The (Siamese) Dream of the 90s is Alive and Well in the Joy Formidable

If you’re around my age, you were probably in or nearly in or just barely out of junior high when Smashing Pumpkins released Siamese Dream. I still remember the way it felt listening to that band tear into “Cherub Rock” (easily among the best opening tracks of the 1990s) – it was a grandiose, endearingly pretentious song which was totally okay because I was a grandiose, possibly not-endearingly pretentious teenager. I still love Siamese Dream, even if it was probably a symptom of the egotistical excess that would later lead Billy Corgan completely over the edge into Batshit Crazytown.

Siamese Dream is on my mind at the moment because The Big Roar, the debut album by Welsh trio The Joy Formidable, reminds me so much of it. It’s a Big Rock Record at a time when Big Rock Records honestly aren’t that good. When I think of “Big Rock” nowadays, I think of Nickelback and have the sudden desire to stick pins in my ears. But The Big Roar (let me just say this about that title, by the way: to me, it strikes exactly the right balance of audacity and pretension) desperately wants – nay, it longs – to be a Big Rock Record in the way that Siamese Dream wanted to be a Big Rock Record (which is kind of the way Ten wanted to be a Big Rock Record and an Indie Grunge Record).

Given the scope of its ambition, The Big Roar is inevitably flawed. Album opener “The Ever-Changing Spectrum of a Lie” is probably four minutes too long and stuffed with so much stuff that you almost come away thinking that The Joy Formidable were worried they wouldn’t get to record another song and, in a simultaneous fit of pique and bravado, they just put every musical idea ever into seven minutes and forty-four seconds. The song itself has some great melodic moments and foreshadows an album full of a whole lot more noise than you might think three people could make. They only really overindulge like “The Ever-Changing Spectrum of a Lie” a couple more times on the album (at the end of the otherwise sublime “Whirring,” the instrumental meandering becomes almost hilarious), which is why I find myself consistently willing to forgive The Big Roar for its worst behavior.

Before we go much further, I feel like I should point out that I kind of love pretentious bands, so long as they’re the right kind of pretentious. I realize that seems like an arbitrary distinction, but bear with me a minute and I’ll see if I can clarify it a little. For me, the bad kind of pretentious is “Welcome to the Black Parade” by My Chemical Romance. The song, apart from being a blatant Queen pastiche, tries to create a false sense of sorrow so that it can then anoint itself the anthem that helps the listener transcend said fictional sorrow. On the other hand, I think Yo La Tengo is a good kind of pretentious. Yes, some of their songs are indulgent (some are even awful; more than one of my friends has dismissed Yo La Tengo as “indie for indie’s sake,” a charge I can’t entirely dismiss), but they have a broad musical knowledge that they have channeled into a varied and often beautiful musical oeuvre. Bands that are the good kind of pretentious are bound to fail at times, but their good moments are often fucking brilliant (I guess the Flaming Lips are also a good pretentious band).

The good moments on The Big Roar are great – “Whirring” (its end notwithstanding), “I Don’t Want to See You Like This,” and closer “The Greatest Light is the Greatest Shade” are worth the price of admission on their own. And even the bad moments are more unnecessary than outright awful (like “Maruyama”), thanks largely to Ritzy Bryan’s zealous delivery of every line she sings. The Big Roar doesn’t just remind me of Siamese Dream because of its pretension – the sonics on this album are straight out of 1994 and I mean that in the best possible way. The vocal melodies are strong (a less forgiving critic might say “un-fucking-subtle,” but one critic’s crippling lack of subtlety is another critic’s favorite Bikini Kill record), the guitars are pretty much always distorted and generously slathered over every single song, and the drums are straight out of the Big Rock Drummer Handbook (originally written by John Bonham and then edited in later editions by Dave Grohl. For drummers of a slightly different bent, the Kickass Punk Drummer Handbook was begun by Topper Headon in the late 70s. Heroin addiction prevented him from finishing the tome so Tobi Vail and Janet Weiss completed it with authority in the 1990s. Further revision has not been required). The Joy Formidable’s sound is built to fill stadiums and I have no doubt that it will in the very near future.

So you might have guessed by now that there isn’t much original about The Joy Formidable, but I don’t necessarily think that’s a bad thing. A guy fucking a microphone while shitting in a bass drum and shouting random words in a made-up language would be an original album for sure, but it almost definitely (almost – we must keep open minds here) would not be good. Plenty of good bands work within familiar tropes (the Grammy-winning Black Keys, anyone?) and I think it’s enough that The Joy Formidable does a lot to redeem the idea of arena rock.

