Great Fucking Albums #21: Grace

On my recent trip to Death Valley, we had a sort of unspoken policy of letting albums cycle through about two-and-a-half to three times before we changed the disc. You do a lot of driving getting around a national park that size, and we were more diligent about our conversation (and which sites we were going to see next; my friend Marlayna has a passion for national parks and she attacks them with an almost ruthless efficiency. Whereas I would’ve wandered the park aimlessly, slack-jawed and mumbling about the “goddamn bigitude” of the place, Marlayna mapped out the best way for us to see the most interesting bits of the park in the two days we had) than we were in making sure each album only went round once. This policy worked out pretty well, though, because we got to spend some quality time with some great albums, not the least of which was Jeff Buckley’s 1994 debut/masterpiece/final album Grace.

I’ve mentioned at least once how I first encountered Jeff Buckley’s music – a great friend of mine put “Grace” and “Last Goodbye” on a mixtape (a real cassette mixtape) when I was in college. That mixtape led me to purchase Grace and both the mixtape (which also featured Radiohead’s “Thinking About You” and “Henry Lee” by PJ Harvey and Nick Cave, among many other gems) and Buckley’s album got me through some pretty lonely times. Sadly, I don’t have the cassette anymore, but I do still have my copy of Grace and its only gotten better with time.

Buckley’s voice, high and keening, was perfectly suited to these ten tracks, and he completely owned two well-known covers on Grace as well. The best-known is, of course, Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.” Buckley actually based his arrangement of the song off of the one the Velvet Underground’s John Cale did for I’m Your Fan, a Leonard Cohen tribute album that also featured the Pixies, Nick Cave, and R.E.M.. Cale’s arrangement is lovely, but if you hear Buckley’s version and don’t think it’s the definitive one, you’ve probably got bubble gum stuck in your ears. The other famous cover on Grace is James Chilton’s “Lilac Wine”, which was made famous by Nina Simone. Here again, Buckley makes the song his in a way that should scare all sensible people away from attempting to cover it (if you don’t know better than to cover “Hallelujah” at this point, you probably also think it’s okay to cover “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and I don’t think I can help you).

Of the seven originals that grace…um… Grace (the other cover is “Corpus Christi Carol”, which is credited to Benjamin Britten in Grace‘s liner notes), it’s pretty awesome to think of these songs appearing in 1994. Nothing sounded like “Grace” back then. Soundgarden’s Chris Cornell was kind of close, but he was more heavy metal when Buckley was more… what? Blues? Folk? Soul? These songs are essentially rock songs, but they have little in common with the better-known tunes of 1994 (fun fact: Tesla’s Bust a Nut was released the same day as Grace). This was the year of Stone Temple Pilots’ Purple, Green Day’s Dookie, Pavement’s Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, and Nine Inch Nails’ The Downward Spiral (oh, and Yanni’s Live at the Acropolis. Thank you, Wikipedia).  And then there was Grace, part soul, part rock, part blues, and all beautiful. It shouldn’t surprise you to you find that the album was met with early critical acclaim but little commercial success when it was released (the kids were too busy buying that Green Day record with all the turds on the cover). It takes time to recognize something as monumental as Grace and, maybe, just a little bit of tragedy too. People love to examine the record catalogues of the dead (I’ll admit that I didn’t find out about Chris Whitley until after he died in 2005) and Buckley’s drowning in the Wolf River in 1997 may have been an unfortunate catalyst to many people’s discovery of his music (best song written about Buckley’s death: “Grey Ghost” by Mike Doughty).

However you find Grace, you should fucking find it. It’s as cohesive and wonderful a set of ten songs as you are likely to find on record. If you listen to, say, Dookie now, it will sound unmistakably 90s, for better or worse (in that case, for worse). Grace, though, sounds fresh and unique in any decade. Buckley’s voice is matched by some extremely tight guitar playing, and his rhythm section (Mick Grondahl on bass and Matt Johnson on drums) is more than up to the challenge of playing behind such virtuosity. I can’t help but wonder if Robert Plant, upon hearing songs like “Last Goodbye” was forced to stop for a minute and realize, “That’s what I should’ve been going for all these years.” If he didn’t, he fucking well should have.

