Miss Piggy Lunchbox

Little things that just don’t matter
Still could get me mad as a hatter

- “Hot Shit”

Quasi either took a sharp left turn on this record, or I just wasn’t paying close attention before. In the past their lyrics seemed to lie firmly in fantasy, describing Seuss-like worlds where fluent animals in unlikely situations acted out impossible and nonsensical scenarios. There’s a little bit of that on Hot Shit!, but the lyrics are now much more strikingly and overtly political.

Released in 2003, the anti-war message is inescapable. Explicit insults are handed out to W and the administration in “White Devil’s Dream” and the 9/11 imagery of “Seven Years Gone” is unambiguous. Here, though, lyricist Sam Coomes still does let the esoteric creep in by assigning playground nicknames to members of the cabinet. “Seven Years Gone” also seems to foreshadow Bush’s political isolation at the end of his presidency by drawing a comparison between him and The Flying Dutchman, while  “Master & Dog” excoriates both parties as “the elephant wields the rod while the donkey throws you a bone/I’d rather have a bone than a beating I suppose,” in lyrics that are applicable at times when Democrats are in power, too. By the end of the song, Coomes goes the full kill-‘em-all, all-politicians-are-corrupt proletariat route and throws up his hands at the whole system: “Master is the country squire/And the housedogs lay by the fire/But it gets pretty hard for the dogs in the yard.” As much as I try to make lemonade out of our political system, it’s hard not to let these lyrics resonate as our squires let yard dogs without health care die every day…to take the analogy to its non-poetic ends.

Things changed far more for Quasi lyrically than they did musically onthis release. Take away the lyrics and this fits right in with their previous catalog. What Quasi does best they do even better here, namely mix dissonance and atonality into wonderfully crafted pop songs in a way that’s impossible not to notice but is also very appealing. I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend this band to anybody that liked catchy melodies and safe music, but they push the boundaries everywhere. They’re like the perfect introduction to experimental music.

In the past the band has tended to separate these two elements, leaving an abrasive song here and a song from The Beatles’ lost tapes there. On this disc, though, it’s all put together perfectly. Every song is the perfect mix of everything Quasi does and the album itself is crafted without flaw, with each song being the perfect one to follow the one it does, resulting in what might be the most palatable middle finger to consonance of all time.

Rating:

Mixers: “Seven Years Gone,” “Drunken Tears,” “Mama Tried,” “No One,” “Good Times”
Keepers: everything else
Filed Between: Quasi’s The Sword Of God and Queen (The Platinum Collection)

I’ve written about Andsnes, a Norwegian himself, playing Grieg’s pieces before. I didn’t remember being as disappointed by that CD as I was until I re-read the review just now. It’s hard for me to believe I ever wrote anything so detailed, but here’s the essence of where that disc failed me:

…the lack of sonic brilliance is a bit of a let down. Andsnes’ liberties with the tempo are not ones I would take, but I can live with those. I’m more disappointed by the heaviness of his left-hand….

If I had read that review before adding what is probably Grieg’s most popular piece to my collection, I may not have bought this performance of Andsnes’. In this case, at least, it’s good I didn’t get reference value out of this blog, because I find none of those problems on this excellent album.

From where I sit, Andsnes’ performance is flawless. The flashy, brilliant first movement is dynamic enough to potentially earn a spot on a classical mix CD. Led by Mariss Jansons conducting the Berlin Philharmonic, the second movement is so lush I can feel it. It’s synaesthesia, as I can hear colors I’ve never seen nor heard before and the cadences melt deliciously in my ears. The second is the most challenging of the three movements in this concerto, which is one of the most accessible pieces in all of classical music, but it is oh so rewarding to just a fair amount of attention. If you’ve got six minutes to give, you could do a lot worse than devoting them to this movement.

I’m less thrilled with the Schumann concerto that follows (as an aside, both composers only wrote one piano concerto and they were both in A minor…they’re presented here in reverse chronological order as Grieg was inspired by Schumann’s), but not through any fault of the personnel. The liner notes contrast the two by describing them as a young man’s exuberant piece (Grieg’s) and a more mature man’s at-times schizophrenic piece (Schumann’s). I can’t disagree: there’s more emotional and compositional complexity in Schumann’s concerto, but I still prefer Grieg’s. It’s fantastic, though, and it gets better as it goes, and by the time I hit the third movement bumping this up to 4.5 lunchboxes is an easy decision.

Rating:

Mixers: Grieg’s Piano Concerto in A Minor, Movements 1 and 2
Keepers: everything else
Filed Between Grieg (Lyric Pieces) and Gruntruck (Inside Yours)

[Mystery solved.  J-mez was the one who decided to thank me for my output by sending me this CD. - Ed.]

