Rock – Page 33 – Rock Salted

Dinosaur Jr. – Farm

Dinosaur Jr. – Farm Jagjaguwar JAG150 (2009)

When Beyond reunited the original Mascis–Barlow–Murph Dino Jr. lineup, it was jolt of the best sort of rock energy. Here were guys well past the usual cut-off for the young person’s rock game pulling off something that hardly seemed to lose a step from an era twenty years prior. They still were the same screw-ups singing songs that endearingly begged, “please like me,” and “please be my friend.”

Farm takes a turn in a different direction though. This is a more conventional indie rock album. The hallmark warbles and fuzzy guitar solos of J. Mascis are held in check within a wall of sound. Lou Barlow’s bass is unusually prominent. One song blends into the next, and by the end of the album it’s hard to remember anything about it. This is the album for people who never liked Dinosaur Jr. to begin with, but want a competent, if rather faceless, guitar rock album to add to the pile of others. But it is a rather competent faceless guitar album! The opener, “Pieces,” is the best thing here, though it comes up short of the most memorable of the group’s songs. Don’t fret though. The follow-up I Bet on Sky turned things around in a more promising direction, and Mascis’ guitar thundered back to the forefront.

Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti – Scared Famous

Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti – Scared Famous Human Ear Music HEAR0003 (2007)

Originally part of a two-cassette, self-released album package Scared Famous/FF>> (2002) recorded in 2000-2001 and available to practically no one it seems, Scared Famous was (re-)released in 2007 in slightly different form. The liner notes to this later version say it features selections from the original release. It seems that some songs from both the original Scared Famous and FF>> cassettes are present here (at least based on the song titles), plus some other material apparently not previously released (“Politely Declined,” “An Appeal From Heaven”). FF>> was re-released in 2010 in what seems to be its original form, overlapping in content with the Scared Famous 2007 re-release.

Let’s look at this music in context. This is, after all, music that is all about context. During basically Ariel Pink’s entire lifetime, there has been a retrenchment of power in the hands of the already rich and powerful. This came at the expense of the middle class (and the poor), undoing the social contract of the New Deal era as complacency set in among the middle classes who forgot about the militancy that forced the concessions that made their “golden age” after WWII possible. Pink’s music, mostly recorded entirely by himself on rudimentary equipment in his own apartment, but also with guest R. Stevie Moore (their original collaborative activity is omitted from this re-release), in a sense challenges middle class complacency. In its own way, this music is very militant. It appropriates musical elements that epitomize the period in which the social transformations that began stripping the middle class of their social status really came forward in an obvious way. More to the point, this borrows from the sort of music that represented the time when working people enjoyed the highest social standing they ever received in the industrialized world. This was the music of their glory days, played back when the glory was practically all gone — destroyed. But since then it all collapsed. Pink reboots it.

Antonin Artaud wrote an essay, “En finir avec les chefs-d’oeuvre [An End to Masterpieces],” in Le Théâtre et son double [The Theater and Its Double] (1938) — reprinted and translated in Antonin Artaud, Selected Writings (1976). He advocated for a “theater of cruelty” that had “the power to influence the aspect and formation of things” utilizing physical understanding and trance “as if in a whirlwind of higher forces”. He was determined to address the power the past held over the future:

“One reason for the asphyxiating atmosphere in which we live without possible escape or recourse — and for which we are all responsible, even the most revolutionary among us — is this respect for what has already been written, formulated, or painted, what has been given form, as if all expression were not finally exhausted and had not reached the point where things must fall apart if they are to begin again.

***

“The masterpieces of the past are good for the past: they are not good for us. We have a right to say what has been said and even what has not been said in a way which pertains to us, which is immediate and direct, which corresponds to present modes of feeling, and which everyone will understand.”

David Keenan wrote about “hypnagogic pop” in The Wire magazine (“Hypnagogic Pop,” August 2009, Issue 306). He coined the term to describe “How James Ferraro, Spencer Clark, Pocahaunted, Emeralds, et al are floating beyond Noise to a dreampop hallucination of the 1980s.” “Hypnagogic” means “Of or relating to the state immediately before falling asleep.” (Oxford Dictionaries). The way Ariel Pink adopts (and modifies) this approach, it becomes a reflection of the very same sentiment Artaud expressed about the theater seven decades prior. What has been said and formulated before falls apart, and is put back together in a new way, breaking out of a trance-like impression of the former, accepted meaning. The flat, creaking falsetto vocals, tape hiss and sudden shifts in tone, and fragmentary lyrics on Scared Famous are like the violent jolts that promote a physical understanding of the music just as Artaud suggested in theater.

