Rock – Page 35 – Rock Salted

Au Pairs – Sense and Sensuality

Au Pairs – Sense and Sensuality Kamera KAM 010 (1982)

After Au Pairs’ critically-lauded, feminist punk debut album Playing With a Different Sex, the band returned the following year with the much different Sense and Sensuality. While the debut focused on compact, driving and funky punk songs, the follow-up moved in many different directions. This eclectic approach has garnered it mixed reviews. On the one hand, there is still a lot of feminist rage, and angular, funky cuts are still to be found (“Intact”). Yet there is a slicker and more sinister approach to the way Sense and Sensualilty was recorded. It makes a more ominous use of space. Take “Stepping Out of Line,” for instance. It has icy, repetitive guitar in abundance, highly compressed drums, and some synth, with the bass pushed far down in the mix. It bears some resemblance to Magazine‘s Secondhand Daylight. It’s the relative absence of a regular bass line that most noticeably differentiates this from the previous effort. Elsewhere there are clear jazz influences, from the retro-lounge vocals on “Tongue in Cheek” to the slightly dissonant horn charts on “That’s When It’s Worth It.” Songs like “Sex Without Stress” have a punk edge, but are altogether poppier than on the debut, foreshadowing the (much-maligned) direction Gang of Four would take the following year with Hard. Au Pair’s experiments don’t fail, exactly, but the dark and brooding tone doesn’t generate the anthemic blend of feminist militancy and smart humor that has endeared so many fans to Playing With a Different Sex.

It’s worth noting that, like reissues of albums by X-Ray Spex and The Fall, reissues of Sense and Sensuality have reordered the original track listing — even Stepping Out of Line: The Anthology disregards the original track sequence. It’s worth taking this in the original sequencing, that opens with “Don’t Lie Back,” because that gives the lyrical and thematic focus of the songs a slower pace to develop.

Pescado Rabioso – Artaud

Pescado Rabioso – Artaud Talent SE-408 (1973)

A bit derivative of a lot of folk/rock of the day, like Richie Havens, Neil Young, Tim Buckley, Bread, America, Wishbone Ash, Roy Harper et al., but at its best Artaud offers a compelling distillation of lots of currents running through popular music at the time. There is a searching quality here. Argentina had struggled through power battles between military and civilian rulers. As a peripheral economy, they made fitful efforts to industrialize. Just the other side of the border in Chile, of course, 1973 saw the U.S.-sponsored coup against President Allende. Turbulent times. In them, Luis Alberto Spinetta and Pescado Rabioso (translation: Rabid Fish) attempted to forge an unique identity among the remnants and detritus of Western rock and folk. They don’t completely break the mold. They still do manage to forge something of their own. Some of the most memorable moments (“Las habladurías del mundo,” “Bajan”) have more burning electric guitar solos than much folk of the day. Spinetta’s guitar playing has hints of forward-looking modernity in its vaguely hippie rock foundations. The tone of the album is a little darker than what would have been popular in much English-language singer-songwriter music at the time. It also bears no resemblance to the bright and brash psychedelic and distinctily South American elements of Tropicália that evolved in nearby military-ruled Brazil in the previous few years. Little touches, like the slightly bluesy and jazzy flair of “Cementerio club” and “Superchería” and the acoustic intimacy of “Por,” keep things interesting. On the whole this is eclectic. It’s no surprise then that it’s also a little uneven (the nine-minute-plus “Cantata de puentes amarillos” drags at times). It’s a hell of a lot more satisfying than a lot of latter-day acts — almost forty years later — like Jack White that also take a highly derivative approach to songcraft, because when it hits this stuff seems honest and thoughtful rather than being just lazy approximations of what are thought to be successfully established formulas.

Bo Diddley – Bo Diddley’s Beach Party

Bo Diddley – Bo Diddley’s Beach Party Checker LP-2988 (1963)

Consider Bo Diddley’s Beach Party the first great live rock and roll record. It was recorded in July 1963 in Myrtle, Beach South Carolina. Recording technology was not really advanced enough to permit on-location live recordings of amplified rock bands to have anywhere near the fidelity of studio recordings of the day. So, this one is pretty lo-fi. But damn if Bo and his band — just Jerome Green and Norma-Jean Wofford — don’t rip the place up! Bo is a huge ball of energy. His screaming vocals on songs like “I’m All Right” are pretty fierce. Just listen to the guitar on a song like “Mr. Custer” too. You could almost slip it onto The Blow Up from more than 15 years later and it would still sound contemporary. It’s really the raw and cutting guitar that makes this one so special. Apart from some of the hits, which are frequently played at breakneck speed, Bo manages to tear through such unlikely material as “(On Top of) Old Smokey” as an instrumental and make it cook. It was a few years before live rock records came close to this one, and then mostly from West Coast acts able to tap into the latest technology. It’s records like this that make people fall in love with rock and roll.

