Miss Piggy Lunchbox

I’ve been skipping those CDs I got from J-mez that are duplicates in my collection, for obvious reason. But if one of them is a duplicate of a cassette I have, well, I’ll give that a truncated treatment.

Honestly, I just don’t feel like doing the full-on review process for a turd like this. This was Mötley Crüe’s fifth album and last before grunge hit. I.e., it was their last album where they were relevant. Their first album was a masterpiece, their second was really good, and the next three were god awful and also their most popular. Dr. Feelgood might be better than Theatre Of Pain, but I think it’s inferior to Girls, Girls, Girls. Gawd, I can’t believe I wrote about Sibelius just two days ago.

So this gets just a quick listen to remind myself that, yes, it sucks, a rating that is an estimate of how many lunchboxes I would give it were I to torture myself with five full listens, and a quick assessment of which songs I’d consider on mixes and want to keep on my DMP.

Estimated Rating:

Mixers: none
Keepers: “Kickstart My Heart”
Filed Between: Dr. Feelgood on cassette and Crüe’s Decade Of Decadence ’81-‘91

I saw Morphine once. It was St. Louis in the fall of 1994 and I was being loaded into the back of an ambulance. Long story.

Anyway, this is the band’s second album and probably their most well-known one. They had a couple of mid-level hits with it in the form of “Cure For Pain” and “Thursday.” The three-piece has an interesting instrumentation: a drummer, a two-string bassist and vocalist, and a saxophonist who hangs out on both the tenor and the bari. It’s a sound that is fresh and instantly recognizable; no other band sounds even close to Morphine.

It’s also the best thing they’ve got going for them. It works about half the time, and for the other half the interesting-ness can’t carry it through the low-key, repetitive songs. When it works, it’s accompanied by a killer emotional melody, like on “I’m Free Now” or “Candy,” and those tracks work great. There’s quite a bit of meh to go around, though, like on “A Head With Wings” or “Mary Won’t You Call My Name?,” two completely forgettable tracks.

Speaking of “Candy,” the best songs given female names are clearly those given “Candy.” You’ve got this one, which is the best track here, “Sex And Candy” by Marcy Playground (which actually might be a band that sounds remotely close to Morphine, now that I think about it), and the best song ever, Springsteen’s “Candy’s Room.”

The band’s not completely a one-trick pony, though. When they go away from the formula, putting the bass way down in the mix and replacing the saxes with a mandolin, you get “In Spite Of Me,” a quiet, whispery, contemplative piece that would have fit on Springsteen’s Nebraska, or at least on that album’s tribute, Badlands.

This kind of at-times-great and too-much-of-one-flavor vibe is what I remember when I added the band’s 1997 release Like Swimming to my collection, but I wasn’t reviewing here then, so I’m not completely sure. Regardless, it’s definitely the opinion of Morphine that’s currently getting solidified in MPL-land.

Rating:

Mixers: “I’m Free Now,” “Candy,” “In Spite Of Me,” “Thursday”
Keepers: “Buena,” “Cure For Pain”
Filed Between: Morning Becomes Eclectic and Morphine’s Like Swimming

[See?  Now you know why I had to put up this post...I couldn't lead with this review this morning. -Ed.]

According to Wikipedia, this is the greatest-selling album by a female artist of all time. More than anything by Madonna, Mariah Carey, Janis Joplin, or Aretha Franklin. Huynh. That’s surprising to me because I was under the impression that Jagged Little Pill was pretty universally scoffed at. But there it is at number 327 on Rolling Stone’s 500 list (two albums ahead of Sonic Youth’s masterpiece Daydream Nation, no less). I guess Morisette has Hootie disease, which is named after Hootie and the Blowfish and refers to an artist that becomes massively huge in a short amount of time, but after a little bit of reflection by the public is victim to such a severe backlash that it overshadows that time when they were huge. Of course, there’s no Hootie on that RS500 list (no Faith No More either…don’t get me started…).

