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The Listening Post: November 2011–January 2012

Life interferes with blogging sometimes. Hence the lateness. But music still provides the soundtrack.

  • Feeling You Up—Truly. Where on Earth did this album come from? Oh, Seattle. Truly was a very late-entry into the Seattle sweepstakes. While they formed in 1990 and released a couple of singles on Sub-Pop, their first album didn’t see light until 1995 after Cobain had killed himself and the pop-punk of Green Day was ruling the alternative airwaves. But Truly had a pedigree: the bass player was Hiro Yamamoto who was part of the original Soundgarden, and the drummer was Mark Pickerel, who played with Screaming Trees. And yet, the album sounds nothing like what you would expect. Far from the crushing weight of Soundgarden or the molten psychedelia of Screaming Trees, Feeling You Up is a densely textured dreamscape of an album. The songs slide and glide, swirling like a thick fog. There’s an almost Stone Roses-ish quality to some of this, minus the annoying pretensions to dance music. There’s no shortage of rock on the album, but the heavier moments are heavy in a 1960s way, not in a grunge/punk way. The production throughout is stellar, with every instrument and sound effect clearly jumping out of the speaker. Songs like “(Intro)/Public Access Girls”, “Wait ‘Til The Night”, “EM7”, “Come Hither”, and “Leatherette Tears” feature strong melodies backed by music that is both heavy and trippy. Only the title song, a boring instrumental, falls flat. Feeling You Up sounds like nothing else from 1997, and holds up beautifully all these years later.
    Grade: A
  • Up On The Sun—Meat Puppets. The third album from Arizona’s Meat Puppets is where they found the sound that would carry them through the rest of the decade. Meat Puppets was all LSD-addled hardcore dirge, and Meat Puppets II had great songs but paper-thin production. But Up On The Sun carries both tunes and excellent production. The elegantly wasted country-rock the band called its own is in full flower here. There are no songs on this album that are less than good, solid listens, and much of it either approaches or achieves greatness. Even the tossed-off songs, like “Maiden’s Milk” with its insane whistling melody, “Hot Pink”, and “Seal Whales”, are a reminder that bands simply can’t get away with stuff like this anymore. The indie labels of the 1980s, like SST for whom the Meat Puppets recorded, allowed bands much more leeway, and on albums like Up On The Sun it allowed those bands to create works that hung together as a cohesive whole. While “Maiden’s Milk” might draw confused reactions if it were to pop up on an iPod playlist, it fits perfectly after the opening track and before the excellent “Away.” There was a sound to these records, with even the weak parts providing texture. The strongest tracks (“Animal Kingdom”, “Swimming Ground”, “Buckethead”, “Too Real”, “Enchanted Forest”, and “Creator”) are among the finest tracks the Puppets ever recorded, equaling or surpassing the classic triptych of “Lake Of Fire”, “Plateau”, and “Oh Me” (not coincidentally the three songs Nirvana covered on Unplugged) from Meat Puppets II. Meat Puppets recorded better albums later. With a couple of exceptions this band got better as time went on, but this is the album where they first successfully blended country with punk and psychedelia. It’s the cornerstone that later albums like Mirage and Huevos built upon.
    Grade: B+
  • Safe As Milk—Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band. An early exposure to Beefheart’s notoriously difficult Trout Mask Replica put me off the Captain for a long time. I’m still not sure I’m ready to swim with the Trout again, but Safe As Milk, the début album from the Magic Band, has gone a long way to convincing me to give Trout another chance. Safe As Milk is generally considered Beefheart’s most immediately accessible album but it’s still bizarre enough to draw puzzled glances from most listeners. Beefheart is a blues aficionado, and he mixes Howlin’ Wolf with early Frank Zappa and the avant-garde to craft a mutant strain of blues that is unlike anything else. Beefheart’s vocal range is simply astounding, and confounding. He sings like a real soul man on tracks like the fantastic “Yellow Brick Road” then growls like a feral beast on others like “Electricity” and “Plastic Factory”, his vocals sounding like Howlin’ Wolf with a sore throat. It’s difficult to believe both voices come from the same man. The surrealism of the lyrics (song titles give a clue: “Zig Zag Wanderer”, “Abba Zaba”, “Sure Nuff ‘N Yes I Do”) and the off-kilter, Zappa-inspired arrangements (the opening of “Autumn’s Child” could have been lifted directly from Freak Out) make this a challenging listen, but it is more than worth the effort. This is blues and pop music, dressed in psychedelic and avant-garde finery. On repeated listens, great melodies start to emerge and the band, led by a young guitar virtuoso named Ry Cooder, is more muscular and musical than Zappa’s Mothers. A classic.
