Miss Piggy Lunchbox

This is Jawbox’s last studio effort, and it seems they could never make up their mind about who they wanted to be. Or maybe they made up their mind that they wanted to be a bit of everything. Either way, as the band frequently vacillates between powerful melodies supported by mildly abrasive guitar, completely atonal talk-singing over nearly atonal, rapidly shifting songs, and slow attempts at setting a mood of darkness, the mixed bag that is Jawbox serves as a pretty good summary of the mixed bag that was Jawbox.

So was it intentional or accidental that so little of their catalog approaches “Spoiler” either in terms of style or quality? Did they want to write a bunch of disparate songs that weren’t as good as their hooky, powerful stuff? Or could they just not put it together all that frequently? I’m not even sure the band could answer that question truthfully, but given how great Jawbox members J. Robbins and Bill Barbot did when they went on to Burning Airlines three years after this album, I have to think it was just plain stubbornness. Who knows, though…”Iodine” is fairly low key, sounds pretty, and is easily the best song here, while “Chinese Fork Tie” is one of their least conventional, fitting into the atonal/off-kilter-rhythms category above, and I love it.

This is a borderline three-and-a-half lunchboxes CD. Even though they rarely get greatness from beginning to end on a song, overall the interesting moments outweigh the also significant portion of unnecessary sound. You also have to give it props for having five mix CD candidates, a very good number. It’s not the first time I’ve said this, and it certainly won’t be the last, but this might have even been four-lunchboxes good if they’d just cut four or five songs off, mostly toward the end. As it is, it’s still less than 45 minutes, so I guess I can’t accuse them of being motivated just by all the empty space on a CD, as they’ve left plenty.

Clearly, as the last two paragraphs reveal, I have some mixed and conflicting feelings about this album and the band that made it. In the end, Jawbox is one of the most frustrating band I’ve encountered. When they’re good, they’re so very good and ripe with potential, but when they’re bad they’re as meh as it gets.

Rating:

Mixers: “Mirrorful,” “Iodine,” “His Only Trade,” “Chinese Fork Tie,” “Spoiler”
Keepers: “Livid,” “Chinese Fork Tie,” “Won’t Come Off,” “Desert Sea,” “Capillary Life”
Filed Between: For Your Own Special Sweetheart and Jayhawks (Hollywood Town Hall)

I wrote this damned review two days ago, but now it’s yesterday, and after being persuaded by some unseen force to give it one last spin on my stereo, I’m forced to rewrite the vast bulk of it. At least it’s because I think it’s a lot better than I did before. Anyway, I just can’t bring myself to trash the old stuff completely, so, along with adding some material, I’m just going to do the strikethrough thing, and you can treat it as a window into the process of getting to know this album. Or whatever.  I kept some of the old stuff, too, so if some of the non-strikethrough stuff seems to be a little poorly composed or to lack cohesion, that’s why.

Attack & Release, released earlier this year by The Black Keys, was produced by Danger Mouse. I’m not sure exactly what meaning is supposed to be conveyed by that, but it is apparently the law that it has to be mentioned in every review of this album, so I figured I’d just get it out of the way. If I’m going to be a music critic, I have to just ape the press release, right?

The Black Keys are some prolofos (prolific mofos), putting out an additional four albums since their 2002 debut, The Big Come Up. I have and love 2003’s Thickfreakness, and I think maybe the band should be a little less prolific because a lot of the pow has disappeared in the last five years. Attack & Release is still really good, but with more emphasis on the slow repetitive nature of the blues and less on their formerly driving rock, the shine is off this blues-rock duo from Akron a bit. Attack & Release is named, I believe, for the strong dichotomy on the album of super-charged, hard-driving rockers against slow, repetitive, blues-y numbers.

The last five years have also formed The Black Keys into a more polished-sounding, less lo-fi band. That’s not necessarily unexpected, as more bands clean up their sound over time, but it is surprising considering this was recorded on a homemade console. Maybe the cleaner sound is the result of Danger Mouse’s production and you all understood that in the first sentence of the review. Maybe the code all reviewers write in is really clear to everybody but me. Regardless, it sounds absolutely amazing on my stereo. It still sounds gritty, but now instead of sounding like they’re playing to their cats in their living room, it sounds like they’re captivating Wembley Stadium.

