Miss Piggy Lunchbox

I barely had enough time or energy to make these, much less write about them.  Still, they’re done and in the hands of their recipients, so I’m going to at least get a blog post out of them.

As always, these are mixes that represent an intersection of what I think the recipients would like and what I reviewed here on MPL in 2009.  Whether the music was released in 2009 is irrelevant, and in fact very little of it was.  Eligible contributing CDs run from The Nields’ If You Lived Here You’d Be Home By Now to A Man About A Horse’s Does Not Exist.

These mixes suck. Hard.  Cuz of that lack-of-time-and-energy thing. And because my busy year gave me fewer songs from which to choose.

Volume K
1. Stand Up Comedy - U2
2. Postcards - The Cutters
3. Government Center - Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers
4. Twa Recruiting Sergeants - The Old Triangle
5. Girlfiend In A Coma - The Smiths
6. Sex Euro and Evils Pop - Messer Chups
7. Wouldn’t Mama Be Proud? - Elliott Smith
8. Catch A Collapsing Star - The Mendoza Line
9. I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles) - The Proclaimers
10. Does This Mean You’re Moving On? - The Airborne Toxic Event
11. Seven Years Gone - Quasi
12. Just To Know You’ve Been Dreaming - Will Johnson
13. Such Great Heights - Iron And Wine
14. The Wrestler - Bruce Springsteen
15. Heavier Than 3 Lbs. - A Man About A Horse
16. Carry On - Spacehog
17. Let Me In - R.E.M.
18. St. Teresa - Joan Osborne
19. (Love Is) The Tender Trap - Frank Sinatra
20. How Deep Is Your Love - The Bad Plus

Volume S
1. 9 To 5 - Dolly Parton
2. Li Li - The Cutters
3. Sometime Around Midnight - The Airborne Toxic Event
4. Barracuda - The Bad Plus
5. Our Haunt - Palomar
6. Wolfman’s Brother - Phish
7. Crazy Baby - Joan Osborne
8. Will The Night - Low
9. Aase’s Death - Grieg
10. Belated Promise Ring - Iron And Wine
11. Then I Met You - The Proclaimers
12. How Soon Is Now? - The Smiths
13. L.A. - Elliott Smith
14. Strangers Out Of The Blue - St. Thomas
15. Try For The Sun - The Old Triangle
16. Preface - Vincent & Mr. Green
17. Mainstreaming - Kaada
18. Flor de Leis - Slow Dazzle
19. Hopeless Bird - A Man About A Horse

2009 MPL awards to follow.

Given that all the other lists of this sort come out on December 1, I’m two months late with this.  But we’ve been over the reasons for that.

This is the second annual MPL’s top ten CD list.  2009, however, was relatively light on the CD reviews, due mostly to busy spring and fall quarters, reviewing massive collections like Beethoven’s symphonies and Melvins v. Minneapolis, and spending a lot of my time reviewing Wagner’s Ring.  As a result, I only reviewed six CDs that came out in 2009.

So here they are, MPL’s top ten six albums of 2009:

4.5 lunchboxes:
1) The Bad Plus: For All I Care

4 lunchboxes:
2) Iron And Wine: Around The Well

3.5 lunchboxes (in no particular order):
3) U2: No Line On The Horizon
4) Melvins: Pick Your Battles, Live in Berkeley 1989/Boston 2008

2 lunchboxes: (in no particular order):
5) Bruce Springsteen: Working On A Dream
6) Covered, A Revolution In Sound: Warner Bros. Records

Last year I reviewed 10 2008 albums that received four or more lunchboxes.  In 2009 I only reviewed two that achieved that score.  And 2009 didn’t have a single five lunchbox album, at least not that got reviewed here and, really, did it even happen if it didn’t get reviewed here?  Sucks to be 2009.  But of course that’s been covered elsewhere.  At least Melvins made the top ten list two years running.

