FlickWatch: Exit Through the Gift Shop (or I wanna make me some art)

Streamed via Netflix/Wii, we watched this documentary the other night. It's one of the most exciting and interesting actual documentations I've seen in a while.
See, there's this guy, Thierry, who has OCD. He has a compulsive need to videotape EVERYTHING. But he doesn't label or categorize because he's sort of nuts. Just keeps filming and filming. Then he gets hooked up with some street artists and starts documenting them. Then they connect him to Banksy, the holy grail of mystery street artists. Banksy puts on a show. Banksy then tells Thierry it's time to put the movie you've been filming together. When he does, it's a chaotic mess. So, Banksy decides to take all the raw stock and edit the film himself. And he tells loony to go off and busy himself. Make some art. Do something. And Thierry takes this as a mandate to become an ARTIST. He rebrands himself Mr. Brainwash (MWB) and basically becomes sort of a celebrity in the artworld.
It's fantastic.
Not to be missed.
And it kind of made me want to get some art supplies and draw this little alien character I made when I was 8. It's the only thing I've ever drawn and I think it could be a neat little stencil. On a building. Or you know, something.

Exit Through the Gift Shop
Grade: A+

FlickWatch: Scott Pilgrim vs. The World & the current state of comedy.

I've heard nothing but good things about this movie. That it's a real, geUwine comic book come to life.
It is. But that don't make it good.
It's annoying and difficult. I would stack it next to Kick Ass as the hyperbolic comic book movies of the year. Kick Ass, while violent as hell, is a better companion piece to Watchmen (A movie I truly loved, but in a geek that knows it's not as good as he wishes it was kind of way).
Pilgrim is so self aware, so self conscious and so pretentious that it left us with nothing to hold on to.
This could just be generational. I felt as detached from Napoleon Dynamite earlier this decade and I realize that I am in my mid-40s and movies aren't made for me anymore.
Fine. No problem. I'm happy to go into that good night. There is something more at work in Scott Pilgrim, though.
I grew up in a golden age of comedy. Steve Martin, Bill Murray, David Letterman. These were anti-comics working in the world of ironic detachment. Where they are superior to the characters they are playing and, while not embracing of them, certainly not hateful of them either. This is different from irony, which is the standard bearer of comedy. Ironic Detachment is snootier. And probably why I don't care for Conan O'Brien. He traffics in earnest doofusness. And Sandler, Farrell and early Jim Carrey. They don't love their characters. Those characters are just dumb and they aren't smarter than them, winking with us. They are more callous and indifferent.
Pilgrim traffics in what I am calling Ironic Alienation. The characters are so far removed from reality that they border on meta-people. There's no humanity but the actors playing them play them like the characters themselves are smarter than the people playing them. (I'll give you a second, it's a pretty bad sentence) It is the direct opposite of The Jerk. And there's nothing for me to grasp on to as there no place for me to relate. The audience can't fall in love with Pilgrim or Ramona or Knives because they have no semblance of human-ness. They aren't people, they are aliens in human clothing. At least in Kick Ass the characters bled and felt loss. The teeniest amount, perhaps but it was something.
Scott Pilgrim is the uber-meta-outside observer. And everyone who populates the film is as well. It's a good sign that the film was a flop.
Thoughts?

Grade: C

Reads

I used to love to read. Then I stopped because I didn't have the time, I had kids, there was too much music to listen to and too much tv and movies to watch. And then there was working and writing and, well, life.
Then I got a Kindle.
And I started reading again. Not as much as I'd have liked, but at least I was reading again. Even if a lot of it was crap.

In no particular order.



I'm a politics junkie. And since I spent 225 hours working on the Obama Campaign it's natural that I would have read this the day it came out.

Takeaway: McCain really unleashed a demon on us, didn't he?



Makes sense that I would want to get more inside dirt on this election. And I bought it to read while on business in the reddest state in the union. Too bad that Plouffe writes like a 15 year old girl who's a little to in love with himself and what he does for a living. I never finished it. Seemed redundant after the mid-terms.
Takeaway: The President's advisor is a bore.



The history of my union til 1985, just before I joined. I'm pretty involved now so I have been referencing this book all year.
Exceptional. I had a brief email exchange with the author and discovered that my theories and his coincide for what is happening that he expected to happen.

Takeaway: Politics is cyclical. And logic matters little.


Bourdain's pomposity overpowers the book. Could've been food porn and gossip but it just becomes a meandering memoir.

Takeaway: Brunch is leftovers and Holladaise sauce will kill you.



The best Gladwell since Tipping Point. Redolent with insightful information. Gladwell lays out his premise (that it takes 10000 hours doing something to become proficient) and supports it page after page. All leading up to a final chapter on the KIPP education progam.
Takeaways: The Power Dynamic Index explains why some jobs really suck.




The history of the Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP) described at the end of Outliers. Exceptional enough to make me want to get Zoe on the waiting list.

Takeaway: We need to send our kids to school year round. Summer Vacation is a boondoggle.




Like reading blog entries and news articles. The events are so fresh that it almost seemed like I had read it already. Breezy enough, though.

Takeaway: The networks don't give a shit about quality. They give producers X dollars and expect X return. Whatever they put in there is up to them. They didn't ask for it to be "good". Woah.



Gladwell's collection of articles from the New Yorker. Do you find the New Yorker dry and over written? Then you won't like this book. It's a time passer but not one I'd recommend.

Takeaway: Playwrights plagiarize.



The only fiction I read all year. Starts out really promising and then loses its way about 2/3 in. But, fun, otherwise.

Takeaway: Fiction disappoints.




You know those documentaries that you see on Netflix that look like they were put together over a weekend? Like the B movie of documentaries? This is the published version.

Takeaway: Well, I no longer trust my real estate agent.



Klosterman's entry into the regurgitated essay field. I love him, so he can almost do no wrong. It's no "sex, drugs and cocoa puffs", but so what. The essay on football is amazing. Got me watching again.

Takeaway: The NFL is a progressive organization with a socialist bent and baseball is a backwards thinking arch conservative pastime. Go figure.



The music industry doesn't foresee the mp3 and it's own imminent destruction.

Takeaway: What I've always known: The lack of the need to replace albums with the new vehicle and the lack of foresight to see this happening helped kill the music biz.



My version of Kitchen Confidential was corrupted so Amazon gave me a credit. I really just wanted to read this for the Adam Ant Persuasion article. Which was sublime. The rest was fun piffle that could have been a series of articles for Rolling Stone. I'd buy it for that feature.

Takeaway: David Bowie is an opportunistic poser and Chicago is still around.



I put this one on here to make myself look smart. But I'm only halfway done. It's 1000 pages. And it's realllllly slow. I put it down 3 months ago and haven't been able to get back to it.

Takeaway: Obama spent so much time reading this he lost track of what was actually going on with Health Care. That's the only explanation I can think of.


Okay. In looking at this list I really need to read less about music and politics. Maybe find some fiction that can capture my attention. And stay away from the entertainment biz.
I

Listening Post: Guns N Roses

I think everyone had three albums in their collection in 1991. Nirvana's Nevermind. Pearl Jam's 10. And Appetite for Destruction. If you were like me, you also bought the Illusion twins but if you were reallllly like me, you never listened to any of those albums all the way through. Buying music as a 25 year old was almost a habit. And one that I was shedding and wouldn't return to until a decade later.
But I have them, dammit. So....what to think?




Guns n Roses - Appetite for Destruction - 1987

The tail end of hair metal. One year earlier and GnR are a hair band. Albeit one of the best. Look at Axl's hair in that video. Nirvana would sweep all of GnR's brethren away in one stroke, leaving them at the top of the mainstream maximum rock pile. But in 87, this was the answer to all that Joshua Tree posing.
Does it hold up? Sure. Is it great? Yeah. Could it be trimmed? Couldn't anything from the 80's be?
The surprise to me isn't how great the whole album is, it is, but just how it's an obvious grafting of punk and sleaze to Aerosmith. In fact, if you mixed ____ punk band, with Motley Crue and Aerosmith you get Guns N Roses's first album.
it's great.

Grade: A+
A Side: Welcome to the Jungle, Sweet Child O' Mine, Mr. Brownstone, Paradise City
BlindSide: Nighttrain, Rocket Queen, It's So easy.




Guns N Roses - G n' R Lies - 1988

The one with Patience on it. And, if there is any doubt about the slavish adoration for the Toxic Twins, there's a rousing cover of Aerosmith's "Mama Kin". You can get those tracks elsewhere, this is unnecessary now.

Grade: C
A Side: Patience, Used to Love Her
BlindSide: Mama Kin
DownSide: Nice Boys



Guns N Roses - Use Your Illusion 1 - 1991

For my money, Illusion 1 is a more rewarding spinner than the debut record. But it's also a different record. The band has, for the most part, shed it's punk roots (Right Next Door to Hell notwithstanding) and embraced all sorts of rock themes. It's an aggressive record but, sonically, spectacular. "Perfect Crimes" could be a Motorhead track, then followed by the Stones-esque "You Ain't The First".
Sure, the singles are what we all remember, but there are muscular tracks like "Bad Apples" and "Dead Horse" that keep the record pounding long into it's 60th minute of play. I think Matt Sorum really fits the sound the band was going for and "Back Off Bitch" would never have gotten the same treatment by Steven Adler. The same goes for the energy of Double Talkin Jive, a real centerpiece on an album filled with them.
You get your money's worth with UYI1, it's relentless and devastating. In 1973, Paul McCartney's "Live and Let Die" came out. By 1991 it was schmaltz. Not only does GNR update it for the times, it STILL, 19 years later, packs a whallop. It's a testament that the rest of the album lives up to that track. I feel like this is the real GnR classic.