    Grade: A+
  • Numb—Hammerbox. Released in the same year as Nirvana’s In Utero, Pearl Jam’s Vs., and Smashing Pumpkins’s Siamese Dream, Seattle rockers Hammerbox simply didn’t stand a chance. Which is too bad, because Numb is a good, rocking album with two tracks that belong on any anthology of the Northwest rock scene: the ferocious “Hole” and the grunge ballad “When 3 Is 2”. The rest of the album falls short of the standard set by those two songs, but none of it is bad and songs like “Hed”, “No”, “Outside”, “Trip”, and “Simple Passing” are very good. The musicianship is excellent throughout, and Carrie Akre’s a vocal powerhouse. The album’s a bit uneven, with several tracks mired in a sort of generic “grunge” sound, but when it’s good it’s very good.
    Grade: B
  • Dry As A Bone—Green River. Before Pearl Jam, there was Mother Love Bone. Before Mother Love Bone, and before Mudhoney, there was Green River, named after the notorious serial killer that haunted Washington and the Northwest. Green River was the boot camp for Mudhoney’s Mark Arm and Steve Turner and Mother Love Bone’s/Pearl Jam’s Jeff Ament and Stone Gossard. Formed today, this would constitute a grunge rock supergroup, but back in the mid-1980s it was just the first outlet for musicians who would later become famous. The fact is, the desire for Green River’s work to be a lost, neglected gem—like a rudimentary Temple Of The Dog—meets reality. There are some good moments on Dry As A Bone—”Searchin'” and a scorching version of Bowie’s “Queen Bitch”—but the album itself is flat. Green River lacks all the elements that make Mudhoney and Pearl Jam superior outfits: melody, lyrics, tunes. This is flailing sub-Sabbath riffing. As a historical document, it’s interesting in the same way that hearing a young Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker playing in The Graham Bond Organization is interesting. But these players would get a little older, refine their talents, and produce better work than this. Dry As A Bone does not sound like the work of a band. It sounds like musicians trying to find their way.
    Grade: C-
  • Some Girls (Deluxe Edition)—The Rolling Stones. Please, oh please, let the next deluxe re-release be Beggars’ Banquet… Following last year’s deluxe reissue of Exile On Main Street, the Stones have now put out a 2-disc version of Some Girls. This is actually a better example of a deluxe edition than Exile. The second disc has no songs that otherwise appear on the album. This has the effect of making it a new, lost album from a period when the Stones were doing truly great work. While the bonus disc is not as strong as the original album, it is still an excellent batch of songs, ranging from the hilarious skewering of Claudine Longet, the French singer and wife of Andy Williams who beat the rap for murdering her boyfriend, Spider Sabich (“Claudine”), to the simple piano/vocal of “Petrol Blues”. Along the way there are country influences (“Do You Really Think I Care” and a cover of the Hank Williams song “You Win Again”), traditional blues (“Keep Up Blues”) and the reggae lilt of “Don’t Be A Stranger,” and even a raunchy, comic, update of “Stray Cat Blues” (“So Young”). The New York influence that permeated the original 1978 album is also there, with references to the city, the subways, and even the specificity of “the D train.” What is not here is the disco influence that gave the world “Miss You” but, considering the near-travesty of 1980’s Emotional Rescue album, perhaps that’s for the better. Keith sings the ballad “We Had It All” with great tenderness, and they romp through a cover of “Tallahassee Lassie.” The twelve extra tracks constitute a strong album that would have been a worthy successor to Some Girls and, while it’s easy to see why a track like “Claudine” was shelved (the subject was already dated by 1978, and the lyrics may well have touched off a libel lawsuit), it’s difficult to understand why these gems were left on the cutting room floor.
    Grade: A+ (original album)
    Grade: A- (bonus tracks)
  • Clear Spot—Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band. “Mr. Zoot Horn Rollo, hit that long lunar note and let it floooooooooooooat,” says Captain Beefheart as guitarist Rollo does just that, using a slide to ride a single note for all it’s worth in “Big-Eyed Beans From Venus”. It’s a pretty good summation of what you get with Beefheart: a bit of surrealism (what is a “lunar” note?), great musicianship, avant-garde lyrics. 1972’s Clear Spot is more mutant blues, and as accessible as 1967’s Safe As Milk. The arrangements are more straightforward, even as some of the lyrics become a little more outre (what is one to make of “Big-Eyed Beans From Venus”?). Clear Spot seems to me to be the best entry point for anyone interested in Beefheart’s career. The music blends blues with soul and rock, while Beefheart’s vocals once again range from the sublime (“Too Much Time”) to the ridiculous (the aforementioned “Big-Eyed Beans”). Along the way, there are a few missteps like “Circumstances” and the spoken word piece “Golden Birdies”. But those missteps are offset by tough blues rock tunes (“Crazy Little Thing”, “Long Necked Bottles”, “Nowadays A Woman’s Just Got To Hit A Man”) and songs that are just flat-out beautiful (“My Head Is My Only House Unless It Rains”, “Her Eyes Are A Blue Million Miles”). Beefheart’s voice is an acquired taste, like Howlin’ Wolf’s, but at the end of the day it is a simply extraordinary instrument. Clear Spot is not quite as good as Safe As Milk, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a great album.
