Rihanna

Rated R

2009

The only reason I checked out this record in the first place is that I heard "Rude Boy" on a car radio and thought..."damn, that's hot!" Rihanna has an original vocal style, a sort of deadened monotone that works well in the current auto-tuned climate of R&B and hoped her album would have more of the same to offer. I'm walking away from "Rated R" with the same assessment of Rihanna as a vocalist but there are too many negatives about this album to commend her for anything else.

The very first thing I noticed about "Rated R" is that the lyrics are absolutely horrible. I'm talking so bad they made me laugh out loud. Although she isn't attributed with even one songwriting credit on the album I think Rihanna must be writing the lyrics herself because I can't imagine Def Jam hiring a songwriter with such bad taste.

Thematically much of the album is about the emotional harm done to her by Chris Brown, although never mentioned by name, but the way she's chosen to express her feelings of heartbreak and betrayal could have been done just as effectively by a 15-year-old who didn't get asked to the prom. Here she's turned genuine feelings of personal anguish into flat, laughable and tasteless metaphors on "Russian Roulette" and "Fire Bomb" -- wasting the opportunity to channel her pain into something artistically relevant. Same with "Stupid In Love" and "Cold Case Love" which are complete jokes both lyrically and musically. Only the will.i.am produced "Photographs" succeeds in creating a genuine musical expression of emotion I could believe in and relate to.

And that's another big problem right there. The only reason "Photographs" works is because of who wrote and produced it. It's basically will.i.am's strengths that make the song a success and oh, it just so happens Rihanna is here too. As mentioned before, Rihanna has no songwriting credits on this album so you can hardly even consider this work to reflect any artistic integrity. Each track (although brightly colored by her vocals if the song works) sinks or swims based on the producer. I cannot respect this. The "take it for what it is" mentality doesn't fly with me. Yes, it's just a pop album meant to sell singles and make money but I hold all music to a higher standard.

Listening to this has frustrated me and I think it's because I hoped it would break my notions of what radio pop is in America today. On certain songs Rihanna is legitimately doing original things with her voice but it's still over the backdrop of slick yet immature R&B/Hip Hop production that will forever date it to this moment in time.

The vast majority of "Rated R" is utterly disposable and easily forgettable. I still feel Rihanna has potential to rise above these flavor of the month sounds and make something great but based on this I feel it may still be awhile in coming.

Best Tracks: "Hard", "Rude Boy", "Photographs"

My Morning Jacket

Evil Urges

2008

Well produced. Good songs. Great energy. Terribly uneven.

"Evil Urges" is a strong release but fatally flawed by inconsistency. It is more than alright to represent different genres and mix dissimilar sounds on an album but you must do it in a way that gives that album a sense of purpose; a unifying aesthetic.

My Morning Jacket bookends this record with "Evil Urges" and "Touch Me I'm Going To Scream Pt. 2" which work fine, they are both shape-shifting tracks that provide the right tone for beginning and end. In-between them is a real mess and listeners are forced to wade through it.

"Highly Suspicious" is the song that many fans will say turned them off early on and I certainly understand why. It could be a fairly straight-forward funk track without the ridiculous, gruff backing vocals during the chorus. Had they cut it out along with "Two Halves", "Look At You", "Aluminum Park" and "Remnants" this would be a classic album. The country sounds reconcile well with the rock and psychedelia but the segment of weak songs between "Sec Walkin" and "Smokin From Shootin'" throws the album's momentum completely off.

Check out the far better "Z" before this one.

Best Track: "Smokin' From Shootin'"

Modest Mouse

We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank

2007

“We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank” opens with singer Isaac Brock screaming the most bizarrely hateful lyric of all time: “If food needed pleasing you’d suck all the seasoning off/Suck it off!” This first track, “March Into The Sea” introduces the nautical themes Modest Mouse attempt to carry through the record with varying degrees of success. Also present throughout is a lyrical focus on damaged love and broken relationships. One could conclude that this is the first pirate breakup album ever recorded.

On “We Were Dead…” Modest Mouse are joined by former Smiths guitarist/songwriter Johnny Marr and he shows his stuff early on in the single “Dashboard” with its funky opening riff. His influence isn’t felt much other than that though; the Brock/Green songwriting partnership is so unique that it’s hard to break through.

The songwriting style employed here, although still unique to the band, is much more conventional than previous releases. Similarly they abandon the genre-mixing approach and stick mainly to modern rock arrangements: loud guitars, big drum sounds, assorted keyboard tracks and not much else. This works fine for inspired tracks like “March Into The Sea”, “Education” and “Fly Trapped In A Jar” which all manage to move in variations which defy their humble instrumentation. Others don’t fare as well.

The downfall of “We Were Dead…” is its failure to maintain momentum. It starts out hot but weak tracks “Fire It Up” and “Florida” damage the flow until it picks up with the melodic “Parting Of The Sensory”. Things move well until “Spitting Venom” which runs about five minutes too long. Brock’s tendency to create vocal-driven breakdowns at the end of songs is exciting when it fits the track but can get tiresome when overdone, as it is here.

