Awesome Free Download: The Baseball Project “Broadside Ballads”

August 17, 2010

D’ya like baseball? D’ya like story songs? How about story songs about baseball? How about story songs about baseball written by a supergroup of alterna-cool elder statesmen including the Dream Syndicate’s Steve Wynn, drummer Linda Pitmon, R.E.M.’s Peter Buck and Scott McCaughey of the Young Fresh Fellows, The Minus 5 and, well, a zillion other side projects. These four got together last year and formed a band that specializes in baseball songs. They call their band – duh – The Baseball Project and they released their debut full-length album Vol. One: Frozen Ropes and Dying Quails in 2009. While they’re working on Volume Two (due out next year), they’ve partnered with ESPN’s The Life this summer to provide running baseball commentary in song. And those songs – six of ‘em so far – are being made available for free dowload at the Baseball Project’s label home, the always awesome Yep Roc Records. No small feat: these songs have actually given me a reason to care about baseball this year.

I mean, seriously, with the exception of my sons’ little league games and the occasional excursion to Warner Park to watch the Madison Mallards play (and eat a few brats), I like stories and movies about baseball a lot more than I like baseball itself. I never miss a chance to watch Major League II when it comes on the TV. But when the guys in the Baseball Project start singing about “Lima Time”, the references are pretty much lost on me in the same way that that punchline in Modern Family about Diana Ross’s RCA period was mostly lost on the majority of the network prime time viewing audience. But it doesn’t matter that much: the band plays a handsome variety of laid back folk rock – think The Traveling Wilburys at a Miller Park tailgate party – that sounds great even when I don’t know the relevant background of the song’s lyrics.

Moreover, songs like “Phenom”, in which a 21-year-old ponders his ability to live up to his own hype – “Man of the hour, and that’s 400 percent of your 15 minutes of fame, and they say that I’m the most in the Washington Post… I just want to stick around for a while” – resonate outside of the sport they pay tribute to on an allegorial/metaphorical level. I love the relentless (and hopeless) optimism of “Cubs 2010″, the jangly, swinging, Woodie Guthie-ish singalong of “30 Doc”. And I’ve never been to or even cared about a baseball season opening day, but I can, nevertheless relate to the sense of excitement and expectation of “All Future and No Past” – Before a game is played! Before an out is made! – especially when the song sounds like They Might Be Giants fronting the Byrds on a Bob Dylan cover.

Forbidden Discographies: Air Supply in the 1990s – The Giant Years

August 9, 2010

A while back, I wrote here of my initial excitement over the reappearance of Australian soft-popsters Air Supply both in stores (with their new album Mumbo Jumbo) and on the U.S. charts (with the song “Dance With Me”), and then of my serious disappointment with the music itself. It had been nearly 25 years since I’d been excited about Air Supply, but it only took a moment for that hot air balloon to deflate. But it got me to thinking about all the Air Supply I’d been missing, all the music they recorded in the 1990s, that I’d made a conscious decision (maybe several conscious decisions) to blow off. Air Supply are best known for a string of hits they’d put out in the early 80s on the Arista label. After releasing a greatest hits record in 1983, which came with their last mega-hit in the form of the Jim Steinman-penned-and-produced “Making Love Out of Nothing All”, the band’s career sputtered and faded. They’d release two more studio albums for Arista and a holiday record for good measure, but all to diminishing returns. That seemed to be that.

But then, the autumn of my freshman year in college (that would be 1991), I noticed, probably while shopping for the CD by that new band Nirvana, that Air Supply had released a new album called The Earth Is… on Giant Records, label home to one of my favorite bands of the time Too Much Joy. The title turned me off immediately, but the cover art – a photo of a hand holding up what looked like a garden gazing ball of the earth against a celestial blue background – was pretty terrible too. Not that the generic portraiture of the Air Supply (1985) and Hearts In Motion (1986) albums were all that great. But the whole thing seemed to suggest a collection of cheesy, preachy songs about saving the environment – and seriously, the whole “saving the environment” thing? So 1989. It was neither the first nor the last time I would judge an album by its cover, and I was okay with it.

But hearing how awful the new Air Supply single was nevertheless made me wonder about this neglected phase in Air Supply’s career. That said, it’s not like I was going to rush out and buy all their albums. Unless, that is, my 10-year-old son might convince me to take him to Pre-Played (a local used CD/DVD/video game store), and while there, I just happened to notice that the store currently had copies of all four of Air Supply’s studio albums from the 1990s, all priced at $2.99, making the 2010 price for the four CDs roughly the 1991 price of the first one. That, to me, was an acceptable price for the satisfaction of a morbid curiosity. I bought ‘em. And now I’ve listened to them. And here’s what I think.

The Earth Is… (1991): Well, I judged wrong. If there’s a pro-environment message here, it’s written in the code of the 80s style power ballads that made Air Supply famous. The thing that’s most immediately striking about Air Supply’s 1991 “re-debut” on the Giant label is how much it sounds exactly like, y’know, Air Supply, which could very well be chalked up to the band’s reunion with Harry Maslin, the producer behind their biggest early 80s hits. Had the opening song “Stronger Than the Night” been issued in 1984, it might have been huge. As it is, it’s just another great Air Supply ballad that’s just begging to be discovered by old fans who have no idea it exists. “Stop the Tears” (which was released as a single in some territories), the slow-building “Love Conquers Time”, and the lovely midtempo “Speaking of Love” are nearly as good even if the guys stumble a bit with an overwrought reworking of the Badfinger/Harry Nilsson classic “Without You”. Mariah Carey would soon prove that American audiences wanted that song back on the radio, but not the way Air Supply delivers it. Hitchcock’s upper register, which had dazzled me as a youngster ten years earlier, is almost comical at the song’s climax, and this otherwise stiff take on the 70s pop perennial simply goes on too long (literally twice as long as Nilsson’s version – which, admittedly, was a profile in pop economy).

