The Essential 13

porter -- Control Question

2011-05-29T21:01:00.002-04:00

Final track from the 2009 porter record

WAKER GLASS wsg/Brett Caswell & The Marquee Rose

2011-05-26T17:14:00.000-04:00

TOMORROW NIGHT!!! Doors at 9pm!

WAKER GLASS -- LIVE DEMOS

2011-05-11T18:42:00.000-04:00

THE BOTANY OF DESIRE

2011-04-23T18:27:00.002-04:00

RADIOHEAD -- LIVE FROM THE BASEMENT

2011-04-15T07:14:00.000-04:00

http://www.fromthebasement.tv/artists

LCD SOUNDSYSTEM -- FINAL SHOW @ MSG 2011-04-02

2011-04-03T18:06:00.001-04:00

I could always take these guys or leave 'em. I just can't see the genius that so many think is there. And they have one of the worst band names ever. That being said, their demise is a notable event. So, if you have 3 hours + 41 minutes to kill...

David Sylvian -- Steel Cathedrals

2011-03-19T00:23:00.000-04:00

Part One

Part Two

LOUDER THAN LOVE -- The Grande Ballroom Story

2011-03-13T19:28:00.002-04:00

LOUDER THAN LOVE-The Grande Ballroom Story from Tony D'Annunzio on Vimeo.

THE DECEMBERISTS: LIVE AT KCRW ON MORNING BECOMES ECLECTIC 02-10-11

2011-02-13T21:31:00.001-05:00

Cuyahoga
Don't Call It All
Rise To Me
Rocks In The Box
Calamity Song
Down By The Water
This Is Why We Fight
Hymn

THE NATIONAL -- TERRIBLE LOVE

2011-02-06T16:34:00.001-05:00

THE ESSENTIAL 13: WAKER GLASS

2011-02-06T13:34:00.000-05:00

THE ESSENTIAL 13: ECHO & THE BUNNYMEN -- CROCODILES + HEAVEN UP HERE

2011-01-30T10:53:00.000-05:00

THE ESSENTIAL 13: RADIOHEAD -- SCOTCH MIST

2011-01-29T09:21:00.000-05:00

Weird Fishes/Arpeggi
Bodysnatchers
Jigsaw Falling Into Place
Faust Arp
15 Step
Videotape
Reckoner
House Of Cards
All I Need
Nude

THE ESSENTIAL 13: ACL -- SONIC YOUTH & THE BLACK KEYS 01.22.11

2011-01-24T06:55:00.000-05:00

Watch the full episode. See more Austin City Limits.

SONIC YOUTH

No Way
Sacred Trickster
Anti-Orgasm
What We Know
'Cross The Breeze

THE BLACK KEYS

Thickfreakness
I'll Be Your Man
Next Girl
Howlin' For You
Tighten Up
She's Long Gone
I Got Mine

THE ESSENTIAL 13: THE NATIONAL -- A SKIN, A NIGHT

2011-01-23T10:44:00.002-05:00

THE ESSENTIAL 13: ACL -- MONSTERS OF FOLK 01.08.11

2011-01-23T10:28:00.000-05:00

Watch the full episode. See more Austin City Limits.

Say Please
Right Place
Soul Singer
Dear God
Man Named Truth
Baby Boomer
Just To Know
Whole Lotta Losin'
Smokin' From Shootin'
Sandman
Map Of The World
Losin' Yo Head

THE ESSENTIAL 13: WOVENHAND -- SALA CARACOL MADRID 12.09.10

2011-01-22T21:29:00.000-05:00

Heart and Soul
Sinking Hands
Raise Her Hands
Kingdom of Ice
Tin Finger

THE ESSENTIAL 13: ACL -- WILCO 11.03.07

2011-01-22T21:21:00.000-05:00

Watch the full episode. See more Austin City Limits.

THE ESSENTIAL 13: ACL -- SPOON 10.09.10

2011-01-22T21:14:00.002-05:00

Watch the full episode. See more Austin City Limits.

THE ESSENTIAL 13: ACL -- THE NATIONAL & BAND OF HORSES 01.15.11

2011-01-22T21:12:00.000-05:00

Watch the full episode. See more Austin City Limits.

THE ESSENTIAL 13: RADIOHEAD FOR HAITI

2011-01-22T21:08:00.000-05:00

THE ESSENTIAL 13: GRIZZLY BEAR -- LIVE AT KCRW 08.06.09

2011-01-22T20:44:00.000-05:00

No narrative, just a performance. Enjoy.

THE ESSENTIAL 13: SUNDAY MORNING CALL -- 10/31/10 -- CREAM 'GOODBYE''

2010-10-31T10:22:00.000-04:00

Goodbye (for a while).

THE ESSENTIAL 13: SUNDAY MORNING CALL -- 10/24/10 -- WINTERSLEEP 'NEW INHERITORS'

2010-10-24T12:35:00.001-04:00

Ah...Wintersleep. A band I have championed since, while folding laundry, I saw them perform at the ECMA's. Bubbles introduced them...they were destined to have my love and respect. I thought they were the shit. And I told people so. I burned CDs. I harangued. I arrived - pre-dawn in some cases - at peoples' houses with offers to lather them up in Wintersleep brand butter.
An effort, I am sad to say, largely wasted.
One friend loved 'em. Several liked 'em. Most gave me an indifferent 'Meh'. My own brother (click here for a photo of us - I'm the one in the sunglasses) was moved to near-hatred after seeing them live. Honestly. You'd think he'd just seen Nickelback.
Here's a bio from Wikipedia...

Wintersleep formed in 2001^[1] and released two albums with Dependent Music, a music label and artists' collective that began inYarmouth, Nova Scotia in 1994.

In 2006, Wintersleep signed with Labwork Music, a partnership label of Sonic Unyon and EMI Music Canada, and re-released their first two studio albums to the U.S. and Canadian markets. The re-releases include bonus tracks and videos not featured in the originals. Their debut album was remixed and re-mastered by Laurence Currie for the re-release.

On October 2, 2007, Wintersleep released their third full-length album, Welcome to the Night Sky. They won the 2008 Juno Award for New Group of the Year.

The band's members frequently collaborate outside of Wintersleep. Murphy and D'eon played together in the band Kary, now on indefinite hiatus. Drummer Campbell has also performed with Kary, and is a member of a number of other projects, includingContrived, Holy Fuck, Hayden, The Holy Shroud, and The Remains of Brian Borcherdt. Murphy collaborated with his brother in the project Postdata. Bigelow plays bass in Contrived with Campbell and Jon Samuel, and also plays in Holy Fuck and The Holy Shroud. D'eon played guitar for Contrived before Samuel joined the group, appearing on Contrived's first record, Pursuit of Plots, and the second album, Dead Air Verbatim. Samuel was a member of Halifax band Slight Return.

Along with Joel Plaskett, Wintersleep was selected as one of the opening acts for Paul McCartney's concert at Halifax Commonon July 11, 2009.^[2]

Wintersleep began working on their fourth studio album, New Inheritors, in September 2009.^[3] The album was released on May 17 in Europe and May 18 in North America.^[4] The bulk of the album was written while touring Welcome to the Night Sky due to the very busy tour schedule the band follows.^[5]

^{Mike Stagno of Sputnik Music gives New Inheritors a 4.0 (excellent) rating:}

The release of New Inheritors sees Wintersleep in an interesting position. Each of the band's first three records were met with varying degrees of acclaim – their self-titled debut and untitled sophomore efforts were well-received locally, andWelcome to the Night Sky even won a Juno for best new artist in 2007 – but they haven't exactly hit it big yet. Whether or not New Inheritors actually becomes Wintersleep's breakthrough record remains to be seen, but it's catchy enough to appeal to a wider audience. That isn't to say Wintersleep confine themselves to popular alternative rock aesthetic; though they certainly have a solid grasp of this, there is a lot more going on. In a way, New Inheritors both expands on the elements found in Welcome to the Night Sky, while still covering new ground. Wintersleep haven't lost any of the charm that has been a staple in their music, but this time around they get more creative instrumentally.

Frontman Paul Murphy has always been rather important to Wintersleep's sound. He was the main draw on cuts like "Weighty Ghost" and especially "Astronaut", both of which combined fairly insightful lyricism and super catchy hooks exceedingly well. Although Murphy remains a significant member (just listen to "Terrible Man"), New Inheritors sees the rest of the band step up their game, to great successes. The album is simply bigger, louder, and dare I say better off for it. It's no coincidence that New Inheritors' best songs are the ones which see Wintersleep loosen up. The long, guitar-heavy instrumental passages featured in "Mausoleum" are the strongest example of this new found prowess, and considering the accompanying pop flare, it wouldn't be much of a stretch to call it one of the band's better songs. And though much of New Inheritors features some sort of instrumental break, not all are based around driving guitar rock. The prominence of jangling guitars in "Echolocation" make for a nice change in pace, while "Experience the Jewel" has a sparser build, before going all out in the final minute.

