R

by Queens of the Stone Age, 2000.

This is the kind of album I love. I love it so much, in fact, that I had to put it on just because I was thinking how awesomely it kicks ass. I have this thing for records that have a mix-tape feel. Check Your Head is one, there’s a record by Gerling that’s a good example which I will get around to writing about soon, and R is definitely one of those records. It has a vibe to it, but it plays with different genres and tempos. Three lead singers on R: Homme, Olivero, and Lanegan. Fucking Lanegan! “Ain’t gonna worry/Just live ’til you die…” he suggests in his gravelly, fucked-up croak. “I wanna drown…”

QOTSA are best pegged as “alt-metal” in the same vein as Alice In Chains, a metal band that isn’t afraid to, well, not play metal. R is probably the most psychedelic QOTSA record, which is why I love it so much. There’s spacey numbers (”Auto-Pilot”, “Better Living Through Chemistry”), rockerz (”Feel Good Hit of the Summer”, “The Lost Art of Keeping A Secret”), weird obtuse stabs at pop (”Monsters In The Parasol”, “Leg of Lamb”), and punkiness (”Quick and To The Pointless”). Homme’s oddly affecting high voice compliments the pop stuff and weirdens the metal stuff, the playing is hawt, and the vibe wobbles between mentally ill and self-medicating. This record fucking has it all! Their intial creative core still intact, this is the Queens’ finest hour.

(This was my favorite record of 2000. It’s also my favorite QOTSA album cover. While QOTSA make consistently great music, their album covers and videos generally suck vomit. They got this one right.)

“Auto Pilot”, with Mark Lanegan, live in Ljubljana, Slovenia, 2003.

Broken Boy Soldiers

by The Raconteurs, 2006.

It took a little while for the shock to wear off, to let Jack White exist as an artist outside of the parameters of The White Stripes. There was a time not long ago, seriously, when it was outrageous to see the man in a pair of blue jeans. Now that The Raconteurs have been established for a while, it’s easier for me to appreciate this record. And I like it a lot. In fact, I’ve been listening to this record almost constantly all summer.

The songwriting partnership between White and fellow singer/guitarist Brendan Benson seemed a matter of strange bedfellows before, but in The Raconteurs they’ve managed to find a sweet common ground. Their fingerprints are still all over their own tracks (”Broken Boy Soldier”, “Blue Veins” for White, “Call It A Day”, “Yellow Sun” for Benson), but most of the songs spotlight each man’s strengths and their terrific harmonies, as well as the amazing rhythm section of Jack Lawrence and Patrick Keeler. “Steady, As She Goes”, the first single, the opening track, and the first song White and Benson put together for the project, is a perfect example of what The Raconteurs craft so well: bluesy, smart alternative rock with strong folk, pop and garage rock touches.

Sometimes I’ll buy a record for the promise it holds, or because an artist I like is involved in some way. Sometimes these purchases languish in my record collection, and sometimes I dig them out from time to time to see if I missed anything the first time around. Broken Boy Soldiers was a bit like that, but it’s grown on me and I now happily consider it one of the best records of the decade thus far.

Keep On Your Mean Side

by The Kills, 2003.

I was into what this band was going for, but Keep On Your Mean Side left me cold when I first heard it. Nothing on it really grabbed me, except “Wait”, which is still my favorite song of theirs. And in fact “Wait” first appeared on the Black Rooster EP along with their Captain Beefheart cover “Dropout Boogie”. That’s actually where I was able to begin an appreciation for Mean Side. It’s an album I went back to after getting into some of the band’s other output.

I don’t isolate the music from the image with this band, so it’s hard for me to be totally objective about the music. The Kills are a stylish band, an image band, but they aren’t without substance. They meld the two as well as anyone.

A lot of Mean Side is pretty samey, though that’s more about the musical palette of the record than the quality of the music, which is all but filler-free.

“Fried My Little Brains” music video.

Appetite For Destruction

by Guns N’ Roses, 1987.

This is one of those albums that always gets a pass. Everyone seems to respect it, despite the myriad of reasons for not liking it: Axl Rose, misogyny, Axl Rose, drug glorification, Axl Rose… Using a Robert Williams painting (banned from the front sleeve, but used inside) alone gives them plenty of points.

Simply put, this buries the strain of poodle-coiffed hard rock bands that were running rampant at the time, even the Crüe. Guns N’ Roses had that thing that the Stones had in the early 1970s — torn and frayed, elegantly wasted, whatever you want to call it. They had the chops and the balls and the tunes.

The guitars buzz and crackle and rev in an almost Ramones-like glory, the rhythm section is solid (cowbell galore!), and Rose’s screech is Plant-esque enough for the heavy metal fans but unhinged enough for the rest of us. I think the real strength here, though, are the arrangements. Even the lesser tracks employ tempo changes and other songwriting elements that make them more vital than a lot the band’s contemporaries best singles. The quality of the filler here is average or better.

