Beck Is Mixing Up Tons Of Bizness

Conversations with my friends frequently come up about how music is pointing out important things in our lives. This goes beyond the mournful croon of Morrissey and his misanthropic view of the world, or even Bono’s call to arms to achieve something greater. Rather, a lot of the times conversation hovers around what artists have to say about society at large rather than an introspective analysis of the self that’s set to loud guitars.

Enter my friend Chris.

Last semester, Chris decided to write an extremely thought provoking final paper for his Women & Gender Studies class. Aside from some of the material he’d been exposed to in the class, Chris decided to use a piece of music that he felt really illustrated something poignant about the roles in masculinity and sexual identity.

Using Beck’s album, Midnite Vultures, in conjugation with Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho, Chris crafted an articulate response on the nature of masculinity. The result is one of the most enjoyable academic papers I’ve ever had the pleasure of reading. I decided to post this paper on my blog because I fell in love with Chris’ analysis of possibly my favorite Beck album, and how he displays Beck’s satire as more than just a good listen.

Here’s an excerpt:

“Beck Hansen, in the song “Get Real Paid,” makes a very quick but meaningful reference to gender identity, only two lines that are unmistakably loaded: “We like the boys with the bulletproof vests,” he sings in a monotone drone, “We like the girls with the cellophane chests.” Here, boys and girls have been marked with the appropriately gendered chest gear. Girls have their “cellophane,” an obvious reference to breast implants and the ornamental nature of American femininity. Boys, on the other hand, are given “bullet-proof vests,” which easily connotes the notion of gun-violence. It is masculine to be violent...”

If this excerpt has peaked your interest, I highly recommend you download the paper for yourself at this location: http://www.sendspace.com/file/i9j915

Who knows...you might learn something!

Johnathan Rice- Further North (***)

Sometimes, artists sound like their influences.

I mean, they really sound like them. If you put on an old Blur album, you’ll catch fleeting glimpses of Kinks and Beatlesque harmonies peppering the backing vocals. It’s also pretty much impossible to completely divorce Muse’s sci-fi theatrics from Radiohead’s sonic experimentation (or Queen for that matter), and Green Day wouldn’t be the same without taking cues from The Ramones.

Johnathan Rice is also one such character.

On his newest album, Further North, Rice delves headlong into his influences and aims to craft catchy, folk-inspired pop that glides on by, even if he hasn’t quite found his own voice in the process. Sonically, the record calls to mind the alt-country flourishes that Ryan Adams often implements, but Rice’s vocal range isn’t as dynamic and the arrangements aren’t as lush. His hooks are also reminiscent of some of Tom Petty’s most infectious radio hits, illustrating that Rice knows how to construct a song, something that’s very apparent during the album’s running time.

For what it’s worth, he’s got good places to draw inspiration from.

Most of the tracks on Further North implement soft slide guitar touches and jangly rhythms. Rice’s first single, “We’re All Stuck Out In The Desert” leads off the album nicely. A punchy bass line gives way to a steady backbeat while Rice’s not-so-silky voice drives along the rhythm. It’s a good choice for a single, and a nice showcase for the album’s sound.

However, it’s also TOO good and indicator of the album’s sound. Rarely does Rice break from the mid-tempo song speed that he establishes with the opening track. By the time the last track rolls around, it feels like everything’s blended together. Tracks like “The Middle Of The Road” might have benefited distinct tempo changes, or some less obvious rhyme patterns.

Such sameness ultimately bogs the album down, and makes it feel like Rice should stray from this formula from time to time. When he does, the results are astonishing.

The album’s one speed breaks on the southern rock swagger of “The Ballad Of King Coyote” and the tender closing ballad “It Is Best To Keep It All Inside.” The latter features some rich acoustic guitar work as well as a backing piano to add fullness to the arrangement. It also illustrates what Rice is capable of when he really pushes himself, rather than being preoccupied with crafting concise and tightly structured pop songs.

Make no mistake though, this isn’t pop in the clean glossy sense, merely only in the song structure. The album benefits from having a more organic production value rather than being buried in layers of studio compression. There is grit to some of the more distortion driven numbers and a deep sense of space in regards to the percussion. The album’s standout is easily “THC” a more country influenced track that finds Rice implementing his most ethereal croon alongside a nice helping of feedback and plodding rhythms. The song acts as a slow burner and a nice center piece for the album, balancing out Rice’s gift for hooks and interesting dynamics.

