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Herbert: Bodily Functions

2013-02-09 20:30:00 (читать в оригинале)

Matthew Herbert likes processes, rules, and parameters. He has a manifesto for how he records music-- no sampling other artists, no drum machines, no synths. It sounds mighty ascetic, but the prolific Brit has been responsible for some of the past decade-and-change's most natural-sounding dance music. 1998's Around the House saw him incorporating household sounds; 2001's Bodily Functions moved inward, building songs from samples of the human body. It was easily Herbert's most audacious idea at that point.

Bodily Functions is even more stretch-your-legs-out luxurious than House. The beats don't sound like flatulence, belches, or growling stomachs, but there is something very organic about the record. The drums feel squishy, the rhythms are padded, and everything moves with an elegance that most house could only dream of (no drum machines, remember). "e;Leave Me Now"e; and "e;You Saw It All"e; are relatively raucous stompers fashioned from gasping snares and wet rattling, while the very strange "e;Foreign Bodies"e; is like early Ricardo Villalobos mapped out in human flesh.

It's as much of a jazz album as a house album. Around the House already had plenty of jazz leanings, but this record makes them explicit-- horns that sigh like deep exhales, scrumptious, meaty bass. The album is punctuated by brief meanderings away from house, like the cocktail lounge opener "e;You're Unknown to Me"e; or the straight-up "e;I Know"e;, which is four and a half minutes of pure jazz vamp with Herbert's own delectable piano work. These pieces serve to open the album up into its inviting, expansive whole.  

Bodily Functions also continued Herbert's fruitful collaboration with Dani Siciliano, a smooth singer whose jazzy inflections go well with this album's tasteful house. She's as much the star of Bodily Functions as Herbert is, her pleasantly husky voice inhabiting the album's warm atmosphere. Her calm, gently emotive personality makes tunes like the masterful "e;It's Only"e; agonizingly ambiguous. She wrings layer upon layer of feeling from the wry kiss-off "e;Leave Me Now,"e; commanding "e;never call again"e; but later asking "e;be the friend I never knew."e; The lyrics are equally clever, mixing the lexicon of life science ("e;Foreign Bodies"e;) with subtle commentary on relationships and interpersonal interactions. 

Bodily Functions' supple texturing, smooth demeanor, and pop songcraft have made it timeless, a gem so well-polished you couldn't ever imagine it accumulating scuff marks. So the reissue acts as more of a reminder than a rediscovery, packaged with a second disc that includes compilation track "e;Back to the Start"e; (which could have easily landed on the album), as well as a number of period remixes. Highlights include a stunning cover by Jamie Lidell and strong remixes from Matmos and Plaid.

For well-versed Herbert fans, the reissue offers few revelations, though it is nice to have the whole period collected into one package. There are a few new bits, however, including a Dave Aju remix of "e;Foreign Bodies"e; and two remixes from Pampa boss and consummate weirdo DJ Koze. His take on "e;You Saw It All"e; capitalizes on the album's odd movements and springy textures, but it's his version of "e;It's Only"e; that really hits home. Koze's work here is pretty transparent: he hollows out the beat and mixes up the vocal, and then puts a monster bassline underneath, sloping down at a sharp right angle just when you expect the chord progression to ascend. 

With Bodily Functions, Herbert made a gorgeous jazz-pop album from recordings of human bodies and a few instruments-- but he also made one of last decade's most important dance albums. An enduring album that still sounds singular, Bodily Functions floats far above the trend-obsessed nature of dance music.

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D'Angelo: Voodoo

2013-02-09 20:30:00 (читать в оригинале)

It's impossible to talk about Voodoo without talking about what's happened since Voodoo. Or, more accurately, what hasn't happened since Voodoo. It's been 12 years since D'Angelo released his dirt-encrusted soul opus in the first month of the new millennium, and we have yet to see a follow-up. During those dozen calendar runs, the Virginia-bred singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and producer has learned to play guitar and spent countless hours in various studios, trying to find his way to the next sound. This time last year, unofficial D'Angelo status updater and kindred spirit/collaborator ?uestlove told me the new album is "e;pretty much 97% done."e; And this year, D played a number of live shows, his first in a decade. That's the upside.

