The Original
The Funny One
March 11, 2007
John Mellencamp's tune: 'Forgiveness, understanding'
John Mellencamp's philosophy: "I'm optimistic, but I always expect the worst."
Freedom's Road, his 21st album in 31 years, surveys the worst in human nature from the Midwest to the Middle East, yet the singer's optimism trumps cynicism in songs that encourage compassion.
"I wanted to make a record of hope," he says. "There has to be forgiveness and understanding. I'm proud to say I'm one of those bleeding-heart liberals."
His appraisal of contemporary America finds heartache in the heartland as Mellencamp jumps from political defiance in the title track to confronting racism in Jim Crow (with a guest vocal by Joan Baez) and a faulty justice system in Rural Route's chilling tale of a deranged killer, which ends with a plea for tolerance.
"It always seemed crazy to punish people in need, whether they're homeless or mentally ill," he says. "I live in a place where you see these misguided, desperate folks on crystal meth, and all we can figure out to do is throw them in jail."
In a throwback to Bruce Springsteen's Born in the USA, one song has been misconstrued as red-state red meat. Rather than a flag-waving anthem, The Americans "talks about my personal disappointment in who we pretend to be and who we really are," Mellencamp says. "The line 'I try to understand all the cultures of the world' applies to some, but there are more who don't know where Iraq or Iran or Syria are and don't care. Another part addresses the Hollywood idea of turning dreams into a way of life, but when you pull down the pants of the West Coast, it's sad. Can't we do better than this?"
At 55, this lifelong Hoosier has no fear of speaking out, despite the sharp attacks and death threats sparked by the anti-war To Washington, his 2003 reworking of Woody Guthrie's Baltimore to Washington.
"I didn't anticipate the problems, but it wasn't as bad as what the Dixie Chicks got," he says. "I had made 20 albums. They had made two. It's hard to chastise someone who's been around as long as me. They were a little animal being aggressive."
A scrappy rebel not known to back away from a fight, Mellencamp exhibits dovelike contempt for U.S. war policies and leadership, underscored in the Bush-bashing Rodeo Clown.
"I'm a peacenik, which is not to be confused with a pacifist," he says. "I was doing radio interviews right after 9/11, and when I said we need to go over there and find out why (the terrorists) thought this was a plausible solution, the guy went berserk. He said, 'You gotta be crazy. We gotta nuke these guys.' That was the first time I got a sense of the mob mentality out there.
"People were eaten up with fear and revenge, but they didn't even know who to get even with. 'We're America, and we'll come over and kick your (butt).' We barely pulled that out in World War II. That doesn't even work in a bar. Why would you run the world that way?"
Our Country, a rousing anthem akin to This Land Is Your Land, may prove to be the album's most controversial track, owing to its use in a Chevy truck ad campaign. It's a corporate dance Mellencamp long opposed, but changes in the music industry changed his mind.
"I agonized," he says. "I still don't think we should have to do it, but record companies can't spend money to promote records anymore, unless you're U2 or Madonna. I'm taking heat because no one's ever done this before. People have licensed songs that have already been hits, but nobody's licensed a brand-new song to a major company, and people don't know how to react."
Chevrolet made the deal attractive, offering priceless exposure and creative input: Mellencamp chose images for the TV spots, including clips of Rosa Parks, Nixon's resignation and Katrina flooding.
"In 10 years, this will probably be the way it's done," he says. "I'll have taken crap for it, and people will forget I was the first guy."
Despite the reach of Our Country (which just re-entered the country singles chart at No. 56), Mellencamp is not expecting the platinum heights he scaled with 1982's American Fool, 1985's Scarecrow and 1987's Lonesome Jubilee. Freedom's Road made its debut at No. 5 in Billboard, his first top 10 in 10 years, but with a modest take of 56,000 copies. It has sold 131,000 copies in five weeks, according to Nielsen SoundScan. He's just happy to be happy making music again.
