Tag: album assignments Page 3 of 9

The Go-Go’s hit the peak of their career with the very first track on their very first album, Beauty and the Beat. That’s not to say that the rest of their work is a disappointment — far from it — but “Our Lips Are Sealed” is simply a perfect pop record. Instruments build in in classic layers as the song begins — first drums, then rhythm guitar, then lead guitar, then bass, and finally Belinda Carlisle’s voice, smooth and sparkling as crystal. Every layer is excellent. Gina Schock sets an ebullient beat, a springboard for the guitars of Jane Wiedlin and Charlotte Caffey, while Kathy Valentine’s melodic bass dances through the rhythm section like Carlisle through the fountain in the song’s video.

I’ve heard this song hundreds of times since 1981, and it still makes my hair stand on end, every single time. It captures a feeling both carefree and defiant, with lyrics that make a lovers’ conspiracy against the world seem like the most ecstatic expression of young romance. At least, that’s the mood set by the initial verse-chorus-verse, but then there’s a shift as the bridge comes. The bass slides into minor key territory as Wiedlin takes over the vocal duties with an angelic and maternal tone: “Hush my darling / Don’t you cry / Quiet, angel / Forget their lies.”

As Wiedlin finishes her last word, Schock hits the pinnacle of the song, a two-second drum break that feels exactly like an explosion of joy. Valentine buoys the last stroke as the verse comes back in, but this time supported by that Wiedlin angel from the bridge, echoing questions and reassurances: Can you hear them? See right through them. The band reprises the first verse but enriches it with higher harmonies, ending on a thrilling, jubilant vocal chord.

How do you match that? They didn’t, but some tracks on this album come pretty close. Top among the candidates is the iconic “We Got The Beat,” a manifesto of Go-Go attitude, youth, and musical exuberance. “Our Lips Are Sealed” was the band’s introduction, but “We Got The Beat” was when America really fell in love with them, catapulting the single to #2 and the album to #1 for six consecutive weeks. Astoundingly, they are still the only all-female band who writes their own songs and plays their own instruments ever to top the album charts.

Not only that, it’s not as if they rely on the talent of a single great songwriter. Take a look at the songwriting credits on their 5 Top 40 hits:

• “Our Lips Are Sealed”: Wiedlin, Terry Hall
• “We Got The Beat”: Caffey
• “Vacation”: Caffey, Valentine, Wiedlin
• “Head Over Heels”: Caffey, Valentine
• “Turn To You”: Caffey, Wiedlin

Wiedlin, Caffey, and Valentine form the core of the Go-Go’s songwriting team, bringing people from outside the band every so often, writing songs solo or in various combinations, occasionally including Carlisle (who has co-writing credit on one song each from Beauty And The Beat and Vacation) and Schock (who co-wrote one Vacation song and two from Talk Show.) Despite the varied personnel, the songs share a consistent musical and lyrical identity: fun, bouncy, affirming, with a swagger that carries just a hint of darkness.

Take Caffey & Wiedlin’s “This Town”, which sounds like surf rock in deep shade, a ticking rhythm guitar part and a stalking bass line underneath bright harmonies. The first verse and chorus sets the tone for a “Yay Los Angeles” lyrical picture: “Life’s a kick in this town… This town is so glamorous / Bet you’d live here if you could and be one of us.” But then here comes the second verse: “Change the lines that were said before / We’re all dreamers, we’re all whores / Discarded stars, like worn out cars / Litter the streets of this town.” Not exactly pretty postcard fare.

Similarly, “Automatic” has few words, but what it has isn’t reassuring (e.g. “Angles sharp / Crash together”), and its overall mood is slow and spooky. Unfortunately, it’s not one of the album’s brighter moments. I got the sense that Wiedlin was trying for something hypnotic, along the lines of The Motels’ “Total Control”, but it comes out just kinda plodding. It starts a bit of a lackluster slide in the album, a few songs from side 2 that are just okay, as opposed to the fireworks show that is side 1 plus “We Got The Beat”.

I assigned Beauty and the Beat to Robby because I’d been listening to and loving Talk Show recently. I considered assigning Talk Show instead, but decided it was unlikely I’d be assigning another Go-Go’s album anytime soon, so I’d better pick the acknowledged classic. Funny thing, though — after listening to them both extensively, I actually think Talk Show is overall the stronger album. Though it lacks any single moment that reaches the heights of “Our Lips Are Sealed” and “We Got The Beat”, even its lesser songs feel like classics (look no further than the deeply underrated “Capture The Light.”) The Go-Go’s had a brief and brilliant career (setting aside for a moment their 2001 comeback record), and over the short course of it they became stronger and stronger songwriters, if not hitmakers.

Even so, they absolutely bring the goods for most tracks on Beauty And The Beat. It’s inexplicable to me that IRS Records chose “Automatic” for the third single from the album when there are a raft of stronger contenders. From the rocking and vital “How Much More”, to the whirlwind of “Lust To Love”, and the defiant, hopeful “Can’t Stop The World”, this album is stuffed with shoulda-been hits. “We Got The Beat” is clearly the thesis statement, but Valentine delivers the perfect sendoff in the final track: “Can’t stop the world / Why let it stop you?”

