Freshly Poured Pavement

        My mother told me that when I was young chap I had a tendency to say "no" to everything immediately, even if it was something highly desirable for an eight year old. Whether it was ice cream before dinner, a trip to the comic book store or three hours in the torture dungeon a "nay" would fly out of my mouth before she even finished asking the question. As someone who works with children, this is a phenomenon I am thankful to see is not limited to me. After seeing it happen repeatedly throughout the years, it seems to stem from a power struggle. Kids want to be the ones who make the decisions, without having an adult fully script their life at all times. As grown ups, we have the freedom of choice desired by those younger versions of ourselves so we have to figure out a way to rebel in new ways. We say "no" to suggestions we know to be good ones, unlike the children who just say it for the sake of control. This is the best justification I can come up with for friends of mine not immediately becoming full fledged addicts when listening to the Silver Jews American Water.
        The best and more inevitable part? Eventually, it always happens. It's like the kid who realizes he just said no to ice cream and has to weasel his way back. Now, don't get me wrong, I can understand why this album is a little harder to swallow than three scoops of Ben and Jerry's. Friends of mine always seem to be fans of the components that make up the Silver Jews (Pavement, alt-country rock, weirdly fantastic lyrics) but initially they are unable to take the leap. The band is certainly not made to grab your attention with radio friendly melodies and choruses. No matter how much you fight it though, it's a slow, infectious process that will happen. The only question remaining is when the freefall begins.

        None of this is to say that the album shouldn't take a while to get into. Formed at around the same time as Pavement, the SJs have put out six albums.  American Water is their third, released in 1998. Their sound is rarely quantifiable or duplicated, thanks in large part to a rotating cast of members rocketing into the mid twenties with David Berman being the only constant. The key for this body of work is the combination of Steve Malkmus and Berman at a time when no idea seemed too strange to say "no" to. 

        Admittedly, I'm not huge on lyrics. Great lines tend to stick out to me here or there but for the most part, I'm drawn in and entrenched based on the music. Lyrics become a fun little after dinner mint for me. This record, however, may be one of the few in my entire collection that is equally balanced in terms of why I appreciate it. The quirky yet strangely personal lyrical poetry of Berman in combination with the country-funk-shuffle crafted by Malkmus, Tim Barnes, Mike Fellows and Chris Stroffolino is a concoction crafted by the finest of sorcerers. These are not songs aimed at being hit singles (even the actual single, "Send in the Clouds" stretches five and half minutes and has a long guitar jam at the end). But good luck getting the rhythms, phrases and imagery out of your consciousness.

        "Random Rules", the first track, delivers on all fronts. Opening with the wonderfully evocative line "In 1984, I was hospitalized for approaching perfection", the band travels along on a country ditty supported with a fine horn section as Berman attempts to get a woman to simultaneously sleep with him and stay loyal to her would-be husband. From there we are given the spaghetti western, "Smith & Jones Forever", that I swear won't get stuck in my head each time I listen to it. At this I fail, every time. 

         Lest you worry that you won't be able to relate due to the high level of country, "Night Society" slips in as my personal favorite instrumental track of all time. It's little more than two minutes of a jam, cut out and placed surreptitiously in a prime spot on the album. Guitars dance upon each other as I pray each time that I've listened to it enough to unlock the special, ten minute version that surely exists somewhere in the ether. From there, it transitions into "Federal Dust" which has almost a coffee shop poetry-reading feel to it as the two singers meld semi-spoken word verses. "People" on the other hand, is downright sexy with it's strangely danceable groove. You'll catch yourself shimmying to it and wonder how in the world you got there. 

         The creatively strange lyrics ("Oil paintings of x-rated picnics") continue to be the brilliant glue that hold each of these genres and song structures together, but guitar plays a prominent role as well. "Blue Arrangements" has Malkmus doing some of his finest noodling while the aforementioned "Send in the Clouds" let's loose at the end, turning into a Pavement-esque nonsense shout-along as guitars weave alongside. Not one to leave you without a quintessential "mouth guitar part" suited for your finest oral impersonations, "Buckingham Rabbit" uses a repeated phrase that's immediately accessible and impossible to forget. 

       With two powerhouse songwriters/musicians working together to create such beauty, it's obvious that they must have learned to stifle the tendency to say "no". That's the kind of thing that seems to have a hard time being sustained for an extended period of albums. Though there are three other Silver Jews records these two worked on together, it never quite coalesced as well as it did here on American Water. 

