Underrated Album: Eight Arms to Hold You by Veruca Salt

Remember Veruca Salt? Sure you do--funny name from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, had a big hit in 1994 with "Seether"? Well, it turns out that they were actually kind of great.

First of all, let's talk about allusions. These gals had great taste: their band was named after a Roald Dahl character; their first album, American Thighs, was named after a line from AC/DC's "You Shook Me All Night Long"; and their second album contains two explicit Beatles references. The title, Eight Arms to Hold You was the working title of Help!, and "Volcano Girls" contains this hilarious verse:

I told you bout the Seether before
You know the one who's neither or nor
Well here's another clue if you please
The Seether's Louise

If you don't get the joke, listen to the Beatles' "Glass Onion." (If you still don't get the joke, go back and listen to "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds," "Lady Madonna," "Strawberry Fields Forever," "Fixing a Hole," "The Fool on the Hill," and "I Am the Walrus").

And it's Eight Arms to Hold You that I want to talk about today as an underrated album. Rolling Stone gave it a meager 1.5 star review, and Allmusic claimed that those Beatles references belie the fact that it's just another overpowered guitar album: the album couldn't sound further from the British Invasion . . . if it had been recorded by the Prodigy"; "too often, the songs are buried by heavy guitars. Veruca Salt sound awkward when they try to rock out." And because Veruca Salt's lead singers are women, Allmusic and others compared them to the Breeders, L7, and other female rockers of the mid-90s, reminding one of PJ Harvey's comment that "I'm like anyone as long as they're female. If they've got dark hair it's even better"-(allusion alert!: "Shutterbug" was purportedly written about Harvey).

But all these 90s female touchstones are ultimately misleading, as is Allmusic's criticism that "every song on the record is powered by fully rounded heavy guitars and big, big drums -- a sound that went out of style in 1990." The real key to cracking Eight Arms to Hold You is all those allusions. It simply isn't true that "every song" on the album is anything, and definitely not anything specific. What Veruca Salt has done is taken all their favorite touchstones and mashed them together into a multi-period, multi-sound, melodic mess. So you've got a New Wave guitar line opening a song about David Bowie, hair-metal riffs powering essentially pop songs like "Straight," and Soundgarden-like grunge on the song about PJ Harvey. Yes, this is a messy, but it is also exhilerating: something like a mash-up a decade before its time. And in Veruca Salt's words:

Forget humility
what's coming over me
is awesome
God forgive me i know
it's so awesome

It's true that at 50 minutes, that album is at least 10 minutes long, and the last 2-3 songs don't do much to help it's cause. But until then, every song is powered by hooks catchy enough to make all those Beatles allusions meaningful. Check out circular guitar riff on "Don't Make Me Prove It," the pre-chorus on "Awesome," the back-up vocals on "The Morning Sad," and the downward leaning guitar line on "Sound of the Bell." This is an album that believes in the purity of a great hook, and pop music in all of its forms.

Off Topic: Fact-based Movies

Last week I was reading a couple of articles on slate.com (here and here) about the various factual inaccuracies of the new movie about Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook. I haven't seen the movie, and the articles are actually quite interesting, but they got me thinking about the whole concept of biopics and other movies "based on a true story." It seems like every time one comes out, we see a whole slew of articles about this or that inaccuracy, in a way that never comes up for (for example) novels based on true events.

I think there are a number of interlocking reasons for this obsession with accuracy in films, and I'm going to see if I can try to tease them out.

1) The Categorization of Movies

Movies can be (very broadly) broken down into fictional movies and non-fictional (sometimes called documentaries), roughly analogous to fiction and nonfiction books. Just as there are biographies, science textbooks, histories, and other non-fiction books which ultimately aim at something akin to "truth," there are nonfictional films which attempt to convey the facts or truth about some event - films like Lanzmann's Shoah (about the Holocaust) or Wadleigh's Woodstock to pick a couple of random examples.

On the other hand are fictional films. Nearly every movie that comes out of Hollywood is a fictional movie. Some of these fictional movies are based on events that happened in real life, but they nevertheless continue to be fictional movies. It seems obvious to me (though perhaps less so to others) that these movies can be seen as directly analogous to artwork based on factual events in a variety of artistic fields: painting (say, "Guernica"); music ("1812 Overture"); plays ("The Crucible," Shakespeare's histories and Roman plays), and books (DeLillo's Libra, Oates's Blonde).

If you pick up a copy of a scholarly edition of one of Shakespeare's history plays (say the Arden or the New Cambridge) you will find a section devoted to explaining the actual history of England and its kings and all the ways Shakespeare conflated events and rewrote history. But even when movie versions are made of Richard III or Henry V, no one seems much bothered by the historical accuracy. I think one of the reasons that fictional films are held to different standards is a confusion of categorization on the part of both filmmakers and filmgoers.

As far as I can tell, your average Hollywood producer and your average Hollywood filmgoer are unlikely to have seen or cared about more than one or two documentaries in their whole life, and so they see fictional movies not as a category within film, but as the whole substance of the art of film. For these viewers and creators, fictional films based on fact fill in the gap left by their ignorance of nonfictional films, and they turn to these films to provide them with "truth." This is entirely understandable, but it is also an enormous category error. As with novels based on fact, there are huge variations within fact-based films as to how much fact is used: from James Whale's The Great Garrick, dramatizing an entirely fictional event in the life of a real person (actor David Garrick) to David Fincher's Zodiac, which at least attempts to stay close to Robert Graysmith's account of his Zodiac investigation.

