Late to the Party with The Men

        Even prior to the recent SCOTUS landmark announcement on equal rights, I was a little behind the times when it came to finding The Men. A Brooklyn band that put out it's fourth album, New Moon on March 5th, The Men have put out one of my favorite recordings of the year. Prior to listening to it, one way or another, I obtained a copy of their previous album Open Your Heart, and though I liked plenty of it,  the song "Candy" worked it's way into my brain like a burrowing insect. A Replacements-esque acoustic ballad fixated me and got me excited enough to purchase New Moon, sight unseen. What I came to find after my first listen was that this was an excellent decision.

        Having not been a fan since their incarnation, I was confused to see that some fans didn't like this eclectic collection of excellent tunes. Hearing earlier albums, it seems they have made a semi-sonic ("somewhat-different-sounding", not "Closing Time") shift away from the brash assault of punk they played throughout the first three albums. While I could see this disappointing fans that were looking for more of the same, as a fresh entrant onto their bandwagon, I was immediately hooked by the raw, melodic punk/rock/pop songs this album is fully stocked with. This balancing act seems to have been performed due to their production. It's far from a polished shine, which fits in perfectly with their earlier sound. The album is dripping with melody, hooks, and a slowed down pace; words that can be, at times, taboo to the average punk fan.
        Listening to this album felt like flipping through the radio dial and hearing updated, modern versions of many a classic rock sound. Feel like thrashing about listening to some of the aforementioned proto-punk after a stubbing your toe? Try "Electric" or "The Brass" (just ignore that medlinglingly beautiful piano raucous punk fans). Perhaps that's a little too brash for you.  Feeling in the mood for being washed in some harmonia-meets-piano-meets-acoustic strum-meets electric jaunts instead? Well then, sit back and throw on "Half Angel Half Light", "Without a Face" or "Bird Song"and mouth harp your way to contentment. Need a little guitar trudge with what could only be the Horse in tow? Throw on "I Saw Her Face" and melt into the corduroy comfort of Uncle Neil. Maybe you're the type that isn't a fan of vocals at all? Well good choice then, because two opposite ends of the spectrum instrumentals are here for you. Mellow and chill after a sudsy bath? "High and Lonesome". Tripping on acid and looking to crash over the edge? "Supermoon" yourself. Your radio knob might be getting a workout, but you've undeniably been enjoying the trip.

True to their name, nary a female in sight. 

          While some claimed that this lack of focus was a sign that they couldn't seem to grasp a musical direction, I never understood why it was a bad thing if the songs on an album all didn't sound the same. That's not to say I haven't had bands who veered away from their "typical" sound only to let me down (.....KoL), but I don't think that's the case here.  Instead, I would argue New Moon is a stellar album and an excellent precursor of things to come, as they show their talents performing in a myriad of styles. Plus, with their frenetic recording pace (by modern standards at least), I shouldn't have to wait all that long to find out what comes next.

Final Score: .83 You're Living All Over Me's

I'd Rather Be With An Animal

Trying to pick an "ultimate album" is ultimately an exercise in subjectivity.  But, as humans we always feel the need to categorize and rank things^[1].  Having some sort of high-water mark to reference can aid in that endeavour, as well as illustrate the rubric and tastes employed by the person doing the ranking.  For these reasons, I begrudgingly chose my ultimate album.

Although I realize that these types of things are innately nothing more than a personal opinion, I had a hard time selecting an ultimate album.  I almost felt like I would be forced to defend and argue for this album for the rest of my life.  This choice says something about me.  Imagine if you had to get your favorite album from seventh grade tattooed on your forehead^[2].

        With this L.B. Jefferies-esque paranoia in mind, I chose Pink Floyd’s 1977 concept album Animals as my personal ultimate album^[3].  Simultaneously a cult classic and underrated, Animals often gets overlooked.  It is sandwiched between the heavyweights Wish You Were Here and The Wall.  Not too mention still in the wake of the groundbreaking Dark Side of the Moon.  The recording of the album also represents one of the many well-documented rough patches for the members of Pink Floyd.  It was when Roger Waters first began to feel that he was the driving creative force behind the band, for better or worse, and made sure his fellow bandmates knew it.  The mood in the studio was later described as “workman-like”, but that discordant atmosphere bred a collection of music that perfectly encapsulates the feelings of general tension and angst that are expressed in the lyrics.