A lot of times the 2.5-to-3 lunchbox boundary has to do with whether I decide an album breaks the likable boundary or not. Other times, though, a CD doesn’t fall into the fuzzy middle ground as much as it’s just a collection of good stuff and bad stuff, and breaking the three-lunchbox mark then becomes about whether the good stuff outweighs the bad stuff. That usually happens on compilation albums, but sometimes one band can’t seem to decide whether to suck or rule for even a single hour. This is one of those times.

The album’s ten tracks have seven keepers among them. By themselves, they’re an easy four lunchboxes, and if you took out their noodly parts, which keep at least half of them from being mixers, we could be talking about five lunchboxes. Even “Drunkship of Lanterns” has its moments. But I’m not reviewing a collection of parts of songs.

The bad parts…oy, this is the kind of stuff that gives progressive metal a bad name. Lyrics that make no sense (“Exoskeletal junction at the railroad delayed” is one of the more cohesive lines in a song that begins with “Transient jet lag ecto mimed bison”), sounds and noises just for their own sake, a story so opaque that understanding it requires reading a .pdf linked to from the album’s Wikipedia page, and abrupt, loud starts of phrases that spend too much time in the strident mid-high ranges and thus force you to quickly lower the volume which then obscures the quieter parts…it’s more than just not good, it’s a frustrating, angering experience.

However, as angry as it makes me, and it makes me pretty freaking angry, there’s a lot of good stuff and it is really good good stuff, with complex, driving rhythms, awesome guitar riffs, and gripping (if a bit too whiny) vocal melodies. Even though I started writing this review fifteen minutes ago with a lead paragraph aimed at giving this disc 3 lunchboxes, these are the CDs I went to half-lunchboxes for.

Rating:

Mixers: none
Non-keepers: “Roulette Dares (The Haunt Of),” “Tira Me A Las Arañas,” “Drunkship Of Lanterns”
Filed Between: Bob Marley And The Wailers (Legend, The Best Of) and a double-opera CD with Cavalleria rusticana by Mascagni and Pagliacci by Leoncavallo

10 nights over the course of five-and-a-half years. 13 sets. 2 audio CDs and one MP3 disc. 127 tracks. 10 hours, 12 minutes, and 32 seconds of audio. 7.5 pages of notes. There were times I considered just throwing up my hands and walking away from my collection. I must be masochistic, given my willingness to jump into this after Pearl Jam’s 2003 tour.

I came away from this much happier with Melvins than I came away from that tour with Pearl Jam. There are a number of reasons I’ll attribute this to. First of all, I just had a higher level of affection for Melvins going in. Second, 13 sets over 10 nights is not even close to 73 sets over 72 nights, nor do the length of any Melvins sets approach the length of the single shortest Pearl Jam concert. Finally, this represents five-and-a-half years of changing set lists, not five-and-a-half months of the same. Plus it’s Melvins vs. Minneapolis, for crying out loud. How can you go wrong with that combination? Boner-ness commence!

I’ll be honest with you, though. This sounds like ass. I’d love to tell you these were lovingly recorded, mastered, and compiled concerts—and they very may well have been done out of love: the non-Walker shows, which is also exactly the set of Grumpy’s shows, were “recorded from the audience by Jeff Sebastianelli” and sometimes with Geoffrey Nicholson and the box set is dedicated to Sebastianelli’s memory—but no amount of love is going to burnish a non-soundboard recording in a tiny bar.

Still, I enjoyed this immensely. As opposed to the Pearl Jam debacle, which emphasized how much I hate several songs of theirs and how even the ones I like can’t quite stand up to that amount of heavy rotation, this experience reinforced to me just how much I love the Melvins catalog. Be assured, this is for fans only. Newcomers who don’t already have a robust Melvins collection will be confounded and perturbed. But if you love Melvins, you’ll love the passionate performances and live energy that cut through the terrible sound quality.

Even I got something new out of it. They hearken back to their very early Pacific Northwest days by covering Malfunkshun’s “With Yo’ Heart (Not Yo’ Hands)” from the legendary Deep Six compilation, which also featured four Melvins songs, and then they go right from that song into “Leeech,” a song that was given to them by or stolen from Green River, depending on who you ask. (This brings us all the way around because those were the two bands that merged to form Mother Love Bone, the predecessor of Temple Of The Dog and Pearl Jam.) Their covers of Alice Cooper’s “Halo Of Flies” are amazing; Melvins meets 1970’s glam-prog-rock? That’s such a fantastic combination I can’t believe it’s not a Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. In fact, the performance of that track on 9/18/2000 might be the highlight of the collection if it’s not the Walker sessions where they do “Hung Bunny” and “Roman Dog Bird,” the first two songs on Lysol.

Still, my god, I’m not sure what’s better: Having this collection and listening to it intently several times, or finally allowing myself to move on through the rest of my unlistened-to collection.