Thematically, Grace is almost eerily fitting for a dude who died young – on the title track, Buckley even sings, “And I feel them drown my name” and “Lilac Wine”, of course, is madness teetering on the edge of death. “Eternal Life” is a fiery rocker that scoffs a mighty scoff at the “twisted hell” of a “racist everyman.” The song, like all of Grace, is forceful, mournful, and hauntingly beautiful. Take note, however: this album was all that stuff before Buckley’s untimely death, so I’m not gonna sit here and speculate that the dude knew he was gonna die (well, okay, he knew he was gonna die eventually, obviously, but I’m not gonna project some kind of mystical bullshit on Grace because Buckley died three years after its release – the album and the man both deserve better).

There are plenty of albums I’ve owned in my life that have steered me through some dark times (Wilco’s Summerteeth, Bob Dylan’s Blood On the Tracks, and most of Tom Waits’s stuff) and the best of those have something to offer me during my happy times as well. Though I once found solace in the sweeping loneliness of Grace, I can go back to it now as a happily married, pretty well adjusted (I think) dude and appreciate the sheer beauty of the music. Jeff Buckley was a truly unique musical talent and while it’s a goddamn shame that Grace is the only complete album he ever released (Sketches for My Sweetheart the Drunk was released posthumously, containing demos for what would’ve been Buckley’s second album), I am personally extremely grateful to at least have this one. So pour yourself a glass of lilac wine (I guess you have to make it yourself – let me know how that goes, if you try it) and give Grace a listen. If you find, afterwards, that you prefer Green Day’s Dookie to Jeff Buckley’s masterpiece, do us all a favor: stick your head in the toilet and flush.

This Time of the Season

Since the very first time I heard them, I have believed that Belle & Sebastian are one of the most overrated bands of all time. Cutesy, self-amused bullshit. So I admit that I had some trepidation back in 2006, when I discovered that an ex-Belle & Sebastian member, Isobel Campbell, was teaming up with Mark Lanegan (the voice of the Screaming Trees, a sometime Queen of the Stone Age and occasional Soulsaver) for an album called Ballad of the Broken Seas. To my surprise, the album was great and the Campbell/Lanegan partnership has become a reliable source of excellent country/murder-folk/indie music (I make the distinction between “regular folk” and “murder-folk” because I believe that there should be a hint of darkness in really good folk songs and not all folk artists share this belief. Not every murder-folk song has to literally be about murder, but it should have just the slightest hint of despair to it – not too much though, because then there is a risk of the song becoming emo, in which case it has to be shot with a silver bullet). What’s more, Campbell has proven to be quite adept at paying homage to American folk/country/roots music without butchering it – the Brits have a mixed track record in this department, largely because of Elvis Costello, who set the bar really high with King of America but then turned around, knocked the fucking thing over, and broke it in half with Secret, Profane, and Sugarcane.

I lived in Boston when Ballad of the Broken Seas came out and it was the perfect accompaniment to the dark, cold winters in that city (it’s a great place to listen to murder-folk). For Campbell and Lanegan’s subsequent releases, 2008′s Sunday at Devil Dirt and this year’s Hawk, I have lived in Los Angeles, where it is almost always sunny and almost always at least seventy degrees (bad place for murder-folk, too. People out here don’t wanna know from folk songs unless someones sings ‘em on Glee. I cant’ say with any certainty whether someone has or has not sung a folk song on Glee because that show is Auto-Tuned up to the eyeballs and is thus spiritually abhorrent to me). Sounds like paradise to a lot of people, I know, but it creates a certain amount of frustration for yours truly. So I’ve had a hard time listening to Hawk this year, even though I’ve had it for months. But now, the clouds have come to visit the so-called City of Angels and rain is in the forecast for possibly the next week. Now, at last, I can get down to business with this record.