New Inheritors isn't devoid of peppier moments. "Black Camera", "Encyclopedia" and even the title track represent a collection of more upbeat works. The album lacks a truly experimental piece ala "Miasmal Smoke & the Yellow Bellied Freaks" (the closest we get is a shorter emotional build up in "Baltic"), but given the album's modest structuring, this is hardly a problem. If that makes New Inheritors a bit of a safe album, so be it. More importantly, it sees Wintersleep develop and flesh out their craft, and sound really good doing it.

^{Official Site}

^{Wintersleep at MySpace}

THE ESSENTIAL 13: SUNDAY MORNING CALL -- 10/17/10 -- THE REPLACEMENTS 'LET IT BE'

2010-10-17T10:31:00.000-04:00

I first heard The Replacements because of Peter Buck. I was really getting into R.E.M. in the early 1980's and had heard that Pete was going to be producing a band from Minneapolis called The Replacements. Turns out he didn't produce the album but he did contribute a nice solo to the single. When Let It Be was released, I remember thinking that I would probably have to go to Detroit or Toronto to pick it up as the record stores in town probably wouldn't stock something like that. Turns out I was right about the non-stock issue. I was, however, saved from traveling by a guy in my school that happened to have an older brother with connections. He would lend me his copy of Let It Be to tape until I could procure my own.
What does Wiki say? Glad you asked...

Let It Be is the third studio album from the American rock band The Replacements, released in October 1984 on Twin/Tone Records. By 1983's Hootenanny, the band had grown tired of playing loud and fast exclusively and decided to write songs that were, according to vocalistPaul Westerberg, "a little more sincere."^[1] Influenced by genres as diverse as metal, Chicago blues and arena rock, Let It Be featured more complex arrangements and songwriting than the band's previous albums.

The album was remastered and reissued by on April 22, 2008, with six additional tracks.

The Replacements started their career as a punk rock band but had gradually grown beyond the straightforward hardcore of initial albums likeStink.^[2] Westerberg recalls that "playing that kind of noisy, fake hardcore rock was getting us nowhere, and it wasn't a lot of fun. This was the first time I had songs that we arranged, rather than just banging out riffs and giving them titles."^[3] By 1983, the band would sometimes perform a set of cover songs intended to antagonize whoever was in the audience. Westerberg explained that the punks who made up their audience "thought that's what they were supposed to be standing for, like 'Anybody does what they want' and 'There are no rules' [...] But there were rules and you couldn't do that, and you had to be fast, and you had to wear black, and you couldn't wear a plaid shirt with flares ... So we'd play the DeFranco Family, that kind of shit, just to piss 'em off."^[4]

Peter Buck of R.E.M. was originally rumored to produce the album. Buck later confirmed that the band did consider him as a possible producer, but when they met Buck in Athens, Georgia, the band did not have enough material. Buck did manage to contribute to the album in a limited capacity; he said, "I was kind of there for pre-production stuff, did one solo, gave 'em some ideas."^[5]

Let It Be placed more of a focus on Westerberg's songwriting than previous albums. While elements of hardcore remain, the band's sound also incorporates arena rock, pop, jazz, heavy metal, honky-tonk country and Chicago blues. Unlike previous efforts, the individual songs have distinct sections and dynamic shifts. Instruments such as piano, lap steel guitar, 12-string guitar, and mandolin appear.

The album is divided by more energetic rock songs like "Tommy Gets His Tonsils Out" and "Gary's Got a Boner" and more dramatic songs like "Sixteen Blue" and "Unsatisfied". R.E.M.'s Peter Buck contributed the guitar solo to Let It Be's first cut, "I Will Dare", which was released as a single prior to the album's release in July 1984.

Although not a commercial success upon its release, Let It Be was critically acclaimed by various American music publications; The Village Voice's Robert Christgau gave the album an A+ rating,^[6] and the album ranked fourth in the 1984 Village Voice Jazz & Pop critics' poll.^[7] The Rocket critic Bruce Pavitt said Let It Be was "mature, diverse rock that could well shoot these regional boys into the national mainstream."^[8]

The album is frequently included on professional lists of the all-time best rock albums. It is listed in Allmusic with a five-star rating and is one of the few albums to receive an 'A+' from esteemed music critic Robert Christgau. In 2003, the album was ranked number 239 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. In 1989, it was rated #15 on the same magazine's list of the "The 100 Greatest Albums of the 80's". In the 1999 miniseries "VH1's 100 Greatest Albums of Rock and Roll," VH1 ranked Let It Be #79.^[9]Rateyourmusic.com lists it as the 28th best alternative rock album and 5th best album of 1984.^[10] Pitchfork Media rated the album at #29 on their 100 Best Albums of the 1980s. Spinranked it #12 on their list of the 25 Greatest albums of all time.^[11] Robert Christgau ranked it #10 on his list of the best albums of the 80s.^[12]

In 2004, Continuum International Publishing Group published a volume in its 33⅓ series inspired by Let It Be. The book was a memoir written by Colin Meloy of indie pop band The Decemberists. In his book, Meloy wrote, "I listened to Let It Be endlessly. The record seemed to encapsulate perfectly all of the feelings that were churning inside me [...] Paul Westerberg's weary voice sounded from my boombox and I trembled to think that here I was, thirteen and the 'hardest age' was still three years in the making."^[13]

^{The cover of Let It Be is a photograph of the band sitting on the roof of Bob and Tommy Stinson's mother's house taken by Daniel Corrigan. Michael Azerrad stated that the cover was a "great little piece of mythmaking," showcasing each bandmember's personality via how they appear in the photograph.^[8] The album's title is a reference to the 1970 album Let It Be byThe Beatles; the reference was intended as a joke on the Replacements' manager, Peter Jesperson, who was a huge Beatles fan.^[1] Westerberg has stated the name was "our way of saying that nothing is sacred, that the Beatles were just a fine rock & roll band. We were seriously gonna call the next record Let It Bleed."^[3]}

^{^{Unofficial Replacements Database}}

^{^{TwinTone page}}

THE ESSENTIAL 13: SUNDAY MORNING CALL -- 10/10/10 -- THE WALKMEN 'LISBON'

2010-10-10T11:09:00.000-04:00

Based on the date, I probably should have featured Pearl Jam's first record. I just couldn't do it, though. Sorry. Nothing against Pearl Jam but, since I am attending a Walkmen show tonight, you know what you're going to get. This is the second Walkmen record to get The Call which, I believe, is a first. Congrats, gents! There will be some sort of ceremony to mark this occasion...just contact me via the blog to work out the details. What?
You can read my post from July here. It features the band's album 'You & Me' which is still my favourite Walkmen record. 'Lisbon', I think, is really, really good...just not 'You & Me' good.
Here's a bio stolen from AOL. I know...whatever.

The Walkmen feature three members from Jonathan Fire*Eater and two from the Recoys. When Jonathan Fire*Eater disbanded in 1998, the group took the remainder of their Dreamworks funding and established an uptown rehearsal space in New York City that doubled as a 24-track recording studio where they use a wide variety of vintage equipment. The 900-square-foot Harlem industrial space, dubbed Marcata Studios, was completed in the fall of 1999. (Bands that have recorded at their studio include labelmates the French Kicks and experimental rockers Arto Lindsay and Nação Zumbi.) The Walkmen, some of whom had gigged in the city under the moniker Today Okay, formed in 2000 and consist of Fire Eaters Walter Martin (vocals, organ, etc.), Paul Maroon (guitars), and Matt Barrick (drums) and ex-Recoys Hamilton Leithauser (vocals) and Peter Bauer (bass). Like Jonathan Fire*Eater, the members of the Walkmen grew up together in the Washington, D.C., area and have played in the same bands since the fifth grade. Perhaps the only way the group could be any closer is if they were all related. (Martin and Leithauser are cousins, so the semi-merging of bands is also somewhat of a family reunion.)

The Walkmen make a conscious attempt to evolve away from the raw, fiery garage sounds of their previous bands. They incorporate piano into the new songs as well as take the compositions in new directions by experimenting with instrumentation and recording techniques. The Walkmen are influenced by such diverse bands as the Pogues, Joy Division, Bruce Springsteen, Björk, U2, New Order, the Smiths, and the Cure. Their new music has favorably been compared to Pixies, Brian Eno, and the Velvet Underground with strong hints of U2 and Television. An online advertisement for the Marcata Studios explains that the owners appreciate the sonic recordings on Joy Division's Peel Sessions, Talking Heads' Fear of Music, the Specials' The Specials, and Royal Trux's Singles, among others.
The Walkmen released a self-titled, four-song EP in 1999 through the small Brooklyn label Startime International (Brendan Benson) and completed a vinyl-only release to be made available at concerts. The first Walkmen concert was at Joe's Pub in the East Village in September of 2000, shortly after their EP was released. In 2002, the Walkmen made their proper full-length debut with Everyone Who Pretended to Like Me Is Gone. It was a favorite among indie crowds and the album led the Walkmen to tour the world in support of it. Bows + Arrows, the band's first for Warner Bros.' Record Collection label, appeared two years later. Along with touring and appearing in a cameo on the Fox TV series The O.C., the Walkmen began writing a novel, John's Journey, together. The band returned to the studio in 2005, working with Don Zientera at Arlington, VA's Inner Ear Studio on their third album, A Hundred Miles Off, and at their own Marcata Studio on a song-by-song cover of Harry Nilsson's Pussy Cats, which was the last album recorded in Marcata before the band closed it. A Hundred Miles Off was released in spring 2006, and Pussy Cats arrived that fall. The Walkmen recorded their fourth album in New York's Gigantic Studio and the same Oxford, MS, studio in which they recorded Bows + Arrows, releasing You & Me in 2008 on Gigantic Music. Lisbon, the group's sixth studio album, arrived in 2010 on the Fat Possum/Bella Union label. ~ JT Griffith, Rovi

Instead of the usual print review, we will be employing new cutting edge video technology to provide this week's perspective. The folks here at The Call Home Office worked long hours to put this together for you. Please enjoy some bald guy talking about Lisbon...