But as interesting as these varietions are, just as one does not look to DeLillo's Libra for an accurate account of Lee Harvey Oswald's life or the JFK assassination, one should not look to The Social Network for an accurate account of Mark Zuckerberg's life. They are fictional narratives which use some level of fact as underpinning, but are not ultimately about uncovering truth about their subjects.

2) Adaptation

The second problem that enters this equation is that of adaptation. In many cases, the source material for a fictional film is not merely facts available to the public but a readily identifiable text, such as a nonfictional book. Biographies, for instance, are often adapted into movies. The trouble here is related to the issues above, but centers around a fundamental misunderstanding of the process of adaptation. James Naremore wrote a fantastic book about Film Adaptation, and I won't by any means attempt to recapitulate even his main points, but one of his points is that the process of adaptation is not about reproducing a text in a different medium, but about "translating" it and using the base text to create a new work of art. (As a side note, this is an enormous issue for novels made into films: the point of making a film is not to accurately reproduce every event and tonal characteristic of the novel - otherwise the audience could simply read the book. A film is it's own art, and should be judged accordingly).

For another analogy, we'll turn back to Shakespeare. Almost all of Shakespeare's English History plays, as well as some of the Tragedies, were "adapted" (in some cases with large blocks of text wholesale plagiarized) from Rafael Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Wales. Shakespeare was not attempting to accurately reproduce Holinshed for the edification of his audience; he was attempting to make a narratively interesting play and turned to a historical account of a series of very interesting lives. In other words, Shakespeare was taking a nonfictional text and adapting it into the fictional realm of drama. In the same way, fictional films based on nonfiction texts cannot be seen as "nonfictional," unless the film is explicitly created as documentary (for an example, think of Enron: the Smartest Guys in the Room).

In sum, because the average filmgoer thinks the purpose of an adaptation is to faithfully recreate its base-text, she may be led to believe that a film based on a nonfictional text is automatically a nonfictional film, an idea which is patently false.

3. The Illusion of Reality

None of what I've said above is intended to disparage ordinary filmgoers. Most of them would have no trouble distinguishing between a novel and a nonfiction book, or between a Shakespeare play and a text on English history. The problem is that Hollywood wants to have it both ways. Marketing departments want to be able to use that phrase "based on a true story," because it gives films a certain cache; but at the same time, writers and directors want the "poetic license" to create a sound narrative arc. Add on top of this the fact, stated above, that Hollywood is not particularly interested in producing or promoting actual nonfiction films, and you have an area ripe for misunderstanding.

But possibly more important than any of these is the basic fact of movies: that they have always seemed to be a view of reality. We see real(ish) people with real(ish) faces and we are drawn into the illusion much more powerfully than in the case of a novel. Just look at the level to which celebrities have become identified with their on-screen personae and it is clear that we want to believe that what we see on the screen is real, and when someone on slate.com writes an article shattering the illusion, we get mad - either at the writer or at the movie, for having deceived us.

Greatest Filler Albums

1) An idea: a series of Mix CDs/iPod playlists comprised of the best album tracks of a specific artist. So many artists get their hit singles repackaged over and over again, which is doubly annoying because a) many of us already have the hits on another greatest hits package and b) those are the songs that get played on the radio anyway. So why not some CDs of the best songs that never were singles?

2) The rules:

a) The mix should be standard CD length. So, 12-24 songs, or 30-70 minutes.

b) The songs should never have been released (in the US) as a single, A or B side. This one gets a bit tricky with some older artists--eg Otis Redding, whose record company released practically everything he ever recorded as a single. So, if you want, we can limit it to singles that were released while the artist was active.

c) The mix should sound like a real greatest hits album. This means, it should be sequenced with some care, and shouldn't be completely filled with 20-minute live cuts and outtakes (a couple of those are OK).

3) Two examples:

The Clash

1) Police on My Back
2) I'm So Bored With the USA
3) Charlie Don't Surf
4) Julie's Been Working For the Drug Squad
5) London's Burning
6) Somebody Got Murdered
7) Career Opportunities
8) Police and Thieves
9) Safe European Home
10) Lost in the Supermarket
11) Koka Kola

12) Death or Glory
13) Something About England
14) Stay Free
15) Janie Jones
16) Wrong Em Boyo
17) I'm Not Down
18) Rudie Can't Fail
19) Overpowered by Funk
20)Up in Heaven
21) We Are the Clash

REM

1) Circus Envy
2) Welcome to the Occupation
3) Pretty Persuasion
4) Moral Kiosk
5) Ignoreland
6) Laughing
7) Me in Honey
8) Harborcoat
9) Oddfellows Local 151
10) Be Mine

11) Exhuming McCarthy
12) Monty Got a Raw Deal
13) Leave
14) Texarkana
15) Star Me Kitten
16) Let Me In
17)You
18) Strange Currencies
19) Catapult
20) So Fast So Numb

4) Other possibilities: Neil Young, Prince, James Brown, Bob Dylan, PJ Harvey, Randy Newman, Rolling Stones. Who else you got?

