#157: Closer- Joy Division

Listened to: MP3 (Sadly, I don’t own it on CD or Vinyl)
　
Ever since I bought their greatest hits in F.Y.E. at 17, I have become, as they say in the move Control about the life of Ian Curtis, “…a firm believer in Joy Division.” Hell, when I saw Nick’s copy of Unknown Pleasures on vinyl, you would’ve thought I’d seen the face of god. Even my own stage performance takes on a lot of the habits I’ve observed from Ian Curtis.

That being said, there is an air of tragedy that looms around Closer, just as there is around Double Fantasy by John Lennon of L.A. Woman by The Doors. This was Joy Division’s final studio album (also only their second) before the death of Ian. This haunting album, with a cover almost as enigmatic as Unknown Pleasures, is a landmark in music, form a band that got much more appreciation in England then they did here.

The first track, “Atrocity Exhibition”, is named after the J.G. Ballard novel of the same title. Whereas Unknown Pleasures had a similar post-punk feel throughout, Closer’s first track begins with an African-esque drum beat, the guitar making wild, contorted growls, and Ian practically rapping, or reciting beat poetry, rather than his typical frenetic warbling. I can see Ian sitting back and saying “You like what we did before, huh? Well, fuck that!” For once, though, for me, the most impressive person on a Joy Division track isn’t Ian Curtis. It is instead Stephen Morris, for the drum beat that seems to overtake the song in the most glorious way. Amongst all the poetry and soundscape, the drums comes across clean and strong the entire time, and I’m loving it every second.

“Isolation” is a hard track to hear now, because I can’t separate it form that scene in Closer, where Ian’s standing in the studio, staring at the girl, singing about how he’s alone. The song is danceable, yes, hence it’s mass appeal, but like any good Joy Division song, the lyrics can tear at your soul if you’ll only listen. I also want to add that Bernard Sumner’s keyboard part here is one of my favorites in any song. That fact that I can turn to the instrumentalists to point out great things on the album, not just Ian, ought to show you how great the album is, because finally all of Joy Division has come together to form the super group they were for a year.

“Passover” is a dark track with a looming, ghostly vibe. A song where you can feel the spirit of Ian Curtis over your shoulder every time it comes on. Listen to that guitar part. Johnny Marr, eat your fucking heart out (did I really just use that phrase? In my defense, Animaniacs was on last night, and Dot uses that a lot). That choppy, heavy sound on “Colony” could be danceable, head-bang-able, even fuckable, and that’s just what Joy Division was after, I’m sure.

I can’t tell you why the line “I always looked to you” strikes me as hard or as sharp as it does on the track “A Means To An End”, but it does. God damn it hits hard. “Heart And Soul” is special, if for no other reason than to hear Ian on the guitar. The bass has been sampled and repeated throughout the song, and that might be quite likely for the drums at the beginning as well. That echo on the vocals, if that doesn’t explain why I called the album haunting, I don’t know what will. “Twenty Four Hours” has a slight reverb on the bass that I’m in love with, plus Ian sounds great, crisp and clear on this track.

“The Eternal” has this ethereal grasp on your soul. That dark piano feel, it’s so emotively beautiful, it’s almost like Ian was recording his suicide note (and, indeed, perhaps he was). This deep, dark track recalls a murky sea, endless, hiding all that lies beneath, with a piercing dark blue that draws you close while scaring you away.

“Decades” has a cheap organ sound that I’m still not sure if it enhances or detracts from the song. It’s still a great track, but I might have preferred this track and “The Eternal were switched around.

This album may be Joy Division’s most fluid and possibly it’s best. It is highly worth the listen, and hopefully it will move you even a fraction of the amoun I has moved me over the years.

-Mike

See you guys tomorrow for #153: Moanin’ In The Moonlight by Howlin’ Wolf.

#361: Substance- New Order

Sorry for the delay on this one. Came home to find my sis monopolizing the computer all day. No big.

Listened to: MP3

I’ve never been a huge fan of New Order. Their music’s good, but it’s basically Joy Division without Ian Curtis. And Joy Division was Ian Curtis. Come on, listen to “Everything’s Gone Green”. It sounds like it was for Ian, and he just died too soon to record it. “Ceremony” is the same way. I understand the importance to put a New Order album on there, but if it weren’t for “Bizarre Love Triangle”, the album wouldn’t pop out at all. Why not replace it with Technique or Power, Corruption, And Lies. I know this post is short, what can I say? 9am class. But I want to encourage you all to look up all three of these New Order albums: Substance, Technique, and Power Corruption & Lies. Then make your own decision. I’m gonna let this album stand, because while I much prefer Power…, I can see how this would be a better intro to New Order.