One of my biggest problems (and I have many) with Big Rock Records is that not very many of them feature strong female vocalists (don’t say Evanescence, okay? Just don’t). The Joy Formidable has Ritzy Bryan, who is not only a great singer but also a talented guitar player (there’s nothing too flashy about her playing, but there’s some incredible textures on The Big Roar); she’s almost like a Big Rock Marissa Paternoster. I’m not saying, by the way, that the Screaming Females’ sound couldn’t fill stadiums. But I think their stuff is actually better for tearing stadiums down.

For the most part, The Joy Formidable manages to make a heady elixir out of audacity, pretension, and good, old-fashioned volume. The Big Roar is by no means a perfect album – the song titles (“Llaw = Wall,” “The Ever-Changing Spectrum of a Lie,” and so on) stretch the boundaries of tolerable pretension – but I think people who have any fond memories of 1990s alternative rock radio (I grew up with Portland’s 94.7 FM and they might be the only radio station I listen to when I make my return to the gorgeous, soggy northwest) will find a lot to love here.

Retribution Gospel Choir is Pleasing Enough

Low makes exactly the sort of music I expect to come from people who routinely survive Minnesota winters. It’s slow and mostly depressing, with a pretty dark sense of humor (“All the Pretty People,” from Drums and Guns, exemplifies all three traits with its cheerless refrain of “all the pretty people/ are all gonna die”). At times, it can be beautiful, but I have to be in a particular mood to sit through an entire Low record.

So what does it sound like when two members of Low team up with a fantastic drummer and make a rock record? Is it the sweet summer to Low’s long, cold winter? Well, sort of. Low vocalist Alan Sparhawk (Sparhawk would be a good name for any given prog-metal cover band) formed the awesomely-named Retribution Gospel Choir with Low bassist Steve Garrington and Eric Pollard, the aforementioned fantastic drummer, and proceeded to rock out… in a Duluth, Minnesota, sort of way.

There are obvious differences between Retribution Gospel Choir and Low. Where Low is often quiet and dramatic, Retribution Gospel Choir is loud and dramatic. Low is slow (their genre is, I’m not making this up, “slow-core” which is fun to say but also a reason why I loathe the very concept of genre – cut to the scene from Adaptation where Donald says, “My genre’s the thriller, what’s yours?” and Charlie says, “Don’t say genre.”) and Retribution Gospel Choir is…um… slightly less slow. The Choir does get a little up-tempo on a couple of songs but, like Sparhawk and Garrington’s full-time gig, the band seems most comfortable at a slow to moderate pace. Also, Retribution Gospel Choir has squalling electric guitars where Low usually has nothing.

So it must have been fun for Sparhawk to plug in and play chunky electric riffs in a meat-and-potatoes (or soy-nuggets and carrot sticks for vegetarian listeners) rock band, but albums that are fun to make are not always fun to listen to. I have no doubt that Them Crooked Vultures had a ball making their album; I only wish they’d taken the time to write some actual songs while they were at it. Good news, though: 2, the aptly titled second album from Retribution Gospel Choir, has actual songs and they’re actually pretty good.

Though 2 could be faulted for padding a little (two of the ten tracks are instrumental fillers and “Electric Guitar” is unnecessarily long), it is a generally pleasing rock record in an era when too many rock records are pseudo-punk or cringe-inducing emo and it may end up pleasing folks who have a hard time getting into Low’s slower, more morose stuff (I couldn’t even really call myself a Low fan; I only own Drums and Guns and I heard Trust once in a record store and really dug it). There are some excellent harmonies on 2, especially on opener “Hide It Away” and “Workin’ Hard” and Sparhawk makes the most of his time with the loud electric guitar, mostly opting for slow-burning, chord-based riffs and avoiding the temptation to engage in noodly, look-at-how-fast-my-fingers-are bullshit.