An organic acoustic/electric confluence topped by raw twangy vocals, Road "is the first record I've made in a decade that I really enjoyed," Mellencamp says. "I didn't feel I had to do anything for anybody other than myself. Universal said, 'Do what you want,' and they didn't interfere."
During the '90s, "the fun had gone out of making records. It had turned into hard work with no cooperation from the record company. I made a huge mistake in the early '90s when I left PolyGram (absorbed by Universal) and went to Columbia. I thought the grass was greener. But they would tell me, 'Can you make a record like Hurts So Good?' That was 20 years old. Why would I do that? It was insulting and non-productive."
For Road, Mellencamp sought '60s sonics that had been lost to the digital age. He used vintage gear, an echo unit and old guitars, mastering the album to vinyl and then to compact disc.
"And that's why the finished version sounds so warm and inviting," he says. "It's a math problem. X's and O's don't merge. With analog, all these echoes and drum sounds get squooshed together in a magical way.
"The Rolling Stones were going to engineer their album this way and chickened out. Not me. I'm old-school, baby."
March 09, 2007
Pink Floyd: Set the controls for the heart of the sun
1968 pink floyd performs 'set the controls for the heart of the sun', short introduction by frank zappa... hope you enjoy the vid.
March 08, 2007
Bread - If (1971)
If a picture paints a thousand words,
Then why can't I paint you?
The words will never show the you I've come to know.
If a face could launch a thousand ships,
Then where am I to go?
There's no one home but you,
You're all that's left me too.
And when my love for life is running dry,
You come and pour yourself on me.
If a man could be two places at one time,
I'd be with you.
Tomorrow and today, beside you all the way.
If the world should stop revolving spinning slowly down to die,
I'd spend the end with you.
And when the world was through,
Then one by one the stars would all go out,
Then you and I would simply fly away
MY FAVS # DCFC - What Sarah Said
and it came to me then
that every plan is a tiny prayer to father time
as i stared at my shoes in the ICU
that reeked of piss and 409
and i rationed my breaths as i said to myself
that i'd already taken too much today
as each descending peak on the LCD
took you a little farther away from me
away from me
amongst the vending machines and year old magazines
in a place where we only say goodbye
it's done like a violent wind that our memories depend
on a faulty camera in our minds
and i knew that you were a truth
i would rather lose than to have never lain beside at all
and i looked around at all the eyes on the ground
as the tv entertained itself
cos there's no comfort in the waiting room
just nervous pacers bracing for bad news
then the nurse comes round and everyone lifts their head
but i'm thinking of what sarah said,
that love is watching someone die
so who's gonna watch you die
so who's gonna watch you die
so who's gonna watch you die
December 30, 2006
Top 50 Albums of 2006 # 10-1
10: Scott WalkerThe Drift
[4AD]
Like a malcontent Santa Claus, Scott Walker's gift to the music world this year was a sack of coal-black art songs, dumped centerstage and set on fire. It's strong stuff: Ghosts of European and American political crimes howling from the grave, percussion constructed from gut punches to a side of beef, scary string arrangements that tilt the floor downward, and heavy guitar sludge that hits like first-wave Swans. Presiding over this palace of gloom is Walker's gnarled, throaty croon, a gallows moan that braids sweetness and violence. His trembling vibrato can be overwhelming, but Walker's histrionics are kept on a short leash of meticulous control. Amid the endgame of microscopic sub-genres and unconvincing pastiches that is contemporary music, Walker's hard slap reminds us that music can be both High Art and utterly new. --Drew Daniel
09: BorisPink
[Diwphalanx/Southern Lord]
Pink's liner notes peel apart into small individual squares resembling either Pantone chips or acid tabs, but the implication was surely meant to be ambiguous: Whatever you were looking for, you would find. This meant gauzy, billowing meditations; disembodied vocals and dirt-caked guitar tones; and an echoing thicket of colliding feedback and gong reverb. For a trio so ready to fall on its collective face, they found a way to make vertigo their chief strength. Attempting everything at once, all elements magically congealed; only on Pink will you hear three musicians committed so deeply to going exactly where their songs took them. --Zach Baron