-Mike

See you guys tomorrow (aka later) for #54: Electric Ladyland by The Jimi Hendrix Experience.

#471: Heaven Up Here- Echo & The Bunnymen

Nick Young:

Listened to: MP3

Not all bunnies are cute. I personally can’t think of bunnies without conjuring up images of “Donnie Darko’s” Frank standing alone in the middle of a golf course. Perhaps this is why Echo & the Bunnymen’s name never stood out as being that weird or ill-fitting to me. The “Bunny” from “Donnie Darko” embodied that twisted, disturbed sound that Echo & the Bunnymen could pull off when they were at their best.* On “Heaven Up Here,” the band’s frenzied sophomore LP, they truly were at their best.

As the paranoid, mood-setting notes of “Show of Strength,” pierced the aether with savage grace, I experienced that special kind of early eighties angst I thought only The Cure could give me. On “With a Hip,” vocalist Ian McCulloch began to experiment with intertwining vocals long before overreaching emo bands made them into sickening clichés.. At this point in music history, the celebration of misery was only starting to be ravaged by the process of commercialization. We still had a long way to go before “Miserabilia” became something to sing about.

I was particularly impressed with “Heaven Up Here’s” fifth and sixth tracks, “A Promise,” and “Heaven Up Here.” McCulloch conveys the sound of betrayal better than any other artist I can think of as he moans “you promised,”** with androgynously spectral vehemence.

*I belong to the generation that never experienced the 1980’s. As far as I’m concerned, “Donnie Darko” and Echo & The Bunnymen can coexist in harmony.

**he later chants “a promise” over and over as though he’s been condemned to do so.

-Nick

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Mike Natale:

Listened to: MP3

There’s not much to write about Heaven Up Here, because, to be honest, there’s not much there. You know your in trouble when the most interesting thing about the album is the band’s name. I was utterly, utterly bored by this Joy Division knock-off. It lacked all of Ian Curtis’ soul, and anything really interesting musically. Every track blended together and the only track that’s even worth listening to is “A Promise”. That’s it. There’s the whole album right there. Every other track is a suckier version of that. I realize my more indie-oriented counterpart would probably be livid from reading me say this, but really, the instrumentals offer me nothing New Order can’t give me, and the vocals offer me nothing the Talking Heads can’t give me better. I guarantee you I will forget that I even listened to this album in about a week. At least The Heart Of Saturday Night was good, just not great. I know, this is short, but fuck, I just can’t understand it. This album isn’t even that good, let alone great, let alone one of the 500 Greatest albums. Do you realize how many great albums got ignored (such as the previously “switched in by me” 1984 by Van Halen and Songs of Leonard Cohen) to put Echo & The Bunnymen? Echo and the fucking Bunnymen! And maybe I could excuse this if it were the very bottom. Like, 500. But for fuck’s sake, George Michael’s Faith ranks lower than this. And that’s an album people have actually heard of. When future generations look back on our culture today, are they really gonna go “I truly feel that the greatest albums of the 20th century are Sgt. Pepper’s, Pet Sounds, and Heaven Up Here”? If they do, then we have failed the future. So why don’t I do us all a favor, and swap out the dull droning of Echo & The Bunnymen with a truly unique, non-white-noise, exciting, brilliant album by a band we all went through a phase of (or if not, you will now).

Would Replace With: Sublime by Sublime

Rather than infest this list with another 80’s, whiney “I’m so miserable being British middle-upperclass” album (look, fellas, The Cure was fun. Joy Division was brilliant. That’s enough. You only need two of each animal on the ark), I thought it best that ska-punk be represented (unless you count No Doubt, which isn’t really ska-punk to me, but that aside), and there was only one band, one album, that could possibly fulfill such a role. The brilliant magnum opus that is the studio debut of the Long Beach rockers Sublime. Fun Fact: Every 2 hours in the United States, a joint is sparked up while listening to “What I Got” or “Santeria”. From the opening, almost overture violins on Garden Grove to the Summertime riffing “Doin’ Time”, this album is the #1 go-to for driving around with the windows down in summer. From a decade full of depressing grunge (Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Stone Temple Pilots) or emotional balladeering (Jeff Buckley, Radiohead, R.E.M.), Sublime was an absolutely refreshing breath of upbeat musicality. Even as I’m typing this, I can’t help but bounce my leg and drift off into dreams of beaches, cold ones, and that small zipper-bag in your wallet you hope no one finds. As opposed to Heaven Up Here, where every track is forgettable and similar, each track on Sublime is unique, catchy, and for the love of God, as I’m trying to type I can’t help but sing-along to every word of “What I Got”, even shouting “I can play the guitar like a motherfucking riot!”, much to the displeasure of my sleeping family.