He's also been arrested-- for disturbing the peace, marijuana possession, carrying a concealed weapon, and driving under the influence in 2005, and then for offering an undercover NYPD officer $40 for a blowjob in 2010. There were several attempts at rehab. And he's almost died at least once, when he drunkenly crashed through a fence and flipped his Hummer alongside Virginia's Route 711 seven years ago. In 2010, when I asked ?uestlove how his friend stacks up against the other luminaries he's worked with-- people like Jay-Z and Al Green-- he summed up the D'Angelo dilemma well: "e;I consider him a genius beyond words. At the same time, I say to myself, 'How can I scream someone's genius if they hardly have any work to show for it?' Then again, the last work he did was so powerful that it's lasted 10 years."e;

At this point, it's easy to forget that Voodoo itself was, for quite awhile, one of those forever-delayed studio myths, too. "e;I've been gone so long, just wanna sing my song,"e; D'Angelo sings on "e;The Line"e;, a self-directed pep talk and explanation of his slug-like pace, "e;I know you been hearing a lot of things about me."e; Voodoo arrived five years behind D's home-recorded bap&B debut, Brown Sugar, and blew through its fair share of release dates before touching down on January 25, 2000. Its arrival came during the twilight of the mega-CD era-- six months after Napster's birth, two years before the iPod-- but its four-year gestation occurred during the halcyon 90s, a time when artists were afforded the chance to tinker for years on end while blazing through bottomless studio budgets. The record topped the Billboard albums chart during its first two weeks out, and looking at 2000's other #1s-- including N'Sync's record-breaking No Strings Attached, Eminem's angsty Marshall Mathers LP, and, uh, Limp Bizkit's Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water-- Voodoo stands tall with October's Kid A as a paranoid, mysterious, and challenging artistic statement that somehow managed to scale the industry.

Riding high off of 1998's The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, Maxwell's first two LPs, and Erykah Badu's 1997 album Baduizm, the so-called neo-soul movement, which favored earthy 70s production rather than 90s slickness, was reaching an apex in 2000. And Voodoo was positioned as a more down-to-earth alternative to the infinite excess of late-90s hip-hop and R&B. "e;[Contemporary R&B]'s a joke,"e; scoffed D'Angelo at the time. "e;It's sad-- the people making this shit have turned black music into a club thing."e; (For his sake, here's hoping D hasn't flipped on the radio in the last five years.)

While this viewpoint may seem somewhat myopic in our poptimist era, to understand D'Angelo is to understand who he looked to for musical and spiritual guidance: Jimi Hendrix, Sly Stone, George Clinton, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, Curtis Mayfield, Al Green, Otis Redding, Prince-- supremely gifted artists known for expertly plying their craft. His devotion isn't merely cosmetic or fashionable, though-- by all accounts he's a hardcore music nerd who "e;knows every Prince concert's playlist,"e; according to recent GQ profiler Amy Wallace. His love of musical lore is partly why he chose to make Voodoo in Electric Lady Studios, the downtown Manhattan recording space Hendrix built in 1969. Listening to the album, his influences are apparent, but also ingrained in a way that's equal parts reverent and uncanny. Rather than just listening to old Funkadelic or Stevie albums for inspiration, Voodoo was literally born from them; a typical night at Electric Lady would have D, ?uestlove, bassist Pino Palladino, and maybe one or two of their prodigious buddies playing an entire classic soul album through, and then seeing where those jams led them. This went on for years. The result is ineffably natural, the type of live-in-studio sound that requires copious god-given talent-- D'Angelo started playing piano at age 4-- and constant woodshedding to really pull off. There are no shortcuts.

D'Angelo's old-school obsessions extended even further than songwriting inspiration. Voodoo was recorded on 2"e; tape-- 120 reels of the stuff were used in total according to engineer Russell Elevado-- and many of the songs' instrumental takes were recorded live without overdubs. Vintage gear was employed. The analog fetishism is ironic considering how, at the time of its release, vinyl had yet to make a resurgence; indeed, this 2xLP reissue is a godsend in that respect, especially for anyone who's considered dropping $100 on eBay for one of the few LPs originally made in 2000. I've been listening to this album since it came out-- my original 74-minute CD-R, burned from a friend, left out the 79-minute album's last song-- and it never gets old, or grating, or tired. While this is obviously largely due to the quality of the songs, it's hard not to think that the warm glow given off by the equipment and recording techniques used to create it factors in as well. Not all music needs to be built to last, but Voodoo was designed and willed and technically optimized to be a testament for the ages; it captures empty space and heartbreak as well as it does rim shots and joy. The grooves deepen. When the news of a bare-bones, no-bonus-tracks vinyl reissue causes palpable excitement 12 years later, it's a rare accomplishment.