Grade: A+
ASide: Don't Cry, November Rain, Right Next Door to Hell, Live and Let Die, Back Off Bitch
BlindSide: Dead Horse, Bad Apples, Dust n Bones, Bad Obsession, Double Talkin' Jive, Don't Damn Me



Guns N Roses - Use Your Illusion 2 - 1991

Opening with an excerpt from Cool Hand Luke, "Civil War" opens the second set of 1991's GnR offerings like the second act of a big rock show. Bigger, if that's even possible, than the first set, this is the more methodical, anthemic GnR. The one that bridges the connective tissue between Aerosmith and Queen, the band's semi-disparate influences. I say that because while Queen's Brian May could shred with the best of them (Check out Dead on Time from Jazz) it's not May that excites Axl. It's Freddie Mercury. And he's brought the pomp in spades, brilliantly offset by Slash's guitar heroics and the best rhythm section of 80's stadium rock. Evidenced by the jaunty 70s rock of "14 Years", the band hasn't lost it's way, but the bloat of pablum like "Yesterdays" might indicate that they were a little tired and should have waited to put out a B-Side, rarities, thing, thought I do have a soft spot for their version of "Knockin' on Heaven's Door", so much so that my own band's "1000 Years" could be considered a direct rip. Influence. i meant influence. The song serves as Rose's answer to Bon Jovi's "Blaze of Glory". But is there anything as awful in the band's collection as "Get in the Ring"? The fact that the music is wasted on terrible lyrics and poorly over processed spoken word/rap is a testament to just how good the band is. But the bloat that follows feels more like filler than joyous rock n roll carnage. Except for the occasional bright spots like the trip-metal of "Locomotive" and the excess but exciting, "Breakdown", the albums lags more than one would hope, considering it's brother. And at least that record didn't have a "So Fine" to drag it to the maws of crap. A song that even latter day Crue would have rejected. The bloated "Estranged" is no real worthy successor to "Don't Cry" and "November Rain", of which it is supposed to be the closer of a trilogy. And the theme to Terminator 2, "You Could Be Mine" felt like rock-by-numbers in 91 and still does today. And it goes without saying that "My World" lays the groundwork for what Chinese Democracy was going to be all about. All you had to do was listen to that.
But don't. It's awful.

Grade: C-
ASide: Civil War, Knockin' On Heaven's Door
BlindSide: Breakdown, Locomotive
DownSide: Yesterdays, Get in the Ring, So Fine, My World

It should go without saying that The Spaghetti Incident? is a covers album and I am loathe to give it any of my time and Chinese Democracy is GnR is brand name only.

The state of the movie industry

Recently I was engaged in a minor conversation/debate regarding the decline in box office this holiday season. It could be looked at from many angles but everyone seems to point to internet thievery, piracy and a comparison to the music industry.
Here's what I think:
Before we lay all the blame at the feet of “pirates” (and I’m no fan) let’s also take into consideration a few other facts.
1. Hollywood makes a LOT less movies than they ever have before.
2. There are no Holiday themed movies which count for a good portion of the Winter box office (Elf, Polar Express to name a couple from the recent past).
3. It’s very expensive to go to the movies. $8 is an average ticket cost nationwide and the internet, XBOX, WII, Netflix have cut deeply into disposable cash availability.
4. If consumers are cutting their cable bills wouldn’t it stand to reason they aren’t going to offset that savings with exorbitant trips to the theater?
5. The music industry is very different from the movie one. Music is a very personal experience that most people enjoy in solitude. Movies are communal storytelling. The more the people involved in the experience the more it’s heightened.
6. While we are no longer in a recession, would you rather take your kids to Yogi Bear for X-Mas or get them the better Buzz Lightyear toy?
7. I am less concerned over box office, which I think is only slightly affected by theft, than I am by theft of television programming.
8. The music industry is suffering, sure. But, then how to explain the 1+ million first week SALES of Taylor Swift and the million plus sales of Kanye West? (Both albums are extraordinary by the way) Even Michael Jackson sold 3 mill of his posthumous release. The trouble the music industry has been having IS the same as the movie, but not what you might think:
It isn’t piracy. It’s noise. These two industries used to be able to pound their fodder into your head through limited ad space. Ad space isn’t limited anymore. It’s diversified. That should be great, right? Except that the attention is split, quartered, vivisected, pulverized. It’s all noise now. Advertising has no “special event” quotient. The Beatles on iTunes? That could have been an event. In 2003. But now it’s just…well, okay, great. What else ya got?
Movies were special. They were events. People talked about them. Now people talk about them…and everything else! Facebook, Twitter, blogs, comments, my god, how could you possibly catch up on what’s out there? How can anything get real traction?
The fight over net neutrality might be the answer. If we take away the freedoms of the net access theft can be choked. But at what cost? And what if, heaven forbid, we create this new world of vertical integration, of total corporate internet consolidation, arrest downloaders, stop rampant theft and the population STILL doesn’t go to the movies? What or who will we blame next?
There are less movies and those that are made are, for much of them, awful programmers. Is the answer to make better movies? Not really. There’s too much competition for those dollars.
In 1980 there were 3 networks and a handful of local stations and a fledgling company called HBO. Atari was barely a home option. Maybe, MAYBE, you had a VTR. And movies cost nothing. And, let’s be honest, by the end of that decade we were still a culture that viewed moviegoing as an artistic experience. The last vestiges of the cultural takeover of the 60s.
It’s 30 years later.
Apple TV. iPad. Hulu. Crackle. Netflix. RedBox. HBO, Starz, Showtime. VOD. Amazon VOD. XBOX. Wii. Playstation. Kinect. VuDu.Blu-Ray.
My goodness, we’ve splintered the entertainment options so many times how could we possibly expect people to go OUT??? We’ve built so many systems to keep them IN! And we want to be in, man. I’ve got a 50″ plasma with 5.1 surround sound and I curl up on my couch with my dog and my daughter and my pregnant wife and I microwave some 100 calorie popcorn and I pour ice cold Diet Pepsi from the $.89 2 liter bottle and I pause when someone needs to go to the bathroom.
Or I pull out the Rock Band set and we all go to town and make a crapload of noise playing together as a family band.
But the internet thieves, they’re the problem.
The studios used the economic downturn and the writer’s strike to kill producer deals and make less product. With less product comes less work availability, so they were able to squeeze performers into taking less since there’s just not as much work out there. But, it has bitten them on the backside, too. Because just like the fact that there was a glut of movies over the past 20 years the cutting back means less for people to see. I’m not going to see The Social Network again. But there aren’t as many options as before. This should be a good thing. Except that less product means there HAS to be less income. The music industry never really got this.
They continue to put out more and more and more in the hopes that something will stick. When the way it used to be was, sign a band, stick with them, cultivate them, sell a few, a few more and then they create their masterpiece and everyone does well. When the industry needed to scale down it couldn’t because the internet and the computer makes it possible for every little shitty band in every town in every city to put out and market their own music.
Think about that: 10 major cities. 20 clubs per city. 4 bands playing per night with no allowance for overlap shorter than 2 weeks (Clubs used to ask for this. They don’t want you wasting your “fan” attraction before you play their club. Band love this for the same reason. They don’t want to burn out.)
4 x 20 x 7 x 2 x 10. 11000 bands. In just 10 cities. So, there’s obviously more. And now ALL of them are recording their “music”.
Holy crap. How to compete with that? How to make it special when there are 3-10 thousand albums being produced a year?
And now movies. We need to not encourage the DIY of YouTube and Google. But we can’t help ourselves. We’re always for the little guy. The David. He’ll eventually slay Goliath, cause Goliath can’t co-opt them all.
And then it’s over.
Pop will eat itself.

Music Twenty-10

I didn't sample nearly the amount of music I have in the past so a "best of" list wouldn't be fair, truly. But there were some extraordinary spins, good listens and disappointments as well as a turkey or two. So here's my 2010.

My favorite spins of the year



Steel Train - Steel Train (Buy It, Dammit)

Without a doubt THIS was our album of the year. I blogged about it here
Just a fun mix of anthemic rock and Indie aesthetic. Self produced and distributed, this was my album of 2010.



Against Me! - White Crosses (Get it here and get it on vinyl with the digital download, you won't be sorry)

One of the best vinyl purchases of the year, White Crosses was more radio friendly and MOR than New Wave but it was big and it was fun and it was explosive and we loved every minute of it. The first half was stronger than the second but the beauty of vinyl is that you KNOW which side is which and that's how it should be. One different than the other. I think....



The Gaslight Anthem - American Slang (Get the vinyl here. When I did it came with a DD, dunno about now.)

The other vinyl purchase from SideOne Dummy records arrived on the same day and did not disappoint. Building on the strengths of The '59 Sound but with better production and a beautiful gatefold (How I miss those) this album is one strong track after another and a must for any Bruce Springsteen fan who hated Working on a Dream with as much loathing as I did.



Taylor Swift - Speak Now
My wife threatened to leave me if I bought this on vinyl. She didn't want to walk in to her husband on the couch holding a Taylor Swift record. It was too much. She was afraid our unborn son might curl up and wither in embarrassment. That said, the songs here are just as strong as on Fearless and, in many ways, better. Taylor wrote the songs herself and used her poison pen to great success.



Kanye West - My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy

I rejected this album on principle. That being that I am a short sighted and narrow minded person. I was blinded by Kanye's public persona and I haven't given rap a cursory listen since Eminem's The Eminem Show. When I finally gave in it was a revelation. The hit "Runaway" doesn't really work as a radio single, but nestled in the middle of this, that song is epic, tragic, reflective, amazing. As is the rest of this record.




Cee-Lo - The Lady Killer

It's not as great as that single, but holy crap that single. And it's as good as it needs to be.



Devo - Something for Everybody

Devo is back. Again. But they've learned a LOT from the tv scoring and the Dev2.0 crap they were involved with. This is Freedom of Choice part two. A treat. You will love it. The bridge between 1981 and 2010.

Better Than It Deserved to Be



Weezer - Hurley

Every Weezer fan laments every release that are not the second coming of Pinkerton. Get over it. This is a catchy pop-rock band. The epitome of 21st century bubblegum. If you're expecting more, move on.