Bon Jovi’s never been the most original band in the world, but have you heard their new single?  Oh my god, they’re entirely re-using old choruses.

First, just to remind yourself what it sounds like, check out the chorus of “Born To Be My Baby” from 1988’s New Jersey, here at 1:11.

Okay, now 21 years later, check out the tripe I hear at almost every commercial break when watching the baseball playoffs.  With that last song in your head, try out the chorus of the band’s “new” single “We Weren’t Born To Follow,” here at 0:53.

You can basically just sing one melody over the other.  I guess they’re giving the fans want they want.

Here’s another Melvins CD paired with a “comic book” (again, I’m sure I’m not supposed to call it that) by their friend Brian Walsby. Instead of pulling out their earliest experiments with a four-track, this time the band stayed on the Melvins vs. Minneapolis path and released portions of two concerts: one from Berkeley in 1989 and another from Boston almost 20 years later in 2008, recorded just a few weeks after I reviewed this Seattle show.

The Berkeley show is filled almost entirely with content from 1989’s Ozma, much of which I like better in this format and some of which, amazingly, actually sounds better than it did on Ozma. The end with a fantastically powerful rendition of “Your Blessened,” one of their best songs and probably the best one from 1991’s Bullhead.

The Boston show, like the show I saw that summer, is primarily filled up with content from A Senile Animal and that summer’s Nude With Boots. In contrast to the Berkeley show, nothing here sounds as good as those albums’ studio versions, but its nice to have live versions of those fantastic songs, even if they’re a bit lacking. The band also reaches back to 1987 and 1991 with “Eye Flys” and “Boris,” respectively. I’ve gained a greater appreciation for Melvins’ early material in the past few years, and hearing them play those old sludgy songs with their modern, razor-sharp virtuosity and musical sensibilities is one of the richer experiences of Melvins fandom. They’re able to bring out aspects of those songs they couldn’t in their earlier days, as if you’re finally hearing the songs they way they heard them in their head when they were written.

Waslby’s Manchlid 4 was not as good as I remember Manchild 3 being, but it was still pretty good. The largest chunk of it is devoted to the history of his membership in bands, which was interesting but also reminiscent of that scene from Crumb where the art in his brother’s “comics” become overwhelmed by the text. The best parts were the excorating dismantling of the requisite and nonsensical conformity of the North Carolina hardcore scene and his tales of dealing with too-passionate Melvins fans from behind the merch table on tour. That one might have even stung a little bit. ;-)

I ended my review of The Making Love Demos/Manchild 3 by telling Melvins that this pairing was unnecessary, that I’d buy anything they put out and it didn’t have to be paired with a friend’s product. I’m not sure I feel that way anymore. These accompanying books have added a new dimension to the band and increased my appreciation of them. I’m an even bigger fan than I was before, but now I know how not to act like a tool, especially if Walsby is behind the table at the next show I go to. Keep it up, guys.

Rating:

Mixers: none
Keepers: “Koolegged,” “Oven,” “Raise A Paw,” “Your Blessened,” “Eye Flys,” “Boris”
Filed Between: Melvins Vs. Minneapolis and Melvins + Lustmord (Pigs Of The Roman Empire)

U2’s a bit like Phish now. Not in the suck department, because they’re still pumping out good albums, but in the fact that it’s all about the live show. The tracks and theme of an album are all just the means to the end that is the few dozen stadium shows they’ll do around the world. Actually listening to the release (on the plain vanilla jewel case CD when there are no fewer than three different types of limited edition releases no less) is so 20th century. Now it’s more about the event than the content.

The album’s opening track, the title track, opens with a sole held note and, after a few seconds, punches into one of those delay- and reverb-heavy grooves that has typified the last 15 years or so of U2’s output. Bono does his Bono thing (though his voice is the weakest I’ve ever heard it) over a chorus pregnant with anticipation. When the guitar breakdown and additional drum track burst in at 1:15, you know this is the song that’s opening that new stadium show. You can essentially hear the light show that accompanies the multi-media extravaganza the band has planned for your several-hundred dollar evening.

