Miss Piggy Lunchbox

Tired of waiting for the impetuous Axl Rose to get his act together and release Chinese Democracy, Guns N’ Roses’ third proper studio album, guitarist Slash, bassist Duff McKagan, and drummer Matt Sorum teamed up with Scott Weilland of Stone Temple Pilots and Dave Kushner to form Velvet Revolver. In 2004 they released their debut album Contraband.

So I’m listening to this on Tuesday and thinking, damn, Chinese Democracy is never gonna come out and, hey, 2008 is almost over and Dr. Pepper said they’d give us all a pop if it was released this year, what’s the latest on that?

And holy s**t, Chinese Democracy is scheduled to be in Best Buy stores on Sunday. This f**king Sunday. And Dr. Pepper is making good on their promise and holy f’ing lord up is down and there’s a new Guns N’ Roses album?

And I’m supposed to review this ancient artifact? Pfft.

I half-expect that the new Guns N’ Roses album will blow big chunks, but nevertheless, this is probably the most anticipated album of all time and holy good god I’m running out to Best Buy on Sunday just to buy it on the day it comes out and it’s not waiting its turn in line because, again, Most. Anticipated. Album. Ever. So, musical history right there, by definition.

What’s most amazing about this being the most anticipated album ever is that their previous release (Use Your Illusion, I’m not counting The Spaghetti Incident) was previously the most anticipated album ever. I remember waiting outside the Title Wave in Columbia Heights at midnight in September, 1991 for those two albums, which had themselves been scrapped in their entirety and completely re-worked a couple of times at least, if we’re to believe reports from the GnR camp. They also were, of course, a huge let down. They were good, it’s just that nothing could match the five-lunchbox awesomeness of 1987’s Appetite For Destruction.

So now we’ve got Chinese Democracy out soon, and I guess everybody else has already heard most of it due to a leak. I’ll still be waiting for the release date and listening to it then because I’ve got enough to keep my ears busy in the meantime…during which I should write this review, huh?

So, yeah…. This hour’s worth of material, apart from the two requisite power ballads (these guys really are still living in the early 90’s), is pretty monochromatic: it’s got a heavy groove with an even heavier distorted guitar layered on top creating the song-obscuring din of noise that mixer Andy Wallace loves so much. I like a few more colors in my rainbow and a touch of bass in my rock.

Still, there are only two truly bad songs (“Big Machine” and “You Got No Right”) and another that’s borderline bad (the hit power ballad, “Fall To Pieces”). The two mixers are really good, but even the verses of “Illegall i Song” are boring in their simple aggressiveness. It gets considered for mixes only for the great chorus which features the most inventive drumming on the album. And after the rest of the album is a pretty even spread of “good” to “meh,” with the band at times sounding a lot like Stone Temple Pilots and at others like Dirt-era Alice In Chains. Fans of Slash will be happy as his characteristically melodic Les Paul playing is, naturally, everywhere. On balance, it’s all a little bit more good than it is bad.

Finally, one more thing about Chinese Democracy. That free Dr. Pepper has to be the best part of this, right? I mean, one of the biggest rock bands of the past twenty years basically got mocked and dared into releasing their third album by a pop company. That’s awesome. So bravo, Dr. Pepper, for using your cavity- and obesity-causing syrup power for good. Even if the album sucks I’ll be able to wash it down with a free 20 oz. beverage, and we got a great piece of media history to go with it.

Rating:

Mixers: “Illegal i Song,” “Spectacle”
Keepers: “Sucker Train Blues,” “Headspace,” “Slither,” “Dirty Little Thing,” “Loving The Alien”
Filed Between: Velocity Girl (¡Simpatico!) and Billy Vera & The Beaters (By Request)

From Gregorian Chant all the way up through Mahler and Strauss at the very beginning of the 20th century, music had gradually added dissonance and stretching of harmony and melody in what amounts to a sort of evolution. As human ears became accustomed to certain tonal structures, composers were able to make things exciting by breaking a few of the old rules, ears adjusted, and so on. This isn’t earth-shattering and you can hear the same effect in comparing popular music of today to that of 50 years ago.