I hope it’s obvious by now that I’d rate 2 a good, solid Pleasing Enough. And I hope it’s obvious that there is the implication of a “but…” on the end of that Pleasing Enough. And here it is:

But… while all the elements that make up Retribution Gospel Choir are undeniably good (I think I mentioned the good drumming, yeah?), 2 doesn’t stick to my musical ribs much at all (your musical ribs, according to the experts I just made up, are located just inside your ears. When songs or albums are running through your head all day, it’s because they’re stuck to your musical ribs). There are only three tracks that I think are honestly memorable (“Hide It Away,” the oddball “Something’s Going to Break”, and closer “Bless Us All,” which ends with the line, “We buried ourselves in the arms of our enemies/ so the last thing I need/ is a lover”) out of the ten and the rest are a not-bad blur of chords, harmonies, and pounding drums. I have to assume Garrington played something besides the bass on 2 because there are no memorable bass lines on the album at all (when you listen to an album at least a dozen times before you write about it, you start to pay attention to different parts. I’ve listened to London Calling so many times that I can almost pick out the distinct pianos on “The Card Cheat” – there are at least two because Mick Jones wanted to beef up the sound). The highlights on 2 make the whole album worth listening to but, like the last thing I heard from Wye Oak, the handful of brilliant tracks make you want to take the band aside and say, “See what worked on these songs? Why can’t you do that all the time?” Of course, no one can be brilliant all the time. But why put songs like “Hide It Away” alongside songs like “’68 Comeback”, which has no reason to exist? With a little more time and elbow grease, 2 could have been among the best rock albums of the year. And I know Retribution Gospel Choir is supposed to be a side-project, but if you record an album with your side project and expect people to pay money for it, you could meet them half way with some good tunes. Hell, the Shins started as a side project (I’m just full of fun facts today, I guess) and when people started digging it, James Mercer did the right thing and crafted two and a half beautiful records (Wincing the Night Away puts me to sleep after the excellent “Turn On Me”) before taking a break to team up with my favorite indie/hip-hop Jedi, DJ Danger Mouse. The point is, as side projects go, Retribution Gospel Choir has a lot of promise if they can muster the discipline to make a complete album. As it is, 2 is Pleasing Enough when it could be Fucking Awesome, which makes it just a slight disappointment.

Romance is Boring

Well, let’s see if the soft spot in my heart for Los Campesinos! (the Welsh band with the Spanish name) has grown any since they dominated my 2008 with not one but two totally awesome albums.

Nope.

The soft spot is about the same size that it used to be, which is still reasonably large-ish. The new Los Campesinos! record, Romance is Boring (I disagree with the assertion, but that’s a great title nonetheless), is probably my first big Expectations Test of 2010 (it will be followed shortly by second albums from both She & Him and Titus Andronicus). Their first album, Hold On Now, Youngster, made me pretty giddy, with its acerbic lyrics and bouncy, twee-pop music (I personally wouldn’t call it that, but a friend of mine used it to deride the band not long ago and I’m stealing his words because I confess I’ve never known what people meant by “twee”. My friend went on to compare Los Campesinos! to the Go! Team [on exclamation points alone, he's got a point] in a way that suggests he has about as much regard for both bands as he would have for a grilled shit sandwich with a side order of deep-fried herpes). Of course, it caught me in the early part of 2008, when I was feeling like I didn’t have much besides a Hold Steady album (Stay Positive, which turned out to be the best album of that year) to look forward to.

So what, exactly, is the trouble here? Romance is Boring isn’t bad. It’s certainly not boring. It’s got the clever lyrics (so far, my favorite is “we need more post-coital/ and less post-rock”, a sentiment with which I heartily concur, “post-rock” being right up there with “twee” on the list of Bullshit Styles that I Think Pitchfork Made Up), the music is actually better (more guitars, fewer chimey bits) than in the past. And yet…

And yet…

Well, I’m kinda stunned that I don’t like this album more than I do. And don’t get me wrong (or do), I do like it. It’s just… hmm… Here: have you ever had a friend talk up a favorite dessert or something – say, tiramisu – and they take you to this place where they think the world’s best ever, you’d-kill-your-mom-for-a-slice, perfect tiramisu is made and you try the tiramisu and it’s got all the essential elements (for you non-culinary types, any good tiramisu has, in my estimation, two essential elements: coffee and rum), but it just doesn’t quite deliver for you the transcendent, orgasmo-religious (how’s that for a made-up word, Pitchfork? I can do this shit too) experience that it clearly does for your friend? Well, replace your friend with “me”, yourself with “also me” and the tiramisu with Romance is Boring. I think I’ve reached a point where I no longer believe my own rhapsodizing about how fucking awesome Los Campesinos! are. This probably won’t create a problem for other listeners of their music, but it’s kinda bumming me out.

