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Bikini Kill: Bikini Kill EP

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

When you put the needle to Bikini Kill's newly reissued self-titled EP, the first thing you hear is static, followed by frontwoman Kathleen Hanna asking, "e;Is that supposed to be doing that?"e; It was the summer of 1991 in Washington, D.C., and the four members of the Olympia-based punk band were in a professional recording studio for the first time. The EP's de facto producer, straight edge monastic and Minor Threat/Fugazi frontman Ian MacKaye, recalls in its liner notes when one member glanced at the mixing board and marveled, "e;It's like Star Trek!"e; In the middle of a tour riddled with heckling and violent threats, Bikini Kill were nervous, road-wearied and vulnerable, all of which comes through on the EP. "e;It [was] a way to demystify the myth of perfection that a more polished product perpetuates,"e; drummer Tobi Vail wrote earlier this year, reflecting on the EP's aesthetic, "e;It's also a way to say, 'Hey! You at home! You can make a record too!'"e; Bikini Kill is purposefully, defiantly, invitingly imperfect. This is why some people thought it was the scourge of the underground ("e;It was sad to see a woman so desperately confused,"e; one music critic wrote of Hanna at the time); it's also why some other people have its lyrics tattooed on their skin. And it's precisely why, two decades later, it still sounds like a revolution.

In 2012, Bikini Kill's legend is more widely known than their music. The spirit of riot grrrl is manifesting not so much in bands but in extra-musical phenomena influenced by the movement's ideas: from the rebel girls running the feminist teen webzine Rookie to the collective of Russian revolutionaries who plucked two pieces of the Bikini Kill lexicon and dubbed themselves Pussy Riot. So the release of the first EP on Bikini Kill Records (an imprint formed to reissue the band's discography) feels like an auspiciously timed opportunity to remember something that's come to feel, oddly, almost secondary to their story: Bikini Kill wrote great punk songs. Tobi Vail's drumming managed to sound both wildly anarchic and assertively tight; Kathi Wilcox's bass gave even their hardest songs an elastic, low-end pogo-ability. Billy Karren pivoted between sludge-coated surf riffs and piercing dissonance. And then there was Hanna, sassing, seething, and spitting the band's cumulative passion like hot bile.

Commemorative reissues of classic punk records present certain ideological challenges. Should a band that sticks a $200+ price tag on a box set of previously released material be banned from speaking about the evils of capitalism? Can liner notes explain why a certain album is great without discouraging the listener from coming to his or her own conclusions? Is it possible to glorify the past without shortchanging the future? Well, aging punks, take note: the reissue of Bikini Kill elegantly avoids these pitfalls. It provides context (a zine-style insert featuring photos, collages, and recent interviews with MacKaye and Bratmobile's Molly Neuman) but doesn't stifle you with nostalgia. It pokes fun at the scenester's eternal refrain of "e;I was there"e; (one interview's gently mocking subtitle: "e;Bikini Kill, You Really Had To Be There…"e;), and it's ticketed at the reasonable price of just 2 and 2/5 Fugazi shows (not adjusted for inflation). It's an uncommonly inviting reissue, letting the songs sound not like museum pieces but living documents. Somehow, this music still sounds throbbingly present tense, which levels the exclusiveness of nostalgia.

Bikini Kill touches on themes they'd continue to explore over the next half-decade. "e;Liar"e; draws a direct line between capitalism and forms of social oppression ("e;You profit from the lie"e;), "e;Carnival"e; extols the virtues and radical possibilities of seemingly trashy pleasures ("e;It's by the Lacey Mall! That's where you'll find me, yeah!"e;), and the opening manifesto "e;Double Dare Ya"e; manages to cram everything Bikini Kill stood for into two minutes and 41 gloriously abrasive seconds. "e;Hey girlfriennnnnnd,"e; Hanna begins, "e;I gotta proposition, goes something like this! Dare you to do what you want! Dare you to be who you will! Dare you to cry right out loud!"e; It's one of their definitive songs: an explosive collision between didacticism and dynamism, a Bill of Rights you can mosh to.

And as Hanna treats each song like a cross between a political speech and a vaudeville act, her performance on this EP is nothing short of legendary. She can roar as powerfully as she can belt and over the course of the EP she adopts a wide range of personas: She's Barbie, she's Biafra, she's a drill sergeant and a (not-so) conscientious objector, she's artist and (on the incendiary and dryly funny "e;Thurston Hearts the Who"e;) critic, victim and abuser; she's your dad, your mom, your little brother, and your big sister all trapped (or liberated) inside one body.