I confess to being into “You Oughta Know” in the summer of 1995, but I always found the subsequent singles here (“Ironic,” “Hand In My Pocket,” etc.) awful. I think my attraction to that first single was its titillating lyrics and break-up rage. It fit me at 20. Marriage is one long suck-and-f**k fest, though, so now it takes more than movie theater blowjobs and fingernails down the back to rile me up, and the stalker-ish obsession in that song and on the bonus track “Your House” is far creepier now.

This will be one of the very rare discs where I don’t keep anything on my DMP. It’s not that every song is awful, it’s just that the ones that are tolerable still aren’t quite good enough to want to hear over and over again. “You Oughta Know,” “Right Through You” and “Forgiven” came the closest, but Morisette’s vocal stylings of singing some caricature of a cackling witch combined with the squeaky voice thing are a pretty big turn-off. Plus, half the thing is still played on the radio, so it’s not like I’ll never encounter it again.

All I’m going to say about this album’s most well-known single, “Ironic,” is these two things. First, due to the completely overblown semantic backlash, I now assiduously avoid using any form of the word “irony” at any time for fear of some kind of ridiculous smackdown. Second, I will always hear “death row pardon two minutes too late” as “death row hard-on….”

So I can listen to this in the background and not be completely disgusted, as it’s safe, but not interesting. It’s got its awful parts (like “Perfect,” “Head Over Feet,” “Ironic,” and good lord how does “Wake Up” get recorded, much less put on as the last listed track?), but it’s also got some parts of songs that are at least bordering on good. Still, one of the greatest 500 albums of all time? 60 spots better than Def Leppard’s Pyromania? I don’t get it…and it’s not like I’m missing something, because this is so straightforward that, besides a few f-bombs thrown in, this is basically a continuation of Morisette’s turn as a teen star in Canada.

Rating:

Mixers: none
Keepers: none
Filed Between: Monster Magnet (Dave Wyndorf interviewed by Sean Yseult of White Zombie) and Morning Becomes Eclectic

You know what would be awesome? Less of this.

I was under the impression I liked Mocean (pronounced like “motion”) Worker based on his track on KMTT New Music Sampler 2005. Turns out he bores me to tears. This came out several years earlier and, whereas “Chick A Boom Boom” from that sampler was lighter and airier with more jazz and soul elements, this is darker, heavier, more synthethic, with more of a dance and techno feel. I’m assuming this difference, then, represents a career progression for him because man does this suck.

To be fair, this just wasn’t meant to be listened to except on ecstasy at a raging night club at 2:00 in the morning, and it is extremely rare that I experience even one of those things, much less all three at the same time, so Mocean Worker’s got his work cut out for him to win me over.

Still, dude. These songs don’t have to be six minutes long. You could really get everything out in about 90 seconds, which would make these ten tracks much more bearable since for the most part I find the first minute or so quite enjoyable. As it is, it’s just lay down some beats, quickly build up some layers, and put it on repeat while you go smoke a j. I mean, I know that’s the point with this techno dance stuff, but it doesn’t fly at MPL.

You know how boring this was? I had to turn on the NBA while I gave it its focused listen. It wasn’t boring enough, however, for me to actually watch the game. I just turned the damn thing on and then proceeded to ignore it. God the NBA sucks.

Anyway, I’m giving this an extra half-lunchbox because about half of the grooves are pretty cool, even if they go on way way way too long. There’s gotta be a way to do this in a way that’s interesting when sober, though. Vocals would be a start, like an Us3 or Soul Coughing thing, but then you don’t get played in clubs. So I guess it’s get played in clubs or get a good review on MPL. Seems like an easy choice to me.