The Walkmen Official Site
The Walkmen at MySpace

THE ESSENTIAL 13: SUNDAY MORNING CALL -- 10/03/10 -- THE VELVET UNDERGROUND 'VU' + 'ANOTHER VIEW'

2010-10-03T10:05:00.000-04:00

Today only! A twofer!! Tell your friends!
I had, as of last night, decided on The Velvet Underground's self-titled third album as the subject of today's Call. I changed my mind because I figured that anyone who actually reads this might already be at least a casual fan and, therefore, The Velvet Underground might be old news. THEN I thought, "Well, anything by The Velvets is technically old news", but at that exact moment a dog with a fluffy tail walked by my window and I chased him in circles for 45 minutes, forgetting what I was on about in the first place. That brings us to the now.

I shall let Wikipedia explain the circumstances that led to VU and Another View being released in 1985 and 1986 respectively...

When the Velvet Underground moved from Verve Records (who had released their first two albums) to parent company MGM Records, they signed a two-album deal, releasing their third and eponymous album The Velvet Underground in March 1969. Later that same year, however, there was a management change and MGM Records' new CEO, Mike Curb, was brought in to try to rescue the financially struggling label. He decided to purge the record company of its many controversial and unprofitable acts. The Velvet Underground quickly became one of the groups blacklisted and were released from their contract. The band had, however, in the meantime recorded fourteen tracks for possible release as their second MGM album. All of these were shelved and forgotten by their record company until the early Eighties.

As Verve (by then an imprint of Polygram) prepared to re-release the band's three Verve/MGM albums on vinyl and, for the first time, on CD, they found nineteen previously unreleased tracks: five Cale-era tracks and the fourteen "lost album" tracks, some of them in two-trackmixdown format, some of them even on multitracks. The cream of the nineteen tracks was released in February 1985 on VU; the rest remained for the time being in the vaults.

In 1986, Polydor decided to prepare a vinyl box set for European release. Simply titled The Velvet Underground, this box, which was released in June, consisted of the band's first three albums, VU, and an untitled bonus album containing the remaining nine tracks from Polygram's vaults. That untitled album was later separately released on vinyl and CD as Another View.

An acetate-sourced alternate mix of this album's version of "Ride into the Sun", featuring vocals by Lou Reed, has appeared on bootlegs and on the Australian boxed set What Goes On.

As the Velvet Underground moved from MGM to Atlantic, they re-recorded two of the songs on Another View, "Ride into the Sun" and "Rock and Roll", for possible inclusion on Loaded. Only "Rock and Roll" made the grade, but two of the Another View songs would be recycled by Lou Reed during his early solo career: "Ride into the Sun" (on Lou Reed, 1972) and "We're Gonna Have a Real Good Time Together" (onStreet Hassle, 1978).

As Verve (by then an imprint of Polygram) prepared to re-release the band's three Verve/MGM albums on vinyl and CD, they found nineteen previously unreleased tracks: five Cale-era tracks and the fourteen "lost album" tracks, some of them in two-track mixdown format, some of them even on multitracks. The cream of the nineteen tracks was released in 1985 as VU; the rest was released as Another View in 1986.

VU is a selection from the 1969 tracks as well as two previously unreleased Cale-era songs—"Temptation Inside Your Heart" and "Stephanie Says". Since most of the material was available on multitrack (only "Ocean" is included in its original 1969 mix), engineers were able to clean up and remix the tracks.

As The Velvet Underground moved from MGM to Atlantic, they re-recorded two of the songs on VU, "Ocean" and "I'm Sticking with You", for possible inclusion on Loaded. Neither made the cut, but no less than six of the VU songs would be recycled by Lou Reed during his early solo career: "I Can't Stand It" , "Lisa Says" and "Ocean" on Lou Reed, 1972; "Andy's Chest" on Transformer, 1972; "Stephanie Says" (became "Caroline Says II") on Berlin, 1973; and "She's My Best Friend" on Coney Island Baby, 1976.

VU peaked in the U.S. at #85, the band's best placing.

The quality on both records varies - indeed, that could probably be said about every Velvet Underground record - but I believe both are important for not only Velvet Underground/Lou Reed completists, but for casual fans and fans of the many bands that were influenced by (or ripped off) the Velvets' sound.

THE ESSENTIAL 13: SUNDAY MORNING CALL -- 09/26/10 -- NICK CAVE & THE BAD SEEDS 'NOCTURAMA'

2010-09-26T11:09:00.002-04:00

So much from which to choose. I was originally thinking Murder Ballads was going to be the subject of this week's Call but then reconsidered. Anything 'classic' didn't seem appropriate. I wanted something that I liked but was generally panned by reviewers. Maybe 'panned' is too strong. Nick Cave is one of those artists that doesn't ever get 'panned'. People will say 'not his best' or 'still better than most of whatever else is out there' but you won't really see a Nick Cave record trashed in print. Which brings us to Nocturama. Released in 2003, it met with mixed reviews. It was also the last record to feature the supercool Blixa Bargeld who left the Bad Seeds after 20 years to concentrate on Einstürzende Neubauten.
Personally, I love Nocturama. Perhaps it's because I caught the tour in Toronto and got to hear the songs performed live. Perhaps it's due to the excellent Chris Bailey singing on a couple of tracks. It could even be because of the mental video for Babe I'm On Fire.
Here's a typical review from Stylus' Clay Jarvis:
Throughout his solo career, Nick Cave has belonged to the illustrious three: himself, Tom Waits and Leonard Cohen, three of the only outsider singer-songwriters to make a substantial, relatively mainstream living off of their art. True originals, Cave, Waits and Cohen create worlds of tenderness and torture, and when you put on one of their records, they own you. They create rich, deep, album-length worlds in which their skills as musicians are challenged only by their poetry and singular voices. Cave’s last album, 2001’s No More Shall We Part, put him above both Waits’ and Cohen’s recent output; a masterpiece of warmth and patience crafted by a man at the height of his creative powers. With that album -- that career highlight -- not two years old, the inconsistent, surprisingly tepid Nocturama comes as a blistering shock and heartbreaking disappointment. The illustrious three Cave seems to be running with these days is himself, Steve Earle and Bruce Springsteen, a trio of greats wasting their energy and genius on material that is completely beneath them.Earle and Springsteen can blame 9/11 for their recent duds. Cave has no such excuse.
Nocturama’s ten songs are mostly ballads, a song form Cave has a proven mastery of, and yet all but one of those ballads is wholly ineffective. The music is sparse and simple, forcing focus upon the lyrics, which, for the first time are riddled with clichés. “Wonderful Life” opens the album with a total lack of fireworks. No dynamics with which to excite, no lead instruments with which to captivate, and an unsure vocal performance that finds Cave mumbling with a total lack of confidence, a strange affliction that plagues the first few songs on the album. The music is tasteful as always, but dry. Cave’s Bad Seeds are a wonderful, well-honed band -- they can make darkness impenetrable and beauty indescribable -- but when asked to play ordinary material, that ordinariness is pounded home with every note.
“Ordinary” is a compliment for many of these songs. “He Wants You” is safe and tired, the tale of a sailor adrift on the ocean that is as plain and predictable as the tender piano that nudges it along. “Right Out of Your Hand” is another song harmed by cliché, but its fabulous vocal harmonies and touching violin (courtesy of Dirty Three’s Warren Ellis) come close to redeeming it. “There is a Town” is the only solemn track that provides a spark, a slow, trudging tale of deflated dreams and homesickness in which longing is captured by the violin, wandering by the piano and truth by the guitar. Unfortunately, “Town” is bookended by “Still In Love” and “Rock of Gibraltar”, two very disappointing, whitewashed tales of dead love that deserve to be better. “Still In Love” begins darkly but is quickly bleached by middle of the road refrains and choruses; “Rock of Gibraltar” is a throwaway. Nocturama’s non-ballads don’t help the album. One is terrible, one is alright, one is fifteen minutes long. “Bring it On” is as bad as its title would suggest: AOR-ready pony-tail rock and easily one of the most bafflingly bad songs any talented artist has ever recorded. Sounding out of touch, old and polished to a garish sheen, “Bring it On” sounds like the reunion of some forgotten 70s AM radio band. “Dead Man In My Bed” is furious in comparison, but only slightly better. Keyboards blare, guitars clang and Cave delivers some great lines about ambivalence and dehydrating love, but the music, loud as it is, lacks depth and all lyrical mystery is destroyed by the smoothly harmonized “we’ve got to get it all together” refrain near the song’s end.