Exactly.

British singer-songwriter Frank Turner has a trick. He didn’t invent it, and he doesn’t use it all the time, but he employs it to great effect on his fifth album, Tape Deck Heart. Here’s what it is: he sings a song long enough to make you think you know it, then changes it completely, putting a whole new context around it and bringing new and surprising levels of meaning to the very same words and tune.

The most pronounced version of this happens on “Four Simple Words.” The song starts out folky, and gently opens up into a swaying, strumming chorus:

I want to dance, I want to dance
I want lust and love and a smattering of romance
But I’m no good and dancing, and yet I have to do something
Tonight I’m gonna play it straight, I’m gonna take my chance
I want to dance

It’s a sweet and catchy, setting the stage for a warm and happy singalong, but as soon as it ends, furious drums upend the song and suddenly Turner charges in behind a frantic tattoo of electric guitars, spitting rapid lyrics about “heading out to the punk rock show” in a style that makes him as likely to be on the stage of that show as in the audience. When the chorus comes back it’s in that punk style, and now instead of feeling winsome and wistful, it’s a fierce declaration of independence from cultural strictures.

But the song’s not done yet. After a few pogoing verse-chorus-verse fusillades (with the occasional solo, profanity, or Rocky Horror Picture Show reference), it slows way down to deliver the chorus again, this time cabaret style, with tinkling piano and a subtle choir, and then switches to rollicking music hall on “But I’m no good at dancing”, and then ramps back into punk for a final verse and an abrupt ending.

The overall effect feels like taking the same sentiment to different phases of life, different internal and external communities, bringing them together with an insistence on joy and risk. The trick happens elsewhere too, though. “Broken Piano” finds him at first accompanied by a spooky drone, but otherwise a capella, lapsing occasionally into a grief-stricken Chris Martin falsetto. As the chorus arrives for the first time, the piano begins to assert itself, and the ominous drone increases in volume and coarseness. When the chorus comes back, it’s suddenly backed by huge, echoing drums, and a thick band of harmonizing Turners, leading up to sweeping, emotional power chords and an powerful climax.

“Plain Sailing Weather,” too, starts with its chorus in its simplest form, sung by Turner over basic acoustic guitar. Then the verse that follows it builds intensity so that when the chorus comes back, the band kicks in behind it and everything feels like it was meant to happen. “Tell Tale Signs” does a similar kind of build, albeit far more subtly.

Here’s the real trick, though. Those shifts don’t just happen within a song — they happen across the terrain of the album, too. Turner has described Tape Deck Heart as a “break-up album”, and that’s certainly apparent in songs like “Broken Piano”, “Plain Sailing Weather”, and “Tell Tale Signs”. Probably the most heartbreaking of them all is “Anymore.” No stylistic head-fakes in this one — it’s just pure acoustic guitar and mournful folk delivery of lines like “Darling, I can’t look you in the eyes now / And tell you if I’m sure that I love you anymore.” Turner frames “the romance and the running down of disconnected hearts” in stark terms that will surely resonate with anyone who’s ever been witness to the slow suffocating death of a love affair. It doesn’t get any bleaker than a repeated “I don’t love you anymore.”

But that’s not all there is to Tape Deck Heart. Amid the wreckage, there are brilliantly shining glimmers of hope. There’s “Oh Brother”, which beautifully encapsulates a close friendship on top of a deeply satisfying rock and roll riff. “The Way I Tend To Be” portrays a different kind of closeness, one that disrupts the singer’s self-destructive patterns with prompts to growth like “love is about all the changes you make and not just three small words.”

Best of all is the album’s opening track, “Recovery”. The song is unflinching in its depiction of a narrator “swallowed by the pain”, but every time the chorus comes in, the exultation of it is just undeniable, blowing through heartache even as it declares “It’s a long way up to recovery from here.” Turner’s band and his jubilant vocal recall the best moments of The Waterboys’ Big Music, with a similarly redemptive quality. At the other end of the album, the uplift that happens at the end of “Broken Piano” is similar to the breakthrough that happens in Coldplay’s “Amsterdam.” In each case, the pain gets surrounded by music so powerful that it lifts the singer into the skies, putting his earthbound heartache into a grander perspective. That’s how healing happens, and we’re lucky that Frank Turner has shared some of his with us.

Sometimes, when writing these album reviews, my first reaction has to do with the lyrics, or the performances, or the composition, or the production. And then there are those times when it’s just all about me. Fumbling Towards Ecstasy falls into the latter camp. I put this album on and I’m instantly transported to the mid-90’s, a time when one-word song titles ruled the world, and it still felt like a clever trick to leave a bunch of silence at the end of the last song on your CD, only to be followed by a “hidden track”. I’m just starting to work in CU’s Financial Aid office, after a couple of years in graduate school. It’s just a temporary thing, because I’m on my way to an academic career, just as soon as Laura finishes her Ph.D. Many of my friends are newly married, or on their way to it.