        Animals begins meekly with Roger Waters’ acoustic strumming on “Pigs on the Wing (Part I)”.  He sings a pledge of love to his new wife that is as endearingly clumsy as it is relatable.  “Dogs” fades in with sharp, contrasting chord changes that quickly sweep the listener from the bittersweet sentiments of the previous track.  This is the start of the main misanthropic portion of the album.  The scathing lyrics are paired with perfectly tense instrumental counterparts.  David Gilmour’s ever tasteful guitar work is in full force here.  He mixes lyrical melodies with screaming bends that cathartically complement the subject matter.  The 17 minute long track shambles and swirls as Waters’ throws every neurotic accusation at humanity that his cynical mind can conjure.  Where “Dogs” is a general condemnation of mankind, “Pigs (Three Different Ones)” is where Waters’ singles out his candidates for biggest disgraces to the human race.  Though you may need a quick refresher on 1970’s British politics to understand the literal subject matter of the lyrics, “Pigs (Three Different Ones)”, like “Dogs”, contains timeless Orwellian critiques of human nature that are as applicable today as they were in 1977.  Originally titled “Raving and Drooling”^[4], “Sheep” is the yin to the yang of “Dogs”.  It parodies the rationale of the weak, ignorant members of society that allow aggressive, sociopathic dogs to prey on their complacence and thereby flourish.  In Waters’ view, these people are just as at fault for society’s ills by enabling the dogs to continue their exploitative behavior.  This is particularly interesting, given Waters’ own reportedly dominating personality.  His friends claim that he always gravitated towards people that stood up to his confrontational bullshit, rather than shy away from it.  The album comes to a close with “Pigs on the Wing (Part II)”^[5].  The corresponding bookend to the album opener features a similarly light mood that brings the listener back from the brink of absolute cynicism.  It also features a potential Ol’ Diry Bastard style dick reference with the line “now that I've found somewhere safe to bury my bone”.  Or maybe that’s just me.

        Peoples’ tastes (thankfully) evolve over the course of their lives.  Bands and albums that one day seem amazing can later induce feelings of regret and embarassment^[6].  One of the reasons I chose Animals over other albums is its timelessness.  The lyrical sentiments and instrumental elements are as relevent and applicable today as they were when the album was recorded.  If I had to argue the merits of the album 20 years from now, I think I would still have a good case. Conversely, if I could hop into a Doc Brown navigated DeLorean and force my socially awkward 13 year old self to listen to the album, I think quasi-pubescent Dick would get into it.  

This is the album that best represents what I like about music.  It is my ultimate album.  For the purpose of arbitrary yet interesting rankings and ratings, this is my gold standard that all others will be held up against.  There can be only one!

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[1] Just look at the bevy of “top ten” articles every other website is churning out these days.  Top Ten Stoner Movies.  Top Ten Quarterbacks of All Time.  Top Ten Rimjobs.  Don’t get me wrong --I click on them all.

[2] I likely would have had “Antichrist Superstar” tattooed on my forehead.  One hopes it would have served as a convenient bullseye for a discerning sniper.

[3] Dark Side of the Moon is literally a perfect album, but it felt too obvious... too easy.  I tend to make things difficult for myself.  Kind of like the time I was arrested freshman year of college.  I had to pick up trash outside of the dorms for my community service.  When I wasn’t skipping out on it or sparking up conversations with passing coeds (you’d be surprised how good of an icebreaker litter reduction can be),  I had a burned copy of DSOTM playing in my discman the entire time. It was one of my first times listening to the entire album straight through.  I could write a whole separate essay on this enlightening experience.

[4] Thanks, Wikipedia!

[5] On the Animals 8-track, the two “Pigs on the Wing” tracks are fused into one song.  The separate pieces are bridged by a guitar solo by a guy named Snowy White, who was apparently in Thin Lizzy during the early 80s.  He actually sounds like he’s trying to impersonate David Gilmour, which more guitarists should probably do.

