The Besnard Lakes are the Boring Night

The Besnard Lakes are kind of infuriating because, when they can be bothered to get to the fucking point, they’re actually pretty good. It’s that whole “getting to the fucking point” thing that they kind of suck at. I’m completely unafraid of long songs and songs that take a while to build (I like Sigur Ros, for example), but – call me crazy – I just can’t dig songs that stubbornly refuse to go anywhere.

On The Besnard Lakes are the Roaring Night, the not-at-all pretentiously named follow-up to The Besnard Lakes are the Dark Horse, the now twice-titular Besnard Lakes have assembled some really beautiful bits of music and spaced them out at random amongst lots and lots of meandering, frightfully dull bullshit. I think it’s supposed to be “atmospheric,” but it’s mostly really difficult to pay attention to. There are precisely four minutes and forty-two seconds of music on The Besnard Lakes are the Boring Night that hold me utterly rapt. They’re collected into a really beautiful song called “Albatross,” sung by Olga Goreas. “Albatross” is so good it nearly saves the whole album. Nearly.

Which is, in my mind, all the more reason to damn The Besnard Lakes are Really Not in a Hurry. When your band can do something like “Albatross,” there is no reason whatsoever to precede it with… well, everything that precedes it. Not once but twice on The Besnard Lakes are Probably Pretty Sick of this Joke do the B-nards, as I like to call them, present us with a false two-part song. The first fake two-part song is “The Ocean and the Innocent.” Part 1 (“The Ocean”) is a little more than a minute and a half of noise and chords that only serves as a long, unnecessary introduction to Part 2 (“The Innocent,” of course). Now, “The Innocent” has some good bits, but they could lose all of part one, chop three minutes off of part two, and just have one pretty good song called “The Ocean and the Innocent.” But instead, they’ve stuck us with two parts unequal in length but completely equal in their audacious level of wanton pretension (and this is coming from a guy who will forgive a lot of fucking pretension. I like Yo La Tengo, for dog’s sake, and they’re not known for being unpretentious, even by those who love them). The gag is so apparently funny to the B-nards that they repeat it for “Land of Living Skies” – it’s just as stupid the second time around.

The Besnard Lakes are the Dark Horse was, to my mind, a pretty good album. There was dark subject matter, beautiful harmonies, and a bit more discipline. I’m not saying every song needs a hook in the first minute and a half (again, see Sigur Ros, Yo La Tengo, and plenty of other bands I like… I don’t think anyone has ever identified a “hook” in a Tom Waits song, but the man is nonetheless America’s Greatest Living Songwriter); by “discipline,” I mean  you chop out the shit that is not necessary to the song’s, you know, being good. I know, we all think when we write songs that everything we put in there is necessary and beautiful and amazing and like our kids or whatever but if your bandmates really love and respect you, they’ll be able to tell you when you’re full of shit. And much of The Besnard Lakes are the Roaring Night (let’s not overuse the name-pun gag) sounds like someone forgot to tell someone else that they were full of shit.

Know what else? Olga Goreas should just be the lead singer for the Besnard Lakes. As I listen to Roaring Night again for the nth time, I find that she’s singing lead on all one and a half of my favorite tracks. Her husband, Jace Lasek (who also invented a popular laser eye surgery), shares vocal duties, but he should just surrender the mic to his wife. It’s not that his voice is bad (far from it – the couple sounds really good on part 2 of “Land of Living Skies” a.k.a. “Living Skies” a.k.a. “The Only Necessary Part of this Two-Part Song Because the Other Part is Not a Song”), it’s just that hers is better.

The thing I hope you’ll understand here is that there is no bad music on The Besnard Lakes Hopefully Have Better Fans than Portugal. The Man. There is, however, a whole lot of unnecessary music on the album that bogs the thing down and obscures the truly beautiful, well-crafted stuff that might win a person over to the musical stylings of the B-nards. For that matter, there are plenty of people who are going to love this album despite – and perhaps because of – its tendency to meander. Like it or not, as always, is your business. I’m not even sure I dislike the album; I’m definitely infuriated by it, but that’s mostly because I know what it could be if the B-nards just settled down a little bit and were a little better at looking at a song and ruthlessly doing away with whatever doesn’t serve the song. “Albatross” is the best song on The Besnard Lakes are the Roaring Night because it is the least repetitive, among the least pretentious, and its length feels about right, instead of feeling like it’s been inflated for the sake of some vague notion of atmospherics or dynamics (a long, boring introduction before a real song starts is no replacement for real dynamics. Listen to the Pixies if you want to know everything you need to know about brevity and dynamics in rock music).

