Cultural Detritus, Reviews, and Commentary
Sleaford Mods – Divide and Exit Harbinger HARBINGER121CD (2014)
Sleaford mods basically adopt the rhythmic post-punk sound of The Fall. Although they certainly aren’t the first to do so, it is interesting that they sound like latter-day Fall (year 2000 onward). Vocalist Jason Williamson sounds a bit like Ian Dury too. Decent working class rock.
Tom Waits – The Black Rider Island 314-518 559-2 (1993)
I’ve never been fully satisfied with The Black Rider. It was created as part of a theater production of the same name that joined Tom Waits with one of the century’s greatest writers (William S. Burroughs) and one of the world’s most respected theater artists (Robert Wilson). There is a weak link though…and it’s Tom Waits! The story (thanks to Burroughs) is a brilliant parable. I have not had the opportunity to see a theater production of the work and judge Wilson’s contributions, but reliable sources have raved about it. So why can’t this album hold up? Well, it has its moments. But too often Waits gets ahead of his compositional abilities, trying too hard to sound like a latter day Kurt Weill or something. Underneath it all, there is still something amazing about this album. Too bad Waits couldn’t pull it together like on Bone Machine.
Tom Waits – The Heart of Saturday Night 7E-1015 (1974)
The Heart of Saturday Night sits — sometimes uncomfortably — between the California soft rock of Tom Waits’ debut and the beatnik barfly music of his later 1970s work. His avant hobo persona was still a long ways off. Waits is ambling in the right direction, but compared to later efforts the performances come across as too uncertain and the songwriting too muddled. In a perplexing way, the worn out and boozy ambiance of Small Change and the theatrical and maudlin touches of Blue Valentine ending up providing the missing ingredients. So while there is hardly anything in particular wrong with this album, Waits has done better.
Prince – Sign ‘O’ the Times Paisley Park 9 25577-1 (1987)
Prince always was best when he attempted everything under the sun on one album and tied it all together only by the fact that he was writing, arranging, producing, and performing his music entirely by himself. Sign ‘O’ the Times is just that kind of album. A few select guests keep the album hopping with psychedelic R&B flavor. The many different faces of Prince each make an appearance. He never made a better album.
Disc 1 has a bunch of winners, enough to make any album great. “Sign ‘O’ the Times,” “Starfish & Coffee” and “The Ballad of Dorothy Parker” tell of urban social decay, surreal childhood memories, and dark romantic journeys.
Disc 2 is a goldmine. “U Got the Look,” “I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man,” “The Cross” and “If I Was Your Girlfriend” are big deliveries even for a superstar. Prince had a talent for dance rock that could keep going all night. The ideas are easy to grasp. Prince builds rhythm by repeating what you need to hear as many times as you need to hear it.
Throwing in two or three note riffs on the keyboard was that thing only Prince seemed to get right. 1980s pop music tried to break everything down to simple little songs. Prince dared to make things simple and help the word “simple” grow along the way. His guitar solo on “I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man” has all the recognizable points of a hit song. It also can wrap you into the guitars and drums completely. It’s hard not to relate to Prince. He reaches to be a friend to the lonely girl he meets. She wants more than he’s willing to give. Her sad situation is enough to have him thinking her problems over, and telling her he’s not good enough to be the answer.
“The Cross” is a tremendous rock-gospel song that has fire and brimstone held in check. Prince uses enough guitar and sitar to overpower any heavy metal song of the day. He is careful not to use any padding.
Sign ‘O’ the Times was made when Prince was on top of his game, and it stays right there. As a listener, though, it gets hard to resist the urge to wander off. Temptation is all part of the game!
O(+> – Emancipation NPG Records 7243 8 54982 2 0 (1996)
Let’s take a look at the largest arcs of Prince’s career, to better understand where Emancipation fits. His early days in the 1970s had him doing closet R&B, very much as a one-man show, and very much in line with R&B of the day. He was singing in a falsetto almost always, and his songwriting wasn’t particularly attention-grabbing, though it started to become more and more provocative as time when on. In these early days, commercial success and popularity came at best fitfully to Prince. Then came the 1980s. His star rose higher and higher, and with 1999 and then, most significantly, Purple Rain, he became as big a star as there was in pop music. Some of his recordings in the 80s were uneven, especially as the decade wore on, but there was good stuff found on anything with Prince’s name on it. He had hits galore. Into the early 1990s, things definitely changed. Prince’s recordings were becoming a bit patchier, and he was starting to chase after fads like “new jack swing” and cater to what was popularized by others. There is some terrible stuff in this period, along with some worthy bits and pieces. The good stuff was fewer and farther between. There is a hard fact of Western popular music during this larger era that artists usually only have about 5-10 years of relevance before they are cast off in favor of something else. By the 1990s, Prince had already had his decade. His response? Feud with his record label. He changed his name to an unpronouncable symbol in 1993 (people referred to him as “the artist formerly known as Prince”). After he entered the new millennium, Prince had a comeback of sorts. He was something of a respected elder of pop music. But there was a crucial transition during the 1990s. It was then that Prince’s abilities as a songwriter faltered. The guy could still play, but he was only coming up with one or two catchy songs every few years. Rather than face up to that, he started the record label feud and engaged in other distractions that kept his name in the press for reasons other than the content of his work. Now, as to the feud, the man did have a few decent points about musicians getting too small a slice of the pie. However, those seemed like excuses drummed up after he already wanted to stir controversy. But into his later period, it was really apparent that this guy was a total professional as a performer. His was playing as well as ever, even if he wasn’t writing new songs of much interest. This was clear to anyone hearing him play some of his old songs. He would sometimes change them up and present new versions. He could still wow audiences that way, mining his back catalog.