I listened to this album a lot during those years. I mean, a lot. But from 2018, time-traveling back to 1994 feels strange. So many things have changed since then. Some of those marriages have dissolved, some of those career paths have derailed, or I guess switched rails. There was so much coming that I didn’t foresee. I think that’s why Fumbling Towards Ecstasy felt really worn-out to me the first couple of times I listened to it for this assignment. Sometimes I feel a smooth, unbroken connection to the me I once was, but listening to Sarah McLachlan’s deep, cool emoting on this album, he felt quite distant indeed.

A few more listens, though, helped scrape off the overfamiliarity. I started to get past my own memories and just connect with the music on its own terms. It makes sense to me that this was McLachlan’s breakout album. It feels like the first mature expression of her artistic voice, not just her singing voice. She’d already established herself as an exceptional singer, and put that forward as her primary selling point — the debut single from her debut album was none-too-subtly called “Vox.” Her first couple of albums were very good, but still felt like an artist emerging from her influences, working to get past the Kate Bush-isms into her own unique idiom.

“Possession” is the song that stakes her claim on this new territory. A sterling member of the “Every Breath You Take” school of songs that sound sweet but are actually super-creepy, it puts McLachlan’s vocal gifts into a new context. This time, she’s not just here to earnestly express her struggles with lovers and/or parents, but rather to inhabit a pretty unsavory character, an obsessed fan projecting romantic attachment onto his favorite singer, with a sinister undertone of violence: “And I would be the one to hold you down / Kiss you so hard I’ll take your breath away.” It’d be a few more years before McLachlan would reach the US Top 40, but this song made a big impression in the “adult alternative” radio world, and consequently had a big impact on my area, as local station KBCO was a pioneer in that format, and I was still working as an intern there. Rightly so — it’s an excellent song, well-produced and performed with enough restraint that its eeriness can shine through.

Most of this album sticks pretty close to the “Possession” template musically. In fact, I’d say that the entire thing stays within a fairly limited range. If Fumbling Towards Ecstasy were a color palette, it would be whites, blue-whites, light blues, and dark blues. Even her imagery favors chilly controlling metaphors like “Ice” and “Ice Cream”. Piano, organ, subdued drums, and guitars that stay mostly in the background with the exception of occasional stabs outward, are the order of the day. The star of the show is McLachlan’s voice, but for many songs (case in point: “Wait”) she hangs out mostly in her lower register, or at least the Sarah in front does that. She tends to enrich her songs by layering herself singing a variety of parts, like a vocal harmony group made of all Sarah McLachlans. Then when the lead reaches a little higher, it feels more dramatic for how contained everything else has been.

Tempo-wise, also, most songs aren’t out to set your pulse racing, in fact so much so that some stretches of the album felt downright somnolent. I really appreciated “Circle” this time around for the way it kicks up the energy, especially on the chorus. “Ice Cream” is another welcome exception, with a little bit of swing to its drumbeat and a hi-hat that isn’t shoved to the back of the mix for once. And conversely, sleepwalkers like “Mary” and “Fear” started to feel longer and longer with every listen. McLachlan would learn this lesson well for later songs like “Building a Mystery” and “Sweet Surrender”, but on Fumbling she still stays mostly in a pretty small box.

Ultimately, it’s McLachlan’s songs that prove the most satisfying element of this album. Even though there’s a samey quality to the album as a whole, many songs have a refreshing directness that’s missing from her earlier work. “Hold On” is a plea to the fates that anybody who’s ever had a seriously ill loved one can instantly relate to. “Plenty” and “Circle” set out relationship dysfunction in a way that makes perfect sense, especially if you’ve been there. And “Good Enough” is still a very strong portrayal of somebody tired of hearing about a friend’s abusive love affair, knowing that they could fix it if only they were allowed to. At the time, it was even a little more intriguing for its hints of same-sex eroticism.

It’s those songs, and McLachlan’s endlessly compelling voice, that finally lift this album out of the mid-90’s amber in which it nearly gets preserved. Once I pry it loose from the context that sticks to it, I’m ready to love it again.

In 1982, Joe Jackson was an Englishman in New York. He’d grown musically restless, impatient with genre pigeonholing that wanted to call him New Wave, or Rock And Roll, or Angry Young Man, or what have you. His last record had tried to shrug off the whole scene by devoting itself completely to loving covers of jump blues classics by artists like Louis Jordan and Cab Calloway.

But while Jumpin’ Jive was a delightful diversion, it was after all just a covers album. It was time for Jackson to get back to writing and performing, but not to go back to the Joe Jackson Band sound of his first three albums, as great as they were. He wanted to move forward, and keep dodging labels. So he focused his creative process on the city around him. He watched it, from beauty to terror, from freedom to isolation, and he listened to it, salsa sounds pouring from Puerto Rican groceries, piano ballads in smoky clubs, the Broadway legacy stretching back to Cole Porter and George Gershwin.

He poured all of it into Night And Day, and found a sound that defined its difference from the rock + roll mainstream by what it omitted: guitar. There isn’t a note of guitar on this album, allowing the piano to occupy center stage unchallenged. Into the generous spaces left over stepped an extraordinary rhythm section: longtime Jackson bassist Graham Maby, drummer Larry Tolfree, and percussion by the astonishing Sue Hadjopoulos, who brought a whole spice cabinet of new and thrilling flavors to Jackson’s sound.