    Grade: A
  • Parallel Lines—Blondie. Thanks to the disco crossover “Heart Of Glass” and the tough rockers “One Way Or Another” and “Hanging On The Telephone” there was no escaping Blondie’s Parallel Lines in 1978. The edited version of “Glass” (it cut the words “pain in the ass”) was all over AM radio, and “Another” and “Telephone” were all over FM. Blondie was so ubiquitous at this time that I never bothered to investigate the album, even though I liked the singles. In fact, those singles were so prevalent that even now, 34 years later, I can only hear them so many times before I reach for the “skip” button. Fortunately, there is much else to like about Parallel Lines. Blondie shared a love of early 60s pop music with some of the other NYC punk bands, but while the New York Dolls camped up their “girl group” tributes (“When I say I’m in love you best believe I’m in love L-U-V”) and the Ramones absorbed the hooks and melodies of bubblegum music and regurgitated them at 100 MPH, Blondie pays tribute to that era with unabashed sincerity (listen to their version of “Denise” from the Plastic Letters album). Which means that for all the hype of Blondie being a “punk” band from the hallowed halls of CBGB’s, Parallel Lines is a pretty straightforward pop album. Drummer Clem Burke adds power to the pop, and a song like “Fade Away And Radiate” is both musically challenging and lyrically interesting. But Debbie Harry’s sultry delivery ties almost every track back to groups like the Ronettes of the Shangri-Las. The singles from the album are the best songs here, matched by a few tracks but never surpassed, but overall this is a very good album.
    Grade: B+
  • More Songs About Buildings And Food—Talking Heads. The first album from Talking Heads, ’77, was brilliant. This album, their second, is as consistent as its predecessor, but only hits the same heights three times: the last two songs, a hit version of Al Green’s “Take Me To The River” and “The Big Country”, stand taller than the nine songs that lead up to them and “I’m Not In Love” features a herky-jerky rhythm and stop/start chorus that makes the song endlessly listenable. That doesn’t mean the rest is bad, only that those three songs are amazing. The other eight tracks are uniformly excellent, making this an album with no truly weak spots. If the album suffers at all it’s only because it sounds very similar to ’77, and the first album will always get the nod over the second when both albums are cut from the same cloth. Where the album succeeds in besting their début is in the musicianship and production. ’77 was largely David Byrne’s show, but here the Heads sound more like a band of equals.
    Grade: A
  • Black Session—Grant Lee Buffalo. One of my Top Concerts of All Time was the alternative rock also-rans Grant Lee Buffalo at Irving Plaza, in 1998 when they were touring behind their final album, Jubilee. Black Session is a bootleg recording from what appears to be French radio. The sound quality is excellent, despite the occasional between-song intrusion from a French DJ, whose only recognizable words (to me) are Grant-Lee Phillips, Paul Kimble, Joey Peters, and, strangely, Kurt Cobain. The show dates from the Fuzzy era, circa 1993, and goes through that album’s highlights: “The Shining Hour,” “Jupiter and Teardrop,” “Fuzzy,” “America Snoring,” “The Hook,” and “Soft Wolf Tread.” There’s also a solid run-through of the as-yet-unreleased “Demon Called Deception,” a quick take on the theme to the movie Deliverance, and an unreleased track called “Stockton”. With the exception of “Stockton,” a song that is wrapped in its own pretensions and has understandably never been officially released, the live recordings here breathe fire into the studio versions and, in most cases, surpass them. The drums snap harder, the bass throbs with more intensity, the guitar wildly swings between intricate 12-string picking and harsh distortion. Grant-Lee Phillips, one of the best singers of the day, howls throughout as if his life depended on it. It’s a stark reminder of what live rock music is supposed to sound like, and casts a large shadow over Phillips’s post-band career as a balladeering acoustic troubadour. “Stockton” is a bummer of a closing song, but the ferocious version of “Fuzzy” that precedes it is more than enough to forgive all sins.
    Grade: A