In general, the songs are longer here than they had been on the band’s previous records, as Graham Russell’s songwriting – which was never not ambitious, even though the hits were always silly love songs – here, occasionally, gets proggish and arty, especially with the mildly exotic rhythms and layered vocal harmony parts of “Dancing With the Mountain”. They lose me a bit with the six-and-a-half minute “Dame Amor”, not because the song is sung entirely in Spanish, but because so much of the song is given over an exploration of the song’s minimalist faux-Latin textures, which, to me, sound like the audio equivalent of a leopard print fabric. It’s not necessarily offensive, but it sure sounds cheesy. Still, despite the occasional mis-steps, Russell’s ambitions result in some truly enjoyable, sophisticated pop. Sure, they never quite reach Peter Gabriel country, but they often land fairly credibly among the Martin Pages, the Mr. Misters, and the late 80s Simple Minds.

The Vanishing Race (1993): If The Earth Is… found Air Supply simply re-asserting its existence with a reminder of everything everyone had always loved (and/or made fun of) about the group’s music – and this, even as Graham Russell flexed his art-pop songwriting chops a bit – their 1993 album actually marks a pretty significant artistic leap forward. Once again, the album comes packaged in an aura of social consciousness that is largely missing/separate/irrelevant to the music contained within, although the title track is a haunting epic inspired by a Native American prayer and incorporating a chanted vocal on the chorus to stirring effect.

Produced by David Foster associate Humberto Gatica (see also Chicago 17), the album is full of the kind of smooth jazz and R&B rhythms and arrangements you might expect to hear on a contemporaneous record by Anita Baker or Peabo Bryson. But Air Supply’s songs prove a surprisingly great match. Listening to songs like “Don’t Tell Me” and “Too Sentimental”, it’s no surprise that Air Supply was able to make some modest inroads back onto the pop charts with this record – what’s surprising, in hindsight, is that the record didn’t become an adult-contemporary juggernaut and that its songs haven’t become perennials on par with their earlier hits.

The Vanishing Race contains, what are to my mind, two of the group’s greatest singles – not just of the 90s, but of their entire career. “Goodbye” is vintage Air Supply with the two guys delivering a fantastic tag-team performance, Graham Russell doing his best Art Garfunkel in the quiet opening verse, before Russell Hitchcock swoops in with the emotional catharsis on the verse. When you hear him say, “though it’s gonna hurt us both”, you can hear him bracing with anticipatory pain, like watching a kid brace for a vaccination at the doctor’s office.

Air Supply “Goodbye”

Even better though, is the spare, soulful, and largely acoustic “Evidence of Love”, which sounds absolutely nothing like what you expect from an Air Supply single. Graham Russell handles the bulk of the vocals on this song about a flagging relationship, reaching up into a vulnerable falsetto on the chorus just in time for Hitchcock to sweep in with a powerful affirmation and statement of purpose – “I still believe we can see this through”. The album’s not without its sore spots. “Faith” finds the whipping up a frothy merengue out of every possible faux-gospel gimmick, tactic, and cliche. But generally speaking, I don’t think I’m being overly charitable in saying that The Vanishing Race is an honest-to-goodness keeper.

News from Nowhere (1995): Urgh. How depressing. The group’s third Giant album, produced by Graham Russell himself, is a great leap forward… off a cliff into the adult contemporary void. News From Nowhere, as its title might suggest, is a meticulously crafted snooze. (The cover art’s pretty though.) Following The Vanishing Race‘s more radio-friendly (however radio-rejected) collection of slightly more pithy (i.e. 4 minutes instead of 5 or 6) R&B-tinged pop songs for grown-ups, the songs of New From Nowhere boasts the most grandiose arrangements of the band’s career to date with enough oceanic washes of breathy vocal harmonies to make even Enya cry uncle.

The album-opener “Someone” is probably the closest thing to memorable, but its sprawling length works against it. When the CD player goes to Track 2, it’s hard to believe you’ve only made it through one song. And mostly these songs just bask in their own gratuitous orchestral gorgeousness leaving the listener with absolutely nothing to hold onto or engage with. It would be bad enough that the songs aren’t up to snuff, or that they didn’t offer much for the listener to return to. But, in addition, they offer a few things the listener might actually want to avoid in the future. For instance, a sloshy cover of (ugh, it makes me puke a little just typing it) “Unchained Melody”. Moreover, Russell Hitchcock, for whatever reason, feels marginalized on this record. It’s not just the he seems to be singing fewer leads (although the aforementioned cover is all his) – the parts that he does sing feel like the John Oates parts of Hall & Oates songs. Even worse, after delivering some very powerful vocal performances on the previous record, here he seems to be struggling to hit the notes that seemed to once come so effortlessly. The whole thing is just… really, really sad.