What separates the music of Ariel Pink from, say, hip-hop, is that Pink largely retains the overall structure of the sources he plunders. Hip-hop uses repeated samples, which disassociates the new music from its source. New rhythms are created. Raps also use less vocal dynamics than the singing common on the source material. In contrast, Pink creates songs with verses, choruses and all the other formal elements of the original rock/pop music. What differs are the jumps between styles and breakdowns within a song, and his vocals, which are irreverent, off-kilter, off-key (flat or sharp), sarcastic, and often in a different style juxtaposed against the musical accompaniment. So “Talking All of the the Time” has fuzzy heavy metal guitar riffs broken up by squeaky novelty teen pop vocals, shattered by gothic growls. Also, the degraded, lo-fi haze over everything in Pink’s music has a distancing effect. It emphasizes remove from the original source, the way late-generation dubbed cassette tapes sound. Yet it does so inscribed on overt references to the past. Another way of looking at his music is that it is like being locked in a room in which you have to listen to 1980s FM radio blasted loudly from an adjacent room, with the music sounding indistinct and muddy through a wall, and continuing to the point that it all seems to blend together into a morass of old, jumbled memories. At that point, someone keeps opening the door to the room to interject statements (in affected, goofy voices) that seem to both contradict and complement the music in a way that makes it seem more concrete and pointed than you previously imagined it could, or ever wanted it to after sitting through it so long.

This is unsentimental, militant music because it does not respect the status of the sorts of cultural artifacts it appropriates. Pink’s songs pay the sources no deference. They are just some bits of raw material, the stuff of the past. History, like these musical fragments, gains meaning only looking back. Pink has a free hand to fashion whatever meaning in it he chooses. This is not unlike demolishing an ancient Roman shrine — or if you prefer, a Nazi concentration camp — to use the blocks and rubble to build something entirely different. And if the only thing built is a flophouse — an apt comparison for some, given the coarse, lo-fi, uncouth sensibility of Pink’s music — so what? The early Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti albums may seem like bored SoCal adolescent indulgence, but they are also militant in their appropriations. They must be seen as militant. Hegel said, “It is an insight of speculative philosophy that Freedom is the sole truth of Spirit.” (Reason in History). The caustic, impudent, profane, and at times self-indulgent mess that Ariel Pink has recorded here requires a substantial sort of freedom, or else it would not be tolerated.

What makes Ariel Pink one of the great pop/rock musicians of his time is the scope of his faculty with the remnants of bland pop music of the past. Some references are easy ones, but they only scratch the surface of what Pink is up to on Scared Famous. Every song dabbles in slightly different genres, from R&B (“Howling at the Moon”), to psychedelic surf rock/pop (“Jesus Christ Came to Me in a Dream”) to TV commercial jingles (“Beefbud”), Italian pop exotica meeting jangle pop (“Gopacapulco”). He catalogs a vast array of styles from the 1960s onward. Some are featured only for a single guitar riff. Others weave throughout an entire song. Pink doesn’t just show off his familiarity with so much music, though his work does prove the time and energy he’s put towards such a self-styled education. The specificity of what he draws upon, both in its time referents, and in the demographics of the audiences that it was directed to and who once fostered its success, make it more than that. There is a definite act of defiant creativity in the way this slacker takes thrift store cast offs — the music people have wanted to forget — and transposes it to summon meaning that matters to the present. He is definitely not trying to recreate some closed universe of nostalgic authenticity. He’s sifting through the wreckage of the past, and taking bits of it down another path. No doubt, along the way he exudes the sort of attitude that comes naturally from working in record stores and collecting albums (“The List (My Favorite Song)”).

I must admit to a soft spot for autodidacts. Ariel Pink fits that description. He’s doing what he does, on his own. There isn’t deference to norms. More importantly, he puts forward his own vision, turning the standard hierarchy of taste-making on its head. If he can turn around perceptions of music like he has here, it seem like anyone can reformulate anything.