Every genre produces a few milestone albums that find their way into a broad audience’s record collections, which I guess makes Appetite For Destruction the Kind of Blue of heavy metal.

“Sweet Child O’ Mine” music video.

Sparkle In The Rain

by Simple Minds, 1984.

It only makes sense that I follow up a U2 post with a Simple Minds post. In the mid-to-late ’80s, they were ideological cousins, and with Sparkle In The Rain Simple Minds were working with producer Steve Lillywhite (fresh off of duties on U2’s War) on an arena-filling sound. The band’s carefully cultivated art-rock sound was evolving into something larger and louder as their pop profile rose, and for a moment or two it seemed as if Simple Minds would follow U2 into the rock stratosphere.

Where past albums grooved, Sparkle In The Rain thundered, due in large part to new drummer Mel Gaynor. Out was Brian McGee, and after this record bassist Derek Forbes would also leave, stripping the band of a key component. Guitarist Charlie Burchill’s playing became Edgier, keyboardist Mick MacNeil’s melodies more epic, Jim Kerr’s vocals and lyrics more rapturous. On the heels of their ornate, moody 1982 release New Gold Dream, this was a stylistic sea change meant to propel the band on to a bigger stage.

Sonically it’s hard not to compare Sparkle In The Rain to U2’s War: “Speed Your Love To Me” has the same urgent drive as “Two Hearts Beat As One”; the condensed cover of Lou Reed’s “Street Hassle” has the same thematic feel as “Surrender”; “Up On The Catwalk” and “New Year’s Day” both feature a prominent piano and both bristle with energy and emotion; “Shake Off The Ghosts” and “40″ both end their respective albums on introspective notes. One wonders how intentional this was, or whether or not it was simply Steve Lillywhite’s hand in things. Regardless, what may have served this album on its release now dates it, though the conviction of the music still shines through.

“Waterfront” music video.

Zooropa

by U2, 1993.

Unlike the hair metal dinosaurs of their era who lifted their gazes to the skies to see the meteor shower of grunge raining down on their parade, U2 had evolved by the early 1990s into something a bit more adaptable. The follow-up to the redefining statement that was Achtung Baby, Zooropa found the band celebrating the new dawning in their sound as well as in the European sociopolitical spectrum. Reaganism, Thatcherism, The Berlin Wall, The Eastern Bloc and Soviet Union — all the monuments of post-WWII European fascism were crumbling away and a new world was crawling out of the wreckage and dancing on the ruins.

Zooropa has moments more ambitious than Achtung Baby, though it’s a lesser album in whole. “Lemon” and “The Wanderer” are the most interesting tracks, with co-producer Brian Eno’s fingerprints all over the former and Johnny Cash’s somber drawl highlighting the latter, while “Stay (Faraway, So Close)” is the representative classic U2 single and “Numb” (the first single) is an unconventional mix of processed guitar, tape loops, samples and a thick bassline with spoken verses by guitarist The Edge.

Recorded with relative speed during the band’s 1992 Zoo TV tour, Zooropa is refreshing in the context of U2’s ouevre as it shows them operating with a renewed curiosity and confidence, tinkering with their image and sound whilst bearing the cross of the world’s biggest band.

“Numb” music video.

The Sound of The Colour of The Sun

by SIANspheric, 2001.

Sometimes you hear something and it compels you to seek out every note and find out everything you can about an artist. Other times you hear a song that is just right in its moment, and then the moment is gone. There’s no use in trying to capture it, and often if you do, the second time around lacks the magic of that first moment.

At some point in the not too distant past I was looking for some nice, droney psych music, and I stumbled upon this record. It was exactly what I was looking for, and though I don’t listen to it often, when I’m in a certain mood it’s the perfect accompaniment. Being a synesthete, I find the title of this album perfectly descriptive of the music. Not as nuanced as My Bloody Valentine or Slowdive, similar in some ways to early Verve, SIANspheric exists somewhere in that drone/shoegazer milieu; probably an obscurity, possibly a derivative, but absolutely what I was looking for to fill that moment.

El Momento Siguente

by The Church, 2007.

As a band that’s been together for nearly three decades, The Church could get away with resting on their laurels. Commercially, their biggest claim to fame is still 1988’s “Under The Milky Way”, but obviously these guys are musicians compelled to write and play music as much as we’re compelled to sleep and eat. So instead, they’ve stayed active, releasing new records every couple of years, as well as companion albums of outtakes and long, instrumental cosmic jam pieces. Since 2002, they’ve released eight albums worth of material, as well as the odd solo record.