Rating:

Mixers: None
Keepers: 3/20/04, Grumpy’s Minneapolis: “Night Goat,” “With Teeth,” “Black Stooges/It’s Shoved”; 3/24/06, Soo Visual Arts Center: “Intro by David Scott Stone”; 2/8/03, The Walker: “Hung Bunny/Roman Dog Bird”; 9/18/00, Grumpy’s Minneapolis (Set 1): “Missing,” “Tipping The Lion,” “With Yo’ Heart (Not Yo’ Hands)/Leeech,” “Halo Of Flies”; 9/18/00, Grumpy’s Minneapolis (Set 2): “Revolve,” “AMAZON,” “Cherub,” “Youth Of America”; 9/19/00, Grumpy’s Minneapolis (Set 2): “Youth Of America”; 10/15/01, Grumpy’s Minneapolis: “The Ballad Of Dwight Fry/Halo Of Flies,” “At The Stake”‘; 10/16/06, Grumpy’s Minneapolis: “Intro/Oven,” “It’s Shoved”; 2/9/03, Grumpy’s Minneapolis: “Black Stooges (first half),” “Black Stooges (second half)”; 3/25/06, Grumpy’s Minneapolis: “Pigs Of The Roman Empire,” “Hooch,” “Happy Birthday/Black Stooges”
Filed Between: Melvins’ Nude With Boots and Melvins+Lustmord (Pigs Of The Roman Empire)

One MPL reader has remarked recently that my Radiohead reviews don’t read as if the albums should be receiving the high ratings that they do. I’ve gone back and looked over my reviews for Radiohead albums to try to find out where this impression originates. One option is that I assumed knowledge of OK Computer, which doesn’t have an MPL review since I got it when it came out in 1997. So here’s the deal: OK Computer is, without question, five easy lunchboxes, one of the best albums in my collection, and easily the height of Radiohead’s achievement. That is why I compare every album of theirs to OK Computer, and it is also why when they all fall short of that masterpiece, it’s not a harsh criticism. To be fair, in retrospect, the review of Amnesiac focuses more on why it’s worse than Kid A than on the strong points that make it worth four lunchboxes. I stand by choosing that angle, particularly amid this flurry of Radiohead album reviews, but it’s understandable that my reader would encounter some cognitive dissonance upon reaching the rating. I’d be interested to know if my regular readers who are familiar with Radiohead’s catalog, and OK Computer in particular, experienced the same dissonance.

That Amnesiac review may have also sounded bitter because it meant the first five Radiohead albums, in chronological order, received ratings of 4, 4.5, 5, 4.5, and 4 lunchboxes. The band was showing a clear descent from their peak, rather than plateauing, and that was disappointing. In that most recent review I said, “the band just might be right on the verge of pushing things too far.” They don’t continue over that experimental, soundscape-y cliff on Hail To The Thief, but they do continue their downward trend in quality.

Hail To The Thief is still a very good album, but it has two main weaknesses. The first is that it’s the first album the band has done that has anything legitimately awful on it. “We Suck Young Blood” needs to be taken out back and put out of its misery. Sure, it has that one crazy part, and that’s kind of cool, but any song that features this much pitiable whining has no right to exist, I don’t care who its authors are.

The second weakness is a nice weakness to have, but is one the band is going to have to contend with for the remainder of its existence. Has Radiohead, in its first four or five albums, broken all the ground they have to break? Have they reached a developmental plateau? In short, did they blow their wad too soon? Because there are a lot of songs on here that are very good, but seem to be awfully similar to songs they’ve done in the past. “Sail To The Moon.”, “Backdrifts.”, and “The Gloaming.” are respectively fine, very good, and great, but they both fit a little too nicely into the band’s oeuvre, blending into a background hum of “yep, that’s Radiohead.”

When they do mix it up a bit on here, things generally work out well. “2 + 2 = 5” explodes into an opening of the tempo, volume, and rock throttles at the end and “Myxomatosis” is also welcomely aggressive (personally, I think it should beat the crap out of “We Suck Young Blood.”) “A Wolf At The Door.” is the most non-Radiohead tune, with its nearly-rapped vocals, and contains a depth that is not immediately obvious. As the last track on an album that should have been moving more in a direction like this, it bodes well for the band’s progression.

If I had heard this album in isolation from the rest of Radiohead’s catalog, the novelty of this sound and the high overall quality of the songwriting might have garnered four lunchboxes. Most bands would love to put out an album this good. Radiohead’s done it before, though, and better.

Rating:

Mixers: “2 + 2 = 5,” “The Gloaming.,” “Myxomatosis.”
Non-keepers: “Sail To The Moon.,” “Where I End And You Begin.,” “We Suck Young Blood.,” “There There.,” “I Will.”
Filed Between: Amnesiac and Ramones (Ramones)