Kronski
Songs You Should Be Listening To
-
-
High TimeMonoGranpaboy (Paul Westerberg)
-
-
Posts
How do you a review a record for a band whose previous work you admired so much over the years that when you look at their catalog, you are really looking back at the events in your own life, proof of how music can get grafted onto us and lodged within us so deeply that the music becomes synonymous with who we are.
Case in point with Verve’s fourth record, Forth. To say that this release was anticipated by the music world is to stretch the very notion of patience. Ever since the promise found in certain songs on "Urban Hymns" and three near disastrous Richard Ashcroft solo records, a new record from the Verve is about as hopeful to me as my middle age encroaching self is capable of getting these days.
So is it any good or not? And I say like with everything else, that all depends, because while there are several worthwhile tracks on here, longtime fans can’t help but be a bit disappointed, but will find enough to reconstruct that world, where a grip on sanity wasn’t always guaranteed, and we couldn’t have been further from knowing who we were.
The first time I heard the Verve it was back in 1992, a sophomore in College, The Verve EP came to the radio station, and I had enough copies of NME and Melody Maker lying around my dorm room to recognize the name, and knew that these guys were going to be great, gods even, and if the English Press couldn’t come up with enough hyperbole to convince me, there was that cover, of a girl, probably on drugs, spinning in the middle of a room messy enough to be my own at the time, a single dormer with cigarette butts and beer cans everywhere. I was used to a little squalor about as much as the girl spinning on the cover was.
But what I was unprepared for was how much I fell for that record, Listening to "Man Called Sun" at two am after a heavy night was akin to hearing what Pink Floyd or the Dead might have sounded to the hippies back in 67, stretched out leisurely, the EP had jams that painted a lived-in psychedelic world, one entirely of their own creation. In reality they were aping all sorts of folks, too many to list on paper, but to my addled brain back then they were everything.
I heard A Storm in Heaven a few years later from my T-Rex fanatic friend Kris. Kris said it was his make out album, the one he would play when he brought girls back from seeing some third rate bar band at Frank’s Hot Dogs. The Verve seemed to inhabit their own world even more so then, the boundaries and walls of this world getting louder and more uncomfortable. Then there was the stellar B Sides Collection No Come Down and I remember the acoustic version of "Make it Till Monday" was on my walkman, and I played it until the tape got all warped. It was blessed out and blue, stoned and elegantly wasted, and back then Richard Ashcroft seemed to sweat charisma.
I hardly heard "A Northern Soul" when it came out in 1995, but it wasn’t until "Urban Hymns" came out in 1997 when I fell fully in love with both records.
For me the almost self help vibe of both of those records seem to really gel with where I was at in my life, and it seemed like the band was taking its victory lap. Tracks like "Lucky Man" and "Velvet Morning" on Urban Hymns announced their newfound optimism on their sleeves and with lyrics to yell out to like "Born a little damaged man, look what they made" and through these songs I found a kindred spirit in these easy answers to life’s biggest questions.
I hope that at least one of these songs chart and get these guys some hard earned scratch. Their previous hit, "Bitter Sweet Symphony", yielded them exactly zero royalties, due to a sample nicked from a Rolling Stone song, "The Last Time", so Andrew Loog Oldham, the Stones manager at the time, got all the royalties from that ‘hit’.
"Sit and Wonder" makes a fine start, a shuffling stadium ready opener, one when played next to their finer moments hide some of the weaknesses that repeated listens eventually reveal, but the chorus, sweeping and all encompassing rouses the whole psychedelic monster up from its slumber.
The Single "Love is Noise" takes some getting used to. hell you practically have to ignore that pratty cat call of a chorus, a sound not unlike a pelican being hit with one of those Whack A Mole mallets found at County Fairs, used to punch down Moles that periodically pop up from pot holes with lights flashing , yeah, it’s that annoying.
But once you ignore that awful cat call, the song itself, with its call and response refrain of "I was blind, couldn’t see" and some kind of vague protest to China, "if these feet in ancient times these shoes were made from China", evoking, William Blake’s, "And did those feet in ancient time, walk upon England’s mountains green."
B Side Mover is a reworking of the 1997 version, but its all bluster and cock of the walk in the right direction its assuredly braggadocio, but it has the chops and the rhythm section to back it up. It’s also better than any other song on Forth, lending credibility to the whole reunion, though that depends on your mood.
"Judas", with its track length up to the seven minute mark, lovingly meanders in the previous pool that The Verve EP and Storm in Heaven swam in, and because of that alone, its my favorite track. Its still a treat to linger in this world, to know that this can happen, that Nick McCabe and Richard Ashcroft can still get together and create this otherworldly magic. And barring a few awful lyrics, "The trip has just begun" for example, makes up for the positively cringe worthy lines like "A latte, double shot for Judas." Each time I listen to that last lyric, it never fails to throw me out of the soundscape, so much so that I have to bury it enough to still make it one of the best songs on this it- could-have-been-so-much-worse record.