All that remains is “Babe I’m On Fire”, all fifteen minutes and 39 stanzas of it. Propelled by a great bassline, “Babe” is relentless, invigorated/invigorating, jittery post-punk filled with blistering guitar noise and Cave’s trademark flailing, but to play it for fifteen minutes is near ridiculous. The lyrics are incredible -- clever, all encompassing and imaginative, with a scope and grasp of rhyme that is nothing if not perfect -- but they would be just as good without the music. Take the lyrics away, however, and you’re left with some pretty meaningless, repetitive fury. More ambitious and exciting than anything else on Nocturama, “Babe” is still difficult to adore.
While not ruinously bad and not enough to destroy his legacy, Nocturama certainly calls into question Nick Cave’s future. There is flatness where once there was majesty; there is garbage where once there was gold. Until his next album is released, Cave will reside in limbo, where only he can decide which triumvirate he belongs to.

To call any of these songs 'terrible' is silly and wrong. That is, however, how some folks make a living. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, etc. Judge for yourself. Don't compare it to any of his earlier (or later) work. It stands on it's own and, given 10 or 15 years, may well be considered a classic.

THE ESSENTIAL 13: SUNDAY MORNING CALL -- 09/19/10 -- SIOUXSIE AND THE BANSHEES 'HYÆNA'

2010-09-19T11:25:00.001-04:00

It's not difficult to understand the appeal of Siouxsie and the Banshees. John McGeoch's guitar work (with the Banshees, Magazine, PiL and others) earned him the honour of being called the "Jimmy Page of new wave". Siouxsie herself was visually arresting. Technically not the greatest singer but she was perfect for this band. Steven Severin probably got the least attention. A shame since he was really the driving force behind the band; both with his bass playing and his position as songwriting partner to Siouxsie. And then there's Budgie. He did some great things with the Banshees but he really shone with The Creatures. Check his work on 'Standing There'.

This post, however, must concern itself with the Banshees' 1984 record Hyæna. After 1982's A Kiss In The Dreamhouse, John McGeoch was kicked out of the band. Around that time, Severin was working with Robert Smith on Blue Sunshine, the only record by The Glove. Smith was conscripted (or invited himself, depending on the source) to be the Banshees' guitar player and the group set to work on a version of the Beatles' 'Dear Prudence'.

Here's the Wiki...

Hyæna is the sixth studio album by Siouxsie and the Banshees, released in 1984. It was re-issued remastered and expanded in 2009.

It is the only record guitarist Robert Smith of The Cure composed and recorded with the Banshees.

Melody Maker wrote:

“

"Parts of it are so wistfully carefree that it's impossible not to credit Robert Smith as the talisman - his irreverence seems to course through everything.

"Take Me Back" is the Banshees rollicking like some primitive jazz combo drunk on the Good Lord's wine. On "Belladonna", Smith's liquid guitar relaxes Sioux to the extent that she drops a few masks to reveal her vulnerability. When the siren sings "daylight devours your unguarded hours", she's illuminating her own predicament so acutely it surely can't be coincidence.

"Dazzle", too, is naively daring: Siouxsie's voice, framed alone against the firmament of strings. It could be Lloyd Webber's Cats or something by Vaughn Williams. You can get impressed, wrapped up and lost in this.^[1]

”

In the United States, Hyæna was the first Banshees album to be released on a major on Geffen Records (now sister label to their then-UK label, Polydor).

Prior to the release of the album, "Dear Prudence" became the band's biggest hit in the UK, reaching number 3 in September of the previous year. The song was intended to be a stand-alone single in Europe and as it was not issued in North America, it later only appeared on the American version of Hyæna.

A review of the 2009 remaster lifted from the BBC...

There had been considerable tumult in the Banshees' camp between the release of 1982's A Kiss In The Dreamhouse and 1984's Hyaena. Guitarist John McGeogh had been sacked; Robert Smith had replaced him on a long-term loan, and after a year of group solo projects (The Creatures and The Glove), Smith wanted to mark his time in the studio with Siouxsie. The resulting single (here as a bonus track), Dear Prudence, became their biggest UK hit in late 1983.

Hyaena, the sole studio album this line-up recorded together, was released in 1984, just after Smith had left to return to the Cure full time.It is swirling, complex and frequently enchanting.
Traditionally an album that has split the audience, it bridges the gap between the raga-like material on JuJu and their later, high-gothic period. The lyrics are suitably bleak – 'a dead sea of fluid mercury' (Dazzle); 'from the fury pit, a reek of misery' (Pointing Bone); 'eat me, feed me, with your belching, foul breath' (We Hunger) - and ably demonstrate the underbelly of pop at the time of Wham! and Nik Kershaw.

With Budgie and Steve Severin playing like their life depended on it, and Siouxsie enchanting with the appropriate air of need and detached drama. It is the Banshees psychedelia running riot. There are sufficient theatrics and spills that make it akin to a thriller hanging on its final twist.

This new remaster, bonus material and suitably ornate notes from Paul Morley make this another exemplary addition to Banshees' reissue series, demonstrating the regard in which they still hold their audience.

Siouxsie Sioux's official site
Steven Severin's official site

THE ESSENTIAL 13: DETROIT LIVES

2010-09-13T19:32:00.000-04:00

An excellent short doc in 3 parts plus bonus ~~tracks~~ feature. It highlights the positive side of Detroit in 2010. Thanks to Chris Holt for posting on Facebook.

THE ESSENTIAL 13: ELTON DUCK

2010-09-13T19:13:00.000-04:00

The topic of much discussion at last week's band practice...

THE ESSENTIAL 13: SUNDAY MORNING CALL -- 09/12/10 --THOMAS FEINER & ANYWHEN 'THE OPIATES Revised'

2010-09-12T10:17:00.000-04:00

I first heard Thomas Feiner through David Sylvian.
I considered several versions of that opening sentence. 'David Sylvian turned me on to Thomas Feiner'. 'After a recommendation from David Sylvian, I decided to check out Thomas Feiner's record'. 'My close friend David Sylvian gave me a copy of The Opiates'. 'David INSISTED I listen to The Opiates immediately following our weekly jai alai session'. 'A bulk e-mail from Samadhi Sound mentioned the re-release of The Opiates'.
Whatever. The actual circumstances are irrelevant. What IS relevant is that you listen to this record.
Who in the blue hell is Thomas Feiner, you ask? Here's a bio from his official site...

Born 1968 outside Gothenburg on the Swedish west coast. Parents of Russian and Polish origin. Started taking trumpet classes in public music school at the age of 10, playing in various youth orchestras throughout the school years. This gradually gave way to less formal musical experiments as synthesizers started to become accessible. During and after the mid-teen years came the first attempts at forming bands and recording music with younger brother among others. Started singing for lack of other volunteers. Demos and some scattered gigs amounting to nothing substantial.

1989 saw the formation of what eventually evolved into the band Anywhen. As various members came and left over the following years, a core crystallized with Thomas Feiner on vocals, Mikael Andersson Tigerström on bass, Kalle Thorslund drums, and Jan Sandahl guitar. The band gave some few rare concerts and put out three full length albums: "As We Know It" in 1993 on Gothenburg label "Roligan". "Anywhen" in 1996 on Roligan and German label Clearspot 1997, and "The Opiates" in 2001 on Clearspot.

While the first record contained a kind of airy, skewed pop, the second record, produced by drummer and percussionist Michael Blair (Tom Waits, Elvis Costello etc) put out much more aggressive energy - music perhaps best described as power pop, or rock even.

The release of the self-produced "The Opiates" was a venture into more brooding moods and melancholic soundscapes, and the band more or less dissolved itself in the process. Priorities shifted among many of the members, ultimately distancing some from the project. Feiner gradually started adding more songs of his own, in the end bringing the entire project home. The record was completed in 2000, with Kalle Thorslund as assistant producer.

In 2003 Feiner was commissioned to score the soundtrack of German movie "Love in Thoughts" (Was nützt die Liebe in Gedanken, X-filme 2004), which also featured his song "For Now" in the end credits.

Thomas Feiner currently resides in Gothenburg and divides his time between graphics and music, working on his first solo-album.

Check out this review from musicOMH -

From haunting minimalism to the kind of swelling strings The Last Shadow Puppets would be proud of, The Opiates is a wonderful album, well worth waiting the seven years it has taken to complete. On David Sylvian's Samadhisound label, it has found the perfect home.

