Between What Is and What If

by Weston Cutter

Josh Ritter’s The Beast in its Tracks hits tomorrow, though it’s been streaming for the last week through NPR’s First Listen, and if you haven’t already, you need to put this work in your brain rapidly, either download it or stream it or steal it, whatever. Here’s the bold claim I’ll try to support with the rest of this: Ritter’s Beast 1) is redemption for the over-the-top excess of his book and his last album (So Runs the World Away) and 2) the most steeped-in-humility album ever made, and 3) we need, all of us, more steeped-in-humility art.

So: if you’ve been tracking Ritter (and you should be), you’ve been watching/listening as he has, for the last decade+, released album after album that’s showed him stretching his powers. I tuned in as of Golden Age of Radio, which has more confidence than just about any quiet lone-dude singer/songwriter folks affairs I can think of. What’s startling about Ritter, though, was how quickly he zipped into his next realm: he built and built on his sound and released The Animal Years, which was large but not bursting, and then, in ’07, he released The Historical Conquests, which was everything: large, bursting, overwhelming in the best way. Hearing that album for the first time will remain one of my all-time listener highlights—if you’ve yet to experience the thing, I’m infinitely jealous. Here’s what I mean by overwhelming and bursting and large—here’s the opening track, “To the Dogs or Whoever”:

I don’t want to geek too blissfully out on that one (for instance, noting the crazy lyric genius that rams Grateful Dead and Dylan lyrics together like siblings, or that just fucking sick chorus balancing longing with danger, someone calling in the dark), but let’s just acknowledge that that track has to be included in any discussion of top-10 tracks from the ’00s, and certainly among the very best track-one-side-one tracks ever. The album was fucking titanic and glorious—everything about it was big-shouldered + glad; it’s one of those very rare albums which requires no track skipping or cherry picking. It’s rambunctions, big-spirited, playful, aware of risks, etc. It’s one of those this-might-be-perfect listening experiences. The album felt, in that best way, almost like a debut novel from some crazed madcapper: there was elbow room to it, and there was jaunty joy, and there was infinite joy—just look at that dude in the video up there.

And then came So Runs the World Away. Released in ’09, it felt very much like JR’s grown up album: he got married, he was settling down, etc. Maybe that’s an overread, but go listen to the thing: it sure feels that way. It feels…stuffed. Turgid. Gone was the lithe agility that made him such fun: now there were big orchestral pieces—gorgeous, certainly, but almost moribound, funereal. Check it (and I believe this is the most gorgeous track on the album, “Change of Time”):

So there was that. I’ll admit to some trepidation. He also at this time wrote Bright’s Passage, his debut novel, which was (I think) pretty much perfectly reviewed by Stephen King here. I should also here cop to the fact that I was engaging in some similar lifechanges as Ritter right as he was (he’s a few years older than I, but we got married like months apart, and I published a book around when he did, and etc. etc. etc.). I bring this up just to say that I cared a whole shitload about Ritter’s personal artistic shit more than I have any right to, simply because I (like any young whatever) looked at his life/accomplishments and thought: okay man, trailblaze this next section for us. I don’t imagine I’m remotely alone.

But then what happened though is that Ritter and his wife divorced, and then I honestly sort of let go of him. I listened to his stuff endlessly, but I figured maybe he’d just missed an exit he shouldn’t have. I hoped I’d hear more, but didn’t think much, didn’t expect much. So then imagine the joy this fall when, months apart from my own daughter’s birth, there was this news that he had a kid, with this new love, and there’d be a new album in March—The Beast in its Tracks. I was hugely excited. And, thankfully, my enthusiasm was totally, 100% warranted.

Look, I’ve already taken way, way too much license with shaping Ritter’s bio and forcing a narrative onto it. Maybe I’m 100% wrong and he loves So Runs the World Away (one of the best things Westerberg always does is note that there are fans of the last two Replacement records, and that maybe they’ll end up being right), and it’ll in time be recognized as his greatest album. I don’t think so, though, and I think Beast is strong evidence that the best is yet to come with him.

Because Beast is an infinitely smaller—in scope and sound and imagination—record than So Runs, and I’ll here claim its better for its size. Look, Ritter could’ve gone two directions after Historical Conquest, right? Sure, there were infinite options, but he could’ve gone, basically, larger or smaller. He chose larger. Beast feels like the smaller album that, who knows, maybe he couldn’t have made then, given the size of his life (I know getting married and feeling like I’d arrived into adulthood made for some larger notions as well, made me think I needed to Get Larger about everything [I don't know if that makes any sense; if you make stuff, you probably already understand; in my own case, after marrying—after finally having instead of longing—I found myself wrestling with some large, large ideas—how to live a good life, the point of experience, religion, etc.—and I ended up sort of believing the more fun, loosey-goosey rock+roll playfullness of my unbound years was supposed to be laid to rest at the altar of this awesome togetherness I'd for so long wanted]).