"Rather Be" has the same propulsive melody line as "Bitter Sweet Symphony" and for the brief moments while the chorus is playing I get a twinge of bitter nostalgia wishing that this record could be as good as the others, but feeling grateful for the time all the same.
But that leaves us with the misfires: The positively catatonic drudgery that is the somnambulist "Numbness." The vague sound of the band playing with a paint kit, painting a monster not even the "Verve" can crawl their way out of in "Noise Epic",
The lumbering go-nowhere "Colombo", whose sound bows back to their first full length record, A Storm in Heaven but whereas the tracks on that record created a tapestry of sound, a distinct sound whose more pointed songs told stories and the ones that didn’t faded successfully into the back ground, but "Colombo" does neither.
It’s as if someone turned on a tape recorder during an in between song moment in the studio and hit record. It shares many of the faults of this record, notably that while the ideas are interesting, engrossing even, reminding us of an earlier time long enough to warrant a repeat listen, and songs that only have a four minute shelf life are stretched out to passed the seven minute mark.
It’s a record to lose yourself in, for sure, but a record that you might not be able to find your way out of. And while occasionally, as on "Valium Skies", "Sit and Wonder", "Judas", and closer "Appalachian Strings" brings us around one last time, leaving us wanting more rather than less, the rest of the record could have been left in the can, relegated to b-sides.
One thing’s for sure, "Forth" would have made one hell of an EP, one to match that moment, when I, unbeknownst to me at the time, was handed a band that would follow me kicking and screaming into adulthood.
The downer vocals, the whispers of regret, it’s all hitting me as I listen to the opening strains of "Dream State Flying", one of the tracks on Firecracker People, by Hotel Lights, a project helmed by Ex Ben Folds Five Darren Jesse. In this song I can see clear through the Summer to the Winter, with me standing outside that old brick building I used to work in. Decked out in a sweater and blue jeans, I watch the wind push the sinewy branches on the trees.
Even from the first time I listened to Firecracker People it only took a few lovely drops of piano for me to start warming up to it. The touchstones are all there: a comforting falsetto voice, tasteful production, and a solid acoustic guitar strum that occasionally builds to electric. It brings to mind an image of a warm candle shining light in the darkness of an old barn. And like an old barn, the foundation is rock solid, with everything else worn down and on the verge of falling apart.
On Firecracker People I hear the built in wintry scenery the songs contain: the roads that go on for miles, the dried cracks in the muddy ground, the endless snowdrifts. That’s not to say it’s a depressing record, but there’s more than a shred of melancholy to be found here, and if we can grab a hold of that melancholy we’ll be amazed at the places they take us, to those dark things we don’t dare think about.
It can take you back to that thing you did last Summer that you never told anybody about, to that affair you thought you covered up, to that person you were selfish with, to that relationship you willingly destroyed.
There’s a sense of recovery in this record, a sense of beginning again after a great moment of tumult, a regrouping. How a song can fit that mood so well, with just a flicker of rain, the vocals coming in and out of the mix, and instrumentation that bottoms out into a tide pool. The guitar sounds fill in the plucky holes just enough to support the melody before the whole song drops away.
In these post-millennial, post everything days, its nice to rely on this sturdy-as-an-old-house record, so close and personal, its like flipping through an old photo album. In one of the pictures I am holding up to the camera a homemade bow and arrow made out of construction paper. I made it in the middle of a two-week blanketing Minnesota blizzard. Another picture is taken from the diving board of an opulent Miami pool and is faded at its edges like so many childhood memories are.
The progression from Summer to Fall and Winter is in this record in spades. It’s in the hushed vocals that bring to mind hardwood floors of New England, a lace that radiates around Fall, that old heartbreak in the air, the northerly winds that carry disappointments and regrets, rolling delicately towards the granddaddy of depression time, Christmas.
With a simple guitar-bass-drum contingent and great understated vocals, Hotel Lights are about as cloying as an unassuming bed and breakfast. They might not dazzle immediately, but come winter you’ll crave its down-home comforts.
The pace quickens on "Norina", an up-tempo number that threatens to rock and finally fulfills its promise at the end of the song. "Why should you count the days on your hand?" He asks over delicate strumming, inviting us back to his place and pouring us a whiskey, neat.
"Blue Always Finds Me" is an assurance that no matter where I go in this life, the blue fog of Winter will follow me, and each Winter I'll come back here, to relive it all over again.
"Firecracker People" is a sweeping, lilting ballad an exploration of some of the more destructive elements in our lives. We see that these Firecracker People are eternally "going off all the time" and through this song, we see a whole world constructed with bits of string, songs with characters cut out and propped up, a living diorama with tempers flaring up and blowing out, all framed by a memory of that familiar piano, the ghosts of Ben Folds Five creaking into the sound. It sums up the record nicely, a companion to get you through the coldest, bleakest months of the year.