The point at which the wheels came off the gradual-and-natural-evolution train, however, was with Arnold Schoenberg, who examined this gradualness and decided that he might as well be a millennium ahead of his time and just throw off tonality altogether. Of course, it doesn’t really work like that…things happen gradually for a reason and you can’t, for the most part, jump all of the musical world forward several hundred years.

Curiously, though, Schoenberg was quite celebrated in his time. While his giant leap forward in harmony might have been a bit much, he enables the listener to come with him by emphasizing beautiful static sounds and graspable melodies throughout his 5 Pieces For Orchestra from 1909. When you listen to it now, in fact, you realize how much modern music owes to Schoenberg.

Without this piece, composed well before Schoenberg’s conception and articulation of “12-tone music,” film music wouldn’t sound the same, nor would the music of cartoons. Consider Bugs Bunny walking along while Elmer Fudd shoots at him, anvils fall from the sky, and animals run off cliffs only to be suspended in mid-air for several seconds. The music accompanying these scenes, with its quick and quickly-changing motifs is straight out of this work. He eventually leads you down into the same deep, dark hole that Berg does to open the disc, but he’s at least holding his hand as he gradually takes you further and further from the life you once knew and might never see again.

Schoenberg’s students in what was dubbed the Second Viennese School (the first being loosely comprised of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven), Alban Berg and Anton Webern, on the other hand…well, they’re a little harder to get your head around. Berg’s contribution here, his 3 Pieces For Orchestra, originally composed in 1914 but revised in 1929 (which is the version on this disc), is particularly abstruse. It is grandly symphonic, a sonic maelstrom with no life presevers in the form of melodies or static beauty to guide you through. If you want to listen to this, it’s put your head down, lean into the wind, and push through. Its final part is militant both in its sometimes, but not for long, march feel and in the unpredictable explosions and cacophony, the sonic equivalent of what the middle of a World War I cannon bombardment must have felt like…and it was written around the time of Germany’s march through Europe in 1914. I like it more and more with each listen, as its ominous flower of darkness is slowly opening itself up to me, but it’s still tough.

If you know anything about Webern, it’s that he was a miniaturist, composing very short works, some only a few seconds long, that laid out his musical thought quickly with little to no development. As with Schoenberg’s 12-tone system, though, throw that notion away for this CD because Webern’s composition, 6 Pieces For Orchestra, was written before then, though all but one of the Pieces are still quite short, ranging from 0:55 to 2:33. They all stem from the death of his mother, and you can hear the seeds of his later work here as he wastes no time in explicating each emotion succinctly. There’s nothing traditionally beautiful here, but a wide range of sounds is produced, from a bubbling, percolating muck (II), to a gargantuan sounding funeral march whose climax is nearly deafening (IV), to chords upon chords layered in such a way that they simply refuse to resolve, bringing to mind a sumptuous but unsatisfying infinity. It is equal parts mystifying and palpably close to something familiar. Here, Webern lies nearly halfway between the now-everywhere sounds of Schoenberg and the total mindf**k of Berg.

One of the comparisons that leads off Alex Ross’ history of 20th Century classical music is that modern music is the analogue to modern film, dance, and visual art…not just in that it’s new, but in that the 20th century has seemingly produced art that has been so violently opposed to what came before it. I agree. This is absolutely the analogue to Kandinsky, Pollock, and David Lynch: there are parts that excite you, but it’s more about color, maybe a little about form, and less about some cohesive representativeness…and since music was always the least representative of all art forms (save possibly dance), the revolt against the structures that were there seem even more revolutionary.

One final note that I can’t fit in anywhere else. I love that James Levine conducted these pieces. Not because I think his interpreations are fine (I have no point of comparison) or that he’s one of my favorite conductors (I just don’t have enough data to really form an opinion on that), but just because I heard him speak when I lived in Boston (where he is now Music Director of the BSO), and found him to be intelligent, articulate, and quite likeable despite (or maybe because of) disagreeing with certain musical opinions of his. It was an intellectually challenging, enlightening, and mildly disturbing experience…much like this album.