Solo Artists

Don't know why, but I started thinking about how frighteningly often bands split up to pursue "solo careers," and I wondered, how often do solo careers actually improve on the original band (artistically - obviously they do all the time in terms of popularity). Here's what I got:

Joan Jett
Justin Timberlake
Paul Simon
Michael Jackson
Van Morrison

And that's all I could come up with. I'm sure you can come up with others (feel free to comment) - but think about it: I could list hundreds of solo artists but only 5 or so that are actually better than their band. Sad.

Underrated Album: Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star by Sonic Youth

Has Sonic Youth made a bad album since their triumph with EVOL in 1986? Not counting their experimental SYR records, they've made 12 studio albums since then. I make half of them (Sister, Daydream Nation, Dirty, Washing Machine, A Thousand Leaves, and Rather Ripped) outright classics, with another four (Goo, Murray Street, Sonic Nurse, and The Eternal) an output that puts other bands of the period to shame all by itself. That leaves NYC Ghosts and Flowers, which I haven't heard, and does get some negative buzz (if I get my hands on it, I'll post my findings here), and today's entry in my underrated album series. Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star wasn't exactly hated, but reviewers seem to have been utterly confused as to how to approach the album, which led to a lot of mixed reviews.

Allmusic, in a relatively negative (3/5) review, claims that "this record must be considered the closest the group has ever gone to straight-ahead pop/rock." On the other hand, Robert Christgau in a hugely positive (A) review states that "Instead of distilling their weakness for experimental trash into noise-rock that sounds like a million bucks, they apply their skill at major-label compromise to their eternal propensity for experimental trash" - a typically christgauian dense sentence which is arguing (if I'm reading it correctly) something like the opposite of allmusic's claim to "straight-ahead pop-rock" - that it is their major label ode to their experimental roots. Blender's review is negative (3/5), but nevertheless sides with Christgau's take on the experimentality of the record, calling it "a weirdly subdued, even-more-dissonant-than-usual record."

On a different tack, the Rolling Stone reviewer, in a positive (4/5) review claimed that "I wish this disc didn't sound like a cup of mud." Allmusic doesn't know whether to agree or disagree with RS on that one, once referring to "Butch Vig's clean production" but later to the "murky production."

We can perhaps forgive the confusion of reviewers at the time, but Blender and Allmusic both had access to the same information we do: namely "A Thousand Leaves," "Murray Street," and "Rather Ripped." Of course, Blender didn't think too much of those three records either, so at least they are consistent. For the rest of us, who relish the Sonic Youth of the turn of the millenium, Experimental Jet Set sounds like nothing so much as a prescient distillation of many of the ideas they later fleshed out in those three records (as well as others).

I think the confusion from Allmusic and Rolling Stone about the relative dirtiness of the production comes from the fact that it sounds so different from the previous two albums, Dirty and Goo, and from the fact that there is a clear (to me) dissonance between the actual fidelity of production (clean) and the relative distortion of the sounds being captured on tape (murky). Personally, I can't really see the claim of muddy or murky production - it sounds crystal-clear to me, but again, I can place it in a line with A Thousand Leaves and Murray Street, which boast similarly clean production values, while maintaining Thurston's and Lee's oddball guitar sounds.

Aside from the above point, I don't (for once) have a grand unifying scheme to demonstrate the superiority of this album. Instead it's as simple as this: there's not a bad track on the album, and many are prime SY. The highlights for me are "Self-Obsessed and Sexxee," "In the Mind of the Bourgeois Reader" (great title), "Skink," and "Bone." Ask me tomorrow, I might have a new favorite. Are these all immediately catchy "pop/rock" songs? No, of course not - it's Sonic Youth. As with all the best SY, they're an interesting combination of intricate yet hooky tunes, dissonant guitar sounds, and nontraditional structures. Just how we like it.

Underrated Album: In Through the Out Door by Led Zeppelin

In the prime of my Zephead days (high school, natch), I acquired all of their albums through Physical Graffiti, having gleaned from various sources, now obscured in the mists of the past, that the latter albums weren't worth owning. So, the only real exposure I had to this week's underrated album, In Through the Out Door, were the tunes that inevitably crop up on classic rock stations, "Fool in the Rain" and "All My Love." I'd hear them and say "I love this song - why don't I own it?" but whenever I was in a record store, I'd skip right by the Zep CDs, thinking "I own all the Zep I need."

Enter my wife, making a mix CD for her cousin, comprising old favorites they listened to as teenagers, including "All My Love." In an attempt to download the song from emusic, I found that I had to download the whole album, and thought, "what the hell." Turns out it's pretty amazing - when the dust settles, I can see it falling pretty comforably into third place behind IV and Houses of the Holy - definitely above II, Physical Graffiti, I, Presence, and Coda.

Alright, enough with my own underrating of the album - what did the critics make of it, and why did I never listen to it in the first place? It seems that while it was never hated, it was pretty universally seen as a middling record from the very beginning. I found the original Rolling Stone review, which stated:

"Side two consists of three of the least effective songs the band has ever recorded. 'Carouselambra,' the opener, is built on an extremely lame keyboard riff and clocks in at an absurd 10:28. Repetition to weave a hypnotic effect has always been part of the Zeppelin sound, but what they are repeating here is not worth the effort. 'All My Love' and 'I'm Gonna Crawl,' both slow and incorporating synthesized violins, let the record peter out instead of climax. Side one qualifies as occasionally interesting — particularly the heavy-metal square dance, 'Hot Dog,' and Bonham driving a locomotive through the mariachi (I think) beat in the middle of 'Fool in the Rain'—but the only cut I'll return to with any enthusiasm is 'In the Evening.'"