The elasticity of voice in a Bikini Kill song is visceral, cathartic, and occasionally even comic. But it's also inherently political. Shortly before forming Bikini Kill, Hanna was working at a domestic violence shelter where she'd founded a discussion group for teen girls. This experience had a huge impact on her songwriting. In Sara Marcus's riot grrrl history Girls to the Front, she says that these were the girls she was initially writing for, screaming out other women's pent-up silence. So the vocal theatrics Hanna delivers on the earliest Bikini Kill songs are sometimes declarations of resistance (during the chorus of the blistering "e;Suck My Left One"e;, she voices a girl hurling the title phrase at her sexually abusive father like she's re-enacting a scene from The Exorcist), but they also find her exercising her freedom, acting on the challenge she issues in the first song: Dare you to be who you will!

"e;Women make natural anarchists and revolutionaries because they've always been second-class citizens, having to claw their way out,"e; Kim Gordon said in a recent interview. She was reflecting on the trial of Pussy Riot, who cite Bikini Kill as a major influence, but she might as well have been summing up the spirit of Bikini Kill's earliest recordings. They'd go on to make better records (The Singles remains Bikini Kill's defining document), but none invite the listener to re-think how records are measured quite like their insurrectionary first EP. So if Pussy Riot prove the continued relevance of Bikini Kill's ideology, this EP does the same for something that deserves just as much credit: their music. In its grooves, still, you hear the revolution.

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The Velvet Underground: The Velvet Underground & Nico

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

Forty-five years after its release, everything that was supposed to have made The Velvet Underground & Nico special has been nearly eradicated by its own legend. The most dangerous record of 1967 has been absorbed into the establishment rock canon; the paradoxical fame it earned from its hilariously terrible sales figures in its early years has been negated by reissue after deluxe-edition reissue; and its transgressive kinky-druggy menace has been smothered by the embrace of millions of overly precious Wes Anderson acolytes. Is a limited-edition "e;super deluxe"e; six-disc box set really going to help restore any of the ineffable outsider cool that it's lost over the years? Actually, yeah, it is.

The new super deluxe edition of TVU&N consists of a new stereo remaster of the album, a new mono remaster (both taken from the original tapes), a disc of alternate versions and mixes of the songs, a disc of practice sessions recorded at Andy Warhol's Factory, a live recording from around the time the album was recorded (spread across two discs), and a remaster of Nico's solo debut, Chelsea Girl, which the Velvets performed on. So aside from the 45 minutes of Chelsea Girl, you've got five hours of essentially the same 11 songs presented over and over in various levels of audio fidelity. On paper it may seem indulgent, but listening through the entire massive collection of material results in a sharper-edged portrait of the group than there's ever been, with all of the danger filled back in.

First there's the album proper. The remastering process was handled by Bill Levenson, who's been working on Velvets material since the mid-80s rarities collections VU and Another VU, and who oversaw the 1995 Peel Slowly and See box set that collected all of the group's studio recordings. Levenson knows the material well enough to keep from making it sound too clean. The amp hiss, tape saturation, and overall grit that made TVU&N leap out from the scores of mannered psychedelic rock albums released around the same time is still firmly in place; it's just that the grit sounds better. 

The stereo mix breathes in a way that the album never has before. As incredible as it sounds, though, the mono version on the second disc provides the set's first moment of serious revelation: It doesn't breathe at all. In fact, with every throbbing bassline and squalling viola set dead center, the mix is suffocating. The transformative effect it has on the songs is unreal. Lou-fronted rockers like "e;I'm Waiting for the Man"e; and "e;Run, Run, Run"e; leap out from the speakers with an aggression that other versions lack. "e;All Tomorrow's Parties"e;, "e;Venus in Furs"e;, and "e;The Black Angel's Death Song"e; are oppressively noisy, but pleasurably so. It's a sensual sensory overload that underlines just how successful the group was at the music-as-S&M game it was playing with listeners.

Disc four is even rawer, and removes the last bit of remaining studio refinement to expose the Velvets' primal proto-punk heart. The first half is a reproduction of the one-of-a-kind acetate discovered by a record collector in a New York City street sale in 2002-- and sold on eBay a few years later for over $25,000-- that contained the first version of the album that the band delivered to Columbia Records (and which the label rejected). Some of the tracks would end up on the version of album that Verve issued after taming them down during another round of mixing; others were re-recorded entirely. Compared to the familiar finished version the material sounds unhinged. Moe Tucker's rudimentary drumming on an alternate version of "e;Heroin"e; is primitive to the extreme, while the original mix of "e;Femme Fatale"e; place a bizarre falsetto backing vocal from one of the male members high enough in the mix to put a listener on edge. And since the audio's taken straight from a beat-up acetate the whole fantastic mess is covered in crackles and hiss.

