A frequently asked question: "Why am I listening to something like this?"
And then Neutral Milk Hotel's "The King of Carrot Flowers, Pt. 1" begins, and I'm knocked back into my chair, as a slight "damn" escapes my lips.
__
The Summer's over. Coming with the ending of that "magical season", comes the end of many things. The end of TV shows (I'm still missing Drunk History), free concerts (I'll never forget the Men's cover of"I Wanna Be Your Dog" at 4Knots), the end of the heat, and the the end of relationships, both romantic and friendly.
My Summers usually entail listening to a lot of DIIV, Wild Nothing, Craft Spells, Beach Fossils, and whoever else is on the Captured Tracks roster or fits the season. But now that the cold is creeping up, I've found myself turning my musical interests to a different and bygone era in music.
I don't listen to Japandroids around Christmas. I listen to Television, Fugazi, Gang of Four and Jawbox.
My Summers usually entail listening to a lot of DIIV, Wild Nothing, Craft Spells, Beach Fossils, and whoever else is on the Captured Tracks roster or fits the season. But now that the cold is creeping up, I've found myself turning my musical interests to a different and bygone era in music.
I don't listen to Japandroids around Christmas. I listen to Television, Fugazi, Gang of Four and Jawbox.
__
Starting in the early '80s, music in America started to move away from classic rock, and move on to something else. If you've read Michael Azerrad's Our Band Could Be Your Life, you already know how bands like Black Flag, Minor Threat, Fugazi, Hüsker Dü, Minutemen, Mission of Burma, Sonic Youth and The Replacements spearheaded a movement, a blend of pop, hardcore and punk into a whole. But after them, came the indie rock of the '90s, much less angry, and more focused on melody. Led by R.E.M., artists like Pavement, the Lemonheads, Buffalo Tom, Jawbox, Superchunk and Guided By Voices forged their own careers, whether being slacker noise, or lo-fi pop. There was no point in being obscure for them (i.e. Sonic Youth, Butthole Surfers), so they sang about the normal things: breakups, music and the occasional drug reference.
But the one record perfectly encapsulate all these musical references into one, is Dinosaur Jr.'s second album, You're Living All Over Me. J Mascis is possibly indie rock's supreme guitar god (Sonic Youth's "Teenage Riot" is about him!), able to convey so much emotion through the tips of his fingers. Backed by Lou Barlow's powerful bass and Murph's jazzy drumming, Mascis's thin whine details stories of girls, and other topics that are now filed under "emo". There's not one song on this thing, that isn't equally catchy as it is terrifying. The fuzzed out guitar of "Little Fury Things" matched with Barlow's throat shredding screams. "In a Jar"'s pop tendencies, with lyrics of stalking, being stuffed into a jar and picking at scabs. When the staff at SST received the advanced copy of this record, they didn't know what to think, because the needle on the monitors spun out of control due to the intense noise and distortion. And rightfully so. "Tarpit", "Kracked" and "Sludgefeast" are fuzzed out, indie based guitar rock classics, and Barlow's "Poledo" set the standards for modern day bedroom recorders, who dream of something better, by using their four-track.
Reverting back to a simpler musical landscape isn't exactly what this is. Because this music is goddamn complex. If you don't believe that statement in regard to this era, just listen to Modest Mouse's The Lonesome Crowded West (which will be mentioned later). What made the era of Beat Happening, X and Liz Phair such a strange, complex and brilliant era, was that artists worked without inhibitions. No one gave a shit. Phair could sing about one night stands on an album where she proudly brandished a nip-slip ("Fuck and Run" from Exile in Guyville), John McRea of Cake could make a pop hit with a chorus that simply yelled, "just shut, shut the FUCK UP! ("Nugget" from Fashion Nugget), or Calvin Johnson of Beat Happening could sing about hot chocolate boys, in a creepy baritone ("Hot Chocolate Boy" from Dreamy).