But Voodoo is more than a fetish object for analog geeks and old-soul collectors. It's peppered with hip-hop inflections largely informed by the singular work of J Dilla, the record's biggest modern influence. D'Angelo probably had Dilla's beats in mind when he wanted ?uestlove to dirty his impeccable timing to drum like he had just "e;drank some moonshine behind a chuckwagon,"e; as ?uest once put it. In GQ, D cited the Detroit producer's 2006 death as the moment he decided to wake up from his booze-and-cocaine fueled lost years. "e;I felt like I was going to be next,"e; he said. And when he played this year's Made in America festival in Philadelphia, he stepped out to the strains of obscure Canadian band Motherlode's "e;When I Die"e;, which Dilla flipped on the finale of his last true album, Donuts. The song's hook: "e;When I die, I hope to be a better man than you thought I'd be."e; Voodoo's element of sampling is crucial and varied as well, whether through flawless interpolations (as on "e;Send It On"e;, which borrows its horn-laden lilt from Kool and the Gang's "e;Sea of Tranquility"e;), or sly cut-ups (like when DJ Premier drops in a line of Fat Joe's materialistic "e;Success"e; into the anti-materialism screed "e;Devil's Pie"e;), or well-chosen covers (the slowed-down brilliance of "e;Feel Like Makin' Love"e;, a #1 for Roberta Flack in 1974).

Given his extensive repertoire of male R&B legends, the fact that D chose Voodoo's only cover to be a song made famous by a woman also seems key. Because another aspect of the album's overall concept involves an embrace of femininity. "e;The Aquarian Age is a matriarchal age, and if we are to exist as men in this new world many of us must learn to embrace and nurture that which is feminine with all of our hearts,"e; wrote singer/poet Saul Williams in the record's liner notes. "e;But is there any room for artistry in hip hop's decadent man-sion?"e; The album's most uncharacteristic moment involves this schism between hip-hop and misogyny and feminism, when guest stars Method Man and Redman drop tone-deaf dick-fluffing broadsides on "e;Left and Right"e;. (Intriguingly, Q-Tip recorded a more thematically appropriate verse for the track, though that version has yet to surface.) But everywhere else, Voodoo exhibits a mature attitude toward women and relationships-- one that doesn't pander, but empathizes, and shows that the then-26-year-old father of two was becoming acquainted with all sides of love.

Voodoo's second half, from "e;One Mo' Gin"e; through "e;Africa"e;, goes from the depths of despondency, to regret, to carnal ecstasy, to something more spiritual and everlasting. These songs get to the bottom of nothing less than the core of human interaction; what happens when people collide and come together and break apart. And it's all done with the omnipotent knowing of a saint. Nothing is overstated. "e;The Root"e; is the record's most downtrodden track lyrically, where D'Angelo confesses, "e;I feel my soul is empty, my blood is cold and I can't feel my legs/ I need someone to hold me, bring me back to life before I'm dead."e; But instead of dour instrumentation, the song's accompanying rhythm is comforting, warm. The whole song leads to a kind of exorcism-- in its final minutes, the singer masterfully layers his own voice on top of itself, vocal lines coming in at every imaginable direction, offering a peek inside his brain. Then it all smooths out, finding comfort in infinity: "e;From the Alpha of creation, to the end of all time."e; D'Angelo knows these stakes are high but, as he concludes on "e;The Line"e;, "e;If I can hold on, I'm sure everything will be alright."e; Voodoo is the sound of him holding on; its ensuing silence marks his lost grip.

Details also give Voodoo its timelessness. The album's gentle avoidance of common song structures adds spontaneity; even after hundreds of listens, it's still possible to be surprised. The barely-heard words spoken in intros and outros give things continuity and a voyeuristic quality, like you're hearing it all through a city wall; listen again for the the sweetly awkward conversation with an ex that starts "e;One Mo' Gin"e; or the way "e;Greatdayndamornin'"e; is introduced with D'Angelo praising ?uestlove to journalist dream hampton: "e;I was like, 'You gonna be my drummer one of these days,'"e; gushes D.

The concept of voodoo itself-- as portrayed via the record's voodoo-ceremony photos-- is multi-layered. While probably using voodoo's exaggerated and misrepresented image within modern popular culture to add some mystique and danger, D'Angelo's also likely referencing the religion's African origins, and how it was coveted by uprooted slaves, feared by slave owners, and ignited the Haitian Revolution of 1791. D'Angelo was born the son of a Pentecostal minister, and he was exposed to that religion's closely intertwining relationship between the spiritual and earthly realms: speaking in tongues, divine healing. And music. "e;I learned at an early age that what we were doing in the choir was just as important as the preacher,"e; he told GQ. "e;The stage is our pulpit, and you can use all of that energy and that music and the lights and the colors and the sound. But you know, you've got to be careful."e; Coming out of D's mouth, this is more than hokum-- he believes it and he makes you believe it. There are many ghosts hidden within this record. They're still being drawn out. 

