Whatevs

Typically equivocal review of the Pitchfork effect, suitable for NPR consumption.

I'm Not Even Gonna Mention "Kingdom Come"

I've vowed to myself innumerable times to never "grow up" or "sufficiently mature" to the point where I no longer enjoy rap music as much as I should. Within the past year or two, however, I've frequently had reason to suspect that such a metamorphosis has unwittingly taken place, and the only thing restoring me is the hopeful thought that hip-hop might just be in the midst of a remarkable fallow period.

Of course, the collective ball-washing being given to recent rap albums ranging in quality from "pretty good" to "meh" is probably a good sign that my hypothesis (which I'm certainly not the first to have expressed) may be correct. Ian Cohen offers a typically withering critique of the Clipse hivemind on his blog, though I think he hedges his bets a bit by ultimately giving the album satisfactory marks when he fails to really give credit to the group for the good qualities (quality?) they do possess.

Basically, Clipse are very good at exactly one kind of pose (streetwise, brand-conscious, unmoved) and they actually do it so well that "Hell Hath No Fury" is undoubtedly a solidly worthwhile release. Still, it doesn't change the fact that they've got about as much breadth as a greeting card. Pusha T and Malice are both blessed with the ability to effortlessly exude badass-edness every time they exhale, a trait certain other rappers (Lil Wayne, Bubba Sparxxx, Petey Pablo) will likely never boast no matter how much more gifted they may or may not be as artists. But as poor a year (or two) as it's been for hip-hop, doing one thing very well apparently excuses the fact that they don't even really try to do anything else.

Sorta like how the Game's fascinatingly constructed persona excuses the fact that he still pretty much sucks as an emcee. I'm very forgiving towards backstory and supra-musical shit informing music in general, and I think it can often forgive a multitude of sins, but Eminem and Madonna still wrote and recorded some excellent fucking songs and made some absolutely brilliant aesthetic choices. The Game, meanwhile, is someone blessed with terrific beats who finally has something interesting to say, but still doesn't know how to say it.

If "More Fish" ends up being my second-favorite rap album of '06, I officially give up.

Love? More like "like"

I'll briefly post to warn the budget-conscious away from "Love." Yes, it's cute to hear a few Beatles songs augmented and tweaked, and there are some surprises along the way, but it's sooo not essential, and you won't be replaying it very often. The opportunity for something truly new was wasted, and this is nowhere near as exciting as The Grey Album. It's just a scavenger hunt for tracks you're familiar with; they're on top of OTHER tracks you're familiar with (call it "White on White".) The Vegas show may very well go on forever, but I suspect the CD will end up in the bargain bins somewhere between The String Quintet's Tribute to Hilary Duff and Marcel Marceau: Live in Concert.

Robert Altman: In Memoriam

Iconoclasm, serendipity, and bad ideas were his tools, and I can't think of any living filmmaker who valued all three in equal measure. My first viewing of The Player almost fifteen years ago was instructive, watching Ready To Wear not long afterwards more so: both films revealed how serenely an artist can create something cringeworthy from the same material he'd transformed so triumphantly.

"The industry" – those windmills that obituary writers claim Robert Altman toppled – no longer exists, if it ever did. "There was always room for an Orson Welles picture," the boy-genius once said about the studio system. Despite Altman's legendary squabbles with boardroom members, he really had nothing to worry about; during his most fallow period, the company men didn't blink when he churned out Images, Buffalo Bill & The Indians, Health, and A Wedding. There was always room for a Robert Altman picture; a system needs a rebel. Even the rebel gets an honorary Oscar if he's around long enough. If the pieties of Garrison Keillor seemed too homespun for a director this purportedly irascible, let's remember that he took David Rabe, Ed Gracyzk, The Caine Mutiny, and Richard Gere seriously too.

We had little time to assemble a commemorative package, but this turned out to be rather excellent under the circumstances.

Sugar: lots of spice

Bob Mould's intelligent, cultivated anonymity was a prime influence over the young Alfred. Luckily I discovered him when Sugar released its debut album. While File Under: Easy Listening made several top tens in 1994 (including SPIN's), it has largely been forgotten, undeservedly. I try to do it justice.

Note to Carrie Underwood, Deana Carter, Lee Ann Womack, etc.

When choosing songs for your respective next records, please make sure to reserve at least one slot for Lori McKenna, who is totally on some Patti Griffin/Lucinda Williams type shit right now as far as gracing superstar pop-country singers with career-defining material. Particularly attractive candidates include “As I Am,” “Borrow Me,” “Girl Like Me” and “One Man.”