Turns out Hawk might be the best offering yet from Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan. There’s some newfound country and rockabilly stomp to break up the brooding, murder-folk ballads that have populated their past efforts. There’s still plenty of darkness on Hawk – the Lanegan-led “You Won’t Let Me Down Again” is basically a threat and Campbell’s “To Hell and Back Again” and “Sunrise” are beautiful but deeply depressing, just the way I want them to be. I get the sense listening to this album that Campbell and Lanegan are just starting to find their feet in this musical partnership,which should mean that their best stuff is yet to come.

I’ve always had a thing for bands that feature both male and female voices (I’ve remarked on that plenty of times in this space) and Campbell and Lanegan’s voices compliment each other perfectly. An entire album of Isobel Campbell’s wispy whisper would probably get old, but Lanegan’s baritone growl (I’ve probably also said this before, but it bears repeating: Mark Lanegan is one of the most underrated vocalists in the history of rock ‘n’ roll) lends weight to the proceedings. They don’t necessarily harmonize on the scale of, say, the Living Sisters, but they’re also not trying to be as cute. The best Campbell/Lanegan tunes, like all great murder-folk songs, reek of sex and death, even if they’re singing about taking a walk in a garden.

The other new wrinkle in the old Campbell/Lanegan dynamic is a dude named Willy Mason, who appears on the Townes Van Zandt cover “No Place to Fall” and the Campbell original “Cool Water.” Both songs are down-tempo, pretty tunes. One might be tempted to surmise that Mason was brought in to handle the pretty stuff for which Mark Lanegan is too menacing, but I would caution against that conclusion – Lanegan has been downright charming in the past, never more so than on “(Do You Wanna) Come Walk with Me?” from Ballad of the Broken Seas. Anyway, Mason performs his part admirably and the two Townes Van Zandt covers that appear on Hawk (the other being “Snake Song”) have awakened in me a desire to listen to Van Zandt; plenty of musicians for whom I have profound respect seem to dig his music and it’s high time I saw what the fuss is all about. Just scanning the dude’s Wikipedia bio is pretty entertaining.

Since Christmas is almost upon us, I guess I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention “Time of the Season,” one of Hawk‘s many highlights. The tune perfectly captures the bittersweetness of a holiday season full of romantic turmoil. Winter is a helluva bad time to be lonely, even in stupid-sunny Los Angeles, and it’s nice to hear a song that captures that with some dignity instead of just bitching about it. The line, “We all do what we have to do/ at this time of the season” sums it up pretty nicely, I think.

So if you’re lucky enough to need a fire by which to warm yourself during this holiday season, why not consider a nice bottle of red wine (there’s a fine and affordable Pinot Noir from Oregon called Firesteed. They are not paying me to endorse their product, but if they read this and wanna ship a free bottle or two, I could probably mention them more in the future) and a spin through Hawk? Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan might not melt the ice on your gutters, but they can maybe do something for that chill in your heart (although that “something” may be “turn your thoughts to murder” but your mileage may vary).

So now that I’ve reached the end of my review of Hawk, I’d like to mention a word that is used too often in reference to Isobel Campbell. I have intentionally eschewed the use of that word in this review because I don’t want to give people the impression that Campbell, a very talented musician, is one-dimensional. The word I’m talking about, of course, is “sultry.” It’s not that it’s a bad word for the way Campbell sings (sometimes) but literally every review I’ve read of a Campbell/Lanegan album has worn the word into the ground and rendered it meaningless. Now it reads like shorthand for, “I have nothing new or creative to say about Isobel Campbell so I’ll just call her ‘sultry’ and take an early lunch.” So I am pledging to never use that word to describe Campbell’s singing ever again and I am also calling on all other music critics, professional and amateur alike, to do the same.

What We Lose in the Fire We Gain in the Flood

Still basking in the glow of the Hold Steady’s Heaven is Whenever, I turned my attention to a little album by the Mynabirds, a band named after a band (the Mynah Birds) that, no shit, once featured Neil Young and Rick James. At the same fucking time! The Mynabirds are mostly Laura Burhenn, who was in a D.C. duo called Georgie James. I know nothing else about Georgie James and it’s not important. The thing is, the Mynabirds quiet debut album (on Saddle Creek, no less. Saddle Creek spawned Bright Eyes and some other pretentious indie bands that I think are more than partly to blame for why non-music nerds get a little nervous when you say the word “indie”*), What We Lose in the Fire We Gain in the Flood is nothing short of fucking gorgeous and elegantly simple.