Three albums into their contract with no real American hit to show for it (the group’s popularity never flagged in South American and Southeast Asian markets), Giant Records rushed out Greatest Hits Live… Now and Forever during the ’95 Christmas shopping season, which was, if nothing else, a way for the company to vicariously reap the benefits of the band’s back-catalogue. It appears to be the one Air Supply record on Giant that remains in print today. With that out of the way…

The Book of Love (1997): Maybe this is the record that News From Nowhere wanted, but failed, to be: something pretty miraculous happens on the band’s fourth Giant studio album. It’s as if they’ve completely stopped trying to make hit singles and in so doing, embraced their roots in musical theater (Russell and Hitchcock met during a 1975 Australian production of Jesus Christ Superstar). While previous albums were made to look like socially conscious concept records, The Book of Love actually holds up as a structured, musically coherent, soft-rock opera about love, longing and loss. There’s no “story” necessarily, or if there is, it’s sufficiently hidden in the spaces between the songs; but the songs do create a very satisfying dramatic arc, beginning with the title track – a stunningly beautiful preamble to the songs that follow, delivered in understated choral harmonies over synth washes, delicate nylon guitar melodies, and a quietly soulful beat (okay, so the spoken intro is a bit much, but somehow it still works) – to the meditative closer “All That You Want”.

Despite the record’s heavy reliance on ballads, it’s perfectly paced. It’s also beautifully arranged. Gone are the previous record’s overzealous orchestrations in favor of more spare, organic, and tasteful treatments. Yes, of course, there are still strings – there must always be strings – but here, the strings support the drama on songs like the fairytale gothic “Mother Said” (which I’d love to hear Glee‘s Lea Michele and Chris Colfer sing a duet on) instead of trying to be the songs’ drama. Where the songs of News From Nowhere wooshed one into the other with none really standing out, the songs of The Book of Love mostly stand well individually, but also – and more importantly – add narrative strength and emotional depth to each other as a collection, from intimate confessionals like “When I Say” to the almost religiously inspirational “We the People”, which sounds like it could have been a number in Godspell, had Godspell been written by Johnny Clegg or someone.

The centerpiece of it all is the 8 minute (!) “Let’s Stay Together Tonight”, a gorgeous attempt at end-of-the-night persuasion that builds to an emotional crescendo around the 6 minute mark before dissolving slowly into instrumental uncertainty. Though it’s probably my favorite song on the record (and, heck, one of my favorite Air Supply songs ever), it’s got a couple of strange flaws. For one thing, Hitchcock is almost absent from the song, but when he does chime in on the chorus, his voice feels louder and starker than its soft focus surroundings. The effect is off-putting and feels wrong. There’s also that instrumental passage at the end, which certainly sounds lovely enough, except there’s this continuous discordant bit of feedback that hovers over it all that makes it hard to listen to. Again, it clearly seems intentional, but it also feels unsettling and, well, wrong.

But the next track “Daybreak” sort of explains and resolves those wrongs – as if to say that the gorgeous, angelic persuasions of the previous track didn’t work – they didn’t stay together that night. In the context of “Daybreak”, a stirring Hitchcock solo from start to finish with one of his most powerfully vulnerable latter-day vocals, Graham Russell’s whispery verses on “Let’s Stay Together Tonight” sound like words unspoken in a moment of intimate longing. Both songs are great on their own, but they’re even greater – and they make more sense – together.

While it should be noted that Hitchcock’s voice here is not what it once was – whether due to age or illness – that roughness around the edges and at the top of the range adds a sense of urgency and emotional gravity to the songs he sings; as with the previous album, his role here seems somewhat diminished, but the strength of the material he’s given (what? no Barry Manilow cover this time around?) more than compensates for his relative absence elsewhere. The album’s one misstep is “Once”, an instrumental that sounds like an audition tape for a job scoring the next “Based on a novel by Nicholas Sparks” romantic drama. But it’s pretty enough and it makes a fine intermission before the album’s powerful second act. The unexpected truth is that The Book of Love is a dazzlingly great record from start to finish, even if, by its own design, it yielded no hit single.

The Book of Love would be Air Supply’s last record of the 90s, but not their last for Giant. That would be Yours Truly, released in 2001. Sadly, my local Pre-Played didn’t have that one in stock, but I’m keeping an eye out for it. (Or hey, if you own a copy and you’re desperate to get rid of it, let me know! I’ll be happy to take it off your hands and review it here.)

First Impressions: Sons of Sylvia

July 9, 2010

Hey! Remember this show? Remember the band who won it? Maybe not. It was three years ago, after all, and unlike the American Idol which all but guarantees an annual outlet for its past winners and finalists to remind their fickle-by-design audience that they still exist, the Next Great American Band has not since returned to the airwaves. (I’m actually still holding out hope for Season 2 of Bands on the Run! Flickerstick Rulz!!!)

Moreover, where Idol winners often have an album assembled and rushed out to the market in time for Christmas shopping, Next Great American Band winners The Clark Brothers seemed to drop off the face of the earth, leaving the few of us who watched the show and fell in love -err mild infatuation with the Appalachian trio’s thrilling (for prime time) acoustic conflagrations of bluegrass, pop, and classic rock to wonder, y’know, wha’happen?

The Clark Brothers “Gimme Shelter”

Sometime between then and now, the Clark Brothers – Adam, Ashley, and Austin – were signed to a major label, and then got dropped by the label in a bit of corporate re-shuffling. At which point, they changed their name to Sons of Sylvia, signed with 19 Entertainment and Interscope, and showed up on a duet with Carrie Underwood called “What Can I Say”. Now, the band is on tour with Underwood in support of their long delayed debut album Revelation.

Carrie Underwood with Sons of Sylvia “What Can I Say”

Though the Sons of Sylvia had previously, along with three more of their brothers, recorded and even charted a Top 20 Country hit 10 years ago as the Clark Family Experience; and though the instruments they play (fiddle, mandolin, slide guitar) look and sound a little, y’know, bluegrassy; and though they are touring with Carrie Underwood, it becomes clear listening to Revelation that Sons of Sylvia are no more a country music band at this point than OneRepublic, whose lead singer-songwriter (and one of 19 Entertainment’s favorite go-to hit-writers) Ryan Tedder co-wrote and produced the group’s debut single “Love Left to Lose”. As with many of Tedder’s other hits, the song boasts a big, open-air sound with a full-throated campfire folk sing-along of a chorus, making it an immediate winner when you hear it on the radio.