Any time I literally have to force myself to sit down and listen to an album, that’s a bad thing. And with The Besnard Lakes are the Roaring Twenties, I’ve had to deprive myself of other distractions to make it through the whole thing. It feels like work. My guess is someone might suggest letting the album “wash over” me as I listen to it and I know you expect me to make fun of people who might say such a hippie-dippy thing as that, but it’s a legitimate suggestion and one that is useful when listening to, say, Gavin Bryars or Riceboy Sleeps. I don’t think it’s all that legitimate with regard to the B-nards because Roaring Night clearly has some moving moments to it and they wouldn’t be there if it was a “washing over” kind of record (Bryars’s stunningly beautiful and grammatically suspect Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet is the ultimate “wash over” you record – get the CD version that features Tom Waits and you’ll see what I mean). No, I think The Besnard Lakes are the Roaring Night is a bit of a misguided rock record where “Albatross” is unfortunately the exception when it should be the rule. And, that being the case, it’s the most infuriating album I’ve heard this year, though somehow not the worst.

Cass McCombs < Jason Mraz? A Discussion of Strummy Songwriters

While this is, ostensibly, a review of Cass McCombs’s new album Catacombs, it will end up being a rundown of the guy-with-guitar-and-heart-on-his-sleeve genre, a genre that’s getting a little too bloated of late. Someone needs to sift the wheat from the chaff, and, unfortunately, Cass McCombs is firmly in the chaff.

I can sum up Catacombs for you in one word: boring. Or two words: fucking boring. How about three? Really fucking boring. You get the idea. Moving on.

There are several variations on the dude/guitar/singer/songwriter formula, some of which are all right and some of which are annoying as hell. Jason Mraz, while still a more compelling listen than Cass McCombs (it pains me to say that), traffics in the gimmicky word-play, gee-look-how-fast-I-can-spew-semiclever-lyrics sort of singing/songwriting. So, needless – but still fun – to say, Jason Mraz really sucks. This doesn’t seem to stop people from adoring him, much like another strummy bum I know named Jack Johnson who is my generation’s Jimmy Buffet (those of you who have read Bollocks! even one time know there is no way that can be a compliment). Jack Johnson did a bunch of songs for the Curious George soundtrack and it still impresses me that he escaped playing the titular character as well.

And I’m not merely complaining about the genre here because there are good singer/songwriters out there. They’re just hard to find sometimes. M. Ward is pretty awesome, largely because he writes good melodies and has a deliciously old-school sound to him that I really dig. Elliott Smith was one of the best of the stummy bunch, and is probably largely responsible for people like Cass McCombs and this one uber-emo kid I saw at a small theatre in Sherman Oaks last week (I’m not gonna out the kid here, but he was hilariously, embarrassingly bad – I literally laughed through his set).

Technology has served to somewhat democratize the music business in recent years because we’ve reached a point now where anyone with a laptop and a halfway decent microphone can make an album. The one big downside to this is that anyone with a laptop and a halfway decent microphone can make an album. It doesn’t mean everyone should. I can’t speak for McCombs’s other albums, but with Catacombs, he’s crafted easily one of the ten most boring albums I’ve ever heard (and my parents listen to Kenny G for dog’s sake). So if you find your normal listening choices a little too exciting, why not try Catacombs?

McCombs’s biggest mistake is assuming that long and winding melodies will compensate for the one-dimensionality of the record as a whole. In his case, the melodies are all delivered at a near-whisper (I know Iron and Wine does this but the key difference is that Iron and Wine is, generally, awesome) and in half the songs, they’re repeated well past the five minute mark (incidentally, I don’t have a problem with songs being longer than five minutes. But, if you’re going over five, your song should be at least as awesome as The Clash’s “Straight to Hell” or LCD Soundsystem’s “All My Friends”, which surpasses seven minutes and is still one of the best songs of the decade. Yes, the whole fucking decade). While Pitchfork finds this “aurally hypnotic,” I would like to suggest they’re confusing hypnosis with coma-inducing boredom.

Elliott Smith was one of the few singer/songwriters I can think of who could whisper his way through most of his songs and not sound like a tool, and that’s largely due to a lyrical skill that your McCombses, Mrazes, & Johnsons couldn’t touch in a lifetime of trying. Listen to “Say Yes” if you doubt that shit. In fact, listen to all of Either/Or and XO if you doubt that shit. And, if you doubt that shit after that, you’re quite possibly hopeless.

There’s a certain point where I feel like Cass McCombs is too committed to the shtick of being a lo-fi, quiet, “mysterious,” singer/songwriter and that’s a death trap for innovation. Tom Waits realized this in the early 80s  when he got tired of being the wisecracking, boozed up, jazz/country piano man and started making some of the most interesting (and awesome) music of that entire decade. And yet, I somehow doubt you’ll hear much about Frank’s Wild Years on I Love the 80s. Why? Because, as stated so many times before, VH1 knows fuckall about good music. (And, in a way, Tom Waits is the king of all the singer/songwriters – I’m not one to agree with the Pitchfork kids much, but I have a hard time disputing their assertion that “You will not write a better song than Tom Waits. Period.”)