Disappointments



I hate it when a band I love peaks but I think that might have happened with The Hold Steady. The first 3 records are extraordinary and then they slip and finally fall. Read my full review here:



If you read this blog you know I love me some Jukebox the Ghost. They were the best album of 2008 (written here) and their concert was fantastic as I wrote about here.. So you can imagine my disappointment when I didn't love the follow up. I think I might rate it a little higher now that I've lived with it for a few months. But not much. Here's that review.

The Bad




Meat Loaf - Hang Cool Teddy Bear

Ugh. Talk about nauseating. The review is at the bottom of the Meat Loaf Listening Post Here.Read it if you like. What a bad record.

That's it. That's the music that filled the Lulu house for 2010. Of course there was a lot more, retrospectives and the like. But of the new tunes, this is all we really dealt with.
We'll see what 2011 brings.

Listening Post: Sparks - Propaganda

Sparks - Propaganda - 1974

Like I said before. 1974. Crazy.
Obviously if this and the previous Sparks album were put out 15 years later, on CD, they would have been one offering, as Propaganda plays like Kimono My House part 2. But more of the same is terrific if what was before was as great as Kimono. Loony and more British than an LA band has a right to be. The Maels wear their influences on their sleeve and, while the production is just as keen as the previous record, the highlight is neither that nor the musicianship, its not even Russell's voice, all of which are stellar. It's the songwriting. Catchy as hell ("Reinforcements"), insightful ("At Home, At Work, At Play", "Never Turn Your Back on Mother Earth"), and just plain loopy ("B.C.", "Thanks But No Thanks", "Something for the Girl with Everything"). The Maels have captured the mid-decade confluence of dada-art and commercialism, albeit both are disguised within another. While it could use a little editing here and there ("Achoo" seems to go on forever, but maybe that's the point) Propaganda is another winner from Sparks.

Grade: B+
A Side: At Home At Work At Play, Never Turn Your Back on Mother Earth, Something for the Girl With Everything
BlindSide: Reinforcements, B.C., Achoo
DownSide: Don't Leave Me Alone With Her

Listening Post: Sparks - Kimono My House

Sparks- Kimono My House - 1974

Someday I'm going to get around to doing the Listening Post for the year 1974. A watershed year, I think. So much music really came into it's own: Metal, Glam, classic Rock, it was a grand time.
Sparks' 3rd album, the extraordinary merry-go-round of lunacy Kimono My House, which came out that year, is at once an epic of singular fun while at the same time picking up the mantle of Beatle glam and Queen sass and running wild.
Russell has embraced his anglophilia while brother Ron, writing epics of dubious nature (The exquisite epic glam waltz/lullaby "Falling in Love with Myself again" for example) and operatic genius ("This Town....") has truly found his voice.
The first side of Kimono is relentless. "Here in Heaven" is haunting and grandiose, worthy of Broadway. The breathless "Thank God it's not Christmas" calls to mind a 70s movie car chase with a vocal that calls to mind Freddie Mercury at his falsetto best.
The lost traveler opener of the second side, "Hasta Manana, Monsieur" is cute with it's obvious, cheeky, fish out of water lyrics, but it's not up to the par of the rest of the record. But it rights itself quickly with the bouncy Kinks pop of "Talent is an Asset", a terrific 3rd person tale of overindulgent parents and their prodigy. Reminds me of "Making Plans for Nigel" or any of the myriad songs in this idiom from English rock. It's quite brilliant. And on a record of great songs, it's a standout as is the equally jaunty "Complaints".
I could go on, song by song (well I guess I have) but the bottom line is that Kimono My House is one of the best top to bottom records of it's kind, an explosive yet bizarre (Sometimes macabre) glam pop rock relic of the mid-70s. If you think you know the era but you haven't heard this, you are not as educated as you think. It's a must.

Grade: A
ASide: This Town Ain't Big Enough for the both of Us, Amateur Hour, Talent is an Asset
BliindSide: Falling in Love With Myself Again, Here in Heaven, Thank God it's Not Christmas, Complaints, In My Family
Downside: Equator

Listening Post: Sparks - A Woofer in Tweeter's Clothing

Sparks - A Woofer in Tweeter's Clothing - 1972

Sparks gets much closer to perfecting their brand of glam and goof on their sophomore outing. Once again the record is front loaded as "Girl From Germany" is a splendid way to start but it's at about 3 songs in with the scattershot and epic "Nothing is Sacred" coupled with the string festooned "Here Comes Bob" that the album gets its fun on. "Moon Over Kentucky" completes the first side and shows the pathway to greatness that the forthcoming "This Town Ain't Big Enough for the Both of Us" would exemplify.
Side Two opens with a looney yet earnestly rocking version of Rogers and Hammerstein's "Do-Re-Mi" which would almost kill were it not for Russell's insistence on using that faux french accent which works later on "The Louvre" but is too distracting to ever convert anyone expecting mainstream pop to these guys. A denser and more rewarding record than their first, Sparks makes it clear that they are not for everyone but if you get them, they can be a real treat.

Grade B
A Side: Girl From Germany
BlindSide: Nothing is Sacred, Moon Over Kentucky
DownSide: Angus Desire, Whippings & Apologies

Listening Post: Sparks

Has anyone ever listened to every Sparks record? Well, I'm pretty sure the Mael brothers did but, other than them, I'm skeptical. So I'm about to change that.




Sparks/Halfnelson - Halfnelson - 1971

I bought Angst in my Pants after hearing "I Predict" on some New Wave stations and college radio. So, I assumed Sparks was a cheeky, humor band. When I saw Ron Mael's sardonic, determinedly non-musical presentation and his Chaplin/Hitler moustache I was convinced that this group spoke to my outside the mainstream aesthetic. I was pretty close. And when I would have the time and an extra couple bucks I would wander to a used record store (Most of the time it was Sounds in the East Village) and I would grab me an old Sparks record.
It took me a while to get my hands on the debut record and when I got it to my dorm and popped it on the turntable I was surprised to hear a very stripped down and bare sound, unlike the later glam gigantosaurs.
More surprising was the french accent lead singer Russel Mael adopted for much of the first side of the record. "Wonder Girl", the only single, and the only really memorable track, sounds like a french band trying to sound American. Or worse, an American band trying to sound like a French band trying to sound American.

Grade: C-
A Side: Wonder Girl
BlindSide: No More Mr. Nice Guys
DownSide: The rest.

Listening Post: Jukebox the Ghost - Everything Under the Sun

Jukebox the Ghost - Everything Under the Sun - 2010 (Buy it. I recommend the Vinyl with the digital download)

Originally published at PopDose Here

In the long history of rock music, there have always been two constants. One is a steady stream of pablum spoonfed by the industry conglomerates feeding their own beasts and satisfying stockholders, maintaining corporate expense accounts and living in largesse.

This panoply of easily forgotten music is supported, in no short amount, by the consumers who just HAVE to have that new Usher record. Or are suckered into the Beyonce remixes. Or queue up their digital download device to whatever tortured, guyliner wearing emo-punk of the moment. It is from this well that we drink up the latest Disney creation. The gamut runs from baseless, bald-faced commercialism to high-minded musical royalty.

The other constant is all the music that bubbles under the surface. The “Indie” band struggling to make it on their own with just a scrappy minor label who may or may not have a distribution deal with a major but is still doing things on “their terms” with integrity, fortitude and, if they’re really, really lucky, a spot in the early afternoon on one of Lollapalooza’s stages.

My Jukebox the Ghost LP came in the mail today.

Who? Jukebox the What?

The band’s name shouldn’t ring any bells for you. They get no airplay. They’re not sexy, have no singles and, except for one late summer, underwatched last-minute appearance on Letterman, are virtually unknown to all but those who traffic in the blogosphere (yes, I still call it the blogosphere. Deal with it. I sometimes use “hella” as well). They did get to play Lollapalooza this summer, though. So, their star is on the rise.

Jukebox the Ghost’s first album, Let Live and Let Ghost, was my favorite record of 2008. A compact set of intricate ditties at times relentlessly hooky and, at others, stupefyingly ambitious. The two sets of multi-song suites on that record belie the youthful naivete of the trio that formed out of George Washington University’s undergraduate program. In fact, it was probably just that naivete that allowed them the hubris necessary to pull that record off. Part Ben Folds, Part Queen, Part prog rock, part indie, part power pop, JtG made me so happy that year. And now they’ve returned with a new set of songs, a strong producer Peter Katis (Interpol, the National) and a hundred thousand miles of touring behind them.

And maybe that’s the problem.

The band sounds not quite weary, but not so cheeky as they have been. They’ve never shied away from tackling topics larger than just boy meets girl or boy pines for girl; their last album featured an epic meditation on a wrathful God’s smiting of an earth that disappointed him. And they try to hit those heights again. But they don’t really try that hard.

“Schizophrenia,” the most recent single from the record, follows the toothless but catchy “Empire.” Both are quirky and smart and have one more thing in common: They are each more promise than delivery. On their first album the boys had struck gold with a pair of singles that were priceless in their hummability. “Good Day” & “Hold It In” were spectacular introductory songs and the rest of that album blossomed into a surprising collection of self-assured epics. Everything Under the Sun tries so hard to be a sequel and it almost succeeds. The key being the word almost.

One after another, the guys dabble in that power poppy idiom and, on that first side/half they very nearly succeed. “Half Crazy” is speedy and easy to catch onto. The toy-casio keyboards evoke the early ’80s goofball stuff by the Rubinoos, and that’s super. Once it’s gone, it’s gone, though. And we don’t get back to it until well into the end of the record with “The Popular Thing,” a jangly, backbeat faux soul that calls to mind the Elvis Costello of Punch the Clock and the vocal gymnastics of Russell Mael of Sparks. It’s piffle, but it’s sublime piffle. It’s the kind of track you hear at the end of a Mean Girls/Easy A/Clueless movie. No doubt we will.

In between we are treated to the quite excellent “Empire,” a single which went nowhere and that’s sad, because it’s a little indie earworm — as is the lovely “Mistletoe.”

Jukebox the Ghost tries so hard to prove that they are able — able to play (they most certainly are) and able to write (the aforementioned melodies) — that they forget to have fun.

With 25 songs to choose from written over the past two years I have to wonder what they chose to forgo to include the dull and uninspired pair of “Let Us Create” and “Carrying.”