Which is why, maybe, What We Lose in the Fire We Gain in a Really Long Album Title is one of the first new albums I’ve been able to listen to since acquiring the latest Hold Steady offering. There’s a simple, meat-and-potatoes pleasure that I derive from how good the Hold Steady is at kickass rock ‘n’ roll. I get the same pleasure from listening to the Mynabirds – despite “having always wanted to make a record that sounded like Neil Young doing Motown” – do what the Band did pretty much better than anyone. I guess there’s some whiffs of Neil Youngish folk colliding with some Motown sound, especially on “Numbers Don’t Lie” and “L.A. Rain.” But to me, what the Band did very well was make aching, Broken-Ass Music. And if you don’t hear that on What We Lose in the Fire We Gain By Being By Far the Best Band on Saddle Creek, you might want to get your ears checked.

Everything the Mynabirds do is instantly familiar, but not in a bad way. Listening to this album is like stepping into my grandfather’s office where the smell of old books mingles with the smell of pipe tobacco. “What We Gained in the Fire”, nominally the title track, sets this tone from the outset and Burhenn and collaborator Richard Swift never deviate – they don’t need to. The album is instrumentally pretty simple – mostly piano, guitar, and drums, with some horns and a few nice backing vocal performances thrown in for spice (although Burhenn’s voice is fantastic on its own. She’s like a more confident Cat Power). The parts are few, but the sum is mighty. Getting back to my meat-and-potatoes analogy: you might think meat and potatoes is pretty dull, but what if you know someone who can whip up a homemade marinade for a juicy cut of steak and they grill it just right and serve it up with mashed spuds (maybe some garlic and rosemary in there**) and a nice smoked porter? My mouth is watering just thinking about that. That’s what the Hold Steady does with rock ‘n’ roll, it’s what She & Him do with the Beatles, and it’s what the Mynabirds do with country/gospel/folky/Bandy awesomeness.

At barely a half an hour, What We Lose in the Fire, We Gain in a Trade with the Red Sox is almost too brief, which is its own kind of accomplishment. Burhenn and Swift are clearly not trying to hide the fact that they’re being derivative, but they’re so damn good at it that you end the album wanting a little more. Which is exactly how an album like this should leave you feeling. You’re really gonna end up in one of two places after hearing an album like this: 1) you’re going to think, “Wow, that band has an amazing grasp of musical history up to this point. I should very much like to subscribe to their newsletter” or 2) you’ll think “what a bunch of hack-assed ripoff artists. I’d like to pull their internal organs out through their nose.” Interestingly enough, people have divided into those two camps about the likes of Led Zeppelin (they had some good songs, but I hope Zombie Willie Dixon comes to Robert Plant’s house in the [living] dead of night and bites his nuts off) and Bob Dylan (who, to be fair, is kinda ripping himself off at this point). I’m firmly in column numero uno when it comes to the Mynabirds.

I could spend all night parsing out the different influences that are evident on What We Lose in the Fire We Gain in the Flood Unless We’re Poor Black People in New Orleans and This is 2005 (okay, I’ll stop now) but at a certain point it doesn’t matter. To pastiche or not to pastiche*** is really not the question in music these days. We have twelve notes, folks. Different octaves, sure. But that’s a matter of the quality of the note, not the quantity of notes available. So the question then becomes: how good are you at using the past? Great musicians learn from their history in a way that human civilization at large has so far managed to avoid. Tom Waits is a genius at this. He hasn’t done anything that hasn’t been done before, he just has a very keen understanding of music’s past (and a broad one. If you threw Harry Partch,  Kurt Weill, Leadbelly, Captain Beefheart, and Exile On Main Street in a blender with a shitload of whiskey, you’d come up with something near a Tom Waits album. But name another guy who can juggle those influences so adeptly). The Mynabirds aren’t operating on Tom Waits’s level (who the hell is?), but they have spun their favorite records into a musical celebration instead of a theft and that makes What We Lose in the Fire We Gain in the Flood an album that can best be described, after all this writing, in two words: “fucking beautiful.”