In the mid-to-late 1990s, Prince released two multi-disc albums, first Emancipation and then Crystal Ball. There was the late night sketch comedy program that in the 90s made a fake TV ad for a bank that supposedly only made change, and when asked how they made money responded by saying, “volume.” That gag is built on the same principle as Prince’s 1990s multi-disc albums. He wasn’t able to write any particularly engaging new material, but he could churn out new recordings by the bucket load. These recordings leaned on covers, and also thin re-treads of old Prince songs. If anything, these years gave him the chance to hone his already-impressive skills as a performer.
On Emancipation, Prince chose to use every ounce of his skills as an instrumentalist. The performances are rich and textured. His band The New Power Generation (NPG) works perfectly as a spotlight on him. Improvisational elements form the core of this work.
“Sex In the Summer” is a fresh reconstruction of Sly Stone’s “Hot Fun In the Summertime,” complete with nods to other influences like Mahalia Jackson. Prince manages to avoid superficial worship, and delves into lush arrangements. He always liberally quoted other material. This is not cutting corners on the creative end, but benchmarks in a fun way (“Get Yo Groove On” takes a line from “Another Saturday Night”).
This is a mature and wiser Prince — now a music “professional”. Emancipation still finds “the artist” fuming over past recording contracts, but he’s rarely bitter. With over three hours of music, he does have plenty of opportunities to touch base on just about anything. Though the song structures are fairly traditional, that more directly emphasizes his change in direction. While Emancipation isn’t quite the accomplishment as his legendary 80s material, it isn’t so far behind that you don’t recognize Prince as Prince. This is likely an album only intense fans will take a chance on, but it doesn’t have to be that way. Prince knows how to make music people will like, and this album is far more accessible and durable that it seems.
There is a lot to Emancipation. More importantly, there is a lot to like about it. It’s an album that many will probably find more enjoyable and listenable than expected, though there isn’t much on it to convince you to listen in the first place.
David Bowie – ‘Hours…’ Virgin CDV 2900 (1999)
Bowie’s career doggedly refuses to drift into total irrelevance. ‘Hours…’, like so many other later efforts, features one pretty good song — “The Pretty Things Are Going to Hell” — amidst a lot of not bad but definitely boring, pro forma contemporary rock. This is certainly a lot more consistent than Earthling, but that previous record came up with more than one pretty good song (even if those were balanced with some cringe-inducing moments). Now Bowie had largely dropped the electronic industrial sound (except, ironically for the best song here, “The Pretty Things Are Going to Hell”). His next effort, Heathen would improve on this album, again with one really good song (“Sunday”) but with filler that was much better and less boring.
David Bowie – Low RCA Victor PL 12030 (1977)
CAN’s Tago Mago — half full-bore rock half ambient soundscapes — sketches the outlines of Low but this album sounds like no other. It represents is the beginning of Bowie’s “Berlin” period, the creative peak of his long and distinguished career. He made this album as a work of art. It is invigorating to hear someone not content to merely accept the confines of tradition, but try to work out new expression.
Even with its experimentation and avant-gardism, Low is always a pop record. David Bowie always had a flair for the dramatic. Here, his bold use of space and inverted compositions are a different kind of showiness. Bowie’s audacious attitude has purpose. He crafts Low like an artist burning inside.
Brian Eno is a major contributor to Low. He is the perfect foil for Bowie, and side two wouldn’t be the same without Eno’s presence. Even Iggy Pop appears for some backing vocals. Bowie was a major force in Iggy’s solo breakout The Idiot where he began honing the techniques employed here.
While there are some singles that came off the album, the full impact of Low comes on slowly. Deeply textured sounds present themselves with time. Bowie presents himself as an observer but one who’s objectivity has dissolved. His style is reflective of personal discovery. He becomes a part of his songs, and seemingly a part of a barren landscape.