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The Listening Post: October 2011

Finally, Autumn.

  • On Fyre—Lyres. The 1984 début album from Lyres is a superior collection of organ-heavy retro garage rock. Band leader Jeff Connolly is completely enamored with 1960s Nuggets-style music, but comes off as a genuine practitioner of the craft and not a mere copycat. On Fyre features songs that qualify as genuine garage rock classics as surely as anything by the Music Machine, the Standells, or the Chocolate Watchband. “Help You Ann,” “Don’t Give It Up Now,” “She Pays The Rent,” “I Really Want You Right Now,” and “You’ve Been Wrong” are all original compositions that sound like they’ve time traveled from 1966. Covers of two Kinks songs—”Love Me Till The Sun Shines” and “Tired Of Waiting For You”—are faithful and fantastic. On “Love Me Till The Sun Shines” it’s downright spooky how much Connolly’s voice has the same tone and timbre as Dave Davies, who sang the original. The album stumbles a bit with “I’m Telling You Girl,” which mangles a Kinks-style riff and lacks anything resembling a tune. “Not Like The Other One” and “Someone Who’ll Treat You Right Now” are okay album tracks, but well below the high standards set by the rest of the album.
    Grade: A
  • Army Of Anyone—Army Of Anyone. Call them “Audioserf.” It’s amazing what a difference one band member can make. Army of Anyone was the second attempt by Stone Temple Pilots to replace the notoriously unreliable Scott Weiland. The first, Talk Show, released a surprisingly good album that played up the poppier side of STP. Army Of Anyone, with Filter vocalist Richard Patrick replacing Weiland and Ray Luzier taking over for Eric Kretz behind the drums, accents the heavier side of STP. As the drummer, Luzier is excellent, superior to Kretz. But while Patrick has a great voice, he’s simply not Scott Weiland. The secret weapons of STP are Weiland’s melodies and the way his voice weaves into the music. Weiland’s voice complements the music, riding with it. Patrick seems determined to bludgeon the listener with bombast, even as he comes close to getting Weiland’s extraordinary sense of melody. There’s nothing wrong with the quality of his voice, but his style is overwrought. Almost every chorus sounds like he’s about to launch into Filter’s signature tune “Hey Man, Nice Shot.” There’s some great stuff on this album: “Father Figure” is the proto-metal sound they seem to be shooting for throughout, but it’s the only song where every piece locks together perfectly. “A Better Place,” “Non Stop” and “Disappear” are almost as good. “This Wasn’t Supposed To Happen” is strongly reminiscent of the softer side of Stone Temple Pilots, mainly because Patrick tones down the histrionics and concentrates on the melody. It’s no surprise that it’s the track where he sounds most like Weiland. The rest of the album falls below that level. None of it is bad, but there isn’t much remarkable about any of it either. It’s likely that this was a one-off collaboration, since the DeLeo brothers have reunited with Weiland and Kretz. In a way, that’s too bad. The album is good, but there is great potential here. It reminds me of the first STP album, Core, in that sense. Whether Army of Anyone would have followed this with something as majestic as STP’s Purple is anyone’s guess, but the talent was there.
    Grade: B-
  • Last Words: The Final Recordings—Screaming Trees. Seattle’s best unknown band has a reputation of being grunge also-rans, but they were so much more than that. The albums Sweet Oblivion and Dust are every bit as good as more famous albums from Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, and Alice In Chains. The Trees broke up in the late 90s, a few years after their last and best album, Dust. Singer Mark Lanegan went on to concentrate on his solo career, and the rest of the band drifted into obscurity. Now comes Last Words, a collection of tracks the Trees had recorded for the followup album to Dust, but had never released. This is not a rarities collection, but really an unreleased album that’s been sitting in the can since 1999. Had it been released at that time it’s difficult to see how it would have been viewed as anything less than a letdown after Dust, but all these years later it comes as a nice reminder of how great a band they could be. What mars the album is that it sounds somehow unfinished. There’s a solid skeleton of great songs, and a lot of meat on the bones, but what’s lacking are finishing touches. Songs like “Crawlspace,” and “Tomorrow Changes” are good, but sound more like solo Lanegan than full-fledged Trees songs. Much of the rest sound like outtakes of songs from Dust. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, because Dust was so great. “Revelator,” “Black Rose Way,” and “Anita Grey” sound the most finished and are the best tracks on the album. The rest of the album is very good, but lacks the power of earlier songs like “Nearly Lost You” or “Witness.” The result is an album that would have been truly great if they had just done a few more takes, maybe added a few more overdubs, or tweaked the writing a bit.
    Grade: B+
  • Pleased To Meet Me (Deluxe Edition)—The Replacements. The best band that never happened hit their songwriting peak with 1987’s Pleased To Meet Me, an album that perfectly combined thrashy punk rock, power pop, and acoustic tenderness. The march of progress the Replacements were on reached its culmination here, with all due respect to the masterpieces that preceded it, Let It Be and Tim. The only flaw of Pleased To Meet Me was the production that put a shiny gloss on the record and smoothed out the drunken charm of the earlier albums. Tracks like the lovely acoustic ballad “Skyway” suffer the most from the production. Rather than sounding like a troubadour with an acoustic guitar, “Skyway” practically glistens and it detracts from the desired effect. The Replacements were many things but this was the first time they could be called “smooth.” Fortunately the eleven bonus songs on the Deluxe Edition are, with the exception of “Cool Water,” the sound of the scruffy ‘Mats near and dear to the hearts of fans. There are three songs in the bonus tracks that appear on the album: a studio demo of “Valentine,” what sounds like a run-through of “Alex Chilton” and an early pass at “Can’t Hardly Wait.” None of these come anywhere near the quality of the official releases, but all are fascinating. “Alex Chilton” and “Valentine” sound like outtakes from the rough, brilliant Let It Be. There are brutally ragged versions of “Route 66” and “Tossin’ ‘N’ Turnin'” that give a sense of the anarchic heart of the band, and the studio demos of “Birthday Gal,” “Bundle Up,” “Photo” and “Kick It In” are loose and fun, though it’s also clear that these songs are not as good as the ones that ended up on the finished album. None of the bonus tracks are really essential, though all are worthwhile, and the alternate versions of the album tracks give a tantalizing glimpse into how much greater this incredible album might have been with a little less shine and a little more ragged glory.
    Original album grade: A+
    Bonus tracks grade: B+

