Saturday, July 2, 2005

Land Ho! When is Mariah Carey going to put out her punk-rock Joan Jett record and freak out all her fans? When is Jay-Z going to put together his own Body Count metal band and go out on the road?  (And no, Linkin Park doesn't count.) Or what about Maroon 5?  Will they just do four-minute pop gems all their lives, or are they going to get all crazy, start doing ten-minute anthems and songs with glockenspiels and marching bands and backwards guitar solos? Here's my point.  The best albums by bands are often the albums where they stretch themselves in every possible way, whether or not their fan base comes along with them.   The best bands break themselves into pieces and rise up out of the dust, stronger and better for the experience.   Radiohead did this, to some extent, with "OK Computer," and all the way with "Kid A."  Wilco didn't just freak out their record company with "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot."  More than a few of their fans were put off by the ambient space and sonic experiments.  Not to mention the classic-rock guitar breakdowns on "A Ghost is Born."  But how many other bands really decide to go full-out and let the music push them beyond even their own limits, and come out alive on the other side? Case in point:  Sleater-Kinney's "The Woods." Sleater-Kinney went into the studio with a producer (Dave Fridmann) who said all of their studio records sounded the same.  He tried to capture the energy and raw buzz of their live shows.  They came out with an astonishing album, something that is completely in line with everything they've ever done and yet still unbelievably out there.  It is beyond any expectations I had. All the elements were there.  The power trio structure was lightning in a box:  a fierce drummer in Janet Weiss, two voices that clashed and screamed with/at each other, two guitars that held each other up and ran into each other like near-accidents on the freeway.  Carrie Brownstein has been a rock star in waiting since the early jagged riffs of "Anonymous" and "Dig Me Out."  They've always had the screaming vocals:  Corin's warbling, trembling battle cries, Carrie's flatter voice that sometimes turned into that freaky blood-curdling shriek (see "Call the Doctor" and "Heart Attack".) "The Fox" is the first indication that something's different.  The first sound is not chiming guitars or a polite drumbeat introducing itself.  It's a squeal of feedback, followed by dirty, dirty guitar chords spiraling into themselves like drunken birds, and then spiraling up again like awakened beasts.  Everything's wrong here.  The guitars are too loud.  The drums sound like mud.  (This is where I realized that if I set my EQ on anything besides "flat," this entire album was going to sound like an out-of-tune radio.)  Janet unleases one Keith Moon flurry for no apparent reason except fun punctuation.  At the end, in case you're not off your game yet, Corin shrieks that last verse at the absolute top of her lungs.  It's like ... no, forget it.  I've never heard moments like this on an album before.  There are lots of moments like that, where I thought, "Have I ever heard anyone do this before?"  It happens on "What's Mine is Yours," a sexy, taunting rocker, a fight song for destroying the world and everyone in it.   It's swinging along fine, there are jaunty little chords and the beat's rocking along, and then Carrie comes out of nowhere and bludgeons the song into submission with a slurring, subterranean guitar solo that sounds completely out of sync with the song.  It's not on beat.  There is no beat - the drums have run for cover behind the curtain.  The guitar skronks on, slipping backwards and then forwards again, and then bass notes come tiptoeing back in.  Plunk plunk plunk.  Is this another song?  No, it's the same one, but they've misplaced the beat, and Corin sounds like she's declaring war.  On someone.  Maybe on me.  By the time the song's over, I'm looking over my shoulder. Who does that?  The last time I heard a song that turned tail like that in the middle, it was "Are You Experienced?" and at least the drumbeat sorta continued through that mindfuck of a solo. "Rollercoaster" just stops in the middle of a beat.  Stops.  Just out of nowhere.  What the fuck - where'd they go?  There's a whooshing sound - did they fall off a cliff?  Then they start up again, the same riff, the same beat, like nothing happened.  There's a little laughter at the end, like they know they're fucking with us.  I love this album.  I love the impatience of it.  Everything is turned up so high, and every moment is filled with action.  The vocals are full-volume.  The guitars and drums are unhinged.  It's full-force rock and roll.  Even "Rollercoaster" starts out with sounds like standard S-K chords, a jaunty little riff, but while Corin sings, Carrie fills in every spare second with slidey snarling guitar fills.  This is an album with not a second of wasted space.  I love the bravado of this album.  S-K has been identified before as a band that wants to take over the world.  They may not do it this time, but they're playing like it's already happened. The twelve-minute track that everyone's talking about, "Let's Call This Love?"  Please.  Six-minute guitar solos?  Corin bellowing into the infinite like a woman possessed?  They don't care who's listening anymore.  They are all they need.  Which is what makes this such a compelling record.  