In what has to be a first, The Black Keys put four of the five best songs at the very end of this record. They also put the two very best songs and the single best song on the record at the very end. It sounds even weirder to listen to than it does to hear about. After decisively determining, through extensive examples at SP20 this last weekend, that the best way to construct a 40-minute live set is to build the entire time, with the possible exception of putting in a really strong opening song (the third mixer, “All You Ever Wanted,” is the opener here), I can’t help but wonder if they’re planning to play this album (clocking in at just under 40 minutes…I knew it) straight though live some time, because that set up certainly doesn’t work on disc as well as it does live.

I don’t think this set up is an accident either. To transition from the “meh” first half to the “yeah” second half of this album, they put the two tracks “Remember When (Side A)” and “Remember When (Side B)” right in the middle. The former fits in with those in front of it as a slow, moody, bluesy sleeper, and the latter picks up the pace and the punch on the drums quite a bit to prepare you for the excellent second half. I am newly loving the first single, “Strange Times,” and “Lies,” and newly really-liking everything else.

I don’t know…this is probably a four-lunchbox CD if I hadn’t heard Thickfreakness, but knowing how much better their output was five years ago, I’m tempted to give it three-and-a-half. But that’s not really fair. It is produced by Danger Mouse, after all. I really like this album. It is a no-brainer at four lunchboxes.

Rating:

Mixers: “All You Ever Wanted,” “Oceans And Streams,” “Things Ain’t Like They Used To Be”
Keepers: everything else
Filed Between: Thickfreakeness and Black Sabbath (Black Sabbath)

I believe I only have two CDs with the word “Argentines” in their lyrics. Both of these CDs have been reviewed here this month. The first is Vampire Weekend (“Mansard Roof,” the first track), and now I encounter the word on Billy Joel’s “That’s Not Her Style,” the first track off of 1989’s Storm Front.

There’s a lot here that you’ll recognize, but for the longest time my iPod was only shuffling through crap like “When In Rome” and “Shameless” and so I couldn’t figure out why this would be the only Billy Joel album in J-mez’ collection. Finally, though, I discovered the presence of “We Didn’t Start The Fire” and everything made sense. (Speaking of finally making sense, check out this awesome Wikipedia page on that song.)

What I still can’t make sense of is Billy Joel. The guy is basically music’s biggest enigma. Chuck Klosterman wrote a great profile of him a while ago that reportedly set off Joel something fierce. A good chunk of the profile is about how Joel craves critical approval, and that’s the crux of the enigma. There’s no questioning Joel’s talent, skill, and work ethic, but for some reason there’s this layer of cheese that creates a bit of an emotional distance between the listener and the songs that keeps Joel just out of reach of a “Great” categorization.

All of which is ironic because you can tell this guy feels intensely in a way that most of us can’t understand. His well-publicized battles with his demons seem to be evidence of that, but we also have a number of songs, primarily ballads, where he cuts right through to the core. The best example of that type of song on Storm Front is “And So It Goes,” whose lyrics encapsulate every sentiment about taking risks for love far more poignantly than nearly any other poet and songwriter has been able to do. “Leningrad” isn’t quite as raw emotionally, but its tale of a “cold war kid” making a connection in adulthood with a Soviet man of the same age reveals how powerful the moment was to Joel and how he owns the power of the history of his lifetime.

Joel probably doesn’t get as much credit as he should from the music world, but I can’t quibble too much with him being confined to his “Very Good” status. He kind of brings it on himself, with that layer of silly, bombastic cheese on top of so many of his songs. “Shameless,” with its opening Bryan-Adams-riff, sounds like it was written for Garth Brooks, who did have a hit covering it, and “Storm Front” pushes a metaphor between weather at sea and romantic relationships well past the point of unintentional parody.

Still, Joel is the master at creating songs that you like, even though you think you shouldn’t, and this album is full of them. I can hear what’s wrong with “We Didn’t Start The Fire” and “I Go To Extremes,” for example, but I still like them. And while I’d never think to categorize this album as “Great,” it’s a damned enjoyable piece of musical craftsmanship, and what else really matters? I hope Joel can arrive at that conclusion for himself and find some peace.

Rating:

Mixer: “And So It Goes”
Non-keepers: “Shameless,” “Storm Front,” “When In Rome”
Filed Between: Joel’s The Bridge and Elton John (Greatest Hits 1970-2002)

Just in case you weren’t quite sure that I would buy absolutely anything that Melvins put out, here I am reviewing The Making Love Demos, which are “mastered” versions of four-track demos the band recorded in 1987. Furthermore, these aren’t even mastered from the original four-track tapes, which have been lost, but are instead taken from a cassette the band gave their friend Brian Walsby 20 years ago. Finally, the only way to get this CD is to buy it with Walsby’s book, Manchild 3.