Hold tight my lass, things are about to get weird.

       In the pursuit of all things honest and true, I have a confession to make. I was one of those "no" holdouts myself. It took me years to get comfortable with this album, despite the protests of those who knew better. Whether it was a holdout from my childhood years or just the tendency of many music fans to want to "find" something on their own, it took me much longer than necessary to discover what a gem I had in this record. So, who am I to judge? Give it a listen. If you don't like it, give it another listen and another until someday you realize the same thing we all do. Resistance up to a point is acceptable, but inevitably it's futile.  My hope would be that a day may come when I (or you) learn that saying "yes" isn't always such a bad thing after all. 

Final Score: .95 You're Living All Over Me's

Albert Hammond Sr. Spawning a Keeper

       "Hit or miss" is a term that purportedly dates back to the early 1600s. It's safe to assume King James VI of Scotland used it as a phrase when justifying his daily witch hunts. For me, it couldn't be more appropriate than when used to describe the solo projects by members of bands you enjoy. What works as a collaboration of minds and styles isn't always going to work on an individual level. Most musicians seem to THINK they have the ability to write their own stuff, but clearly this is not always the case. Perhaps they feel the band isn't giving them enough creative input, with the band headed in a direction the individual isn't happy with. Invariably, most members will someday join a side project or front their own band, especially in an age when it's so easy to release music. "Hit or miss" seems to have been coined as a way to define how these experiments work out. Sometimes you're the witch and sometimes you're the manancial ruler of a sovereign land killing those that supposedly practice the dark arts.

A serene Looney Toons landscape.

      Keeping all of this in mind, and knowing how much control the lead singer of The Strokes seemed to exert on his band, I wasn't sure what to think upon the 2006 release of Albert Hammond Jr.'s Yours to Keep. At the time, Albert had the distinction of being a famous son, and one of the founding five members of The Strokes.  As a big fan of his parent band, I knew he contributed excellent lead and rhythm guitar parts, enjoyed wearing his guitar at a seemingly uncomfortable height and rocked an excellent 'fro that my own curly hair never had the fortitude to reach. Plus, Guitar Moves sat down with him and outed him for his trademark windmill flail. Each of these are solid credentials but were they enough to prove that he could handle his own album? The answer became a resounding "hit".

      The excellently named opener, "Cartoon Music for Superheroes" gives you a beautiful preview of things to come. In it's brief two minutes it packs in everything you need; lullaby guitar and melodica, straightforward drums, a cloud-like melody and the ability to easily tranquilize a pissed off grizzly bear. The ragged pace of the Strokes was nowhere to be found. Until the next song that is, when "In Transit" proved just how much influence Albert clearly had. A slowed down but familiar Strokes drum beat paces the tune as the guitar line calls out to his four compadres like the Bat Signal. Thankfully though, he continues to make it his own with soaring synths and the sunny production value seen throughout the record. 

      The rest of the album is littered with wondrous pop tunes that manage to expertly straddle the line between "musically good enough to want to share with all my friends" and " someday I plan to play this on repeat for my newborn child as a way to comfort them". Every track stands out and that tends to leave me without a favorite. "Everyone Gets A Star" showcases a ping-pong guitar and drum machine groove.  "Back to the 101" is the another tune that has a Strokesian vibe to it but Albert does plenty to make it his own. "Call an Ambulance" brings out a ukulele and serenely weaves a layered tale of unrequited love. "Scared" has an ambiance built upon gorgeous harmonies and backing vocals coming from none other than Julian Casablancas and Sean Lennon. The closer, "Hard to Live in the City" is packed with jangly guitars, piano and ends with horns that build to a crescendo that makes you want to drop the needle and start the album again.

Hammondsaur Jr.

                           

       In college I became obsessed with playcounts in iTunes. Spending the majority of my time in front a computer, it was an easy way to quantify which songs I liked the most, a tome to my dedication. Thankfully this single mindedness didn't entirely prevent me from exploring what albums sound like, something many people have forgotten today. That used to be the only way to listen. Looking back, it's sad to see that I had fallen into the trap too, playcounts proving I was only playing one or two songs off an album. This is not one of those albums. Every track has the practically the same number of plays. In an age of skips and shuffle, this is a true rarity. It's an album that I put on and listen to front to back, every time. 