To prove that I was still inexplicably ga-ga over Los Campesinos!, I revisited their debut. Hold On Now, Youngster is still awesome, but I’m now skeptical that I would list it among my favorite albums of 2008. It’s still good, but it doesn’t grab me the way it used to. Fearing the onset of some kind of complete desensitization to great music, I decided to test myself on another band, Titus Andronicus. I was pretty awestruck by their debut, The Airing of Grievances. In anticipation of their second album, The Monitor (which is coming out next month and which can’t come out soon enough for me), I listened to Grievances again. Funny thing: I probably love The Airing of Grievances more now than I ever have. It’s a great album, still one of the more cathartic records I’ve ever heard (when you feel like beating the shit out of the whole world, put on “Joset of Nazareth’s Blues” and “Titus Andronicus” and you’ll feel better in no time. Or at least you’ll have an invigorating soundtrack for that steep climb up the book depository stairs).

So what’s changed between me and Los Campesinos!? Was I so eager for Romance is Boring that I ruined it with my own admittedly high expectations? No. I think it is exactly as good as I expected it to be. Los Campesinos! are doing what they do best, and they’re doing it pretty well. I think I’m just less excited by what they do best than I used to be. Now, bear in mind that I’ve only had this album for a couple of weeks and I could be orgasming over it by year’s end, but I don’t feel that way now. I felt sort of obligated to listen to Romance is Boring and that’s never a good sign. Having fulfilled the obligation, I don’t regret anything, but I do feel like I was just going through the motions a little (yes, I realize I’m dangerously close to a “faking it” analogy). 2010 is a weird year so far – there’s stuff I’ve been sure I would hate that has blown my mind and stuff I’ve expected to blow my mind that has been… well, so far, merely adequate. That I haven’t been utterly disappointed by anything yet is actually a rare and encouraging sign.

At the end of the day, I think the problem I have with Romance is Boring is that I expected it to blow my mind and it didn’t. It was merely good, possibly even great (maybe. Nah, probably not), but entirely unsurprising. I’m not gonna sell the album back or anything and I’ll probably keep listening to it, but I feel like I might end up feeling like I’m in love with an image of this album that exists only in my mind. In which case, I guess I will have proven that my romance with Los Campesinos! has become boring, at which point I will wait until they are dying of cancer to cheat on them. (Too soon?)

The Pros and Cons of the New Soulsavers Record

I’m not gonna lie: I downright loved the last album by Soulsavers, It’s Not How Far You Fall, It’s the Way You Land. I loved its unwieldy as fuck title, I loved its post-apocalyptic gospel feel, and I loved it for giving me a duet between Mark Lanegan and Will Oldham (on a cover of a Neil Young song! Grizzled dude trifecta!). So I was quite excited to discover that Soulsavers – Brits Rich Machin and Ian Glover – had teamed up with Lanegan once again for Broken, which doesn’t feature Mr. Oldham but it does have a Palace Brothers cover (Palace Brothers = Will Oldham = Bonnie “Prince” Billy. I know, it’s hard to keep track). But it has not been, for me, as immediately rewarding as its predecessor. So I decided I wanted to discuss the pros and cons of Broken with another person, mostly to try to work out my real feelings for the album. Because I’m slightly biased in favor of Soulsavers, I’ll handle the “pros”, but I wanted to find a real con with which to discuss the “cons.” So I called up my good friend Zombie Ken Lay (I know what you’re thinking: Lay’s conviction was vacated when he conveniently died, but dying don’t mean you broke the law any less, n’est pas?) and he sauntered on over to my imaginary office for a chat about Soulsavers and Broken.

Me: Well, the first thing this album has going for it is Mark Lanegan. The dude’s voice is perfectly suited to the sort of pseudo-gospel atmospherics of Soulsavers, and it especially soars on the Palace Brothers cover, “You Will Miss Me When I Burn.” By the way, I wasn’t familiar with this Will Oldham tune before I got Broken, but if I had to guess which song on here was written by the Bonnie Prince, I’d guess that one. It’s just so him.

Zombie Ken Lay: Yes, but doesn’t Broken feel a bit melodramatic at times? It’s Not How Far You Fall had dramatic tension, but Broken often sails over the top, especially on “Some Misunderstanding”, which is nearly eight minutes long. The stakes feel artificially high on this album.

Me: That’s a valid point (from a guy who knows a thing or two about making things artificially high). But they’ve also added some badass guitar work on these songs. I didn’t like “Some Misunderstanding” the first time I heard it either, but it’s really grown on me. It’s another stellar track for Lanegan, too. I kinda forgive the song its melodrama because Mark Lanegan sings it so well.

ZKL: Okay, but what about the two long instrumental tracks on the album? They’re both dirges. Completely unnecessary.