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The Listening Post: August/September 2011

A little late with this one but sometimes life interferes with blogging.

  • Learning To Crawl—The Pretenders. When 50% of The Pretenders died shortly after the release of their second album—rock-solid bassist Pete Farndon and ace guitarist James Honeyman-Scott, both of drug overdoses—few people gave the band much chance of coming back from such a crippling blow. To pretty much everyone’s surprise, The Pretenders followed this loss with what many consider their best album. Kicking off with the fantastic “Middle Of The Road,” a song that sounds as fresh today as it did in 1983, Chrissie Hynde and über-drummer Martin Chambers lead their new compatriots bassist Tony Butler and guitarist Robbie McIntosh through a collection of tunes that rank in the top-tier of Hynde’s writing. “Back On The Chain Gang,” “Time The Avenger,” “Show Me,” and “My City Was Gone” all got tons of radio play, and deservedly so. They are all excellent. Add in a terrific Stones-y swing at country and western with “Thumbelina” and the hypnotic ode to the drudgery of everyday living, “Watching the Clothes,” and you’ve got an album that’s just shy of perfection. It falls somewhat short of that mark with the dull ballad “Thin Line Between Love and Hate,” and the thudding “I Hurt You,” and sequencing both of those songs consecutively near the end of the album could have sunk the entire listening experience had it not been saved by the closing “2000 Miles,” a song that’s become a Christmastime staple on rock radio (but which sounds out of place in a non-winter setting).
    Grade: A-
  • The Pretenders—The Pretenders. Arguing about the merits of the first Pretenders album is a lot like arguing the merits of the first Clash album. It’s kind of pointless. The début album from The Pretenders has highlights that are so high they make you easily overlook the lesser material that rounds out the set. “Precious,” “The Phone Call,” the brutal “Tattooed Love Boys,” “The Wait,” the Kinks cover “Stop Your Sobbing,” the beautiful “Kid,” “Brass In Pocket,” and the pounding “Mystery Achievement” are enough classic tracks to rate the album among the best that the late 1970s/early 1980s had to offer. At its best, this is a first album for the ages. But there are holes here, as well. “Space Invaders”, a repetitive instrumental set to match the then-popular video game, is pointless and dull. At nearly six and a half minutes, the droning “Private Life” is enough to send the worst insomniac to sleep. “Lovers Of Today” is a good ballad hindered by excessive length. But when “Space Invaders” is sandwiched between “Love Boys” and “The Wait,” “Private Life” between “Kid” and “Brass In Pocket,” and “Lovers Of Today” gives way to the closing brilliance of “Mystery Achievement”…well, who cares about a few bum tracks when the rest is so great?
    Grade: A-
  • The Natch’l Blues—Taj Mahal. The second album from blues/rock/folk legend Taj Mahal is one of the strongest blues albums from any blues artist. Most blues musicians prior to the 1960s worked strictly in a singles format. LPs by Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf were usually just collections of previously released singles. Coming up in the post-Beatles era of the album, Taj painted on a canvas broader than a 45 RPM single could hold. Elements of folk music, rock, and even bluegrass all informed Taj’s blues. Even his name was a nod to something that existed outside of the dark nightclubs of Chicago or the juke joints of Mississippi. The music here is pure blues, and it’s fantastic from start to finish. While the instrumentation is strong throughout, the element that puts The Natch’l Blues over the top is the warm gruffness of Taj’s superb voice, recalling Otis Redding at his most soulful. That voice, combined with the eclectic instrumentation, gives songs like “Corinna,” “I Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Steal My Jelly Roll,” “She Caught The Katy and Left Me A Mule To Ride,” “The Cuckoo,” and the tornadic album closer “Ain’t That A Lot Of Love” a sound that has all the timeless hallmarks of blues combined with a distinctly modern edge.