Bo Diddley – Bo Diddley Is a Gunslinger

Bo Diddley – Bo Diddley Is a Gunslinger Checker LP 2977 (1960)

I will repeat a line someone wrote about Sly‘s A Whole New Thing that Bo Diddley Is a Gunslinger is also one of the most exciting mediocre records ever. It was recorded in gloriously crude and primitive fashion in Bo’s home studio in Washington, DC. The effect is a little like having him playing in your living room, which is so small the backing singers have to be in the next room — that’s how quiet they sound on the opening “Gunslinger.” There are plenty of flubs, a lot of off-key singing and a pervasive do-it-yourself feel to this music (there is a superior version of “No More Lovin'” on Rare & Well Done complete with someone coming into the room during recording to announce “I’ve got your hamburgers.”). While hip-hop eventually turned to gangster and thug life topics, in its early days it was proudly focused on trivialities like sneakers and how parents didn’t understand. It was a transformation with parallels in rock ‘n roll. Gunslinger sounds very much like the early rock ‘n roll era with fun, frivolous topics carried on by pure energy…and Bo’s raucous guitar. You can put this album on for anybody, and they’ll get it. And they’ll probably smile too. Nobody can make a record like this anymore without resorting to parody. But that’s just because there never was and won’t ever be another like Bo Diddley.

Mac DeMarco – Salad Days

Mac DeMarco – Salad Days Captured Tracks CT-193 (2014)

Call it hypnagogic pop, cultural anthropology, or the musical corollary of “Hansen’s law of third-generation return,” there are plenty of musicians operating in the early new century trying to reconfigure the music of the past that was never associated with people their social status before. Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti spring immediately to mind, but in their own ways, acts like Thundercat and Kishi Bashi have the same sorts of attitudes, even if they utilize arrestingly different styles and techniques. Mac DeMarco represents sort of the singer-songwriter contingent. Salad Days has wit and character. But it also overuses a few gimmicks, like an effect that makes the guitar sound like it is wobbling or maybe even like the strings are rhythmically bending, and many of the songs fail to make their mark. If you hear one of these songs you’ve practically heard them all–but if you have to choose, pick the title track. DeMarco has talent and promise. He’ll just need to work at broadening his range a bit.

Little Feat – Hotcakes & Outtakes

Little Feat – Hotcakes & Outtakes Rhino RS 79912 (2000)

Disc one is a great summary of the reasons Little Feat was a fantastic band in their day. Disc two charts their decline and transformation into a third- or fourth-tier jazz fusion outfit. Disc three–barely listenable–tracks much of their post-Lowell George reunion. Disc four is a collection of outtakes and rarities, including live takes and some Lowell George and The Factory cuts. Disc one deserves five stars, even if I would love to see maybe a few more songs from the debut LP represented. Disc two gets boring quickly. Disc three, *sigh*, is a complete waste of space. The group was churning out pretty formulaic “New Orleans” style boogie rock at that point, they rarely had a decent singer (though Shaun Murphy helped in that department), and most of all they didn’t have any good material to work with. The thing about Little Feat was that Lowell George was that band. As his influence in the band declined before his early death, the music declined in parallel. Without him, the band was just uninspired. There is an interesting quote in the liner notes though. One of the band members talks about the reunion and ponders: how can they make it not seem like money-grubbing? Answer: you don’t. If it is truly only about the music, get together and play in your garage.

This set includes too much useless junk to recommend outright. Feat fanatics may like the rarities and outtakes disc. Ideally, though, stand-alone versions of just discs one and four would really be the ticket for newcomers and the fanatics.

The Mars Volta – De-Loused in the Comatorium

The Mars Volta – De-Loused in the Comatorium Gold Standard Laboratories GSL75 (2003)

In the tradition of proggy music for lonely, sexually frustrated young men, from Frank Zappa to Rush, that only King Crimson ever seemed to transcend, you have The Mars Volta. Some good stuff here and there, but this also tries too hard and shifts around too much for its own good.

The Velvet Underground – White Light/White Heat

The Velvet Underground – White Light/White Heat Verve V-5046 (1968)

White Light/White Heat is an album that demands, but also teaches, a most elemental understanding of rock ‘n’ roll. In spite of its demands, it also opens up limitless possibility. It writhes not in perfection but realization. A cerebral work of great complexity, White Light/White Heat is a very important creative turning point in the history of rock music. The Velvet Underground nullified prior rock conventions in making the loudest album possible. What they left in their wake was a new world where a specifically urban rock ‘n’ roll ideal could begin to truly realize itself.

This is the album that assured John Cale a place in rock ‘n’ roll heaven. He won the Battle of “Sister Ray” (rock’s greatest cutting session) because he had the loudest amp. But his organ solo on “Sister Ray” is something more. His minimalist keyboard pounding swaggered and twisted its way into rock ‘n’ roll lore.