With dark, brooding vocals that recall Smog backed by an Eastern Bloc symphony orchestra (the Warsaw Radio one actually, since you asked), the music comes over like Nick Cave trying to ape Scott Walker, a promised land of Old Testament yearning in God's own bass clef.
The Opiates was meant to be the third studio album of late 90s Scandinavian misery mongers Anywhen, but the band went their separate ways before it was completed, leaving its emotional depth charge to become a potential lost classic. Released here and there across Europe in 2001, but doomed to be mostly forgotten, until now it lived on only through the original press and PR releases thrown up by Google, internet ghosts whose frail homepages would be soundtracked perfectly by the music that survives them.
So let us rejoice then that under Slyvian's guidance, direction and championing, former singer and driving force Thomas Feiner has been convinced to dust off the master tapes, suck in the midnight and full moon atmosphere, and finish the job.
His rich, slow baritone seeps through the woodwind and strings, hypnotic and alluring, seducing you into the log-fire warmth of a midwinter night. Brooding and dangerous, his call is impossible to resist. The sleeve, dressed in Cecil Beaton images of Jean Cocteau is perfect: not only for the juxtaposition of starkness and beauty but also for the subliminal reminder of the band which shares Cocteau's name. Their fans will find much to like amid The Opiates' fragile beauty.
The deep, low register of the album makes the occasional contrasts all the more memorable. One of these is the gentle piano on For Now, written by Feiner for the German movie Love In Thoughts and, along with Yonderhead, one of the two interlopers that has been added to the original vision.
From its opening bars to the perfectly titled closer All That Numbs You, The Opiates is exquisite, a funeral march for a band that never wanted to make you dance but who most certainly deserve to live on, as a memory if nothing else.

Thomas Feiner at MySpace
Anywhen at MySpace

THE ESSENTIAL 13: PEOPLE, LET ME GET THIS OFF MY CHEST

2010-09-11T22:03:00.000-04:00

By popular demand. If gazing dreamily at the image below isn't enough, you can get all 70 tracks by clicking HERE. You're welcome.

THE ESSENTIAL 13: SUNDAY MORNING CALL -- 09/05/10 -- WOVEN HAND 'MOSAIC'

2010-09-05T12:04:00.000-04:00

David Eugene Edwards is a strange fella. That's fine because the strange ones usually make the most interesting music. Woven Hand (or Wovenhand, both are used) rose from the ashes of 16 Horsepower, a band Edwards formed in Colorado in 1992. Next week's Call might be something from 16HP, so I'll defer the history lesson until then. If you just can't wait, use the Google machine or take a peek at the excellent Thank You For Clapping site.
Musically, Edwards veers towards towards the dark; liberally employing traditional yet rarely used (in popular music) instrumentation -- banjo, concertina, mandolin. Lyrically, well, he sings about God. Normally, this would be a red flag of the highest order. These lyrics, however, are not of the 'Jesus saves, spread the good news' variety. Nope. These are more the 'Old Testament, fire & brimstone, smite thine enemy' type.
Mosaic is the third Wovenhand record, released in 2006. Here is a review, pinched from Thank You For Clapping, that originally appeared in a Dutch magazine called OOR...

Woven Hand - Mosaic review

by Marcel Haerkens

from Dutch magazine OOR, issue 6, July 2006

The ominous sounds of instrumental overture Breathing Bull have only just started to peal from the speakers when, outside my study, a dark cloud hides the sun that had been shining cheerfully up till then and a hellish thunderstorm breaks out. You can't make that up. David Eugene Edwards spooks me. But he does make otherworldly fantastic music.
He already did that in 16 Horsepower times and with Woven Hand he takes it one big step further. Formerly he limited himself mainly to folk and blues rooted in the Appalachians. On this, the fourth Woven Hand album he travels trough time and styles. The melody of Swedish Purse is based on a medieval ballad, whilst the lyrics of Twig are derived from a St. Ambrose, who is supposed to have lived a couple of centuries before the birth of Christ. (TYFC: well, the booklet says 340-397 AD…)
Yes indeed, David is a devout disciple of the Lord. His poetic lyrics are timeless though and force even the most unyielding atheist to think. Dirty Blue is the song Andrew Eldritch wished he'd written for his Sisters Of Mercy. But Edwards isn't a black-clad poseur who confines himself to a stylistic format. This man opts for a kaleidoscopic approach. From Irish folk and Japanese roots to classic Elizabethan and the hypnotizing drone of the Aboriginals. Meanwhile the mystic is speaking in tongues.
Mysterious, spellbinding and inescapable. Mosaic is a fearsome beautiful album.

I think the Andrew Eldritch comparison is apt; not so much musically but in mood and tone. Ditto Nick Cave.

Woven Hand official site
Woven Hand MySpace
David Eugene Edwards Tiny Desk Concert at NPR

THE ESSENTIAL 13: SUNDAY MORNING CALL -- 08/29/10 -- RHEOSTATICS 'MELVILLE'

2010-08-29T12:26:00.000-04:00

Trying to name a band is tough. First, you have to try to find something that hasn't already been done (or at least, "hasn't already been done well enough that lots of people have already heard about it"). You could always throw out some combination of worlds that's likely to be original, say, Phlegm-truck Bagel or The Concrete Enriched Tomato Boyz. Or, if you REALLY want to get ridiculous, Hinny. I mean, c'mon...who would want to name their band Hinny? Am I right?!? What in Christ's name is a hinny?? Ahhhh...good times.
In any case, it was at one of these marathon naming sessions that the conversation, as it usually does, drifts toward music. Recently, the conversation drifted up the Macdonald-Cartier Freeway to the dissolved municipality known as...Etobicoke.
Etobicoke, home of Humber College, Woodbine Race Track and Sherway Gardens. Most importantly, however, Etobicoke is the birthplace of Rheostatics and the Trans-Canada Soul Patrol, later wisely shortened to Rheostatics.

Melville is the Rheostatics' second record. Here's what Wiki say...

Melville is a 1991 album by Canadian rock band Rheostatics.

It was the band’s second album, and their first to garner wide airplay across Canada. The single “Record Body Count” was a significant hit for the band on Canadian alternative rock stations and MuchMusic in 1991.

The song “You Are Very Star,” a bonus track on the CD release, ends with a hockey announcer’s narration in which the band is presented as a hockey team competing for the league’s top ranking against 13 Engines, Scott B. Sympathy and Tom Cochrane.

In 1996, the Canadian music magazine Chart conducted a reader poll to determine the best Canadian albums of all time. Melville placed 16th in that poll. When the magazine conducted a follow up poll in 2000, Melville placed fifth, behind only Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Sloan and Rheostatics’ 1992 album Whale Music. In the magazine’s third poll in 2005, Melville placed 44th, but was one of only 25 albums to have placed in the Top 50 in all three polls.

Hop on over to the excellent Northern Wish. Find "Static Journey" and you can download what amounts to a Rheostatics box-set. For free. Click HERE for the Melville-era volume.
The boys called it quits in 2007 (save for a 2009 reunion to honour the terminally ill Paul Quarrington) but someone still maintains an official site.
More links:
Dave Bidini
Dave Clark
Tim Vesely
Martin Tielli
Don Kerr
Kevin Hearn
Michael Phillip Wojewoda

THE ESSENTIAL 13: SUNDAY MORNING CALL -- 08/22/10 -- GIANT SAND 'GLUM'

2010-08-22T09:40:00.003-04:00

Howe Gelb gets around. Metaphorically. Physically, he probably doesn't venture too far from Arizona. Maybe he does. I don't know. In addition to his 15-20 solo records he has also released music as/with Arizona Amp & Alternator, OP8, The Band of Blacky Ranchette and Giant Sandworms. I think he was also part of Calexico for a while. Today, mes amis, I want to highlight the loose collective known as Giant Sand. In particular, their 1994 release, Glum.

Here's what the mighty Wik says about Giant Sand...

Giant Sand is an American rock band, based in Tucson, Arizona, USA. The name is shortened from the original Giant Sandworms, a reference to the creatures in the Dune books. Overseen by singer-songwriter Howe Gelb, its membership has shifted over the years—at times with each album. For a long while the band's rhythm section consisted of John Convertino and Joey Burns who left the band when their side project, Calexico, grew more widely known than Giant Sand and, as Gelb characterized it in 2004, Calexico "began to work against Giant Sand and eat away at what the band was"^[1].
Other members have included keyboardist Chris Cacavas (of Green on Red), bassist Paula Jean Brown (who was briefly a member of The Go-Go's and was married to Gelb at the time^[2]) and drummer Tom Larkins (later to become a Jonathan Richman sideman).
Guest artists have included Victoria Williams, Neko Case, Juliana Hatfield, PJ Harvey, Vic Chesnutt, Steve Wynn, Vicki Peterson, Rainer Ptacek, M. Ward, Isobel Campbell nearly all members of the band Poi Dog Pondering, and regular cameos from Jello Biafra and Gelb and Brown's daughter, Indiosa Patsy Jean.^[3]

Since I couldn't find a review of Glum (I didn't look very hard. Sorry.), you can read about Howe in his own words...