Taking, presumably, the best of what was on the original double-album set, this is about as compelling as Pink got with his early work. No doubt, even this trimmed version of the original Scared Famous/FF>> album set could stand to be trimmed back a little further (dropping “Girl in a Tree,” “The Kitchen Club”). It still benefits from a sequencing that puts most of the slower, folkier elements in the second half and most of the more driving R&B and metal elements in the first half. Assuming it is fair to accept the hindsight editing of this re-release, Scared Famous probably edges out Worn Copy as the best of Pink’s early home recordings.

Mac DeMarco – 2

Mac DeMarco – 2 Captured Tracks CT-164 (2012)

Mac DeMarco is basically a more working class, Canadian counterpart to lo-fi “hypnagogic pop” artist Ariel Pink. Whereas Pink had a thoroughly middle-class upbringing, attending an artist school and being exposed to the urban environment of the Beverly Hills area of California, his music exhibits an exposure to a wide variety of music and a kind of boredom and apathy that is uniquely a part of middle-class life. DeMarco hails from the rather remote oil town of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. He has interests in the more DIY part of the spectrum of singer-songwriters, like Jonathan Richman and even Shuggie Otis. To that he adds a general awareness of contemporary indie folk rock. His lyrics are confined to rather limited themes, and take things more at face value than someone like Pink. DeMarco has, in this sense, a more blue collar perspective, more concerned with sensual gratification in mapped out avenues, with only minor detours (the scope of these detours are somewhat exaggerated in his music). He also overuses certain processing effects on his guitar. He’s committed to creating a lo-fi sound from what seems like higher fidelity equipment. This is a little problematic. The music is a bit disingenuous. His melodic sense is not particularly developed, and the songs kind of drag after a while. The best here is “Freaking Out the Neighborhood,” which can almost pass for what Pink was doing a decade earlier.

The Rolling Stones – Between the Buttons

The Rolling Stones – Between the Buttons London PS 499 (1967) [US release]

Starry-eyed idealism worked wonders for The Beatles. The Kinks had nostalgia. For The Rolling Stones, the raw energy of rock and roll was their near constant source of inspiration. Early on, The Stones worked exclusively with the blues and R&B at the root of all rock music. That soon changed. It was a pair of albums they put out in 1967 that confounded any notion of the group being easily placed in one category of rock and pop music. Between The Buttons was the first of those. The album, and especially the U.S. version with the singles “Let’s Spend the Night Together” and “Ruby Tuesday,” has all the catchy pop hooks of a Beatles record plus all the ragged stylistic shredding of any other Stones record.

“Let’s Spend the Night Together” is joy. The simple pleading of a boy in love, Jagger encouraged to a desperate pace confirmed in the wordless ba-duh-bap-bap of his associates and the prodding of a relentless piano. Desire is so strong that doubt hasn’t room to breathe. This could be the most uninhibited song the group recorded. For purity of emotion, there is no equal. Pleading, pleading, pleading, with the moment ready to pass sweetly by, every attempt is made to realize the possibilities that could, at any time, collapse under the effort convince some exquisite being of something that words hardly convey, with another plea, and another, the beautiful possibility–excuses, apologies fail–for a wonderful night together. Trembling with confidence, there can only be success. The bass rambles by, undeterred by anything around it. The guitars drift in and out. They mirror the strongest melodies, making them practically invincible.

“Ruby Tuesday,” an exposition of simply the finest baroque chamber pop, matches its aristocratic etiquette only in its bittersweet delicacy. Its coarser sibling is “Yesterdays Paper’s,” whose treatment of a casual dismissal overflows with neglect.

In every odd turn the album takes, a surprise is waiting. “Connection” is a driving piece, full of energy. Less obvious are the textures loaded in every pulse. “She Smiled Sweetly” sways on the tones of an organ, with a romantic attachment to lingering memories and the instinctive desire to live them again. What makes the song unshakable is the plain and honest fact that the sweet smiles of those very occasional girls who put the world within reach can keep you alive for months. If she tells you not to worry, then days become a blur. The blur is the image of her blending bleeding into everything else. Having her in mind is happiness. All that comes in a song.

