Miss Piggy Lunchbox

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)

It’s a shame that this album contains “One Of Us,” and not just because that song blows. Almost as big a crime as inflicting that unrelenting tripe on our 1995 ears is it obscuring what is an excellent album as well as Joan Osborne’s true style. I was reminded of that style myself when I heard this disc open with “St. Teresa,” which I seem to remember as the first single off the album, with “One Of Us” being the second.

The other 55 minutes here, for the most part, decidedly part ways with that atrocity (notably the only song credited solely to guitarist Eric Bazilian). Light up a cigarette on a hot, steamy night (note: offer not available in Seattle), kick back with a cold beer, and let the slow, bluesy rhythms, Osborne’s sultry voice and Bazilian’s perfectly accentuating guitar playing bring your heartbeat and temperature down.

There is some diversity, like the party track “Right Hand Man” with its great sax and piano parts, the tight little groove of “Ladder,” and “Let’s Just Get Naked,” which is appropriate about 10 months into a recession and six beers into the night and is a candidate for mix CDs primarily because of its lyrics. Still, for the most part, just sit back and soak up the deeply penetrating soulfulness of Osborne.

Sadly, in the end this album will be remembered for one thing (aside from its atrocious cover art that makes Radiohead’s look like Van Gogh) and that is “One Of Us.” My Baby came into my office the other day when it was playing and said, “Is this Alanis?” I think that just about sums up the merits of that song.

Rating:

Mixers: “St. Teresa,” “Let’s Just Get Naked,” “Crazy Baby”
Non-keepers: “One Of Us,” “Help Me”
Filed Between: Beth Orton (Comfort Of Strangers) and Ozzy Osbourne (No More Tears – Collector’s Edition cassette single)

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

A couple of months ago when I was putting the finishing touches on my love letter to Jump, Little Children’s Magazine, I briefly had the “new favorite band” tag on the post. I hesitated, though, not quite willing to bestow that title I’m so slutty with to a band with eight albums based on only one of those. The band’s 2001 release, Vertigo, a step in the wrong direction for them, justifies that hesitation.

Vertigo is still a damn good album. Jay Clifford’s voice still moistens my crotch, the melodies still suck the stiff out of my spine, collapsing me into an emotionally twitching heap, and the band still mixes elements of straight-ahead rock with creative, novel songwriting. What’s missing here, is the big go-for-the-jugular, arm-raising, visceral, primal builds that led to such thrilling elation from a few years prior.

It’s understandable that the band would want to go in a new direction. When you’re really good at a songwriting skill, you can become hesitant to rely on it as a crutch, and try to go in new directions to broaden your palette. Too often, though, songwriters let a little too much self doubt into the equation, and you can feel the band hedging, exercising restraint here because they think they should, even though they kind of want to. On “The House Our Father Knew,” for example, they kind of go for the kill in the chorus, but they still hold back a little, and my hands only get up to about neck level, not even close to the fully extended Rocky triumphant pose Magazine got out of me. The music has a bit of a feel of bubbling stasis, which matches the lyrics, which deal a lot with activities like floating, resting, sleeping, and the like.

And so those songs most similar to Magazine, while good, end up in a somewhat indistinguishable muddle in my brain. Individually, I love them all, and they’re all at least keepers. But I couldn’t tell you after five listens, without cheating, which were my favorites or hum more than a couple.

The songs that do stand out are those where JLC went with a more experimental approach beyond just holding back on the explosive releases. I really dig the choral harmonizations that constitute the dirge that is “Pigeon.” “Mother’s Eyes” is their take on epic, and they pull it off as you hardly notice the song’s seven-and-a-half minutes going by. It’s a smooth, natural progression from the very slow, sparse beginning through to the end. It’s also a remarkable blend of their soulful, melodic rock with the anesthetic aesthetic of Radiohead while Clifford also sounds remarkably like Thom Yorke. Other times, the experiments don’t work as well. Most notably “Singer,” with its breathily spoken vocals over drums and bass, strays far from the band’s usual formula, with disappointing results.

The album, as a whole, is a bit of a disappointment as well, but that says more about how great Magazine was and how much it raised my expectations than it does about how enjoyable a listen Vertigo is.

Update: “Made It Fine” would make an excellent going away/moving/road trip mix CD candidate.

Rating:

Mixers: “Angeldust (Please Come Down),” “Too High,” “Lover’s Greed,” “Come Around,” “The House Our Father Knew,” “Made It Fine”
Non-keepers: “Made It Fine,” “Singer”
Filed Between: Magazine and Kaada (Thank You For Giving Me Your Valuable Time)

One of my friend Karl’s bands released a new album this year. As you know, it’s MPL policy not to review friends’ CDs, but you should get this.