In the end, however, Further North makes for an album that should catapult Johnathan Rice into the iPods of many new fans. While the album itself could have benefited from some songs that changed the mood a bit more, it’s certainly a well constructed and hook-heavy release. Given that he’s come off a successful tour opening for Rilo Kiley, it wouldn’t be surprising if Further North really helped push him towards mainstream radio.

Maybe then, he’ll back off on the hero worship and really show listeners what he’s made of.

Sounds Like- Rock ‘N Roll (Ryan Adams), Easy Tiger (Ryan Adams), Highway Companion (Tom Petty)

Key Cuts- We’re All Stuck In The Desert, THC, It Is Best To Keep It All Inside

The Mars Volta- The Bedlam In Goliath (****)

Nearly every internet forum that I belong to had this to say about The Mars Volta for the last few months:

“The Mars Volta have gone MAD!”

Of course, they referred to the band’s newly fashioned website, featuring four videos of surreal scenes, live footage and new material. It signaled many things. For one, The Mars Volta were about making songs that were blisteringly fast and short, something they’ve all but abandoned since the days of At The Drive-In. The other was that The Mars Volta had truly been losing their mind, something that the new record is a testament to.

While the full feeling of The Bedlam In Goliath was merely hinted at on their website, the album serves as a manifestation of the chaos the group experienced during the making of the record. Apparently, there’s some bizarre story of a Ouija-board game Cedric Bixler-Zavala received as a gift from Omar Rodríguez-López. The band then went through a series of events that they thought the game, in a greater cosmic sense, was somehow responsible for (like Rodríguez-López’s basement studio flooding, audio tracks suddenly disappearing).

It sounds like Jumanji on crack.

But whether or not you feel is just anther excuse for The Mars Volta to be weird on purpose, the fact is this game (dubbed “The Soothsayer”) really had an affect on the group. The result is an album that recaptures the loud, messy hardcore of their At The Drive-In days as well as their appetite for voracious experimentation in terms of jazz, Latin rhythms and blistering post-hardcore.

While not all the songs are as short as previewed, the first single “Wax Simulacra” serves as a good launching point into understanding this record. In a flurry of frets, spidery drumming, and Bixler-Zavala’s almost soulful shriek, The Mars Volta set to prove they can still speed through smaller numbers with ease. The song is best described as a fleet of blenders set on high, and strangely makes two minutes seem longer than you think it might.

However, it does break The Mars Volta out of this mentality that longer song structures mean more artistic. Unlike 2006’s Amputecture which featured three songs over 10 minutes, there are only two songs on The Bedlam In Goliath that stretch past nine minutes, and average somewhere around five and six minutes a piece. It demonstrates that the group is cutting the fat these days, opting to shape sound and actual songs while moving away from pretentious art-rock ambiance and meanderings.

The quirky and funky “Ilyena” is shaped around murky and hazy white noise before Bixler-Zavala’s voice pierces the atmosphere giving rise to a pulsing rhythm section as well as Rodríguez-López’s madman axe skills. While their last album owed more to Zeppelin and Rush than Fugazi, The Bedlam In Goliath borrows heavily from funk at times. Rodríguez-López seems to have discovered the wah-pedal and makes many of his melodies sway and glide alongside the onslaught of distortion and spaced-out feedback.

The seductive and watery “Soothsayer” begins with drifting strings but stomps off with this wah-soaked playing style, rising and falling at Rodríguez-López’s whim. His guitar playing is best categorized as abusive and the leads on this album are perfect evidence of this. The album’s centerpiece, “Goliath,” is a seven minute monster that plateaus in squealing ferocity from Rodríguez-López, further proving that he’s lost nothing in terms of skill.

All the while, Bixler-Zavala’s voice is as is most high pitched as it’s ever been, rambling on about stillborns, cement husks, blistered prisons and whatever purple prose the guy wishes to throw into the mix. His penchant for peppering his lyrics with cryptic metaphors hasn’t changed, but given the superstitious background of this album, they seem to aid in the pseudo-sanity of Bixler-Zavala’s ideological musings.