       Yours to Keep is a tour de force of supremely catchy power pop, infectious melodies and layered songwriting that any artist would be proud to call their own. It's one of the few albums I own that is so bright it honestly and truly lifts my mood every time I put it on (which may say things my psychiatrist will one day break to me gently). The combination of the songwriting and production give the album a light, airy and luminescent feeling that resonates deeply within me. I plowed through this repeatedly at a time when a lot of things were changing, unstable and uncertain in my world. Life may have been rocky but I always had this 35 minute respite to fall back on. Without getting too touchy and or feelie, that's a pretty cool thing to have, especially when it's something you can bring with you into adulthood. 

        

Final Score: .90 You're Living All Over Me's

Furr Trapping

       Every music fan I know has a secret stash of killer band name ideas, artfully crafted throughout the years of their musical fandom. They commit the titles to memory and have them at the ready. They do this just in case a bunch of musicians approach them with the sole intention of forming a new group. This new group would have all the pieces in place, and they would be looking to you for a name and some scintillating woodblock. Thankfully, they would've come to the perfect person. I'd like to assume that's how Blitzen Trapper got their name. Sadly though, this isn't the case. Apparently, they saw it painted on the outside of an old, 70s, creeper van, which is still pretty awesome. But, screw it, I like living the lie. It gives me hope.
       I did not however, feel hope that I would someday become consumed with bands in the alt/folk/country revival scene. The country aspect was always a little too twangy, the folk side always a little too lacking in the instrumentation department.  For every Uncle Tupelo or Neil Young there were significantly more artists I couldn't take the leap with. Becoming fully engrossed with the rootsy americana funk of The Band allowed me to step out on the ledge. With the 2008 release of Furr, the fourth album from the Trapper, I was ready to do a full fledged swan dive off the cliff.
   

Carved with a craftsman hand.

      How many albums do you feel comfortable sharing with every single friend you have? Regardless of their muse, inclination or proclivity, you'd be pretty sure they would dig it. After some intense contemplation, I would have probably settled on zero if you asked me this in the past. It's just plain rare to find that middle ground that isn't too center of the road lame. Enter Furr. Opening with the carny rock galumph of "Sleepytime in the Western World", my zero gracefully ticked up to one. With swirling Garth Hudson organs, gnarly Harrison licks and the narrative timbre of Dylan, worlds melded to form something pure and new. I wanted to conceive a child on the spot just so I could play them this somewhat demented bedtime story. 

      This wondrous amalgam of styles continue throughout with "Gold for Bread", "God & Suicide" and "War on Machines", all of which add in just enough strange flourishes to prevent categorization. The oft-cited title track, "Furr" is a tour de force of storytelling. An acoustic strum and layered vocals provide the perfect backdrop for a romp through the eyes of a woodland man/beast. It's one of many instances showing the excellent lyrics crafted throughout the entire record. Another example is my first obsession, the classic murder tale, "Black River Killer". It's a Tom Petty ditty that has been sprinkled with Chronic era Dre production. Strange as that sounds, I dare you to try and avoid grooving along. I already look forward to the day when the great-grandson of Slick Rick weaves an account of ghetto misery over an extended sample. 

        Beautiful is a word that gets thrown around way too much (especially by a hyperbolic machine such as myself) but there is really no other way to quantify the acoustic guitar/piano ballads "Not Your Lover" and "Lady on the Water". They are truly beautiful. Their simplicity reminds you that with as much talent as these musicians have, the anchor is the melody and songwriting at the heart of these tunes. Each is the type of song you might use to entice your significant other into appreciating the band, only to one day realize they are now your favorite tracks. 

      Channelling The Band and showcasing their trademark versatility, funk rears its sexy head on "Saturday Night" and the "Echo/Always On/Easy Con" medley. The former uses jaunty piano and a groovy, syrupy-thick bassline to paint a background over which acoustic strums and synth flourishes dance. The latter begins as another piano ballad, then drifts into a Pink Floyd/Wizard of Oz clock homage before finally becoming the type of folk-funk that should have archivistics stumped for years to come. 

Sounds painful.

      If you become enough of a fan to immerse yourself in their (rawer) previous three albums or (more polished) three subsequent albums you may find yourself waist deep in the rabbit hole. There are so many genres and sounds they create that you can become lost in a vortex of their music, regardless of the genre or sound you are fiending for at the time. This album was the perfect entry point for me. It gave me faith that bands could still take something I didn't fully embrace (folk/country), put a modern spin on it and subsequently develop something that I couldn't get enough of throughout my multiple obsessive periods. Now, let's all grow furry beards!

    

Final Score: .95 You're Living All Over Me's