Rating:

Mixers: ha, yeah right
Non-keepers: 3 Pieces For Orchestra III; 6 Pieces For Orchestra V, VI; 5 Pieces For Orchestra IV, V
Filed Between: Ben Folds Five (Whatever And Ever Amen) and The Best of Both Worlds – The Rykodisc and Hannibal World Music Sampler

I experience a phenomenon with certain comedy television shows, Monty Python, Dave Chappelle, and South Park among them, where, when somebody describes a sketch, routine, or segment of the show to me, I find it side-splittingly hilarious. When I watch the show, though, iincluding the described parts, I sit straight-faced wondering when the boredom will cease. (Note: Does not apply to South Park’s early work, which I found pee-my-pants funny.)

The musical analogue of this phenomenon has to be Secret Chiefs 3 who, as mentioned in a post a year-and-a-half ago, have been recommended to me by more friends who like the same obscure music I do than any other band. And it figures they should be: they are led by Mr. Bungle’s guitarist Trey Spruance and joined frequently by Mr. Bungle members and contributors Bar McKinnon, Trevor Dunn (also in Fantômas and has contributed to Melvins), Danny Heifetz (if I haven’t told you my story about meeting him, remind me to tell you), and William Winant. Upon discovering our Mr. Bungle connection, these conversations with friends always go the same way:

Friend: Do you like Secret Chiefs 3?

Me: Probably. I only have First Grand Constitution And Bylaws and…meh….

Friend: Yeah, that one’s not so special. You gotta get Second Grand Constitution And Bylaws. Book M also rocks.

So here I am with the band’s second album, originally released in 1998 and remastered in this format with a bonus track added in 2000. And…meh…. Spruance, Winant, and Heifetz all deliver technically brilliant and compelling performances, and Spruance’s compositions are, of course, off-beat, creative, and intriguing mash-ups of techno, surf, spy music, disco, funk, and Middle Eastern rhythms and tonalities. It’s like if “Desert Search For Techno Allah” from Mr. Bungle’s 1995 album Disco Volante (probs my fave album of all-time) were stretched out for a whole album. Then, in “Jãbarsã,” I swear he actually samples audio clipping and uses that sample as the basis for an instrument for a complete mind- and ear-f**k. Still, I find myself kind of bored through big chunks of this.

Who knows? Maybe I’m just too obsessed with the election to enjoy anything (I’m barely even looking forward to my birthday, because there will still be 12 days to go). In the end, I’m just befuddled by the whole thing. Not only with the music being less-than-gripping, but with the liner notes, too. There’s this whole Sufi mysticism thing going on that is completely opaque. The liner notes nearly start with this passage.

Once you are familiar with Book T (having remained unmoved by the spectre of Death) you may pass through the “Source of Life” at the psycho-cosmic center (Qaf). Here you will gain access to the Huraqalyan World, or “Eighth Climate.”

And I am just not getting on that train. At least not without Sufi Mysticism For Dummies or something.

Still, though, even that sounds awesome when it’s explained to me by somebody else. Along with the quotes I pulled from Seattle’s alternative weekly The Stranger 19 months ago, consider what’s written by Jonathan Zwickel, also of The Stranger and one of the people who, whenever I read them, make me never want to write about music again because I could never be that good, on the band’s page on Spruance’s label’s web site:

Legend has it that 11th Century Persian sheikh Hassan-i-Sabbah inspired fanatic, even suicidal, devotion from his legions. His method of initiation was to kidnap and drug his foes’ fiercest soldiers, then bring them to his fully functioning Garden of Earthly Delights, which was complete with exotic delicacies, fountains of wine, and good-to-go virgins. When his captives came to, dazed and suggestible in their psychedelic stupors, they were told they had died and entered heaven. Sabbah had only to promise that each of his subjects would return to Paradise if fortunate enough to martyr himself in his service. For a century, Sabbah’s Hashishim — “Hash Eaters,” from which we derive the word assassin — were the most feared killers in the known world.

It seems that Sabbah and Trey Spruance have something in common. Spruance, Secret Chiefs 3’s chief composer and a former guitarist for Mr. Bungle, is a visionary madman capable of instilling both fear and respect in his listeners.

…

Over three years in the making, Book of Horizons is Secret Chiefs’ most expansive and coherent statement, an alchemical fusion of Morricone-esque cinematic grandeur, midnight surf guitar, traditional Middle Eastern rhythms and time signatures, demonic death metal, and electronic deviance that yields a work of undeniable force.

Holy crap, that sounds incredible. I have to go get Book Of Horizons right f’ing now…I’m sure to love it.

