If The Melvins Were Named Nirvana Would They Rule The World?

Melvins

Album: The Bride Screamed Murder

Song: The Water Glass

Dunno about this one, boys and girls.  I've been a fan of the Melvins since way back in the day, but I must admit that I've found them less and less interesting as the years have passed.  Their main attribute has always been their heavier-than-death grooves, but today so many bands do heavier-than-death better than the Melvins.  I mean, the whole jagged syncopated guitar thing is getting a bit old, at least compared to bands who take risks in this regard, like Lightning Bolt.  They get huge props for being progenitors of the whole stoner rock genre...but I don't know if they're musically relevant any more. 

The Melvins just released a new album.  In some ways it seems much like previous efforts: square, slow, sludgy riffs over rock-steady percussion.  They do it well.  Yawn.  But there is something different going on here.  Listen to our song of the day:



I'm not quite sure what to think.  The opening riff is damn good, but the drumline meets military cadence section?  It's a nice idea, but it goes on forfuckingever.  I kept waiting for the riff to return, giving the song some balance, not to mention compositional symmetry.  Nope.  No return.  Just more and more and more of the military shtick.

I haven't let the song percolate in the ol' musical teapot for very long, but my first impression is not great.  What do y'all think?

Fiona MacManus

Elvis Costello (performed by Fiona Apple)
Album: Blood And Chocolate
Song: I Want You

Would Stephen Harper be Prime Minister if his name was Egbert Hump?  Would Bono be Bono if his name was Kevin Berkowicz?  Would Elvis Costello be one of the coolest cats in music if his name was Declan McManus?

I doubt it.  Maybe the Kabalarians had it right all along.

"I Want You" is darkly bitter.  It starts out as a typical love ballad, a paean to a significant other, when all of a sudden BAM! it morphs into the tortured mutterings of a spurned man.  The titular refrain is repeated over and over and over again, in almost the same way, claustrophobic and obsessive.

Elvis Costello's performance on Blood and Chocolate is very good, but I must admit I find the song slightly boring due to its repetitiveness -- it works as a piece of art but it isn't really enjoyable.  But as I was surfing YouTube recently I came across the "Joyful Noise" rendition and was absolutely blown away.  Fiona Apple is pretentious as fuck, but she's also willing to be emotionally naked on stage.  The intensity of her performance elevates this good song into a different league altogether.

And by the way, henceforth I will respond only to the name Draken.

Working Out The Kinks

The Kinks
Album: Kinda Kinks
Song: Everybody's Gonna Be Happy

Any song with hand claps is thirty percent better than it otherwise would have been.  It's a songwriting given.  Combine hand claps with crazy rhythm guitar and Ray Davies on vocals and you've got a winner.

The Kinks are one of those bands that never quite got the respect they deserved.  One of the groups in the original "British invasion," they achieved some measure of commercial success, and 20 years later launched a moderately successful comeback, but today, as one of the many bands lost in the The Beatles' legacy, their influence has waned.

They are perhaps best known for their gender-bending classic, "Lola", and for the garage rock anthems, "You Really Got Me" and "All Day And All Of The Night", absolutely excellent songs all.  And they all point to one of the main reasons I like the band so much: The Kinks are delightfully sloppy.  It's all very rock'n'roll, the antithesis of the sanitized, produced-to-within-an-inch-of-its-creative-life cow fodder that dominates the airwaves.  Usually, it's considered an asset to be a "tight" ensemble; that is, a group in which the rhythmic element in particular is spot on.  But there's something about the "looseness" of bands like The Kinks that I find very appealing.  There's a type of musical energy which emerges, seemingly from the tension inherent in the possibility of the entire song degenerating into arhythmic chaos.

I chose our song of the day because it's one of the most irrepressibly upbeat songs ever written; with today's reprise of the seemingly never ending drizzle it's the perfect time for pure goofy happiness.

And, of course, I chose it for the hand claps.  Natch.

Who Says A Tiger Can't Change Its Spots?

A.A. Bondy
Album: American Hearts
Song: Vice Rag

Scott Bondy, lead singer of the glam rock outfit, Verbena, in 1997:



Pretty typical of the genre. Nothing too spectacular. A nice little groove but Stone Temple Pilots did it better, and did it earlier. And the faux rock star moves -- kicking over the mic stand etc -- are ridiculous, even if they   are meant to be ironic.  Or post-ironic.  Or something.

A.A. Bondy, solo artist, singer-songwriter, 2007:



Remarkable what a decade'll do to a guy.

Now this music, I like.  Tasty little guitar licks, a world weary voice, and a wink and a nod to the addict in all of us.  What more do ya need?  Incidentally, the tune is fucking awkward to play.  I spent the better part of two days trying to learn the guitar line and failed huge.  Just couldn't force my fingers to mimic the correct finger picking patterns and still scrape out the melodic line.

Doesn't help, I suppose, that I suck royally at guitar.  In fact, if I had one wish right now* it might very well be to have learned the guitar (and good technique) at a young age.  I love the instrument, but I hack my way across it like a blind yak.

*If I had two wishes right now, the first would be for the guitar learning, and the second would be for all the children of the world to get together and to sing as one in the spirit of harmony and peace.  Bless you, Steve Martin.

What's Scarier Than A Regular Faun? A Megafaun!

Megafaun
Album: Gather, Form And Fly
Song: Impressions Of The Past

One more retro-hip bearded sad-bastard sighting and I swear I'm gonna puke.  Despite that, I really like this band.