Nominally an indie-folk/alt-country type of gal herself, McKenna gains admittance to Nashville’s inner sanctum by being so good at nailing the kind of implacable physical realities and narrow parameters of existence so intrinsic to pop-country’s safe-at-home mindset. The joke’s on Music City, however, because McKenna uses her intimate knowledge of the salt of experience to disrobe suburbia and small-town quietude as the suffocating, spirit-killing shams they often are. Her women may keep up appearances, but just beneath the surface they’re almost unseemly in their desperation for recognition and affection. They cling fiercely to the few things they know while never forgetting just how empty and drained their rigid lives have made them.

The two best country songs I’ve encountered this year by some distance were both actually released in 2005, and were both written by McKenna. “Bible Song” as performed by Sara Evans and “Stealing Kisses” as covered by Faith Hill are rarities in Nashville for explicitly associating traditional communal and family values with stultifying horror and absolute loneliness. Both Evans and Hill are far better singers than McKenna, and further lend her compositions the weight of their own stardom and the contextual nuance of their personas. Still, neither has ever before delivered a more emotionally devastating performance, and both owe a significant debt of gratitude to the deftly powerful internal rhythms of McKenna’s songcraft. Evans lulls you into false contentment so convincingly (aided no doubt by her own apple-pie pro-life public image) with blue-collar blandishments – “they marry young in these parts/they work the factories” – that it literally catches you in the throat when she cries “I ran as fast as I could/through the tall grass and the midnight wood.” In a song loaded with concrete realities, the incomplete suggestion that a grief-stricken mother “came undone” is simply terrifying.

Faith’s domestic drama (one of three McKenna songs on her most recent album) is even more gut-wrenching. The teenage girl who once exulted in the allure of surreptitious romance is now the intellectually and spiritually stifled housewife who can’t entice her husband to even get it up. The throwaway line about how “you haven’t talked to an adult all day/except your neighbor who drives you crazy” is pitch-perfect (made even better by Faith’s delivery), but the real twist of the knife goes right back to running again, Faith “standing outside the high school doors/the ones you walked out of twenty years before” and then whispering to “all of the girls/run, run, run.”

Faith’s performance in the video is almost ridiculously agonized in places, but this scene, with schoolgirls bounding out-of-doors, nudging and brushing by the breaking-down Hill, is undeniably heart-rending. I just hope Gretchen Wilson’s paying attention.

Beyonce: cultural theorist

As if Ne-Yo's ego wasn't swollen enough, he goes and writes my favorite Beyonce single by some distance. The thwackety arrangement of "Irreplaceable" is a disappointment, but the star gets a lyric blaringly subtle enough to suit her blaring voice. "I could have another you in a minute/Matter of fact he'll be here in a minute," she shouts in Sean Carter's ear, as if she was singer enough to persuade us she was referring to a fictional lover. This is no "Express Yourself" or Christina Aguilera's "Beautiful," dependent upon empowerment platitudes; Beyonce, who evidently saves every receipt, equates independence with the name monogrammed on the handbag. I suppose it's the unmitigated vulgarity of so much contemporary R&B and hip-hop which repulses young music fans, driving them to seek the ascetic pleasures of Wolf Eyes and the Junior Boys; but Beyonce understands the relationship-as-capital-investment model as well as Gang of Four, and her guitar sound is just as noisome.

This post is dedicated to the late Milton Friedman. R.I.P.

Haul

First night of ginormous library book sale last night. Here's what me and the missus-to-be scooped up. Feel free to lend recommendations and/or snark where appropriate, otherwise this post just looks totally narcissistic and masturbatory:

Bleak House - Charles Dickens
Read Xgau's piece "James Brown's Great Expectations" recently and realized I should read more Dickens. You can never listen to too much James Brown.

Innocent - Ian McEwan
One of my favorite living authors. Don't know much about this one though.

The Wild Sheep Chase - Haruki Murakami
Ditto, though to a slightly lesser degree.

Shiloh - Bobbie Ann Mason
Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All - Alan Gurganus
The Knockout Artist - Harry Crews
Southern lit. Rawr.

Motherless Brooklyn - Jonathan Lethem
I loved Fortress of Solitude. Hate me now.

Sabbath's Theater - Philip Roth
Per Alfred's rec. On a barely related note, I noticed Chuck Klosterman mispelled Roth's first name in the "Nemesis" essay that ran in Esquire. Strange no one caught that.