That's the same Rolling Stone that 2 years earlier had said of Presence: "Led Zeppelin's seventh album confirms this quartet's status as heavy-metal champions of the known universe." In the more scholarly quarters of the Pazz and Jop Poll, Zeppelin was never a huge critical favorite, but IV made number 30 and Physical Graffiti made number 25 in the days of P&J's top 30 album poll (there was no poll in 1973, the year of Houses of the Holy), while In Through the Out Door didn't even place in the expanded-to-40 poll of 1979.

Flash forward to the present: Rolling Stone issued updated grades for Zep's albums in 2010, giving In Through the Out Door 3/5 stars; Allmusic rates it 3.5/5, in a mildly positive, but by no means rave review; Q magazine gave it 3/5 back in 2000.

All in all, a pretty poor showing for an album by a band conosidered by many to be one of the all time greats. Is this a case of critics needing to find a weak link in an otherwise stellar catalog? I don't think so.

In some of my other posts, I've argued that bands get derided for straying too far from their perceived roots or strengths (cf Their Satanic Majesties, Liz Phair, Two Virgins). While it would be possible to make that claim with this album, I think there's something a bit more subtle going on: I think it may be a more general confusion about what Zeppelin stood for as a band.

Since its earliest days, Zeppelin was held up as the kings of the newly formed "heavy metal" genre, with fans quick to point out the overwhelming power of songs like "Dazed and Confused," "Whole Lotta Love," and "Black Dog." But what sometimes gets forgotten is Zep's devotion to traditional British folk music, American country, and straight ahead pop. Going back to those two songs that get played on classic rock stations, you can draw a pretty direct line from "Fool in the Rain" and "All My Love" back through "Houses of the Holy," "Dancing Days," "Rock and Roll," "Out on the Tiles," "Living Loving Maid," and "Good Times Bad Times." In terms of the electrified country of "Hot Dog," the antecedents are legion: "Bron-Y-Aur Stomp" and "Black Country Woman" to name just the most obvious.

I hear the Zep purists out there arguing that the songs I mentioned may well represent a certain side of Zeppelin, but In Through the Out Door abandons the old heavy side we loved so well. So rather than dwelling on how In Through the Out Door recapitulates old Zeppelin tropes, I want to look at how it advances their genius. What I think is going on with In Through the Out Door is that Zeppelin in finally synthesizing their disparate influences into a unified approach. Where on past albums, the country, folk, pop, and metal tunes were (relatively) separate entities, here, each song contains elements of all their ideas. As an example, throughout the record, Page spins out hooks and solos that are at once catchy, hard hitting, tricky, and electrifying: the countrified solo on "Hot Dog" in particular is a marvel.

So too with Bonham, who demonstrates that the album represents the culmination of Zeppelin's discovery (seemingly between IV and Houses of the Holy) that Black music did not end with Muddy Waters. Put another way, In Through the Out Door has the funk, and not just a "Trampled Under Foot" here, a "D'yer Maker" there: it's a full out rhythmic masterpiece from a band not necessarily known for same. Just check out the drum breakdown on "Fool in the Rain" and compare it to "Moby Dick": it's the difference between an undeniably talented drummer showing off his might, and a genius who no longer needs to.

Obviously, Zeppelin did not intend for this album to be their last (barring the outtakes-only Coda), but in some ways, they couldn't have picked a better way to go out.

Best Songs of the Naughties

This post is probably at least 7 or 8 months late, and not at all researched, but hey, I just had a baby, and am at work for the first time in 3 weeks, so I'm taking it easy. Here's the playlist for a mix CD Rena and I put together of the "Best of the Decade, 00-09." It's not actually the best of the decade, or even our favorite songs of the decade. It's more, 20 or so songs that did well to very well on charts, that we liked a lot, and that were listed in Rolling Stones songs of the decade, which is where we ripped off the idea. So, it's nothing special, just a great mix - I encourage you to burn yourself a copy. And feel free to discuss.

1. Hey Ya! - OutKast

2. Work It - Missy Elliot

3. American Boy - Estelle, feat. Kanye West

4. Oxford Comma - Vampire Weekend

5. The Way We Get By - Spoon

6. Wake Up - Arcade Fire

7. Take Me Out - Franz Ferdinand

8. Fell in Love With a Girl - White Stripes

9. 99 Problems - Jay-Z

10. Can't Get You Out of My Head - Kylie Minogue

11. Stacy's Mom - Fountains of Wayne

12. Rehab - Amy Winehouse

13. Gold Digger - Kanye West

14. Kids - MGMT

15. Stan - Eminem

16. Paper Planes - M.I.A.

17. Breakin' Up - Rilo Kiley

18. Mississippi - Bob Dylan

19. Do You Realize?? - Flaming Lips

A Guide to non-Beatles 60s music

Have you ever noticed that pretty much every oldies or classic rock station on the air will spend significant airwave on events like "the Beatles A-Z" which often includes non-Beatles tracks by the solo Beatles, while playing the same one Otis Redding song (Dock of the Bay) over and over again? This frustrates me for a lot of reasons:

1) While you'll never find me claiming the 60s as a special decade (quite the opposite), nevertheless, there was a lot of great music in those ten years, a surprising percentage of it not written by the Beatles.

2) By privileging the white/male Beatles, these stations continue the trend of pushing music by blacks and women from the 60s to the very edges of their programming.