    Grade: A+
  • As Safe As Yesterday—Humble Pie. Anyone who’s heard the live album Performance: Rockin’ The Fillmore knows that Humble Pie was a blues boogie band with a penchant for lengthy, mind-numbing jams. You’d be forgiven for taking a pass. But their 1969 début album, As Safe As Yesterday, is a very good album filled with great tunes and a lot of craft. Kicking off with an excellent version of Steppenwolf’s “Desperation” that highlights Steve Marriott’s English soul boy vocals and Peter Frampton’s tasteful lead guitar, and peaking with the title track’s organ-heavy rough-hewn psychedelia and the wonderful “I’ll Go Alone,” Yesterday provides the missing link between The Small Faces and The Black Crowes. There are songs on this album that could easily be put on any Black Crowes album, and most fans wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. There’s also some junk. “Alabama ’69” is the biggest offender, a country pastiche that’s an even bigger smear of an entire state than Neil Young’s “Alabama.” The fact that it ends with two minutes or so of faux raga music is baffling and indulgent. “A Nifty Little Number Like You” is a good song that stays well past it’s freshness date and has a brief drum solo built in. “Growing Closer” is another pseudo-country number, good but unremarkable. “Stick Shift” tries but never succeeds in getting out of first gear. The album is strongest—and very strong, indeed—when it sticks to the blues-based boogie: “Buttermilk Boy,” “Bang,” and “What You Will.”
    Grade: B+
  • Keep On Moving—The Butterfield Blues Band. For a brief period in the mid 1960s there wasn’t a better blues band in the world than Paul Butterfield’s outfit. Their first album was an in-your-face blast of pure Chicago blues, highlighted by the twin guitar attack of Elvin Bishop and Michael Bloomfield. Years before Eric Clapton hooked up with Duane Allman for Derek and the Dominos, Bishop and Bloomfield laid the groundwork for having two searing guitar players in one band. The second album, East-West, was even better, featuring the majestic instrumental title track that combined hard-core blues with Eastern raga rhythms for a song that was both thrilling and incredibly influential. By the time of Keep On Moving, the Sixties had taken their toll. Bishop and Bloomfield had moved on, and Butterfield had embraced some of the hippie-isms that ruled the day. Hence tracks like album opener “Love March,” custom-made for the Woodstock generation and light years from the urban grit of their first album. Keep On Moving is a decent record. There’s nothing terribly wrong with it, but it also lacks much of what made the Butterfield band so great. Except for a stinging solo on the terrific “Where Did My Baby Go?” there’s a noticeable absence of burning coals lead guitar. I understand that it’s almost impossible to replace Mike Bloomfield, but it seems like they didn’t even try. Here there’s more of an emphasis on horns. The horns sound great, but there’s still some magic missing. A great deal of the album is simply very ordinary: “Love March” is a cute piece of nostalgia for aging hippies, “No Amount Of Loving,” “Morning Sunshine,” “Losing Hand,” “Love Disease,” and the title track are nothing special. Only “Where Did My Baby Go?”, “Buddy’s Advice,” and “Walking By Myself” stand anywhere near the level of Butterfield’s best material. The true highlight of the album is Paul Butterfield’s soulful voice and amazing harmonica, both of which elevate even the most mundane tracks to a higher level, making Keep On Moving a rewarding, if uninspiring, listen.
    Grade: B-