If The Bedlam In Goliath has any flaws, its that Bixler-Zavala’s reliance on vocal effects reaches an irritating level in places. That and sometimes, you feel sorry for The Mars Volta because they really seem like they’ve lost their minds. While some weirdness goes along way, the songs here barely stay together, twisting and churning like only The Mars Volta know how.

But somehow, it fits in a weird cosmic sort of way.

It truly feels like concentrated madness, or a schizophrenic’s worst nightmare. The Bedlam In Goliath succeeds because of how focused the insanity seems. Like their success with At The Drive-In and their debut album, De-Loused In The Comatorium, The Mars Volta seem like they are beginning to channel that weirdness into solid songs that could go off the railing at any moment, rather than being overrun by it.

And to think, all it took was a Oujia board.

Sounds Like- Relationship Of Command (At The Drive-In), De-Loused In The Comatorium (The Mars Volta), The Shape Of Punk To Come (Refused)

Key Cuts- Wax Simulacra, Goliath, Soothsayer

My $0.02: New Weezer Material

“They play riffs of the hard rock beat…”

Of all the releases planned for 2008, the one that I might have the most invested in is the new Weezer album. After a hoax site claiming to update the public on its progress and a wonderful collection of Rivers Cuomo's demos late last year (aptly titled Alone), my excitement for this spring release is bursting with anticipation.

Recently, Cuomo has hinted at a few prospective songs. Titles like “Piece Of The Pie,” and “Heart Songs” have all been thrown around various message boards and forums. The latest being a song called “Daydreamer,” rumored by Cuomo to be a 6 minute epic with huge movements and string arrangements. Basically, it sounds like a great deal of overblown fun and I couldn’t be anticipating April 2008 more.

However, it would seem that many don’t share the same feelings that I do about our geek-rock heroes. While it’s true that everyone is entitled to their own opinion, I have to question where this negative backlash against all things Weezer really began. While the hardcore fans paint Cuomo and the band as reclusive and quirky shapers of song craft, the general public is comfortable labeling the band as lazy, mediocre, and has-beens since The Blue Album (or Pinkerton depending on who you talk to).

Let’s all be honest and realize that Weezer were never at the forefront of genre-breaking music. In fact, aside from the video for “Buddy Holly” way back in 1994, no critic has really had much nice to say about the four-piece. Pinkerton was slammed and named “1996’s Worst Album” by Rollingstone while both The Green Album and Maladroit were criticized for being overly produced and lyrically bland.

The final nail in the coffin was Pitchfork’s infamous 0.0 review of Make Believe stating that, “Sometimes, an album is just plain awful. Make Believe is one of those.”

To be fair, I was never one of those fans that had a problem with Make Believe. While not my favorite album by them, I thought people unfairly panned Cuomo's lyrics, especially with the knowledge that he was attempting a vast variety of writing processes. It’s as if the world expected Cuomo to write long diatribes that put him as the 90’s equivalent of Shakespeare.

Weezer were ALWAYS far from Shakespeare, and it was unfair for people to expect that level of writing. Hell, it’s unfair to expect that from any band really, but especially from Weezer. And while I love each an every one of their albums, I can’t say that even my favorite ones are as articulate and hold deep insights to rival Macbeth. In fact, that’s precisely WHY everyone fell in love with Weezer in the first place. Weezer’s charm wasn’t Matt Sharp singing backup vocals that were already penned by Cuomo; their charm was in the awkward rhymes, the fumbling insecurities, and the eager hopefulness that despite being second fiddle at everything, things might work out.

That’s what Weezer is, was, and will be. The sooner people get that, the easier it will be to accept that they will not make albums like they did in the 90s.

And all of this inner clumsiness was on display, set against the perfect marriage of 90’s garage rock and cheap metal alongside glorious pop hooks and half-baked theatrics. Through this lens, listeners are treated to fun and intimate records at the very same time, even if Cuomo took his sweet time delivering them. The Blue Album’s nostalgia reminds people what it’s like to be in 1994 again, when singing about Kiss and the X-Men made for a credible single. Elsewhere, Pinkerton’s abrasive and heart wrenching lyrics paint a man so uncomfortable in his own skin, it makes us as uneasy as the raw guitar that accompanies it. And perhaps it’s possible to look at The Green Album as the perfect record that recalls bright summers and long road trips with one’s closest friends, while Maladroit unleashes all our inner love for everything that’s big and flashy about the guitar solo.