El Momento Siguente (”The Following Moment”) is as close to lazy as this band gets. A sequel to 2004’s El Momento Descuidado, this is an acoustic album comprised of three new tracks, a classic Triffids cover (the opener, “Wide Open Road”), and ten catalog tracks. Always solid players in the electric realm, the band’s acoustic chops are just as solid. However, it’s the arrangements that show brightest here, with ancient tracks like “Electric Lash” (given an almost “Country Honk” vibe with slide guitar) sitting seemlessly next to this decade’s “After Everything” (gorgeously augmented with cello and violin). The Starfish classic “Reptile” is given a jazzy, dark-cabaret reworking, while the version here of Heyday’s “Tantalized” is a beguiling Eastern reimagining that renders it timeless, modern, and totally unlike its source version.

The “unplugged” format has too often been a way for band’s to simply prove they can play without the aid of effects and amplifiers, offering rote versions of their studio work. Few bother to be this adventurous or engaged in tinkering with their catalog. What could easily be a “greatest acoustic hits” throwaway is instead another reason for devotion. Give The Church credit for revisiting the past and bringing back with them something new and enthralling.

El Momento Siguente is available directly from http://merch.thechurchband.com.

Boss Hog

by Boss Hog, 1995.

Cristina Martinez’s Pussy Galore offshoot Boss Hog was more notorious for the nude front sleeve photos of Martinez than for their music. So, in the post-Nirvana strip-mining of indie music that had DGC snap up the band, it only made sense that a cartoon Martinez appeared on the front cover of her major label debut in a long, conservative black dress and flowing hair obscuring any notion of naughty bits (and wearing gloves and holding an umbrella, no less).

Tongue-in-cheek album sleeve art self-referencing aside, Boss Hog is one of those records that sits high up on my unwritten list of underappreciated albums. It did nothing commercially (the band’s next record was, predictably, not on DGC), but artistically it’s a very pleasant combination of the offbeat and accessible, helped in large part by the presence of Martinez’s spouse Jon Spencer. Spencer’s role is more than that of a sideman, lending lead vocals to “Beehive”, “Strawberry” and the Ike & Tina cover “I Idolize You” (the band joked that they considered naming the record Ike Turner Was Right), as well as a liberal helping of his trademark hoots and buzzing blooze guitar. (Boss Hog was released between the Blues Explosion’s Orange and Now I Got Worry.)

The silly duet “I Dig You” is the closest thing to an alternative radio single here, but this album has plenty of hooks and charm, and never takes itself too seriously or gets boring as it casually changes tempo. The major label makeover cleaned up the band’s sound and image a bit, but there’s still enough scum stuck in the cracks to betray any notion of a sell-out.

“I Dig You” music video.

New Adventures in Hi-Fi

by R.E.M., 1996.

I’ve partitioned R.E.M.’s catalogue into four phases thus far. Phase one was the early, obtuse work that earned them their rabid underground following, from their “Radio Free Europe” single on Hib-Tone through to 1985’s Fables of the Reconstruction. Phase two finds them evolving from an underground act into a mainstream one: Lifes Rich Pageant through Green, their debut for major label Warner Bros. Phase three finds them established as one of the world’s top acts, from Out Of Time to New Adventures in Hi-Fi. Phase four…well, let’s not get into phase four.

New Adventures in Hi-Fi is very much an end of an era, then. It’s the last record the band recorded with their original line-up (drummer Bill Berry left the fold afterward). It’s the last record produced by Scott Litt, who had worked the desk on all of the band’s records since 1987’s Document. It’s their tenth album, and their fifth for Warner Bros. after five with I.R.S. It also marked the end of the band’s business relationship with longtime manager Jefferson Holt.

And so New Adventures in Hi-Fi finds the band on uneven ground. Recorded piecemeal at soundchecks, live, and in various studios around the country, Hi-Fi certainly carries a sense of travel and transition. It’s an album that doesn’t stick to one road for long, tinkering with the established R.E.M. sound in a decidedly looser approach to recording.

Michael Stipe’s lyrics generally keep things lively, alternating between stream-of-consciousness and more studied yet still obtuse wording. Some of the snatches are particularly visceral: “Aluminum/Tastes like fear,” from “E-Bow The Letter” is as indelibly evocative as “See ya/Don’t wanna be you/Lunchmeat/Pond scum” from “The Wake-Up Bomb” is stupid fresh.

Musically, the record alternates between the dark folk of Automatic For The People and the cartoonishly heavy Monster, it’s two immediate predecessors. When it’s on, it matches anything on those records (and in the latter case, exceeds that material), but ultimately this is a mixed bag. The good news is that it’s never bad, just boring in places. And when it’s not boring, it’s generally very good, with some bona fide gems in “How The West Was Won And Where It Got Us”, “Binky The Doormat”, “So Fast, So Numb”, “New Test Leper”, and the closing track, “Electrolite” — a wave goodbye that in retrospect seems all too appropriate.

“Electrolite” music video directed by Spike Jonze and Peter Care.