Me: Yeah, I’ve got to agree with you there. The thing with these guys is, they’re always striving to be epic, almost cinematic, really —

ZKL: I’m gonna stop you right there. You realize that the Pitchfork review said basically the same thing, right? And any time you lend credibility to a Pitchfork review, that’s a “con.”

Me: I guess you’d know something about cons, wouldn’t you, Ken? Am I right?

ZKL: Fuck you.

Me: Just saying. Anyway, getting back to the album. I know it sucks to validate a Pitchfork review, but they’re right about Soulsavers trying to make Big Music. Just like Sigur Ros (but in English!), they can stumble on the road to epic awesomeness. But when they don’t stumble, they make some of the most beautiful music I’ve heard in a long time. “All the Way Down” is glorious.

ZKL: Yeah, but “Can’t Catch the Train” is basically a blatant Tom Waits ripoff.

Me: True. It’s not an entirely unlistenable one, but you’re right – Soulsavers should leave broken-ass songs about trains to Tom Waits. It’s sort of his niche. On the positive side, on the enormously positive side, Broken features guest vocals from Red Ghost, a.k.a. Rosa Agostino. Her voice is perfect for this kind of music and she has more cool stuff on her MySpace page. It’s worth at least two “pros” for Broken when you consider the Red Ghost tracks. Album closer “By My Side” is one of the most beautiful songs I’ve heard in a long time. In fact, I’m going to suggest that, while taking a break from making awesome albums with Isobel Campbell, Mark Lanegan makes an awesome album with Rosa Agostino.

ZKL: The album would be better if they lost the instrumentals and put Agostino on every track. As it is, Broken is overlong – there’s not a song under four minutes on here and there are three songs that are around seven minutes long.

Me: You’re wrong, Zombie Ken Lay. There are two songs that are shorter than four minutes, but one is a gratuitous instrumental.

ZKL: Sorry. I’m not good with numbers.

Me: I know. Everyone knows. It’s okay. Any final “cons” for Broken?

ZKL: It just feels a little uneven to me, too much like the soundtrack to a movie version of Fallout or something. But other than that, I don’t have anything else negative to say about it.

Me: And that’s discounted for agreeing with the Pitchfork review, at least in spirit. To close the case for the “pros”, I will say that Soulsavers are remarkably consistent. People who dug It’s Not How Far You Fall, It’s the Length of Your Album Title will probably enjoy Broken, though perhaps just a tiny bit less. I considered It’s Not How Far one of the best albums of 2007, and, while I doubt Broken will be one of my very favorites of 2010, I have been listening to it at least once a week since I got it with no major regrets.

So I’ll go ahead and say the “pros” beat the “cons” by a field goal (in overtime) on Broken and hopefully that will encourage people to check the album out and decide for themselves. Soulsavers are a group whose good music is amazing enough to compel me to forgive their mediocre music (I have yet to hear anything from them that is outright bad music). I’d like to thank my guest, Zombie Ken Lay, for debating the Soulsavers album with me and for not eating my brains. He might have been a lying, stealing bastard in life, but he seems to be a pretty stand-up guy in death. Just don’t let him do your taxes.

The Worst of 2009

Well, I’m back after a restful week in Seattle and it seems to be that wonderful time of the year when everyone arbitrarily quantifies all their favorite whatevers – I’m not immune to such behavior. But before I tell you what I thought was so great about 2009, I wish to – in the interest of balance, of course – point out the very worst that 2009 had to offer. I’m limiting this to music because, if you expand the Worst of 2009 list to, say, news stories, you can get depressed fast. I should hope the image of a vomiting clown suggests we’re here to have a good time.  So, without further et cetera:

Worst song of 2009: “Desolation Row” (Bob Dylan cover) by My Chemical Romance. Now, I didn’t like the new Bob Dylan album. I do, however, enjoy much of his early work. It just so happens that “Desolation Row,” from Highway 61 Revisited, is my very favorite Bob Dylan tune. Of all time. When I heard that My Chemical Blowmance was going to cover the song for the Watchmen soundtrack, I knew it was going to be bad. I just had no idea how bad. This band truly pioneers shittyness. Fortunately, My Chemical Toilet didn’t bother to cover all 11 minutes of the original. Still, they put together a painfully awful three minutes. I was doing pretty well at ignoring MCR’s evil up to this point. But now, I want them destroyed. Fuck this band.