08: Grizzly BearYellow House
[Warp]
2005's Horn of Plenty earned Grizzly Bear a number of comparisons to Brooklyn brethren Animal Collective, but Yellow House outed the band as its very own kind of critter. The album was recorded in Edward Droste's mother's Cape Cod home, and that familial, clean sheets, cookies-baking warmth is weirdly palpable: Yellow House is cozy, nuanced, and lovingly produced, as delicate as a fistful of dried flowers. Tracks like "Little Brother", with its acoustic intro, wisps of flute, and slow descent into psychedelia, and vintage waltz "Marla" (written by Droste's own grandmother) are dense with dizzying vocals, plucked banjo, and dusty, room-filling arrangements, all showcasing Grizzly Bear's strength for imbuing scratchy, archaic sounds with a sense of safety and warmth. --Amanda Petrusich
07: ClipseHell Hath No Fury
[Jive]
You could file it in the last two years' "crack rap boom" if you want but you'd be selling Clipse's climactic second album short. Hell Hath No Fury might detail crack-dealing and all its ugly vagaries, but it's also an exercise in self-awareness: Its street tales follow two balls-of-fire rappers (Pusha and Malice) for whom the game-- and the society that helped them into it-- has turned frigid. Hardly a glorification of the drug dealer lifestyle, Hell Hath No Fury's immediacy, no-future misanthrope, and grim delivery feel borderline apocalyptic. Even tracks like "Dirty Money" and "Trill", which are supposed to be about "fun," ring like death knells for materialism. Pharrell's gruesome, impersonal space beats may sound futuristic, but these lyricists' tales are as old-- and maybe as effective-- as Greek tragedy. --Julianne Shepherd
06: LiarsDrum's Not Dead
[Mute]
Brooklyn-to-Berlin trio Liars have one of the strangest career arcs in recent memory, but even their staunchest champions couldn't have anticipated the avant-rock masterstroke of their third album, Drum's Not Dead. Following through on the murky promise of 2004's widely panned concept album They Were Wrong, So We Drowned, the band hunkered down in an East German radio facility, using the varying acoustics of different rooms to naturally inform the atmosphere of each song.
The result is an album cut with dark, devastating simplicity, colored by ritualistic percussion, translucent guitar figures, and Angus Andrew's unearthly falsetto, which hovers like a phantom. The fabric of tracks like "Be Quiet Mt. Heart Attack" or "Let's Not Wrestle Mt. Heart Attack" is rent with shadowy turmoil, depicting an ongoing conflict that finds fragile resolution in the exquisite album-closing ballad "The Other Side of Mt. Heart Attack". Gorgeous and unfathomable, Drum's Not Dead is a landmark achievement from a group that many had virtually left for dead, but whose prospects now seem more limitless than ever. --Matthew Murphy
05: The Hold SteadyBoys and Girls in America
[Vagrant]
Almost every description of the Hold Steady invokes alcoholic imagery: a bar band with drinking songs. But such condescension doesn't do Boys and Girls in America justice; it isn't so much a dashed-off, beer-soaked record as an unflinching and literary document of social intoxication, from its Kerouac-quoting thesis statement-- "Boys and girls in America/ Have such a sad time together"-- to the 11 one-acts that repeatedly drive the observation home.
Craig Finn fills his dioramas with characters using substances to stave off boredom and fuel desperate, fleeting collisions with people in similar states; in most songs, the drugs get equal billing. The only way to accurately depict these interactions was to reach back to an era of bigger rock sounds-- not just Bruuuuce, but also Thin Lizzy and the Band-- that do the alchemy of making the everyday seem momentous. If alcohol's most seductive effect is making one feel like they're the main character in a movie of their own life, the Hold Steady made the bombastically bipolar soundtrack for that feeling. --Rob Mitchum
04: Ghostface KillahFishscale
[Def Jam]
Fishscale was officially released in March, but unofficial versions were devoured and crapped out on blogs for months prior. Upon hitting stores, it was showered with praise by critics from your local paper to NPR-- trusted sources of hip-hop since never. In other words, no matter when you heard it or in what form, Fishscale became your favorite rap record, maybe for hours, maybe forever.