Howe Gelb by Howe Gelb
born with a big eye. left alone a lot. learned how to talk to furniture. good listeners and eratic mumblers. big flood in 72. 6 feet over our roof. fantastic imagery when the waters receded. and no more material goods to worry about losing. but the piano bit it hard. a biblical fate i suppose, because i would hate to practice. so it called out to the river (of tears maybe) to rise up and splinter it for spite. great, no more feeling bad about not practicing. the refrigerater had the best sense of humor. was completely turned upside down and placed back in its exact same spot. the house reeked of mud and water snakes. but along with the divorcings, it meant i was about to discover the desert. not much flood insurance offered in tucson. met up with a an east german born slide player i decided must be my older brother. gave up college of art for the crutch of guitar. first recorded rock opera in 76 on a pbs radio station – 4 track. sattempted punk band in 78 but didn’t have to sing. got to start a giant sandworm band with east german slide player in 79 or 80. finally figured out how to make a record – on 8 track – in 1983 or 4. band of blacky ranchette. then recorded another one in 84 or 5: giant sand. finally toured in europe (3 times) in 86. opened for the ‘cramps’ in france. went to east berlin for a look see. like walking in a muted colored painting by an artist who liked not to paint pedestrians. rainer flew in to west berlin in case they were to recapture him at the border, like they might still be in need of slide players that utilized instruments invented by chekoslavakian brothers …where they mentioned my wife looked like jr’s wife from ‘dallas’. had a baby soon after back in hollywood. partnered up with drummer covertino in the same shambled building we lived in there. divorced and moved back out to the high desert this time in 89. joshua tree area. pappy and harriet’s was the center of the universe. recorded center of the universe. took in young bassist burns. met 2 nd wife in arhus. moved back to tucson in 91. bassist and drummer begin splintering off in 94. rainer gets brain cancer in 96. surrounded by folks falling victim to self medication. rainer dies 20 months later. another baby born in 99. one more for good luck in 02. 2nd step sister falls to cancer in 03. thinking how great the flood and divorce was. discover a new way to applicate guitar effects pedals. assemble them in an utility belt. begin to tour with no luggage. have socks, boxers and t- shirts provided in rider instead. put a guitar in the rider too so i don’t need to haul one anymore. get arrested in 04 or 5 for attempting to board plane with no luggage, no guitar …just a ‘utility’ belt.

THE ESSENTIAL 13: SUNDAY MORNING CALL -- 08/15/10 -- THE BAND 'THE BAND'

2010-08-15T11:01:00.002-04:00

'The Brown Album' doesn't sound nearly as cool as 'The White Album' (or, for that matter, 'The Black Album') yet that's exactly how some folks refer to The Band's eponymous second record. Released on September 22, 1969, The Band doesn't get the same love as its predecessor, Music From Big Pink yet, for my pesos, it is the better record.

From Wiki...

The Band peaked at #9 on Billboard's Pop Albums chart. In 2000, it recharted on Billboard's Internet Albums chart, peaking at #10. The singles "Rag Mama Rag" and "Up on Cripple Creek" peaked on the Pop Singles chart at #57 and #25 respectively.

The album includes many of The Band's best-known and critically acclaimed songs, including "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down", whichRolling Stone named the 245th greatest song of all time. In 2003, the album was ranked number 45 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. In 1998 Q magazine readers voted The Band the 76th greatest album of all time. TIME magazine included it in their unranked 2006 list of the 100 greatest albums.

According to the liner notes to the 2000 reissue of "The Band" by Rob Bowman, the album, "The Band", has been viewed as a concept album, with the songs focusing on people, places and traditions associated with an older version of Americana.^[1]

Thus, the songs on this album draw from historic themes for "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" , "King Harvest (Has Surely Come)" and Richard Manuel's "Jawbone" (which was composed in the unusual 6/4 time signature.)

The album was reissued in 2009 by Audio Fidelity as a limited edition gold CD. Remastered for the first time on CD from the original master tapes (which Capitol evidently no longer possesses), the album also included a single b-side "Get Up Jake" as a bonus track. Originally slated for the album "Get Up Jake" was dropped from the original album line-up at the last minute because the band felt it was too similar to another track on the album.^[2]

In 2009, the album was preserved into the National Recording Registry because the album was "culturally, historically, or aesthetically important, and/or informs or reflects life in the United States."

Sound On Sound has an excellent essay about "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down". I suggest you give it a read. Click HERE.

An interesting New York Times article from October 1969 can be read HERE.

While The Band does not have an official site, THIS SITE is an outstanding resource.

THE ESSENTIAL 13: SUNDAY MORNING CALL -- 08/08/10 -- DAVID BOWIE 'LODGER'

2010-08-08T09:28:00.001-04:00

Today we delve into the last installment of the 'Berlin Trilogy'. Last week we profiled 'Heroes' and, the week prior, Low. For Lodger, however, the name 'Berlin Trilogy' is a bit of a misnomer as it was recorded entirely in New York and Montreux.
Let's see what Wiki has to offer...

Originally to be titled either Planned Accidents or Despite Straight Lines,^[2] Lodger was largely recorded between legs of Bowie's 1978 world tour and featured the same musicians, along with Brian Eno. Lead guitar was played not by Robert Fripp, as on "Heroes", but by Fripp's future King Crimson bandmate, Adrian Belew, whom Bowie had "poached" while the guitarist was touring with Frank Zappa. Much of Belew's work on the album was composited from multiple takes played against backing tracks of which he had no prior knowledge, not even the key.^[1] Other experiments on the album included using old tunes played backwards, employing identical chord sequences for different songs, and having the musicians play unfamiliar instruments.

Eno felt that the trilogy had "petered out" by Lodger,^[3] and Belew also observed Eno's and Bowie's working relationship closing down: "They didn't quarrel or anything uncivilised like that; they just didn't seem to have the spark that I imagine they might have had during the "Heroes"album."^[1] An early plan to continue the basic pattern of the previous records with one side of songs and the other instrumentals was dropped, Bowie instead adding lyrics that foreshadowed the more worldly concerns of his next album, Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps).^[3]

Though missing the songs/instrumentals split that characterised Low and "Heroes", Lodger has been interpreted as dividing roughly into two major themes, that of travel (primarily Side One) and critiques of Western civilisation (primarily Side Two).^[4]^[5] The final track on "Heroes", "The Secret Life of Arabia", anticipated the mock-exotic feel of Lodger’s travel songs. "African Night Flight" was a tribute to the music and culture of the veldt, inspired by a trip to Kenya;^[6] its musical textures have been cited as presaging the popularity of world music, Bowie considering it a forerunner of the sounds developed by Brian Eno and David Byrne for My Life in the Bush of Ghosts (1981).^[1]^[3] "Move On" was lyrically Bowie's ode to his own wanderlust, sonically his earlier classic "All the Young Dudes" played backwards.^[4] "Yassassin" was an unlikely reggae song with a Turkish flavour. "Red Sails" was inspired in part by the ambient motorik of German band Neu!;^[5] for Bowie, it combined "a German new music feel" with "a contemporary English mercenary-cum-swashbuckling Errol Flynn" to produce "a lovely cross-reference of cultures".^[1]

Of the album's critiques, "Boys Keep Swinging", the first single, was seen partly as a witty riposte to the Village People but also, combined with its cross-dressing video clip, a comment on ideas of masculinity; musically it was notable for guitarist Carlos Alomar and drummer Dennis Davis in the unfamiliar roles of drummer and bass player, respectively.^[4] According toTony Visconti, the song featured the "exact same chord changes and structure, even the same key" as "Fantastic Voyage", Bowie's take on the possibility of nuclear war.^[7] The second single, "DJ", took a sardonic look at the world of the disc jockey. "Repetition", Bowie's exploration of a wife-basher's mentality, was sung in a deliberately unemotional tone that highlighted the lyric and the unnatural slur of the bass guitar. "Red Money" added new words to a Bowie/Alomar tune that had originally appeared as "Sister Midnight", with lyrics by Iggy Pop, on the latter's album The Idiot.^[2]

^{David collaborated with British pop artist Derek Boshier on the cover design. The original gatefold album sleeve featured a full-length shot of Bowie as an accident victim, heavily made up with an apparently-broken nose. For effect, the image was deliberately of low resolution, taken with a Polaroid SX-70 type camera. The inside of the gatefold included pictures of Che Guevara's corpse, Mantegna’s Lamentation over the Dead Christ, and Bowie being readied for the cover photo.^[4]^[8] These images were not reproduced in the Rykodisc CD reissue in 1991.}

Lodger received relatively poor reviews on its original release, Rolling Stone calling it "one of his weakest ... scattered, a footnote to "Heroes", an act of marking time",^[9] and Melody Maker finding it "slightly faceless".^[2] It was also criticised for having a thinner, muddier mix than Bowie's previous albums.^[2] Lodger peaked at #4 in the UK charts and #20 in America at a time when the artist was being "out-Bowied" commercially by his New Wave "children" such as Gary Numan.^[1]

Soon after its release, NME editors Roy Carr and Charles Shaar Murray predicted that Lodger would "have to 'grow in potency' over a few years, but eventually it will be accepted as one of Bowie's most complex and rewarding projects".^[4] While biographer Christopher Sandford calls it a "slick, calculatedly disposable record",^[6] author David Buckley contends that "its stature grows with each passing year",^[1] and Nicholas Pegg sums up, "undervalued and obscure practically from the moment of its release, its critical re-evaluation is long overdue".^[2]

^{Many are of the opinion that}^Lodger^{was mistreated by reviewers upon its release in 1979 and that it is only recently getting its due. Check this 2004 review from Ian Mathers at Stylus -}

For better or worse, we here at Stylus, in all of our autocratic consumer-crit greed, are slaves to timeliness. A record over six months old is often discarded, deemed too old for publication, a relic in the internet age. That's why each week at Stylus, one writer takes a look at an album with the benefit of time. Whether it has been unjustly ignored, unfairly lauded, or misunderstood in some fundamental way, we aim with On Second Thought to provide a fresh look at albums that need it.