Starting in the early '80s, music in America started to move away from classic rock, and move on to something else. If you've read Michael Azerrad's Our Band Could Be Your Life, you already know how bands like Black Flag, Minor Threat, Fugazi, Hüsker Dü, Minutemen, Mission of Burma, Sonic Youth and The Replacements spearheaded a movement, a blend of pop, hardcore and punk into a whole. But after them, came the indie rock of the '90s, much less angry, and more focused on melody. Led by R.E.M., artists like Pavement, the Lemonheads, Buffalo Tom, Jawbox, Superchunk and Guided By Voices forged their own careers, whether being slacker noise, or lo-fi pop. There was no point in being obscure for them (i.e. Sonic Youth, Butthole Surfers), so they sang about the normal things: breakups, music and the occasional drug reference.
__
Another record that can achieve the same heights that The Soft Bulletin can, is Smashing Pumpkins' 1995 double album, Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. Mellon Collie operates as a generation's call to arms, their White Album, Quadrophenia, or Sandinista! It's a double album, where almost all musical chambers are explored, from grunge, to R&B, to metal. It also has no filler. It produced some of the Pumpkins' biggest songs ("Tonight Tonight", "1979", "Bullet With Butterfly Wings"), but listen all the way through, and you'll find beauty in songs like "Galapogos" and "Farewell and Goodnight", hushed confessionals like "Stumbleine" and "Take Me Down", or ugly rawk on "X.Y.U." and "Bodies". At it's best, Mellon Collie is a distillation of teenage angst and sadness, and it achieves what the Smiths and Bowie tried to do. No wonder 15 year old me loved it.
But, not every big record was intent on making you feel "better". Modest Mouse, wanted you to question everything, and realize the darkness, but sometimes beauty, that comes along in life. And this old Modest Mouse we're referring to, pre Good News for People Who Love Bad News and awful American Idol covers of "Float On". Back in the mid 90s and early 2000s, Modest Mouse was a band we could wave at the British, and say "you may have Radiohead, but you don't got this!" We could say that, because Modest Mouse was undeniably an American band. This trait is no better exemplified than their 1997 sophomore album, The Lonesome Crowded West. In the words of frontman and guitarist Isaac Brock, his "[surroundings] were becoming mall-fucked". The Lonesome Crowded West acts as a reaction to this, and many other things, developing throughout a young man's life. On opener "Teeth Like God's Shoeshine", Brock screams, hits a lovely falsetto, pounds the life out of his guitar, and sings a semi-chorus of "here's the man, with the teeth like God's shoeshine" (who else but Brock to think of a lyric like that?). God and religion is a topic encountered a lot on this record, from the man who plans to start a war with the man upstairs ("Cowboy Dan") or the main protagonist wishing to walk like Jesus while drowning ("Styrofoam Boots / It's All Nice On Ice, Alright"). But other songs, were tear jerkers ("Trailer Trash", "Polar Opposites" and especially "Bankrupt On Selling", where Brock sings "I came clean out of love with my lover, I still love her, loved her more when she used to be sober and I was kinder").For those fans of Lonesome Crowded West's sadder and more inward songs, were rewarded on the singles and b-side collection Building Nothing Out of Something (considering that a compilation was so incredibly cohesive and one of Modest Mouse's best shows how consistent they were). The beautiful, winding "Interstate 8" finds Brock lamenting on how life is just a figure 8. "Workin' On Leavin' the Livin'" takes Erasherhead's "Lady in the Radiator Song", to create a beautiful harmonizing jam. And on my personal (in regard to lyrics) favorite, "Whenever You Breathe Out, I Breathe In (Positive Negative)", where Brock sings lines such as: "I didn't hang out with anyone, 'cause I'd have nothing to say", "I didn't leave my bed for eight days straight" and "I didn't feel angry or depressed, I didn't feel anything at all".