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The Listening Post: July 2011

Melting in the summer heat.

  • Eternally Yours—The Saints. When Australia’s The Saints first kicked down the door in the Year of Punk with “I’m Stranded” they immediately set a very high bar for themselves and any other punk acts to follow. Though they’ve been largely forgotten by punk fans, “I’m Stranded” remains one of the greatest punk rock songs ever recorded. The album from which that song came was a strong collection of buzzsaw riffs and gargled vocals, but it was the band’s second album, Eternally Yours, that best defines the band. As time and the 1980s progressed, the Saints became more of a classicist rock band, marrying guitar-based hard rock with swinging, soulful horn arrangements. At its best (1987’s All Fool’s Day), the results were spectacular. 1978’s Eternally Yours carries the seed of this later sound. The opening blast of horns on “Know Your Product” is so breathtakingly in-your-face that you could be forgiven for thinking that the horn arrangements carry over to the rest of the songs. Once heard, this opening salvo is not forgotten, and while the horns do crop up again (in more muted fashion) on “Orstralia” the rest of the album is a solid wall of high-energy guitars. What matters here is the songcraft. For all of it’s punk brilliance, “I’m Stranded” would have been one of the lesser songs on this album precisely because the songwriting itself is so much better. Horns or not, these songs swing in a way that the first album didn’t. As early as this sophomore effort, the Saints were starting to branch out, incorporating not just the horns but acoustic guitars. The effect is to make this a far more listenable album than their first, while it retains all of the punk attitude and whiplash tempos.
    Grade: A
  • Dirt—Alice In Chains. I’m not sure this was the right time to immerse myself in Alice in Chains. With the sun shining brightly and the pretty girls on the beach and in the streets walking past in their summer finest, the relentless gloom of Alice’s drug-stained world was a tough listen. No wonder I alwways associate the alt-rock explosion of the early 90s with wintertime. Still, there is some greatness here. The opening blast of “Them Bones” is one of the best album openings you will hear, while “Dam That River,” “Sickman,” “God Smack,” “Down In A Hole” and “Would?” are all essential recordings. Many Alice fans would also put “Rooster” in that category, but I find the song dull. “Angry Chair” and “Rain When I Die” are also excellent, meaty slabs of Jerry Cantrell’s heavy metal guitars and Layne Staley’s tortured voice. But there is also enough mediocrity here to drag the album down. “Junkhead,” “Dirt,” and “Hate To Feel” are okay, but nothing special while “Intro (Dream Sequence)” is a 45-second waste of time. It is possible that heard another time this album may have sounded better to me. I found while listening to it that oftentimes I simply wasn’t in the mood to hear these songs of despair, drug addiction, and death. But for now…
    Grade: B
  • Summer Of A Thousand Years—The Grip Weeds. The gloom of Alice in Chains sent me running to the catchier, more summery harmonies and melodies of The Grip Weeds. However, this was not a particularly impressive effort. With a band as retro as the Grip Weeds it’s hard to criticize them too harshly because everything sounds good. Which means that more depends on the performance and on this album the Weeds simply don’t sound all that inspired. All of the elements are there: the Keith Moon-style drums, the Byrdsy harmonies, the Beatley guitars, a fabulously smart cover song (the Who rarity “Melancholia”), but what sounded explosive on The Sound Is In You sounds muted and by-the-book on Summer Of A Thousand Years. None of it is bad, but a lot of it simply sounds the same. It’s possible that had this been the first Grip Weeds album I heard I would feel differently, but it’s the third album of theirs that I’ve put into high rotation in the past year or so, and it’s all starting to sound the same. Sure it’s good, but what else do you have?
    Grade: B
  • Alone Together—Dave Mason. I haven’t listened to this album in probably more than 25 years. Back then I thought, “It’s good…but I’d rather listen to the second Traffic album.” This album is more than good. This is the last gasp of someone who was, briefly, a truly great songwriter and performer. Backed by a bunch of the raggle-taggle gypsys of Delaney and Bonnie’s band, Mason comes up with many of the best songs of his career. The opening “Only You Know And I Know” is the classic track, though it was never a hit for Mason, but the other songs are at least as deep and resonant. There’s a bit of a singer/songwriter vibe to much of this, but Mason turns in a much stronger set of songs than most of the mellow California crowd. “Can’t Stop Worrying, Can’t Stop Loving” and “World In Changes” are gentle acoustic-based tracks that beats Stephen Stills at his own game, with the latter featuring a swirling keyboard solo when you least expect it. “Shouldn’t Have Took More Than You Gave” rides an insistent wah-wah guitar back to Mason’s days with Traffic, the exquisite “Sad And Deep As You” is a piano ballad that is almost inexpressibly lovely, and the album closer “Look At You Look At Me” starts gently and builds before erupting into a shredding guitar solo that carries the song and album out. Alone Together is a forgotten gem of classic rock…excellent songwriting, strong performances.
    Grade: A

by

The Listening Post: June 2011

The sounds of summer begin.