Worst album of 2009: Scream by Chris Cornell. I should think this is unsurprising to Bollocks! readers. Scream was a perfect storm of really bad ideas (Timbalind producing a dance-pop record by a grunge icon? I thought there were laws against shit like this) and, somehow, the whole manages to be far worse than the sum of its parts. Cornell has been slipping since Soundgarden broke up (I know, that’s putting it mildly), but Scream was the point where I completely lost my faith in the man. With dull, misogynist hooks like “No, that bitch ain’t a part of me,” and vocal performances that could charitably be described as “lackluster”, Scream is terrible enough to be a dark horse candidate for worst album of the decade.

Worst person of 2009: Chris Brown. Oh, I know. He apologized and he wants our forgiveness and wants us to buy his terrible new album, but I don’t feel like letting him off the hook just yet and here’s why: I was able look the other way while Brown became an inexplicably famous adolescent pop star with a swimming pool full of money and a stunning girlfriend. It happens all the time in this country and I don’t begrudge Brown his success, up to the point where, in a sports car that costs more than I make in a year, he smacked around said stunning girlfriend. You don’t get to be an inexplicably famous pop star and an abusive cocksucker, Chris Brown. Fuck you. If you want my forgiveness, here’s what you can do: purchase a Yugo, four bottles of Old English, drive out somewhere in the hills, drink the malt liquor, and then beat the shit out of yourself. You do that, and I’ll run out and buy your shitty new record. I promise.

Worst Live Act of 2009: Ghostland Observatory. I saw these assholes open for the Flaming Lips. They looked like a Ren Fair crashed into a Star Trek convention and sounded like a sack of kittens and a laptop in an industrial-sized blender. At first, I thought this was some kind of Andy Kaufman thing where they were fucking with my perception of what a “good” band should be. But then I realized that no, they’re just no-talent ass-clowns with a pretty good light show.

Most Pathetic Comeback of 2009: Creed. Hey, even Jesus hates these guys. And his word is Gospel.

Worst New Band of 2009 (and Possibly of All Time): Wavves. I guess they’re not technically “new,” because they put something out last year too. But I just wanted to take another opportunity to point out that Wavves is a god-fucking-awful band. How awful? I shit you not, I’d rather listen to My Chemical Blowmance’s Black Parade album at top volume while Gerard Way bad-touches me and reads aloud from the My Chemical Romance Saved My Life Site than listen to Wavves even one more time. If I’ve already doled out a “Fuck this band” to Way’s MCR, I reserve the (much more severe) Triple Dog-Fuck This Band for Wavves. No… Quadruple Dog-Fuck This Band.

Worst Record Label: EMI. And Sextuple Dog-Fuck EMI for not putting out Dark Night of the Soul. It’s ironic to me that labels often assume you would buy an album that you downloaded if you couldn’t get it for free. This is definitely not always the case. But, with Dark Night of the Soul, EMI is putting me in the position of having to steal an album for which I would gladly have paid. Way to keep the kids from getting what they want, EMI.

That’s about the worst stuff I can think of for this year. Later this week (starting tomorrowish – we don’t have hard and fast schedules here at Bollocks!), I’ll tell you some of my favorite songs of the year and 13 of my favorite albums.

The Case Against Green Day

It’s actually pretty hard to describe how much I dislike Green Day. I’m serious – this is the fourth draft of this post that I’ve started because it’s also really hard to decide where to start discussing all the things I don’t like about them. Do I start with all the better bands they’re ripping off? Do I start with the black-dominated wardrobes and guyliner? Do I start with some of the laziest, most cringe-inducing songwriting I’ve ever heard? Do I start with the fact that they’re considered by some people who may or may not have cognitive disabilities (including themselves) to be a punk band?

Maybe I’ll start there, because that bugs the living shit out of me (and because I have a lot of love for good punk music. A lot of love). When I think of punk bands, I think of (who doesn’t?) the Clash, the Stooges, the Ramones, the Sex Pistols, the Dead Kennedys, the Jim Carroll Band, early Bad Religion, and – for some current reference – the Thermals, the Old Haunts, Titus Andronicus, and the Future of the Left. Green Day is, at best – at best – a dull, lifeless distillation of the style of music those awesome (and vastly superior) bands play(ed). The Clash gave us, “Let fury have the hour/ anger can be power”; Green Day’s “Know Your Enemy” (one of the most repetitive, godawful songs I’ve heard all year. Billy Joe Armstrong knows one word that rhymes with enemy: “enemy.” Oh wait. That’s the same word. I hate this band) literally waters that down to “Violence is an energy” and “Bringing on the fury” and maybe I’m paranoid, but that seems a little close to be coincidence. Am I accusing Green Day of callously ripping of their betters? You bet your ass I am. And even their peers – one of 21st Century Breakdown‘s many awful tracks is “East Jesus Nowhere” which features a guitar riff eerily similar to (and by “eerily similar to”, I mean “shamelessly ripped off from”) Marilyn Manson’s “Disposable Teens.” Have you left no sense of decency, Green Day? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?