It all adds up to a maddening sense of ambivalence. On the one hand, almost all of these songs are pretty good with a few (“No Line On The Horizon” and the two mixers) coming very close to great. On the other hand, though, there’s no passion in this. I mean, cranking out 55 minutes and eleven tracks of good is like a day at the office for these guys. Give ‘em a strong cup of coffee and let them pound out the grooves.

That’s more than can be said about a lot of bands, but I shouldn’t be dismissive of the band’s work ethic. I’m sure they bust their tails to keep creating catchy, brilliantly produced radio-ready songs. What I’m saying is, in 2009, what is U2’s motivation for creating a CD? They’re bigger than the quarter-square-foot or so of plastic that will sit on my shelf. They’re bigger than the Best Buy ad and the front page of the iTunes Music Store. They’re bigger than the radio towers and more elemental to the fabric of the culture than the broadband that now brings their audio and video to your home entertainment system. The only thing that can properly reflect the aesthetic of U2 is a stadium. And so the only reason they put out a CD is to give people a reason to come hear the new chords echo off a wall a few hundred yards away.

And I’d love to review that for you, but it would require several hundred dollars and a couple of days in Vancouver, and that is just not going to happen. And so even if I listen to this recording at the best possible fidelity, I still feel like I’m missing something, like the actual event is passing by very far away and I haven’t been invited. They’ve loaded up the jets and flown away, and I’m left to mull over something that fell out the back of one of the delivery vans.

Like I said, this is pretty much the definition of a solid release with every track being enjoyable on some level. That’s usually good for four lunchboxes, but there’s something nagging at me. Beyond even the afterthought nature of the format for this band, I’m left flat by the flaws that are also present in most of the songs. “Unknown Caller” starts off weak and never seems to get going, with its hastily pasted together vocal track where it never seems clear which vocalist we’re supposed to be paying attention to or why. “Get On Your Boots” is fun but also way too much like “Wild Wild West” by Escape Club (you know…”living in the 80’s, heading for the 90’s, living in the wild wild west”). “Stand Up Comedy” starts off fantastic but barely maintains its mixer status as the band, which is getting up there, takes a now seemingly mandatory nap time about two-thirds of the way through the song.

I guess they’ve really nailed down this blurriness theme they’ve created in the cover image and title. There isn’t a single song on here I have strong feelings about. And that ambivalence is marring an otherwise very enjoyable experience for me.

Rating:

Mixers: “Stand Up Comedy,” “Breathe”
Non-keepers: “Unknown Caller”
Filed Between: U2’s The Best of 1980 - 1990 and UHF/VHF – The Relapse Records/Nuclear Blast America and Release Entertainment 1995 Promotional Sampler

When your “band’s” polished releases are just you and a guitar, it’s not very far from that to demo, and so Iron And Wine fans won’t be disappointed by this two-disc set of demos, rarities, and b-sides. You can definitely tell these are not finished, A-cut products (there’s a barely-audible buzz on most of disc one), but that degradation in sound quality isn’t going to do much more than keep these tracks off of a mix of radio-ready tracks.

In fact, in many cases, the rawness works for Iron And Wine’s only member, Sam Beam. The naked, exposed quality serves to make his gorgeous melodies and the vivid-but-dreamlike quality of his lyrics all the more potent. And on another level, the fact that his demos are of a quality this high says a lot about the talent flowing out of this guy. It’s like he has good-song-diarrhea, like he can’t even hold in the rich, catchy tunes.

The good songs are worthy of 4.5 lunchboxes, and there’s only one clunker in the mix (a cover of Sterolab’s “Peng! 33”). However, there are a few too many places, especially near the end of disc two, where he seems to get stuck in a merely mildly interesting groove and rides it out too long. That’s to be expected in a collection of this type, though, and I’ll generously chalk those up to something like “insight into the creative process.” Really, even with the non-keepers, this a sweet, emotional listen from start to finish.