If you’ve been lucky enough to sit through “Where are All The Scientists Now” and “A Matter of Time” from the first album (please, I implore you to), then you’ve heard the new album’s track penultimate track, “Stars.” It’s no wonder, since they were both written by Thomas Siegal, the lead guitarist. Had “Stars” been included on that first record, no doubt I would be singing its praises. On that album, these epics came out of nowhere, this little trio of guitar, drum and keys and their enormous worldview. Universe-view, really. Those songs were surprises, to be sure.

On Everything Under the Sun, the surprise is over and I’m left cold. Thus, about half of this album I would categorize as redundant. The other half is fine, workman-like indie pop. Everything Under The Sun is, at best, a placeholder. Definitely not the calling card of their first record. Hopefully they’ll get another shot.

Grade: B-
ASide: Schizophrenia, Empire, Misteltoe
BlindSide: Half Crazy, The Popular Thing
DownSide: Carrying

3.5 Hours with The Hold Steady

Three and half hours with The Hold Steady

I've espoused my love for this band before. They put out a new album this year and I was so excited that I pre-ordered on iTunes. And then kicked myself because for just a couple bucks more I could have bought the LP and it CAME with a digital download. Alas, now would be a good time to go back and listen to the band's albums. First off, I love the opening three. And maybe I'll like the fourth more. And then there's the new one. Which I've given one listen to and I'm not really impressed. Okay. Now that we all know what I am going to do. I guess I should do it, yes?

0:00 – 43:00

Almost Killed Me – 2004



Sure, “Certain Songs” sounds like a band aping Springsteen. Even though they are song-checking Meat Loaf and Billy Joel. But that's not the whole story of The Hold Steady's debut. It opens with a shaggy guitar and a poetic screed that asks us at one point, that “the 80s, almost killed me, let's not recall them oh so fondly.”
The Hold Steady's first album has a lot of negative things to say about the go-go decade while Craig Finn spouts out about how elated he is to be in a band again.
It's hard to get used to his speak-singing, since he sounds like Jello Biafra fronting a 70s cover band. And yet he pulls off lyrics like, “I've been trying to get people to call me sunny d. i've got the good stuff kids go for. people keep calling me five alive. because the last guy didn't really die.”
I'm sure there are some beautiful melodies that could be written to Tad Kubler's music but that's not was The Hold Steady is all about. It's about a couple guys who are really too tall for the rock and roll ride deciding to do it anyway and along the way becoming the grand-daddies of the Indie Rock movement, and one of the best bar bands in the world. It's about a world of characters that we will return to, like Charlemagne. It's about the love of rock and roll and telling stories and chord changes and not being too precious and being “close enough for rock and roll”. And, dammit, a sax even shows up at one point.
The thing is, THS doesn't wanna be one of the Indie Kids. They wanna rock, dammit. They make fu of the trucker hat wearing club kids. They would probably have been more at home opening for Foreigner in 1982 than finding themselves lumped into conversations alongside The National. As Finn looks back at the “Killer Parties” which “Almost Killed Me”, I feel like I'm in good hands. Like this storyteller has a lot to say and, being that I'm too old for the ride myself, I'm sure I can relate.

I adore this record. It's awkward and difficult to listen to and confessional as hell but worth every second.

One of my favorite debut albums ever. Took me 6 years to get to it. But it was worth it.

Grade: A
A Side: A Positive Jam, The Swish,
BlindSide: Certain Songs, Barfruit Blues, Killer Parties
DownSide:

43:00 – 1:25:00

Separation Sunday – 2005



This was one of those albums that EVERYONE had on Soulseek. I tried to listen to a couple tracks but they didn't do anything for me. Then Mojo listed “Cattle and the Creeping Things” as one of the greatest punk songs of all time and it didn't do anything for me. Then Hurley said to the girl in the record store “The Hold Steady is playing tonight....” And, I figured, if Lost got it and Mojo and all the Indie kids on Soulseek and I didn't, what the fuck, right? So, I gave up.
And then I really listened.
And it's brilliant.
We're really following characters now. Craig, our leader. Charlemagne, the pimp, Holly also known as Halleluiah, who's a prostitute and a drug addict and Gideon.
What the fuck Mojo was getting at makes no sense as “Cattle” is a really great rock march, a stadium anthem with a groove that would make the greatest 70s classic rock bands lick their lips with envy.
“Your Little Hoodrat Friend” is the closest they've come to a song you can sing along to. Finn's weird-ass drunk poet warbling actually pulls off something amazing here: Spoken singing. It's almost a pop song.
And lemme tell ya, rock, in all it's great four chord glory is alive and air-guitar-licious on “Banging Camp”. And “Charlemagne in Sweatpants” is what you get when you're a bar band who stayed up all night listening to The Rolling Stones's Tattoo You.
Halleluiah's redemption by the end is almost heartbreaking. The hoodrat came home. And, I think she'll be okay.

I could go on and on, but the fact of the matter is Separation Sunday is a masterpiece. An album so steeped in religion, beat poetry and classic rock that the only way to really appreciate it is to set aside about 45 minutes and get into it.

Grade: A+
A Side: Cattle and the Creeping Things, Your Little Hoodrat Friend, Chicago Seemed Tired last Night, How a Ressurection Really Feels
BlindSide: Hornets! Hornets!, Banging Camp, Charlemagne in Sweatpants, Stevie Nix, Multitude of Casualties

1:25:00 – 2:05:00




Boys And Girls in America - 2006

On Boys and Girls Keyboardist Franz Nicolai is given a helluva lot to do. He's playing Roy Bittan to Finn's Springsteen. And he brings melody to “Stuck Between Stations”. One of the best tracks in the band's career. A song you can sing along with. Actually, a lot of B&GiA is comprised of more songs than the spoken word set to rock of the earlier THS stuff. But the characters are back. Gideon, Charlemagne, Holly...well, she's in the hospital not far from the bar where we all met on that “First Night”.
“Chips Ahoy” is about a guy whose girlfriend is psychic and she doesn't have to work because she always knows which horse is going to win at the racetrack. But, it could be about Saturday night at the roller rink for all we care. It's just grand.
This is the record where it all comes together. The soaring guitars, the poetry, the stadium rock posing as an Indie Band.
In the mood for some 70s inspired rock? "Hot Soft Light".
Need some edgy boogie rock? "Some Kooks".
One of my personal favorites (heck, they're all terrific) is Party Pit. If you've ever been to a bonfire with beer buckets and stoners in the woods, you know this place. "Just gonna walk around and drink some more." is the perfect sentiment to those aimless late nights. This is not just an album about partying. It's about being at the party. And it's not an Andrew W.K. kind of PARTY!!!. It's a chaperoned, glee-filled, spiked punch party.
"Citrus" calls to mind the acoustic balladeering of Zeppelin. Though, I'm not sure they were singing an ode to alcohol. But with such pinpoint accuracy and deft wordplay...Example:
hey citrus
hey liquor
I love it when when you touch each other

hey whiskey
hey ginger
I come to you with rigid fingers.

i see judas in the hard eyes of the boys working the corners.

i feel jesus in the clumsiness of young and awkward lovers.

After you've gotten a little too high you might need some time in the "Chillout Tent". Craig's story of two kids who get way too high on E (probably), find themselves in that Chillout Tent, make out and never see each other again, is a hopeless but too true commentary on the rave lifestyle. Neither seem too fazed by the experience. But the millenials are sort of inured to those kinds anyway.

The album closes with the ready-made classic "Southtown Girls". With it's lazy, faux country sensibilities, it's the perfect coda to a grand 40 minutes.
I can't recommend this record higher.

Grade A+
A Side: Stuck Between Stations, Chips Ahoy, First Night, Southtown Girls
BlindSide: Party Pit, Massive Nights, Citrus, Chillout Tent
DownSide: none.

2:05:00 – 2:49:00


Stay Positive - 2008




When the band backs up Finn, yelling out, "This Summer!" on the opening track, "Constructive Summer", I can hear Black Flag's "TV Party" and, it makes me happy. They haven't really forgotten their punk roots, The Hold Stead. Name checking Joe Strummer isn't a bad idea, either.
"Constructive Summer" is actually the right progression for the band. It's a bold melding of the Separation Sunday THS and the Boy and Girls one.
In no time they are reminding us of why we loved that last album with the first single, "Sequestered in Memphis". That organ, though. They are bringing out the kitchen sink and feeling their E-streetiness. Saxophones? This time the story is matched by rhymes and choruses which, at first, seem out of place and I don't know why. And then I realize: that's not what The Hold Steady does. Songs? Rhymes schemes? Sing along choruses? Maybe on their covers and rarities. It's a step in the absolute right direction.
“One for the Cutters” continues the "local townies" aesthetic that helped rise the previous record to new heights (this time calling to mind the 70s film, Breaking Away), but it's weakened by the harpsichord (huh?) battling for space with a grand piano feels crazily out of place. I applaud the attempt to expand and give Nicolau free reign but it's very disconcerting.

And whatever instrumentation they are forcing upon us on "Navy Sheets" doesn't help this album make a good impression. New Wave synths have no place on a Hold Steady record. Kind of makes me wonder if Kubler and the guys are running out of ideas.
"Lord, I'm Discouraged" feels like the sort of sleepy, anthem ballad that the guys can write in their sleep. It works. It's not surprising, it doesn't jolt you, but it works. It recalls some of the best meandering stadium ballads of the 70s with a soaringly eligiac solo at the 3:20 mark that will have you reaching for a lighter.
And the dustbowl, almost Jovi-esque, "Both Crosses" can't quite the mustard. This time, it's because heavy echo won't mask the fact that Craig Finn isn't a singer. And yet, he's trying something more than spoken word. He's trying to wrap his larynx around this idiom. He fails and it's not spectacular.
The album gets itself back on track with the title track. A big “woah-oh-oh-oh” song that chunks and moves and explodes into an aural depiction of the previous album's cover art. Once they get their footing, they follow with "Magazine", "Joke about Jamaica" and the excellent epic, "Slapped Actress".
If Boys and Girls was The Hold Steady's nod to Springsteen and 70s arena rock, Stay Positive shows the band expanding it's musical palette and trying to avoid pigeonholing and redundancy.
But shooting for that moon they just miss and the resulting record is a hodgepodge.