Who knows? Maybe this album just needs more demonic death metal, which I was expectingor maybe it just helps to be really stoned. I guess I should have listened to this when all my friends were telling me to. Oh, and as I’ve been writing this I’ve promoted “Zulikfar II” from non-keeper to mixer and “Book T: Broken Glass Hearse” to keeper and added a half-lunchbox to the rating. So maybe it just needs more time, but my editor’s breathing down my back.

Rating:

Mixers: “Zulikfar II,” “Jãbarsã”
Non-keepers: “Renunciation,” “Jãbalqã,” “Book T: Orbital Ballroom In The Hall Of Resurrection,” “Beyond The Mountain Qaf,” “Hurqalya”
Filed Between: First Grand Constitution And Bylaws and Sensational (Get On My Page)

Somewhat unbelievably, this is the first review of anything Pearl Jam I’ve done that hasn’t been of their 2003 tour. It’s been 15 months since I finished that puppy off, and I’ve been staring at this album, dreading it, ever since. As of this posting, my to-be-listened-to pile will be devoid of Pearl Jam for the first time in over five years.

Released in 2006, this album doesn’t contain anything I heard on that seemingly interminable tour, and so it was refreshing to hear the band pounding out some new songs. This might be the band’s worst record, though, and so the breath of fresh air didn’t last long and I’m back to literally feeling nauseous while I write this. Pearl Jam is this decade’s Vs., which is the album competing with this one for the worst in the band’s history. Here the band goes back strongly to the raw, fast punky stuff they were doing on that album, Vitalogy, and, to a lesser extent, Binaural. However, there’s nothing on here as fantastic as Vitalogy’s “Last Exit” or “Corduroy,” or even “Go” from Vs.

I’ve counted Pearl Jam out before, but they bounced back to release a great string of albums that is now their mid-career stretch (No Code, Yield, and Binaural). However, I can’t help but feel that they’ve just reached their end here. The performances are strong but uninspired, and the songwriting, while containing novel approaches here and there, is a hodge-podge of things that they’ve done in the past: screamy punk here, a plodding half-ballad there. While most songs have some progression or odd time signature that catches my ear, it’s rare that one wraps me up inside of it for its entirety, with the album’s high point, “Marker In The Sand” being the exception.

The disc is on a roughly three-and-a-half lunchbox trajectory through the first eight tracks or so, with the inventiveness outweighing the banality by a decent enough margin. Starting with the third single, “Gone,” though, things take a pretty severe nosedive. “Gone” itself might as well just be Binaural’s “Nothing As It Seems” or Riot Act’s “I Am Mine,” and by the time we get to the album’s requisite epic seven-and-a-half minute closer, “Inside Job,” I’m able to predict all but about thirty seconds of it.

Still, there are a decent amount of songs worth listening to here, and even more that contain at least one or two riffs that are notably creative for such an aged band (“Comatose” and “Unemployable,” for example). So it’s not write-off-able, but it’s going to take more than this to ease my stomach’s reaction when thinking of this band after it hung around through 72 concerts from the same tour.

Rating:

Mixers: “Marker In The Sand”
Keepers: “World Wide Suicide,” “Life Wasted,” “Parachutes,” “Big Wave,” “Wasted Reprieve”
Filed Between: Pearl Jam’s Lost Dogs and Peeping Tom (Peeping Tom)

As a drummer, there’s no arguing with Zach Hill’s proficiency, brutal accuracy, and rhythmic creativity. As a compelling composer, though, Hill still has a way to go.

To be fair, Hill doesn’t seem to be trying to write for anybody other than the tiny subset of the population that is looking for the audio equivalent of a cavalcade of haunted house strobe lights, so it’s hard to fault him when he successfully achieves that sound. That sound, in fact, is some of the most extreme music in existence. Curse Of The Golden Vampire is infamous with My Baby and her family for being the most abrasive sound put on record, but this is basically just the same thing minus the metal guitar sound and with tinny, futuristic vocal sounds instead of growling.

The rhythms are insane, or at least cause insanity. I think it would be a great practical joke to play this in a college music rhythm transcription exercise with the same number or repetitions, the same length of pauses, and all the solemnity you would for any similar exercise using Mozart or Brahms. It’s almost hard to believe that somebody either wrote this or performed it, but Hill here does both. What’s more, despite the chaotic sound of the album, attentive listening to any given part will reveal an intricate structure creating the seeming disarray of sound.