*Which is why I’m trying not to use the word “indie” when describing bands. First off, it doesn’t describe how a band sounds (but neither does “post-rock” in my opinion) and second, it makes me think of Bright Eyes.

**Pro tip: steam some cauliflower, puree it, and mix it in your mashed potatoes. You get the extra vegetable nutrition, the consistency is about the same, and you can trick folks into eating their veggies this way. Also, if you like cauliflower, it’s just plain delicious. Also also, George Carlin once helpfully pointed out that cauliflower cures cancer. Unfortunately, it did not cure his congestive heart failure.

***I know it’s not a verb, but I couldn’t help myself.

My 13 Favorite Albums of 2009 13-6

Well, here we are in 2010, the year we make contact. For those of you who don’t know, a new federal law went into effect at midnight on New Year’s Day: if you hear any of your fellow citizens call this year “oh-ten”, it is legal to punch them in the face exactly one time.

Having safely seen 2009 out the door, I think it’s time to start talking shit about it. Everyone loves a list, especially one that doesn’t include Animal Collective or Phoenix, so I compiled a list of my 13 favorite albums of 2009. I don’t know if they’re the best albums of the year or not and I don’t care. They’re the ones I like the best and, honestly, I think that’s all anyone can say. Also, my list contains 14 albums (well, technically, 13 albums and an EP) because there was a tie. Anyway, feast yer eyes on this here list (helpfully rendered in a distinctly non-slide-show format):

13. Lord Cut-Glass, Lord Cut-Glass. I’ll just assume everyone knows that Lord Cut-Glass is really former Delgado Alun Woodward. And I know that my review of this record spent a good deal of time bitching about how the Delgados ought to just reunite, come to the U.S. and play shows in the courtyard of my apartment complex. But the fact remains that Lord Cut-Glass is a really beautiful record; Woodward lilts over plucked acoustic guitars and low brass, quietly issuing some of the best melodies of his career. Highlights include “Picasso,” “Even Jesus Couldn’t Love You,” “Holy Fuck,” “A Pulse” and “Big Time Teddy.”

12. Mike Doughty, Sad Man Happy Man. Last year, Doughty put out an album called Golden Delicious that I liked well enough at first. And then it kinda grew off of me with a stunning quickness. Just wasn’t feeling it, I guess. However, because I love Mike Doughty, I’m always willing to listen to his stuff. This year, he put out the superb Sad Man Happy Man, which I nabbed from Amazon’s digital store for five freaking bucks (gargle my balls, I-Tunes). SMHM is driven by Doughty’s chunky guitar strumming and absurd humor, and it’s my favorite album of his since Skittish (which has to be one of the most underrated albums I’ve ever heard). It opens with one of its best moments, “Nectarine (Part Two)” and also includes the coolest prayer ever (“Lord Lord Help Me Just to Rock Rock On”) and “Year of the Dog,” which might be Doughty’s best tune since “Sweet Lord in Heaven.”

11. Yeah Yeah Yeahs, It’s Blitz. 2009 was a great year for some of my favorite female vocalists, not least of whom is Karen O. of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Not only did I get to delight in an affordable deluxe edition of It’s Blitz! (Amazon’s mp3 store has not yet let me down in the cheap goodies department), but I got to see the Yeah Yeah Yeahs play a kickass set at Coachella (one of the best sets I saw at that festival). The album is filled with awesome turbo-pop (starting with a pair of aces in “Zero” and “Heads Will Roll”) and a few pretty ballads (“Hysteric” splits the difference between the two types of song and is, in two words, fucking awesome). It’s Blitz! firmly established the Yeah Yeah Yeahs as one of the best bands in America and their live shows will back that claim up for the doubters.