Still, many simply know Voodoo for a certain naked music video. The clip for "e;Untitled (How Does It Feel)"e; is the reason why the album went platinum, and it plays a large part in D's ensuing disappearance. It instantly transformed the singer from a very talented artist to a pin-up. The song was the last track recorded for Voodoo, and it's the most direct thing here, a churning Prince-inspired ballad that bests nearly every actual ballad Prince ever recorded. It's about lust, sure, but it's a two-way street. The way he sings it, "e;how does it feel?"e; isn't necessarily rhetorical, no matter how much it should be considering the power of the music. And if you look closely, the video isn't just a handsome and muscular guy flexing his pecs. There's a vulnerability in D'Angelo's eyes, an awkwardness that's both endearing and slightly uncomfortable.

"e;You've got to realize, he'd never looked like that before in his life,"e; D's trainer Mark Jenkins told Spin in 2008. "e;To be somebody who was so introverted, and then, in a matter of three or four months, to be so ripped-- everything was happening so quickly."e; The video became a phenomenon and, soon enough, women were standing at the lip of D'Angelo's stage, telling him to take off his clothes. The attention was infuriating to him, and it sent the singer to a dark place-- all that work, all that time blown away by a few sweaty shots of his abdomen. Then again, while he was hesitant, he still shot the video. The unfortunate ordeal causes writer Jason King to conclude, in this reissue's new liner notes: "e;For all of Voodoo's claims to realness and authenticity, D'Angelo's imaging, while rooted in promise, had been in some ways a charade, an unsustainable performance of black masculinity gone awry."e;

"e;I got something I'm seeing; I got a vision,"e; D'Angelo told Time upon Voodoo's release. "e;This album is the second step to that vision."e; It seems safe to say the prophecy he was speaking about did not entail more than a decade of nothingness, or drug addiction, or shame. Now, it's difficult to say where this vision is leading. Playing an upbeat new funk track called "e;Sugar Daddy"e; at this year's BET Awards, he looked solid, and his voice sounded fantastic, but it was almost as interesting to watch the cutaway shots-- to see Nicki Minaj staring on, seemingly confused, or Kanye talking to someone during the performance, or Beyonce standing up, loving every second. (BET headlined the clip: "e;D'Angelo's Sexiest Performance Ever!"e;)

There's a big difference between a prodigious, smooth-skinned 26-year-old playing retro-styled music and a 38-year-old doing the same thing. The backwards-looking pose can calcify; by the time Prince was 38, he was well into his symbol phase. That said, D'Angelo is the quintessential old soul. And there's hope in the comebacks of fellow 90s refugees Maxwell and Badu, who both released some of their best work after long layoffs over the last few years. But D'Angelo's inactivity has only helped to inflate Voodoo's myth, though it doesn't need much help. It's frustrating to think about how someone so enamored with the past, who knew his heroes' failures so well, could be doomed to repeat them. It's almost as if he studied them too much, and the same spiritual power that fueled his greatest moment couldn't help but bring him down. Like that's how he thought it was supposed to go. In an interview between ?uestlove and D around the release of Voodoo, the drummer confronted the singer about his idols: "e;They all have one thing in common, they were all vanguards, but 98% of them crashed and burned."e; To which D'Angelo responded: "e;I think about that all the time."e;

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The Smashing Pumpkins: Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness

2013-02-09 20:30:00 (читать в оригинале)

Billy Corgan hasn't done a very good job speaking on his own behalf over the past decade, so let me feed him a line from the Greek philosopher Pittacus that would make a much better case for his legacy: "e;The measure of a man is what he does with power."e; In 1995, nearly every other band at Smashing Pumpkins' level was in some way turning its back on its audience: Pearl Jam had started their principled retreat from the spotlight; U2 and R.E.M. were deep within their stagiest, most ironic phases and making their least satisfying music to date; Rivers Cuomo was well on his way towards making Pinkerton; Metallica discovered nail polish; and, of course, Kurt Cobain gave up on life itself. On a much smaller level, even Corgan's eternal rival Steve Malkmus had just released Wowee Zowee, a record whose sloppy sprawl was taken by Rolling Stone as proof that "e;Pavement are simply afraid to succeed."e;

Given this mid-decade valley, it's understandable that the 2xCD Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness would be sneered at as self-indulgent. The Smashing Pumpkins hadn't made their appearance at Hullabalooza yet, so many were unaware the band had a sense of humor. Still, their reputation was played for laughs. But Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness turned out to be one of the most generous records of the decade. During a time when rock heroes were hard to come by, Smashing Pumpkins took it upon themselves to make a record that only teenagers could love and for many it was the only one they needed.