When American Idiot came along back in 2004, lots of people loved it because they hated the President and all the bullshit he was up to. But what did that album really say about…well, anything? The answer is (drum roll please) fuckall. Sure, they got their best line ever on the title track (“I’m not a part of a redneck agenda”) but the rest of that album was generic suburban alienation bullshit. They spent 13 tracks saying nothing the Clash didn’t say better in “Lost in the Supermarket”.  The best moment of that album is “American Idiot” and it’s eclipsed in every way by (take your pick) “White Riot” by the Clash, “California Uber Alles” by the Dead Kennedys, “Anarchy in the U.K.” by the Sex Pistols, and even “Time for Heroes” by the Libertines*.  And Green Day’s utter lack of ability to handle anything approaching substance led them to squander a great song title in “Wake Me Up When September Ends.” Any punk band worth a damn (hell, any kind of band with any kind of sense) doing a song with that title in 2004 could’ve made an awesome song about how frustrating it is, only a few years after 9/11, to be constantly reminded to “never forget.” But what does Green Day give us? “The innocent can never last.” Really? That’s all you got? And this was their Big Meaningful album, folks. Not only does that fail to scratch the surface, it fails to come anywhere near the surface. It floats around in space, consulting maps and charts in a futile attempt to determine the location of the surface. And it’s fucking banal, musically and lyrically. Especially lyrically. In the span of one song, we get that prize-winner about the innocent and “here comes the rain again/ falling from the stars/ drenched in my pain again/ becoming who we are.” That might be fine for any given 8th grader’s Live Journal entry, but it doesn’t cut it for discerning listeners of rock music (much less bands that claim to make rock music). It’s like Armstrong just pulled words from his copy of Poetic Imagery for Dummies Pretentious Assholes. And don’t even get me started on “Boulevard of Broken Dreams.” By itself, that song puts Green Day at the top of the list of bands that need a serious cock-punching.

But people are buying their shit at an ungodly rate. Rolling Stone, a magazine whose irrelevance actually increases exponentially with every review, raved about 21st Century Breakdown‘s “rage filled punk anthems.” The Los Angeles Times called the album a “dazzling musical journey.” If “Know Your Enemy” and “21 Guns” are rage-filled punk anthems and/or dazzling musical journeys, we’re in trouble. You can like whatever you want, but I’m warning you: if you let bands like Green Day (or My Chemical Romance or any other band that is just dying to write the anthems of your prepubescent/adolescent/adult angst) climb to the top of the punk and/or rock heap, you’re running the risk of creating a nation of black-clad, whiny dullards who are capable of expressing their feelings/desires/politics only in the most vague and offensively bromidic terms. That’s a nation where Green Day dominates the radio, every television show and movie is about emo vampires, and people think Dane Cook is funny. Believe me, America: we can do better than that. We must do better.

*This song features the line, “Did you see the stylish kids in the riot,” which I mention only because it occurs to me that Green Day are the stylish kids in the riot (the kids who show up to say they were there, but don’t expect them to hurl any bricks, thank you very much). For the sake of contrast, Joe Strummer, who wrote “White Riot” actually participated in a riot. He and Paul Simonon attempted to set a police car on fire while the British cops beat up some black kids. I’m not advocating destroying cop cars in hilarious ways, but it’s certainly nice to know that Strummer and the Clash weren’t afraid to put their money where their mouths were.