Modest Mouse remain a colorful and exciting young band but this is some of their weaker material. Isaac Brock is (among young singers) in a league by himself with his esoteric lyrics and spastic delivery but the songs on “We Were Dead…” don’t rise high enough to match that ingenuity.

Best Track: “Fly Trapped In A Jar”

Elvis Costello

My Aim Is True

1977

Elvis Costello’s classic 1977 debut showcases all the elements which would come to define his sound during the next decade: snarling punk rock swagger, dense hyper-literate wordplay, lighthearted cynicism and tongue-in-cheek humor. “My Aim Is True”, recorded with session players prior to the formation of The Attractions, leans heavily on the influence of 1950s Rock & Roll, Doo Wop, Soul and R&B rather than the synth-heavy New Wave sound he would experiment with on subsequent releases.

“My Aim Is True”, like many great albums, is diverse and difficult to pin down. The one constant is Costello’s endlessly hungry intellect, burning white-hot through each track. He croons tender sentiments of naïve love on “Alison” just two songs before spitting irate, anti-conformity rhetoric with “Less Than Zero”. This tendency towards dichotomy is as confusing as it is endearing.

One noticeable difference between this record and his later work is how often “My Aim Is True” finds Costello singing about romantic mishaps and quixotic teenage love. “I’m Not Angry” details the frustrations of a jealous, scorned lover. “Miracle Man” and “Mystery Dance” are hilarious accounts of unfulfilled sexual urges and the embarrassingly unsophisticated behavior of young lovers.

Also present here is the social satire for which his songs are well known. “Pay It Back” laments the loss of identity when assimilating into professional culture as he sings: “And they told me I could be somebody if I didn’t let too much get in my way/And I tried so hard just to be myself but I keep on fading away.” The excellent opening track, “Welcome To The Working Week”, takes a shot at disillusioned working stiffs with the line: “I hear you saying, ‘Hey, the city’s alright’ when you only read about it in books/Spend all your money getting so convinced that you never even bothered to look.”

Costello’s work has been categorized in many ways, most notably as a pioneering force in the development of the punk rock sound, but this is misleading. His signature vocal style was hugely influential in that regard but his songwriting and arrangements are worlds apart from most punk musicians in terms of creativity and sophistication. “My Aim Is True” is only the first in a string of brilliant records he released during the late 70s and early 80s that raised the bar for everyone else writing pop music. The front of the record says it all: Elvis is king.

Best Track: “Watching The Detectives”

Alkaline Trio

Agony & Irony

2008

There are points in life where it’s comforting to know certain things don’t change. Listening to the Alkaline Trio’s “Agony & Irony” is not one of those times.

Kudos to this Chicago three-some for sticking it out far longer than anyone could have imagined when they made a name for themselves at The Fireside in the late nineties. It is clear, however, that time has not treated the group well. It’s been eleven years now since the release of their maniacal, goth-punk masterpiece “Goddamnit” and they have yet to rival or even match the originality and intensity of that seminal achievement.

After the departure of original drummer Glenn Porter following “Maybe I’ll Catch Fire”, which features the anthemic, revenge-themed “Radio”, the band released one album with former Smoking Popes drummer Mike Felumlee before shacking up with Derek Grant of the Suicide Machines. The only interesting part about this Spinal Tap-esque history is the surprising effect losing a drummer can have on your overall sound.

Porter was a monster behind the kit. Being such a virtuosic player he was able to keep the Trio’s simple arrangements and straightforward power chord approach fresh by the huge array of rhythms he could create. From bombastic, metal-influenced breakdowns to the shape-shifting shuffle of “You’ve Got So Far To Go”, he was the standout musician but rarely recognized for his contributions. Derek Grant is a great drummer but his influence has proven to be more melodic than anything else. Singers Matt Skiba and Dan Andriano have benefited greatly from Grant’s ability to write vocal harmonies and incorporate backing vocals. Those things worked well for his LP debut on “Good Mourning” but the band has displayed little growth musically or lyrically since.

“Agony & Irony” is no different. The only positive thing I can say about the record is that the vocal harmonies and backing vocals have again improved over previous albums. That’s about it. “Agony & Irony” is a bland, uneven pop-punk effort that offers nothing new to the either the band’s repertoire or the genre to which they belong. Which poses another question, what genre of music is this? No longer edgy enough to be punk. The gothic/macabre elements of their earlier albums now come off as gratuitous and stale. It isn’t exactly Emo. Are the Alkaline Trio now a pop-rock band? “Love Love, Kiss Kiss” and “Do You Wanna Know?” sound eerily like top 40 rock hits with their big hooks and catchy melodies. And what’s with the cheerleader handclaps in “Calling All Skeletons”?