I suppose it's worth mentioning I was 15 when Mellon Collie came out and I would've told you at the time it was my favorite album ever made. Finally, I thought, here was our White Album, Physical Graffiti, or The Wall, but we could watch its legend being constructed in real time without all the received wisdom. It's true, a double album reeks of 70s-style excess that tries to edify its creators. It was meant as Smashing Pumpkins' monument to itself. But in the case of Mellon Collie, it was the only format that could contain the songwriting streak Corgan was going through at the time. Anything shorter would've done his fans a disservice.

This is not an exaggeration. Cull the 14 best tracks from the concurrently recorded The Aeroplane Flies High singles collection and you either have the fourth best Smashing Pumpkins album (behind the perpetually underrated Adore, ahead of Pisces Iscariot) or a strong third disc that would've made Mellon Collie the greatest triple-LP ever made. What becomes more obvious with time is that Mellon Collie, unlike its most common comparison The Wall, has no conceptual framework. There is no plot, almost no filler, and the organization of its two discs is iffy at best: The second song on the seemingly chronological first disc Dawn to Dusk is "e;Tonight, Tonight"e;, while disc two, Twilight to Starlight, contains all of the ugliest metal songs. So Mellon Collie is a Smashing Pumpkins record that just so happens to be 28 songs in length, stunning in both its stylistic range and overall excellence.

This is perhaps the only Smashing Pumpkins record where they acted like an actual band rather than Corgan and his resentful charges. It's hard to pinpoint where the influence of James Iha or D'Arcy came into play (not so with the phenomenal drumming of Jimmy Chamberlin), but with the oversight of producers Flood and Alan Moulder, Mellon Collie was developed through protracted jam sessions and personal interplay. Siamese Dream, for all of its symphonic grandeur, was a fairly standard rock album and a solitary one-- nearly all of the guitar and bass parts were rumored to have been performed by Corgan himself. Meanwhile, Mellon Collie indulges in styles more associated with hermetic artists-- ornate chamber-pop ("e;Cupid De Locke"e;), mumbly acoustic confessionals ("e;Stumbleine"e;), and synthesized nocturnes (mostly everything after "e;X.Y.U."e;). And it does so while feeling like the work of four people in a room. 

Mellon Collie's remarkable breadth is the best indication of Corgan's ability to let loose. You could pick five songs at random and still end up with a diverse batch of singles that would make a case for Smashing Pumpkins being the most stylistically malleable multi-platinum act of the 90s. Maybe it wouldn't sell as many copies, but picture an alternate universe where heavy rotation met the joyous, mechanized grind of "e;Love"e;, "e;In the Arms of Sleep"e;'s unabashed antiquated romanticism, the Prince-like electro-ballad "e;Beautiful"e;, "e;Muzzle"e;'s stadium-status affirmations, or the throttling metal of "e;Bodies"e;.

The ubiquity of the five songs that did become singles overshadows just how idiosyncratic and distinct they were in the scope of 1995. Has there been anything like "e;Tonight, Tonight"e; since? Orchestral strings typically signify weepy balladry or compositional pretension in rock music, not wonderful, lovestruck propulsion. While "e;Tonight, Tonight"e; is now inseparable from its Le Voyage dans la lune-inspired video, that the music existed without its guidance only stresses the Pumpkins' sonic creativity. "e;Thirty-Three"e; was the final and least heralded of the singles-- where on alt-rock radio was there room for a slowpoke, time-signature shifting country song with phased slide guitars and shuffling drum machines?

"e;Zero"e; and "e;Bullet With Butterfly Wings"e; are the ones that riled up the older folks and, yes, the lyrics are pissy and juvenile and fairly embarrassing. That said, they're far more interesting from a sonic perspective than they're often given credit for. They're the songs where Flood's digitized production fits better than the saturated, analog warmth Butch Vig lent to Siamese Dream. They're basically new wave performed as pop-metal.

And of course, there's "e;1979"e;, the one everybody can agree on. On a record that reveled in 70s prog and pomp without being restricted to it, it sounds futuristic. And while just as youth-obsessed as everything else here, it's one of the few times where high school sounds like something that can be remembered fondly. Corgan loves to stress how it was the last song to make the record, and while its chorus does have an effortless charge embodying the "e;urgency of now,"e; it's the only Mellon Collie song that functions best as nostalgia. That reading is no doubt abetted by another fantastic video, but while "e;1979"e; is an unimpeachable song, the rush to praise it as an outlier does its surroundings a tremendous disservice. While Mellon Collie is the realization of all Billy Corgan's ambitions, most of the criticisms surround the lyrics for not being as personal as those on the tortured Siamese Dream. It's this way by design. 