Grade B- (This rating has changed a bit since the DoubleShot from last year. I think the record is slightly better than I originally thought. It could have just been expectations, since Boys and Girls was so wonderful they couldn't have done anything but come down from there)
A Side: Constructive Summer, Sequestered in Memphis, Stay Positive, Slapped Actress
BlindSide: Lord I'm Discouraged, Joke About Jamaica
DownSide: One for the Cutters, Navy Sheets, Both Crosses

2:49:00 – 3:30:00


Heaven is Whenever - 2010

1.The Sweet Part of the City – Why is Finn mixed so far back? It's interesting to listen to this right after hearing Sticky Fingers. If the earlier Hold Steady records were Springsteen and the later ones Zeppeling, this is starting off sounding like the Stones. It's a languid piece. Not how I would start off a record but I'm not in a band anymore. I'm going to infer from the last line “We were bored so we started a band. We'd like to play for you.” that this is a reminiscence of humble beginnings. Different than the band that wrote “A Positive Rage”.
2.Soft in the Center – A single! A pop song! It feels like the band has decided that poet-of-the-street is fine and all but wouldn't it be great to, I dunno, sell some records? The only problem is that the production really stinks.
3.The Weekenders – Wow. So, we're revisiting the duo from “Chips Ahoy”. Okay, Finn has done this a lot. He's got a notebook of characters. This story, however, doesn't really take us any further. I wonder if it's just easier to write great stories when you're holed up in a dank apartment in Brooklyn than to write on a tour bus.
4.The Smidge – More cowbell! And that other rattley percussion instrument. You know, the one with a stick that you run up and down grooves. I don't know what it is. But it's here.
5.Rock Problems – Is it The Ramones? Sure, they've ripped about everyone else off. Might as well put the basic melody of “Chips Ahoy” over a Ramones-y chukka-chukka bed. It's an hollow tune. Wow. When did I become a Hold Steady hater?
6.We Can Get Together – Finn has dropped Meat Loaf titles in songs before. Here he's name checking Husker Du and Utopia as well. But, I'm bored. I've been here before. These nameless “he's” and “She's” are tiring. I miss Charlemagne and Halleluiah and even Gideon. This is treacly and mawkish and I kind of hate it.
7. Hurricane J – Oh. Here's a character. Jessie. Let's see what this is about. It's really lackluster. I want so badly to give a shit about this character or this song but I don't.
8.Barely Breathing – Don't sing, Craig. Don't sing over some forbrush-y vaudeville guitar. Don't sing over a back beat swing. Ever. EVER!
9.Our Whole Lives – By now I feel like the band is just uninspired and are realizing that it's been 2 years since they released an album. Maybe I would like this if I had never heard the 1st three albums. But I did and they need to do better.
10.A Slight Discomfort – An awful, uninspired, aimless, directionless, useless piece of poorly recorded shit.

Wow. Is the gleam this far off the rose? Three amazing records, one mediocre and one disaster. In that order. It's going to be hard to recover from this. And I don't know if I will be there when they try.

Grade: D+
A Side: The Sweet Part of the City
BlindSide: Soft in the Center
DownSide: The Smidge, Heaven in Whenever

DoubleShot: Nightmare of You

The idea is to highlight an album that truly resonated with me. A personal classic. Or just a really great entry album. By that I mean, the record that brought me in to a band's fold. And, then, their follow up. The sophomore. Slump? Brilliance? We'll see.




Nightmare of You - Nightmare of You - 2005

A band I'm pretty sure you have never heard of. I was at the gym when a friend of mine stuck my earbuds into his iPod and made me listen. One song in and I was hooked. I picked up the eponymous debut album at Amoeba that day and, I gotta tell ya: this album is 5 years old and has never, ever left my iPod. In some playlist or other I have this record. Why is it so good?
First off, there are tremendous hooks. "The Days Go By So Slow", "Dear Scene, I Wish I Were Deaf", these are two epic, hook-laden, retro-80s, lush emo rock songs, deceptively steeped in 50s songcraft. The way singer Brandon Reilly wraps his throat around wordplay and rhyme schemes of, say, Thumbelina, only add to the catchiness of the songs.
The album is relentless in it's pop-hook assault. The electro-nightclubbing Simple Minds-esque "My Name is Trouble" and quasi-college Indie "Why Am I Always Right?', the brilliant "I Want to Be Buried in Your Backyard", paint vivid pictures of desperation, loss, death, love and all of them make you want to lower the top and sing along on a coast drive.
Does it stop?
Nope.
The skiffle pop of "Ode to Seratonin".
The faux-country of "Marry Me".
The urgent "In the Bathroom is Where I Want You".
The driving "The Studded Cinctures".
It's amazing that every single song on this album is great. It's like a best of record by a band you've never heard of but wish you did so you could collect all the rest of their colection. Except that this is the debut.
Closing on the french cabaret inspired, "Heaven Runs on Oil", well, if you can't tell, I think this album is an unknown classic.

Grade A+
A Side: The Days Go By So Slow, Dear Scene, I Wish I Were Deaf, I Want to Be Buried in Your Backyard
BlindSide: Everything Else.
Downside: Nothing.

Septenary


In between this album and this year there was a brief, forgettable ep called "Bang". I have it. I don't care for it.
But a few weeks ago I got a tweet from NoY that their new album was out. I downloaded it from iTunes immediately.

It's called...





Nightmare of You - Infomaniac - 2009

Starting off with "Good Morning, Waster" I think we're on an interesting ride but, I got the sense that something was wrong. Now, I often give a cursory listen to a second record and dismiss it as not as good as the first, because I'm an impatient a-hole and I want immediate gratification. But this song sounds like a leftover b-side from the first record. It feels like Reilly is trying to sell the tunes through vocal gymnastics, like they all know nothing is really as good as that first record. It's a mellow place to open things with and bleeds into the simplistic "Eustacia Vye" that feels like, gulp, a Panic at the Disco track. A little too Beatles-y for my taste.
The lazy-versed and catchy-chorused, "I think I'm Getting Older" smells of "first single" but it's really obnoxious. What I hate most is that I am singing along even though I know that this is not a great tune.
The first sign that the band hasn't lost all songwriting prowess comes on "Someday, but not Today", which steals heavily from mellow 70s AM radio top 40. It builds to a nice chorus that I can't help but sing along to. It pairs, weirdly, with the retro-70s stuff My Morning Jacket tried earlier this year.
The 50s songcrafting is back on "Hey, Sweetheart" and that's a welcome sign.
But the more troubling things come just after.
"Experimental Bed" should really read as "Experimental Bed of Music that we are not really up to."
"Amsterdam" is just bad but--
"Gavi". Gavi sucks. I assume they are writing from the perspective of a self-serving, indignant, unctuous swinger but the lyrics are so poor and forced that it's almost as embarrassing as its subject matter. In fact, it's really the worst thing this band has committed to...what do we call it now that vinyl is dead, anyway?
The album rights itself, slightly, with "Tell Me When its Over", a song that would fit well into their calssic, hooky, canon. And "Pair of Blue Eyes" and "Please Don't Answer me" are terrificly classic NoY. But they can't save the record.
The last track, "Goodnight, Devil" bookends the album. It wears its adoration of Pink Floyd's the Wall on its sleeve but, even so, that's light years better than most of this record.

Too bad. I was really hoping that this follow up would be as terrific as the first. It's not. It's not awful, but it falls many stories from the debut's heights.

Grade C-
A Side: Someday but Not Today, Tell Me When It's Over, Goodnight Devil
BlindSide: Eustacia Vye, Please Don't Answer Me, I think I'm getting Older
DownSide: Gavi, Experimental Bed

DoubleShot: The Fratellis

In the fall of 2006 I needed some happy. It was a pretty dark time in our lives. But it was also a great time for music. Especially Scottish Rock.
Just when I needed it most, I found the debut import by The Fratellis, a glam/cabaret/britpop trio that were none of them brothers but had adopted the drummer's previously unknown last name as their individual and band moniker.
I don't usually spent upwards of $25 for one cd. But, after hearing some of the tracks through someone on Soulseek, I ran out and got the album asap.
That album was....



The Fratellis - Costello Music - 2006

With it's backbeat Oompa horns and it's dirty glam pop sound, "Henrietta", the first track off Costello Music, explodes with such a pied piper fury that I can't help but think be reminded of the Violent Femmes debut. No, it doesn't sound ANYTHING like that record but the busker aesthetic is there on both records. Like these songs were hewn on the corners of Scotland and recreated in the studio with wild and excited abandon.
You know the second track, "Flathead" because it was the iPod commercial song for a while. And it popped up in weird commercials like Safeway out here in LA. But that doesn't diminish it's hummability. You WANT to follow the top hat waring, vagrant foppishness of Jon Fratelli with a chorus of "ba da bop bop badadadada"s as we shuffle and skip our way through the streets and into the pubs.
"Cuntry Boys & Girls" could have fallen off a Libertines record if it wasn't so...happy. "Whistle for the Choir" proves that Jon Lawler (Jon Fratelli) has a way with melody as well as a turn of phrase.
The album's biggest hit doesn't come until almost halfway through the CD and it's the big, driving glam beat alley rocker "Chelsea Dagger". It's a worthy hit song. It's got everything: Random shouts. Tricky rhymes. Nonsense (do-do-do-dododo-do-do-doo-doo....) that would make The Beatles proud. It's easily one of my favorite tracks of the decade.
"For the Girl" changes the nonsense to "La la"s and is still a hoot. In fact, it helps cement the fact that Costello Music is a great party album. The first half, up to this point could rev up a rave and keep everyone dancing.
The second half of the album takes a slightly different turn starting with "Doginabag" which is a little darker, less fun for the sake of fun. It's not a failure by any stretch and it comes at the perfect time. An entire album of this might wear patience. But after 20 minutes of La Las and Doo-doos, it's a welcome change.
"Creeping up the Backstairs" owes its chord progression to (of all things) Dead Kennedys' Moral Majority but, don't worry, you're safe. The boys keep that sing-a-long ditty aesthetic alive and well.
The rest of the album is just as good. In fact, it never lets up in it's craft and the stories eaved and characters described.
After 20 or so listens you may think you never want to hear Costello Music again, but that's fine. I can't think of many albums I want to listen to a second time.