The rest of disc four is pulled from a taped rehearsal at the Factory a few months before the Scepter sessions, previously available in bootleg form. Parts of it are more interesting than listenable, like the band dicking around while Lou Reed patiently attempts to explain the lyrics to "e;Venus in Furs"e; to Nico. Other parts are jaw-dropping, like a version of "e;Run, Run, Run"e; that quickly turns itself inside out and transforms into a frenetic, semi-improvised Bo Diddley impression that's denser and heavier than almost anything else in the Velvets' catalog and can demand repeat plays back to back.

What makes moments like this, and the set in general, so compelling is that you get a picture of the group as a living, breathing band, separate from the performances that would be frozen in time and started on a long march to iconhood a little over a year later. For a minute-- or sometimes for 12-- you get a sense of what they really were, which is just another garage outfit hopped up on pills and playing rock'n'roll music so hard that it starts flinging off parts. The difference is that their garage was the Factory, and that they were willing to ride it far closer to fully falling apart than anyone else.

That's the image that sustains the final two discs, which together comprise a bootlegged live set from Columbus, Ohio's Valleydale Ballroom in November, 1966, four months or so before TVU&N was released. While someone-- maybe a devoted fan of the Factory scene-- yells out Nico's name when she introduces "e;All Tomorrow's Parties"e;, you get the very clear idea that very few people in the crowd know who the Velvet Underground are, or like what they're playing. You can hear maybe two or three members of the audience clap after the opener "e;Melody Laughter"e;, a 28-minute jam that's mostly noisy drone with a brief pop coda at the end. After a feedback-filled scorched-earth rendition of "e;Black Angel's Death Song"e;, Lou Reed snarls at the audience, "e;If it's too loud for you, you move back."e; 

A few months later, right after the release of The Velvet Underground & Nico, the group would convene to record parts of Nico's Chelsea Girl, which is a fine baroque folk-pop album, but nothing approaching that first record. The three other LPs the group recorded before Reed left the band almost four years after that show were great in their own rights, but paled in comparison to TVU&N. Listening to the live recording and hearing the silences between the songs, though, it's easy to imagine a roomful of people being pummeled by this strange, intimidating noise, and seeking safety in the back of the room, completely unaware that the band they're being assaulted by was at that moment (and for not much longer), the best in the world.

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William Basinski: The Disintegration Loops

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

In the early part of the last decade, William Basinski's The Disintegration Loops was the sort of music you passed around. Once you heard it, you wanted to tell somebody about it. There was obviously the sound itself, so hypnotic that it was immediately understood as a classic of ambient music. But there was more to it. 

The Disintegration Loops arrived with a story that was beautiful and heartbreaking in its own right. It's been repeated so many times that Basinski himself has grown weary of telling it: in the 1980s, he constructed a series of tape loops consisting of processed snatches of music captured from an easy listening station. When going through his archives in 2001, he decided to digitize the decades-old loops to preserve them. He started a loop on his digital recorder and left it running, and when he returned a short while later, he noticed that the tape was gradually crumbling as it played. The fine coating of magnetized metal was slivering off, and the music was decaying slightly with each pass through the spindle. Astonished, Basinski repeated the process with other loops and obtained similar results. 

Shortly after Basinski digitized his loops came the September 11 attacks. From the roof of his space in Brooklyn, he put a video camera on a tripod and captured the final hour of daylight on that day, pointing the camera at a smoldering lower Manhattan. On September 12, he cued the first of his newly created sound pieces and listened to it while watching the footage. The impossibly melancholy music, the gradual fade, and the images of ruin: the project suddenly had a sense of purpose. It would become an elegy for that day. Stills from the video were used for the covers of the CDs, and eventually, the hour-long visual with sound was released on DVD. The video is included with the four volumes of the music and two new live pieces in this lavish and impressive box set. 