Some of you may want to cry “sexist” at me for not including any women in this singer/songwriter rundown, but here’s why I didn’t: generally speaking, the women do it better than the boys. Neko Case would roughly fit the singer/songwriter mold here and Middle Cyclone is a fucking masterpiece. If Catacombs could compare to it, I’d give Cass McCombs an actual review instead of using his album as a springboard to complaining about his chosen genre.  (I just envisioned sitting the two albums on a table together and watching Neko leap off that car’s hood and chopping Catacombs in half. Kathleen Edwards is also superior to many of her male counterparts, though she seems to get a lot less press. Ani DiFranco is not only better than Jason Mraz but I’m pretty sure she could beat him in a fight (also, she’s one of the most truly, committedly, and successfully independent artists out there right now – so independent, in fact, that Pitchfork doesn’t seem inclined to review her albums). And I know she’s been quiet for a while, but I’ve got pleny of love for Beth Orton as well.

So here’s the thing, I think: the solo singer/songwriter field is littered with mediocrity because it’s so easy to do. You buy a guitar, figure out some chords, and then pour your soul out onto a piece of paper. You weld the words to a melody you can repeat with your modest vocal range, you repeat it until someone listens, you make an album, and some asshole in Los Angeles spends a thousand words and the better part of a morning completely shitting on your precious art. On a long enough timeline, we can all be singers in cafes and, no matter how shitty our songs are, we can find at least one person who thinks we’re so deep. But let’s not do that, okay? Please?

Sometimes I Wish I Liked Bill Callahan (Not Really A Review)

You know how Spaceballs was much funnier when you were like 12 years old? I only mention it because of the lame Prince Valium gag where they have the space prince who is always falling asleep (see, ’cause his name is Valium. See what Mel Brooks did there? Yeah, that’s why you should pretend he died in 1981 after making History of the World Part 1). And I know you came here looking for a review of Bill Callahan’s Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle, but in listening to the thing, I’m sad to report I felt a lot like Prince Valium.

I really want to like Bill Callahan. At least I think I do. I recall really enjoying the last album he did as Smog and I even liked Woke On A Whale Heart well enough. But Sometimes I Wish My Album Titles Made Grammatical Sense just bored the living shit out of me. It’s a narcotic. I nearly dosed off listening to it in my car. Damn thing should come with a warning label.

I get that the album was supposedly inspired by a gut-wrenching breakup and I will also allow that Callahan’s awesomely low baritone doesn’t lend itself to vocal pyrotechnics, but that’s not the problem. His Smog albums were some of the most depressing things I’ve ever heard – they are, in fact,  nearly Love Liza-esque in their ability to make one curl up on the floor in desperate need of a hug (if you haven’t seen Love Liza, it’s a beautiful movie, very well done, and one of many stellar performances by Philip Seymour Hoffman. It’s also like getting kicked in the nuts by a guy who stops by to tell you your whole family just died in a fire and their last words were about how they never loved you. I recommend it, but I also kinda never want to see it again). So I know Callahan doesn’t have to bore me to tears. So why is Sometimes I Wish Matt  Would Stop Fucking with Long Album Titles different? Has Bill Callahan changed? Have I changed?

Truth is, I don’t know. The only song I remember off of Sometimes I Wish For Just A Dash of Brevity is “Eid Ma Clack Shaw,” and that’s only because it is utter fucking nonsense. I kinda get what he was going for on it: the words are supposed to be the perfect words to win his lady back or some such thing, but he read ‘em in a dream so when he writes them down upon waking, they make no sense. It’s like a three-minute Finnegan’s Wake but without Joseph Campbell’s awesome skeleton key. In more interesting news, did you know Joseph Campbell (yeah, the guy who wrote The Hero with a Thousand Faces) wrote A Skeleton Key to Finnegan’s Wake? I’ll be hittin’ that shit up on Amazon for sure. And if you haven’t read Hero and you write things – any things – or read things – you should totally read it.

I know what you’re thinking: you’re thinking, “I’ve read about half of this review and precious little has been said about the album.” That’s ’cause it put me to sleep. So you could take that as a definite thumbs-down or as me not liking it or whatever. If you’re foolishly optimistic or are some kind of Bill Callahan fanboy (do those exist?), you could charitably say that for me, the jury’s still out. Except that they’re never fucking coming back because they’ve gone on to adjudicate something more interesting… (wait for it)… like grass growing.

There is, I’m sure, an audience for Bill Callahan’s Sometimes I Wish I Had a Skeleton Key to Finnegan’s Wake, it’s just that I’m not, you know, it. The songs seem to all blend together into this slow-paced jumble and you end up four tracks in thinking that you’ve been slogging through a double album. I’m not aware of any dramatic shift in my attention span over the last few years, so I have no choice but to pin it on Mr. Callahan for being boring.  So I guess, if you’re a Callahan fanboy, you can fire up your Word program and start crafting those polite, monotonous hate letters now.