So that’s what I did.

The book is filled with Walsby’s drawings and thoughts on music and his life. The style is that of a comic book, but I get the feeling Walsby would bristle at the term. The biggest section is a journal of Walsby’s trip on a Melvins tour through the South a few years ago. At one point he talks about how each night they would create a single t-shirt with markers, making it as offensive as possible and pricing it really high to see if it sold. It always did, according to Walsby, and I can’t help but think that this shirt that I own (except that mine is white) came out of this process. Honestly, I’m surprised I haven’t bought a Melvins turd yet. (Although I suppose most people would say that any CD by Melvins is a turd.)

Some of these songs came out on 1989’s Ozma, recorded with a different bassist. That album was ostensibly recorded in a studio and all, but it sounds an awful lot like this, which also sounds a lot like 1987’s Gluey Porch Treatments and 1986’s Six Songs. The point being, for anything that Melvins recorded in the 80’s, the sound quality just doesn’t matter. They hadn’t yet figured out how to sound like they sounded like crap by sounding awesome, they kind of just sounded like crap and, noise merchants that they were, a poor recording environment just sounded like it was intentional, and it probably was, for all I know.

And even though this sounds like crap, it’s still awesome in a way only Melvins can be. In the 80’s they were at their bombastic, amelodic worst, but somehow, through the din, it all worked. Melvins have always been the superlatives of unlistenable music, and that alone makes them magnificent. The fact that it’s all really good and, given enough time, listenable, and the fact that they’ve changed so much and yet remained completely on the fringes of the music world in the last 20 years makes them a truly historic movement worthy of being placed in the highest tiers of music’s long and storied history.

Manchild wasn’t an unenjoyable read, but I didn’t need it. Really, guys, you could out-do your forebearers, Kiss, and brand a turd and I’d buy it. At this rate, it does seem they will release Fecal Matter at some point, which I really would rush out and buy.

Rating:

Mixers: How many Melvins demos from a 1987 cassette do you think would work well on a mix? Although, “Creepy Smell,” “My Small % Shows Most,” and “Repulsion” came close.
Non-keepers: “Dime Lined Divide”
Filed Between: A Senile Animal and Melvins+Lustmord (Pigs Of The Roman Empire)

After MPL Laboratories created the equation that describes the relationship between the quality of Radiohead’s cover art and their music, we wondered if it wasn’t, in fact, an inverse relationship. After developing further experiments to try to answer that question, we can now saw conclusively that it is not a relationship that behaves strictly inversely. This was proven by the fact that Kid A’s art is their worst yet, while the music is not their best. Furthermore, their best album from the 20th century (and I’m including this release from 2000 in that list) is OK Computer whose art is actually pretty good.

Kid A is actually pretty similar to OK Computer in style. In fact, if I were to randomly hear one of their combined 22 songs, I’m not sure I could place it on the correct album with much more than 50% accuracy. The U2 influence is completely gone by now, and Radiohead has come into their own as a unique, formidable creative force. Like OK Computer, the straight-ahead, guitar-driven rock is put aside for a synth-y, cold, and detached, while still beautiful feel. Unlike their prior album, though, Kid A is more of a mood machine than a collection of songs in the traditional sense. It is a work of music, in and of itself, an opus, if you will. It does not lend itself to shuffle play, and will only submit to being played from start to finish.

Kid A was the album where the band decided to really challenge their fans, as virtually every song takes on some kind of experiment to mix a new sound into the Radiohead oeuvre. “Everything In Its Right Place” implements an effect where it sounds like Yorke’s vocals are on a cassette tape that is being eaten, “The National Anthem” features a chaotic free-jazz ensemble highlighted by a Morphine-like sax solo, and “Treefingers” is a new age-y piece composed of sustained chords with harmonic movement but no progression. And that’s just in the first half of the album. The second half contains “Idioteque,” that, with its tight drum hits, sounds like it could have come right out of a club, and “Motion Picture Soundtrack,” with bagpipe-like synths and a brilliant harp part. And of course it all works excellently.

Kid A doesn’t cripple me with its detached, powerful emotion the way OK Computer does, but it’s still a masterpiece. There’s hardly a flaw (*cough* “In Limbo”) from start to finish, and what’s there is brilliant, but just shy of transcendental.