A month ago, I looked at the website for my local "classic rock" station, 103.7 The Band, and found that of the last 200 songs they played as of 6/3/10, 6 were by black artists (4 by Hendix, one each for Stevie Wonder and War), and 3 were by women (Janis Joplin and Heart). Another 4 were Latino, all Santana. Looked at another way, Pink Floyd, Elton John, the Eagles, and the Beatles each had more tracks (7 each) than all black artists combined, and Journey matched the black output of 6. I mean, Jesus, how many ELO songs do we have to hear (4) before getting something from the Shirelles (0)? We get no songs from Otis Redding, but we do get the Black Crowes cringe-worthy cover of his classic "Hard to Handle." I just repeated the same experiment today on 7/3/10, and it was even worse: one Stevie song, one Hendrix, and two Santana.

I don't want to belabor the point--it's clear that classic rock programmers have no interest in black or female music. And obviously, the target audience here is very narrow: but assuming that the target is nostalgic boomers, isn't it a bit ironic that in the relatively more racist late 50s and 60s, these same boomers would have heard a significantly higher proportion of black and female music on top 40 radio than they do on these "nostalgic" stations? The reason I think this is important is that I happen to believe that the history of rock and roll is both incredibly enjoyable, and important for anyone who wants to understand what the music signifies in the present.

And at one point at least, "oldies" and "classic rock" stations were the way to access this history (that was the case for me). Today, of course, there's youtube, iTunes, and various semi-legal ways of downloading music. And I completely embrace those means of accessing rock and roll history. But the radio stations (in theory) offer a unique means of accessing this history, because: 1) they're free (unlike iTunes); 2) they are social, in that they encourage a community appreciation for a set of music; and 3) they (again, very much in theory) offer music preselected by people who know something about the period. In other words, if I want to educate myself about 60s rock and roll, I would much rather listen to the extended mix-tape that is a radio station than blindly stumble through websites, books, etc. to find out what to listen to, then track down the music, and often have to pay for the music.

By playing the same tired white-guy-jam music over and over, "classic rock" stations fail to capitalize on what could be a perfect opportunity to educate listeners, young and old, about the history of what I think of as the greatest music on earth.

So, for anyone who was introduced to 60s music through these stations, or has completely forgotten their youth, I offer below a primer on what you should really be listening to from the 60s. I'm not including stuff that is already well known and heavily played on these stations (Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, The Who, etc.), and focusing mainly on black men and women, for the reasons stated above. Here you go:

Otis Redding - every studio album he put out (plus a live one) is worth owning, roughly in this order: Dictionary of Soul, Otis Blue, Immortal Otis Redding, In Person at the Whiskey a Go Go, Pain in My Heart, Love Man, Sings Soul Ballads, Soul Album, Dock of the Bay, King and Queen, Tell the Truth

The Shirelles - Very Best of the Shirelles (Rhino) - the very best girl group, woefully unknown.

James Brown - Star Time (4 CD Box) - seriously, the whole thing is worth owning.

Wilson Pickett - A Man and a Half (Rhino)

Bobby Bland - any greatest hits comp

Ray Charles - you should have his 50s stuff first, but any 60s comp is essential too

Sam Cooke - The Man and His Music, if you can find it. Otherwise, any greatest hits

Aretha Franklin - I Never Loved a Man, Lady Soul, Spirit in the Dark, Young Gifted and Black

Marvelletes - Anthology

The Supremes - Anthology - the most popular group of the 1960s, aside from the Beatles, is known, primarily by route of Diana Ross, but not nearly listened to enough. Pick up this double CD.

Stevie Wonder - A lot of people have the 70s and 80s Stevie, but for 60s stuff, try to track down Greatest Hits Vol. 1 and Vol. 2

Phil Spector - Back to Mono - another box set, weaker than the JB, but easy to find cheap used.

Dusty Springfield - Dusty in Memphis

Temptations - Anthology

Joe Tex - any greatest hits comp

Under-rated band: Wussy

My listening hasn't been taking me to many critically dismissed works recently, so I've decided to redefine the word "under-rated" for this post. Instead of an album rated below its worth, today I'm going to look at a band that has not been rated by enough critics at all: it's been under-rated (note the hypen). Critics who have taken the time to listen to and review Wussy's albums (specifically Franklin Soults and Robert Christgau) have generally rated them highly, but no one else seems to have heard of them at all.

Wussy's second record, Left For Dead, garnered 2 whole mentions in the 2007 Pazz and Jop Poll for a 636th place finish. And their third, eponymous album made it all the way to 109th place, with 11 mentions in 2009. I can't seem to get access to the full results to the 2005 P&J poll, but I'd be shocked if their first record, Funeral Dress, got mentioned even once on that poll. Allmusic gives their generic 3 star review to Funeral Dress and Wussy, and doesn't even bother to review Left for Dead.

Yes, I know, everyone has their pet band that know one's ever heard of, but I swear - you should really listen to Wussy.

