”  In truth the extra material is of marginal interest.  The best material is on disc one; a single disc edition would actually be the one to get, if it existed.  But all those details aside, this collection is great because it shows how even (or maybe especially) a huge star like Dylan faced pressure to do something “different” even when it was clear that doing more of the same is what would have worked best.  The evidence is right here, and with hindsight thankfully the best of his efforts of the era are now available for all to hear.

Frank Zappa – Hot Rats

Hot Rats

Frank Zappa – Hot Rats Bizarre RS 6356 (1969)

Often cited as a key example of jazz fusion, I think Hot Rats makes a rather poor representation of the genre.  For the most part, it’s a well-orchestrated affair that leaves precious little room for any significant improvisation.  And after all, it’s improvisation that marks any music as “jazz”.  Zappa, as usual, is really the opposite of what he pretends to be.  This music is sort of a distraction, a cynical ploy that conceals behind a wall of exuberant, nearly psychedelic effects a kind of gutless service to all the lame institutions of the past.  This isn’t the freaks revolting and taking over the world; this is the show that the “great and powerful” Wizard of Oz puts on to help the boring old man control the realm just out of sight.  Or perhaps it is cheap vaudeville to let off some steam so that the machinery of established society keeps churning without exploding.  Either way, the status quo emerges unscathed.

The best offering here is “Gumbo Variations” (as the title implies it’s really built more off Euro-classical tradition than any kind of jazz idiom).  A few players rotate solos and you’re out.  Don “Sugarcane” Harris puts in a nice electrified violin solo, but the song really drags after a while.  Captain Beefheart makes an appearance on “Willie the Pimp”.  Even Beefheart kind of gets lost on the album, scarcely utilized at all.  The album is respectable, but, like most Frank Zappa albums, it just isn’t anything special.