Grade A
A Side: Chelsea Dagger, Henrietta, Flathead
BlindSide: Cuntry Boys & Girls, For the Girl, Whistle for the Choir
Downside: None, really. It's all fun.

So, you can imagine just how excited I was to buy the follow up album. I didn't waste any time. I knew it was coming out that morning and I fired up the iPod Touch, turned on the Wi-Fi and bought it immediately....



The Fratellis - Here We Stand - 2008

Just about every bit of fun in the foggy streets the band laid out on the previous album was tossed out in favor of trying to emulate, well, Arctic Monkeys. That shouldn't be bad, right? I mean, on the first album they were apeing The Libertines, right? But on that first album Lawler and crew was taking their cue from those turn of the century britpoppers and making it their own. The opening track, "My Friend John" could be mistaken for the Monkeys. And not "Whatever People Say i Am..." Arctic Monkeys. "Favourite Worst Nightmare" Arctic Monkeys.
There seems to be, especially on "A Heady Tale" a concentrated effort to create a bigger sound. A stadium sound. But, it doesn't sound like The Fratellis anymore. It's anonymous. And when they do try to get back to their sound on "Shameless", it sounds tired.
There are good songs on this record, but it doesn't have the explosive fire of the first. It's a sophomore album slumping along. The hits just sound too much like other bands. Look Out Sunshine is really steeped in The Beatles more than ever before and Mistress Mabel....what can be said? It's catchy and fun and toe-tappy but it also calls to mind George Michaels' "Faith" as written by Green Day's side project, Foxboro Hot Tubs. Who, themselves, were ripping on a particular late 60s swinging mod rock sound. To sound like a second rate version of a made up band paying homage to a style...this is not the Fratellis I fell in love with on the first album.
The entire record can be summed up for me by the track, 'Tell me a Lie", which is so distracted by being a mini-britpop rock opera that it never realizes that these guys aren't up to the task. Trying to cram these different styles and tempos into a 3.5 pop song written by street buskers (who seem to also be trying to hard to sound like the White Stripes) the boys only come up short. And unfocused. Which is the sum total of the whole record.
The album really rights it's listing self with the double shots of "Acid Jazz Singer" & "Lupe Brown" which are close as we're gonna get to the Fratellis we fell in love with.
Toward the end of Here We Stand we get possibly the only track that really succeeds in trying to take Lawler's songs to a new place. "Milk & Money" which opens with a melancholy piano which takes it's lead from Kander & Ebb, picks itself up and really rocks out a second half of frenetic instrumentation.
Here We Stand is not a total failure. It's confused. It doesn't reach out and grab the listener the way Costello Music did, but is it worthy attempt at a second record? Sure. Why not. I don't hate it. But I will only cherry pick the songs I like and dump the rest.


Grade B-
A Side: Mistress Mabel, Acid Jazz Singer, Lupe Brown
BlindSide: Baby Doll, Look Out Sunshine, Milk & Money
DownSide: Tell Me A Lie

Listening Post: XTC

It was a heady time. In fact, looking back, I realize that this was the last Listening Post before I burned out. What I did, in reality, was burn myself out. Genesis, XTC and Motley Crue, all listened to and reviewed in one 2 week period. It almost killed me. Genesis actually has some terrific moments and really enjoyable music. Crue can be just fun. XTC was a chore. I was surprised at that.


XTC – White Music – 1978

In 1980 my friend, John, got tickets to see The Cars at Madison Square Garden. Yes, the same John with the Genesis loving sister! I recall his dad thinking that the $18 or thereabouts was quite steep.
Anyhoo.
We stood outside the Garden, waiting to get in and I kept hearing people talking about the opening band, Ecstasy.
They were interesting. After the show we commiserated that they were most definitely better than the main attraction. The Cars were perhaps the most boring live band ever.
The next year I would get my first XTC record and start a flirtation with them much like my passing adoration of The Clash.
So, what is the debut XTC record like?
Man, I do love me some edgy, angular New Wave. White Music explodes with a sound that feels like The Jam was suddenly taken over by a band that was inspired by Devo. “Radios in Motion” is speedy, quirky and every other adjective that fits that synonym.
In the early 80s I had a compilation of Ohio new wave called Red Snerts. A bunch of musicians on the “gulcher” label. It's quite possible that most of them were inspired by “Cross Wires”, a residents song on cocaine.
“This is Pop” is very much the opposite. It's a screed or irony so venomous that you can see the microphone dripping from the spittle Andy Partridge is spewing.
The songs are breakneck and schizophrenic and it isn't until the first side is just about over that we get to hear what this band really is. On “Statue of Liberty” it's obvious that these guys are cut from the same songsmith cloth that made Elvis Costello. They can do any style because their record collection is vast an all encompassing. They love music. They are crazy about pop. And they're a bit off. Case in point: The harmonica driven semi funk diversion cover of “All Along The Watchtower”. It's bizarre and it does just what punk was supposed to do in the mid-70s; it turns the pomp on it's head and raises a mirror to grandiloquence all the while shouting, “fake!” But you can't do that unless you adore the original and I am quite sure Partridge and Moulding do. Very much. It's because they love it that they are able to fully rape the song the way they do.
Side two rights the mistake of that cover with the pop/punk ditty “Atomic Age” and “I'm Setting Myself on Fire” a song I am pretty sure Adam Ant must have heard prior to recording “Dirk Wears White Sox”. It's JUST as annoying as half of that record! In fact, a lot of White Music sounds like it was recorded next to Dirk.

I read a lot of reviews that rate this album in relation to the later work by the band. I don't think that's fair. This is what they sounded like at the time. It's what got them signed, got them paid and laid the foundation for their future, however that might sound.
White Music has all the marks of a band aping the hot sounds of the day in an attempt to make something of themselves. Fortunately, I know that they will figure it all out. On this record they're just trying too hard.

Grade: C+
A Side: This is Pop
BlindSide: Radios in Motion, Statue of Liberty
DownSide: All Along the Watchtower, I'm Bugged



XTC – Go 2 – 1978

From all I've heard, I imagine I could get away with just writing, “the best thing about this album is the cover” and I would be right.
But, I gotta give it a listen anway.
While “Meccanik Dancing” carries that angular stench from the previous record there are actually glimmers of the traditional Partridgian melody in the choruses a hint of “Supergirl”. It's a harbinger of what's to come...I hope.
Which is “Battery Brides”, a sort of ode to Brian Eno. I don't care for the warm jets and I really hate this. A monotonous “melody” interspersed with other notes to break up the monotony. I can't even begin to describe “BuzzCity Talking” except to say that, if I wanted to get out of a record deal, I would put this song on my album.
At least “Crowded Room” & “Red” sound like someone gave a shit and tried to write, I dunno, a Madness song. Soon to be exiting keyboardist Barry Andrews is the only one who scores a somewhat enjoyable track with “My Weapon”.
In the end, Go 2 is less of an album than a collection of unstructured ideas laid down by musicians who know how to pull them off if not give them any life. I don't imagine the label, the musicians, or the fans ever listen to this record and think, “huh...what an underrated album”.
In the 21st Century this was the kind of release that gets you released from your contract.
Others were doing angsty, angular new wave at the same time (Squeeze's U.K. Squeeze among many others come to mind) and they were doing it better.

Grade: D
A Side: My Weapon
BlindSide: Crowded Room,
DownSide: Battery Brides, BuzzCity Talking, Life is Good in the Greenhouse



XTC – Drums & Wires – 1979

Drums & Wires opens with such promise....

“Making Plans for Nigel” is hands down better than anything on the previous two records combined. Andy Partridge gets so much notoriety for XTC. Being the force behind grounding the band from all love shows might have had something to do with it, I guess. But, I keep going back to Colin Moulding as a primary force for this group. And an unsung one, at that.
There is a cohesiveness in the production of this record that at once calls to mind The Police is one of the many things that separates it from those previous two.
“Helicopter” is another disaffected offering from Partridge (who is beginning to sound like an Asperger's sufferer more than a songwriter). It calls to mind all that messy herky jerk but with Steve Lillywhite at the helm it stays afloat.
XTC doesn't make it easy on the listener. There seems to be a discordant guitar forcing it's way into the proceedings at every turn. Or a mind-numbingly annoying riff that never seems to want to end. And just when I find myself hating everything about them, they left turn into some blissfully elastic power pop track like “When You're Near I Have Difficulty”, angsty relationship goo all over this one.
I still find XTC as impenetrable as ever. I had hoped Drums & Wires would allay that somewhat, instead what it does hammer home is the idea that Moulding & Partridge, while talented, are not the geniuses I've always read about. Not yet. Songs on D&W drone on and on long after their welcome was worn. Is it filler or something else, something less professional?
There are tracks that I actively despise, “Roads Girdle the Globe”, a song whose employ of “world rhythms & chants” (quotes mine) are so callous and calculated that I find myself pulling further and further away from the album instead of being drawn in. I feel like Partridge is writing songs that are this difficult and annoying specifically to say, “Anyone can write a song people like, I like to write songs that challenge the listener. And by “challenge” I mean “irritiate”.
Side Two opens with the near-ska “Reel by Reel”, the first XTC track with any discernible guitar solo (Welcome to the party, Dave Gregory!) which, perhaps because it is relegated to the second side, is less self-conscious and more accessible. And “Scissor Man” is pretty great. So is the bloodletting of “Complicated Game”.
But that's not enough to save this record.

Drums & Wires is the third miss in a row for a band that has been so heralded that it warranted a Listening Post. If I wasn't already so familiar with English Settlement and Skylarking I would have dropped this band by now.