Rating:

Mixers: “Morning,” “Waitin’ For A Superman,” “Such Great Heights,” “Communion Cups & Someone’s Coat,” “Belated Promise Ring,” “God Made The Automobile”
Non-keepers: “Peng! 33,” “Friends They Are Jewels,” “Hickory,” “Sinning Hands,” “No Moon,” “Carried Home”
Filed Between: Iron And Wine’s The Shepherd’s Dog and Iron Maiden (Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son)

Among Rock Band’s 60 or so songs on the Wii, there are a handful of songs where the artist is listed as “as made famous by.” For example, you have “Paranoid, as made famous by Black Sabbath.” This seems to be the case when they got publishing rights to the song but couldn’t get the actual version to use in the song. These songs are still fun to play, but come on, any version of “Paranoid” without Ozzy singing isn’t really “Paranoid,” now is it? Well, Covered is basically an entire album of “as made famous by.”

The record labels aren’t even trying anymore. In 1990, for their 40th anniversary, Elektra released Rubáiyát, a two-CD (four-LP) collection of contemporary Elektra artists covering classic tracks from Elektra’s catalog. It came in one of those stupid double-CD jewel cases that was bigger than two single-CD jewel cases, but that also meant it came with a 53-page booklet filled with images of artists and records in Elektra’s history. It had The Cure doing The Doors, Billy Bragg doing Love, Kronos Quartet doing Television, and Metallica ridiculously won a Grammy for their cover of Queen’s “Stone Cold Crazy.” It was great from start to finish and, as a collection of jewels, truly lived up to its namesake.

19 years later it’s Warner Music’s 50th anniversary, and Covered is the same concept, but it’s 12 tracks, as opposed to Rubáiyát’s 39, seems hastily performed and compiled, and is being given away for free in the lunchroom at My Baby’s office (where, to be fair, they’re probably partners with Warner Music, so are more likely to get this kind of schwag regularly). The cover art is uninspired and most of these tracks sound like ass. Not the kind of ass I usually complain about where the fidelity is bad, but the kind of ass where things have been compressed to make it all sound loud but instead it just sounds slick and over-produced. I’m guessing it was a collaborative effort by some exec on his way out and some intern with no sense of what music sounded like before mp3s ruined everything.

Of the tracks I know on here, all but a couple are crazy faithful versions. This is not the way to impress upon me that your new artists are lighting a new way forward for your collective. Nor does it demonstrate the quality of your catalog, because when somebody does a faithful cover of a classic, it only makes you long for the original. To do a successful cover, you almost always have to add a new interpretation. (Faith No More excluded, as somehow their versions of “War Pigs” and “Easy” were incredibly close to the original and still sound better.)

The two unfaithful covers of songs I’m familiar with are The Flaming Lips doing Madonna’s “Borderline” and The Used doing Talking Heads’ “Burning Down The House.” The Flaming Lips continue to impress me, as their slowed-down, trippy version demonstrates a stubborn refusal to conform to a sea of mediocrity. The Used get points for using distortion as an instrument, I suppose, but theirs is a super-compressed version of a classic, with no dynamic contrast, and it’s almost unlistenable. The souls were sucked out of two of my favorite songs, Faith No More’s “Midlife Crisis” and Black Sabbath’s “Paranoid,” by Disturbed and Avenged Sevenfold, respectively, in exactly the same way.

Faithful doesn’t automatically equal awful, though. James Otto’s voice carries Van Morrison’s “Into The Mystic.” And given that his voice just like that of Neil Young, I have to imagine Adam Sandler’s (yes, that one) version of “Like A Hurricane” is quite faithful, though I’m sure it pales in comparison to Young’s.