And a lot of the time it works. I’m a big fan of the three mixers below. “Stoic Logic” is probably my fave track on these two-discs (the second of which contains only the 32-minute “Necromancer”), with its more traditional rock structure and Hill’s brief swap of wacky for aggressive, ferocious drums.

On the other hand, there’s more than half of this that I don’t need to hear again. “Uhuru” is a nearly 9:00 drum solo that you might have gotten at a Mötley Crüe concert with some weird sounds added in, but with its hollow, aboriginal drum sound you get the feeling Hill thinks its his most out there one. Only if out there equals boring.

If I have one complaint that persists throughout, it’s that there’s a general thinness to the sound here. Superficially, it doesn’t seem like that could be the case, with layers and layers of scattered, rapid-fire rhythms flying past you like lasers in a space age riot. However, one of the most abrasive elements of this album is that it spends too much time in the upper-middle range of the audible frequency spectrum, so it’s like three different Pats from Saturday Night Live are simultaneously talking to you for 90 minutes. Meanwhile, the very little bass there is to speak of isn’t audible enough to make itself felt. You have to go searching for it, which all adds up to an unsatisfying experience.

Astrological Straits tickles my interesting bone, and I’m intrigued to review more of Hill’s work on Ipecac when I get to the their releases by the bands Hella and Goon Moon. But if Hill spent more time in the middle ground between crazy and boring that he finds on his mixers, I would get a lot more legitimate pleasure out of listening to him.

Rating:

Mixers: “Dark Art,” “Stoic Logic,” “Momentum”
Keepers: “Toll Road,” “Keep Calm And Carry On,” “Tick On,” “Astrological Straits”
Filed Between: HFL 4 – KISW, Rock 99.9 FM and Hole (Live Through This)

Here’s the deal with Now I Got Worry: just…stop. Please. It’s too much, and I can barely force myself through this any more. It begins with a acerbic howl by Spencer and then it’s 16 songs of more-explosion-than-blues riffs delivered through a punk filter of loud, distorted, loud, loud guitars played loudly at the same intense tempo for 45 loud minutes.

Apparently Jon Spencer does this raw sexuality, animal magnetism, Elvis impersonation shtick that is completely sultry-except-it’s-not. Because I don’t think that it would be all that erotic to have sex with a savage beast, but maybe Spencer’s into bestiality. In fact, if an artist’s music is an expression of his or her sexuality, then I think it would be best to keep your sex far away from Spencer, because if he pounds your pussy or asshole with the same insistent intensity devoid of nuance with which he pounds your earholes on this album, it will be far from an enjoyable experience. Like the album, I have to imagine it’s all about Spencer himself, and far from the partnership you want it to be.

The motto for this album should be “Keeper at best,” because that’s the note I’ve left for myself on over half of these tracks. I’m hesitant to write off songs initially, but it’s quite clear that very little here would work well on a mix due to the sheer sonic brutality of almost every track. This is, quite simply, a very hard listen, whose proper listening context I’m having trouble finding.

My opinion of most of these songs vacillates from listen to listen, and a lot of that has to do with tolerance for intensity and my programming. This album, to its credit, is in exactly the right order, at least for the first 75% or so. The order they appear in on the album is the only order they could possibly be enjoyable in, as every permutation shuffle has found over the past week has been unlistenable. As a result, I frequently like these songs more or less than I did the last time based on what came before them. Additionally, I like almost all of these significantly more in isolation than I do in the context of the rest of the album, even the correctly-ordered context. It’s fun to rock out this obnoxiously for three to five minutes…but not so much for 20, much less 45.

And that’s why the number of songs that gets kept doesn’t really match the number of lunchboxes. Most of these songs are enjoyable and interesting as one-offs, but the album as a whole is, while interesting, an aesthetic failure because it operates in only one gear. Some of my favorite tracks are the sound experiments of “Fuck Shit Up” and “Sticky” where the band briefly steps back from the edge, or “Can’t Stop,” where the piano does a great job of leading the rest of the band through the harmonic progression. But just when things start to get enjoyable with a little bit of a rockin’ groove that feels comfortable, Spencer goes and screws things up by letting out some primal scream coming from a dark alley that only makes you pick up your pace.