The Rolling Stones’ greatest ability was in absorbing the possibilities of every kind of pop music. In that way, Between the Buttons is exactly in stride with the path of a group who had already mastered their own heartfelt transformation of American blues. The focus simply moved to encompass the sweeter strains of pop. Even still, their music is open to anything. “Miss Amanda Jones” is a manic workout that looks forward to sound The Stones took up a few years later. The vaudevillian humor in “Something Happened to Me Yesterday” and elsewhere takes the eccentricities of the album the furthest. So carefree. Between the Buttons is wonderful nonsense, and one of the group’s best efforts.

Jonathan Richman – Action Packed: The Best of Jonathan Richman

Jonathan Richman – Action Packed: The Best of Jonathan Richman Rounder 1166-11596-2 (2002)

If Buddy Holly had arrived in the punk era, he might have sounded something like Jonathan Richman. The material collected here leans on bubblegum pop but with an ironic, half-serious delivery. These are like children’s songs played in a way that has no appeal to children. When it’s just Jonathan with a guitar, which is most of the time, the music could pass for that of some guy at an open mic night playing solo versions of old rock/pop songs and making up a few new ones as he goes too. That might not sound all that interesting, but it all ends up being quite endearing because Richman is so convincing and earnest. He doesn’t put across shy, introverted attitudes as better than anything else, just as something that belongs in the conversation with all sorts of other great music. His songwriting PWNS that of Rivers Cuomo of Weezer (a band that is quite similar, if much less talented, with just the rock sound of The Feelies tacked on top of something that does kind of suggest a sort of superiority of the geeks). A lot of people will just scratch their heads at this–even if they were intrigued by Jonathan’s appearance as a strolling troubadour in the film There’s Something About Mary. But those with a soft spot for lovable losers and insecure geeks, or simply clever, quirky and goofy songwriting, welcome home…gabba gabba.

BADBADNOTGOOD – III

BADBADNOTGOOD – III Innovative Leisure IL2019CD (2014)

Rock meets jazz, more in the sense of jazz-inflected prog rock (Zappa‘s Hot Rats) than rock-inflected jazz (Miles‘ Bitches Brew). Though they can still play straight jazz to boot (“differently, still”). But this is surely a group of musicians more steeped in math rock (Battles, Don Caballero), electronic music (DJ Shadow) and hip-hop (Prefuse 73) than the sorts of things first-generation jazz fusion artists were listening to. These Canadian youngsters play well. Mostly they go for a harmlessly aggressive, moody atmosphere. They don’t try to shove technical prowess in your face, which is what makes this so listenable.

The Velvet Underground & Nico – The Velvet Underground & Nico

The Velvet Underground & Nico – The Velvet Underground & Nico Verve V6-5008 (1967)

It may be impossible to hold your breath for forty-eight minutes, but The Velvet Underground & Nico makes you want to try. The themes are so timeless success was inevitable if not immediate. Haunting is the wrong word to describe this album. Here was rock ‘n’ roll with an urban soul. This music had compassion–not in the sense of orphans and puppy dogs, but in terms of some bleak realities music had heretofore largely ignored. There is no single, definitive rock ‘n’ roll album that obviates all needs and desires. The Velvet Underground & Nico does provide an expansive view of all that is possible. It is a rare glimpse into something daring yet fully-formed. Congratulations Velvets, it worked.

The Velvet Underground were one of the most important rock ‘n’ roll groups in history. As rock music’s reclaimed gem, the band’s influence fundamentally shifted the direction modern music was taking. The Velvets precisely divide early and modern rock ‘n’ roll. When this album came out, less than “no one” cared. Yet, as Brian Eno is often quoted saying, everyone who bought this record started a band. Through the miracle of historical revision, the music world corrected its oversight and has now placed the Velvet Underground at the peak of rock history where they belong. A record collection without the Velvet Underground & Nico is laughable.