Grade C-
A Side: Making Plans for Nigel
BlindSide: When You're Near Me I Have Difficulty, Scissor Man, Complicated Game
Downside: Day In Day Out, Roads Girdle the Globe.



XTC – Black Sea – 1980

If you were to make a mix tape in 1980 of the best, catchiest XTC songs in an effort to convince someone of how great they were, here's what you would do:
You would make a tape made up mostly of Colin Moulding songs and your friend would be hooked. Where we all got off calling Andy Partridge the genius behind XTC I don't know. Because Black Sea is ANOTHER example of Andy's experimental annoyance and Moulding's singular ability to write a catchy hook.
The guy who was responsible for “Making Plans for Nigel” this time brings us the other great pop new wave song from the band: “Generals & Majors”. It's brilliant and on par with, or better than, the interim single, “Life Begins at the Hop”, also by Moulding.
Not to say Partridge doesn't avail himself a bit. “Respectable Street” is a dynamite opener about sex-education or sex-miseducation.
Partridge takes over for much of this record and you either love his overtly quirky sensibilities or you don't. He gives me a headache about 60% of the time, with is over singing and kitchen sink production.
“Towers of London” and “Paper & Iron” are great constructions. I would prefer them to be instrumentals. Partridge's self-conscious lyrics and shoehorned melodies don't do it for me.
I will admit that, until the breakdown, I really like “Burning with Optimism's Flame”. I think I would like it a lot more if Moulding was able to get his hands on it. And rewrite it. Cause Andy Partridge is kind of an asshole. I don't know him. I'm just guessing. I bet I'm right. “Sgt. Rock's Going to Help Me” is a cute ditty but it can't rescue the rest of the album for me. (I do love the closer, “Travels in Nihilon”, though but I think that has more to do with production than with writing)

I guess what I'm learning is that XTC is one of the bands responsible for the sound of the 80s that I did not like. The one that gave us Tears for Fears and the likes of Big Country.

Grade: C
A Side: Generals and Majors
BlindSide: Respectable Street, Travels in Nihilon
DownSide: Living Through Another Cuba



XTC – English Settlement – 1982

(Disclaimer: This review is of the US release. The English version and subsequent releases are much much longer)

As a teenager I always felt like an outsider. I know, crazy, right? I mean, who else could possibly feel that way? I embraced my underground individualism and, though I was ensconced in suburban New Jersey where the nearest counter-culture was miles away at the local college radio station, I managed to find solace and quench my thirst to belong by reading magazines like “Trouser Press”. That was a long way to go to say that, without TP I certainly doubt I would have heard of any music outside the big FM stations and WNBC's top 40.
In the pages of TP I would read about X, Throbbing Gristle, U2, Duran Duran, Martin Briley and Adam Ant side by side with discographies of The Who and Genesis.
And, somewhere in those pages I kept seeing the name, XTC. Just look at those letters. Cool, huh? AND AND!!! I had seen them in concert! Even though I had absolutely no memory of the show I remembered that they were better than the headliners, The Cars.
When English Settlement was released I was deep in my throes of Trouser Press reading (I was a subscriber so I could get the flexi-disc) and I had completely eschewed WHDA, “The Parkway to Rock!” and was consumed by college radio. I even got to hang out with “The Kid”, a dj who let me spin a couple records.
I bought the new XTC as soon as I could.
Listening to it now I am struck by the fact that, despite how great it is, I never went back into the band's catalog nor did I seek out any follow-ups. That's not like me, really. I'm sort of a completist.
Ah, well. I haven't listened to English Settlement in almost 24 years.
The most striking change from the previous four records is how the angular, herky guitars are gone, replaced by big, acoustic 12 string guitars which, when placed side by side with Terry Chambers solid and rousing drumming set the record apart from, well, anything else I had heard at that point.
The album starts off with two Colin Moulding tracks, “Runaways” and “Ball and Chain” and they're great.
What follows is what I would never have expected. Andy Partridge avails himself of all that experimental ballyhoo that he was previously responsible for by writing the magnificent “Senses Working Overtime.”
No song, to me, better represents the era.
Followed quickly on the heels by “Jason and the Argonauts”, where Chambers seems to be driving the band with his fervent drumming.
On any of the previous albums a droning experiment like “Snowman” would have left me cold. Here, I am drawn in and find myself feeling sympathy for the narrator and his predicament. Although I imagine it's all of his own doing.

Side two sees the return of some electric guitars just enough to remind us why the first incarnation of Adam and the Ants didn't really work. (I am really beginning to see why They Might Be Giants wrote that song, these two groups have a lot of intersections)
I don't mind the caterwauling on “Melt the Guns” as the rest of the album has earned it. Plus it's a pretty cool song whose politics I completely agree with. And it leads us into the second hit by Partridge, “No Thugs in Our House”, taking the opposite road from Moulding's “Making Plans for Nigel”, Andy's family is pretty fucked up and Graham is a dick.
The African rhythm of (MORE intersections!) “It's Nearly Africa” is leaps beyond the musical roundelay of “Cuba”

On their fifth album XTC completely redeems themselves. It's a masterwork.

Grade: A+
A Side: Runaways, Ball and Chain, Senses Working Overtime, Jason and the Argonauts, No Thugs in Our House
BlindSide: Snowman, Melt the Guns
Downside: ------



XTC – Mummer – 1983

I have been warned.

The leader of XTC, Andy Partridge, suffered a mental breakdown while touring for English Settlement. XTC would never perform live again. This would cause the departure of the drummer, as touring is a great source of income for bandmates who don't write the music. The inability to perform live means no revenue from t-shirts or concerts.

So, the only source of revenue would be from sales of records. What does a record by a musician with mental illness, a Pop Rock musician nonetheless, sound like?

It's oddly serene. Pastoral. Gentle. With horrifically awful electronic drums. Hello, 80s!

I still don't know what it means that the single that made the most impact was written by Colin Moulding. Was he trapped by Andy Partridge? Why doesn't he get more credit?

If the first few XTC records were examples of the edginess and quirk of New Wave, the first half of Mummer is a far left turn from that. Building on the acoustic themes of Settlement, Mummer is brighter, more accessible, dare I say it, pretty? The songs are more assured than on the first two and the writers have more to say. There's real fear, of lost wages, or inability to provide, and the songs, replete with those great 12 strings play in hopeful contrast to the dire circumstances presented by Partridge and Moulding.
Moulding's “Deliver Us From The Elements” is more concerned with mood than anything else. It's studio craft designed to convey the awesome power of nature. As a song it's useless. As a concept it's interesting.
Side two opens with “Human Alchemy” and we're back to experimentation, the kind of stuff that made their first two records such successes. (Note: Irony intended) It's not just awful but it dispels any and all good will accumulated on the first side. And it's downhill from there. “Ladybird”, “In Loving Memory of a Name”, “Me and the Wind” are all the worst kind of filler. The sounds a songwriters who have lost not the ability to write, but will to live. There are no teeth. It's pop music as inertia.
There's a neat attempt at jangle pop at the very end with “Funk Pop and Roll”. It's harmless and too little too late.

Grade: C-
A Side: Wonderland, Great Fire
BlindSide: Love on a Farm Boy's Wages
DownSide: Human Alchemy




XTC – The Big Express – 1984

When is someone going to realize that the reason you put a Colin Moulding song up top is because he writes stuff that don't make people want to poke their eyes out?
Sigh.

I never heard of this album prior to this Listening Post series. Lemme see what this is all about.

Wow. This sounds a LOT like “No Thugs”. But not enough to be classified as plagiarism. In point of fact, it's actually an improvement. Then we're back to some Partridge craziness. In the case of “All You Pretty Girls” he's channeling Danny Elfman. It's a percussive trifle and not a great one, at that. But, that's okay. Because “Shake You Donkey Up” kind of explains what this album is all about.
The Big Express is the first album that brings together the song structures of Settlement, the herky jerk of the first record and the expansive sound of Mummer into a cohesive whole.
It doesn't always work. But even some of the failures are interesting. The dancing skeleton music of “Seagulls Screaming Kiss Her Kiss Her” is better than the melody or lyrics. But it isn't hatefully experimental as I've felt so much of Partridge's music can be, you know? He's always been oppressively impenetrable and he is here, as well. But the production overwhelms his worst intentions.
While not horrible by any means, The Big Express is also not that interesting. And it feels inordinately long. Without anything to grab on to, without any real hooks the whole album just leaves me wanting. So, even a song like, “I Bought Myself a Liarbird” which is under 3 minutes, feels like it's five because it’s boring and uneventful.
I kinda wish Andy Partridge would just shut up and let the band play his music. Hand lyric writing over to Colin Moulding.

Grade C-
A Side: Wake Up
BlindSide: Shake You Donkey Up, This World Over
DownSide: Seagulls Screaming Kiss Her Kiss Her, Train Running Low On Soul Coal.