Rating:

Mixers: none
Keepers: “Detonator,” “Times Of Danger”
Filed Between: Miscellaneous and Modest Mouse (The Moon & Antarctica)

On their 1994 release Fairytales Of Slavery, Miranda Sex Garden has done a great job of defining a cohesive artistic vision and then articulating it. Through unconventional instrumentation (there’s a glockenspiel, some strings, and a potpourri of rustling and banging), atonal experimentation both in the instruments and with the band’s pair of female vocalists, and dramatic (albeit super-cheesy) soft-to-loud beginnings to nearly every track here, they have created a strong sense of darkness and discomfort. It’s pretty bad, though, reeking of mid-90’s deeper-than-the-ocean-blue navel-gazing deeposity. They’ve set their mood, they just forgot to create compelling, memorable music to go along with it.

While their off-key instrumental excursions, notably the sax in “Transit,” are clearly intentional, the vocalists’ off-road trips seem to be more accidental, with long tonal melodies capped by a long, held, out-of-key note. According to Wikipedia, these former madrigal singers used to be an a capella group, so I’m left wondering how that could be given the fingernails-on-chalkboard vocals.

The band seems to be fairly well apprised of avant-garde music, employing non-traditional instrumentation and some hints of minimalism. “Havana Lied,” with music by Kurt Weill, sounds like a German oom-pah band, and “Intermission” is reminiscent of a calliope. The bangs and crashes in “Transit” bring to mind some of Varèse’s noise works. “The Wooden Boat” reaches out to minimalist Steve Reich with its rapid-paced theme that slowly and nearly imperceptibly evolves over long stretches of time.

In the end, though, it feels like experimentation for experimentation’s sake. There’s nothing wrong with that, per se, but I just don’t think this mish-mash of 20th century styles does anything new, nor does it present any real reason to spend any more time with it. There are exceptions, like “Transit” and “Cut,” which rock a little harder than the rest of what’s on here. Another exception is “The Monk Song,” which features a capella vocal lines contrapuntally singing vowels and, despite its initial unpleasantness, rewards the patient listener with layers of interesting interplay.

A little darker and a significant amount more experimental, Miranda Sex Garden reminds me a lot of Rasputina, another female-led band in my collection I’m pretty sour on. I didn’t need one of those CDs, and I certainly don’t need two. Still, I have to give the band credit for creating what is, despite a mid-90’s glut of this kind of deep-for-deep’s-sake records, a fairly unique rock statement and for holding it together for over 50 minutes. It’s still a stinker, though.

Rating:

Mixers: none
Keepers: “Cut,” “Transit,” “The Monk Song”
Filed Between: The Minnesota Opera 2000-2001 Season Preview and Miscellaneous

I had a conversation with a friend recently in which he declared, “I get the idea that sound quality means a lot to you.  See, it doesn’t mean anything to me, I just like good songs.” Unsurprisingly, I get a lot of this: people telling me they don’t care about sound quality in music. Frankly, I find this claim untenable on two levels.

First, to claim that somebody could listen to something through a tin can or on top-line equipment and feel the same about it is a pretty thin branch to find yourself out on. The thought that you could listen to a song that was recorded in mono with a microphone down the hall from the room where it was being performed and then relayed via cell phone to your ear and somehow attain some assessment of the true, underlying, song-ness of what you’re hearing is preposterous.

Consider the times you’ve heard early rock-and-roll, or big band jazz recorded in the 20’s, or classical music recorded in the 40’s. I think that, in general, if you examine your feelings about music recorded 60-plus years ago, you’ll find that you form a lot of your “do I want to pick this up again” opinion on the fact that it sounds thin and tinny compared to music recorded today.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that just because something sounds like crap you won’t listen to it. But I’m saying it’s a factor. Because people still listen to Maria Callas even though virtually everything recorded of her sounds awful. That doesn’t mean the sound quality has no bearing on their enjoyment of her recordings; it means that Maria Callas’ interpretations were so unique and fabulous that they’re willing to listen to her despite the shortcomings in fidelity.

The second way in which I find the notion that sound quality doesn’t matter untenable, and this point really makes the first one moot anyway, is that there’s really no way to separate a song from its sound…the two are inextricably linked. You don’t have a song without its sound, unless you’re talking about the abstract concept of its composition, but you’re not telling me you’re getting any kind of pleasure on just reflecting on a composition without listening to some performance of it, unless you’re a really heady music major, in which case we’re having a completely different conversation anway.