And on and on. Most of this is sickening in the way it just flies past you, not saying anything interesting. But, hey, it will sound “good” in your car on the freeway and streaming over the Internet through your computer speakers, so who gives a crap about the rest. Record labels are in their death throes, but their neglect of artist development, fidelity, and format standards did them in more than any technological advancement. They killed the CD and it’s taking them down with it. Good riddance. This half-assed effort will serve as a meta-milestone on the long, dreary path to the format’s grave.

Rating:

Mixers: none
Keepers: “Just Got Paid” (Mastodon), Her Eyes Are A Blue Million Miles” (The Black Keys), “Into The Mystic” (James Otto), “Like A Hurricane” (Adam Sandler), “Borderline” (The Flaming Lips with Stardeath And White Dwarfs)
Filed Between: Course Of Empire (Course Of Empire) and Cracker (Kerosene Hat)

Sometimes in my continuing quest to listen to everything, I run through a stretch much like the current one where everything is swimming in mediocrity. When that happens, I give serious consideration to giving up, to just hunkering down with the music I know I love for the rest of my life. Invariably, though, if I keep fighting through it, I come across something that makes it all worthwhile, like the new album from Minneapolis avant-garde jazz trio The Bad Plus.

This is everything I love about discovering new music. It’s appealing at first, and on repeated listens opens itself up to your ears as they get to know each song’s individuality, finding and loving every hidden nook and cranny that you can only appreciate after experiencing it several times.

This album is 12 tracks of 11 cover songs. The original artists run from Yes to Milton Babbit, from Pink Floyd to Stravinsky, from The Flaming Lips to Ligeti. It’s as amazing as it sounds and even better than the similarly-themed album by Brad Mehldau Trio I reviewed three years ago.

These covers aren’t just curiosities. This group of musicians, now joined by the wonderful, smokey-voiced Wendy Lewis, adds a completely new spin on all of them. They haven’t just replaced the electric bass with stand-up and drum sticks with brushes: these songs have been ripped down to their foundations to be rebuilt in the image of The Bad Plus. Instead of soft-to-loud, the chorus of Nirvana’s “Lithium” is set off from the rest of the song by emphasizing piano. Heart’s “Barracuda,” which I hate, is fantastic here, with a slow-down-speed-up rhythm at the end that is so awesome it has me “down down down down on my knees.” I don’t quite get the scream on “Comfortably Numb” being transformed into silence, but the cascading waterfall of the piano perfectly illustrates the song’s dreamlike quality and the immaculately-controlled chaos at the end reveals the protagonist’s illness and situation better than even Floyd did.

I’m not familiar with “How Deep Is Your Love” by The Bee Gees, but the version here is the Best Song Ever. Heck, these guys even make me love “Radio Cure,” originally from Wilco’s forgettable Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. Literally forgettable: I had no idea I’d ever heard the song before until I looked it up and realized I own it in its original form. The only track I’m not getting into is Roger Miller’s “Lock, Stock and Teardrops,” which, like a lot of these tracks, starts off very languid, but never really pulls itself together save for a few seconds of Lewis drawing me in by nailing the high notes with nearly enough feeling in them to carry the entire tune.

Thanks, Bad Plus, for pulling me out of my most recent musical funk. You’ve been the bright spot in a gloomy week.

Rating:

Mixers: “Lithium,” “Long Distance Runaround,” “How Deep Is Your Love,” “Barracuda,” “Feeling Yourself Disintegrate”
Non-keeper: “Lock, Stock and Teardrops”
Filed Between: The Bad Plus’ Give and Badlands – A Tribute To Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska

Dear Bruce,

Oh boy. Believe me, this hurts me more than it hurts you. After all, you’ve got your millions of dollars and your sycophantic fans and journalists who think you have the Midas touch. I’m sure it’s all very fulfilling.

But between us, Bruce, between you and me, the magic just isn’t there anymore. I’m sorry, Bruce, but I’m leaving you.