The band carries that bigness with them throughout Revelation, almost to the point where it becomes a little too much of a pretty good thing, both in the record’s anthemic sound, but also in lyrics (see the title track) that seem to be reaching for the spiritual profundity of Bono, circa 1984. The album opens with “John Wayne”, a gorgeous statement of devotion that gets oversold by Ashley’s trying-too-hard shouty high vocals on the chorus, and ends with a strange assemblage of sounds (is there a song in this?) called “The War Within”.

There’s no question these guys are talented, and that they’re passionate music-makers. But the fire and brimstone they brought to that cover of “Gimme Shelter” on TV a couple years ago seems to have been compromised in the band’s quest to come up with a great pop/rock record. I’m not one of those people who believes that the words “greatness” and “pop/rock” are mutually exclusive; I think what Sons of Sylvia have attempted with Revelation is admirable, promising, and totally listenable. (I mean, seriously: pop music with actual stringed instruments, people! How awesome is that in 2010?) But listening to Revelation is like watching someone trying to start a fire by rubbing sticks together, generating occasionally thrilling puffs of smoke, but never quite acheiving something we might be able roast marshmallows over.

Sons of Sylvia “Love Left To Lose”

Boys Will Be Boys, and Men… Will Be Boys in Three Awesome New Videos

July 6, 2010

Three terrific new videos by just-barely-under-the-radar artists center around men doing what men do best: being boys. Approaching the similar subject matter from three distinct points of view, from the simply fun and nostalgic, to the tragic-comic-pathetic, to the reflective and hopeful, they’re all individually great in their own right. But taken together, it seems that Philadelphia alt-hip-hop duo Chiddy Bang, indie blues duo The Black Keys, and slam poet Sage Francis have inadvertently created a coming of age suite that John Hughes would have loved.

Already an international Top 10 hit, Chiddy Bang‘s debut single “The Opposite of Adults” (built around a sample of MGMT’s “Kids”) celebrates the carefree life of a kid – basketball, skateboarding, ogling girls at the playground – with rapper Chiddy (Chidera Anamege) promising (with apologies to Mommy) never to grow up. The video attaches cardboard cut-out looking adult faces to live action adolescent bodies as the duo relives all the various awesomenesses of their childhoods. Such as opening a box of cereal to find the prize (A Chiddy Bang 7″? Swwwweeet!).

Chiddy Bang “The Opposite of Adults”

The song may not be explicitly about childhood, but the video to the Black Keys‘s latest single, the Danger Mouse produced “Tighten Up” from their latest album Brothers, has to be one of the greatest videos about a lust triangle among the monkey bars. Singer Dan Auerbach and drummer Patrick Carney sit on a park bench watching as their sons (who, we learn in a hilarious exchange of dialogue before the song starts, may not be the best of pals anyway) compete for the attentions of an elementary school hottie. But their efforts to be the responsible, intervening grown-ups go horribly, horribly wrong.

The Black Keys “Tighten Up”

“It was the best of times. It was the end of times.” In this incredible new video from his latest album Li(f)e, Sage Francis sits among an array of chairs suggestive of a school classroom – only with a wooden coffin where the teacher’s desk might be. Taking a look inside, Francis finds a trove of snapshots and artifacts, and reflects variously on religion, media, and technology before drifting back to memories of his adolescence. His first crush. Discovering his passion for words. Discovering hip-hop. Contemplating suicide, and contemplating the things he wants from life. Contemplating the apocalyptic paranoia that is being a teenager, and contemplating the wisdom he’ll pass down to his children’s children if he’s lucky enough to live long enough to meet them.

As the classroom chairs around him fill up, he’s both teacher and student in what Prince once called “this thing called life”. His verses are loaded with richly specific details – like the love note written in code and wrapped up in ten layers of Scotch tape, but deposited in the wrong locker – and poignantly self-deprecating punchlines. The video has a familial intimacy to it that culminates in a sweet little moment between Sage Francis and the kid who plays the young Sage Francis. It’s the kind of song and video that makes me want to write a deeply personal thank you note to the artist. (Thank you, Sage Francis.)

Sage Francis “The Best of Times”

Lady Gaga Mixes Religion and Sex in “Alejandro”: And? So?

June 10, 2010

There once was a time when a music video was meant to promote a song. In the last year, Lady Gaga has been hard at work reversing that equation. By the time she releases videos for her singles, they’ve already saturated radio playlists. When “Alejandro”, the third promoted single from Gaga’s The Fame Monster album, first hit the airwaves a couple months ago, I was less excited by the song itself than I was curious about what the song’s video would be like. Increasingly, her singles have become teasers for forthcoming short films, which are increasingly promoted the way movies are, with trailers and making-of videos popping up via Gaga’s website, her Twitter and Facebook feeds to throw a little lighter fluid on the bonfire of her “little monsters’” ardent devotion. The songs are just soundtrack.

In this case, the soundtrack is essentially the greatest Ace of Base single they haven’t recorded since “The Sign”, although it’s drawn more comparisons to Madonna – apparently because it’s got Spanish names in it and Madonna sometimes sings songs with Spanish names in them too. The video, however – a collaboration with fashion photographer Steven Klein – is unmistakably Madonna: a veritable mash-up of “Vogue” and “Express Yourself”, with a heaping dollop of arty que-erotica (“Justify My Love”), a big, drippy, melty scoop of religious provocation a la “Like a Prayer” and, what the hell, a tiny bit of “Live to Tell”‘s confessional intimacy. It’s all enough to forget about that silly Ace of Base re-write entirely.