The band was incredibly talented. John Cale and Lou Reed were the highly visible creative centers, but Sterling Morrison and Moe Tucker provided the heartbeats of the band. Moe Tucker never played drum rolls, and was unafraid to use mallets. She could turn a Bo Diddley beat into a modern rock mainstay, as with “Run Run Run”. Morrison played subtle parts that perfectly framed the experimental pieces. The Velvet’s cavalier style threw together anything that produced a good sound. It is simply wrong to say they sounded unlike anything before them. There are elements of La Monte Young’s minimalism (including Eastern classical drones), energetic old-fashioned R & B, doo-wop harmonies (drawn from gospel), twangy country trimmings, controlled guitar feedback, rough layered blues, subdued rockabilly energy, folk-y personal reflection, and girl-group production values. The album deftly melded all these elements along with something more, as witnesses as “There She Goes Again” is more than a duplication of The Rolling Stones playing Marvin Gaye’s “Hitch Hike.” Their genius comes not from mere combinatory music, but developing an entirely new approach to music through which they combined many existing elements. The highly experimental sound comes largely thanks to John Cale. Lou Reed provided the timeless lyrics, exposing the seedy side of the city. Sex, drugs, & rock n’ roll are no long just implied in the music. The Velvets bluntly present these things, making them the first urban rock band and the true rock revolutionaries of the 1960s.

The songs are at times pretty and at times provocative. The group set out to change rock ‘n’ roll, and that is exactly what they did (even if few noticed at first). “Sunday Morning” (the one song produced by Tom Wilson) is tells of a lonely person wondering about a lifetime made of tarnished days and weeks. “Heroin” and “Waiting for My Man” are drug opuses on a grand scale, but they retain a strange objectivity. The singer does not seem to draw any conclusions, understanding only what he doesn’t know. “Heroin” is the grand realization in music of Arthur Rimbaud’s Les Illuminations. Lou Reed had an incredible talent for turning ordinary life into extraordinary stories. He also tells the stories through simple words. It is easy to speak with complicated words, all you have to do is grab a thesaurus and/or go to college. A far more difficult task is speaking to a variety of social circles in a way understandable to everyone. The results are spectacular and timeless. Reed’s onetime mentor and drinking buddy Delmore Schwartz would not have it any other way.

“Produced” by Andy Warhol, the group’s debut album was really their own effort. Andy Warhol essentially did everything he could for the band, because without him the Velvet Underground would not even be an obscurity in history. Warhol gave the band money to record this thing and promoted a traveling multimedia extravaganza he called “the Exploding Plastic Inevitable.” The Velvets cashed in on Warhol’s image; unfortunately, that wasn’t enough for the general public to digest them. Paul Morrissey (one of Warhol’s right-hand men) may have done some legwork, but it was Warhol who created and cultivated his own pop phenomenon. He also okayed the band to include all their “dirty words.” Warhol issuing his meek little approval wasn’t meaningless.

Warhol forced Nico into the band, so Reed and Cale reluctantly let her sing three songs for the album. In fact, she provided the perfect foil for the band. Her deadpan vocals were decidedly non-expressionist. The twist she provides to “Femme Fatale” made it a classic. “I’ll Be Your Mirror” is icily detached in a way that seems both proper and necessary. But it also is warm. In the documentary film Nico Icon, Nico’s aunt (who raised her) plays “I’ll Be Your Mirror” and kind of dances and sings along as best she can (though she only knew German). These songs mean something, to people of all kinds. Like the whole Warhol Factory, the music serves a whole segment of society previously cast from view and memory. The third song Nico sung, “All Tomorrow’s Parties” makes a near comic, near tragic description of the poor little rich girls all about the Warhol crowd. Nico’s detached performance is very much a savior of urban life in America. Or something like that. Like the new aesthetic of the Bauhaus school, she provides a new set of values to judge an increasingly mass-produced rock ‘n’ roll product. Nico was of course ahead of her time, but she was indispensable in the music she made with and without the Velvets. The Velvets (more specifically Reed & Cale) did not desire to be Nico’s backing band, nor did Nico want to be a part-time singer for a group that didn’t need her. They said she couldn’t sing in tune, yet the Velvets never tried to play “in tune” (making for some strange disagreements). The perfect solution was to splinter off Nico to pursue her own solo career (with John Cale playing a central role) keeping those three Nico vocals with the Velvets as nice little memories of something fleeting.