You see, when you listen to some crackly FDR speech and compare it to some pristine-sounding NPR recording like This American Life, I’ll believe you that sound quality doesn’t matter so much beyond comprehensibility, because the meaning of a spoken word recording is in the words, not in the quality of the sound. However, the meaning of music is in both what’s being performed along with how it’s presented. While the meaning of FDR’s speech can be written down and digested through the eyes, music can only be sensed as the expansion and compression of air waves as interpreted by the ears, and sound quality is just as much a part of that as, say, an A power chord played over a rock drum beat.

If folks didn’t care about sound quality, really didn’t care, bands wouldn’t spend tens of thousands of dollars on equipment, producers, engineers, and techniques to get the punch in their recording just right. If the sound didn’t matter, peeps wouldn’t turn up heir favorite songs because it would just be the same song they were already listening to, only louder.

So if you choose to listen to lo-fi music or to music on lo-fi equipment, that’s fine, but I contend that it’s done after an intuitive and immediate but thorough evaluation of how a given song sounds on that particular recording on that particular piece of equipment. And maybe you decide, possibly subconsciously, that even though the sound quality isn’t pristine, it’s still something you enjoy listening to. I can’t argue with that…but I do argue that sound quality was inherently a factor in that decision, and I further argue that I could take that same music production environment and degrade the sound quality to a point that you would decide differently. Finally, I see no difference in the final product between me altering the sound quality in such a way and bands doing the same thing on their recordings.

All of which is a lead-in to the fact that The Minders take fun, catchy songs, and obscure them behind horrible production techniques. It’s not like they just can’t get the sound right; I have no doubt that this album sounds exactly like they wanted it to. However, in what I think is evidence that supports my “if you like music, sound quality matters” argument above, they went out of their way to exploit and over-emphasize the mid-high frequencies (where the human voice resides) that we hear better than other frequencies in order to make these songs sound noisy, abrasive, and low-fidelity. In fact, nobody would deny that raw, powerful bands, usually in the punk vein (see Jon Spencer Blues Explosion) do exactly the same thing (and, again, wouldn’t do that if sound quality didn’t matter to every listener of music). Why you would do it over Beatles-esque melodies for an entire album completely eludes me, though.

“Paper Plane,” has some decent parts but features a hummy, nasal bass that obfuscates everything else in the song, including a lead guitar solo that is Modest Mouse-esque in its inability or refusal to hit notes clearly so that they fall flat as if played by a beginning guitar student. “Big Machine” is a complete and total cymbal-fest, giving even The Melvins a run for their money in that department, but without any meaty guitars to support them. “Hand Me Downs” is basically a Weezer song except that it, of course, sounds like complete ass. Plus not all of the songs are catchy ditties…some are boring, annoying, or both.

Besides the fact that most of the underlying songs are infectious pop bouncers, and that the keepers and mixer below are all recommended without hesitation, the best thing I can say about this album is that it goes through its 17 tracks in under 36 minutes, so they didn’t waste any time getting their shallow-business-made-deep-through-crappy-sound out. I appreciate that.

I guess they were trying to experiment, and failing, much like fellow Elephant 6 collective-artists Apples In Stereo who so disappointed me nearly a year ago. “Elelphant 6 collective” must be short-hand for “poppy songs that sound like suck.”

Rating:

Mixer: “Better Things”
Keepers: “Almost Arms,” “Sally,” “Rocket 58”
Filed Between: Mind Bomb (Mind Bomb) and Mindfunk (Mind Funk)

This CD is summed up in its inside picture. It’s similar to the one on the outside (above), but has Flowers lounging more horizontally making his fat rolls visible through his too-tight leisure suit. “Fun idea, poor execution,” the picture screams, and the sound matches the visuals. Taking popular songs and making them lounge seems cute at first, but it grows tiresome when presented so meekly here.