With dueling vocalists Chuck Cheaver (whiny, little range, but somehow powerful) and Lisa Walker (beautiful, quirky, reminds me of Jenny Lewis) they call to mind Richard and Linda Thompson (a comparison I swear I hit on independently of Christgau), but the music sounds more like 90s grunge that has been freed (finally) from its angsty, teen-male origins and put to use purely for its dynamic possibilities: check out the primordially simple guitar lines and the Nirvana-like way the distorted guitars come in on "Soak it Up" (available in a crappy live version here, but seriously - download it), or "Airborne," both on Funeral Dress.
But there's a lot more to it than post- or retro-grunge. For example, there's a distinct alt-country strain in tracks like "Crooked," (check out the awesome harmonica intro), and good old-fashioned pop-rock on tracks like "Happiness Bleeds," from Wussy. Most of all, regardless of the prevailing musical style, all three albums are filled with 11-12 3 minute pop songs full of catchy hooks ("I never thought I'd drive this far without a gun"; "I wish my head had a tap/and I wish my mind had drain/so I could shunt my fears away"); crunching, intertwining guitars; and offbeat melodies. Plus they've got some of the coolest album covers around.

I'd argue that Funeral Dress and Left for Dead, in particular, are major artistic statements--far better than such critical and commerical smashes of the later 00s as (to pick a couple random examples) The White Stripes or (shudder) LCD Soundsystem. But at the very least, Wussy is a band that deserves a lot more attention.

The Bilking of Beatles fans

I've been listening to the new remasters of the Beatles albums, trying to find a single reason for their existence. The single biggest feature distinguishing these CDs from the 1987 releases is the stereo mixes of the first four albums. But of course anyone who ponied up for the two Capitol Albums box sets (or semi-legally downloaded them) already has the stereo mixes of these songs. (Parenthetically - what the hell happened to that Capitol Albums series? There are still a number of Capitol albums they never put out on CD: Yesterday and Today - probably the best set Capitol put together; Revolver; Hey Jude; The Beatles Christmas Album; At the Hollywood Bowl. In fact, some of those albums are more interesting than the ones they did put out. Oh well - end of parenthesis).

Basically, these "remastered" CDs are a bit louder, a bit bassier, and have "corrected" a few of the quirkier "mistakes" from the 1987 CDs (my favorite is the incorrectly timed fade of the double tracking on Eleanor Rigby - good thing I've got the original CD). So basically, Capitol Records has now tried to sell consumers largely the same exact music on the same format three different times in the last 20 years. Meanwhile The Beatles Christmas Album and At the Hollywood Bowl remain out of print, not to mention countless albums and songs by less "worthy" artists in the Capitol archives (just for starters, where's Joy of Cooking, The Go-Betweens 1978-1990, George Clinton You Shouldn't-Nuf Bit Fish, or The Raspberries Starting Over?)

I guess they know that Beatles fans can be duped into buying anything.

Underrated Albums: Born Again by Randy Newman

The Reviews
The New Rolling Stone Album Guide: "Born Again went for nasty laughs, peaking with the hysterical 'It's Money that I Love' and the achingly sad 'Ghosts'" (p. 581) (3.5/5 stars)

Allmusic: "Born Again is the weakest non-soundtrack album of Randy Newman's career"
"Born Again was packed full of losers and misfits for whom Newman's contempt was unmistakable. . . . stunningly unsubtle" (2.5/5 stars)

Robert Christgau: "Hence, the content comprises ever more intricate convolutions of bad taste; rather than making you think about homophobes and heavy-metal toughs and me-decade assholes the way he once made you think about rednecks and slave traders and high school belles, he makes you think about how he feels about them. Which just isn't as interesting." (B+)

Musichound - no review - 2.5/5 stars

The Music

Since the above critiques focus almost entirely on the lyrical content of Born Again, I thought it might be interesting to start instead with the music.

To put it briefly, if one completely ignores the lyrics, the music on Born Again is as catchy, varied, and beautiful as any album in Newman's body of work. Balancing rockers like "It's Money That I Love" (the piano line of which Allmusic is good enough to compliment), and the pitch-perfect ELO-ism of "Story of a Rock and Roll Band," with such tender melodic gems as "Pretty Boy," "Ghosts," and "Half a Man," Born Again is a worthy musical successor to 12 Songs and Good Old Boys.

At the same time, the arrangements and production on this album are the best of his career, with the possible exception of Good Old Boys: subtler and less fussy than Trouble in Paradise, Little Criminals, and Bad Love, but fuller and more powerful than 12 Songs and Sail Away.

The Lyrics

So what about those lyrics? Once again, I'm going to look at things a bit backwards by starting with the last song on the album, "Pants." Here are the lyrics in their entirety:

Gonna take off my pants (x4)
And your mama can't stop me (x2)
And the police can't stop me
No one can stop me
Gonna do it right now (x2)
I'm gonna take off my pants
Gonna take off my pants
And your teachers can't stop me
And your priests can't stop me
And your firemen can't stop me
And the President can't stop me
Will you take off my pants? (x2)

de gustibus and all that, but to me this is minimalist humor to rival "Why Don't We Do It In the Road?". Working our way backwards, even Allmusic admits that "'William Brown' is a lovely vignette that wouldn't have been out of place on 12 Songs." Similarly, Rolling Stone agrees that "Ghosts" is "achingly sad." And we can probably ignore "Spies" (not too many secret agents out there to get offended). But that still leaves us with seven songs that fall into the complaint about "nasty laughs" and open "contempt," songs in which Newman takes on transsexuality, greed, love and marriage, corporate employees, metrosexuals, and of course ELO.