The beauty of the music is not easy to explain. There are plenty of pieces that work in a similar way-- the beat-less drone pieces of Gas, a few of Gavin Bryars' most heartrending works, the experiments in memory by the Caretaker-- but it's hard to quantify this music's special pull. Each of the nine pieces on the original four volumes has its own character, yet all are related and function like variations on a theme. "e;Dlp 1.1"e;, marked by a plaintive horn sound, has the air of a dejected fanfare, a meditation on death and loss (it was this loop that was paired with the 9/11 video). "e;Dlp 2.1"e; is more of a metallic drone, filled with anxiety and encroaching dread. The source material on "e;Dlp 4"e; sounds like a soundtrack to an educational film, not terribly far from the warble of an early Boards of Canada interlude, but the chaotic ripples of distortion make it seem even more uneasy. "e;Dlp 3"e; feels like a snippet from an impossibly lush and shimmering Debussy piece stretched to infinity and then lowered into an acid bath. The moods and textures of these pieces are all different but they become more powerful in relation to one another.

There's an irony to the four volumes of The Disintegration Loops appearing here on vinyl for the first time, since the defiantly analog origin of the music is central to its appeal. Even 10 years later, the internet is generally a poor space for contemplating the end; there are few digital metaphors for the process of dying. With Basinski's pieces, the metaphor couldn't be more simple. This music reminds us of how everything eventually falls apart and returns to dust. We're listening to music as it disappears in front of us. Hearing the music on vinyl, with its inherent imperfections, and imagining the records changing over time, lends another layer of poignancy. 

Given the central idea behind the project, the length of the individual tracks is important. The first, "e;Dlp 1.1"e;, is just over an hour long, and its source only lasts a few seconds. To listen to the entire piece is to hear that segment many hundreds of times, and the progression from "e;music"e; to silence happens incrementally with each play. But the loops don't fade linearly. It often takes a few minutes for the obvious cracks to appear, and then the tumble toward the void speeds up at the end, presumably because the cumulative runs against the tape head had loosened even the bits of tape that were still hanging on. The process is so gradual it focuses attention in unique way; I find myself examining each new cycle to discover what is left and what has vanished. 

It's possible to use this music in the quintessential ambient sense, allowing it to play in the background while doing something else. The sound is uniform and drone-like, so you can adjust the volume and not worry about it intruding. But there is something uncanny about the emotion embedded in this music. It never feels neutral, so it's hard for me to just have it playing in the background. Part of that is what I know of how it was made, and part of that is the nature of the loops themselves. Basinski has a rare feel for mood and texture. The sounds on their own are haunting, and Basinski has a wonderful ear for how a loop can work, how to capture these bits of incidental music in a place where there's just a hint of tension that is never released. 

One unexpected twist in The Disintegration Loops story is that some of the work was later performed. New music ensembles have charted the progression and decay of the pieces and scored them for a live setting, and recordings from two shows are included in this box set. (One of the performances is by the ensemble Alter Ego, who partnered with Gavin Bryars and Philip Jeck in 2007 to record a new version of Bryars' "e;The Sinking of the Titanic"e;. The presence of Alter Ego reinforces the thematic and emotional connection between the two pieces.)

I was skeptical of these live versions at first, but over time they made more sense. They bring a different quality to the experience and offer a subtle twist. The key to live recordings lies in the rests. Little by little, the players have to insert a bit more silence into the piece and hold that silence as they cycle through the same phrase. And there's something especially tense and uneasy about hearing this happen in a moment with live performers. It also makes it difficult for the audience to know exactly when the piece has ended, and when it finally does, they explode with applause and, presumably, relief. 

I've owned many box sets and this is possibly the most gorgeous and substantial one I've ever seen. There are CD and vinyl versions of all the music; the vinyl is heavy, and the pressings are very well done. There's a book that has liner notes from Antony Hegarty, David Tibet, Basinski himself, and others. But most of the book consists of blown-up frames from the video piece. It's almost like a flip book, as each new shot brings us a little closer to darkness. For me, it functions like a more tolerable version of the video piece, which, even after all this time, I still have trouble watching. I respect it and understand that it might work very differently for someone who was there, but it's still difficult for me to watch footage of burning Manhattan in an "e;art"e; context. 

It's been said that box sets are tombstones, but this one feels like a living and breathing thing. And there's an irony in that too. The obvious observation about The Disintegration Loops is that it's about death, but of course, life gives death meaning. A couple of days ago I was listening to "e;Dlp 4"e; while riding the subway to work. For the track's early half, I was gripped by the sublime beauty of the repeating music and I was lost in my own world completely. But then as it started to break apart and silence took over I started to become aware of what was around me. I could hear the engines, the rattle of the tracks, and the voices of people in the subway car. The music had me thinking about the biggest questions-- why we are here and how we exist and what it all means. And then as the last crackle faded and the music was no more, I took in my surroundings and looked around at the faces and I was right there with everybody and we were alive. 