“Be My Wife” is a dense number with pounding lines from the piano, electric washes of guitar and electronically process drum beats. There are few lyrics. An older Bowie comes to accept what he probably has known all along. The music lilts with his carefree pining but swells in gripping climaxes. The rhythm hesitates for each word. The jarring dynamics play into the compositions. They highlight but also mislead. There is simply too much to take in at once, so each time you listen there is another way to hear the songs.
Funky plastic soul (Neu!-beat really) from side one gives way to bleak anti-rock sound collages of side two. “Warszawa” is the centerpiece of the second side. Stark harmonies and unconventional melodies cast a sorrowful shadow on post WWII Europe. Bowie sings a few sounds, then stops as if he can’t go any further. It gets pretty intense. The music is still enjoyable, despite the grim realities lurking around every corner. Europe, of course, has a deeper connection to Euro-classical than anywhere else. Rock and roll is foreign. It makes sense than rock musicians in (of from) Europe have pulled the two together most spectacularly.
Bowie has been called a Warholian manipulator of surfaces. There is some truth to that, but Low could crush you under its weight. On a very basic level, Low maintains the essence of Bowie’s work in adapting broad concepts into his new music. His compositions use chunks much bigger than individual “notes.” Low, through Bowie’s own grammar, painted the perfect picture of a divided Europe. His determination is like a snowplow on some isolated mountain road. There is the risk of becoming stranded in unfamiliar territory but a greater purpose drives him forward. He has purpose, which makes his efforts so enduring.
Low is not just entertaining, it tells us something pure and unassailable about the bleak world from which it came — it evolved from Bowie’s role playing an alien who comes to Earth to save his home planet but gets lost in aimless hedonism in the Nicolas Roeg film The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976). Low is about a change of direction. That change isn’t inherently for the better. Still, the album is the very embodiment of artistic renewal, and so it is both enlightening and inspiring.
David Bowie – EART HL I NG Arista 7432143077 2 (1997)
I’ve gone through many phases with this album, Earthling. I rather liked it at first, but then later on it felt dated and I couldn’t stand it. Giving it another go during a period of revisiting some Bowie recordings, it seems like one of his better late-career efforts. It’s clear he’s trying, though sometimes he’s trying too hard to seem “with it”. He jumped aboard the electronica bandwagon, deploying industrial drum ‘n bass, or whatever they were calling the microgenre that month. The whole affair seems a bit uneven, and it’s hard to do anything with “The Last Thing You Should Do” and “Law (Earthlings on Fire)” but cringe. Yet there are a fair number of high points, the highest being “I’m Afraid of Americans,” a song that can rub shoulders with any of Bowie’s best songs from any era. Sure, I was probably right when I though this would sound a little dated, but Bowie seems to be legitimately enjoying making this music most of the time (even if “Looking for Satellites,” “Dead Man Walking” and “Seven Years in Tibet” reveal him to be getting lyrical inspiration from watching movies and satellite TV). It shows most in his vocals, which have both an energy and nuance that he hadn’t mustered in while. One last note: isn’t it odd that Bowie’s better work has come during the periods when he’s been married?
David Bowie – The Buddha of Suburbia Virgin 7243 8 40988 2 7 (1993)
Uneven and ultimately not very satisfying. Part adult contemporary dad-rock, part down-tempo electronic, and part jazzy new age, Bowie isn’t taking many chances. This soundtrack album has a few charms (a high level of craftsmanship in the production helps), and glides by amicably enough. But hindsight makes this seem dated.
David Bowie – The Man Who $old the World Mercury SR 61325 (1970)
Bowie is still searching for his own sound, and he tries out a wide array of styles here. He still has one foot in Donovan-like folk sounds (“All the Madmen,” “After All”). But he also makes forays into Led Zeppelin style hard rock with a blues twinge (“Black Country Rock,” “She Shook Me Cold”). There are even hints that Bowie could pull off rock opera like he did on Ziggy Stardust (“Running Gun Blues,” “Saviour Machine”). But what makes this album notable is that it marks the arrival of Mick Ronson on guitar, who would prove the key to Bowie making it big. Ronson fuels the proto-glam musings of “The Width of a Circle” and the title track with panache. What separates this from most of what came later is that later on Bowie’s best individual songs had an almost hermetic perfection, with everything so finely tuned that not a single note sounds out of place. Here things are pretty loose and jammy even. If the songwriting wasn’t so tentative and uneven this could have really been something. As it stands, it’s a decent but somewhat undeveloped affair. Bowie fans will appreciate this most for what it does and doesn’t reveal about what came next. This still may be the darkest record in his catalog. Those unfamiliar with Bowie should start elsewhere.