Mike Flowers is clearly a talented musician. He does all of the arrangements, plays many of the instruments, and does most of the electronic programming for these songs, even adding a few originals to the mix. Look at him, though. What you see is basically what you get in terms of personality, too. He just doesn’t have the requisite charismatic personality to pull this off, so you end up with lounge at its worst: inoffensive noise for covering up background silence, but music so dull that when you pay attention to it it drives you mad.

I guess The Mike Flowers Pops is most famous for their lounge cover of Oasis’ “Wonderwall” on this disc, but it blows, as does their cover of “Light My Fire” by The Doors and “Venus As A Boy” by Björk. Much preferred are “The Velvet Underground Medley” and Prince’s “1999,” where the lyric “Ooops out of time” takes on a new meaning when it’s enunciated and relaxed. Rounding out the covers are Dobie Gray’s “The ‘In’ Crowd,” which works well enough, and “Please Release Me,” famously done by both Elvis and Engelbert Humperdinck, which I think was already lounge enough that, in its very faithful rendition here, it stands out like a sore thumb in this collection.

Rating:

Mixers: none
Keepers: “A Groovy Place,” “The ‘In’ Crowd,” “The Velvet Underground Medley,” “1999”
Filed Between: Metallica (Garage Inc.) and Milk Cult (Project M-13)

We’re back to Sarah McLachlan. Three years ago I reviewed her three albums in My Baby’s collection pretty extensively. Predating all three of those discs is Solace, presumably so titled because most songs are about some kind of past love still creating pain and attempt to provide some sort of comfort, much like she did on Surfacing, though it’s less effective here.

Not surprisingly, McLachlan’s songwriting chops aren’t quite as developed as they were a few years later on Fumbling Towards Ecstasy, and she’s doing a lot of that stagnant, stationary thing she did so much of on that album. However, there are elements here that contributed to the appreciation I gained for her on The Freedom Sessions in that she’s setting a mellow, reflective mood perfect for unwinding from an emotionally full weekend.

There aren’t many songs on I here I like without reservation, even the mixer “I Will Not Forget You” is a borderline mixer and only appropriate for a mellow, sissy mix. “Into The Fire” is very similar to the Dokken song of the same name, though she gives no songwriting credits, and it doesn’t work with her style at all.

However, most of these songs have moments that are enjoyable in my unguarded moments. “Back Door Man” seems to be about the privileged class using networks to get what they want out of the system through creating and then exploiting loopholes, and it’s one of the more passionate songs on the album; it might be the best song on here, but I’m somewhat disappointed it’s not about anal sex.

As she did on Surfacing, she takes instrumentation risks here, to good effect. “Black” is nearly avant-garde with its use of mandolin, accordion reeds, and pizzicato strings emerging out of silence to begin. Something called a billatron is featured on “Drawn To The Rhythm,” which may be the best example here of a song that draws me in with a compelling melody one minute and then turns me away with a cheesy turn of musical phrase the next.

Solace is a mixed bag of bright spots and bland stagnation. Like the rest of McLachlan’s oeuvre, though, it can be quite an engaging, fulfilling listen if you’re in the right spent, exhausted mood, which is not the default mood of MPL, so the best I can do here is acknowledge that.

Rating:

Mixers: “I Will Not Forget You”
Non-keepers: “Into The Fire,” “Shelter,” “Mercy”
Filed Between: Paul McCartney (Chaos And Creation In The Backyard) and Megadeth (Killing Is My Business…And Business Is Good!)

With cohesive songs, consistent, rock-standard instrumentation, slick grooves, and downright catchy, accessible melodies, you would have no idea that this was the same band that released Pony Express Record three years prior. For their last album, though, Shudder To Think went with a slick, kinky-sex vibe that is completely at odds with the overt brashness of their previous release.