Thinly Veiled

Let us consider the dangers of front-loading your album: on the one hand, you might argue that putting your best stuff up front will lure the listener in seductively and sustain them through the more difficult (read: “boring” – and I know you think your favorite band has no bad songs and therefore can’t possibly front-load or pad out their albums in any way, but unless your favorite band is — no, you know what?  I don’t even have to say it, do I? If you’ve read more than one Bollocks! article, I want you to go back to the comma preceding “but unless” and prepare yourself to, by the time you reach the MLA-defying double-dashes, shout the name of my favorite band as loud as you can. Thanks) tracks. I think MGMT tried that on Oracular Spectacular, but “Time to Pretend” didn’t get me more than five tracks in before I got bored. So you could, then, make the argument that you want to put one pretty exciting tune toward the beginning and maybe end on a really strong note (no artist I can think of concludes an album like Tom Waits. He has it down to a science, and if you would utter the slightest skepticism toward this remark, listen to the last tracks of Rain Dogs, Frank’s Wild Years, and Mule Variations and then sit down to a steaming plate of your words.). But then you risk boring people up front (please note: Tom Waits doesn’t disappoint up front either; he opens albums with awesome songs like “Big in Japan” and “Tom Traubert’s Blues.”) I would argue that you wanna grab people up front, but if you have only one song that’s really distinctive compared to the rest of your album, maybe you’re fucked either way. Let’s call it The Semisonic “Closing Time” Theory (the album, for those of you who think I don’t remember, is called Feeling Strangely Fine and it blows, even with – perhaps especially because of? – “Completely Pleased” and its explicit references to inducing orgasms. How can you write a song about wanting to make your lover come and make it so goddamn boring?). Or maybe we can call it The Veils “Sit Down by the Fire” Theory.

“Sit Down by the Fire” opens Sun Gangs, the new album from Finn Andrews and company, and it is a lovely, acoustic guitar-driven tune about not getting what you want. I’m totally down with that. What I’m not totally down with is every single song that follows, especially the 8 minute histrionic fit that is “Larkspur”. Remember the first time you heard Muse and you thought they sounded like Radiohead but not as good? Well, Finn Andrews doesn’t. “Larkspur” wants to be “Paranoid Android” and ends up being more like that Muse song that sounds like it was dropped from Queen’s Flash Gordon soundtrack. You know the one I’m talking about. It’s got the video with the lasers and bullshit. And the rest of Sun Gangs sounds like a Poor Man’s version of, in no particular order: Frank Black, The White Stripes, and early U2. Like really early. Before they were good. (In case you’re wondering: no, they’re not good now. They pretty much quit that after Achtung Baby and everyone but Bono knows it).

I know what you’re gonna say: “Matt,” you’re gonna say, “all music is borrowed and recycled and yada yada yada. What matters is how each artist interprets the music they’re stealing.”

Go ahead. Say it.

Your point would be well taken if we were talking about how Elmore James claimed to have written “I Believe I’ll Dust My Broom” when we know Robert Johnson did (or mostly did. He probably lifted it from someone like Son House – old people, if you’re feelin’ saucy, help me out with a fact check). Both versions of that song are, on a scale of one to ten, fucking brilliant because Elmore James had the musical chops to put his own stamp on the song. The Veils’ pastiche is so hackneyed as to be offensive, meaning that they botched the key thing in your argument: the interpretation. On the surface, it doesn’t matter that Finn Andrews gets his Frank Black on for “Killed By the Boom.” It matters that it’s cringe-inducingly bad. Look, I know that astute listeners will point out the heavy debt Tom Waits owes to Captain Beefheart and I’ve recently addressed Craig Finn’s need to find Jim Carroll and buy him a beer (or better yet: they can meet in L.A. and I will buy them both a beer), but the key difference is that Waits and Finn take their inspirations and mutate them into something that no one else is doing nor could anyone else do it as well.

The best musical moment on Sun Gangs is the first one because its the only song that makes me say, “Oh, that’s what Veils sound like.” The others make think, “Oh. That’s what would happen if you played in a really bad cover band that didn’t know the words to White Stripes, Pixies, and Muse songs so they mashed ‘em all together into…whatever the fuck this is.” “Sit Down by the Fire” may be the only worthwhile track (hearing it on Lala was the reason I got this album) on Sun Gangs because it seems to try the least to be Big and/or Emotional. “Three Sisters” and “Larkspur,” two of the worst offenders, very obviously want to be Big and Emotional. And they’re embarrassing. “Sit Down by the Fire” doesn’t stress Andrews’s emotional intensity; he allows that track (and just that one) to breathe and to have its own space and exist for what it is. Actually, I’ll give “The House She Lived In” some props too and suggest that the album I wanted Veils to make was one that suits the mood of that track and the opener; that’s what I was in the mood for, and it’s a mood Finn Andrews set up me to be in by putting the simple and gorgeous “Sit Down by the Fire” first on the album. Sequencing is an art, kids, but it helps to have enough strong tracks to fill up an album. For examples of nearly flawless sequencing see London Calling, Okkervil River’s The Stage Names, Regina Spektor’s Begin to Hope, Billy Bragg and Wilco’s Mermaid Avenue, and (scoff if you want, but I hear scoffing causes cancer) the new Franz Ferdinand record. In fact, see any of those albums after you listen to “Sit Down by the Fire” and skip the rest of Sun Gangs.