But if the song seems a bit beside the point, the video, after nearly nine minutes, seems disappointingly pointless. It’s not the video’s imagery I object to, although the images’ presumed objectionability appears to be one of the video’s central objectives. The marionetted bodyguard holding a golden gun where his penis ought to be? The leather military uniforms and near-naked goosestepping choreography. The funereal march, the disembodied heart strapped and spiked to a silk pillow? The rubber Joan of Arc hoods and scarlet nuns’ habits? Gaga in ill-fitting flesh colored undies, simulating penetration of a man on an institutional bed? When Gaga previewed some of the video’s imagery on the American Idol stage last month, she was fairly inviting Fox viewers to stage protests and boycotts. (All I could think of was poor Adam Lambert, simulating a little oral sex and giving a band member a kiss on a low-rated awards show after kiddies’ bedtime, while Gaga’s spectacle appeared on a top-rated paragon of family entertainment.)

But “Alejandro” doesn’t feel courageous, or even outrageous, or even terribly interesting. More than anything, it reads as parody – of Madonna, yes, but of Gaga herself. How else to read the way she allows herself to be manhandled by her flock of gay-boy dancers with their ridiculous Catholic monk bowl cuts? The first time I saw it, it just looked hokey. More and more, it comes to resemble a really expensive, really elaborately bit of sketch comedy – only it’s not that funny. In fact it’s a bit dull. And it’s friggin’ long. “Bad Romance” was a masterpiece because it packed a universe of ever-escalating sexual menace and spectacle (and heaven knows how many damn costume changes) into five action-packed minutes. “Telephone” succeeded because it demonstrated a wicked, mordant sense of humor, and it just looked fantastic. There’s no question that “Alejandro” is beautifully photographed. But none of it feels new. And it’s ultimately, strangely… boring. There’s nothing in either the song or the video to justify nine minutes of this stuff. Then again, this could be one of Lady Gaga‘s most subversive innovations: she’s managed to erect (yes, I said “erect) a monument to a character in a really dumb, Ace of Base-like song out of old-guard gay fetish imagery, sadomasochism, and Catholic iconography that people can yawn at, that people will click away from, not because their sensibilities have been offended, but because that article about where the original A-Team stars are now looks way more interesting.

Glee’s Gaga Episode Leaves Me… “Speechless”-less

May 25, 2010

Though the show’s most beloved (for her unapologetic hatefulness) character, Sue Sylvester (played with all the purposefulness and empathy of a power drill by Jane Lynch) was pretty much absent from tonight’s Lady Gaga themed episode of Glee, the show still had a lot of great moments. Unfortunately, none of those great moments were musical. Tonight’s show was useful not only in demonstrating the essential commonality between the artistry of Lady Gaga, Barbra Streisand, and KISS – that is, in a word the show beat us over the head with tonight, theatricality - but also in explaining the symbology behind the KISS members’ made up personae. Who knew, right?

It also boasted two of the season’s most dramatic and surprisingly uncartoonish plot developments. Kurt’s father’s confrontation with their potential future stepbrother/son over Fin’s use of the “F” word (not the four letter one) was powerful and moving, and suggested a new layer of complexity in the three characters’ relationships with each other.

Meanwhile, Rachel’s thwarted reunion with her birth mother – rival glee club coach and disappointed former Broadway aspirant Ms. Cochrane (played by real life Broadway star Idina Menzel in a brilliant bit of lookalike-soundalike-no-way-these-two-don’t-share-genes casting) – felt almost underplayed. It was emotionally three-dimensional, as the relief of confession turned not into a happily-ever-after ending, but into a sort of relationship limbo. Moreover, when Rachel (Lea Michele) admitted with some degree of regret that she just didn’t feel a daughterly need for her mother, the show seemed to honor her relationship with her adoptive dads in a way the show, which has never really shown us her adoptive dads (which, as an adoptive dad, infuriates me!), never has before.

Unfortunately, the show’s musical numbers tonight were uniformly duddish, from strictly imitative versions (in both staging and arrangement) of Streisand’s “Funny Girl”, KISS’s “Shout It Out Loud”, and, of course, Gaga’s “Bad Romance”, a performance so synthesized and Autotuned that the show momentarily felt like a trailer for RockStar: Lady Gaga Edition, to a boy-band-on-stools rendition of KISS’s “Beth”, similar to their take on Madonna’s “What It Feels Like For a Girl” a few weeks back. But at least in that performance, there were, y’know, harmonies and stuff. Here, the Glee boys couldn’t be troubled to throw in even the most rudimentary harmonies, instead singing key lines of the song’s chorus in an emotionally empty unison. It was like Kidz Bop performed by teenagers. Or rather Kidz Bop performed by 28-year-olds playing teenagers.

But the show, sadly, saved the worst for last. Seriously, what were the writers thinking when they had Rachel and Ms. Cochrane (biological mother and daughter, remember) sing a duet on Gaga’s “Poker Face”? Confoundingly, this was the one musical number in tonight’s episode that did anything new with the song. In this case, it was given a cutesy, playful, old-timey vaudeville melodic treatment that rendered the song virtually unrecognizable – quite a feat given its 18-month pop-cultural omnipresence – while preserving the song’s aggressively graphic sexual innuendoes. It wasn’t just disappointing. It was sort of disgusting. Let me clarify: if this were a duet between Rachel and one of her peers – say, Quinn Fabray, her longtime rival for Fin’s affections – the song would have had a fun, kinky, but ultimately harmless, sexual tension. But the Michele/Menzel duet on the song had an unintended (I hope I hope I hope) incestuous undertone. It was just all kinds of wrong.