Rating:

Mixers: “Everything In Its Right Place,” “The National Anthem,” “Optimistic,” “Idioteque”
Keepers: everything else…”In Limbo” mostly only because it fits with the rest of the album
Filed Between: OK Computer and Ramones (Ramones)

Seattle has proposed charging a fee of 20 cents per grocery bag. A City Council panel held a public hearing on it earlier this week, where they got very positive reviews.

[N]early all of the dozens of Seattleites who spoke during the lively hearing supported the proposal. Representatives of the grocery industry were less sanguine, with most arguing for a flat fee rather than a per-bag charge.

…

Since its unveiling, the proposal has been received alternatively as a bold step toward a sustainable Seattle or an attack on Seattle’s poor and middle-class residents.

…

Tuesday’s event got off to a silly start, with a short statement by a Shoreline city councilwoman accompanied by a woman wrapped in 400-plus plastic bags. Her presentation was followed nearly two hours later by an appearance from the “Plastic Menace” — one Jake Harris of Wallingford, wrapped in plastic bags.

Members of the activist organization Raging Grannies belted out a slightly revised version of the Woody Guthrie standard “This Land Is Your Land” that urged conservation.

Silly is right. If you have the time to show up at a City Council to talk about a twenty-cent fee on grocery bags, much less wrapped in plastic bags or singing songs about bags, your opinion should be discounted out of hand.

If you want to get the other side of the story, hold your silly panel meeting at a bus stop in Central District, where you can talk to a mom taking her three kids to day care on the bus. I’m sure she’d be happy to tell you how she feels about expanding the ridiculous regressiveness of taxation in the state of Washington.

Jawbox : Atlantic Records :: Erik Bedard : Seattle Mariners

This is Jawbox’s major label debut, and I’ve heard there was a lot of friction between Jawbox and Atlantic. The artist almost always comes out smelling like roses in stories like that because nobody likes record labels, and for good reason. Still, I can understand their disappointment with this album, because it’s nowhere near as good as what they thought they were getting based on Grippe.

Like the recently reviewed Laid, this album is a heaping pile of okay. More than a mixed bag of good and bad songs, it’s more like song after song that is entertaining but not something that makes your life better for having heard. The catchy melodies from three years prior are mostly gone, with the band instead relying on a rumbling bass, powered by my new favorite bassist, Kim Coletta, filled out with alternately gritty and chimy guitars. The dissonance is powerful and exultant, but it would have been better served as the background to a skateboarding video rather than highlighted as an event deserving of your attention.

The highlights are “Reel,” the laser-focused and lightning-fast “Breathe,” and “Cruel Swing,” which has a bit of a lounge lizard nightclub feel in its lazy walking style, but it’s still full on Jawbox heavy, and the juxtaposition completely works. The absolute lowlight is “Green Glass,” and the less said about it, the better.

I’m still not sure if I liked Jawbox or Jawbreaker back in the day. The mediocrity of this album is a point in favor of Jawbreaker, but “Cooling Card” sounds kind of familiar in both title and song.

Rating:

Mixers: “Breathe”
Non-keepers: “LS/MFT,” “Green Glass,” “Whitney Walks”
Filed Between: Grippe and Jayhawks (Hollywood Town Hall)

My summer concert season kicks off this weekend with SP20, which promises to be one of the greatest weekends of my life.  I’m ready.

I’ve always said that the main reason I shave my head is to remind you that I have eyebrows.  Scared?  You won’t be when you see the absolute joy on my face all weekend.  But if it helps me get that much closer to Green River, then I’m all for it.

I shouldn’t have to explain to you who Green River is, nor should I have to explain to you the momentous occasion that is their reunion on Sunday.  Honestly, ever since they were announced at this concert, the rest of whose lineup is stunningly awesome as well, I have been utterly astonished that, when I’m walking around, I don’t hear people talking about it non-stop.  I have been anticipating this show the way I anticipate baseball season in February…every morning I wake up and think about happy thoughts and they immediately gravitate to how much longer my heart has to keep beating so that I can see this show.

This is a perfect (or very nearly so) pop album. With unbelievably catchy melodies, the perfection of that slightly distorted sound all the kids are trying to get right these days, world music influences, and songs that move naturally from one awesome riff to the next, methodically building to a jumping-up-and-down-in-ecstasy climax, this is the album that The Beatles would make in 2008.