In fact, these tunes are so good, with the repressed sexuality of the simmering grooves clashing with the blatant perversion in the lyrics, and the song’s sections are connected to each other seamlessly enough, that they don’t really need to obfuscate things with off-kilter time signatures and abrupt shifts. For the most part, they don’t, and let the songs work on their own, but they still get in the way a few times, most notably by adding an extra beat here and there in “Call Of The Playground.”

And in fact, these songs are so good that it’s bordering on 4.5 lunchboxes. My main complaint is that almost all of these are catchy in parts, and with the pressure-building restraint the band exercises, it feels like threr should be some kind of satisfying explosion in most of them. That never happens, though, and the listener’s desire is left unrequited. I like wanting more, but this could use at least a little gratification.

Rating:

Mixers: “Call Of The Playground,” “Beauty Strike,” “Survival,” “Hop On One Foot”
Keepers: everything else
Filed Between: Pony Express Record and Silverchair (”Tomorrow”)

Some theories of knowledge assert that things we know about get stored in things akin to slots in our brain and that we also put properties that we associate with that object into those slots. It’s hella scientific, I know, but my “knowledge” of Shudder To Think is evidence of this theory. First of all, I never could tell apart Shudder To Think and Built To Spill. Now that I have a CD by one of the bands, though, I have some very clear thoughts on Shudder To Think. Now, though, when I examine my “knowledge” of Built To Spill, I realize that I associate the same properties with Built To Spill that I do with Shudder To Think, suggesting that they still are both stored in the same brain slot, but now share the knowledge I’ve based on my dozen or so listens to the Shudder To Think’s 1994 major label debut, Pony Express Record.

It’s actually probably been closer to 15 or maybe even 20 listens. You see, this might be the most difficult, challenging rock record ever released, and I kind of got obsessed with why it’s such a cult classic. Combine that with a trip spent driving all over Florida where it was the only CD I brought and I forgot the cord for my DMP and you’ve got a recipe for focused listen after listen.

I’ve read a lot about this record, too, and I can tell you that “challenging” and “inaccessible” appear in almost every single write-up of the album. (So does “opera,” but that’s ridiculous…held, warbly vocal notes do not equate to an opera influence. I might let you get by with “operatic,” but there is no opera on this album.) So when my initial reaction to this album was, “What?,” I wanted to spend more time with it to see if, as happened with the similaraly challenging LP2 by Sunny Day Real Estate, repeated listens would wear ruts in my ear drums straight through to the pleasure centers of my brain.

The results bode well for the album, but it’s not good enough to warrant any further comparisons to SDRE’s masterpiece from the year following this disc’s release. The rapid switching between riffs, odd time signatures, and keys now seem expected and planned to me, instead of cacophonous, as they did on the first few listens. The seemingly-meandering vocal lines and accompanying abstruse lyrics (“Boys you’ve got a great house but it’s got major-holes-a-heart-shaped”) now come as expectations that feel right, not surprises or mistakes. And besides the last two tracks, I can find something to like in every song on here. I even found two mixers, the grooving rawk of “9 Fingers On You” and the halting-but-evident build of “So Into You” (originally by Atlanta Rhythm Section), whose intense riff is the album’s best moment by far. In fact, the only other track that was even close to not getting kept was the slow-to-start “Sweet Year Old.”

I didn’t even get sick of it until the last couple of listens, where I had to switch to whatever radio was available on Florida’s Turnpike, which is basically classic rock, a couple of Latino stations, and Jesus-and-9/11 talk radio, so you can imagine how sick of it I was by that point. But this is a very good album. Attributions like “classic” and “masterpiece” are a stretch, but Shudder To Think definitely deserves their due for releasing such an inspired, difficult-to-access album on a major label.

Rating:

Mixers: “9 Fingers On You,” “So Into You”
Non-keepers: “Trackstar,” “Full Body Anchor”
Filed Between: Shostakovich (Ballet Suites 1 & 3, Suites 1 & 2 for Jazz Orchestra, cond. Kitaenko, orch. Radio-Sinfonie-Orchester Frankfurt) and Silverchair (“Tomorrow”)