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The Weeknd: Trilogy

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

If you checked out completely in 2011, Trilogy has all the makings of a blockbuster: 22-year old Toronto native Abel Tefsaye along with producers Illangelo and Doc McKinney developed a state-of-the-art R&B template and scored several radio hits; they're associates of megastar Drake, and have played sold-out club shows and rapturously received festival appearances. But there's one catch: If you weren't checked out completely during 2011, you've already heard the vast majority of Trilogy, for free. So it's understandable if you're wondering why this set, which collects the Weeknd's three 2011 mixtapes in one package and adds three additional songs, exists in the first place. But presentation matters to the Weeknd. This is evident in the project's early anonymity, the unified typography, the striking photographs, the ambitious videos and, most important, the fact that Tesfaye called his three releases of 2011 a trilogy. It's not unprecedented for someone to put out three albums in a year, but Trilogy suggests an ambitious and rigorously planned Work of Art.

While the previously available versions of House of Balloons, Thursday, and Echoes of Silence already felt definitive, a three-hour immersion provides a new way in, assuming you are willing to take it as a single piece. Which isn't easy: in spite of Tesfaye's diaphanous voice and the lush production, these are heavy records, with tempos that slow to a codeine drip for five minutes or more. But Trilogy as a whole sets up a narrative that was previously only implied. 

House of Balloons is the "e;fun"e; part of the story, though that's a relative term. It has the only Weeknd songs you might play at a celebration, and the only point where the illicit behavior feels alluring. On House, the Weeknd introduce an aesthetic that, over the course of the rest of the three tapes, gradually evolves into something deeper and less based in traditional songcraft. It's a continuation of the purple-tinted R&B and hip-hop hybrid forged by The-Dream and Drake, with eye-of-the-quiet storm assurance of Sade and Aaliyah and industrial and trip-hop touches that range from Nine Inch Nails to Tricky. But the Weeknd show a flair for melody that allows every richly atmospheric song on House to stand on its own, boasting strong (and sometimes borrowed) hooks that embrace repetition without feeling manipulative. The cyclical choruses of "e;What You Need"e;, "e;The Morning"e;, and "e;High For This"e; in particular are both immediately striking and subtly ingratiating, overtures to pop radio that operate outside of it.

Those borrowed hooks mean that House of Balloons is the part of Trilogy most affected by the remaster. If you can't catch how the guitars hit a little harder and the drums have a bit more pop on "e;High For This"e;, you'll definitely notice how the sample from Aaliyah's "e;Rock the Boat"e; has been wiped from "e;What You Need"e;. If I had to choose, I prefer the original House of Balloons for its spontaneity, but it's kind of like familiarizing yourself with your partner after they get a new haircut; it's just different for a while, and if you want, you can always go back. 

Thursday is exactly the kind of "e;difficult"e; second record you'd expect from the Weeknd had they disappeared for two years and holed up in the studio as a reaction to House's success. But it came just a few months after. It's more ambitious in its way, incorporating influences far from the R&B mainstream and generally just sounding like it has something to prove. 

The title is a loaded metaphor; Thursday is a day for the most dedicated partiers, the one that separates a lost weekend from a week full of blackouts. Accordingly, the album is an hour-long exploration of people acknowledging a point of no return. What had been seductive has become menacing. Outside of Drake's guest verse on "e;The Zone"e;, there's not much indication that the songs take place in a club of any sort. The pleasure on House of Balloons felt consensual; here, it feels codependent. 

Echoes of Silence benefits considerably from the Trilogy context and now seems on equal footing with House of Balloons and Thursday. As Juicy J helpfully reminds us out of nowhere at the end of "e;Same Old Song"e;, Echoes was released near Christmas, a refractory period between the publication of year-end lists and the turn of the calendar. It's easy to overlook new music that drops at that point, especially in this case, where the lack of immediate hooks suggests that it could have been a rush job. 

But get familiar with Echoes' aims and you can hear its value. For one, the lyrical and thematic callbacks make clear that Echoes was meant to interact with what preceded it, to serve as an epilogue and appendix in addition to a denouement. More importantly, it's easier to tune into the final third's resounding depression after having been tenderized by the preceding two hours. It's a morning-after record for a night that never ended, where people have to go into their day shift with no sleep, where club stars still live with parents and the parents find drugs in the laundry. And it's where people who only hours before were perfectly fine to snort their life away simply cannot fucking stand to be around each other for another minute.