The cover art and title of Night And Day are meant to evoke Porter, but for much of this album Jackson comes a lot closer to Tito Puente. The first half of the album especially is awash in Latin syncopation and fascinating rhythms. Since albums still had sides back in 1982, Jackson took advantage of the split and literalized his title a step further, dubbing the first five songs the “Night Side” and the other four the “Day Side.” The distinction becomes a little dubious upon close inspection, but there are some important differences.

Rhythm dominates the night — right from the start we get 20 seconds of percussion before any other instrument joins in on “Another World”, and even then it’s a highly rhythmic piano part, pouncing and skittering up and down the scales. For much of the night side, the piano acts a lot like another drum, albeit one that can play different notes, taking its place among xylophones, vibraphones, and bells. Those polyrhythms make the night side addictive and exciting.

The songs on the night side all overlap, segueing smoothly into one another, and spinning through a variety of moods. “Another World” sees the city as a vibrant haven for misfits, a luminously alive place where you can find a welcome even when the rest of the world tells you “no”. (Jackson would revist this theme more comedically in “Stranger Than You”, from his sequel to the Night And Day album, the aptly titled Night And Day II.) Strangely, Jackson calls this experience “like day from night”, with day being the city and night being the rest of the world — an odd way to start the night side of this album.

But the darkness sets in soon enough. The narrator of “Chinatown” is lost and menaced, careening from one uneasy experience to another, culminating in his discovery of a murder victim being hassled by a cop. If there’s a loose narrative to the side (and I would argue that the crossfades suggest one), this harrowing journey drives him to take shelter indoors, just him and his TV, in “T.V. Age”. Here it doesn’t matter whether it’s day or night — “we send out for food, get the news on video.” He’s cocooned in safety, only to discover that, in fact, his TV is part of an alien invasion intent on taking over the earth. No kidding.

If that sounds paranoid, it fits in perfectly with “Target”, in which the narrator feels constantly under threat, no matter when or where he is. “I’m no one special,” he says, “But any part of town / Someone could smile at me then / Shake my hand then gun me down.” (And this was 1982, mind you.) Once again, the distinction between day and night gets erased: “Black, white, day, night / No one’s fussy, I’m a target.”

The relief and redemption from all this awful anxiety comes in the last song of the night side, Jackson’s biggest hit, “Steppin’ Out.” Here in fact is the first song on this side where it’s crystal clear lyrically that it’s nighttime — the narrator and his lover are steppin’ out “into the night / into the light.” Maby really shines on this track, with a scintillating bass groove punctuated by Jackson’s chiming piano. The song presents the New York City night as full of promise and wonder, the place lovers can go when they’ve no more angry words to say, when they’re tired of all the darkness in their lives — “electricity so fine” turns the night into a fairyland that restores their youth and possibilities. For so much of the night side, the city has made us wonder why anyone would stay here, but the misty secrets of its lights hold the chance for magic to happen.

“Steppin’ Out” is a marvelous song, and it deserves every bit of praise and popularity it’s gotten, but my favorite Joe Jackson song of all time is the one that opens the day side: “Breaking Us In Two.” Jackson sets aside the whirling polyrhythms and delivers a gorgeous, aching melody perfectly inlaid with piano, congas, bass, and cymbals. He also delivers some of the best lyrics he’s ever written. “Though it’s oh so nice to get advice / It’s oh so hard to do.” “You don’t do the things that I do / You want to do things I can’t do.” And best of all:

Could we be much closer if we tried?
We could stay at home and stare into each other’s eyes
Maybe we could last an hour
Maybe then we’d see right through
Always something breaking us in two

What a quietly devastating expression of struggling for connection in a relationship that’s falling apart. The album’s day begins with a hangover — from an evening bursting with promise of new beginnings, the merciless light of day reveals only endings.

From there, we get a burst of comic relief, and a return of the Latin cadences from side one, not to mention its paranoia, as Jackson sardonically relates his conclusion that “everything gives you cancer.” Yet another high point follows, the piano ballad “Real Men.” With another genius riff and more excellent lyrics, Joe Jackson deconstructs gender and sexuality norms about 30 years ahead of his time, saying “it’s got to change more” well ahead of when it would. The lyric “You don’t wanna sound dumb / Don’t want to offend / So don’t call me a faggot, not unless you are a friend” remains genuinely shocking to this day.

The day side ends with a return to the night. Jackson’s narrator is steppin’ out again, but “A Slow Song” finds him frustrated with the club atmosphere. In a pulsating disco he’s “brutalized by bass / and terrorized by treble”, wanting only “a strong and silent sound” to help him make that yearned-for connection with his lover. “A Slow Song” is, in fact, a slow song, but it’s phenomenally full of intensity when Jackson scales the chorus. The soaring wordless shouts of “Real Men” seem like they’re as impassioned as Jackson can get, until we hear his anguished vocal on this song — every time he hits the word “slow” in this chorus, it’s an incredibly cathartic musical experience.

I don’t usually write these reviews in this structure, stepping through every song of an album in sequence. But with Night And Day, there wasn’t a single song I was willing to leave out, and traveling through the album now is as rewarding as it was 36 years ago. It’s a pinnacle, an absolute masterpiece from a musical giant who cannot be contained.