Exactly how it became Ghostface Killah's most lauded is more difficult to explain. It's not his most compelling album lyrically, nor his most progressive album sonically. Still, Fishscale most vividly displayed Ghostface's versatility. Even when forced into revision by his abiding (but impatient) fans, he retained his signature faculties-- ludicrous imagination, elaborate storytelling, tortured soul singing, and dirty jokes for days-- all while evolving into a wiser, gentler armchair hustler whose charisma spanned race, class and creed: He was still Ghost, but now he was everybody's. --Pete Macia
03: Joanna NewsomYs
[Drag City]
Ys is, without a doubt, one of the most ambitious albums on this list, which is not always a good thing. But Newsom's ambition is the quiet, professional kind, and complaining about it feels a little like standing at the finish line of a marathon and pointing out that the runners look a little haggard. She's summoned up every shred of her compositional training, refined her voice from a curiosity to an expressive marvel, and shot past the average singer's confessionals into a complex personal mythology of manipulative circus animals, astronomer siblings, and one "awfully real gun." She directs arrangements that veer from shades of Chinese opera to a sort of Broadway baroque.
As fans and detractors talk about fairies, debate the validity of the pronoun "thee," and argue the aesthetics of it-- as if she's on her deathbed and can't just try something else next year-- what slips quietly, professionally under the radar are the triumphs of her songwriting and craft. In the middle of this record, she sits alone with her harp for 10 minutes, asking stuffed birds "Why the long face?"-- it feels like four minutes, tops, and you can spend at least two of them right up toward the edge of your seat. --Nitsuh Abebe
02: TV on the RadioReturn to Cookie Mountain
[4AD/Interscope]
This could be the only record this year I never tired of. Each time I heard it, I liked it more-- and I heard it a lot. In one sense, it's a fairly conventional rock record, with big chords, hummable refrains, chorus hooks, and even a few bridges. Peter Gabriel, U2, and other none-too-hip references are spread out for everyone to hear, though the fantastic singing gives TV on the Radio their own spin on the rock anthem. Still, David Sitek's production-- sounding like nothing else out there at the moment-- wormed its way in between the songs' cracks, all thick and sludgy and opaque, ensuring that the biggest moments never hit all at once. Of course, even after all this time and so many listens, I still don't really know what the songs are actually about. But I guess that'll come in 2007. --Mark Richardson
01: The KnifeSilent Shout
[Rabid/Mute]
Entering the year, could there have been a more unexpected consensus pick for 2006 than the Knife? OK, so the Swedish brother/sister duo got a boost from the Sony Bravia commercial featuring José Gonzalez' rendition of their brilliant "Heartbeats", and that exposure served as unintended cross-promo for Silent Shout, helping anoint them among the upper echelons of this year's blog-rock royalty. But nothing else on the blogs sounded like this. Masters of their own record label, Rabid, the Knife may be indie, but nowhere would their shuddering trance arpeggios and steely technoid programming qualify as "rock."
Vocals aside, Silent Shout is deeply rooted in contemporary European techno at a moment when techno remains deeply unfashionable among American listeners, for all but a few Europhilic holdouts. Retaining the merest echo of their last album's electro-pop perk, Silent Shout plunges into the darkest thickets like a Japanese horror flick, turning sunny-day steel drums into instruments of harmonic torture and processing vocals in a way that decouples the "human" from "expression."
Perhaps what stuck out for listeners, despite the shivering digital luster of it all, was the obvious attention to old-school notions of musicality: Here, no matter the synthetic nature of its source, a sound is never a static thing but a breathing, heaving presence that pushes air across the room helter-skelter. It didn't hurt that, no matter the studio-bred nature of their music, the Knife built their popularity the old-fashioned way, by touring-- embellishing their playback-heavy concerts with suggestive video projections and ominous theatrics.