__
The Meadowlands is the marshy/swap area below the Pulaski Skyway in New Jersey. It's also the title of The Wrens' amazing third album. New Jersey's the Wrens represent this sort of "middle ground" in indie rock. They were guys just like you (Stephen Malkmus, Evan Dando) but sang about actual things, like girlfriends and day jobs. The Wrens haven't made an album since the 2003 release of The Meadowlands, but apparently, they're still working on it. The Meadowlands is a devastating record, a chronicle of romantic failures, inter-band turmoil, depression, anxiety and more. The majority of the album keeps a somber mood, but when the Wrens rock out, they rock out (I want to raise my fist whenever I hear the chorus of "Everyone Choose Sides"). Singer/guitarist Charles Bissell does this over fuzzed out guitars, stark pianos, and a driving rhythm section. His voice is sometimes difficult to understand, but Google the lyrics while listening, and you'll never be the same. "A sophomore from Brown / she worked lost and found / I put her face on you all year" Bissell sings on the great "She Sends Kisses". "Ex-Girl Collection" weaves a story of a man who keeps all letters sent to him from ex-girlfriends while also having an affair, but then his wife finds out ("Ann slams in, another lightning round begins, 'why Charles?', I found out, wipe that smile off your face... called at work, 'Happy anniversary jerk'... I'm called ten kinds of bastard"). On "13 Months In 6 Minutes", he meets the only one he's ever loved, after thirteen months, just to spend six minutes with her in an airport. It's hard to be stuck in the same place for so long, in the Wrens' case, New Jersey. So when Bissell sings "you keep saying, Jersey's not a home" on "Thirteen Grand", it hits like a brick.
There's also Weezer. Oh, Weezer. For a couple of years, Rivers Cuomo was the next indie-rock guitar God, right up there with Doug, Thurston and J. Cuomo painted himself as a relatable geeky kid who liked KISS on Weezer's self titled debut. He could be bitingly funny ("Undone [The Sweater Song]"), but his songs could also carry a message ("Say It Ain't So" was for all the kids who were to scared to listen to Minor Threat but who still were straight edge). But their crowning achievement remains their sophomore album, the commercial failure yet cult classic Pinkerton. Dealing with the anxieties of being famous, Cuomo holed up in Harvard to write a harrowing concept/break-up album about half-Japanese girls, booty shaking and lesbians. The self produced aspect gives the band a much meatier guitar approach, and all backing vocals were recorded at the same time, sans overdubs. All ten songs are perfect from the desperate "Tired of Sex", depressed "Across the Sea", acoustic "Butterfly and "Pink Triangle", where Cuomo's love interest reveals herself to be a lesbian. It's loosely based on Puccini's opera, Madame Butterfly, and Cuomo painted love to be a fleeting, and dead on arrival kind of thing.
But the band that capitalized on this subject matter the most, and took it to new heights, was the Dismemberment Plan. Starting as a scrappy D.C. punk band in 1993, by their second album in '97, they proved themselves to be a force to be reckoned with, with the monster hit, "The Ice of Boston". But on '99's Emergency & I, they managed to capture the anxieties of being young, with some of the most forward thinking music in indie rock (12/8 time! Lyrics about the apocalypse! Synth flourishes more accustomed to Braniac than Fugazi!) It also didn't hurt that Travis Morrison was a lyrical genius, able to dissect the feelings of loneliness and anxiety coming from being a young person in a large world. "Spider in the Snow", "The Jitters" and "The City" are beautiful reminders of this. On 2001's Change, they smoothed out their sound, and became "prettier". Change is a break up album with him looking back in "Sentimental Man", dealing with the lack of her presence ("Face of the Earth", "Come Home"), and equally becomes life affirming while seeking revenge in "Time Bomb" and "Following Through".