This time it was Robby’s turn to help me fill in a gap. He assigned me The 2nd Law by Muse, a band about whom I knew the barest trivia-question minimum: Science-inflected prog rock. Had some modern rock hits. Memorable titles “Knights of Cydonia” and “Supermassive Black Hole”. Not from around here — like Canadian or English or something. (Turns out they’re English, from Devon.)

And that’s it. I had never listened to a Muse album, or even really paid attention to a single Muse song. So I didn’t know what to expect when I cued up the first track, “Supremacy.” But seconds in, I knew I was going to like it. A powerful stomping guitar riff, met with James Bond-y adventure strings, cool. Appropriately menacing and theatrical vocals, cool. And then, about two minutes in, Matthew Bellamy suddenly unleashes an impossible falsetto, diving straight into chills-down-the-back Robert Plant territory as the riff thunders across the frame. AWESOME. That’s when I knew I was going to love it.

There’s plenty of Zep in the Muse mix, but the band I kept thinking of as I listened to the album was Queen. There are Queen-y hallmarks all over this album, starting with Bellamy’s wonderfully dynamic voice and heading right through the layers of guitars and harmonies on songs like “Madness.” In a few places, I felt like Muse might even be quoting Queen deliberately — take for instance “Explorers”, where the melody line on “it was a mistake imprisoning my soul” sounds like it could be a harmony part for “two hundred degrees that’s why they call me Mr. Fahrenheit” from “Don’t Stop Me Now.” As I said, I don’t know the rest of the Muse canon, but based on The 2nd Law alone, I’d say that Queen’s crown has passed to the Devonian trio, and they’re wearing it proudly.

Now, that’s not to say that Muse displays the kind of White-album-esque variety on show in a record like A Night At The Opera, but they’ve got their fair share of surprises on hand. For an album that starts out sounding like it’s going to be straight-ahead hard rock (well, with orchestral flourishes I guess), The 2nd Law throws increasingly heavy doses of electronica into the mix over time. This curve culminates near the end of the album, in “The 2nd Law: Unsustainable”, which starts out string-heavy, then pulls in a spoken track (though looped to stutter occasionally) that sounds like a science textbook, then suddenly drops the title word with a HUGELY processed, inhuman-sounding vocal, accompanied by mind-melting Moog and guitar swoops. This is another one of those moments that just knocked me back on my heels. Absolutely awesome.

As well as taking varying musical approaches, the album also showcases an assortment of themes. There are relationship songs, both positive and negative (“Madness”, “Follow Me”). There are quasi-political diss tracks (“Supremacy” and “Animals”, both of which feel totally relevant to the present moment.) There are pumped-up motivators (“Panic Station”, “Survival”) and despairing cries for help (“Explorers”, “Save Me”).

But it’s the two final tracks of the album that fascinate me the most thematically. They’re joined to each other, and to the album as a whole, by their invocation of the album’s title, “The 2nd Law.” The law in question is the second law of thermodynamics, which states that the entropy of any isolated system always increases. Things fall apart, the center cannot hold. Order always devolves into chaos. “The 2nd Law: Unsustainable” points out, in the most thrilling way, that “an economy based on endless growth is unsustainable.” “The 2nd Law: Isolated System” shifts the focus a bit, away from entropy and towards isolation.

Listening to this album on repeat let the songs shift around in my head until it started feeling like those two tracks open the curtain on the set rather than closing it, and once I started thinking about it that way, I became increasingly convinced that The 2nd Law is a sneaky concept album. Entropy is visible everywhere, in a bunch of different contexts. “Madness” depicts a relationship falling apart. A regime is about to topple in “Supremacy”. The whole planet (or is it another relationship?) spins into chaos in “Big Freeze” and “Explorers”. “Liquid State” and “Save Me” are the anguished cries of someone losing his own center, crumbling into nothing, “drowning in denial.”

But. There are two pieces to the second law. There’s the entropy, yes, but there’s also the isolation. Looking at “Liquid State” and “Save Me” from another angle, they are desperate attempts to break out of isolation, in order to reverse personal entropy. The narrators of these songs crave connection, and feel convinced that it is what will halt the disintegration of their lives. “Don’t let me go cause I’m nothing without you.” “Warm my heart tonight / And hold my head up high/ And help me to survive.” Seen from a different vantage, “Supremacy” is about the moral collapse of an isolated political system, about to be swept away by external forces.

Yes, this album says, things will continue to get worse in an isolated system, and that can’t be stopped unless you can break the isolation. That sobering message of impending destruction, and the glimmer of hope that comes along with it, are just what I needed to hear right now.

I never took the class on Wilco. Trish has been a fan for ages, seeing them in concert bunches of times and buying every album, so I’ve gotten to hear about Wilco a lot, but never actually listened to a Wilco album all the way through. The closest I’ve come were the Mermaid Avenue records, in which Billy Bragg and Wilco set a bunch of unpublished Woody Guthrie lyrics to music. I like those collections a lot, and on a recent re-listen to Mermaid Avenue, Vol. II I found myself really taken with the Wilco songs, so I had the idea to assign Robby a Wilco album, mainly so I could assign myself a Wilco album.