Ultimately, Silent Shout thrives on its uncomfortable balance of mystery and transparency. The way they structure their tracks, every sound sticks out like a lone wire waiting to be stripped, but the more you tug on any given strand, the more all the rest-- unstable harmonics, queered pitches, android shanties, looping tales of forest families-- is plunged into the most addictive kind of inscrutability. --Philip Sherburne
Top 50 Albums of 2006 # 20-11
20: Man ManSix Demon Bag
[Ace Fu]
Indie's finest nickelodeon act grew into a silver screen star on Six Demon Bag, maturing their sound beyond Zappa/Beefheart hijinks and delivering a surprisingly stark, cinematic mood. Not that frontman Honus Honus exactly spills his guts all over the record: Between mindfuck numbers like "Engrish Bwudd" and sweeping busker elegies like "Van Helsing Boombox", Man Man span both ends of the emotional spectrum. Plus, Honus seems to have a one-liner ready for any occasion. The countless Kodak moments here-- from the drunken lament of "Feathers" to the Noreaga shoutout on "Black Mission Goggles"-- only attest to Man Man's ability to power pawnshop ditties with a ramshackle classic rock bigness. --Adam Moerder
19: T.I.King
[Grand Hustle/Atlantic]
Predictably lauded for its triumph, King doesn't really do anything Tip Harris' other albums haven't done before-- he just does it moreso here. "King Back" and "Talkin' to You" spoke to those who wanted the epic, Epicurian, and Eastern, while "Why You Wanna" and "Live in the Sky" held down women and the warm-hearted. And "What You Know" pleased damn near everybody-- DJ Toomp's production is one of the finest in years. But the rough-hewn backend of King-- especially the whistling "I'm Straight", the lock-jawed "You Know Who", and the near-perfect posse cut closer "Bankhead"-- provides the backbone of an album that was conceived as a something of a genre-hopping risk. Working with Just Blaze seems like a no-brainer, but for an artist as locale-specific as Tip, it was bold. All coronation gags aside, this is a marriage of attitude and atmosphere that stands up against nearly any other rap album released this year. --Sean Fennessey
18: DestroyerDestroyer's Rubies
[Merge]
On the expansive and unhindered Destroyer's Rubies, Dan Bejar finally gave his innate musical strangeness some room to breathe. In a sense, it's the most accessible record ever released under the Destroyer moniker, elegantly produced and sharply melodic. But without the constraints of a deceptively "weird" aesthetic regime, the distinctiveness of Bejar's songwriting and performance is much more striking. I'm still not entirely sure how these songs make sense, but they do-- convoluted structures, lavish arrangements, vocal tics, and all. For the first time in his career (with the possible exception of the criminally underrated This Night), Bejar doesn't sound like he's fighting against his own instincts; even if his vision can be impenetrable, it's presented here with tremendous generosity and grace. --Matt LeMay
17: The ThermalsThe Body, The Blood, The Machine
[Sub Pop]
When a rock group that's made it a point to keep things brutally simple tries to change its formula for success, there's naturally some cause for some concern. Yeah, the Thermals might've exchanged their balls-to-the-wall guitar attack for a more measured approach, and yes, some of their charming lo-fi grime and grit has been scrubbed away. But working with the subjects of God, war, and power, these high-brow brat-beaters show no mercy. And when Hutch Harris strikes his Jesus Christ pose on the album's opening blitzkreig, he launches a bloody crusade from which, in the heaving finale, the noble young band conquers all. --David Raposa
16: Beach HouseBeach House
[Carpark]