First of all, let's all agree that "The Story of a Rock and Roll Band," as hilarious as it is, isn't nasty enough toward ELO. Second, let's remember that the writer of "Rednecks," "Sail Away," and "Short People" clearly likes his humor, like his men, black. What then, is the problem? Rolling Stone's "nasty" and Allmusic's "contempt" are rather unhelpful since they equally describe Newman's other, more widely praised albums. More insightful is Christgau, who says that he had trouble with Born Again because "Newman never pinned down the distance between himself and the creeps he wrote his first-person songs about." This seems to be getting somewhere: "Sail Away" is a clear indictment of slave traders because the narrator is obviously not Newman, but "Half a Man" is more complicated because it isn't clear whether Newman is criticizing the homophobic narrator (presumably a "good" position) or the transgender title character (presumably a "nasty" position).

I would argue, however, that this ambiguity over the distance between Newman and his narrators has been at the heart of practically ever important Newman song before or since Born Again: it is the key to the transgressive power of "I Love LA," for instance, in which this listener, for one, has never been able to decide how much Newman really does love LA and how much he hates the narrator of the song. So too with the whole of Good Old Boys, in which we are encouraged to sympathize with southern racists while still finding their racism distasteful.

But the ambiguity of "I Love LA" is relatively harmless (who cares whether or not he likes the city of Los Angeles?), and the morality of Good Old Boys straightforward (racism is evil, racists maybe not). What makes Born Again different is not a different approach, but different topics. When the wife in "They Just Got Married" dies and the husband remarries for money, it is somehow more shocking than the slave trade because it is so much more ordinary. Is Newman actually in favor of marrying for money? Is he a homophobe? Does he hate Jeff Lynne personally?

Maybe - I don't know Randy Newman. Which is kind of the point. Why do we care so much what Randy Newman the human being (or even the lyricist) thinks about all of this? Primarily, I would argue, because we are uncomfortable with the idea that we might be singing along with, and therefore implicitly supporting, a bigoted or hateful point of view. But our discomfort has always been part of the point for Newman--we're supposed to think about these lyrics, not just assume that we know better than the narrators. In some ways, then, Born Again, because it has so thoroughly resisted easy explicaton, is Newman's most successful lyrical foray. It challenges his listeners to think for themselves more than any other album.

Where does this leave us? We've got some great, well-produced music, tied to complicated, dark lyrics that push us to question our own assumptions and make up our own minds. That sounds like pretty much the definition of a great album to me.

The Edges of Greatness

In my posts on underrated albums, I've been talking a lot about how critics fall into the trap of pigeonholing an artist into a particular style, and thus miss great music that doesn't fit the artist's designated style. Today I want to talk about the other side of the coin--albums that are not so much overrated, as they are, at least seemingly, superfluous to an artist's catalog, often because they hew too closely to their standard style. The trouble with this category of albums is that it is incredibly subjective, much more so than simply deciding whether an album is any good or not. Because once you've decided an album is good, you still have to figure out how and when to listen to it in the real world--in other words, how useful it is.

It might be helpful to start with an example. I love the Rolling Stones. There are at least ten Stones albums that, for me, are absolutely essential, and which I listen to all the time (in roughly descending order: Exile on Main St., Let it Bleed, Some Girls, Their Satanic Majesties Request, Sticky Fingers, Between the Buttons, Beggar's Banquet, Out of Our Heads, England's Newest Hit Makers, and Now!).

But then, what do I do with great albums like December's Children, 12 x 5, Aftermath, Tattoo You, Dirty Work, and A Bigger Bang? In practice, what I've done is purchased 3 of those 6 (December, Aftermath, and Tattoo You), but I rarely listen to them. We could argue about my selection of Stones albums, but that's not really the point right now. The point is, that for me, all 16 of the above listed albums are somewhere between great and perfect in terms of quality, but in my personal listening habits, I've made a somewhat arbitrary cutoff between them. Why? If I were to pit December's Children against a minor, non-Stones, album in my collection--let's say Sandanista! by the Clash--it might depend on the day of the week, but I would almost certainly tell you that the Stones record is objectively superior. It's got "Get Off of My Cloud," "The Singer Not the Song," some amazing covers, and it is a fabulous slice of gritty blues-rock; Sandanista! is great, but it is messy, meandering and takes way too damn long to play. But. I've put Sandanista! in my CD player many many times more often than Decemeber's Children.

So what's going on here? In this particular case, the pleasures that I find in Sandanista!--its sprawl, its crazy dub experiments, its more relaxed feel--are very particular to that record. Whereas, if I want mid-60s blues-powered Stones, I'm just much more likely to reach for Out of Our Heads or Now! More generally, I think the issue is that everyone has a different tolerance level for a particular artist or style of music. Once you've got a certain number of Stones albums in your rotation, you just don't need any more--unless of course, they turn around and do something radically new and change your perception of their music (as I argued about Their Satanic Majesties Request).

To take a different example, I have a friend who needs to have pretty much every Prince album ever recorded (some 30 or so studio albums, plus who knows how much bootleg and live material). He knows that some are much better than others, but he gets off on them all, and they are all useful to him. For myself, I have a pretty high tolerance for Prince (probably 12 or so albums) but great as they are, have no personal use for Prince, Diamonds and Pearls, or the Black Album (and I still haven't made up my mind about his most recent albums). You, the reader, may have different needs--maybe you just need Purple Rain and Sign O the Times, and you've got your Prince fix taken care of. All three of us probably agree that there are more than 2 great Prince albums--I might even be coaxed into saying that there are more than 12--but each of us has a vastly different need for Prince in our lives.