10. Brother Ali, Us. I could make a joke about how Brother Ali is the king of white rap (ha ha, because he’s an albino, ha ha), but, taking Us as exhibit A for the prosecution, it’s more accurate to place Ali near the top of the hip-hop heap, regardless of skin pigment. Jay-Z has never, in my estimation, done anything to rival  “Tightrope” or “The Travelers.” To my knowledge, he’s never even tried. With Us, Ali threw down a gauntlet of new rules for the hip-hop community, chief among them: no skits and fewer songs about how badass you are (Us has ‘em, but they’re matched pound for pound by songs of real substance and at least one tune wherein Ali shows gratitude for his good fortune, saying, “I’m the luckiest sonofabitch that ever lived”). Us is a truly refreshing album, and it stays fresh with every listen.

9. Camera Obscura, My Maudlin Career. Speaking of refreshing, Camera Obscura released one hell of an orchestral pop album last year. My Maudlin Career, despite its potentially emo-sounding name, starts and ends with a bang (“French Navy” and “Honey in the Sun”, respectively) – in between, Tracyanne Campbell drops lines like “when you’re lucid, you’re the sweetest thing” and “drinking has never been the same again”, the latter from the stellar, mournful ballad “Other Towns and Cities”. My Maudlin Career is so good that I think almost anyone who likes music will like it. But some people who like music like Wavves, so I could be wrong.

8. The Minus 5, Killingsworth. Killingsworth is the album that elevated Scott McCaughey from Person of Interest to Folk Hero in my estimation. It’s basically a dark country rock album, but it’s so fully realized and wittily rendered (“your wedding day was so well-planned/ like a German occupation”) that it cannot be denied. Backed by an excellent chorus of women, McCaughey sings of lurking barristers, broken love, and crowded urban apartment life (“Big Beat Up Moon”) with a drunken weariness that is deeply appealing to young curmudgeons like myself. He also takes the time to satirize fundamentalist Christianity on “I Would Rather Sacrifice You”, a song that never fails to but a big smile on my face.

7. The Future of the Left, Travels with Myself and Another. I have said many times that, all appearances to the contrary, I like more music than I dislike. A small subsection of music that I like is nasty, noisy stuff that almost no one else I know likes. Titus Andronicus comes to mind here, as does the Future of the Left, whose Travels with Myself and Another beat its way into my skull and won my heart last year with its pounding drums and Andy Falkous’s snarling vocals. Subjects range from girls who get off on hitting people (“Chin Music” will only be appropriate at a very small number of weddings:  “I only hit him ’cause he made me crazy/ I only hit him ’cause he made me mad/ she only hit him ’cause it gets her wet/ yeah, she’s one of a kind/ she’s got chin music”) to the practical concerns of Satanism (“You Need Satan More than He Needs You”). Travels with Myself and Another pretty much kicks ass, though it’s not for the faint of heart or the humorless.

6. Andrew Bird, Noble Beast. I guess #7 and #6 on my list are a study in contrast. Andrew Bird’s Noble Beast is an understated, mellow, and completely lovely work – his finest to date, if I may be so bold. It blends Bird’s myriad musical talents (no one on earth – no one – can whistle like this motherfucker) into quirky pop (“Fitz and the Dizzyspells”), old school folk (“Effigy,” which is nothing short of stunning), and whatever you’d classify “Not a Robot, But a Ghost” as. Some of the songs have unique movements, but they never seem to wander, even on the seven minute “Souverian.” Bird is a musician’s musician, a guy you can study as well as enjoy, and Noble Beast is the textbook for aspiring musical ninjas.

I know. It’s taken me four days into the new year to even start counting down my favorite albums of the old year and now I’m doing it in two parts. Pitchfork took a week to do their list and they still fucked it up, so maybe it’s better that I’m taking my time. I, for one, wholeheartedly endorse every choice I’ve made so far. Tune in tomorrow or Wednesday for albums 5 through 1, which are bound to include demure rodents, plenty of references to whiskey, a rant about shitty record labels, the best pop album of the year, the word vagina, and plenty of weather.