[6] Why is that?  No one feels embarassed in hindsight for not knowing calculus in the third grade, but for some reason we hold the aesthetic tastes of our younger selves to a higher standard.  Very few people are born cool (Johnny Depp, Robert Downey Jr., Kevin M. Johnstone), most of us have to learn as we go.

You Sir, Are Living All Over Me

           You will invariably hit point in your life where you listen to something excellent and you don't like it. The music doesn't hit you in the sweet spot. You might even scoff or make a snide comment about it's derivation from something else you heard once, trying to prove your musical acumen. Other times, you (secretly of course) know that your brain just isn't quite ready to wrap itself around this particular endeavor. You actively look forward to the day when it allows you to devour this type of music and everything similar within a 20 genre radius. Other times though, things just click right from the first listen. Somehow both of these things happened simultaneously for me in the summer of 2003.
            At that time, guitar driven rock was my personal muse (and has been since I reached the point where I didn't listen to strictly R&B and Rap. Said point came latter in my life than I'm willing to admit). I wish I had tales of finding my original heroes organically. In reality though, my much more intuitive friends had found them years before. I just gave the casual "of course I listen to Pink Floyd" shrug to my college friends, before going home to download their catalog and immerse my world in it. It was time for me to inundate myself with a combination of music and information in the hopes that someday soon I could confidently speak about the big names in our conversations. Then, who knows, it might be possible for me to sprinkle in some other bands that even my friends hadn't heard of yet. This task is what lead me to bumbling my way through the chicken scratch journals of Kurt Cobain. Amongst his scrawls were a series of lists of his favorite bands. The name Dinosaur Jr. seemed to appear on every list. What did this mean? Images of prehistoric infants performing oily rock tunes danced throughout my skull and to be honest, the name was just too damn enticing not to investigate.