The Southern US neo-folk movement has contributed a hell of a lot to my recent listening habits.  Sam Beam is the freaking man.  Bon Iver is in heavy rotation.  Fleet Foxes?  Mighty fine.  And to that list I must add -- for the genre obsessed -- the country-rockish-folky-bluegrass-jazzy-inflected stylings of the righteously awesome, Megafaun.

This isn't their best song.  Unfortunately, I couldn't find a decent video of their brilliant acid-tinged tune, "Kaufman's Ballad"* which re-tells the infamous events surrounding Phil Kaufman and the death of his friend Gram Parsons.  (If you're unfamiliar with the story, it's pure comedic badass in the best rock'n'roll tradition.  Well worth the read.)  Nevertheless, "Impressions of the Past" does a pretty good job of encapsulating the band's diverse output.  Enjoy!

Oh yeah, one last thing.  Megafaun doesn't have its own Wikipedia entry.  We're really digging at the bottom of the barrel.



* Actually, I just watched the live performance of "Kaufman's Ballad" provided in the link...and it's pretty good.  But I didn't want to go back and rewrite this post.  So you're stuck with the other tune.

Suck it, Trebek.

Drone On, You Crazy Diamond

sunn o)))
Album: Monoliths and Dimensions
Song: Big Church

If the Stonehenge-building druids were alive today, this is the song they'd party to.

God I love a good drone.  Didgeridoo, bagpipe, guitar, voice, you name it; if it drones, I dig it.  I think my fascination with this sort of music goes back to the earliest polyphonic music in the Western tradition.  For a two month period as a grad student I became fascinated with the music of Perotin, who's considered by some the father of all of Western music.  A lot of what he composed is what's known as organum, in which one or more voices sing florid, rhythmic lines over a drone.  Here's a famous example:



I dare you not to dig it.  Crazy good.

Anyway, my point is that I have always felt an affinity to music that plays against, or emerges from, a drone.  Examples abound in the classical canon.  My single favorite art song is Schubert's "Der Leiermann" in which the piano drone is evocative of death itself.***   But the drone only became a particularly viable means of expression in the mid-60s in the music of the New York avant-garde.  Process music, which also became fashionable in the 60s, also incorporates drones, but usually in much different ways.  One way of thinking of the "process" itself is -- perhaps paradoxically? -- as a continuously evolving drone.

Which brings us to the lovely sunn o))).  It takes a bit of getting used to their heavy-as-hell meets choir-of-angels concept, but once you let the sound wash over you, once you let that drone ooze its way into your beating heart, once you feel the music as much as listen to it, the experience can be pretty damn intense.  Like, in a good way.  Late at night, the house asleep, just me and my iPod in the dark, the covers pulled up to my ears, sunn o))) chiseling its way into my psyche.  I always have good dreams.

And more bands should incorporate punctuation into their names.  Just sayin'.



*** My god.  I've just heard the most stunning recording of this song.  I'd never heard of this guy until today -- how he managed to creep under my cultural radar is a mystery.  Like many musicians, I considered Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau's rendition beyond reproach.  But Thomas Quastoff gives him a run for the money.  Achingly beautiful.

Roger Wilco

Wilco
Album: Sky Blue Sky
Song: Side With The Seeds

There are bands, and there are guitarists.  Most bands suck, and most guitarists suck.  Some bands don't suck, but their guitarists suck.  Some bands suck, but their guitarists don't suck.

And then there's Wilco and Nels Cline.

I revisit Wilco's music regularly, mostly because I greatly admire the songwriting abilities of lead singer and guitarist, Jeff Tweedy.  Tweedy's interesting musical and lyrical perspective helped Wilco stand apart from its alt-country peers over the last decade: he could turn a sweet phrase, and under his artistic influence the band was willing to explore atypical musical territory.  Elements of jazz, hard rock, and experimental music found their way into the music.  But even given all of these attributes, it wasn't until the band added lead guitarist Nels Cline on its sixth studio album, Sky Blue Sky, that it reached its artistic potential.

There's nothing worse than a musician more interested in masturbatory excess than in meeting the needs of the song.  I've always admired Charlie Watts (Rolling Stones drummer), for example, for his tasteful work.  You rarely notice him, but his playing always complements the music beautifully.  On the other hand, if you've ever had the misfortune of listening to Paginini's Violin Concerto, I feel your pain.  Ridiculous double and triple stops, crazy arpeggiated motives, blindingly fast 16th note sections: it's one long finger exercise masquerading as music.  It's what makes watching American or Canadian Idol so annoying, so often: singers who believe that artistry is akin to Celine Dion-style riffing in three octaves on a simple melody.  Give me Sarah Harmer, give me someone who actually tries to connect to a song in a meaningful way, any day of the week.  (By the way, I'm completely psyched that Harmer is going to be performing at the Regina Folk Festival this year!)

My poster boy for shitty guitar wankery is Yngwie Malmsteen, considered by some the greatest guitarist alive.  And it's true, his technique is unrivaled.  Watch this:



Pretty amazing stuff, eh? Too bad the entire song exists only to give Malmsteen the opportunity to demonstrate his technical proficiency.

Now watch our song of the day, and notice in particular the way that Nels Cline's solo provides emotional depth and textural and rhythmic definition. There's no way in hell that he could match licks with dear Yngwie, but he's got more musical talent in his guitar pick than Malmsteen has in his entire, ummm, body. Excuse the dumb metaphor.