And yes, even Make Believe warrants a listen. For here, even if the lyrics are at their most awkward, the music itself is bravely experimental, including smatterings of all eras with nuanced touches and gorgeous melodies. It may never be a classic, but it’s far from 0.0.

With all that said, how can anyone really approach the news of new Weezer with trepidation? Hopefully spring of 2008 will open some minds and people will stop building up this self-obsessed image of what Rivers Cuomo & Co. should be like and sound like.

If anything, they should leave the self-obsessing to Rivers Cuomo.

The Smashing Pumpkins- American Gothic E.P. (****)

A happy 2008 goes out to all my readers out there. With a great year of music behind us, it’s time to push forward and pay attention to the new. As such, it might be difficult as we’ve hit a dry patch in January with many releases slated to hit later this year rather than sooner.

However, the first major release of the year is a charmingly pleasant surprise.

For all the griping about the new Smashing Pumpkins, it’s a wonder to me that they had any fan in the first place. It’s been established that Billy Corgan and Jimmy Chamberlin wrote the classic songs anyway, yet their new material is met with such backlash it’s unreal. People need to get over that Zeitgeist was repackaged by heartless label executives and listen to the music, of which is incredibly high quality.

That being said, the band’s new digital E.P. American Gothic is further proof that their songwriting chops have aged like fine wine. According to the great pumpkin himself, Corgan stated that these four tracks are the product of their touring residencies in Asheville, North Carolina and San Francisco, California back in the summer of 2007. The songs were written on the road and teased numerous times during these shows to wonderful audience reception.

The acoustic strummings of American Gothic are a short shot in the arm, four concise songs with Corgan at his most gorgeous and melancholy. The production is fantastic on this release, lush enough to allow for depth and atmosphere but without a thick layer of studio gloss. The material here is organic in nature, with Chamberlin’s percussion still feeling like a full kit and still allowing Corgan’s acoustic guitar to flourish.

The collection leads off nicely with the romantic sounding “The Rose March.” The number begins with a cascading acoustic melody that is further strengthened by multiple tracks of Corgan’s gentle “la la las” harmonizing over each other. It’s a thing of fragile beauty, as Corgan laments about catching the moon, and laying pedals down for the one he loves. Gentle keyboard swells punctuate the song, further rounding out the wonderful arrangement.

As a whole, the collection reminds me of the folkier experimentation they flirted with on Mellon Collie & The Infinite Sadness. While none of the songs here quite reach those indulgent heights, it’s interesting to see the band in a “less-is-more” mentality. It’s as if Corgan’s realized that he doesn’t need to make every song into a symphonic statement. The tracks here can stand up on their own, without a full orchestra backing them, further displaying the expert song craft.

“Pox” is easily the E.P.’s crown jewel, twisting into a dark and desolate soundscape. It’s the most caustic that Corgan gets on the collection, singing “We’re giving back a dream…” His current pre-occupation with Americana is strongly evident here and Chamberlin’s percussion is as it’s most mesmerizing, chock full of spidery rolls and tumbling cymbal crashes. It’s a guttural track, where Corgan’s tortured wail seems to be enveloped in the disparity of the music itself. Of all the songs present on American Gothic, is the only number where you’ll yearn for some beefy overdrive and messy guitar solo, and perhaps the only one that would translate over well to a full electric version.

The quaint charm of American Gothic closes with the fleeting “Sunkissed.” Organ swells and elegant guitar harmonics run rampant through the track. It further proves that Corgan at his most mournful is still a master of creating an uplifting music piece. The song also finds Corgan finally feeling comfortable with where he is in the universe, with him “Calling upon the wisdom of my age…”

For those complaining about Zeitgeist’s baroque take on meaty and almost metal arrangements, they should be the most adoring of American Gothic. There is something distinctly American about the tracks as well, from the folky undertones to the lyrical content. It basks in its somber beauty and simple make up, but never attempting to pass itself off as something contrived.

In this sense, Corgan has truly made the American statement many feel he didn’t make with Zeitgeist.

Sounds Like- 9 (Damien Rice), Either/Or (Elliott Smith), Adore (The Smashing Pumpkins)

Key Cuts- The Rose March, Pox, Sunkissed