Comments
Beautifully-written review! It was as much a joy to read this as it was listening to the track. I've enjoyed their self-titled album ("Follow Through" was one of my faves) but it looks as if I'll be backtracking to this one. Keep up the great writing!
The very nature of this record, its' essence, the spaces where the edges of songs come together, demands the listener to question their own expectations of pop music. That is whether or not it is the job of pop music in general to provide a catchy melody with which to sing along in the car to or should it be used as a device to shine a light on man’s deepest desires and faults?
Such is the dilemma on Aimee Mann’s sixth record, an attempt at bridging her compelling, some might say novelistic character sketches and pairing it with catchy sing- along choruses.
Not to get into an argument of the nature of pop music, or to suggest that artistic integrity is mutually exclusive with catchy melodies, but on Smilers she once again captures the bleak landscape of her characters as well as she did on her last two projects, The Forgotten Arm and Bachelor Number Two, as heavily sampled in the film Magnolia.
I say bleak landscapes, because for her inspiration this time around, Aimee found an online newsgroup entitled, and I swear to god someone better write a novel about this, Alt. Bitter, and on this newsgroup she found a jewel of a posting that referred to happy people in general as '@#%&! Smilers'.
And as difficult as that was to transcribe, it does work as an effective frame with which to hang the narratives of these thirteen down and out souls. We can view her songs as a complete narrative similar to 2005’s The Forgotten Arm or as thirteen separate disparate threads that together make up a record.
And once again, Aimee Mann has the ability to precisely find that spot in a character's head that makes them different from everyone else. So in a refrain like "get up, you’re borrowing time" we get to pilot the freewill of someone who is sitting idly by and watching life fly past them, or the emotional distance in a relationship where one wants the other but thinks that "I want you, but you’re a poltergeist" and we see how often the theme of alienation falls under her microscope, "I got high on the Ferris Wheel, realized got what made me feel so alone. "
Drugs are a way to describe alienation, as they have been on the last few records, and one image I can’t help but get out of my mind, in Paul Thomas Anderson’s film, "Magnolia" is when the woman turned cocaine addict meeting and falling for the cop, and both of them unable to grab hold of life long enough to make it work, all while Aimee Mann’s Bachelor No. 2 played in the background. It was a perfect pairing, because the characters in Aimee Mann’s songs always seem to be reaching for something, something profound, a lack of answers or closure.
All of the characters on @#%&! Smilers face specific problems, and while on The Forgotten Arm she spun a wide yarn of a boxer and his girlfriends as they roamed the country in search of heroin and redemption, on Smilers, the problems don’t have a specific place, but reveal those innermost problems we all have.
And therein lies the rub. While thanks to Mann’s insightful lyrics that pinpoint the frailty, the addiction or neuroticism, there’s this vague cloud cast over the remaining characteristics on the rest of the person she is describing, so we feel left out, more than we did before. And even though we only see this person for one song, we are left wanting to know more about this person, and their surroundings, but instead we move onto the next song, the next character.
Perhaps it’s a sign when an album as strong as Smilers, where the melodies really grab you, but compared to the three pronged attack of The Forgotten Arm, -with a full narrative, more interesting arrangements, and a storyline that could easily be translated into a film -we can’t help but come up a bit short.
Maybe Mann is just returning to writing songs, without a novelistic or cinematic arc. Maybe it’s my fault, for needing the narrative in the first place.
"Maybe you’ll wake up in jail alone and hold the handle of the one pay phone." She sings on Medicine Wheel, and I can’t help but see the actions recorded in the song put to life by the cast of Six Feet Under, a Bukowski poem, or Raymond Carver Short Story, lost souls in Los Angeles, wandering across the great sprawl of city, in search of their next fix.
I suppose that this dilemma is my own cross to bear, but I’ll gladly go back and construct an arc for these songs, time and again.
Comments
This is one of my top 10 so far 2008. For some reason that I can't put my finger on really, I like this better than either The Forgotten Arm or Bach. No. 2. 31 Today is classic.
Comments
well i liked the song you posted! i saw them live in Barcelona and people were going NUTSO!
I like the posted song -- this CD got a lukewarm review in today's Washington Post, which mean zip to me, but echoes what you say here.
I liked Richard Ashcroft's Human Condition solo album, but the Verve is definately a bigger sound.
Too bad about the royalties thing on Bitter Sweet Symphony -- the Stones will crush you if you mess with them, that's for sure.
I, too, enjoyed "Judas" - and it bodes well for the rest of the album. Then again, your review was less than glowing. Maybe they set the bar too high for you, Kronski. I'll give it a listen though.
BTW, funoka, the Stones always get theirs, but it wasn't Mick, Keith and company that went after the Verve, it was their original manager - no longer in the band's employ - the Machiavellian impresario Andrew Loog Oldham, a notorious prick.