This album is part ska, part punk, part reggea, part rap, and all kick-ass. Seriously, if you can’t enjoy What I Got, Doin’ Time, or Santeria, get your ass some Prozac. Then you have Wrong Way, which takes a subject of teenage prostitution and let’s Bradley (who very tragically died of a heroin overdose before this album got released) talk about it as realistically as he can. Rather than lament about the tragic state of society, he talks like your average man would about the situation.

“A cigarette pressed between her lips/But I’m staring at her tits/It’s the wrong way./Strong if I can,/But I am only a man,/So I take her to the can,/It’s the wrong way.”

Yeah, he fucks a 12-year-old. But it’s not malicious. It’s not gangsta rap rape. And before you can even process the insanity and depravity he lightly recites, it goes right into the absolute bouncing punk Same In The End, which is honestly a better punk song than anything Blink-182 ever produced. Then we get to the only real political track Sublime’s laid-back, spliff-smoking attitude ever allowed them to compose. “April 29, 1992 (Miami)”,which we analyzed in twelfth grade (must fucking awesome class ever), is about the Rodney King riots, but Brad has the balls to point out “If you look at these streets/it wasn’t about Rodney Kind/In this fucked up situation with these fucked up police”. Sure, it’s a rap, but it’s intricate, bouncy, fun, and probably the most spirited and inventive hip-hop I’ve heard since Paul’s Boutique (Chronologically speaking. I’ve been listening to Sublime long before this project started). I’ll be honest, this post is delayed solely because I keep taking breaks from writing to rock the fuck out to these tracks.

Then we get to the song everyone from my 14-year-old sister to my 50-grumble-grumble- year old mother to my grumble-grumble-grumble-year old grandmother knows, Santeria. With a hook so strong everybody can sing, with Bradley displaying a voice that shows more vibrator than violence, and a guitar solo which can only be describe in a cliché manner: sublime.

Then “Seed” becomes the quintessential example of how good it feels to change tempo throughout a song. You can mosh and mellow out to the same track (admittedly, you’re probably so high by this point that the couch and Cheetos are far too appealing to mosh). And with just a howling “Go!” we get to Jailhouse, which could be a Bob Marley demo, and I mean that in the best possible way, and it only mellows out more as we get to Pawn Shop, an anthem for those of us who prefer our items cheap and pre-owned. The guitar and bass on this track alone should already having you creaming your jeans over the genius of Sublime, but if not, Paddle Out oughta wake your dumb-ass up. Seriously, the band on Paddle out is the same band as the track before. You know when you watch American Idol, and the singers there can’t do more than one genre, and complain about how “singers have a niche”? I want to send them this album. Hardcore punk tracks like Paddle Out get packaged between Pawn Shop and The Ballad of Johnny Butt, two of the mellowest tracks on the album.

Burritos is the closest thing to ska I’ve ever found myself enjoying, and Under My Voodoo is one of the greatest songs to jam to in the history of the world, with Bradley tearing those vocals apart, and proving how vocally fearless he really was, going place even Buckley would have admired (In fact, had he had more time, I could have easily seen Buckley covering this in one of his café gigs).

Then we have the sex-aspect of the album. Sure, “Get Ready” is all about smoking pot, but really, positioning a smooth, bass-heavy track titled “Get Ready” right before “Caress Me Down”? I give the boys of Sublime more credit than to say that was just coincidence. And can I just add that Caress Me Down is not only the greatest ode to the hand job ever, but is the finest porn-star-name-drop ever? “Mucho gusto, me llamo Bradley, I’m hornier than Ron Jeremy” ? That line helped me pass Spanish. No joke.

Then we have the reprise to What I Got, which to this day I’m not sure if I prefer to the earlier one, which brings us to Doin’ Time. I had a friend of mine tell me she had a dream in which the world was about to end, and suddenly every speaker in the world started playing this track. And, to be honest, if the world was gonna explode, I’d be fine with this track being the last thing I ever heard.