It would be tempting to say "they just don't make them like this anymore", which in some ways, is true. We'll probably never get another record that's a cesspool of slime, insanity and emotion like Dinosaur Jr.'s You're Living All Over Me. No one will ever be able to make make-out music for indie kids like Yo La Tengo. No one will ever be able to make a song like the Flaming Lips' "Suddenly Everything Has Changed"; a beautiful meditation on death. There will never be closers as powerful as Sugar's "Explode and Make Up" or Weezer's "Only In Dreams" (a two minute crescendo, followed by the best solo of '94). The Replacements' Let It Be is the perfect distillation of humor, punk, teenage angst and hardcore. Who else will make beautiful noise like My Bloody Valentine? Also, Modest Mouse were calling ex-girlfriends drunk before Drake was ("Long Distance Drunk" from The Lonesome Crowded West). But there's still artist who make records that will live up to these one day. Japandroids, The National, M83, The Gaslight Anthem, Titus Andronicus and The Hold Steady.
But no one will ever be as brutally honest as Travis Morrison when he sings "happiness is such hard work, gets harder every day", because it's true. And because that's true, we turn to these records.
Again and again.
There's also Weezer. Oh, Weezer. For a couple of years, Rivers Cuomo was the next indie-rock guitar God, right up there with Doug, Thurston and J. Cuomo painted himself as a relatable geeky kid who liked KISS on Weezer's self titled debut. He could be bitingly funny ("Undone [The Sweater Song]"), but his songs could also carry a message ("Say It Ain't So" was for all the kids who were to scared to listen to Minor Threat but who still were straight edge). But their crowning achievement remains their sophomore album, the commercial failure yet cult classic Pinkerton. Dealing with the anxieties of being famous, Cuomo holed up in Harvard to write a harrowing concept/break-up album about half-Japanese girls, booty shaking and lesbians. The self produced aspect gives the band a much meatier guitar approach, and all backing vocals were recorded at the same time, sans overdubs. All ten songs are perfect from the desperate "Tired of Sex", depressed "Across the Sea", acoustic "Butterfly and "Pink Triangle", where Cuomo's love interest reveals herself to be a lesbian. It's loosely based on Puccini's opera, Madame Butterfly, and Cuomo painted love to be a fleeting, and dead on arrival kind of thing.
But the band that capitalized on this subject matter the most, and took it to new heights, was the Dismemberment Plan. Starting as a scrappy D.C. punk band in 1993, by their second album in '97, they proved themselves to be a force to be reckoned with, with the monster hit, "The Ice of Boston". But on '99's Emergency & I, they managed to capture the anxieties of being young, with some of the most forward thinking music in indie rock (12/8 time! Lyrics about the apocalypse! Synth flourishes more accustomed to Braniac than Fugazi!) It also didn't hurt that Travis Morrison was a lyrical genius, able to dissect the feelings of loneliness and anxiety coming from being a young person in a large world. "Spider in the Snow", "The Jitters" and "The City" are beautiful reminders of this. On 2001's Change, they smoothed out their sound, and became "prettier". Change is a break up album with him looking back in "Sentimental Man", dealing with the lack of her presence ("Face of the Earth", "Come Home"), and equally becomes life affirming while seeking revenge in "Time Bomb" and "Following Through".It would be tempting to say "they just don't make them like this anymore", which in some ways, is true. We'll probably never get another record that's a cesspool of slime, insanity and emotion like Dinosaur Jr.'s You're Living All Over Me. No one will ever be able to make make-out music for indie kids like Yo La Tengo. No one will ever be able to make a song like the Flaming Lips' "Suddenly Everything Has Changed"; a beautiful meditation on death. There will never be closers as powerful as Sugar's "Explode and Make Up" or Weezer's "Only In Dreams" (a two minute crescendo, followed by the best solo of '94). The Replacements' Let It Be is the perfect distillation of humor, punk, teenage angst and hardcore. Who else will make beautiful noise like My Bloody Valentine? Also, Modest Mouse were calling ex-girlfriends drunk before Drake was ("Long Distance Drunk" from The Lonesome Crowded West). But there's still artist who make records that will live up to these one day. Japandroids, The National, M83, The Gaslight Anthem, Titus Andronicus and The Hold Steady.
But no one will ever be as brutally honest as Travis Morrison when he sings "happiness is such hard work, gets harder every day", because it's true. And because that's true, we turn to these records.
Again and again.
No comments:
Post a Comment