The house was clearly abandoned around the end of the second World War: These songs are empty, drafty, and lazy, with sand blowing up in the corners, late-autumn clouds blotting out the sun, and the seasonal power long disconnected. It doesn't hurt that Beach House paint with the barest of colors-- drum machines tick, organs drone, guitars slide, echoes wander-- or that their sweet, broken-down drawl has the same dead elegance as scratched-up waltz LPs, Nico, or old country music. But the album is more elegant than spooky, and when singer Victoria Legrand gets all "Blue Velvet" on "Master of None", it's like we've finally found the Atlantic-coast equivalent of Julee Cruise playing the "Twin Peaks" roadhouse. --Nitsuh Abebe
15: Sunset RubdownShut Up I Am Dreaming
[Absolutely Kosher]
Much more than a "side project" or any other lo-fi, run-of-the-mill indie, there's something wonderfully naive about Spencer Krug's truisms, like a quiet wide-eyed child in the backseat absorbing everything. With its occasionally bleak picture of romance ("The Men Are Called Horsemen There"), Shut Up I Am Dreaming can make you somehow nostalgic and guarded at once. The album's dry, peculiar production and brief minor-key themes make childhood sound like a scary and dangerous time, and it's easy to picture the eccentric Krug behind out-of-tune pianos and toy keyboards, maniacally banging out his eccentric calliope shit. But take these grand statements, sung in his affected drawl, and add oddly flashy guitar tricks like speedy arpeggios and bottomless reverb, and the album becomes a poignant, unflinching portrait of growing up. --Jason Crock
14: Tim HeckerHarmony in Ultraviolet
[Kranky]
Separating Harmony in Ultraviolet into 15 separate "tracks" dampens Tim Hecker's blizzard symphony. What makes the album brilliant-- not merely gorgeous-- is the gradual accrual of power that occurs throughout its 50-minute duration: Submerged, sinking synths are steadily woven into stuck-between-stations radio static, floating from a patient, natural-world meander until, in the last 20 minutes, the dam breaks and angels swirl. This is the ambient album of 2006, one of Canada's most celebrated sound artists imbuing electro-magnetic b-rolls with humanity and grace. --Brandon Stosuy
13: PhoenixIt's Never Been Like That
[Astralwerks]
Pitchfork's Rob Mitchum called Phoenix the "soft-rock Strokes," which is as accurate as it is damning. But where Julian and his boys are so self-consciously cool it hurts, Phoenix effortlessly walk the walk. Their songs work their foggy notions shamelessly, regardless of whether they take their cues from former dictators or Heloise, and what initially seem like inconsequentially doughy ditties turn out to be hearty pop-rockers that won't leave your head. --David Raposa
12: Band of HorsesEverything All the Time
[Sub Pop]
Listening to Band of Horses' big, hazy atmospherics feels a little like steering your 1987 Corolla through 100 miles of white-hot desert, blindly navigating a landscape that feels simultaneously comforting, strange, and infinite. Everything All the Time, the brainchild of Seattle's Ben Bridwell and Mat Brooke (both formerly of Carissa's Wierd), is an unexpectedly epic collection of high, lonesome rock songs. But despite obvious comparisons to My Morning Jacket and the Shins, Band of Horses have carved out their own sonic niche: This is 2006's perfect comedown record, each lulling guitar and strained, earnest vocal hitting like a puff of warm breath on your cheek, reassuring and sweet. --Amanda Petrusich
11: Junior BoysSo This Is Goodbye
[Domino]
Without the stuttering, r&b-influnced beats of their debut, it's harder to prop up So This Is Goodbye as bold or innovative pop. Rather, it aims for a distinctly different yet similarly difficult route: Music so smart, yet so obvious, that it must have been there all along, waiting for someone to snatch it from our collective subconscious and make it our soundtrack for late-night driving and pre-party preening. Not to say this isn't a dance-minded record-- one listen to "Double Shadow" or "In the Morning" firmly proves otherwise-- just a surprisingly classicist one. More than blazing a trail, Junior Boys are simply a half-step ahead on the same path, finding the most predictable and logical rubbery synth or icy croon just a moment before we think of it. --Jason Crock
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