Compounding my disappointment is the fact that there actually is a Lady Gaga song that could have served the scene well, and though it’s not one of The Lady’s hit singles, it’s no obscurity either. She’s performed it in numerous television appearances, and it even makes a cameo in tonight’s Glee episode – in an early scene, Kurt’s got it playing on his stereo. “Speechless”, from The Fame Monster, is a big Elton John-style ballad (which she performed with Elton John at this year’s Grammys) that she says was inspired by her own relationship with her father. The song is a full-throated, gut-wrenching emotional plea pounded out with big arena-rock power chords, and seems made for a moment like the one Rachel had with Ms. Cochrane at the end of tonight’s show – a moment full of conflicting emotions, a moment that was neither hello nor good-bye but rather “see ya ’round, I guess”. Unfortunately, especially after their gorgeous duet on “I Dreamed a Dream” (i.e. that Susan Boyle song from Les Mis) in last week’s episode, I can only imagine what Lea Michele and Idina Menzel could have done with “Speechless”.

I could say, to the tune of “Speechless”, “I’ll never watch again.” But that would be dishonest. I still love the show. But as tonight’s episode has proven, it can be wildly – wildly - off the mark.

The Band Played… “Poptones.” The Continuing Adventures of Public Image Limited in the American Midwest

May 1, 2010

I’ve been waiting literally 20 years to see the band Public Image Ltd, the jagged-post-punk-dub-arty-dance-pop-with-something-to-say juggernaut led by former Sex Pistol John Lydon. The last time the band played Milwaukee was in the fall of ’89. They were touring behind their album 9 at the time, and had a near brush with the U.S. pop charts with the song “Disappointed”, which, if I were to rank my personal favorite singles of all time, would probably fall somewhere in or near the top 10. (Along with their signature classic from 1986 “Rise”.)

After their next album together (1992′s That What Is Not), PiL sort of disappeared for awhile. Aside from a John Lydon solo album, there have been no new records from the band. But while there still isn’t a new album from the group, it would be incorrect to say that there has been no new music. Lydon has reconvened the band for its first U.S. tour since 1992. Last night, I saw them play at the Pabst Theater in Milwaukee and it must be said that even though their set list leaned heavily on songs from the group’s 1979 album Metal Box (or Second Edition) – generally, and rightly, considered the group’s masterpiece, and truly a pivotal album of its era – the music felt very new, and the performances very now. Listening to the band re-animating their back catalog, I was again struck by how rhythmically, atmospherically, and emotionally complex these songs are, and how well they rebuked the joker a few rows behind me who shouted “Pretty Vacant!” (and laughed at his own stupid joke) as the band took the stage.

Not only have songs like “Poptones” and the freaking glorious “Albatross” remained relevant, they’ve actually become more so over time, and when the band closed its set with an increasingly bass-heavy (at Johnny’s chanted urging) take on the song “Religion”, prefaced with a pop quiz (“These are not trick questions!”) on the Pope, the Catholic church, and justice (Milwaukee is one of the epicenters of the current pedophile priest scandals), the outrage and the rebellion were absolutely palpable. (And not just because the ridiculously/wonderfully amplified bass was rumbling our Pabst Blue Ribbon filled bellies.) If there had been a picture of the pope in the room, the bass alone would have vaporized it.

It’s true the band is comprised entirely of graying and/or paunchy fifty-somethings – PiL veterans Lu Edmonds and Bruce Smith, along with bassist-extraordinaire Scott Firth (whose resume includes work with both Elvis Costello and the Spice Girls). It’s also true that they played a slew of obvious fan favorites, like the opener “This Is Not a Love Song”. But let’s make at least this much clear: This is not an oldies act. This is not a greatest hits show. It’s a 2010 show by a 2010 band with 2010 things to say; and though this is a band that spoke to the high school social outcast 1989 Paul Lorentz, this is a band that kicked the ass of the mortgage-paying-cube-dwelling-slightly-more-socially-appealing-father-of-two 2010 Paul Lorentz.

A quick note about the audience. The apparent median age of the pit audience was 47 and a half. The average weight I’m guessing was about 245. There were more chins than scalps with hair. It was, without exaggeration, the oldest, fattest, baldest pit I’d ever seen. In fact, it was an audience I felt young in, which is an increasingly rare phenomenon, and this gave the proceedings another (however accidental) layer of subversion. The truest punks and rebels of the Milwaukee metro area now look like (and are) grandparents. I myself had a bit of a curmudgeonly moment during the band’s entrancing, alternately meditative and cathartic performance of “U.S.L.S. 1″ when an overly flirtatious douchebag and the Taylor Swift lookalike he was trying to make (the only twentysomethings in the audience?) wouldn’t shut up, and I asked them to take it to the lobby. They didn’t immediately comply, but they were clearly not there to see a band play a show (or maybe they were there to see Maroon 5 – oops, easy mistake), and were not long for the place.

After Lydon firmly admonished those in the pit to keep their beers and their bodies off the stage, Lydon affirmed that Public Image Ltd was at the Pabst Theater to enjoy themselves, and they proceeded to do just that for a couple of hours. Throughout the show, Lydon was equal parts den-mother, coach, guidance counselor, rebel warrior, nation-builder, and incendiary device, and he took on each of these roles with an uncompromised joy and unflinching conviction. Reputation for confrontation notwithstanding, Lydon proved a most gracious frontman for an audience that was often either overly polite or (especially later in the show) just plain pooped.