The reason I think this is worth talking about is that I think it opens up a completely different way of thinking about the way albums get rated or talked about. Most reviewers, and many fans, are interested primarily with whether an album is good or not--that is, whether it merits 4 or 5 stars, or an A, or whatever rating you give to good albums. But what I'm trying to argue is that once you've sorted out all the good albums--the albums that you subjectively think are worth listening to--you still have a problem: what to buy and what to listen to.

I don't think there is any way of codifying this into a new critical category (5 stars, but superfluous; 4 stars, essential, etc.)--as I said, it's a much more highly subjective decision than determining which albums are great in the first place. But I think it's an interesting (and possibly important) concept for listeners to be aware of. I know I, for one, often feel guilty about all the great albums I let linger on my shelves (why don't I listen to Aftermath more?). By looking at albums in terms of their utility rather than their artistic greatness, I think we can get better perspective on how and why we listen to what we do in the first place.

Underrated Albums: Liz Phair

"That's what good about [this album]: it's as exuberant, irreverent, and exciting as any other bubblegum pop, defiantly silly and shallow, but also deliriously hooky . . . these are terrific, addictive pop songs that are harder and tougher yet feel fresher and lighter than her big hits from [her last album]. . . . True, this is far from deep, but [her last album] proved that . . . deep . . . is . . . dull" - the Allmusic Guide.

Quiz: does this 4.5 star review refer to Liz Phair's self-titled album or Avril Lavigne's The Best Damn Thing?

Considering the title of this post, you've probably already guessed the answer--Lavigne--but it is somewhat staggering to read this review after reading what Allmusic had to say about Phair's album: criticizing Phair's use of Lavigne's production team The Matrix (on 4 tracks), they castigate her album for "delivering music that not just fits comfortably with Lavigne's, but follows her sounds and stance, right down to the insipid lyrics."

The New Rolling Stone Album Guide (2.5 stars) makes the same point: "The unimaginative production--including lacquered contributions from Avril Lavigne's studio gurus, the Matrix--embraces the pop-rock formulas Phair once gleefully subverted" (p. 634).

And yet, Lavigne's three albums all received relatively positive reviews--65, 68, and 66 on Metacritic to Liz Phair's 40 (including a scathing 0 review from Pitchfork). The overwhelming disdain for this album as having come from a supposed indie rocker like Phair makes the actual criticisms almost beside the point. What's going on is obvious: critics don't actually have a problem with Avril Lavigne or pop music, but simply cannot stand the idea that Liz Phair, their indie goddess, might want to make music like Lavigne.

I hope you know where this is going. All the pieces in this series have made the same point: whether it's the Rolling Stones, Husker Du, the Traveling Wilburys, or John Lennon, the first step of evaluating an album seemingly out of place in an artist's catalog is to completely ignore the name on the front of the record.

Because, ignoring the name on the CD, Liz Phair is a tremendous mainstream pop-rock record, many times better than anything Avril, Britney, Shakira, or even Pink has been able to come up with. If Avril Lavigne had released Liz Phair, the praise for her new found depth and even hooks would have been overwhelming.

Underrated Albums: Unfinished Music #1: Two Virgins

The Critics

Critics have been single-minded in their dismissal of this album, but their objections are essentially amount to a basic objection to the premises of the project, mixed in with some factual inaccuracies. The Allmusic Guide, in its 1.5/5 star review, claims that the album "contains no music that would interfere with one's ability to hear the normal sounds of life":

"The record is not unlike what you might get if you turned on a tape recorder for a random half-hour in your home — snatches of inaudible conversation far away from the microphone, footsteps, wind, and so on. Conceptual 'music' in the Cage-ian sense, yes, but not popular music of the kind with which John Lennon had been previously associated in any sense at all"

Musichound, in a "woof!" (0 star) review warns that "the early experimental albums with Yoko Ono . . . are avant garde works comprised of static, spoken word, and repetition. They may have some historical interest or collectors' value -- particularly the original nude cover of Two Virgins -- but as collectors know, value goes up if the covers aren't opened. And you won't miss much if you don't open these" (p. 667).

The New Rolling Stone Album Guide, in a 1.5/5 review makes almost the identical point: "Rather than the inert 'avant-garde' conceptual sound pieces, the real subjects of these albums [Wedding Album, Two Virgins, and Life with the Lions] are the private art games of John and Yoko. If you are obsessed with the couple, enjoy. Most will settle for a glance at the once-scandalous cover of Two Virgins."

These are clearly written by and intended for fans of traditional pop/rock music with no interest in the experimental movement (you can feel the contempt for non-pop music in Rolling Stone's scare quote around "avant-garde"), but even so, they show a surprising lack of knowledge. To refer to the soundscape on this record, for example, as "the normal sounds of life" is bizarre in the extreme, primarily because - seriously? This is what your normal life sounds like? But more importantly for its complete factual inaccuracy.

Wikipedia gives us some basics of the recording process: "The recording consists largely of tape loops, playing while Lennon tries out different instruments (piano, organ, drums) and sound effects (including reverb, delay and distortion), changes tapes and plays other recordings, and converses with Ono, who vocalises ad-lib in response to the sounds." Clearly not simply a tape machine left on while Lennon and Ono farted around the house. Instead, if we listen with an open mind, we find that Lennon and Ono have very clear ideas about what they are trying to produce.