And so with Lodger we come to the end of another phase of David Bowie’s career; the end of his sustained collaboration with Eno, the end of the Berlin period (although Lodger was recorded in Switzerland), the end of Bowie’s ridiculous burst of creativity that produced three classics in two years, and the end of the 70s. By the time Bowie put together Scary Monsters in 1980 he’d moved on to an entirely different sound. This album was the last gasp of an old regime.

So where does this leave the oft-overlooked Lodger? It’s lacking the sweaty, manic desperation of Station To Station, the belated classic status of Low or the epochal grandeur of ”Heroes”. It’s slight to the point of invisibility, ten tracks in 35 minutes with nary a grand statement in sight. And upon its release, everyone—Bowie, Eno, Adrian Belew, Carlos Alomar, the record label—was underwhelmed.

I come, however, not to bury Lodger but to praise it. We’ve had decades for the album to ingratiate itself to our ears, and it has been (partially) successful—Belew, for example, now dubs it “the greatest thing Bowie has given to the world”. It is perhaps the great lost Bowie album, with not a single dud to be found in the ten songs and maybe the finest second half of any of his efforts.

The album’s first side takes up where ”Heroes” left off with “The Secret Life Of Arabia”. It’s a hasty travelogue, switching locales as fast as possible. “Fantastic Voyage” leads off, however, with political commentary (“Dignity is valuable, but our lives are valuable too”) that, as with so much political music, resounds clearly today. As with everything from the Clash’s early work to Talking Heads’ “Life During Wartime”, “Fantastic Voyage” and its refrain of “It’s a moving world, but that’s no reason / To shoot some of those missiles / Think of us as fatherless scum / It won’t be forgotten / ‘Cause we’ll never say anything nice again, will we?” might as well have been written today. It’s enough to make one think that current events aren’t so much a return to Reagan/Thatcher/Mulroney as it is that these kinds of rulers are the status quo and we’ve merely had an unprecedented (and illusory) break from them in the past decade. “Fantastic Voyage”, in addition to being a fantastic showcase for Bowie’s vocals (stronger than ever throughoutLodger), sets the stage with foreboding.

But before we can worry too much about nuclear apocalypse, Bowie sweeps us into “African Night Flight”, complete with Swahili chant (David Bowie: walking the fine line between exploring other cultures and musical colonialism since at least ’79) and fast, very British proto-rap. It works better on record than it does on paper, thanks to the short run time and frantic pace. If “African Night Flight” (and later “D.J.”) shows that Bowie and Talking Heads were paying attention to each other in the late 70’s (a safe bet, considering Eno), it’s also the sort of song where the comparisons between Kate Bush and Bowie make the most sense. Play it side by side with “Sat In Your Lap” or especially “The Dreamers” and you may wish, as I do, that the two had collaborated.

Like “The Dreaming”, “African Night Flight” depicts a colonial figure that in some ways has “gone native” but remains oppressive despite whatever sympathy for the inhabitants of the country the narrator has. “African Night Flight” also engages in a wonderful rushed expressionism, Bowie chanting,

Struggle with a child whose screaming dreaming
Drowned by the props all steely sunshine
Sick of you, sick of me
Lust for the free life
Quashed and maimed
Like a valuable loved one
Left unnamed

until it makes sense.

But he must, at least for the first part of Lodger, “Move On”. Initially sweeping and calm, Bowie idly muses on where to escape to next (Russia? Japan? Cyprus?) before collapsing into a fevered cry of “Cannot forget you / Cannot forget you”, the emotional reserve of the rich vacationer revealed again as emotional camouflage. The track is wonderful too, even if it is just “All The Young Dudes” played backwards by the new band (hence the eerie, almost wordless backing vocals).

But from “Move On” Bowie switches to an actual first person account of life in a different culture, “Yassassin (Turkish For: Long Live)”. The track itself is fairly odd, a Jamaican sounding rhythm section (actually a corruption of the one from “Fame”) pit against a wailing electric violin and keyboard and a picked, vaguely Eastern guitar part. I have no idea what Turkish music sounds like, but I could believe “Yassassin” is a late 70s update of it. Meanwhile, Bowie sings from the perspective of one of the dwellers of a Turkish café, weaving scattered impressions of violence and foreboding (“I have a love and she is afeared”) but rejecting hasty generalizations: “Look at this—then look at us”.

“Red Sails” rounds out the first side of Lodger with the most important musical moment so far. Although Adrian Belew is all over this album, it’s not until “Red Sails” that his guitar work really shines. The song is a bit of doggerel (possibly about pirates), but as the track fades out to Bowie’s nonsensical syllables and the chaotic howl of the taped-together composite solo, it hits you just how good Belew’s work here, whether edited or left alone, really is. You couldn’t possibly play the solo on “Red Sails” without editing, but as with the other guitar parts on the album it is a thing of acerbic beauty, unfolding out towards the avant-garde while still carrying the tune. And while the songs on Lodger were and are counter-intuitive on first encounter, they are unmistakably pop, if pop of a particularly mutated strain.

The second half of Lodger could not be more different from the first without weakening the album. Location is no longer important, or even mentioned; instead we get a set of songs that grapple with existential decay. “DJ”, in addition to being one of the best songs on Lodger, sets the stage for the second side in much the same way “Fantastic Voyage” did.

What makes “DJ” relatively unique, and also frequently misinterpreted, is the narrative of the song, which has little if anything to do with music, DJing, or any similar topic. As opposed to other rock songs with DJs as lyrical focuses (see, for example, “Panic” by The Smiths), the narrator’s job here is completely irrelevant. When Bowie despairs that “I am a DJ, I am what I play” the sentiment could easily be interchanged with any other work activity. “DJ” is neither celebrating DJ culture nor condemning it, the music and the activity is merely a framework to hang the song upon. Note the opening lines of “I’m home, lost my job / And incurably ill / You think this is easy realism / I’ve got a girl out there / I suppose”. “DJ” is a horror story about a human being reduced to nothing more than work, and even if we can agree that being a DJ is a better job than plenty of others, there is still something strongly (and deliberately) off-putting about the narrator and his story. The “easy realism” line sticks out of the above-quoted section strongly, but the whole second half of Lodger is a rejection of “easy realism”, poking beneath the surface to get at the often repelling guts of the matter at hand in each song.

“DJ” closes with Bowie’s cry of “I am the DJ and I‘ve got believers”, but although “DJ” retreats into hedonism to avoid confronting the problems of life much likeStation To Station, here Bowie is not trapped into that mindset, instead presenting it as someone else’s situation. Bowie has transcended that particular form of denial. “Look Back In Anger”, however, deals with something a bit more serious than even the disaffection in “DJ”. Although vocally the song is Bowie’s audition for the part of the Phantom of the Opera (if he was any more over the top during the chorus, the song would blow apart), the actual tale is stranger and more affecting than anything else on Lodger (or, even, most of Bowie’s work). An encounter between the narrator (and at this stage of Bowie’s career, we can again return to being fairly sure that the narrator of his songs is not him) and the Angel of Death, “Look Back In Anger” is missing several crucial parts of a normal narrative, things like a conclusion, context, plot or characters. As performed it’s a superb piece of unreality, bolstered by a busily churning backing highlighted by Carlos Alomar’s fine quasi-solo. It also boasts one of Bowie’s best opening verses, grounding the cryptic account with weary mundanity:

"You know who I am," he said
The speaker was an angel
He coughed and shook his crumpled wings
Closed his eyes and moved his lips
"It's time we should be going"

But the narrator doesn’t go with the angel and no one really seems to notice him. The calm of the verses is contrasted with Bowie’s bawling delivery of the chorus, and the song flip flops back and forth between restraint and terror.

If “Look Back In Anger” is the second side of Lodger’s somersault into metaphysical oddness, “Boys Keep Swinging” drags us back into the territory of “DJ”. The song is most famous for both its stylistic similarity to past efforts such as “All The Young Dudes” and “Oh! You Pretty Things” and the fact that Bowie had his band change instruments so that the track has a more amateur feel. Whoever plays drums keeps things very simple, but the bassline is one of the best of the album, and the closing guitar shriek is surprisingly effective in its primitivism. The true strength of “Boys Keep Swinging”, however, besides its amiability as a fabulous pop song, is that its exultation of “boys” is so overdone that the song becomes a critique. Things may be better (slightly?) now than in 1979, but the song prompts one to ask why it is that “Heaven loves ya / The clouds part for ya / Nothing stands in your way / When you’re a boy”.