One of my favorite moments in the show was the band’s take on the 1989 single “Warrior” , in which all of those roles came together in a single song. The chorus of the song says “I’m a warrior. This is my land.” In concert last night, Lydon virtually declared the audience and the band together a new nation-state; but he also touchingly proclaimed the U.S. his adopted country (he’s becoming a citizen), repeatedly mentioned how nice it was to see smiling faces in the audience (and by extension the U.S.), and rejected self-pity and complacence. At the end of the song, he asked “Are you a warrior?” The audience replied with the predictable noises. Lydon chuckled in response (I’m paraphrasing), “Well, yes, kind of relaxed warriors.” It was more sweet than judgmental, but it was clearly both. It was good to see his smiling face too. I hope to see it again soon.

Quick Hit – Usher’s Raymond V. Raymond

March 31, 2010

Today, Usher Raymond released his latest album, which directly follows the most grown up album of his career Here I Stand. That album showed his progression from a fly playboy to a grown ass man. He sang about his marriage, the birth of his child, and moving away from momma and towards your wife.

On Raymond V. Raymond, Usher goes back to his playboy ways. If you liked his progression to a more mature Usher, I’m not sure you’re going to like the step back he takes. While, you could say that Here I Stand didn’t have that one crazy big hit that Usher is used to having, an artist needs to grow, and while the album wasn’t super fantastic, it definitely showed growth. I think that’s why Raymond V. Raymond is disappointing. He’s basically telling us that all the growth was for naught.

To me, this album should’ve been about the heartache he’s currently going through because of the divorce from his wife. Wait, he’s a star. He doesn’t go through the regular heartbreak that we all go through I guess.

When he gives us radio garbage like OMG and Lil’ Freak, it really makes me wonder if he’s worried about where the next hit is coming from or if he really feels he’s a star. I guess, in a sense, you can never be too comfortable with your status in this fickle pop music world. But this is Usher, not Justin Bieber.

You know he still has it on songs like There Goes My Baby, which you simply want to sing to the love of your life, and Hey Daddy, which has an infectious, yet awkward chorus for guys to sing. But those moments are too few and far between.

The dude basically calls himself Usher Woods on songs like Foolin’ Around, which you kind of want to enjoy simply for his honesty, but at the same time, it’s just such an awkward thing to respect. Usher may feel like the bigger man for being honest, but how big can you be when your morals are questionable and you admit it?

On Papers he celebrates divorce. Really. And not since Kanye West asked people to chant, “We want pre-nup!” have you heard something as silly as Usher asking the fellas and ladies to say, “I’m ready,” if they’re sick and tired and want to sign some papers.

On Guilty he sings about the fact that he’s guilty for having too much fun and you might as well take him to jail. Maybe the most ironic thing about this song is that while he’s asking to be taken to jail, T.I. pops up and lays down some bars. I guess Lil’ Wayne was busy.

I’m not sure exactly what he was trying to do with this album. He’s stated that it’s called Raymond V. Raymond because there are two different sides to him, but the only side he really showed was someone who is begging for a hit rather than someone who knows how to deliver one.

CD Review: Alicia Keys’ “The Element of Freedom”

January 7, 2010

What’s not to like about Alicia Keys? She’s attractive and talented, and manages to be pop-friendly without being butt-naked or appearing in the tabloids all the time (more on that in a sec).

I also have to say that her albums have the tendency to wear off of me sort of quickly. I’ve fallen in love with each of her previous three studio albums upon release, yet when I play them now, I skip past half the songs. I’m not quite sure why that is, but it definitely tempers the level of enthusiasm I have for her latest effort, “The Element of Freedom”.

“Freedom” is a largely mid/downtempo album of lovelorn songs. Heartbreak and desire figure very heavily in these songs’ lyrics. Alicia seems to have been seriously affected by Cupid in recent days-and if you believe the tabloids, Cupid led her to the very married producer Swizz Beatz, who makes several appearances on this album.

There’s definitely a change in sound on this album vs. Alicia’s earlier work. The acoustic piano-the centerpiece of the majority of her hit material to date-takes a backseat in place of the synthesizer. Now, for most folks, that would spell bad news. Particularly in light of the way music these days enlists synthesized music. Thankfully, there is NO Auto-Tune, no club bounce on this album. The prevalence of synthesizers will actually remind you quite a bit of Prince-this, folks, is a good thing.

The most Prince-y songs on “Freedom” are the midtempo “This Bed”, which sounds like it stepped straight out of 1986, and the breathy, tension-filled “Try Sleeping with a Broken Heart”, a song on which Alicia tries out a breathier singing style. “Wait Till You See My Smile” also has an Eighties vibe, matches a Billy Joel piano figure with thunderous synth work that calls to mind bombastic rock bands like Journey. It’s definitely the album’s anthem.

On a more traditional tack, there’s the album’s first single “Doesn’t Mean Anything”. Most people will remark that this sounds a lot like Alicia’s huge single “No One”, and there are definite similarities. This song, however, has a tenser, more percussive musical background. It’s a sharper backdrop for Alicia’s emotive vocalizing. Meanwhile, the ballad “That’s How Strong My Love Is” has an orchestral sweep that recalls The Force MDs’ classic “Tender Love”. There’s also a rendition of Alicia’s recent hit “Empire State of Mind”. With Jay-Z’s rap and the thundering backbeat removed, the song has less swagger and attitude, but the pensive quality of the song makes up for it. It’s less of a triumphant walk through midtown and more of a wistful look at the starry skyline from the balcony of a penthouse apartment.

Vocally, Alicia sounds rawer and less mannered than she has before. She’s investing more feeling into her lyrics, which bother me a lot less than they used to earlier in her career. She’s become very good at creating a mood-as evidenced by the dark, pensive vibe of “Unthinkable (I’m Ready)”.