Funds were very thin in the recording process. Warhol didn’t float the Velvet much money. Many of the final album tracks were first takes, or had little editing. The ultimate tribute to the Velvets is their ability to produce one of the greatest recordings ever under such oppressive conditions. This album hardly represents the band’s potential. Consensus says the group was much better live. Only rock’s greatest band could have such a fantastic under-achievement as The Velvet Underground & Nico.

One of the benefits of having Andy Warhol as your “producer” is he can design your album cover. The Warhol banana is now synonymous with the Velvet Underground. The original album jacket had a peel-off peel that revealed a pink banana inside. The back of the album actually had a profound impact on the future of the band. An image shows the band at the Exploding Plastic Inevitable with a Warhol film projected onto them as they perform. It turned out that one of the people in the projected film (Eric Emerson) whose face appeared on the back of the album created legal hassles that delayed release. The Velvets had a tenuous hold on their captive audience to say the least. They fit perfectly with the Warhol crowd, but even the more open-minded segments of uptight American society were hardly ready for them. Despite rigorous live performance schedules, the timing of the album release hurt sales. Andy Warhol’s name and image could only do so much to push sales.

The argument over Eric Emerson’s image that delayed the album’s release cemented the commercial failure of this classic. It wasn’t that people didn’t like the Velvets. Originally their concerts were quite popular, and they had capacity crowds. The Mothers of Invention with Frank Zappa used to open for the Velvets. Zappa’s nasty personality surfaced though some bitter turf wars–the Mothers and Velvets were the first two rock groups signed to Verve records, and the Mothers took it upon themselves to use any means necessary to sell more records. Zappa concluded shows by saying how the headlining band sucked and that everyone should leave. This animosity always surprised the Velvets, but they were no angels (they literally threw shit around on tour). The devoutly believed they were the greatest rock ‘n’ roll band in the world. They were right, but no one believed them. Lou Reed would not hesitate to bad-mouth any group he considered crappy. But the Velvets did respect talent. They regularly attended James Brown shows, and hung out with The Rolling Stones. There was also a great deal of respect for The Beach Boys, who don’t always get credit as being one of the most innovative and creative groups of the late 1960s.

The “right” people heard the Velvet Underground: CAN, The Stooges, Jimi Hendrix, Sonny & Cher, David Bowie, Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, New York Dolls, Television, Patti Smith, Roxy Music, The Fall, Sonic Youth, The Modern Lovers, The Voidoids (particularly Robert Quine), Rocket From the Tombs, and yes even The Doors (to name a few).

The Velvet Underground seem to paint a dark vision of the world. It still is one good enough to suggest limitless possibilities. They glorify the hopes and aspirations of fundamental aspects of urban life. Even on “The Black Angel’s Death Song” the Velvets’ music was free and uplifting, as Reed sings: “choose to choose.” They didn’t just hope and dream, but took action to make things better through their music. The Velvets’ intellectual and arty approach goes beyond some peoples’ patience or taste. This isn’t to say the Velvets are an elitist music, quite the contrary. The Velvet Underground completely identify with a section of society. Their broad, non-directional approach holds up better than lesser, narrow-minded music. Indifferent to a society that refused to accept them, their sound progressed. Anyone not satisfied accepting the world at wholesale face value will have a strong inclination to like the Velvets.

Actually, White Light/White Heat may (repeat: may) be the better album, but this one was first. This album dared into the unknown. The audacity to release this record is itself the very essence of rock ‘n’ roll.

The Velvet Underground weren’t just some band that made interesting music. They were heroes–and a heroine or two. It was against monumental odds that they created music. The Velvet Underground were, like Karlheinz Stockhausen would say, the esoteric fringe where the arts now live. It wasn’t just that they had a limited following, lots of people hated them! Without Andy Warhol, the Velvet would have had to pack it up after about five concerts for lack of anywhere to play or record. But that wasn’t what happened. The Velvets did it. They made this lasting document that ultimately did change the world.