The terms "e;sad machines"e; and "e;teen machines"e; are interchangeably used during "e;Here Is No Why"e;, a pep talk to the outwardly sullen mopes who Corgan urges to break free of either and ascend like its heroic guitar solo. "e;Bullet With Butterfly Wings"e; is notorious for its chorus, but teen angst doesn't fight fair; you need some seriously heavy ammo to resist it. The mudslide of distortion that ushers in its bridge leads towards two minutes of the most viscerally exciting music that Smashing Pumpkins produced. Then immediately after, the mournful "e;To Forgive"e; devastates with a personal detail that gives Corgan credibility in all of this: "e;And I remember my birthdays/ Empty party afternoons."e; This is the kind of youthful, inexplicable emotional whiplash that can result in an immolating hatebomb called "e;Fuck You (An Ode to No One)"e; being followed by a giddy proclamation that "e;love solves everything."e; It's clearly not a mature way of dealing with life, but that's only a problem if you somehow believe Mellon Collie isn't meant as rock 'n' roll fantasy. When Corgan declares "e;I know that I was meant for this world"e; during "e;Muzzle"e;, it's your happy ending.

So, yes, most people who have developed a meaningful relationship with Mellon Collie did so in their youth. The question is whether you can get anything new from this in 2012. As with all of the Smashing Pumpkins reissues, Mellon Collie is giving: the Deluxe boxed set justifies its sticker shock by containing "e;re-imagined cover art, velvet-lined disc holder and decoupage kit for creating your own scenes from the Mellon Collie Universe,"e; which is everything you'd imagine and thensome. There are an extra 64 tracks and only a few of them appeared on The Aeroplane Flies High, though most of these inclusions are demos or alternate takes, the sort of thing that should only be listened to multiple times by people who are being paid to do so, i.e., music critics and Flood.

But there is a way of hearing the same album differently as you refract it through your own experiences. "e;Thru the Eyes of Ruby"e; is rumored to have contained 70 guitar tracks; it's a wedding vow punctuated by Corgan snarling "e;youth is wasted on the young."e; This isn't meant to negate the intent of the 90 minutes that preceded it, it's a reminder of how Mellon Collie can communicate different things to someone who's 30 as opposed to 15. Revisiting it can feel like leafing through a high school yearbook-- not necessarily your own, just somebody's. And there's solace in how, for all of the navel-gazing that went on, the ridiculousness of it all somehow escapes you. What you wore, how you spoke, what you felt not so much seeming normal as just the way it is. You look at each person, thinking that they might hope to achieve the self-actualization promised by "e;Muzzle"e;, to lose themselves in another person in the manner described by "e;Beautiful"e; or "e;In the Arms of Sleep"e;, or to embrace their own awkwardness as a rallying cry like "e;We Only Come Out at Night"e;. Those events were all right around the corner, as they are for just about anybody growing up, but when you're locked up in your room listening to Mellon Collie for hours on end, they seem as distant and fantastical as the album cover. When Corgan sings "e;believe in me"e; during "e;Tonight, Tonight"e;, you don't have much of a choice if you want to escape.  

I'd like to say "e;they don't make 'em like this anymore,"e; which is true if you want to talk about rock bands who make double-LPs that sell 10 million copies thanks in part to lavish videos that air constantly on MTV. They do make 'em like this, in spirit, albeit very rarely-- 2012 appears to be just as hostile as 1995 was towards embracing the life-altering possibilities of classic rock or pursuing actual populism. It's no wonder Corgan is so agitated about the state of rock music these days, since his critics won. But every now again, there will be something like M83's Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming and Japandroids' Celebration Rock-- that get there in their own way and express what the Pumpkins did on "e;Tonight, Tonight"e;, that "e;the impossible is possible tonight,"e; as in right now. They have little to do with Mellon Collie except that they sacrifice being cool to show a deep respect for the way teenagers interact with music. When the world is a vampire, you don't want history lessons or a list of influences, you want fucking magic. You don't want lifestyle music, you don't want Our Band Could Be Your Life. You want music that you can live inside. Damn right Smashing Pumpkins shot for the moon on Mellon Collie, but only because they wanted to give you the sun and the stars.

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Interpol: Turn on the Bright Lights: The Tenth Anniversary Edition

2013-02-09 20:30:00 (читать в оригинале)

On the surface, the story of Interpol's 2002 full-length debut Turn on the Bright Lights is almost annoyingly of its place and time: four guys meet in New York, start a band, make tightly-wound indie rock jams that sound great at your favorite mid-gentrification Williamsburg bar, sign to a renowned independent label, and the rest is history. But the early-aughts New York of Turn on the Bright Lights is not the young, vibrant, and impossibly cool place of cultural myth. It is a darker and more complicated place, fraught with disappointment and disconnection. It is a crushingly real place, rendered in such vivid emotional detail that it rings true even to those who have never set foot in the city. This stellar 10th Anniversary reissue documents the process by which a handful of pretty-good songs became a truly great album, making it painfully and unequivocally clear that Turn on the Bright Lights is the sum of its players, not its influences.