          I bought a CD (because that's what people did back then and hot damn it's what I still do) and it wasn't an easy transition. Through the first few listens, my brain didn't quite know how to process it, yet I couldn't give up and shelve it. While I wasn't ready for the angle from which the music was coming at me, the guitar had a quality I couldn't get away from. (I later learned this quality was "being awesome").  In reality, I didn't know how to feel about it yet, but I knew I wanted to keep listening. You're Living All Over Me, released in 1987 (!), showed me a mangled world where the guitar could be the most versatile instrument alive.
            The assault began with the whitewall squall intro to "Little Fury Things". Anguished screams bathed in this mass of noise almost caused me to skip the track, but it's quickly followed by a subtle acoustic strum for the verse. Oh, "how fun" I thought, both styles in the same song. Little did I know that these first 40 seconds merely nicked the surface. The laconic drawl of the lead vocals I would come to embrace, and even some Lee Ranaldo (of Sonic Youth) backing vocals, balanced my unease with the intro and the song turned out to be borderline catchy. "Kracked" follows with a snarling bass intro. The guitar snakes it's way along with a nice lick throughout the first verse before the solo. Ah the solo. The first solo on this album has a wondrous build up, the kind that always conjures the image of a launching vessel headed to the darkness of space. It literally bursts forth, exploding as the wah peddle is danced upon almost as much as my soul. This is the first solo I can remember becoming completely obsessed with. The kind where you memorize it and then hum/sing/whine/fail your way through it every time it plays. I never had a chance. I was in.
            Very few songs in the history of music have a title as appropriate as "Sludgefeast". A sprawling five minute three course meal of a tune that would fit in nicely in the evil lair of most super villains (provided they were heavy metal fans of course). Tonight they shall dine on Sabbath riffs as an appetizer, furious layered swirls of alien howls as an entree, and a blistering tempo-change fueled solo as a fine desert. This track was hard for me to appreciate at first. The changes made it feel almost like I was constantly hitting the next track on a random playlist in iTunes, allowing each track to play for 30 seconds. Nowadays this is one of the key tracks to play to introduce a new fan.
          However, the track most often cited by critics and fans alike for it's inventiveness and excellence is "The Lung". Similar to "Sludgefeast", tempo change and shifting dynamics once again rule the day, but for me the revelation was the lack of lyrics. Not a word is uttered until 1:30 in, and then only one line is repeated twice before a solo begins. This solo churns along with such beauty and fluidity, one can see why the thought of being unencumbered by lyrics is such a grand thing. After repeating the two line "verse" one more time, the song closes using feedback as it's own instrument to help wrap up a truly masterful stroke of musical bliss. As much as I am a slaven master to the guitar, most listens continue to remind me of what a solid rhythm section the drum and bass provide. The break-neck tempo and swift changes wouldn't work if the band didn't swing as a unit and these gents can downright swang.
         From there, "Raisans" uses the "Kracked" blueprint of placing a slick guitar riff-over-straightforward-rock, then following it with a killer solo. This formula is more than fine with me. It's the most to the point tune on the album and easily the one you could give to a girlfriend who likes music, but not nearly as much as you do. Just tell her to ignore the creepy, almost climaxing voice that comes in pre-solo. (Supposedly, this is a mental patient that had been recorded by the bassist, Lou Barlow when he was working in a group home as a young man. He now claims to really regret putting it on the album. Well, I mean yeah but...) Come to think of it, maybe skip that whole girlfriend thing.
         Next up, "Tarpit" plods along with a swampy sludged-up stomp. The short intro is happy and upbeat. This is a ruse. The song trudges along with melancholy vocals, only to end with the howls of what can only be the spirits of dinosaurs past as they drown in the muck of the California tar pits themselves. I'm impressed they were able to record this while avoiding being bitten by a velociraptor.
         "In a Jar" is a nice respite from the onslaught of ear-annihilation that precedes it. A jazzy drum fill leads into the tune while low slung bass dances about on this breezy ode to an imperfect love. This is one of the few tunes where the solo is truly restrained, coming in at only a clipped 15 seconds. Just in case it was getting a little too mellow or you were starting to get comfortable, more deranged recorded vocals immediately follow.
         Our bassist Mr. Barlow, who is given two tracks per album (a tradition that continues to up to this day on any album that he has been on, with excellent results), proceeds to deliver in a big way on "Lose". The songs' seemingly backwards structure of putting the solo first helps to deliver a frantic sense of urgency that drips with the purported tension the bandmates felt for each other. The vocals are delivered in a way that are the polar opposite of everything else on the album. The sense that there was pent up aggression which would lead to an eventual band break-up is never more clear than here.
        "Poledo" is up next. A slight departure from everything else we've heard, this track packages together acoustic strums, tape loops, and pining vocals delivered in the bedroom of many a teenager around the world. It's odd. Perhaps the aim of this track was for it to be a lemon sorbet-esque pallet cleanser, allowing the listener to more easily transition back into the world where this type of music doesn't exist. Maybe someone lost a bet. I'll believe anything at this point.
          Thankfully a solid Cure cover, "Just Like Heaven" redeems everything as an album closer. Taking a tune that helped define the shoe-gaze genre, Dino spices it up with a little more pace and some hearty "roars" sprinkled throughout. It also ends in such an abrupt manner that, like many others, I thought I had a defective copy of the CD for the longest time.

          J Mascis, Murph, and Sweet Lou Barlow struggled to record (or tour/live) in a harmonious environment. Murph was constantly feeling the pressure and dissatisfaction of Mascis (himself a drummer).  Lou wanted more credit and more freedom to bring his own music into the sessions, and J had to juggle all of this with his vision, which seemingly (and thankfully) won out. From all reports I've read, things were pretty rough. After only one more album, feelings boiled over into a 19 year hiatus. The urgency of their sound (especially in live shows from this era) display the discord front and center. When it comes down to it though, whatever strange brew of circumstances and talent came together to make this album, its tough to argue with the results.
           This is my ultimate album. Calling it an ultimate album is strange, because I am sure there are albums I like more, listen to more, and will appreciate for longer. But for me, this was the album that I "found" (after about billion other people, but before all my friends so that's all that really matters). Plus, it was the one that helped me to become a lot more accepting of alternative sounds, tunings, song structures, and vocal stylings. It may not seem like it when you listen to it now, but in my sheltered musical world, this was a groundbreaking big deal. For the time being, everything else I review for this site will be compared to this, as impossibly difficult as that may be.