Feel Like Going Home: Portraits in Blues and Rock 'n' Roll - Peter Guralnick
I NEVER find decent music books at book sales. Shocka.

Breaks of the Game - David Halberstam
Ditto sports books. Bill Simmons has lauded this one repeatedly and I think it's out of print, so I was totally stoked to find it. Includes maybe the most unintentionally hilarious epigram in literary history, which I'll paraphrase if anyone asks.

Democracy in America - Alexis de Tocqueville
Seems like something I need to read.

Vintage Mencken - H.L. Mencken
Ditto.

What We Talk About When We Talk About Love - Raymond Carver
Geeked to read this. Even brought it with me to work today.

The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop. - Raymond Coover
I think I recall JCL testifying to this book's greatness. Terrific find.

For Keeps: 30 Years at the Movies - Pauline Kael
I know embarrassingly little about movies and less about Kael. Hopefully I've done Alfred proud with this pick.

Here's Mrs. Caruso-Love-to-be's grab:

United States - Gore Vidal
Lincoln - Gore Vidal
Messiah - Gore Vidal
The Smithsonian Institution - Gore Vidal
I may read Lincoln before any of my own stuff.

The Oxford Illustrated History of Western Philosophy
I NEED to read this myself as I am a philosophy-ignorant motherfucker.

Life of Pi - Yann Martel
I know this one's been hyped to death but I bet it's really good.

The Lexus and the Olive Tree - Thomas Friedman
Lauren digs Friedman but reports that From Beirut to Jerusalem was written suckily, so I'm not exactly sure why she wanted this one.

Pnin - Vladimir Nabokov
I love Nabokov. Lauren LOVES Nabokov.

I did all of that from memory so I'm probably forgetting a few. Will update if/when necessary.

On the redundancy scale this rates a....

Bryan Ferry's 12th solo album is a collection of Dylan covers. Unless he dug deep into the songbook I'm not sure how interested I am; on the other hand, consider how he'd transform "Sugar Baby," "Tryin' To Get To Heaven," "Most of the Time" and "Thunder on the Mountain" if he was in the right frame of mind.

Madonna: The second singles

Marvelling at the ease with which he'd underestimated Confessions on a Dancefloor this time last year, Thomas adduced "Get It Together" and "Jump," its rather fine third and fourth singles. What about her second singles?

To my amazement, most ranged from average to pretty good. First singles like "Vogue", "Like a Prayer," "Live to Tell," and "Music" and third singles like "Dress You Up" and "Human Nature" rewarded committed listening pleasure.

Here are Madonna's second singles graded:

"Borderline": The Madonna singles cause some confusion. "I Know It" and "Think About Me" excepted, every track got dance airplay. Is "Physical Atraction" the second single (even though it didn't hit the Billboard Hot 100) or "Borderline"? Let's go with "Borderline" for fairness' sake. Note the glockenspiel, the rock-steady piano, which represent the borderline over which Madonna's hysterical falsetto must leap -- and does. GRADE: A

"Material Girl": The casual mastery of mid-eighties Chic: adapting to Synclaviers and the rank ambition of their new boss. Or maybe Madonna's imitating rank ambition. The ambiguity is troubling instead of beguiling; therefore the song doesn't resonate beyond its clever gloss. GRADE: B

"Papa Don't Preach": Ah, here's an example of tantalizing ambiguity. She keeps her baby, but papa's still bitching, as any father who looks like Danny Aiello is wont to do. Since the song deals with Issues it got more attention than it deserved. Better than "True Blue" and "La Isla Bonita," rather strained next to "Live To Tell" and "Open Your Heart." GRADE: B

"Causing a Commotion": The closest Madonna approached boilerplate. Not as giddy as the Expose hits with which she was competing in fall 1987; it does get frisky, if not exactly causing a commotion. The most obscure of Madonna's big hits (it held the #2 spot for three weeks); it's simply vanished. GRADE: C+

"Express Yourself": In which Maddie turns into a gay man, complete with basso vocal. The only self-empowerment anthem I ever want to here, unsullied by "wisdom" and "self-knowledge." She may not need diamond rings, 18-carat gold, or the pinstriped suit she wore in the Fritz Lang-inspired video, but she wouldn't have sounded so assured if she was still selling her ass to Playboy and drumming for the likes of Stephen Bray. This is, in short, the real "Material Girl." GRADE: A

"Hanky Panky": Another obscurity. Better than you remember, and if you remember it at all it's cuz "Vogue" preceded it. The world needs more vampish odes to sadomasochism. GRADE: B