Lou Reed played a customized super-guitar that was nothing short of a necessity. Reed had his 12-string hopped up with about seven pickups (one even borrowed off bandmate Sterling Morrison’s guitar!). Solos on “I Heard Her Call My Name” (recalling Edgar A. Poe’s The Raven) and “Sister Ray” are not trippy peace/love fare. They are original and timeless. Songs telling of amphetamine rushes, hallucinations and murderous orgies don’t shy away from any subjects. Call them goth drug vampires or whatever, it is indisputable that the Velvets had an unbelievably deep and inclusive understanding of the nature of their medium. The dark ambiance of it all was at bottom more optimistic than cynical.

White Light/White Heat is almost a live album by its off-handed and raw nature. Yet, that is exactly what makes it great. It is the closest example of what the Velvets in their prime sounded like live. Any refinements would spoil the divine noise they created. White Light/White Heat is also what any future guitar-rock must be judged against. This is the prefect soundtrack for a real revolution. It’s no wonder Václav Havel named Czechoslovakia’s Velvet Revolution after the band as he did.

Lester Bangs said the Velvets “invented the Seventies.” This only partially explains them. It was as if The Velvets slew the great beast guarding the inner circle of illumination. Here was a band having some new relationship with their instruments. They were not a bunch of depraved punks working solely with forbidden forms. Shattering the dogma still remaining in rock ‘n’ roll, the Velvet Underground questioned every rule previously deemed inviolable, in a genre that already seemed premised on breaking from convention. No amount of shock value could do anything for an album of this ilk.

The Velvets made something that lasts because of its philosophical premise. Music could be more than previously conceived; and it could do it with less. The immediacy is paradoxically the enduring quality. The urges and desires thumping to Moe Tucker’s drum heartbeats are the stuff that sustains it. No routine survives. Maybe it’s not enough to say that White Light/White Heat breaks conventions. It provides somewhat of a guide. It points you in a direction along an axis you never knew existed.

It takes a journey to the edge to properly stupefy yourself with existence. This is the album to take you there, to that edge. The one True musical Statement does not exist. White Light/White Heat, however, is a singular assertion. Sell a kidney if you have to, but you must get this album.

PJ Harvey – To Bring You My Love | Review

PJ Harvey – To Bring You My Love Island 314-524 085-2 (1995)

Music of the 1960s had this liberating aspect that promptly died out through the 1970s as the naïve dreams of the previous era withered and self-indulgent excess took over. The punks came and went, but not everybody paid attention. The vapid, albeit catchy, pop of the 1980s just coasted by. Then by the 1990s, the stage had been set for “alternative rock” (whatever that means). If the moment accomplished anything, it was to reawaken the simmering undercurrents that could be traced back to the 60s—a desire to tear down and cast off the old, and, maybe, reinvent it all—but cast with a deep cynicism and palpable sense of raw anger and frustration. These things are all over early 90’s alterna-rock, grunge, etc.

PJ Harvey landed in the middle of all this. She was right there, in the perfect place and time. Rid of Me was the right kind of rock for its day. With To Bring You My Love, she transforms her style into something less directly “rock” oriented and more widely informed as rock/blues influenced pop music with a mature sensibility. It certainly recalls Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds (1994’s Let Love In being a particularly good reference point).

This music rumbles, roars and slinks. It’s confident. It just sounds ferocious most of the time. The opening salvo of “To Bring You My Love,” “Meet Ze Monsta,” and “Working for the Man” are tough to beat with any other album of the decade.

What is great about PJ Harvey was that she introduced this sort of feminist aspect to modern rock. Her music could bang as hard as anything from the boys, and her lyrical subject matter didn’t pull any punches. The window for her to seize a major-label contract (and associated distribution) was disappointingly small. She may have opened doors, but they were slammed shut right behind her. A few years out, about all mainstream music had time for from women were bimbos singing dance song pap, and variations on that theme. Yet all the proof anyone should need that it could be done properly is right here.

Bob Dylan – Empire Burlesque

Bob Dylan – Empire Burlesque Columbia FC 40110 (1985)

Empire Burlesque first came to my attention when Richard Hell wrote something on his web site about liking it. While the focus isn’t always on the lyrics — something almost guaranteed to turn off most Dylan fans — the musical backdrop is far richer than on most of his albums. It does sound a little dated. But the use of (synth) horns and backing singers works better here than on Street-Legal. There is a ragged decadence to the music that fits. It captures well the superficiality and banality of the Thatcher/Reagan era. The songs evidence contentment, but with questioning, lingering doubt just below the surface. Something about it all sounds mature. Plus, for the skeptics, try going straight to the solo acoustic closer “Dark Eyes.” Can you maybe admit that the young Dylan of the 1960s was still alive and well? If you can answer “yes” in the context of an overtly “folk” song, then go back to the opener “Tight Connection to My Heart (Has Anybody Seen My Love?)” and “Emotionally Yours” and ask if there isn’t some of the same spark there in a whole different setting. This album may be reviled by many fans, but it is probably my favorite of the post-Desire albums, edging out Shot of Love and Good As I Been to You. This might be his best of the 80s — yes even better than Oh Mercy.