A little bit of subtlety can go a long way, but JSBX’s approach to picking up ladies must be walking into the bar screaming with his dick hanging out. As I can attest, this is a memorable, but not effective, approach. So while I’ll always remember that pounding I took, and while I’ll appreciate the fact that my life’s more interesting because of that memory, this isn’t an experience I want to re-visit.

Rating:

Mixers: “2Kindsa Love,” “Rocketship”
Non-keepers: “Identify,” “Wail,” “Love All Of Me,” “Chicken Dog,” “Eyeballin’,” “R.L. Got Soul”
Filed Between: Freedy Johnston (This Perfect World) and Scott Joplin (Piano Works 1899-1904 (perf. Dick Hyman (no really)))

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)

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)

…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)

As has been extensively documented here on MPL, Springsteen is clearly in the decline phase of his career, to use terminology normally reserved for aging baseball players. With baseball players, just being past your peak doesn’t mean you don’t have any great games or even seasons left in you, it just means your numbers are trending downward. This is especially true for the greats, who can continue to be very valuable well past their prime. To really work this analogy, Springsteen’s running out the end of an expensive, multi-year contract, and is nowhere near worth the value he’s being paid anymore, but can still pop one out of the park in a crucial situation from time to time. He can’t put together an entirely awesome season (album) anymore, but from game-to-game (song-to-song), it can be nice to see (hear) him at the plate (mic).

Springsteen first became grossly overvalued with 2002’s The Rising, and I didn’t at all take to Devils and Dust, where I laid much of the blame at the feet of producer Brendan O’Brien, who joined forces with The Boss with The Rising, and continues to stay on board. In great moments in MPL history, last fall, I received an e-mail in response to that review from CT who said “Accurate assessment of DD. … BTW: Yours is still the only website that google returns under the search phrase ‘Brendan O’Brien sucks’—aside from some message board stuff. That is hard to believe.”

Anyway, CT said that he felt the same way about Magic, which he received as a gift. I also received this as a gift, but I actually think this is a step up from Springsteen’s other recent material. It’s still not all that good (five stars from Rolling Stone? The emperor has no clothes, dammit), but as Springsteen heads back to more of a straightforward rock album for the first time in a half-decade, that drawly, affected vocal style that has been driving me so nuts, while still there, is less prominent, and he’s mostly ditched that insultingly obvious screech of a violin. By reducing those elements, the songs are allowed to shine through. Now, there’s still a buttload of awful songs on here that couldn’t shine with even the best of treatments, but there are enough good tunes that I can actually give this CD the lowest possible rating for a CD that I like. I mean, “Last To Die” and “You’ll Be Comin’ Down” are legitimately good songs The Boss can be proud to add to his canon, not just songs that are tolerable and you’ll listen to because they’re new Springsteen.

The worst part of this album, besides the fact that there are a handful of tunes that make me nauseous, is that Springsteen is borrowing from his old material a little too liberally here. The music of “Livin’ In The Future” would have fit perfectly on The Rising, “Your Own Worst Enemy” is basically just “Santa Claus Is Coming To Town,” the piano intro to the execrable “I’ll Work For Your Love” (and the lyrics are just as bad as that title) is an awful lot like that of “Thunder Road,” and “Long Walk Home” is yet another missive on the collapse of small towns. Hey, we get it buddy, small towns are in decline and it sucks to be one of those left behind.

I’m tentatively giving this three lunchboxes because I’m feeling generous today, I guess. It’s almost worse giving a rating that high, though, because now I fear that I have unwarranted hope in Springsteen’s future. I may be setting myself up for disappointment. With a runner on and two outs late in a tie game, I may send him up to the plate hoping for a miracle that would really be more likely delivered by a younger player with a better recent track record.

Rating:

Mixers: “You’ll Be Comin’ Down”
Keepers: “Radio Nowhere,” “Gypsy Biker,” “Girls In Their Summer Clothes,” “Last To Die”
Filed Between: We Shall Overcome – The Pete Seeger Sessions and Stanley, Son of Theodore: Yet Another Alternative Music Sampler