I sought Trish’s advice on which one to choose, and she picked for me: Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. Based on what little I knew about the band, I guess I was expecting a nice album of vaguely folky rock songs, mostly about relationships.

That is not what I got.

I was not expecting for the first sound I heard to be freaky radio sound effects, tuning in and out. I was not expecting for the first song to completely change its mind, 45 seconds in, about what song it wanted to be — new drumbeat, new instrumentation, new feel. I was not expecting straight-up Dark Side Of The Moon homages. And I was not expecting Jeff Tweedy to start singing lyrics like:

I am an American aquarium drinker
I assassin down the avenue

Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is not a nice album of vaguely folky rock songs about relationships. It is so much better than that.

Here’s a recipe for this album. Start with a base of alt-country — Son Volt, Ryan Adams, Tweedy’s old band Uncle Tupelo, that kind of thing. Mix in some roots — Grateful Dead, CSNY, The Band, Buffalo Springfield. Stir until blended, and then apply a thick layer of post-Meddle Pink Floyd and latter-half Beatles (i.e. starting at Strawberry Fields and going all the way down the line.) Drench the entire mixture in wild surrealism — Salvador Dalí, René Magritte, André Breton. Then set it on fire.

Yankee Hotel Foxtrot careens unpredictably from the bizarre and unparseable into the achingly heartfelt and back over and over again, so much that they almost begin to switch places. Take “I am trying to break your heart”, which starts out with the lines quoted above, then finishes them with “I’m hidin’ out in the big city blinking / What was I thinking when I let go of you?” There are five more verses just like that. One moment Tweedy is all, “Take off your Band-Aid ’cause I don’t believe in touchdowns,” and then suddenly he’s grieving, “I’d always thought that if I held you tightly / You would always love me like you did back then.” At some point in the song, you start asking yourself which of these thoughts are really the ones that don’t make sense.

Meanwhile, so many crazy things are happening musically, that I don’t even know how to describe. There’s a bunch of reverb on the guitars, and an organ that sounds like it’s practically underwater. Strums jump to the front and fade back again, rained on by tuneless glockenspiel (maybe?) and arpeggios that sound like somebody dragging a pencil along a grand piano’s strings and then looping the sound back on itself. There’s a perfect piano riff, behind which it sounds like a toddler is banging on the ivories. Zithers jump around in the stereo field. The radios hum, blinking in and out, and then over the title line all the background stuff starts to battle each other, all of it sounding dissonant and yet fitting the mood perfectly.

I listened to this album for three days. It feels like I could listen to it for three years and still keep finding new things. It’s that dense, that layered. The comparison that kept leaping to my mind is Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, and yeah, Wilco lives up to the comparison. The songs themselves, the interstices between the songs, the references back and forth, the endless bold and surprising choices, the sheer variety — it’s a record that leaves you certain that you’ve just heard art, musical creativity at its best.

I don’t mean to give the impression, though, that Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is some abstract, pretentious performance art piece. It is powerful and emotional, and the crazy lyrics and audio effects never seem tacked-on. On the contrary, they seem essential. More than anything, this album feels like a journey into an unusual mind. I’m not sure whether that mind belongs to Tweedy, or to his co-writer Jay Bennett, or to some kind of collective gestalt of the band itself — all I know is that I found it a fascinating, compelling place to visit.

Sometimes that mind is melancholy and contemplative, sometimes philosophical. (“You have to learn how to die / if you wanna wanna be alive.”) There are times when it seems scarily unsettled, near the edge or over it (as in the outro for “Ashes of American flags”), and then other times (like “Heavy metal drummer”) when it is as sweetly nostalgic as any Van Morrison song. There are moments where the trip churns into an eddy, as in the dirge-y “Radio cure”, or the occasional instrumental break that wanders off into the woods, but almost immediately something else comes along to captivate — a pang of melody, an arresting image, a sound you’ve never heard before.

It took me a long time to get to Wilco. I think it’ll take me a long time to really learn them. I can’t wait.

I love a slice of cheesecake. It could be topped with fruit, or chocolate, or caramel, or even nothing at all, and I will be absolutely delighted to have it in front of me. It feels like more than a dessert — it feels like an event. Every moment of eating that slice of cheesecake is bliss. If I’m feeling particularly ravenous or decadent, I might even have a second slice of cheesecake. But if you put an entire cheesecake in front of me, despite how much I love it, I would probably demur. A couple of slices is enough.

Yes, I actually do have a point here about Florence + The Machine’s second album — I haven’t accidentally started a food blog. My point is this: where many albums are like a great buffet, or a delicious meal, Ceremonials is an ENTIRE. DAMN. CHEESECAKE.

When any single track from this album comes up in the iPod shuffle, I am thrilled. The combination of powerful orchestration, tribal beats, building operatic drama, and Florence Welch’s astonishing voice makes for an epic experience. But listening to all twelve tracks in a row, especially on repeat, which is how I tend to listen to these assigned albums… it can be a little overwhelming.