XTC – Skylarking – 1986

Andy Partridge notoriously fought with producer Todd Rundgren during the making of this record. Eventually admitting that Rundgren is quite a talented arranger and had great ideas.
Really.
Partridge arguing with somebody. And that person's contribution works to create the most accessible and artistically satisfying of XTC's career.
Sorry, John, I still want to punch Partridge in the face.
It's impossible to talk about Skylarking without getting to “Dear God” so let's dispense with that right away. It wasn't on the album at first. It became a huge stand alone hit and was included on subsequent pressings. It's one of the 100 best songs in the rock pantheon. I tip my hat to Partridge for having written it.
Ok. Let's get back to the record.
Is it a concept album? Sort of.
Is it beautiful? No question.
Partridge is focused and painting sublime images. “Share a joke, the laughs on me, when I get you on your own, we'll see...” It's a lovely refrain in a lovely love song that has me rooting for the suitor and his love. Oh, wait. That's a Moulding song. And so was “Grass”. Two of the prettiest songs on the record. As is “Big Day” and “Summer's Cauldron”
Hm.
Partridge is back with his snark on tracks like “That's Really Super, SuperGirl”. I do enjoy the fact that Partridge seems to adore comic books. That might be some of the appeal of this band to some. But it's clear that, save a few songs, Moulding is the real talent in this band. What I mean by that is that he can cut to the emotional quick. His musings are spot on and mostly devoid of self-righteousness.
That's what I think the problem is with Partridge for me. He's overt in how much smarter he is than you. God I really don't like this guy. I wonder why....
I think it's because for years I'd heard the name Andy Partridge spoken in unison with XTC. As if the band was his and the players were just Andy Summers to his Sting. But this couldn't be further from the truth. In point of fact, Moulding is every bit his equal as a songwriter.
But, what about Skylarking?
It's magic.
The songs are great, yes, but the production is sublime. The arrangements, the instrumentation are lush, pastoral, delicate but bountiful. “Ballet for a Rainy Day” is a perfect example of this. XTC had never sounded like this and this is a good place for them. It's the best of latter day Beatles, a magical mystery XTC. And it flows into “1000 Umbrellas” like they were written as a suite. An “Eleanor Rigby” for the 80s.
Besides Rundgren's contribution kudos have to be given to one of the greatest drummers ever to emerge from the 70s glam, Ex-Tubes drummer Prairie Prince handles the sticks on this and he, well, Prince can do anything, really.
“Earn Enough for Us” shows us a Partridge that was previously impenetrable though all that experimentation. Instead, I feel empathy for this working class slob who just wants to make enough money to keep his wife and family provided for.
The album wears it's Beatles-ism a little bit on it's sleeve on “Big Day” but that's easily forgiven as homage. And then that's followed by the creepy rejection of “Another Satellite”. And the beat poetry of “The Man Who Sailed Around His Soul”, a song that instantly wipes away all that White Music/Go 2 crap away in a little moody piano, syncopation and Henry Mancini drama.
Now. Back to “Dear God”. Featuring Partridge's son on the first verse, this is the most vituperative rejection of mankind's inhumanity to man under the guise of blaming a “God” that I'm not sure Partridge believes in in the first place. But it's really his disapprobation of what we have done to each other toward the end of the song that cuts so deep.

I won't believe in heaven and hell. No saints, no sinners, no
Devil as well. No pearly gates, no thorny crown. You're always
Letting us humans down. The wars you bring, the babes you
Drown. Those lost at sea and never found, and it's the same the
Whole world 'round. The hurt I see helps to compound that
Father, Son and Holy Ghost is just somebody's unholy hoax,
And if you're up there you'd perceive that my heart's here upon
My sleeve. If there's one thing I don't believe in

It's you....

Well, Mr. Partridge. That song, in and of itself, is enough to redeem you in my eyes. How you did it, I don't know. It's worth having put up with your previous crap to get here.

XTC's Skylarking is a remarkable achievement especially considering just how much I have been let down by this group so far. If you don't have this album you need it in your collection.
Now.

A Side: Dear God
BlindSide: The Meeting Place, Ballet for a Rainy Day, 1000 Umbrellas, Season Cycle, Earn Enough for Us....fuck it. The whole thing is great.



XTC – Oranges and Lemons – 1989

By now it's pretty clear that I am not the biggest XTC fan. With the exception of Skylarking and English Settlement I'm not too sure why anyone would list them as one of the most important band of the new wave or any era. Certainly not power-poppers.
So, it's no surprise that it took me over a month to get back to reviewing their catalog. Cause I really want it to just be over.
As someone who has never been in arduous love with The Beatles (note the Rolling Stones LPs) it's safe to say that the Peter Max inspired artwork on the cover of this record would be the first “turn back” sign I would encounter. I remember seeing it in the bin at Tower and tossing it back in, uninterested.
Then Oranges and Lemons opens with “The Garden of Earthly Delights” and it's pretty obvious that the band has learned something from working with Todd Rundgren. The upbeat yet snarky “Mayor of Simpleton” is one of the catchiest ditties ever to come out of this band, followed by the Moulding song, “King for a Day”, not a bad song, but one that sounds more like it's influenced by the faux-soul of the day. It's as if Moulding was trying to write a song for Crowded House.
Things turn decidedly more political on “Here Comes President Kill Again”. If Partridge had been so blatantly biased in the past he was hiding behind elliptical lyrics and experimentation. Not here. He's not happy. But, by the end of the 80s I don't think anyone was too happy with American Presidents. Unless they were on paper.
While the album isn't as thematic as its predecessor, the collection of songs are decidedly not haphazard. Nor is the production. Lemons is a lovely record. Crafted with care. Case in point “One of the Millions”, a track that has everything I loathe about XTC: annoying vocals, distracting rhythms, poor rhymes and yet I love it, because it ISN'T stripped bare. The layer upon layers keep the entire proceedings moving like a gondola ride down a river made of slippery molasses. I have no idea what that means, either.
“Merely a Man” is the last track on the album brimming with any vitality and/or resonance. After that it's a melange of I don't care.
Chop 20 minutes off this thing and it's a near classic.

Grade: C+
A Side: The Mayor of Simpleton
BlindSide: The Garden of Earthly Delights, The Loving, One of the Millions, Merely a Man
DownSide: Miniature Sun



XTC – Nonsuch – 1992

For all my apathy toward this band they have displayed moments of brilliance, obviously, and, on occasion I do find myself listing a song or two of theirs as one of my favorites. “The Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead” is one of those. As political allegory it's spot on. As pop, it's confection. I've never heard Nonsuch however. Just that one song.
Five songs in and I have to say, this is one of the most pleasing listening experiences I've encountered from this band. Lush, layered, gentle but not wimpy. It's a great soundtrack to a Sunday afternoon. What I notice (and this is echoed in reviews I've read subsequently) is that, instead of paying homage to The Beatles, XTC seems to be drawing from the Beach Boys palette. This is mostly due to the background harmonies, which, to be honest, crib from the Wilson motif. So, somewhere between Pet Sounds and Super Furry Animals/Animal Collective is this album, the connector, if you will.
Where the lack of cohesion bothered me on Oranges and Lemons, I really don't mind it here. This is a protracted and more mature English Settlement. And a much easier listen, as well. Makes sense. Partridge is 10 years older. He's almost 40. He's no longer bogged down by stage fright. Well, he is, but he's dealt with it by not performing live anymore. I think if this record had been made 5 years before it would sound a lot like Tears for Fears. We're lucky that didn't happen.
Around the middle of the record XTC is up to their old awkward habits. “Crocodile” is annoyingly angular and “Rook” is bad Broadway ala Chess. Yet, while “Omnibus” revels in it's weirdness, it's actually engaging and harkens back to the Drums and Wires era. In a good way. So, the first third is pop, the second third, culminating with “That Wave” is the more experimental middle.
What's the last act of Nonsuch?
“Then She Appeared” with it's backwards masking and arpeggiated guitars is hypnotic and delicate. Almost suggesting the, well, the closing act of a three part piece. “Books Are Burning”, the least XTC (it almost sounds like Queen, if you ask me) song of all I've heard closes out this set, the latter third playing out like an extended coda.
All in all, Nonsuch is a great little record. Sure it's about 35 minutes too long, but it never overstays its welcome. I would say it's among the band's better works.

Grade: B
A Side: The Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead
BlindSide: Dear Madam Barnum, The Disappointed, Then She Appeared, Books Are Burning
DownSide: Rook



XTC – Apple Venus Pt 1 – 1999

Apple Venus starts off with a delicately orchestrated piece “River of Orchids”, which sounds more like the opening of a Sondheim musical circa Sunday in the Park with George. It's unlike anything I would have expected and yet, exactly what I expected. Then it moves into the accessible acoustic beauty, “I'd Like That”. A return to Skylarking form, I'd say.
From there it's one lovely song after another. A culmination of everything they've learned from those three best records (Settlement, Skylarking and Nonsuch). A panopoly, if you will. Not a hodgepodge at all. Sadly, the song I like the least on the first half of the record is Moulding's “Frivolous Tonight”. Considering how he's never let me down before this is a tragedy. He almost redeems himself with the french inspired “Fruit Nuit”. Almost.
“You're Dictionary” is a lacerating screed that brings to mind the most vicious Paul Weller moments.
“I Can't Hold Her” is the most humane ballad Partrige has given us, showing humanity in not just his words but in the music as well.
The album loses it's way amidst its own preciousness at the end with “Harvest Festival” and “The Last Balloon” but all in all, it's a pretty solid outing.

Grade: B+
A Side: River of Orchids, I'd Like That
BlindSide: Knights in Shining Karma, Your Dictionary, I Can't Hold Her
DownSide: Frivolous Tonight



XTC – Wasp Star (Apple Venus Pt. 2) – 2000

The thing about the Listening Posts is that they are supposed to be a review of bands whose catalog I am peripherally aware AND they are still releasing music today, making them somewhat relevant. Believe it or not, all of the bands I have covered so far fit that criteria except two that were part of this series. Genesis was finally, mercifully, put out of operation.
XTC has, somehow or someway, gone into that gentle good night. They did it with a 1-2 punch of the Apple Venus records.
The first one was great. This one is more like the band looked around the leftovers and realized they had enough to fill up a record. It's not cohesive. Passingly interesting. Never groundbreaking.
If you like the latter day XTC, you will have no issue with Wasp Star. It actually plays more like a Power Pop record than almost any of their others.
Even Colin Moulding redeems himself with “Standing in for Joe”. It's piffle, yes. But delightful piffle.
Wasp Star is nice. It's edgy when it wants to be. It's quirky. How could it not be? It's XTC. I'll never go back into most of these records again. I'm fine with English Settlement and Skylarking. But, then again, I don't know if anyone else can write, “You and the Clouds will Still be Beautiful”. A song that I could listen to for three times as long as it goes on.
I might pull out Nonsuch or Apple Venus, but I doubt it. There's too much good stuff out there.
Bye bye, XTC. It was a long journey.

Grade: B+
A Side: Playground, You and the Clouds Will Still Be Beautiful
BlindSide: I'm the Man Who Murdered Love, Standing in for Joe
DownSide: Wounded Horse