I can’t support any of these claims, of course: this is just what Beast sounds like to a guy who’s heard most of what Ritter’s done, and a guy who for real was crying tears of joy on seeing him at the Metro in Chicago in ’09 (the infectious energy of his liveset is enough to stun you like a course of heavy pharmaceuticals). Ritter’s Beast (which is I think unwisely being compared to Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks, simply for the fact that they’re both divorce albums) is small and is reflective in ways I don’t hear Ritter’s other stuff having been: Beast feels almost like an emotional economist running tabulations on the life that led to this moment. “I’m just happy for the first time in a long time” he sings at the close of “A Certain Light,” and it’s a starkly bland line, but (I think) riveting for it: just happy. Think of the difficulty of that, of just being happy, of just being—and remember that however Ritter lives, he’s been building crazed spectacles of narrative and songsmithery; none of that old stuff’s about anything as banal and mundane and just being happy.

Hence what I believe is the humility of this album, the being-humbled. What’s striking about the album has I think nothing to do with whether it looks bitterly or happily at the events that’ve led the songs’ narrator here: what’s striking is that he’s just looking at this shit. He’s just acknowledging, is just being there, being where he is. Interestingly (I think), that line—”Between what is and what if”—is a line Ritter sings regarding where ghosts really are instead of graveyards. I’ll here make my final, big, bullshitty claim: Ritter’s earlier albums are full of colossal what-if stuff, and Beast is his big What Is album, and it’s gorgeous for it.

Two last things: Ritter’s singing behind himself on the late choruses on “Hopeful,” and the phrase he’s singing is: “The World Is as the World Is.” Take that how you want, but it’s certainly not an accident that the driving, repeated thing is about the world as it is, not as it could be, not as it may yet be, but right now, here, presently. Also: there are, through several of these songs, whispery bits of conversation—what one’s got to assume are whispery bits of conversation between Ritter and his new lover (Hayley Tanner, whose story will fucking bring you to your knees). I don’t want to propose even more grand theoretical bullshit about what that might mean or anything, but you’ve got to love an album that’s built, literally, on whispers. The thing’s a stunner. Ritter’s back, thank god.

Apparently, it’s 1996 Again.

by Jeremy Griffin

King Animal by Soundgarden

“I’ve been away for too long!” brays Soundgarden vocalist Chris Cornell on the opening track of the quartet’s most recent album, King Animal. It’s a fitting proclamation for a band whose last studio album was released 17 years ago. And while King Animal doesn’t pack quite the same punch as Soundgarden’s seminal works like Badmotorfinger and Superunknown, it does demonstrate a very admirable devotion to the band’s original aesthetic while also representing a refreshing change from today’s hyper-polished rock landscape to a more raw, primal sound.

Having formed in the early 80s, the band split in 1997, only to reunite 13 years later, much to the delight of those of us who were teenagers during their heyday and have since longed for a return to the stripped-down growl of actual bands playing actual instruments (and yes, I am aware of how cliched and unfair and whiny it is to complain about how shitty rock music has become, that it’s more indicative of my own age than of the actual contemporary musicscape, blah blah, but–Jesus Christ– have you listened to the radio lately??). Thankfully, King Animal is as raucous and gritty as their previous work, full of the same kind of moody imagery–drying blood, animal bones, etc. There are instances in which some of these images don’t really come together as well as they should, like “Taree,” with its enigmatic references to bloody needles and tilted shadows, but then that’s sort of always been grunge’s hallmark: it gives the listener the tools to craft meaning from a tapestry of dismal, disparate images.

Compositionwise, the songs follow Soundgarden’s tradition of power chords, bluesy riffs, and peculiar time signatures; the band is especially fond of riffs that run a few beats too long “Outshined” from ’91′s Badmotorfinger. In this case, you’ve got “By Crooked Steps,” with its pummeling and intentionally uneven momentum, as well as “Eyelid’s Mouth,” a calm, mid-tempo number that calls to mind much of the band’s early music and makes for an excellent driving-to-work-in-the-morning song.