“Agony & Irony” does feature some strong tracks (“Help Me”, “In Vein”, “Ruin It”) but holds together about as well as a Hollywood courtship. The reality is that you can only go so far with guitar, drums, bass and five-chord rock songs about heartbreak and insecurities. These are especially hard to swallow coming from musicians now in their thirties with wives, families and a fairly successful back catalog from which to collect royalties.

The Alkaline Trio may have grown up but their music is still enduring the painful and embarrassing mutations of puberty.

Best Track: “In Vein”

Talking Heads

Speaking In Tongues

1983

In my mind, the only blemish on "Speaking In Tongues" is that many fans may be more familiar with the charismatic live versions of these songs featured in Stop Making Sense. The studio versions of some tracks ("Girlfriend Is Better","Slippery People") initially feel a bit stale in comparison to the "live" concert film while others ("Swamp","Making Flippy Floppy") have their own unique life on the record.

The production of this album (again, only initially) struck me as a weak point. The reverb-heavy kick drum sound and distanced mix of the vocal tracks serve to date this record to the mid-80s but that stopped bothering me after several listens. The mix is far different on this album because the songs, accordingly, are a departure for the band and would not be as well served by their previous studio sounds. The drum intro to "I Get Wild/Wild Gravity" (which is a fucking brilliant song) wouldn't be as effective without the drum echo in flowing with the delayed guitar David Byrne is weaving over it.

The quartet of songs comprising "I Get Wild/Wild Gravity", "Swamp", "Moon Rocks" and "Pull Up The Roots" may be the best sequence I've ever heard on a record. A good friend described the Talking Heads to me as "the closest white people get to black music" and it seems fairly true on this record. The more authentic Brazilian percussion of Remain In Light is toned down here in order to meld more with a spacey, New Wave feel but the swing and white-boy funk hold true.

I will start a fight with anyone who doesn't think "Moon Rocks" is killer. It absolutely explodes with energy. How can a four-some of caucasian art school nerds get so funky?

Best Track: "Moon Rocks"

DJ Shadow

Endtroducing.....

1996

Many aspects of "Endtroducing....." interest me. The drum samples are generally used very creatively and reflect a mature taste in percussion. In most cases actual drum kit sounds are used, often jazz influenced with splashy cymbals and, occasionally, clever time-signature changes, wether due to the actual sample itself or an alteration DJ Shadow has made.

There are certainly transcendent moments as well. "Changeling / Transmission 1" is a highlight for me, mixing atmospheric synths with a great backbeat. Like many of the songs on the album it vacillates between hip-hop swagger, R&B cool and a certain unpredictable psychedelia often attributed to well-executed house music. "Stem / Long Stem / Transmission 2" is another that showcases a huge array of influences. The percussion is clearly a sample of a metal and/or punk song and yet that ferocity appears completely normal behind a mellow, clinking xylophone melody. There is no question that the combination of influences is certainly impressive and all coalesce well. Additionally, most of these songs sound great and are memorable but the question still nagging me after multiple listens is:

Is this art?

I'm into hip hop and respect a producer or DJ who has taste with samples, let it be known. However, I feel there is an important difference between a creative producer layering/altering/looping existing music before laying original lyrics over it and what DJ Shadow has done on "Endtroducing.....". Some part of me feels that just merging obscure samples together is not worthy of respect, even when used tastefully as it is here. Is it any different than a cool collage you made in art class in the 2nd grade?

It should be mentioned also that I don't recognize 99% of the samples. I feel a know a decent cross-section of music so this surprises me but it must mean DJ Shadow has dipped into a big pool. It is a remarkable feat to meld so many samples and genres but, again, is this an artistic masterpiece as many seem to view it? After several listens I still don't know.

Best tracks: "Changeling / Transmission 1", "Stem / Long Stem / Transmission 2", "Organ Donor"

Monday's Vinyl Purchases

As always, bug ups to Cheapo in Minneapolis, MN. On Monday, June 21st I became the owner of the following items:

Steve Miller Band - Brave New World (1969)

Peter Gabriel - s/t (car) (1977)

George Benson - The Other Side Of Abbey Road (1969)

Stevie Wonder - Innervisions (1973)

Van Halen - Fair Warning (1981)

Today's Vinyl Purchases

Big ups to Cheapo in Uptown, Minneapolis. Today I became the owner of the following items:

Bob Dylan - Blonde On Blonde (1966)

The Beatles - Abbey Road (1969)

Blondie - Autoamerican (1980)

Sade - Diamond Life (1984)

Sly & The Family Stone - Stand! (1969)

Paul McCartney & Wings - Band On The Run (1973)

Madonna - Like A Virgin (1984)

Steve Miller Band - Children Of The Future (1968)

Big up also to the people who stopped caring about vinyl albums as I am now able to purchase them for very little.

Mic stand = slide.

This man is insane.

Skip to 4:44 for the transcendent solo. I'm in awe of this.