Okay, so everyone's already heard that Lit song. Fine. But is it not amazing!?
Anyway, today I'm offering up two tracks from bands that appear to be reinventing themselves. Reinvention's a very tricky thing: although groups are often slagged for a lack of "evolution," said evolution can easily ruin a perfectly good act. One of my old roommates once bitched me out for criticizing an Orchestre Baobab album as "just the same thing" as their earlier work. And her criticism was apt - in retrospect, I wouldn't want those crazy Senegalese fellows to change. Still, there's a lot to be said for pushing yourself and exploring as an artist - see Radiohead, the Velvet Underground, the Beatles, the Stones...
But ultimately I don't really have any point to this rant, and I'm certainly not telling you anything you don't already know, so I'll simply stop.
The Beta Band - "Assessment". The debut single from the Betas' new record, Heroes to Zeroes (check out the art!). Everyone's yelling that the fumbling stoner experimentalists have gone U2. I'm not really familiar with those Irish fellas' oeuvre, but I'm told that the guitar riff is the same as in U2's "I Will Follow." U2 seems to me like an unlikely Beta Band influence, though - I think it's much more likely that the band's been listening to Interpol.
Trouble is, although upbeat-mellow vocals from Steve Mason, an upbeat-mellow bassline, and Interpol (ie, souped-up Joy Division) guitars, sound like they could be cool, the track is pretty mediocre. I'm always a sucker for slammed bass drums and a horn section (hello Gomez's "In Our Gun"), but even that noisy finale isn't enough to sell me on the 'new' Beta Band. I much prefer the dusty shrugging of "Dry the Rain" and "Dr Baker."
The Cardigans - "Communication". On the other hand, here's the much-ballyhoo'd single from the Cardigans' 2003 turn to alt.country. And it's wonderful - one of the best songs of the year. Nina Persson's voice is cream, and the song itself is sunset: catchy and careful and so casually proficient. They do this much better than they do alt.pop, "Love Fool"'s sassy hook aside. The only woeful bit is the drowsy solo at the three-minute mark, but it's soon washed away by the song's dusk-sun spread, its muted mona lisa smile. (And yes, I know that many of you have probably heard this: hear it again!)
Finally, a necessary shout-out to the video of Alberta Slim's "She Taught Me To Yodel". He's the most ancient, emaciated Canadian yodeller you'll ever see, but if there was ever to be a superhero battle between Johnny Cash and a same-genre antithesis, Slim would be it. (via chris)
Lately I haven't actually been listening to much. That is, I'm listening to a lot of music, but it's basically been the same handful of records: Susanna & the Magical Orchestra (bjork meets julie doiron, not really that good), the new Bonnie Prince Billy, King Creosote's "Lavender Moon" (available at badger minor... whinsome acoustic folk that reminds me of Dick Gaughn; I downloaded the record, which is good, but this is definitely the best song), and Sufjan Stevens' Seven Swans. Seven Swans has grown on me a lot: Stevens' incessant repetition becomes much more of a strength with Michigan's prog-folk arrangements stripped away. The key to loving the album, I've found, is to play it loud.
I overplayed G Unit in my Norah Jones/G Unit playlist, so now I'm tired of that, and although the Kanye album continues to be great, I get a little annoyed whenever I think about it (ie, the anti-college schtick gets me down), so it's been off the turntable.
Consequently, a couple of old, very disparate tracks for your consumption:
Bert Jansch and John Renbourne - "East Wind". I realize these fellows are very well known, but for the uninitiated-- Bert Jansch was an acoustic guitar marvel, amazingly skillful but never showy; always sincere. He and Renbourne were the twin princes of acoustic folk in the mid 60s, mostly due to their instrumental prowess. This short track is like a brief sparkling demo of what they have to offer, taken from the 1966 Bert and John LP. Like John Fahey's British uncles. (John Renbourne went on to do some much more boring neo-folk stuff with Pentangle, which you should avoid, but almost all of Jasnch's stuff is worthy.)
Lit - "My Own Worse Enemy". A complete change of pace from the instrumental track above; I have no idea if Lit blazed US radio like it did the rock radio in Canada circa 1999, but if they didn't - they should have. A dark green pop-punk melody, gleeful but serious, guitars that stomp through bracken, stride through flaming brown carpet. I love so much about this song - the queasy vocoder/pitch-correction before the chorus, the brazen and proud teenage lyrics, the self-conscious self-loathing, the final chorus with "aah-oohs" and an epic arena feel (even though it's not an epic, arena song). This was one of my biggest "guilty pleasures" in the 90s, and one of the breakthrough tracks that got me to reevaluate how I thought about (ie, dismissed) pop music. The pleasure's not guilty any more.