However, beyond these things there is little substance to be found in King Animal, mainly just a lot of the same stuff that made Down on the Upside, the band’s last studio release, so underwhelming; As Pitchfork’s Stuart Berman notes, King Animal starts off with a bang but then, just like Down, devolves into a kind of checklist to make sure that each tune corresponds stylistically to one of their previous hits. And while the results here aren’t terrible–if “Bones of Birds” is their attempt to recreate “Black Hole Sun,” then that’s fine with me; at the end of the day, they’re both good tunes–it is decidedly uninteresting.

Yet, I don’t think this is a fault of Soundgarden’s so much as a fault of the genre. After all, there’s a reason that grunge met the same fate as disco and nu-metal and that cringe-inducing swing band movement of the mid 90s (Squirrell Nut Zippers, Cherry Poppin Daddies, etc.): it ultimately collapses under the weight of its own formula. Of course, maybe this is just the 16-year-old in me talking, maybe I still want Soundgarden to be relevant and hip and artistically viable. Because hey–Nirvana? Pearl Jam? Helmet? Those guys were really good at what they did, and it made a lot of sense at the time. But that’s sort of the thing: this isn’t the 90s anymore, and as much as our hearts may leap at the notion of grunge’s return, our ears tell a different story.

Koi No Yokan by the Deftones

The Deftones finally discovered their wheelhouse with 2010′s Diamond Eyes: it’s in the cross-section between the heavy, brooding guitar riffs characteristic of their earlier work and large-scale elegaic ballads. It was a formula that worked well for the Sacremento-based quintent, both artistically and financially, and so I’m guessing this why they’ve essentially rehashed it on 2012′s Koi No Yokan, only this time the results are much more mixed.

Don’t get me wrong, Koi No Yokan (a Japanese term for a kind of love at first sight) is good, maybe even very good, but that’s pretty much it. Which, you could argue, is perfectly acceptable. I mean, you can’t expect every album to be a homerun. It’s just that, as in the case of Soundgarden, the things that make it very good don’t really have anything to do with the album itself but rather the way in which the band has rehashed their previous work.

The album begins promisingly with “Swerve City,” a fast-paced heavy-hitter whose power is in the juxtapostion of menacing riffs and elegant, ethereal vocals. A lot of this you can attribute to producer Nick Raskulinecz, who has worked with such bands as the Foo Fighters, Rush, and Alice in Chains. But there’s also the Deftones’ penchant for catchy hooks and melodies, as well as their ability to turn simple song structures into deceptively vibrant sound tapestries. All of these things are held together by vocalist Chino Moreno’s voice, a frenzied combination of angry shriek and sensual purr. There’s a vulnerability in it that gives resonance to the songs in its haunting intimation of sexual violence.

From here, though, the album seems to falter. Between the over-the-top grandstanding of songs like “Romantic Dreams” or the stuttering tempo of “Poltergeist,” Koi No Yokan lacks focus. Or rather, it has too many foci, too many things it’s trying to accomplish, which isn’t necessarily unforgivable, except that those things aren’t new for the band. In this way, Koi No Yokan becomes predictable and, near the middle, sluggish as the band struggles to make sense of its own sound. It’s a good listen, one that newer fans might enjoy but that doesn’t really showcase their true potential.

The Hardest Working Band in Pissing You Off

by Jeremy Griffin

Self Entitled by NOFX

I confess that I have no idea how to review a punk album. I mean, like, none. Really, how do you critique a music genre whose very existence is a form of rebellion against the entire idea of criticism? No other form of music–except for maybe gangsta rap–has proven to be such a pain in the ass for reviewers.

I will say, though, that I’ve never heard a punk band (and I’m talking real punk bands here, not the Fallout Boys and Blink 182s and Good Charlottes of the mainstream world; I mean those scuzzy don’t-give-a-fuck SoCal dudes) that didn’t sound like it enjoyed what it was doing. Case in point: NOFX. The California-based quartet, fronted by the amusingly profane Fat Mike, has been going strong for 30 years now, and yet if Self Entitled (Fat Wreck Chords) is any indication, they haven’t lost a step.

Nor have they aged artistically, which in the punk genre is a very good thing (generally). The album finds the band doing what they do best–being NOFX: loud, raunchy, obscene, childish, and undeniably fun. The album starts off with “72 Hookers,” a tongue-in-cheek criticism of Islamic fundamentalism. The solution isn’t war, Fat Mike suggests, it’s loosening the sexual restrictions on jihadists:

How many million men have been killed in foreign wars/ We need to reinstate the draft, enlist a million whores.

Start with sororities and all the spring breaks/ Ship the Girls Gone Wild to Afghanistan, they’ll gladly blow the sheiks.