  • Just Roll Tape: April 26th, 1968—Stephen Stills. The title says it all. On 4/26/68, Stephen Stills crashed a Judy Collins studio session and, when it was over, bribed the engineer to stick around so he could record some demos. “Just roll tape,” he said, and then sat and played 13 songs that he’d been working on but had not yet recorded. It seems hard to believe in 2011, but back in 1968 Stephen Stills was one of rock music’s best songwriters. Floating between the dissolution of Buffalo Springfield and his hooking up with David Crosby and Graham Nash, this is Stills performing loose, ragged, acoustic versions of his new material, some of which would become rock standards. There are beautiful versions here of “Wooden Ships” (minus the verses that would be added by Paul Kantner and David Crosby), “Helplessly Hoping,” and “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes” (which sounds nearly fully formed. There are also songs that would pop up on solo albums and with Manassas. The problem with the album is its roughness. By the third song his guitar is drifting in and out of tune. All of the songs on this album are good. The problem is that the majority of them are available in far superior versions elsewhere. Why listen to a rough pass at “Black Queen” when you can get a fully realized version on the first Stills solo album? As interesting as the early version of “Wooden Ships” is, it pales in comparison to the CSN version and doesn’t belong on the same planet as the Jefferson Airplane version. Which leaves the tracks that aren’t available anywhere else. Of those, the opening “All I Know Is What You Tell Me” is the best, a great track performed beautifully. The others (“Judy,” “Dreaming Of Snakes,” “Bumblebee,” and “The Doctor Will See You Now”) are good tunes that might have been great when recorded properly and fleshed out with further instrumentation and vocals. Just Roll Tape is an interesting album to listen to a few times, but it remains nothing more than a curio for obsessive fans.
    Grade: C+
  • John, The Wolf King of L.A.—John Phillips. If there is a more screwed up person in the history of popular music than John Phillips, who allegedly had an incestuous affair with his daughter that lasted for years, I can’t imagine who it could be. But while the very mention of his name is guaranteed to bring shudders of revulsion, the fact remains that the guy wrote some great music, at least until the drugs and alcohol turned him from a musician into a full-time reprobate with tons of money. Phillips’s ear for harmony and vocal arrangement may be unparalleled in rock music. The best of what he did with The Mamas and The Papas are triumphs of songwriting and arranging. When he released John, The Wolf King of L.A. in 1969 Phillips was at his peak as a songwriter. This was his first solo album and he put aside the folky stylings of The Mamas and The Papas in favor of a more country/Byrdsy sound. Wolf King was clearly influenced by the growing popularity of country music in rock circles, as shown by albums like Sweetheart Of The Rodeo, Bradley’s Barn, and The Gilded Palace Of Sin. Young, stoned, and filled to the brim with talent, this was also the last music Phillips released that was worth anything. The drugs took him that quickly. But this album is a minor masterpiece of country rock from the gorgeous opener “April Ann” to the epic closer “Holland Tunnel.” The album is California to the bone with songs like “Topanga Canyon,” “Malibu People,” and “Down The Beach,” and serves as one of the cornerstones of what became both the California sound and the singer/songwriter movement in the 1970s. While it didn’t do all that well on the charts, it’s clear that people like Glenn Frey, Don Henley, Jackson Browne, and Linda Ronstadt were paying close attention. Phillips isn’t as strong a singer as Papa Denny Doherty, but his rough voice fits the material well, and the instrumentation is top-notch, courtesy of studio pros like The Wrecking Crew, and contributions from James Burton on guitar and Darlene Love on backing vocals. A very good album, mellow with a solid groove that prevents it from getting boring.
    Grade: B
  • Reckoning (Deluxe Edition)—R.E.M. The second album from R.E.M. stands as one of the great albums of the 80s. For a long time it was considered to be nothing more than a little brother to Murmur, but it’s really every bit as good as their first LP. On the 25th anniversary of its release, it was remixed and rereleased with an additional disc featuring a live concert from the Aragon Ballroom in 1984. The live disc features tunes from both Murmur and Reckoning and their debut EP Chronic Town, as well as versions of the as-yet-unreleased “Driver 8” and “Hyena.” There’s also a nice cover of the Velvet Underground’s “Femme Fatale.” The problem with live albums…all live albums… is that they must meet certain criteria to be considered as anything more than tour souvenirs or contractual obligation releases. In order for a live album to truly achieve the type of greatness a studio album can attain some, or preferably all, of these standards need to be met: 1) for the majority of songs the live versions are better than the studio versions of the same songs, 2) there are unreleased songs (or cover songs) that are available nowhere else, 3) the live versions are noticeably different than their studio predecessors (acoustic versions, different arrangements, etc). A live album where there is precious little difference between the live tracks and their studio counterparts is, frankly, pointless. Consider the original version of the Who’s Live At Leeds, largely thought to be the greatest live rock album of all time. Six songs: three of the songs had no studio counterparts (“Shaking All Over,” “Summertime Blues,” “Young Man Blues”), one song had only been available as a single (“Substitute”), and the other two were presented in radically altered form (“My Generation” and “Magic Bus”). None of this is true on the live show packaged with Reckoning. The songs are presented in a very similar way to the studio versions. The “unheard” songs that were performed that night are now part of the R.E.M. canon. There are lots of missed notes and flubbed lyrics. At times they sound like they’re not really sure what song they’re performing. Because of this, there’s actually a certain charm to the recording. This is really live, warts and all. The songs are all played with the reckless abandon of a band that is not ready for the arena circuit. My guess is that this would have been a great concert to see, when the excitement generated on stage and the immediacy of the music would allow you to overlook flaws. But as a recording, preserved for posterity, those flaws are very evident. Still, there’s simply no denying the songs here. From “Femme Fatale” to “(Don’t Go Back to) Rockville” there isn’t a single song on the disc that isn’t great. Extra points awarded for a band that’s got this many great songs on a live disc, especially when it isn’t that horror known as the “Greatest Hits Live” album. At 54 minutes, it also falls short of the other monstrosity, the “Double Live” album. But as enjoyable as the ramshackle nature of the live disc is, it’s simply not essential listening, unlike the studio Reckoning.
    Grade: A+ for the original album
    Grade B+ for the bonus live disc