The formula for all these songs is more or less the same. Let’s take one at random, how about “All This And Heaven Too.” After a few seconds of sound effects, there’s a steady beat and Welch singing pretty calmly, spinning an extended metaphor about the language of the heart. A shift into a minor key starts to ramp up the tension. Layers of Welch’s voice begin to swirl around the main vocal line, Kate Bush style, the range of the melody widening out until the chorus hits with a high note, and Welch shifts into belting out the lines, communicating emotional desperation as the drums pound and the synths swell. Now all those Kate Bush layers are in full effect, droning against and counterpointing the melody line.

Then it all drops out for another verse, just like the first. We build, and build, and burst once again into the same chorus, same layers, same grand parade of operatic feeling. Then there’s a wordless bridge, dominated by drums and vocal layers, stentorian chanting from Welch atop her own voice laying down base chords, and then that overflowing chorus again, resolving into anthemic vocalizations, all about how language can’t contain the level of emotion she’s feeling. And then the whole thing winds up quietly, as Welch sings about “screaming out a language that I never knew existed before.”

I mean, it’s awesome. It’s epic. It’s an incredible emotional ride, contained in the space of four minutes. And pretty much every song on this album is like that. But how many roller coasters can you ride in a row, before your head needs a rest? Is twelve too many?

It’s funny, I wrote a couple of months ago about how the Killers’ 2004 album came out just as the album sequencing era was winding down, and MP3s had turned people into singles enthusiasts once more. Ceremonials, released in 2011, goes even further, collecting 12 intense experiences into a set that wants to be spaced out, mixed in with less dramatic pieces so that it can tower over them in contrast.

When they’re sequenced back to back, over and over, it’s not that they become less good, it’s just that a kind of numbing sets in. You just can’t be transported again and again in the space of an hour. And yet, even when I listed to this on repeat, some songs retained their power to give me chills. “Shake It Off” is the first of these, quite justifiably a worldwide hit, and a memorable rallying cry to rid ourselves of the ghosts that haunt us. “No Light, No Light” is a close second, perhaps because its lyrics permit Welch to address a relationship directly rather than through a distancing metaphor. And finally, “Spectrum” pulls off the rather neat trick of a vivid visualization that ultimately maps back to an emotional reality: “Say my name, and every color illuminates.”

These songs are amazing songs. Every one of them feels like an event. Taken together, they are a little too rich for my palate. But when any single one of them is set in front of me, the bliss is that much more for not bludgeoning me with one high after another.

Summer’s here, and the time is right for an album like 461 Ocean Boulevard. This record has always felt like a sunny day to me, and I paid attention in this assignment to figure out why.

It helps a lot that Eric Clapton evokes the other artist who’s always felt like summer to me: Bob Marley. Clapton’s cover of “I Shot The Sheriff” is smoother and more laid-back than Marley’s original, which isn’t to say it doesn’t lilt and swing. The story in the song is a rather grim one, really, but you’d never know it from Clapton’s tone. He sounds like he’s recounting events from a long, safe distance away, much more so than Marley ever did. And he sounds like he’s having a great time retelling the story of his daring escape, all the while defending his adherence to a code of honor.

Similarly somber lyrically, but far less mellow musically, is “Motherless Children.” These lyrics return again and again to the downbeat theme: “your mother is dead.” But where the music could be a slow, sad blues, instead we get a funky and danceable beat and Clapton’s best riff on the album. I know the song is about orphans, but it is undeniably, irrepressibly joyful and fun, a strange combination that somehow works. It’s so fun, in fact, that it once served as the theme song to a comedy show, HBO’s 1980s Daily Show predecessor, Not Necessarily The News. It’s absolutely the kind of song that would blast from the speakers at a barbecue, its toe-tapping rhythm weaving around good times in the sun.

Those two songs are the most energetic on the album — much of the rest of the set is laid back, way back. Take “Let It Grow”, for example. This is more like the evening conversation after most of the party guests have left, and a few close friends sit on the deck under the warm stars. Clapton pitches his vocal so soft that he’s almost whispering in parts, and where the verses feel like musing, the choruses feel like prayer. Clapton released this album after three years in the hell of heroin addiction, and his exhortations to organic emotional roots feel heartfelt and hard-earned.

“Please Be With Me” isn’t quite so pleading (ironically) as “Let It Grow”, but it’s similarly introspective and hopeful. A glowing evocation of relationship devotion, it’s always been one of my favorites on the album. Clapton mixes nimble (but never showy) acoustic fingerpicking with lovely dobro accents, and Yvonne Elliman provides the sweetest harmonies throughout the song, especially on the chorus.

Elliman is kind of a secret weapon, or sometimes not so secret, throughout this album. She’d go on to a meteoric late-Seventies solo career in adult contemporary and disco hits, but on this album she finds a natural place in each soothing groove, managing to sound earthy and angelic by turns, or sometimes all at once. Her peak is probably in “Get Ready”, a duet with Clapton in which she upends his “I been cheated on” narrative, retorting that she’s just out for revenge following his own “sinful” actions, and taunting him with, “you’ve got a lot of nerve… waggling your piece of meat.” But again, where the music could be fierce and angry, it’s instead calm and leisurely.