"Rescue Me": This one, like "Hanky Panky," is shadowed by its massive predecessor ("Justify My Love"). More Madonna-by-numbers, but since she's sponged as much from gay club life as Bowie did from Kraftwerk and Neu! in 1977 it presages Erotica in the way that "TVC 15" did the Berlin Trilogy. GRADE: B+

"Deeper and Deeper": ...and here's her "Sound & Vision," rewiring the urgency of "Borderline" into a blue-blue-electric-blue Red Shoes saga: while her feet keep dancing, she can't admit her goddamn papa was as right about her love life as he was about keeping the baby. This song is so 1992, just when I was discovering club life for the first time. GRADE: A

"Take a Bow": Rather dated innocuous soul, with tinkly synths courtesy of cowriter/co-singer/co-producer Babyface. A gentler, approachable Madonna, for which the public duly rewarded her by keeping it Number One for six weeks. GRADE: B+

"Don't Cry For Me Argentina": While Bowie never recorded anything as yearningly fascist as the Evita soundtrack, he never sang this well either. To which I say, "So fucking what?" Pop culture colossi like Madonna are as liberal as Richard Perle. Global adoration fills stadiums, not humanitarian impulses (okay, forget about Live Aid). That an icon as feral as Madonna admires a savvy but vacuous recruitment poster like Eva Peron is only the most piquant irony. The dance remix is no help. New Age banalities, here we come. GRADE: C.

"Ray of Light": I'm not as fond of this as so many people are. "Swim" and "Sky Fits Heaven" would have made for more rewarding follow-ups to the wannabe arctic chill of "Frozen." The beats twitter and flicker and Madonna yells her ass off in a most peculiar way (can't throw away the thousands of dollars spent on opera lessons, you know) -- as if Evita was a mistake. No one apparently warned her about The Celestine Prophecy either. Nevertheless, we critics said "comeback" and the public responded. GRADE: A-

"Don't Tell Me": Has anyone properly described how weird this tune is? Acoustic cowpunk and Massive Attack string section compete with Tracy Thorn-worthy melancholia. I'm amazed it hit the Top Five; so was, apparently, the public, since this was the last time her second singles would peak this high. GRADE: A

"Hollywood": Thomas says this is "vile." I want to agree, yet its gaudiness is too insistent for this song to qualify as an unintentional yukfest. She sounds like the manicurist who moved to Culver City, was appalled by the rent, and returned to Miami eight months later -- and moved back in with her parents. She's got mildly diverting stories to tell, but you'd prefer it if she finished painting your left pinky nail. GRADE: C-

"Sorry": We return to the question which prompted this essay. Yes, Confessions On A Dance Floor was underrated. Here's why. Remember the opera lessons? She's learned to propel the beat instead of singing over it or decorating it with redundant vibrato (she leaves that to the chorus of overdubbed Maddies). What a vibrant production. There's so much going on -- the hint of guitar twang (real? sampled?) in the chorus, the squelchy effects, the beat that pummels and ravishes like "Deeper and Deeper" and "Open Your Heart"'s did -- that we're tempted to overlook the singer's fetching vocal melody and her lyrics, which are, for once, revealingly throwaway in the Bernard Sumner tradition rather than attempts at profundity. If "Sorry" has got a flaw, it's that it doesn't go on long enough -- a mistake none of the exemplary remixes redress. Since I love "Sorry" possibly more than any song on this list, I'd like to make a bold claim about the state of Madonna's popcraft in 2006...but I won't. Argue if you must. GRADE: A+

Jonathan Demme's Wild West fix

How appropriate that, on the evening after the Democrats' victory in the House (and possibly the Senate?), I watch a documentary that, inadvertantly, celebrates victory when it meant to enshrine perserverance. Heart of Gold, Jonathan Demme's filmization of Neil Young's performance of Prairie Wind captured Shakey shortly before brain surgery. The prospect of dying frightened him into writing and recording a bunch of hummable throwaways no one will call classics (yet got him his first gold studio album since 1995's Mirrorball). HOG uses the same technique that made Stop Making Sense a triumph: the camera drinks deeply of the performer's idiosyncrasies, with no cutaways to the audience. Demme flatters like a painter trying to persuade a model to undress. As I've gotten more accustomed to Demme's technique, I'm grown suspicious. Like Bob Woodward, he's so dependant on his sources to establish tonal control and perspective that the absence of the authority we expect of an artist strikes me as weird if not feckless. If the lingering shots of David Byrne in Stop Making Sense captured his antiseptic weirdness, the ones of Young casting lovelorn glances at Emmylou Harris and wife Pegi matched the corniness of the Wild West backdrop and battalion of acoustic strummers substituting for sheep: in a ten-gallon hat and singing tunes like "My Old Guitar," Young asserts the right to claim the Western mythos without a trace of irony. Like his old hero Ronald Reagan, Young genuinely believes that John Ford's movies represented the West, especially when the four strong winds are a-blowin' and remindin' him that death's a-knockin' (he's like a lifelong agnostic asking for extreme unction).