Of course, lampooning religion is nothing new for NOFX (see also “Xmas Has Been X’ed”), nor are their hostile criticisms of conservative politics (“Ronnie and Mags,” “Secret Society”). As with most punk bands, this is sort of their refrain, and while Fat Mike’s lyrical talents have always been outfuckingstanding (check out “Don’t Call Me White” on 1994′s Punk in Drublic), it doesn’t get a bit stale. It’s often hard to tell if a band if genuinely interested in a call to action or if they’re just trying to be bratty and subversive and eyebrow-raising; this is sort of where I’m at with NOFX.

The weird thing though is that the band’s brief attempts at sincerity and openness usually outshine their snotty veneer. On their previous album Coaster, this was “My Orphan Year,” in which Fat Mike discusses his mother’s lengthy battle with cancer and his father’s struggles with demensia. On Self Entitled, it’s “I Got One Jealous Again, Again,” a slow and somewhat lurchy tune in which the vocalist recounts, with uncustomary earnestness, a breakup by detailing which of his CDs he was able to keep and which ones he was forced to give up:

Take your Guns’N'Roses with the Robert Williams cover/ and I’ll take the Fugazi picture disc.

Nineteen or twenty years ago I labeled my slip covers/ that was a union I wasn’t willing to risk.

The thing is, I have no doubt that Fat Mike really did lable his slip covers all those years ago and that he still has those CDs. I have no doubt that these guys really are the way they seem on their albums. And I think this is what accounts for a large part of NOFX’s success, their unabashed honesty. They live their music in that badass punk rock sort of way that those of us who have ever played in a band wish we could. NOFX really likes being NOFX, and it shows in their music. Like most of their contemporaries, they realized early on what they were good at, and that’s really all they’ve been doing the past 30 years, nothing more. If you’re looking to broaden your horizons, for substance, for something new, then Self Entitled is not for you. But if you’re looking for a band that is perfectly content with the small piece of punk territory it occupies and seeks nothing more, then you’ve come to the right place.

Father John Misty + Frank Ocean: Best New Music

by Weston Cutter

I was turned onto Father John Misty (FJM) through both Aquarium Drunkard and John Gallaher’s blog, the former with a track from FJM and Phosphorescent, the second with an enthusiastic mention and a clip of FJM’s Letterman show, which I’ll just put here as well:

Here’s the background, before getting into too much: Father John Misty is a debut record of sorts by Josh/J Tillman, the former drummer of Fleet Foxes. That stuff’s largely not much significant. What is is that Tillman apparently left Seattle, drove down the Pacific Coast, and ended up in Laurel Canyon, which, if you know your American musicology, is the site of sort of jangly early-70′s stuff. Tillman’s said that he also happened to have enough mushrooms to choke a horse, though I think the aura of some drug-addled dude making a record’s far off the mark (this interview, for instance, is a good template-clearer by FJM/Tillman re drug use and the record). There have been other solo albums by Tillman (whose younger brother, as an aside, is Zach Tillman, he of the phenomenal Pearly Gate Music), but nothing like this.

Because what this is—this being Fear Fun—is an album that’s its own weird sort of reality. Watch the video above from Letterman: there’s a narrative going on, this son-of-a-ladies-man thing that Tillman-through-FJMisty is channeling or articulating or whatever. This is music which is actively attempting to make clear or articulate its forebearers, often in the actual music (in “I’m Writing a Novel” there’s a character named Neal, and one’d be probably safe in guessing it’s a Cassady reference). What Fear Fun—with production that digsuises what would otherwise sound exactly like a 1974 album by someone in California—sounds like, fascinatingly, is someone creating something just new: the other music Tillman’s made may or may not have much to do with how this one came about—and, frustratingly, even the bullshit enough-shrooms-to-choke-a-horse bit is a headfake of sorts: who gives a fuck what he took to make this record? It’s not some spazzy Naked Lunch-ish thing, no Lynchian weirdfest. Fear Fun is basically a perfect timecapsule pop album. We can all call it otherwise, indie or folk or whatever, but the shimering Beach-Boys-ish harmonies and the dunka-dunka bass so reminiscent of late 60s/early 70s pop and rock, and the attempt to make some narrative other—featuring this Father John Misty, and Sally Hatchet (“This is Sally Hatchet”), and more—I’d argue make the album this almost perfect 1970s pop album that’s suddenly come out, out of nowhere. It’s a glorious thing. I don’t know if I’ll hear anything better than this in terms of guitar-based pop music this year.