At least half of these 11 songs feature melodies that are so damned catchy you can’t believe nobody’s written them yet. Hearing new songs like that is probably the best musical experience you can have at age 33, because it reaffirms the power of music and how much untapped potential is still out there. I’m sure I’ll listen to twelve mediocre albums in a row at some point in the future and lose all faith in humankind’s ability to write a hook again, but for now the possibilities are endless and I can’t even see the horizon.

Wikipedia says the band is influenced by African popular music, and that’s there in the drums, but it doesn’t get in the way of perfectly accessible Western pop songs. I also hear some Jamaican reggae and Latino influences, too. It’s all so easy, though, with absolutely no pretension. So even if world music scares you, you’ll be able to dig on this, and you get the burnishing of your world music cred for free. And remember, it’s basically a modern The Beatles, so what’s to be afraid of?

Vampire Weekend wouldn’t really be a band attending Columbia if there weren’t some pretension, though, and they chose to insert it in the lyrics. Words and phrases like Dharamsala, Madras, Jackson Crowther, kefir, and keffiyah (sic), dowdy, and rickshaw appear every other verse. They fit, though. They’re not forced in there, and you almost get the feeling that they really do talk like this. Who knows, maybe I’m just swept up in the dreamy pop tunes.

“The Kids Don’t Stand A Chance” ends the album and, while okay, is entirely unnecessary, and weakens the album to a notch below perfect. Update: Screw it, this is a five lunchbox CD.  Criticizing this album for its last track is like criticizing Scarlett Johansson for her original nose.  Sure, it’s not what, taken alone, is traditionally regarded as what it should look/sound like, but it makes it even more appealing that there’s some humanity amid the outrageous perfection.  Johansson’s a perfect ten and this is a perfect five.  </Update> “Walcott” is the best song ever, but on a weaker album “Oxford Comma,” “Campus,” and “I Stand Corrected” all could have won the same title. So start with those, but for the love of God start now.

Rating:

Mixers: “Oxford Comma,” “A-Punk,” “Campus,” “I Stand Corrected,” “Walcott”
Keepers: everything else
Filed Between: Steve Vai (Passion And Warfare) and Van Halen (1984)

…and so much feels resolved now.

James ditched that stupid non-trumpeter trumpeter they had on Seven, I found the huge hit I remember, and I can finally see the appeal of this band. I am much more at peace.

Laid came out the year after Seven, but it feels like it must have been much later, as this is a significantly better album. It is a much slower, more low-key (probably too much so) effort than their last, and just about every song is at least borderline enjoyable. It’s a heaping pile of okay, but I’m thrilled about it given last week’s sadness.

You probably already knew this, but the song I thought would be on Seven, due to me being more familiar with that disc’s cover art than this one, was the title track of this album (“She only comes when she’s on top”). I am still experiencing cognitive dissonance over it being on the banana-eating album instead of the fetus-feet album, but there it is, even in the title. Even more cognitively (that’s a word? I thought I just made it up) dissonant, though, is that I really like it. In fact, it’s the only song on here that claims a spot as a mix CD candidate. Other recognizable songs that must have been hits (Wikipedia has very little to say about James considering their prolificacy) are “Low Low Low” and “Say Something.”

Just like there aren’t any other mixers, there aren’t a whole lot of songs I never want to hear again. Even the second-worst one, “One Of The Three” (second to the awful “P.S”), is shown the exit from my DMP because of its lyrics rather than its tune. I’m all about criticizing the Christian church for its history of power-grabs and oppression in the name of God, but here they’re going after Christianity for all the wrong reasons.

I need proof before belief
Oh, well, you just knew they’d come for you
So it was suicide, suicide
Oh, well, now you got just what you want
I hope you’re satisfied

…

Oh, well, it’s a shame you got so famous for a sacrifice

“Oh, well,…,” several lyrics begin. That’s kind of the sum of this band. They’re more of a sad, sighing, half-blind squirrel that can find just enough nuts and avoid enough predators to stay alive. Running across your consciousness every once in a while, but hardly making an impact, they’re outshined by the bold, assertive eagles and tigers that most successful rock bands are.

Still, despite it falling only slightly to the good side of mediocrity, I’ll walk away from this album with positive thoughts. It’s just one more half-lunchbox than their previous album, but making that third lunchbox whole is huge.

Rating:

Mixers: “Laid”
Non-keepers: “One Of The Three,” “Five-O,” “P.S.”
Filed Between: Seven and Jamiroquai (Emergency On Planet Earth)