So, absolutely, skip Heaven Up Here and crank up Sublime. Every fiber in your being will thank you for it.

-Mike

P.S. Gig tonight, 1/9/10, 10:30 pm, at the Massapequa Bowling Alley in Long Island, New York. Free admission, come out if you can.
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As is the custom, I want to thank you guys for reading, and come back tomorrow for #178: The Byrds’ Greatest Hits by The Byrds.

#128: Marquee Moon- Television

Nick Young:

Listened to: MP3

For some bands finding a sound that instantly enables listeners to identify as “quintessential (fill in the blank)” just comes naturally. When the Strokes released their incendiary debut album “Is This It” in 2001, they confidently oozed sex and frustration from every aching pore so well and with such reckless abandon it’s as though Julian Casablancas and company burst forth from their mothers’ wombs already angsty and horny as Hell. In short, they were born to make records.

Fellow New York City rockers Interpol exuded the same vigorous innate certainty on their 2002 debut “Turn On The Bright Lights.” Their unique breed of disaffected intensity is most apparent on their suffocated single “Obstacle 1,” a song the band revealed during a WKQX Radio interview was written after watching a news report about a model’s untimely death. However, though the lyrical content belongs strictly to them, I have a hard time believing the song would exist at all without Television’s colossally influential 1977 LP “Marquee Moon.”
To listen to both songs back to back is to experience a startling revelation: “Obstacle 1” is basically “Marquee Moon’s” eponymous title played at double speed (as if Interpol covered the song and released it at 45 RPM instead of the expected 33 RPM speed). I mean this not as a negative criticism. Quite the contrary actually- I believe imitation truly is the sincerest form of flattery. Both songs are great in their ways. Still, “Marquee Moon” does have one advantage over its darkened 21st century reimagining:

It came first.

Television’s debut came at an absolutely perfect time in music history. The album broke conventions of what a punk record or a rock record could sound like. The end product can’t be lumped into either genre. “Moon” takes the spirit of both sources and, as Ian Curtis once apathetically wailed on Joy Division’s “Disorder,” loses the feeling.

Current Indie artists such as the Mae Shi and Girls have found a way to harness the soul-consuming numbness that Television once so gracefully evoked and have brought it into our time. I could easily imagine Girls frontman Christopher Owens croon “the world was so thin between my bones and my skin,” a lyric from “Marquee Moon’s” second track, “Venus,” sung with cool, atrophic indifference by Television lead singer Tom Verlaine.

His voice has aged quite well since the years it haunted CBGB’s in the era of the Velvet Underground- most likely because anyone growing up today (or in any other time for that matter) learns at some point that it pays impassive. Jim Jones of the Diplomats / Def Jam’s Blakroc really hit the mark when he rapped, “It don’t bother you, it don’t bother.” I think Verlaine would agree. Hey, whatever works right?

Television best conveys the universal human struggle to remain aloof on the album’s eponymous ten-minute centerpiece when Verlaine describes a chance meeting with a ragged, rail-riding hobo who sounds like he’s the physical embodiment of the drifter, “the poor boy whose story is seldom told,” in Simon and Garfunkel’s “The Boxer.” The derelict instructions seem simple at first. The complexity of his words is entirely reliant on how you interpret them:

“Look here junior- don’t you be so happy, and for heaven’s sake, don’t be so sad.”

Does ‘junior’ find this comforting or unsettling? Will he embrace life in all of its gloriously maddening uncertainty? I have an idea of how he interpreted it, but so do you. It’s not really about how the vagabond’s attempt at consolation affect Verlaine- I’m sure he’s thought it over plenty. It’s about what the lyric means to you, the listener. You can either appreciate it for what it is or you can complain about his diction as he spins his tale.* Personally, I think everybody should listen to this album at least once. If it’s not your thing, at least there are still four hundred and ninety-six other records I can recommend during this insane online odyssey of ours.


*That’s actually a lyric from “Marquee Moon’s” third track, “Friction.”

-Nick

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Mike Natale:

Listened to: MP3

I must admit, I knew nothing of Television before listening to this album, aside to the fact that when Jeff Buckley’s debut album Grace was released, one reviewer suggested that the album’s “shimmery, dynamic style suggests careful study of Tom Verliane, who, I later discovered, is the lead singer and guitarist for the band. So, since Buckley is a personal idol of mine (I know that sounds biased, but everyone has a bias, especially because what you draw from art depends on what you bring to it. I just choose to wear my bias on my sleeve) I was excited to check the album out. I was told repeatedly it was a major force in the post-punk movement, and thereby a major influence to modern alternative rock.