 

 

Oh good fucking god. Good lord. I don’t even know how to—. I don’t. There’s this—. There’s SF-Jones@ the NYorker talking up how great this is, and the shadow Drake’s cast and allowed R+B to become what it’s become, and—. There’s nothing like this record. There’s nothing like listening to this record. There no record this year that’ll come close to this record—nothing, at all, will approach the reach and attempt of this album. I’m sorry and thrilled to say that, sorry because Father John Misty, because Sarah Jaffe, because JD McPherson, because lots of records that’ve hit in the past 8 months that I’ve loved but which, I’m sorry, just no. Just nothing. Just listen to this (and know it’s sped up—it’s slower on the album, which you should be purchasing absolutely right this second):

That’s “Bad Religion,” which every place’s mentioned as one of if not the album’s best tracks and the most heart-rending songs I can recall from the last ten years. Easy. What Ocean does so awesomely all through the album is let stakes be stakes: name the last pop musician who’s actually trying to wrestle with aspects and tenets of religion. FOcean’s asking about, demanding clarity regarding, wrestling hoestly with big, big stuff. A friend yesterday attempted to smack down my comment that “Pyramids,” the 9+ minute and maybe most important track on channel ORANGE, is the first thing I’ve heard that honestly seems like it’s trying to get to the epic scope of what MJ was doing on Thriller and “Thriller” (evidence on “Pyramids”: listen to that bass beat; is that not Thriller-like?). This is it then. This is what it comes back to I guess. Maybe I’m old. Maybe it’s not that big a deal. FOcean though is I’d argue trying to do BIGGER things with his music—which music is in the same R+B territory as Prince and Drake and some of Kanye’s stuff—than anyone else working. The last release working on this scale was Kanye’s MBDTF, which was fine, but it was and remains a massively egotistical album—that doesn’t invalidate it or make it bad, it’s just so. Ocean’s channel ORANGE is not at all the work of a massive ego—or maybe it is, but the fact of the ego in the songs is not principal (the fact of Ocean’s sexuality—his letter on Twitter on his first love having been a man—matters not in the least on cO either, unless you need your pronouns to take/adhere to certain flavors). This is just—. This is so much—. This is the best music of this year, over and over, impossibly untoppable. Be thrilled that Ocean makes records fast. Be thrilled that he’s this young and this on fire. There’s no better music being made. It’s just unreal.

The Future of Indie Rock is in Good Hands

by Jeremy Griffin

A review of The American Tragedy’s The Flame.

I owe the fellas in the American Tragedy an apology: this review is way overdue. And I’ll spare you the reasons for my lateness; suffice it to say, I’m a tool. It wouldn’t be such a big deal, I guess, if it were some self-absorbed dickhead  capital M-usician we’re talking about here (see: Weston’s super-awkward interview with Mike Doughty), but that’s not the case. In fact, TAT comprises four of the friendliest, most down-to-earth musicians I’ve ever met, though this doesn’t seem to interfere with their ability to combine brutal, pounding guitar riffs with elegant melodies, the culmination of which is some of the most interesting rock music in the indie world today. And nowhere is this more apparent than their latest release The Flame.

At just four songs, The Flame is the first in a series of EPs that TAT has planned as a follow-up to 2005′s Welcome to the Show, which solidified their reputation not only in terms of their fantastic songwriting skills, but also for their energetic live shows. However, there is a rawness to The Flame that, while uncharacteristic of their work up until now, seems oddly fitting considering the band’s attitude toward the record industry, an attitude made very clear in their music. “We didn’t want to overproduce it,” says frontman Adam Dale, whose voice combines mainstream clarity with punk swagger and just a touch of Motown. “A lot of the mistakes we made, we just left in there. We wanted it to be real. We figured, if it was good enough for Zeppelin, then it was definitely good enough for us.”

This isn’t to say that TAT has gotten any less conscientious about their recording, but rather that they recognize that the spirit of their music–and perhaps all rock music–lies in its unrefinement, that a certain degree of roughness is not only preferable but necessary. This is especially clear on tracks like “Blood on the Stage,” a rowdy, vaguely 80s-style celebration of rock’n'roll: Forgive me Jesus, for I have sinner/ I’m listenin to rock’n'roll records again/I like my Sabbath Black and my Lizzy Thin.  “Everyone Will Finish” and “There Are Some Things We Weren’t Meant to See” are songs built around riffs that would be perfectly fitting on Sabbath’s self-titled debut. Then you’ve got the eponymous track “The Flame,” an outlier in terms of its relative gentility and an excellent example of the band’s ability to meld raucous and melodic textures. All this, combined with Dale’s distinctive voice and his penchant for thought-provoking lyrics, altogether adds up to a pretty damn great EP, no doubt the first of several.