Tag: Rock

Holger Czukay – On the Way to the Peak of Normal

On the Way to the Peak of Normal

Holger Czukay – On the Way to the Peak of Normal Welt-Rekord 1C 064-46 400 (1981)

Before the advent of samplers and digital audio — with all the concomitant abilities to dice up and recombine sounds — Holger Czukay made On the Way to the Peak of Normal, a highly personal and fully analog set of sound musings.  Drawing on techniques from avant-garde modern classical (think Stockhausen‘s Hymnen, Steve Reich‘s “Come Out” and those sorts of things), plus the spliced-together rock music of his former “krautrock” band CAN, Czukay combines found sounds, bedroom/basement guitar/bass jams, comically unexpected instrumentation, and extended suite-like structures, to form an original and remarkably, infectiously durable album.

“To break up an idea into its ultimate elements means returning upon its moments, which at least do not have the form of the given idea when found, but are the immediate property of the self.  Doubtless this analysis only arrives at thoughts which are themselves familiar elements, fixed inert determinations.  But what is thus separated, and in a sense is unreal, is itself an essential moment; for just because the concrete fact is self-divided, and turns into unreality, it is something self-moving, self-active.  The action of separating the elements is the exercise of the force of Understanding, the most astonishing and greatest of all powers, or rather the absolute power.”  G.W.F. Hegel, Preface (para. 32) to The Phenomenology of Mind.

By sheer coincidence, I first encountered this album at the same time I discovered cLOUDDEAD‘s self-titled collection of 12″ records, and the two albums have a lot of similarities.  Czukay is less precious.  And that is fine.  When I first heard On the Way to the Peak of Normal I was particularly impressed with the way some of the sounds on it were “field recordings” made with a dictaphone — a technology now all but obsolete, but still pointedly in use when I heard this album!  I also really liked (and still do) the way a horn (french horn?) kind of bubbles up unexpectedly in “Ode to Perfume,” a song to that point made mostly with conventional rock instrumentation.  The pace is sometimes slow enough that you can almost hear the wheels turning to inch the magnetic tape along holding these sounds, but that only adds to the overall charm of the album.  This is a heart-warming winner.

Weezer – Weezer [White Album]

Weezer (White Album)

Weezer – Weezer [White Album] Atlantic 554625-2 (2016)

Weezer’s “white album” is about as good as anything they have ever done, which, admittedly, isn’t saying a whole lot.  This is pretty superficial stuff, lyrically especially, and the music is mostly just a reenactment of well-worn pop-punk riffs.  No highlights, and forgettable for the most part, but still fairly consistent from start to finish.

The Mothers of Invention – Absolutely Free

Absolutely Free

The Mothers of Invention – Absolutely Free Verve V6-5013 (1967)

Absolutely Free is sort of the quintessential Mothers of Invention album.  It highlights all the problems with the band’s musical approach.  They were arch cynics, which is to say that their zany fart joke songs give the impression that they are mocking the “system” but that is really just a front for what are ultimately merely attacks on personalities in an — ultimately hypocritical — bid to supplant the personalities being mocked in some kind of upper ranks of that “system” they pretend to mock.  Sound complicated?  Well, it is.  The ultimate problem is the hypocrisy.  Rather than holding up the ridiculous claims of those in power for the moronic and stupid things that they are on their face, The Mothers opt to take a superior attitude, getting mired in a kind of “beautiful soul” problem in which they claim to stand apart from the fantasies of those of dominant society and mock in from afar.  This is the epitome of the criticism that “a cynical distance does not amount to ‘traversing the fantasy’, since it implicitly reduces fantasy to the veil of illusions distorting our access to reality ‘as it really is'[, and so] . . . the cynical subject is [that] who is least delivered from the hold of fantasy.”  But against the odds, The Mothers accidentally addressed this very problem on their next (and best) album, We’re Only In It for the Money, which was unintentionally a self-criticism.

The Stooges – The Weirdness

The Weirdness

The Stooges – The Weirdness Virgin 7243 8 64648 2 8 (2007)

So wrong, so wrong, so wrong.  Reviewer BradL wrote about Dylan‘s Christmas in the Heart that “[a]nyone can make a mediocre record.  It takes true genius to make a wretched one.”  Iggy Pop has earned some ignoble piece of genius here because this is about as bad as they come.  You have a band calling itself The Stooges that only manages to sound like a tenth-rate Stooges knock-off.  File this alongside Heard Ya Missed Me, Well I’m Back and 15 Big Ones as another “comeback” album that should have never been.