But the arresting music redeems that potentially alienating emotional view. "e;Montreal"e; boasts a frigid and concise hurt as well as a pop sensibility that went missing from the previous half hour, "e;Outside"e; incorporates intriguing Eastern overtones, and "e;The Fall"e; integrates Clams Casino's brand of beautifully wasted hip-hop, which ascended in parallel to the Weeknd throughout 2011. 

On House's "e;The Party and the After Party,"e; Tefsaye sings, "e;They don't want my love/ They just want my potential."e; In the context of Trilogy's progression, it's the first crack in his callous exterior, revealing a lifelong studio nerd with possibly years worth of grudges ("e;I don't play/ Unless it's keys and I play all day,"e; he claims on "e;Loft Music"e;). He makes repeated mentions of "e;potential,"e; and being "e;next,"e; fixating on those particular words like he's holding onto something a girl told him in 7th grade. If you turn your ear right, Trilogy is the most in-depth exploration of male sexual neuroses this side of Pinkerton.

"e;You never thought I'd go this far,"e; Tesfaye sings on "e;Same Old Song"e;. That line could be a reference to marathon drug use or the progressive demoralization of his narrator, which bottoms out amidst the pall of gang rape coursing through the very uncomfortable "e;Initiation"e;. The inclusion of Michael Jackson's venomous "e;Dirty Diana"e; on Echoes (renamed "e;D.D."e;) is perfect in this context, retaining the original's deplorable depiction of predatory groupies as the feminine norm. Tesfaye's narrator celebrates his own irresistibility and embraces the poisonous justifications of victimhood.

Just as perfect is the closing title track, which finds Tesfaye alone in a quiet room, letting the past reverberate, hitting bottom because he simply stops digging. It's the point where the Weeknd's 2011 stops and it's a perfect way to end things. At least it was; on Trilogy, it's followed by "e;Till Dawn (Here Comes The Sun)"e;. Like all of the new songs, it's strong enough on its own but arbitrary in terms of sequencing and has only minimal relation to the LP it was included on.

This is some of the best music of the young decade; judging by its already pervasive influence, it's safe to say Trilogy (or at least House of Balloons) will be one of those records that will be viewed as a turning point when we look at the 2010s as a whole. Some of it's up to demographics. Artists of Tesfaye's age had formative years where Timbaland, the Neptunes, Missy Elliott, D'Angelo, and Aaliyah were at the peak of their powers. And given the "e;new rock revolution"e; early in the 2000's, which created nothing new at all, it stands to reason that many who came of age in that era don't hear rock as a progressive form. You can sense the shift when talking to new bands. And of course, for those who have some indie rock inclinations, Beach House and Siouxsie samples don't hurt. 

Ultimately, the Weeknd's music creates a world. In it, people acknowledge their humanity as expressed by their desires to fuck, to get high, to resent one another, to hurt, to not care about tomorrow. That's a lot for a single artist to take on. "e;You'll wanna be high for this,"e; Tesfaye memorably sings within the first minute. Trilogy's triumph is in how it makes its three hours feel necessary to fully embrace it all, to acknowledge its existence inside ourselves and to vicariously live through it as art.

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Fleetwood Mac: Rumours

2013-02-09 20:29:00 (читать в оригинале)

Fleetwood Mac's Rumours would never be just an album. Upon its release in 1977, it became the fastest-selling LP of all time, moving 800,000 copies per week at its height, and its success made Fleetwood Mac a cultural phenomenon. The million-dollar record that took a year and untold grams to complete became a totem of 1970s excess, rock'n'roll at its most gloriously indulgent. It was also a bellwether of glimmering Californian possibility, the permissiveness and entitlement of the 70s done up in heavy harmonies. By the time it was made, the personal freedoms endowed by the social upheaval of the 60s had unspooled into unfettered hedonism. As such, it plays like a reaping: a finely polished post-hippie fallout, unaware that the twilight hour of the free love era was fixing and there would be no going back. In 1976, there was no knowledge of AIDS, Reagan had just left the governor's manse, and people still thought of cocaine as non-addictive and strictly recreational. Rumours is a product of that moment and it serves as a yardstick by which we measure just how 70s the 70s were. 

And then there's the album's influence. Though it was seen as punk's very inverse, Rumours has enjoyed a long trickle-down of influence starting from the alt-rock-era embrace via Billy Corgan and Courtney Love to the harmonies and choogling of Bonnie "e;Prince"e; Billy and the earthier end of Beach House. Rumours set a template for pop with a gleaming surface that has something complicated, desperate, and dark resonating underneath. 