Animal Collective – Merriweather Post Pavilion

Animal Collective – Merriweather Post Pavilion Domino DNO 219CD (2009)

Well, these guys have finally discovered latter-day Flaming Lips influences beyond those of The Beach Boys. This album is okay, but hardly anything remarkable. “My Girls” is kinda catchy. Still, music like this is altogether too contrived and disingenuous to be really good. Though this kind of music certainly does fit into the larger tend of a whole generation coping with the fact that their parents’ generation (and their grandparents’ generation too) have undermined (and continue to undermine) their chances for the same kind of life or any anything better. In the usual way, theirs is a kind of retreat into childlike mannerisms. It’s a generation of self-pity, generally not doing anything constructive to actually get out there and solve these problems, be it out of ignorance, ingrained passivity, a feeling of being overwhelmed, or whatever. Animal Collective doesn’t quite hit a nerve like the best and most profound musical artists of the era–Joanna Newsom, for one. Yet what’s interesting about this band is the way they are going back to the pop music of their parents’ generation and trying to rework it, however clumsily. It’s maybe as Samuel Beckett wrote in Worstward Ho (1983): “Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” By no means is any part of this album better than The Beach Boys. Yet, maybe with another try it will be. Just don’t hold your breath.

15-60-75 – Jimmy Bell’s Still in Town

15-60-75 – Jimmy Bell’s Still in Town Water Brothers (1976)

Ohio’s 10-60-75 (AKA The Numbers Band) deliver a nice little album here, one that locates itself in an interesting position somewhere between the psychedelic West Coast music of the 1960s (Grateful Dead et al.) and the burgeoning late-70s punk movement of the East Coast (Ramones et al.). Fellow Ohioans in Pere Ubu likewise channeled some of that same energy (the Grateful Dead influence on Pere Ubu is sometimes overlooked, but it’s there). What made this group unusual was their use of a horn section, setting the stage for its deployment in bands like 1/2 Japanese in years to come. It would have been great to hear this band on the same bill as the Patti Smith Group…

Neil Young – American Stars ‘n Bars

Neil Young – American Stars ‘n Bars Reprise MSK 2261 (1977)

After his “Gloom Trilogy” and the slightly overrated Zuma, the somewhat scattershot American Stars ‘n Bars seems like the perfect move for Neil Young. First of all, he sounds like he’s having fun making music for the first time in years–even if those intervening years produced amazing recordings. Side one is the real highlight. Carole Mayedo, Linda Ronstadt and Nicolette Larson make great contributions. It’s country rock, but with a ragged rock ‘n roll heart that Neil wears so proudly on his sleeve. “Saddle Up the Palomino” has a little up and down runs played so slowly you can almost picture Young in the studio waving his arms wildly like a conductor, in a vague and comically half-hearted attempt to coax the musicians gathered for a late-night session that hadn’t been sober for hours, if it ever was to begin with. “Hey Babe” is Neil Young the sweetheart, at least, Young the sweetheart singing double entendres in a quaking, nasal falsetto. This less wholesome attitude comes back with a vengeance on the rockingest track on the first side, “Bite the Bullet.” Side one goes many places, most of them mapped out on the opener “The Old Country Waltz,” which simultaneously proves Young’s bona fides in the realms of country and rock. It’s a song with smooth three-part vocal harmonies, a slurred fiddle, pedal steel guitar and room for a rather steady strum of an acoustic guitar and heavy drum beats on a snare. No concern for precision stands in the way of matters to the heart of the song.

The second side is made up of leftovers from a couple of aborted album projects from the previous three years. The country leanings of side one are gone, in its place some harrowing, solitary folk (“Will to Love”) and a hazy, laid-back guitar anthem set against sustained, spaced-out keyboard chords (“Like a Hurricane”). It is somewhat fitting that after the completely wasted sound of side one Young has to mail in last week’s homework for side two–his own kind of Sunday morning coming down. The thing is, most artists would never make stuff as good as anything on side two, much less have it around to use as filler! Young makes that sort of complete indifference the noble, slacker heart of the album.

There are definitely different sides to Neil Young, but the side of him that favors a wild ride, replete with a few “fuck off and let me do my thing” laughs, and revels in bawdy inside jokes, was one that made only more tentative appearances in the coming years. That makes this a little special. Of course, all that is tempered with a sensitive side that suddenly drops all pretense and demonstrates inquisitiveness and vulnerability. He does all that, and owns the contradictions. This is Neil Young the perfect anti-hero rock star, one who comes across as simply too well-adjusted, by comparison, to be a “real” rock star. In other words, one for the rest of us. Dean Stockwell‘s album cover concept sums this one up.