The contrast between the raucous “Boys Keep Swinging” and the deadened “Repetition” is deliberate and effective. As the former crashes to a halt, a single guitar starts and then a simple, unchanging two-note bass part starts up. The drums and bass hold steady while the guitar wavers and splinters above it, while Bowie sings the finest portrayal (and thus most harrowing, and thus most sadly true to life, and thus the strongest denunciation) of spousal abuse in modern music.

“Repetition” begins its case with a simple fact that these sorts of songs often leave out: “Johnny was a man / And he’s bigger than her”. The only explicit involvement of Bowie’s narrator in the story he tells is a brief “don’t hit her” that almost gets lost between verses. Most strikingly, “Repetition” locates the ultimate cause for the abuse not in the relation of husband and wife but in the husband’s psyche and issues found thereof; “And he could have had a Cadillac / If the school had taught him right / And he could have married Anne in the blue silk blouse”. The unnamed wife is absent from this section because her and her actions (supper cooling on the table) quite literally have nothing to do with her husband’s sins. There is no fault on her part, and although his actions are explained, there is no sympathy for the abuser. There is just the empty bass twang and the true aftereffects of abuse: “I guess the bruises won’t show / If she wears long sleeves / But the space in her eyes / Shows through”.

Through it all, although we can tell where Bowie’s sympathies lie, he retains an almost complete lack of affect; even the “don’t hit her” line is calmly spoken. The title is apt, as the bass continues inexorably and Bowie’s story almost seems to struggle against the inevitability of its telling.

If Lodger is the forgotten Bowie album, the powerful and queasily affecting “Repetition” is its most unjustly forgotten song, even more so than “Fantastic Voyage”, “Red Money” or “DJ”. On a certain level the song, with its blank description, is almost chillingly cold, but that an artist of Bowie’s stature could write such a song about such a topic without once falling into platitudes or lazy moralizing (or “easy realism”) almost beggars belief. Any true Bowie best-of should include “Repetition”, but unsurprisingly none of them do.

To end Lodger on this note would be cruelly depressive (and incredibly incongruous), so there is still one song left, the almost funky (due mostly to bassist George Murray) “Red Money”. Retreating to the more impressionistic writing of “Look Back In Anger”, Bowie and his backing vocalists spin a tale of a business’ (a government’s?) economic collapse. On a purely musical level it is probably the finest track on Lodger, seeing the album out on a high of chanted, indelible chorus, and note-perfect soaring music, bringing to mind skyscrapers and stock markets.

So why did Lodger do so poorly? I’ve heard that the original release suffered from an untenably muddy mix (I’ve only heard the crisp 1999 digital remaster done by EMI), and even with proper separation the songs here do not necessarily grab the listener immediately, with the exception of the stretch from “DJ” to “Boys Keep Swinging”, which sounds like an alternate-universe Greatest Hits. One complaint that can be leveled at the album is that while these ten songs are all individually great, they often don’t cohere into a pleasing whole, especially on the first half of the album.

Neither the label nor Bowie was particularly interested in pushing Lodger, and while Bowie occasionally includes some of these songs into his live sets, mostly the album has languished in obscurity. To add insult to injury for Bowie fans in 1979, Lodger had a bizarre cover, Bowie’s seemingly fractured legs stretched out above a postcard (the back finding a mashed up Bowie lying on the ground looking as if he’d just seen something very unpleasant), which was probably the least inviting of his career.

Commercially, Bowie would bounce back in a year with “Ashes To Ashes” andScary Monsters, but he never again produced an album of pop as warped (by other cultures, by the horror of a dead existence, by odd left-turns) as Lodger. While Low and ”Heroes” get most of the plaudits, Lodger boasted the virtues of the first sides of both without the (admittedly stunning) instrumental half. While it doesn’t quite reach the heights of ”Heroes”, Lodger is well worth checking out.

Official Site

THE ESSENTIAL 13: SUNDAY MORNING CALL -- 08/01/10 -- DAVID BOWIE 'HEROES'

2010-08-01T09:26:00.000-04:00

"There's old wave, there's new wave. And there's David Bowie..." (RCA marketing catch phrase used for 'Heroes' release)
Today we take a look at record number two in the 'Berlin Trilogy'. While Low garnered the best reviews (and charted the highest) of the three records, 'Heroes' seems to be the best known and most well regarded by fans. Probably due to the endurance of the title track.

Let's see what the Wiki machine has to say...

"Heroes"^[6] is an album by David Bowie, released in 1977. The second installment of his 'Berlin Trilogy' with Brian Eno (the other releases being Low and Lodger) "Heroes" developed the sound of Low in a more positive direction.^[7] Of the three albums, it was the most befitting of the appellation "Berlin", being the only one wholly recorded there. The title track remains one of Bowie's best known, a classic story of two lovers who meet at the Berlin Wall. The album is considered one of his best by critics, notably for the contributions of guitarist Robert Frippwho flew in from the U.S. to record his parts in one day.^[8] John Lennon was quoted as saying that when making his album Double Fantasy in 1980, his ambition was to "do something as good as "Heroes"."^[8]^[9] It was named NME Album of the Year.

Recorded at Hansa Tonstudio in what was then West Berlin, "Heroes" reflected the zeitgeist of the Cold War, symbolised by the divided city. Co-producer Tony Visconti considered it "one of my last great adventures in making albums. The studio was about 500 yards from the wall.Red Guards would look into our control-room window with powerful binoculars."^[10] Bowie again paid tribute to his Krautrock influences: the title is a nod to the track "Hero" on the album NEU! '75 by the German band Neu!,^[11] while "V-2 Schneider" is inspired by and named afterKraftwerk's Florian Schneider.^[12] Earlier in 1977, Kraftwerk had name-checked Bowie on the title track of Trans-Europe Express. The cover photo was inspired by Erich Heckel's Roquairol, as was that of The Idiot, one of Bowie's collaborations with Iggy Pop that was released the same year.^[13]

Though "Heroes" included a number of dark and atmospheric instrumentals such as "Sense of Doubt", "Neuköln" and "Blackout", after the melancholy and inward-looking Low it was regarded as a highly passionate and positive artistic statement.^[10]^[12] This was evident not only through "Heroes" the song but in the rocking opener "Beauty and the Beast" (released as the second single in January 1978), the raucous "Joe the Lion" and the light-hearted closer "The Secret Life of Arabia". The lyrics for "Joe the Lion", written and recorded at the microphone "in less than an hour" according to Visconti, typified the improvisational nature of the recording.^[14]

^{Here is part of an interview that NME did with Bowie in 1977}

Charles Shaar Murray: Why does Heroes - or more accurately "Heroes" come in quotes? Are the inverted commas actually part of the title?

DB: Yeah. Firstly - it was quite a silly point really - I thought I'd pick on the only narrative song to use as the title. It was arbitrary, really, because there's no concept to the album.

CSM: I'd felt that the use of quotes indicate a dimension of irony about the word "Heroes" or about the whole concept of heroism.

DB: Well, in that example they were, on that title track. The situation that sparked off the whole thing was - I thought - highly ironic. There's a wall by the studio - the album having been recorded at Hansa by the Wall in West Berlin - about there. It's about twenty or thirty meters away from the studio and the control room looks out onto it. There's a turret on top of the wall where the guards sit and during the course of lunch break every day, a boy and girl would meet out there and carry on. They were obviously having an affair.

And I thought of all the places to meet in Berlin, why pick a bench underneath a guard turret on the wall? They'd come from different directions and always meet there... Oh, they were both from the west, but they had always met right there. And I - using license - presumed that they were feeling somewhat guilty about this affair and so they had imposed this restriction on themselves, thereby giving themselves an excuse for their heroic act. I used this as a basis... therefore it is ironic.

Yes it is. You're perfectly right about that, but there was no reason why the album should have been called "Heroes". It could have been called "the sons of silent ages". It was just a collection of stuff that I and Eno and Fripp had put together. Some of the stuff that was left off was very amusing, but this was the best of the batch, the stuff that knocked us out.

CSM: Do you find that recording in a studio that's right by the Berlin Wall gives you a sense of being on the edge of something?

DB: That's exactly right. I find that I have to put myself in those situations to produce any reasonable good writing. I've still got that same thing about when I get to a country or a situation and I have to put myself on a dangerous level, whether emotionally or mentally or physically, and it resolves in things like that: living in Berlin leading what is quite a spartan life for a person of my means, and in forcing myself to live according to the restrictions of that city.

Official site

THE ESSENTIAL 13: MOVIE NIGHT -- 'BE HERE TO LOVE ME: A FILM ABOUT TOWNES VAN ZANDT'

2010-07-29T17:28:00.000-04:00

Great songs but man...what a screw up. Enjoy!

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