Setting aside the weight of history, listening to Rumours is an easy pleasure. Records with singles that never go away tend to evoke nostalgia for the time when the music soundtracked your life; in this case, you could've never owned a copy of it and still know almost every song. When you make an album this big, your craft is, by default, accessibility. But this wasn't generic pabulum. It was personal. Anyone could find a piece of themselves within these songs of love and loss.

Two years prior to recording Rumours, though, Fleetwood Mac was approximately nowhere. In order to re-establish the group's flagging stateside reputation, in early 1974 Fleetwood Mac's drummer and band patriarch, Mick Fleetwood, keyboardist/singer Christine McVie, and her husband, bassist John McVie, moved from England to Los Angeles. The quartet was then helmed by their fifth and least-dazzling guitarist, the American Bob Welch. Not long after the band's British faction had relocated, Welch quit the band. Around the same time Mick Fleetwood was introduced to the work of local duo, Buckingham Nicks, who'd just been dropped by Polydor. The drummer was enchanted by Lindsey Buckingham's guitar work and Nicks' complete package, and when Welch quit, he offered them a spot in the band outright. 

The group, essentially a new band under an old name, quickly cut 1975's self-titled Fleetwood Mac, an assemblage of Christine McVie's songs and tracks Buckingham and Nicks had intended for their second album, including the eventual smash "e;Rhiannon"e;. It was a huge seller in its own right and they were now a priority act given considerable resources. But by the time they booked two months at Record Plant in Sausalito to record the follow-up, the band's personal bonds were frayed, there was serious resentment and constant drama. Nicks had just broken up with Buckingham after six years of domestic and creative partnership. Fleetwood's wife was divorcing him, and the McVies were separated and no longer speaking.

While Fleetwood Mac was a bit of a mash-up of existing work, Lindsey Buckingham effectively commandeered the band for Rumours, giving their sound a radio-ready facelift. He redirected John McVie and Fleetwood's playing from blues past towards the pop now. Fleetwood Mac wanted hits and gave the wheel to Buckingham, a deft craftsman with a vision for what the album had to become.

He opens the record with the libidinous "e;Second Hand News"e;, inspired by the redemption Buckingham was finding in new women, post-Stevie. It was the album's first single and also perhaps the most euphoric ode to rebound chicks ever written. Buckingham's "e;bow-bow-bow-doot-doo-diddley-doot"e; is corny, but it works along with the percussion track (Buckingham played the seat of an office chair after Fleetwood was unable to properly replicate a beat a la the Bee Gees' "e;Jive Talkin'"e;). Like "e;Second Hand News"e;, Buckingham's "e;Go Your Own Way"e; is upbeat but totally fuck-you. He croons "e;shackin' up is all you wanna do,"e;-- accusing an ex-lover of being a wanton slut on a song where his ex-lover harmonizes on the hook. Save for "e;Never Going Back Again,"e; (a vintage Buckingham Nicks composition brought in to replace Stevie's too-long "e;Silver Springs"e;) Buckingham's songs are turnabout as fairplay with lithe guitar glissando on top.

"e;Second Hand News"e; is followed by a twist-of-the-knife Stevie-showpiece, "e;Dreams"e;, a gauzy ballad about what she'd had and what she'd lost with Buckingham. It was written during one of the days where Nicks wasn't needed for tracking. She wrote the song in a few minutes, recorded it onto a cassette, and returned to the studio and demanded the band listen to it. It was a simple ballad that would be finessed into the album's jewel; the quiet vamp laced with laconic Leslie-speaker vibrato and spooky warmth allow Nicks to draw an exquisite sketch of loneliness. "e;Dreams"e; would become Fleetwood Mac's only #1 hit.

Though Fleetwood Mac was always the sum of its parts, Nicks was something special both in terms of the band and in rock history. She helped establish a feminine vernacular that was (still) in league with the cock rock of the 70s but didn't present as a diametric vulnerability; it was not innocent. While Janis Joplin and Grace Slick had been rock's most iconic heroines at the tail-end of the 60s, they were very much trying to keep up with boys in their world; Nicks was creating a new space. And Fleetwood Mac was still very much an anomaly, unique in being a rock band fronted by two women who were writing their own material, with Nicks presenting as the girliest bad girl rock'n'roll had seen since Ronnie Spector. She took the stage baring a tambourine festooned with lengths of lavender ribbon; people said she was a witch.