Mixers: “Fate Won’t Wait”
Non-keepers: “All That I Am,” “On The Bus,” “Fall In Love Again”
Filed Between: Terramara’s Four Blocks From Hennepin and Tesla (The Great Radio Controversy)

Instructions:
1) Stop whatever you are doing.
2) Buy, borrow, or steal Jump, Little Children’s 1998 album, Magazine.
3) Listen to it.
4) Experience elation.

I’ve listened to some fantastic albums this year, but it’s hard to think of one that has a leg up on Magazine for MPL’s Album of the Year. There is not one note out of place on this entire, perfect disc. It’s accessible (I liked every song the first time I heard it), but also has depth (I’ve listened to it probably over 10 times now and it just keeps getting better.) It has just the right combination of ballads and rockers and every perfectly assembled song could easily be the next one stuck in your head. Emphatic vocals soar over driving guitars and some of the tightest drumming you’ve ever heard while strings round out the emotional palette that isn’t filled by the brilliant lyrics. And just when you think the song’s topped out, in comes a bridge carefully crafted to fit in seamlessly but also give the tune a welcome bit of spice. It’s a little bit pop, a little bit punk, and all rawk

I want to make out with this band. Magazine is my new favorite album, and “Say Goodnight” is the best song ever. You know it’s a good album when I hardly have anything to say about it.

Meanwhile, I have my own set of instructions to follow now:
1) Find friends who don’t let a decade go by before introducing me to music this good.

If I were king, withholding information like this would be a felony.

Rating:

Mixers: “Violent Dreams,” “Come Out Clean,” “Cathedrals,” “My Guitar,” “B-13,” ““Say Goodnight”
Keepers: everything else
Filed Between: Judgment Night Soundtrack and Kaada (Thank You For Giving Me Your Valuable Time)

This album just screams guitar rock from the early 1980’s. (That’s a good thing.) It sounds very inspired by/inspirational for/in the same zeitgeist as Rick Springfield’s work from the same era. (That’s a very good thing.)

Like a word search, let’s see if I can pull out all of the elements of rock crica 1982. “A One Story Town” and “Change Of Heart” feature that lead guitar that stands out from the rest of the song, bringing in a second melody to interact with that of the vocals. The song you know from this album is “You Got Lucky” and those insistently pulsing keyboard sounds would make Foreigner proud if they hadn’t done something very similar on 1977’s “Cold As Ice.” The intro to “Deliver Me” recalls John Cougar’s “Hurt So Good” and the breakdown is very Springfield-esque in its shukka-shukka grooving guitar treading water between the short, pregnant riff played by the whole band. “We Stand A Chance” starts off an awful lot like Foreigner’s “Double Vision,” another sound on loan from the late 1970’s. Petty must have really liked the album Double Vision as he also references “Hot Blooded” at the beginning of “The Same Old You.” Journey Escape was a game for Atari the year this album came out, and Petty pays Journey’s “Escape” credit with the intro to “Between Two Worlds.”

Wow, I did not expect that paragraph to be that long. I’m also forced to revise my thesis, because I had no idea before I started how many Foreigner songs from four and five years earlier he alludes to.

So here’s the new deal. You know how Foreigner and Journey are completely guilty pleasures in that, yeah, big chunks of their songs are really appealing, but, like candy, if you have more than just a little treat every now and then, you feel sick to your stomach? Well Petty takes all the good elements of Journey and Foreigner, removes the crap that makes you feel sick, drops in some organic Rick Springfield, which is all-naturally good, and gives us the delicious and healthy Long After Dark.

Plus there are the lyrics. Remember how in the 1990’s it was a big deal that people were writing Ph.D. theses on Madonna? It really wasn’t all that newsworthy that sociology doctoral candidates were examining current popular music, but the traditional media used it as a story to fill time back when we were sorely lacking complete and total access to movie stars’ lives. Anyway, I think I might write a thesis about Petty’s lyrics. Take “You Got Lucky,” for example. At first listen, it’s about a thankless soon-to-be ex-: “Good love is hard to find/You got lucky when you found me.” However, a closer examination reveals no information at all about this departing lover, and what we really have is a close look at the song’s protagonist, who, for all we know, might not actually be all that fun to date. Or then there’s “Straight Into Darkness,” which begins like a typical Springsteen exploration of love gone stale, but ends with the headstrong determination to find perservere and find “real love.” Leaving his lyrics as vague as he does makes them appropriate to so many different viewpoints, and is a big part of his broad appeal. That’s the thesis of my thesis. I’ll take one fancy piece of paper, please.

I love this album, and I think it’s right up there in his upper echelon of albums, which includes, but is by no means limited to, Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, Damn The Torpedoes, and Wildflowers.  This will pretty much end my recent Tom Petty flurry. He’s one of my favorite artists, but you might not know how juicy he makes me from the 3.5 and 4 lunchboxes some of his albums have received. I feel the disconnect, too, and I think it’s resolved by the fact that Petty’s strength lies primarily in a lengthy career of a few very, very good songs every year. (Like, when you heard he was playing the Super Bowl this year, didn’t you think that was the most perfect Super Bowl performer on the planet?) I won’t say that his albums have lots of filler, I just think his value is spread out over his career rather than concentrated in a few albums. None of this applies to Highway Companion, though, about which I’m still pretty upset.