I tried to put this off as long as I could, but you and I have both known it was coming for a long time. Things started going downhill at The Rising, and for a long time I thought that our problems had only been going on for the last seven years. I thought you would turn it around again, like you did after 1992’s unfortunate Human Touch, but shit, Bruce, once I really sat down and thought about it, that turnaround, as far as contemporary material was concerned, was basically just The Ghost Of Tom Joad. That’s one great studio album in the last 20 years. You had me fooled during that turnaround by showering me with greatest hits albums, box sets of old, unreleased stuff, and fantastic live performances, but the other day I realized I’ve been living a lie for over two decades now. I even largely overlooked a mediocre CD of Pete Seeger covers. Christ, Bruce, how do you screw up Pete Seeger?

I’m sorry, I don’t mean to attack you. I’m just trying to point out that the signs have been there for a long time…we just have to wake up and see them. I’m finally admitting to myself how empty it is for me. Only you can do the same for you.

Believe me, this is just as sudden for me as it is for you. Like I said, I really did think a turnaround was right around the corner. But when I was in the record store picking this album off the shelf, I originally had the version with the DVD in it in my hand (you know me and my rules, right?). Anyway…the thought of watching you narcissistically discuss this album for 40 minutes made me sick…literally nauseous. I put it down and saved myself the extra five bucks and 40 minutes. That’s when I knew that this was your last chance. If this album wasn’t great, or even just unequivocally good (say, Lucky Town or Tunnel Of Love good), then I would move on, no matter how hard it was.

And then you go and name the album Working On A Dream. Come on…did you let the neighbor kids name it? See, this is the problem, man. You’ve been over this ground again and again and again. It’s all trite garbage you used to leave on the cutting room floor. Your unreleased throwaways, as the masterful Tracks demonstrates, used to be better than this, but now you’re making it the centerpiece of your Super Bowl halftime show. The lyrics, which were the only extravagantly good thing about Devils & Dust, are now just leftover, generic, hard-luck blue-collar imagery about “love shining down” that even Mellencamp wouldn’t touch, and the tunes are plain-Jane forgettable.

No, you’re right, you’re right…. You did tone down that snarly, hick vocalization thing that drove me so nuts on Devils And Dust and, less so, on Magic like I asked you to. You’re a sweet guy (remember that time you couldn’t make it to my birthday but you sent a card with J-mez?…that was awesome), and I believe you’re trying your best, but…jeez, this album makes those last few sound pretty damned good.

I don’t know. Maybe the money and the fame changed you. You kept it going longer than any mortal should have been able to, but now when you sing about outlaws, your weary hands swinging a hammer down, and what love can do…there’s nothing true in it anymore…you have no connection to those lives you sing about other than some saccharine caricature in your head. The spark is gone, Bruce. No amount of glossy liner notes can hide the fact that you’re compensating. Not even an entire choir of gospel singers in front of the world’s largest television audience can mask this inadequacy.

We’ll always have 1973 – 1987. Nothing can take that away from us, and know I’ll always treasure those moments. I’ll still be rooting for you to find that magic again, but the days of me buying your album shortly after its release are over. I’ll be there listening to the old stuff, loving the old Bruce. I still love that Boss…I just don’t know what happened to him. I feel like he still might be there…like I caught a glimpse of him when reading the excerpt from Danny Federici’s eulogy. If you see him, send him my love. If you don’t, I beg you to ride off nobly into the sunset like so many of your characters.

Sincerely,

KEN

P.S. It’s not even about Brendan anymore. It’s just you, Bruce. It’s just you.

Rating:

Mixers: “Good Eye,” “The Wrestler”
Keepers: “My Lucky Day,” “Life Itself,” “Surprise, Surprise,” “The Last Carnival”
Filed Between: Magic and Stanley, Son of Theodore: Yet Another Alternative Music Sampler