Carrie did an interview with the Onion (have you noticed that the ladies are in every alt-rock magazine on the shelves this month?) where she described the wild-eyed vocals at the end of "Entertain."  Dave [Fridmann] was just like, "God, it's intense," and Corin heard it and was like, "Are you sure you want to sound like that? Are you sure you want to sound like you're losing it?" And Dave was like, "Why would we try to get something else? We've captured that. Why would we want to tame it down?"   They took the hint.  There is nothing tamed down on this album.  Nothing is sweetened, nothing is prettified, nothing is held back.  Everything is all-out. I love the menace of this album.  They've done songs before that talked about threats and talked about instability.  The whole record is unstable.  "Jumpers," a first-person suicide song, is terrifying, and thrilling in the oddly life-affirming bridge, and then even more terrifying in its final moments.  "Modern Girl" starts out as a lullaby for domestic tranquility and then decays, goes all fuzzy and blurry, the way you imagine Dorian Gray went when his portrait went up in smoke. The entire album is disarming, disquieting, disturbing.  I love that in an album.  I love albums that you can't not listen to.  I find it hard to work when I'm playing this record.  I can't write, I can't read, I can't do much more than just be enraptured.  I have been listening to this album and very little else for the last week.  I could rave on and on, but they say it all on the record, and for Christ's sake, there are a million other articles talking about how great this record is.  You will not believe what you're hearing.  Go get it.  Now.  This will be one of the albums they talk about in twenty years, along with "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" and "Kid A" and the other great albums of the early 21st century.  This is an unbelievably great album.  Stop reading this.  Go get it. Go! 10:23:53 PM     Speak up!  []

Live 8 - Did It Matter? Did it matter? Live Aid, twenty years ago, raised millions upon millions of dollars for Africa.  This time, Geldof wants attention - or signatures - or something.  See, I'm not exactly clear on what exactly Sir Bob wants to accomplish, this time.  Last time, it was obvious.  This time, it seems more abstract.  I heard platitudes about "making people care" and "raising awareness."  Whose awareness was raised?  Is it possible to explain the role of the G-8 in between Jay-Z and UB40?  Does anyone care?  (And while Jay-Z's bragging about all the money he's spreading around on Moet and chincilla fur, is it really dignified for him to talk about poverty anyway?)  Noel Gallagher certainly didn't seem convinced.  His opinions on the subject: "Are they hoping that one of these guys from the G8 is on a quick 15 minute break at Gleneagles [in Scotland] and sees Annie Lennox singing 'Sweet Dreams' and thinks, 'Fuck me, she might have a point there, you know?' Keane doing 'Somewhere Only We Know' and some Japanese businessman going, 'Aw, look at him... we should really fucking drop that debt, you know.' It's not going to happen, is it?" Is it?  Now I'm hearing that Geldof has posted a dollar amount to success.  The success of the G8 has a price tag of $25 billion.  If they don't offer that much aid, then they will have failed.  And by extension, he and Live 8 will have failed. Eric Altermann had a whole different reason for slamming the concept of Live 8. I am in favor of harnessing the power of celebrity for global good but where[base ']s the good in this?  Good God, this is a moral crime.  All that money available just for the asking[~]all those lives that could be saved by people who won[base ']t miss the money--and these guys won[base ']t even bother to ask?  They won[base ']t even allow charities to canvass the audience.  Turns out the concert is NOTHING, and I mean NOTHING but moral vanity, and the exploitation of starving, sick Africans, by pampered, rich [assholes] and their self-interested corporate sponsors rather than their potential salvation.  This is really unspeakably shameful. So his issue is that private individuals aren't giving the money themselves to African citizens?  This, from someone who I'm certain has supported (like me) social service programs like Medicaid, Medicare, and food assistance, and who has gone on record multiple times on behalf of the common good?  Now he's mad that Madonna and Bono aren't personally paying off the debt?  I don't get it.  Shouldn't he be demanding that the governments of the eight biggest countries on the planet do something to end poverty, too?  Isn't that part of the "greater good" philosophy, or am I missing something? Maybe his issue is that small point he makes about canvassing being banned in the audience.  I'm not sure I agree.  I think there's something preposterously bold and grand about having events this big without a single money ask.  Like any ex-fundraiser, I automatically see any large group of people as a potential funding source.  Sure.  But the message of "we don't want your money - we want you" is magnificent.  It's a perfect, audacious, counter-intuitive slogan.  But when the meaning of "we want you" is unclear, is this really even going to work, or is it going to go down in history as one of those great ideas that just didn't quite make it?  I don't know the answers to these questions.  Tell me what you think.  7:38:46 PM     Speak up!  []