I tend to respond more to lyrics most of the time, but for me it is pretty much always the music that sets the mood of 461 Ocean Boulevard. It’s not as if the album is stuffed with Beach Boy-esque lyrics about surfing, driving, and girls, but every track mixes warm instrumentation, relaxed vocals, and expansive rhythms to encompass every good mood, even when those moods stand in direct contrast to the lyrics.

The truth is, the lyrics don’t matter that much on this album. On some of the songs, like “Give Me Strength,” they reinforce the feeling of the music, but much of the time they’re more like “Mainline Florida”, which is about… I guess a relationship or something? It’s hard to say and it doesn’t make much difference, because the song isn’t really about a relationship, it’s about an easygoing riff, undergirded by smooth drums and cool harmonies, sweeping up above the waves and gliding elegantly back down.

The words could be about hand motions, for all the difference it makes. In fact, sometimes the words are about hand motions. “Willie And The Hand Jive” is maybe the summeriest song on the whole album. Clapton has a talent for making music without sounding like he’s trying, and this one sounds like it’s just wafting up into the air effortlessly. It’s the perfect emblem of 461 Ocean Boulevard — it feels good, it’s fun, it’s relaxed, and it’s the perfect accompaniment to a summer’s day.

Album sequencing is a funny thing nowadays. The MP3 era has taken us back to a world where the track is king. It’s so easy to shuffle an album, or an artist, or an entire library, be it on an iPod, Spotify, YouTube, whatever, that the notion of a meticulously structured and ordered album feels like it belongs to a bygone era. Hot Fuss came out just as the iPod’s popularity was exploding — it’s part of that era’s last gasp.

Here’s why the sequencing on Hot Fuss is important: The Killers very conveniently ordered the entire album in descending order of awesomeness, traversing a spectrum from mind-blowing to mildly annoying. “Jenny Was A Friend Of Mine” is the explosive, electrifying opener, with the most badass bass line on the album. Part of what makes the song so incredible is that it’s our first exposure to the Killers’ sound, a thrilling combination of crunchy rhythm section, towering riffs, Eighties synth flourishes, and the high-drama glam vocals of Brandon Flowers. Every line Flowers sings on this song feels like it’s being ripped out of him, careening from plea to confession to sinister threat. Robby and I have talked a lot about debut albums, but not as much about debut songs — the first track on a debut album. I would make the case for “Jenny” as one of the most intense first songs ever.

If “Mr. Brightside” isn’t quite on that level, it’s only a tiny notch below. Unlike many Killers songs, this one has a cohesive narrative, all hung around the images swirling through the head of the jealous narrator. Again, Flowers’ vocals keep the whole thing at a heightened pitch of emotion while also maintaining just a bit of ironic distance, as the urgent drums drive the track onward relentlessly. This was the Killers’ only Top Ten hit, and it absolutely deserved all the popularity it had and more.

With “Smile Like You Mean It”, the first tiny flaws begin to show. I mean, everything great is still there — a spooky synth riff, Edge-like guitar underpinnings, a hi-hatty drum part that bookends the chorus with big booms — but… “smile like you mean it”? It makes sense on its own, I guess, as a chiding reminder about sincerity, but the verses seem weirdly disconnected from the concept, or really any concept. The bridge brings back a little of Mr. Brightside’s jealousy, but it doesn’t really go anywhere.

“Somebody Told Me” goes even further into lyrical incoherence. Possibly there’s something deep going on here that I can’t find, but it sure sounds like the story of a guy whose ex(?) is going out with somebody who looks like his own ex, which bears repeating over and over again because…? Sure, musically, still incredible — Flowers has a fantastic gift for making just about anything sound like it’s the most important thing in the world, and the mix pulls off a perfect synergy between powerhouse drums, jagged guitar, and brisk synth fills, but the words just don’t hold up here.

That’s nothing, though, compared to the incomparable nonsense that comprises the thesis statement of “All These Things That I’ve Done.” The Killers would summit the peak of Bizarro Lyric Mountain a few years later with “Are we human or are we dancer?”, but repeating “I got soul but I’m not a soldier” makes for a hell of a warmup. It’s not just the repetition — the song builds and builds, literally adding a gospel choir at the end, as if to impart great meaning to the line, but really… “I got soul but I’m not a soldier”? Are soldiers known for having a lot of soul? Does having soul make somebody assume you’re a soldier? What the hell do these words have to do with each other besides phonic similarity?

Let’s think of those first five songs as Side One of Hot Fuss. From there, the record settles into a groove of good-not-great, a solid B full of songs that have their kicks along with their head-scratchers. “Change Your Mind” is the last of these, and then we drop another notch with “Believe Me Natalie” into a couple songs whose music doesn’t quite compensate for their vacuity.

Finally, “Everything Will Be Alright” delivers almost six minutes of droning, Cure-wannabe dirge, whose attempts at reassurance fall flat in the face of its seasick swirling synths and trite mantras. Flowers’ voice, which previously could at least partially redeem even the silliest words, here gets distorted out of its ability to deliver emotion. The song isn’t terrible, but boy, it wears on me.

But luckily, I listened to this album on repeat, so as this subpar song dragged on and my impatience rose, suddenly Mark Stoermer’s kick-ass bass line on “Jenny Was A Friend Of Mine” would reappear, and The Killers were awesome again.