In retrospect, 2002 may have been the very year that we stopped talking about how music sounds, and started talking about what other music it sounds like. "e;Interpol sounds like Joy Division"e; was one of the first critical observations to turn into a full-fledged meme. In the intervening years, other bands have sounded a whole lot more like Joy Division, and the comparison now feels like just that: a comparison. While Joy Division could channel enormous amounts of energy through Ian Curtis's intense delivery, Interpol pulled off a real magic trick by constructing a framework complex and dynamic enough to bring singer Paul Banks' inscrutable deadpan to life. Banks's words can be downright laughable on paper, and are often sung as if WRITTEN OUT IN ALL CAPS WITH NO PUNCTUATION. But from this insistent, exaggerated blankness, the band coaxed a genuinely unnerving sense of alienation and melancholy. These songs are packed with a staggering amount of rhythmic and melodic tension, sometimes amplifying minuscule expressive nuances in Banks's voice, and sometimes drawing attention to their disconcerting absence. 

Each individual member of the band has his own role in piecing this puzzle together. Drummer Sam Fogarino is the perfect anchor for Carlos Dengler's busy, melodic bass lines, keeping the rhythm section forceful and grounded. Guitarist Daniel Kessler is the album's unsung hero, expanding the band's dynamic range by oscillating between wide, monolithic chords and narrow, winding leads. The album's second single "e;NYC"e; achieves two unlikely successes pioneered by Matador labelmates Chavez: structuring a ballad around loud, steady drums and withholding all bass guitar until the chorus. "e;The New"e; slips a disco bass line under a morass of swirling, detuned guitars. There are a lot of things about Turn on the Bright Lights that should not work, and would not work were they not so carefully thought through and artfully implemented.

Three batches of demo recordings are far and away the most interesting bonus materials on this extensive reissue, as they show just how close the album came to not working. The first three-song demo, recorded in 1998 and featuring album cuts "e;PDA"e; and "e;Roland"e;, comes off as an unremarkable practice tape by a band with lots of good ideas but insufficient energy and chemistry to pull them all together. The second three-song demo, recorded at Brooklyn's Rare Book Room in 1999, is more worked over with decidedly mixed results; there are some jarringly tacky too-loud keyboards here, and a sing-spoken interlude that can't help but bring to mind Crazy Town's "e;Butterfly"e;. Somewhat ironically, it is only the third and final four-song demo, recorded at the band's practice space, where Interpol stops sounding like four guys in a practice space tentatively running through busy rock songs. Much of this can be credited to Fogarino, who joined the band between their second and third tapes and brought with him a rhythmic confidence and swagger that provided the crucial missing piece of Interpol's singular sound.

This progression of demo recordings documents not only the evolution of the band's playing, but also their increasing attention to texture and ambiance. As the group grew more confident, the gritty sonics of their demos became less incidental to the songs they were making, and more a part of the songs themselves. Producer Peter Katis did an amazing job of preserving and amplifying this rawness, and the band themselves crucially revisited many elements of their demos to better suit their evolving capabilities. The slight changes that Fogarino made to the kick pattern at the beginning of "e;PDA"e; completely make the song's signature introduction, taking it from "e;oh, there's a drumbeat"e; to "e;OH, there's THAT drumbeat."e; Banks gave his lyrics a thorough tune-up before the recording the album, excising his most rhythmically formless lines and shoring up the critical interplay between his voice and the rest of the band. 

The extensive liner notes here are as much about the city in which Interpol operated as the band itself. It's certainly interesting, especially for those who are up on their New York City indie rock landmarks. And while the photographs included here do a good job of documenting the physical locations where this album was born, the album itself conveys the setting in a deeper way. Suggesting that this album is simply a product of its time and place is no less naive than suggesting that anyone who has ever been in love could easily write, arrange and record an amazing love song. There were a lot of good bands in New York in 2002, but only one band made this record.