"We’re facing the most important election in my lifetime"

I don't take Gore Vidal seriously as a prophet, but interview rumbles with enough portent to scare those lazy sods who've considered staying home today.

The Queen: Strictly for the proles

What's regal about The Queen are the performances (Helen Mirren's pinched, mordant Elizabeth II, Sylvia Syms as a gin-totin' Queen Mum armed with 1,000 years of tradition and a bagful of trenchant wise cracks, Roger Allam as a harried royal sycophant) and Peter Morgan's salty dialogue. Stephen Frears lights and shoots as if he was directing a Lifetime Movie of the Week, but he's sensitive to nuances; certainly there are many members of the audience for whom the weeklong paroxysm of mourning by Princess Di's purported subjects was a ghastly triumph for modern advertising (and a vindication of Elton John-Bernie Taupin's drippy "Candle in the Wind"), which is exactly what flummoxed Elizabeth and Prince Philip. Implicit in their disbelief is: We knew the smiling twit, okay? Princess schmincess. Note the Royals' twitching during Lord Spencer (Diana's brother)'s funeral oration, a compendium of platitudes. We sympathize! I also enjoyed one recurring gag: Elizabeth is shown at her disk, with impeccable posture, writing in her diary. We expect to hear her thoughts read in tedious voice-over. That Frears denies us this convention accentuates his point: what bloody kind of interior life could this woman record for her eyes only?

In its cheap way The Queen is as much an antidote to Hollywood's awestruck representations of monarchy as Marie Antoinette. With the exception of those of us who thought Frears' talent had dissipated in the appalling plushness of Mrs. Henderson Presents (its gags were as disgraceful as The Queen's production values), I can't imagine why anyone would get too excited about it.

So does this make Son House the Buck O'Neil of rock?

Seems to me like the Rock and Roll HOF should take some cues from its baseball counterpart and start being a little less inclusive. In a given year baseball may only yield one or two new inductees, while the folks in Cleveland annually lard their roster with a half-dozen or so fresh faces (and yes, that was just an excuse to use "lard" as a verb like Bob Xgau is wont to do).

If you ask me, Aerosmith should still be fighting for a spot in the pantheon with Andre Dawson and Bert Blyleven, while Jackson Browne and James Taylor should have been long ago relegated to Don Mattingly "not a chance in hell" status, instead of smirking up the hall with their unique brands of bittersweet folk-rock (and I didn't even need to look up that Simpsons quote -- frightening and sad, I know).

Here's this year's crop, of which apparently 5 will be honored:

Van Halen
R.E.M.
Patti Smith
Grandmaster Flash
Dave Clark Five
The Stooges
Chic
The Ronettes
Joe Tex

Personally, I think unless your catalogue is just unbelievably thick with greatness (ie. Prince, Springsteen), you probably need to have made at least some kind of seismic, groundbreaking contribution to the evolution of the rock. Normally I'm not an innovation-over-performance kinda critic, and I sure as hell wouldn't argue The Flatlanders over Fleetwood Mac or Neu! over Neil Young. Still, I don't know if "having a bunch of really great singles and a few really good albums before changing lead singers and becoming a butt-rock joke" or "releasing a landmark debut and several more very solid, marginally successful albums, then attaining temporary superstardom via twinkly melancholy and vague ruminations on dead idols" necessarily qualifies one for automatic immortality. And I love R.E.M., but just as I'm sure is the case with plenty of people who love Jack Morris, I don't know if they should exactly be shoo-ins for the Hall. Perhaps after earning it over time the Bruce Sutter way, but not in their first few go-arounds. Of course, it should've been just as hard if not harder (if not impossible in some cases) for Browne, Taylor, Bob Seger, Billy Joel, Blondie, ZZ Top, Santana, CSN and several others.

For the sheer revolutionary nature of their work, I don't think you should have a Hall without Grandmaster Flash or the Stooges. Maybe throw Chic in there as well. In reality, Stipey and Fast Eddie will most likely lead the pack. After all, somebody's gotta sell tickets.