Beyonce appears on the track “Put it in a Love Song”, and there’s really no reason for this song to appear here other than to be sort of an “event record”. It feels like Alicia’s dumbing down a little bit-trying to record a song with the vibe and feel of “Single Ladies” when she’s obviously a much more thoughtful songwriter than that. This is really the album’s only immediately skippable track.

Over the course of 8 years and four albums, Alicia has done a pretty good job of combining classic songwriting with a modern attitide, and each of her albums has been a step better than the last one. “The Element of Freedom”, somewhat surprisingly given that this album had very little buzz, continues that trend. Whether behind a piano or a wall of synthesizers, wailing or whispering, Alicia Keys continues to stake her claim as one of the best contemporary R&B musicians working today, and this time, I think I’ll feel exactly the same about this album six months from now.

CD Review: Timbaland’s “Shock Value II”

December 31, 2009

What was I thinking when I decided to plunk down ten bucks on Timbaland’s new album? I should have known better. Timbaland is widely considered one of the best producers in popular music right now, but a closer listen to even his production work reveals questionable talent. For every great one of his kick-heavy beats, there’s 3 or 4 monotonous ones, and it’s hard not to notice that many of the beats boasting his name over the past five years or so have been created with co-producers, making me wonder if his recent pop-centric reinvention is really his creative doing.

As a vocalist, let’s just say Tim is a good producer. He raps in a deep, gruff near-monotone and his singing is a slight variation of the same. Lyrically, he has next to nothing to say other than how rich and/or talented he is-mixed up with an occasional trite love/party song. Even I’ll admit that fellow supa-producer Kanye West is lacking in the rhyme skill department, but Timbo makes Kanye look like Rakim by comparison.

The main reason I bought “Shock Value 2″ was the guest artist lineup. The album has a star-studded group of featured performers, ranging from popular artists I like a good amount (Nelly Furtado, Justin Timberlake and The Fray) to artists that I don’t make a part of my everyday listening experience but I can usually tolerate (Drake). Not even the intrigue of hearing how acts like Chad Kroeger of Nickelback and The Fray sounded over a Timbaland beat can stop this album from being a total waste of time and money.

“Shock Value 2″ is generally electronic, lyrically slight, and features way too much actual Timbaland. On the songs that show a glimmer of promise, he normally shows up and throws the entire track off course. Take “Timothy Where You Been”, for example. The lush, acoustic-flavored track is actually a winner and I even dig the vocals from Chris Cester of Jet (!). Then Tim pops in rapping about how great an artist he is and I feel like popping my speaker open and yelling into it for him to STFU. Similarly, his equally untalented and monotone brother/protege Sebastian starts in on “Tomorrow in a Bottle” and ruins a pretty decent song by Chad Kroeger. When the presence of the widely-reviled Nickelback lead singer actually makes your song listenable, there is probably a glitch in the matrix.

Of course, the fact that Timbaland can’t really sing leads to an increased focus on vocal effects. Yes, folks. There is auto-tune aplenty here. It’s most notable on the idiotic “Morning After Dark” (“when the cats go out the bats go out to play”…huh?) and on “Lose Control”, where former teen star JoJo follows the trend of perfectly good singers going for the auto-tune trick. I guess Tim only listened to the tracks he produced on “The Blueprint 3″ and skipped “D.O.A. (Death of Auto-Tune)”.

Speaking of Jigga, he’s possibly the most notable Timbaland collaborator missing from this project. Actually, the only rappers that show up on this project besides Tim himself are the aforementioned Sebastian, “it” rapper Drake and…Brandy? Yep, the former teen idol has created a rapping alter-ego called Bran’ Nu, and she debuts on the song “Meet Me in the Dark”. Somewhat sadly, Moesha probably turns in the best rap performance on the album.

But I digress, my point is that there is a noticeable dearth of r&b and hip-hop artists on this record. Considering that Tim has worked with just about every popular artist in either genre, this fact turns out to be something of a head-scratcher. This album is easily the most pop-centric of his career, and I’ll bet that old collaborators like Missy Elliott, Ginuwine and Magoo are a little peeved that they’ve been traded in for the likes of Miley Cyrus and Katy Perry.

Even Tim’s golden collaborator, Justin Timberlake, can’t save this project. On the inane “Carry Out”, Tim and JT come up with a lame waitress/server lyrical metaphor and throw it over a completely uninspired beat. I should also note that this track highlights Justin’s biggest Achilles heel: his songwriting. Anyone who anoints this guy the best pop/blue-eyed soul singer/songwriter working today either hasn’t listened to a Robin Thicke record or forgets that George Michael had written lyrical gems like “Praying for Time” by the time he was Justin’s age. Speaking of blue-eyed soul, Tim wastes vocals and songwriting efforts on two tracks from Canadian vocalist Esthero, who has released two excellent albums of much better material. While I appreciate Esthero finally getting some mainstream shine, I hope this isn’t an indication of what her future work will sound like.

Is there any reason at all you should own this album? Honestly, nope. I will say that if you are the type of music listener that goes crazy over artists like Akon and the now-era Black Eyed Peas, you’ll probably dig “Shock Value 2″. Similar to records by those singers, there’s plenty of emphasis on shiny, clubby beatmaking and no emphasis on songwriting that goes beyond banal cliche. Actually, I should add that if you dig artists like Akon and the now-era Black Eyed Peas, you should seek professional help, but feel free to put the psychiatric diagnosis on hold and pop in a copy of “Shock Value 2″. I’ll even give you mine.

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