Like her male rock'n'roll peers, Nicks sang songs about the intractable power of a woman (her first hit, "e;Rhiannon"e;) and used women as a metaphor ("e;Gold Dust Woman"e;), but her approach was different. At the time of Rumours' release, she maintained that the latter song was about groupies who would scowl at her and Christine but light up when the guys appeared. She later confessed that it was about cocaine getting the best of her. In 1976, coke was the mise of the scene-- to admit you were growing weary would have been gauche. Nicks' husky voice made it sound like she'd lived and her lyrics-- of pathos, independence, and getting played-- certainly backed it up. She seemed like a real woman-- easy to identify with, but with mystery and a natural glamour worth aspiring to.

It's almost easy to miss Christine McVie for all of Nicks' mystique. McVie had been in the band for years, but never at the helm. Her songs "e;You Make Lovin' Fun"e; and "e;Don't Stop"e; are pure pep. "e;Songbird"e; starts as a plaintive ode of fealty and how total her devotion-- until the sad tell of "e;And I wish you all the love in the world/ But most of all I wish it from myself,"e; (an especially heart-wrenching line given that McVie's not quite ex-husband was dragging a rebound model chick to the sessions and Christine was sneaking around with a member of the crew). She didn't hate her husband, she adored him, she wished it could work but after years of being in the Mac together, she knew better. Throughout, McVie's songwriting is pure and direct, irrepressibly sweet. "e;Oh Daddy"e;, a song she wrote about Mick Fleetwood's pending divorce is melancholy but ultimately maintains its dignity. McVie, with typical British reserve, confessed she preferred to leave the bleakness and poesy to her dear friend Stevie.

As much feminine energy as Rumours wields, the album's magic is in its balance: male and female, British blues versus American rock'n'roll, lightness and dark, love and disgust, sorrow and elation, ballads and anthems, McVie's sweetness against Nicks' grit. They were a democratic band where each player raised the stakes of the whole. The addition of Buckingham and Nicks and McVie's new prominence kicked John McVie's bass playing loose from its blues mooring and forced him towards simpler, more buoyant pop. Fleetwood's playing itself is just godhead, with effortless little fills, light but thunderous, and his placement impeccable throughout. The ominous, insistent kick on the first half on "e;The Chain"e;, for example, colors the song as much as the quiver of disgust in Buckingham's voice when he spits "e;never."e;

In the liner notes to the deluxe Rumours 4xCD/DVD/LP box set, Buckingham describes the album-making process as "e;organic."e; Rumours is anything but, and that is part of its genius-- it's so flawless it feels far from nature. It is more like a peak human feat of Olympic-level studio craft. It was made better by its myopia and brutal circumstances: the wounded pride of a recently dumped Buckingham, the new hit of "e;Rhiannon"e;, goading Nicks to fight for inclusion of her own songs, Christine McVie attempting to salve her heart with "e;Songbird."e; That Fleetwood Mac had become the biggest record Warner Bros. had ever released while the band was making Rumours allowed for an impossibly long tether for them to dick around and correct the next album until it was immaculate.

Given the standalone nature of Rumours, it's difficult to argue that any other part of the box set is necessary. The live recordings of the Rumours tour are fine, lively even (perhaps owing to Fleetwood rationing a Heineken cap of coke to each band member to power performances). Only a handful of tracks on the two discs of the sessions outtakes lend any greater understanding of the process behind it. One is "e;Dreams (Take 2)"e;, which is just Nicks voice, some burbling organ, and rough rhythm guitar gives an appreciation of her fundamental talent as well as Buckingham's ability to transform it; it makes the case for how much they needed each other. Another is "e;Second Hand News (Early Take)"e;, which features Buckingham mumbling lyrics so as not to incense Nicks. The alternate mixes and takes (more phaser! Less Dobro! Take 22!), by the time you make it to disc four, just underscore the fact that Rumours did not hatch as a pristine whole. One does not need three variously funky articulations of Christine's burning "e;Keep Me There"e; to comprehend this.

Nevertheless, it is difficult not to buy into the mythology of Rumours both as an album and pop culture artifact: a flawless record pulled from the wreckage of real lives. As one of classic rock's foundational albums, it holds up better than any other commercial smash of that ilk (Hotel California, certainly). We can now use it as a kind of nostalgic benchmark-- that they don't make groups like that anymore, that there is no rock band so palatable that it could be the best-selling album in the U.S. for 31 weeks. Things work differently now. Examined from that angle, Rumours was not exactly a game changer, it was merely perfect.