Queen – Greatest Hits

Greatest Hits

Queen – Greatest Hits EMI EMTV 30 (1981)

Great stuff really.  These hits are still ubiquitous.  And they deserve to be.  What struck me listening to this for the n-th time was how the techniques that Queen use are not altogether that different from the ironic, kitschy mash-ups of tropicália, though this is undeniably camp rather than social protest music.  But the underlying musical techniques have similarities.  Susan Sontag famously wrote that camp was characterized by artifice, exaggeration, a conversion of the serious to the frivolous, and naïve unpretentiousness.  Even with the very exaggerated, flamboyant frivolity of something like “Bohemian Rhapsody” or even “Don’t Stop Me Now” there really is hardly a whiff of pretension.  The band never blinks no matter how silly the premise.

One thing I’ll always remember about Queen is that a guy I used to work with (in retail) would stroll along at work and sing “Killer Queen” (or at least a verse or two over and over again) in a kind of stoner drawl.  That kind of sums up Queen for me: a band that is a distraction, an escape, greasing the wheels of daily life, and completely and totally okay with being that and no more than that.  The thing to question about something like that is how it tends to justify the status quo, no matter what that is, but , still, few convey a poignant sense of motion holding distinct concepts in a particular relationship to each other quite like Queen.  As one person put it, “The great thing about Queen was that they could unite both meathead jock-rockers and sexually adventurous drama nerds, whether those two groups wanted to be united or not.”

This collection of hits is all you need from the band.  There are also Vols. II and III, but those get lame quickly.  Sure, there is still room to quibble with a few of the selections here, like the lack of “Under Pressure,” and “Flash” belongs at the very end.  But those are minor concerns.

Juçara Marçal – Encarnado

Encarnado

Juçara Marçal – Encarnado (self-released) (2014)

Comes across vaguely like a low-budget version of Tom Zé‘s Vira Lata na Via Láctea (2014), with more conventionally pretty vocals.  Marçal is an excellent vocalist.  The album’s major limitation is the “math rock” guitar style of Kiko Dinucci and Rodrigo Campos (Dinucci appeared as a guest on the Zé album), which more often than not uses the raw repetition of riffs as a way to cover up a general lack of ideas.  The experimentalism of the music also falls prey to self-indulgence at times.  Yet Marçal has a way of making just about anything she sings captivating, which often counteracts the overbearing (and mostly boring) guitar.  The album improves somewhat in the second half, with shorter songs that have less guitar (and sometimes when it appears, it is more as a novelty and a contrast or change-of-pace, rather than with a serious “rock” sound, which works better).  There are a few promising aspects to this album (especially the songs “João Carranca” and “Canção Pra Ninar Oxum”), but for the most part it seems insufficiently thought-through and burdened by the very mediocre guitar playing.

Willie Nelson – It Always Will Be

It Always Will Be

Willie Nelson – It Always Will Be Lost Highway B0002576-02 (2004)

As he has aged, Willie Nelson’s music has stayed fairly mellow.  It Always Will Be is a solid effort, nowhere near his best, but decent for this part of his career.  Its consistent fault is that producer James Stroud gives the music too much spit and polish.  A little grit and gravel would have helped this along tremendously.  Although it bears mentioning that breaking from the mellow tone of the rest of the album with the utterly ridiculous modern southern rock of “Midnight Rider” is brazenly stupid.

The Mothers of Invention – Weasels Ripped My Flesh

Weasels Ripped My Flesh

The Mothers of Invention – Weasels Ripped My Flesh Bizarre MS 2028 (1970)

An album decidedly influenced by free jazz.  Woodwinds player Ian Underwood had studied at the Lenox School of Jazz back in 1959 when Ornette Coleman inspired many to take up the banner of “free” jazz, and maybe that experience helped steer the music on this album.  Or so it seems from the opener “Didja Get Any Onya.”  From there, much of this seems like aimless jams that have good ideas drawn out too long (many of the recordings were made live).  The abstractions are great in theory but are less impressive in practice.  And “The Eric Dolphy Memorial Barbeque” might be the single least interesting thing with Dolphy‘s name attached to it.  But there is also a more straightforward rock song, “My Guitar Wants to Kill Your Mama,” which has long been a favorite Mothers song of mine.  Anyway, music aside, this one features a great Neon Park album cover!