Rating:

Mixers: “You Got Lucky,” “Deliver Me,” “Change Of Heart,” “We Stand A Chance,” “Straight Into Darkness,” “Between Two Worlds”
Non-keepers: “A Wasted Life”
Filed Between: Hard Promises and Full Moon Fever

Elvis Costello once said that “writing about music is like dancing about architecture.” That’s a touch out of context (he followed it up with “It’s a stupid thing to want to do”), and the source seems to be disputed, but shut up. Beyond the obvious reasons, I have some objections to the sentiment. First, why not dance about architecture? Second, dissing writing about music kind of implies you also don’t like talking about music or communicating about music in any way, which invalidates the entire social experience of music.

Sometimes, though, the point is well taken. One of those times is when an album has as much pathos as Janis Joplin’s posthumous release, Pearl. Nothing I can say will give you an idea of how this feels. I could talk about her cutting, soulful voice, Gospel this and Blues that, the excellent performances by backing band Full Tilt Boogie, and try to tie this recording into contemporary events involving heroin, death, and Kris Kristofferson, but it would sound just as impotent to you as every other writer who wrote about those things sounded to me before I listened to this album. You just have to hear it for yourself.

You can’t go wrong with anything here. Honestly, the whole damn thing is almost a mix CD, just in terms of song quality, but also in how great every intro is. Everything is killer, except maybe “Mercedes Benz,” and even that, one of only two songs here written by Joplin, is delivered with such soul and yearning that it fits. Much like “Kids Don’t Stand A Chance” on Vampire Weekend, it initially threatened to keep Pearl from five lunchboxes, but eventually just added a character that made you love it even more. Boneriffic.

Rating:

Mixers: everything except “Mercedes Benz”
Non-keepers: “Mercedes Benz”
Filed Between: The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion (Now I Got Worry) and Scott Joplin (Piano Works 1899-1904 (perf. Dick Hyman))

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

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

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

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

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

Rating:

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

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers had had a few hits prior to their third album’s release in 1979. This would be the one that launched them to stardom. In retrospect, it’s easy to see why, with megahits “Refugee,” “Here Comes My Girl,” “Don’t Do Me Like That,” and the Best Song Ever,” Even The Losers,” contained within. In fact, the album is nine very good or better songs and if you’ve never spent 37 minutes listening to it from start to finish, you’re missing out.

Not only are the songs crazy good, but Petty is at his lyrical peak here, too. Not long ago, I lamented that rock just isn’t good at dealing with mature themes (in the sense of maturing sensibilities, not in the titillating sense). Well if there’s one guy who can pull it off, it’s Petty, the guy who looked and sounded like he was 45 when he was 25. On “Here Comes My Girl,” he somehow manages to simultaneously capture the overwhelming rush of new, young love and the brilliant, deep comfort only found in the love of decades.

Every now and then, I get down to the end of a day
I have to stop, ask myself, why I’ve done it
It just seems so useless to have to work so hard
And nothin’ ever really seem to come from it
And then she looks me in the eye, says we gonna last forever
And man, you know I can’t begin to doubt it
No, because this feels so good and so free and so right
I know we ain’t never gonna change our minds about it
Hey, here comes my girl, here comes my girl
Yeah, she looks so right, shes all I need tonight

I want this song playing every day when My Baby comes home from work. Maybe I can rig it up to the garage door. I love that long, deep breath of Benmont Tench’s piano that seems to sum up the whole feeling of comfortable relief and joy of his girl’s arrival. Plus, the line about wondering why you’ve done a day after it’s over? Once again, Petty lexicalizes a feeling I only vaguely knew I had.

And then he goes and captures that elusive girl from that slippery summer that was partly so good only because it never had any chance of lasting. “It couldn’t have been that easy to forget about me,” he reassures himself in “EvenThe Losers.” She almost certainly isn’t thinking about him as much as he thinks about her, but as the primary participants in this kind of nostalgia, the only way men can get through it is to convince ourselves it’s a two-way street. And what better way to share that solitary experience than to write the Best Song Ever and cause millions of men to nod their heads, think about her, and remember it not as the eventual loss it would become, but as the momentary euphoria that it was.

The music critic in me wants to give this flawless work five lunchboxes. But the KEN in me feels there should have been at least a couple more mixers, songs that get me all atwitter with excitement, for that to happen. Maybe if “Century City,” the weakest song here, was replaced with a premier tune. Maybe I’m just stingy today. Maybe it’s just the clouds lately.

Rating:

Mixers: “Here Comes My Girl,” “Even The Losers,” “Shadow Of A Doubt (Complex Kid),” “Don’t Do Me Like That”
Keepers: everything else
Filed Between: You’re Gonna Get It and Full Moon Fever