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Massive Attack: Blue Lines

2013-02-09 20:30:00 (читать в оригинале)

Listening to Massive Attack's debut album, Blue Lines, 21 years after its initial release is like reading an old William Gibson novel that describes the then-near future, which is now the present, with unsettling precision. Nearly every song offers a sound currently in use in music's taste-making leading edge. Robert "e;3D"e; Del Naja's chopped-up vocals on the album-opening "e;Safe From Harm"e; sound freakishly like the chorus to Kanye et al's "e;Mercy"e; (even if Ye actually lifted it from DJ Screw, who was developing his idiosyncratic style 5,000 miles away from Bristol, England at almost the exact same time Massive were recording Blue Lines). The chunky, palm-muted guitar riff on "e;One Love"e; is almost identical to the one on "e;Ahh Shit"e; from Jeremih's brilliant Late Nights with Jeremih. The subzero space-reggae beat to "e;Five Man Army"e; could easily be a highlight of any number of fashionable rappers' mixtapes. 

When Del Najas, Grant "e;Daddy G"e; Marshall, and Andrew "e;Mushroom"e; Vowles were recording Blue Lines, the sub-genre called trip-hop hadn't been invented. But at its heart, Blue Lines is a hip-hop record, although one marbled with streaks of soul, dub, dance music, and psychedelic rock. The fact that its primary audience in America was made up largely of ravers and alternative rockers doesn't change that. And their accomplishments stand out even further next to what was happening elsewhere in the hip-hop world at the time. Straight Outta Compton, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, Paul's Boutique, and 3 Feet High and Rising were all still just a few of years old in 1991, and so was the idea of beatmaking as an art unto itself. The blocky rhythms and minimal arrangements that defined rap's identity in the 1980s were just starting to be replaced by the deep, organic textures that would define its 90s, and Blue Lines was at the forefront. 

When Massive Attack first arrived, hip-hop in the UK was still figuring itself out. For years the scene there, such as it was, focused mainly on reproducing trends that had already fallen out of fashion by the time they made it across the Atlantic. That lack of identity was probably an asset for Massive Attack. They didn't have to compete against their contemporaries to see who could sample which Jimmy Castor Bunch break first, or worry about conforming to any outsider whose preconceptions about hip-hop authenticity might not include prog-rock samples or a lush chill-out anthem like "e;Unfinished Sympathy"e;. Another asset was Neneh Cherry, whose Raw Like Sushi, which Del Naja and Vowles worked on, provided a genre-bending inspiration for Blue Lines, as well as a bankroll to record it. (Cherry even paid the group a salary and let them turn her kid's bedroom into an impromptu studio.)

In fact, those Raw Like Sushi credits (Vowles' for programming, Del Naja's for co-writing "e;Manchild"e;) were the only real music-industry bona fides any of the principal contributors to Blue Lines had going into it, aside from vocalists Shara Nelson and roots reggae veteran Horace Andy. But somehow the group realized a remarkable and seamless sonic identity. That's clear from the arresting opener "e;Safe From Harm"e;, which spins an aggressive drumbeat, Del Naja's rap, Nelson's soulful vocals, and a mist of sustained minor-key synths around an intimidatingly muscular bass loop. From that moment, every major part of the Massive Attack profile is already present, from the collaging of genres to the spacious, nocturnal sonic environment to the heavy dose of paranoia that permeates it all.

They spend the rest of the album exploring variations on these themes. "e;One Love,"e; with Andy on vocals, has a digital dancehall feel, a creepy-funky electric piano riff, and a scratched sample of a blaring horn section that predates Pharoahe Monch's "e;Simon Says"e; by almost a decade. "e;Daydreaming"e;, with its scratchy breakbeat drums, is more directly hip-hop than most of the rest of the album, but the layers of atmospheric synthesizers and Tricky's felonious near-whisper make it clear that Massive Attack was up to something entirely different from what every other rap producer at the time was doing.

Blue Lines brought producers around to its unique vision. By the time Massive released Protection three years later, the group's renegade approach had been copied enough times to become a full-on movement. They'd go on to produce their masterpiece, Mezzanine, a couple of years after, but by then the project had already started to splinter. Tricky split from the collective after Protection to follow his own solo vision, while the core trio behind it would eventually burn out acrimoniously, with Vowles and then Marshall leaving Del Naja to produce increasingly less rewarding music under the group's name. Meanwhile, trip-hop in general had its edges polished off by genteel musicians who transformed it into soundtracks for fashionable hotel lobbies.

Still, that doesn't change the fact that Blue Lines was a startling record when it came out, and it remains one now. For this reissue it received a new mix and a new mastering job straight from the original tapes. It's available as a CD, in digital form in standard and high fidelity formats, and as a set of two LPs and a DVD of high resolution audio files. There aren't any bonus tracks, and aside from a reproduction promo poster in the vinyl edition there aren't any add-ons either. Frankly they'd just be a distraction from the underlying theme that becomes clear once you get absorbed into the music, which is that Blue Lines is still Blue Lines, and most of the world is still trying to catch up to it.