So let me where my bias on my sleeve again. I dislike “alternative rock”. Don’t get me wrong, I dig Radiohead and some others, but it’s frustrating how every music act today is alternative. Everybody who listens to some music, be it the black clothing clad emo kids, the screaming, roaring death-core, metal-core, math-core, I-have-low-self-confidence-and-feel-the-need-to-fit-in-core toolbags, the tonue-so-far-in-their-cheek-it’s-piercing-through Weezer fans, or the hipster indie rock college radio “I listen to bands nobody’s ever heard of, and loudly criticize anything remotely popular so that makes me cool” douche bags, everybody seems to think they’re rebelling against the “mainstream”. But when you ask them to point out this “mainstream” music, they just point fingers at each other. It would seem that Jonas Brothers fans are the only true rebels these days.

But the true struggle I have with “alternative rock”, primarily the college radio brand, is that it’s become so about not succumbing to the musical mainstream that it stops being musical. Any one who feels the need can front an “indie” band, and while the instrumentalists get better and better, the “singers” seem to just worsen with time.

I realize these first three paragraphs were a rant against today’s music scene, but I thought it only fair to inform you of the melodic battlefield I’ve walked through to finally get to Marquee Moon, today’s album.

The first three tracks of the album failed to impress me initially. I thought “Great, here’s another ‘alternative rock’ band.” But then I realized. This album came out in 1977. Like the MC5 nearly ten years before them, Television was way ahead of it’s time. So, while today those first three tracks may seem nothing special, you have to put yourself into the context in which they were composed, and you’ll truly appreciate them for what they are. You may not enjoy them, but you’ll appreciate them.

It is the fourth track on the album where the genius truly begins. The 10 minute epic title track is equal parts Pink Floyd and Patti Smith. It boggles the mind to imagine a 10 minute track being released as a single, and even more shocking is the discovery that it actually had some success. But all this surprise disappears when you hear the track, which seems to go in a million different sonic directions, while never once ceasing to be an honest outcry from Verliane, who’s guitar virtuosity is in full effect. I’m not sure if Verlaine had even heard Serge Gainsbourg’s Histoire de Melody Nelson, but this track could be an English-language demo from it.

The next track, Elevation, can only be described as what happens when a Talking Heads track sleeps with Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures. Since it’s not as musically ambitious as the previous track, it’s able to pack all that energy into the melody, unleashing a powerhouse of strumming and vocals.

While Marquee Moon may be the most musically dynamic song on the album, I was most impressed by the track Guiding Light for being so…well, normal. Guiding Light could very easily be a Kelly Clarkson ballad. Albeit that may be a bit of a stretch, but it can’t be denied that this track has a very classic sound to it, which is unexpected when one listens to the rest of the album, and reminds me of the first time one hears Here Comes Your Man by The Pixies on Doolittle. Guiding Light caused me to admire Verlaine more, for understanding that good music is good music, and that rebellion shouldn’t be an artists sole goal.

After Prove It, another track equal in force and compositional prowess, comes Torn Curtain, the album’s final track (unless one listens to Little Johnny Jewel (Parts 1 & 2) on the CD version) The chorus of Torn Curtain has that powerful, finale nature that reminds me of the finale of Godspell. For the record, I love Godspell. I’d hate to compare Marquee Moon yet again to Histoire de Melody Nelson, as the two are extraordinarily different albums as a whole, but Torn Curtain does have that same closing satisfaction one gets from Cargo Culte on the aforementioned Gainsbourg album. Torn Curtain leaves one with a sense of completion or closure upon finishing Marquee Moon, but that by no means should encourage you to take the album off your record player. Though I’ve only listened to the album twice so far, I can just feel that this is one of those albums that gets better each time you listen to it. For anyone who is a music lover, Marquee Moon is definitely worth a listen, and to imagine any “indie” music fans that haven’t heard this is like picturing Green Day fans who’ve never heard the Sex Pistols. You know they exist, but when you finally meet one, it take everything in you not to smack your forehead with the palm of your hand.

One more fun fact: Tom Verlaine was in discussion with Jeff Buckley to produce his second album. He produced the original sessions. Yeah, I now have the utmost respect for Verlaine.

-Mike

So, thanks for reading, and see you all tomorrow for #154: The Low End Theory by A Tribe Called Quest.