Never Turn Your Back on Neko Case

Take a moment and look at that album art again. Go ahead.

That’s Neko Case, perched on the hood of a car (is it a GTO? I have no clue), carrying a fucking sword! Ladies and gentlemen, I know it’s early, but let’s go ahead and give Ms. Case the Album Cover of the Year award. “But,” you say, “you’re not here to review her album art. What about the music?”

I’m getting to that.

I’m going to start with the bad stuff first, and you’ll see why in a minute. The last “song” on Middle Cyclone is “Marais la Nuit”, 30 minutes of farm noises, recorded by Neko on an actual farm. Her farm. Again, that’s 30 minutes of nothing but frogs croaking and crickets chirping. This is pretentious and highly unnecessary. It’s really, really annoying.

So what would it take to forgive “Marais la Nuit”? I tell you exactly: it would take the fourteen tracks that precede it. The entire rest of Middle Cyclone is an unparalleled acheivement, a work of stunning beauty that showcases perfectly Neko Case’s myriad talents. Middle Cyclone is so good apart from Track 15 that I have fallen into the habit of listening to it straight through, skipping the final track, and going right back to “This Tornado Loves You.”  My Imaginary Secretary has fled the office today, fearing a repeat of the TV on the Radio incident of last year.

Case’s music is parked (like a car carrying a chick and a big fucking sword) at the intersection of folk, country, pop, and Byrds-style classic rock, and Middle Cyclone, like Fox Confessor Brings the Flood before it, blends those genres into something that is entirely Neko’s. And true to it’s title, Middle Cyclone is all about forces of nature: Neko as a romantic force of nature (she sings “I carved your name across three counties,” on “This Tornado Loves You”) and songs about actual nature, like her cover of Sparks’ “Never Turn Your Back on Mother Earth,” one of the highlights on an album of highlights.  Some songs blend both concepts, as on the advanced single, “People Got A Lotta Nerve,” where Neko not only reminds us that killer whales are called that for a reason but also uses the metaphor to embrace a common perjorative for heartbreaking women: “I’m a man-man-man/ man-man-man-eater/ but still you’re surprised-prised-prised/ when I eat ya.” In other words, if you tangle with a woman who car surfs GTOs (we’ll just pretend it’s a GTO, okay?) with a sword in her hand, you shouldn’t be shocked when you get your head chopped off.

Neko’s ferociousness isn’t all turned outward on Middle Cyclone either. The title track is a simple and gorgeous acoustic ditty with nuggets like “did someone make a fool of me?/ For I could show ‘em how it’s done” and “can’t scrape together enough/ to ride the bus to the outskirts/ of the Fact that I Need Love”. Case takes the whipped-raw feeling that one sometimes get from romantic entanglements and makes them elemental – a tornado, messy and seemingly undirected, is following you through three counties, destroying everything in its path trying to work its way back to your arms. It’s a metaphorical trick that seems ingrained in Neko Case’s soul, as many of the songs on Fox Confessor follow a similar pattern.

The album is driven by Neko’s voice, one of the strongest and most beautiful in music. She soars on “Never Turn Your Back on Mother Earth,” weeps on “Vengeance is Sleeping,” smirks on “People Got A Lot a Nerve,” and does all of the above on “The Pharoahs,” where she sings, “I want the Pharoahs/ but there’s only men.” Neko’s longtime guitarist Paul Rigby handles most of the arranging, building the music perfectly around the mood of her lyrics. This is carried off to devastating efffect on “Prison Girls,” where Neko sings, “I love your long shadows/ and your gunpowder eyes,” adding that the prison girls have “traded more for cigarettes/ than I’ve managed to express.”

If I seem a bit gushy re: Neko Case, let me tell you why: first off, she deserves it. Nobody sings like Neko Case, and her albums are consistently lovely, substantive works. Secondly, look at the women who get attention in music – you’ve got your Miley Cyruses, your JessicAshlee Simpsons, a smattering of first-name-only R&B girls, your Britney Spearses, and so on and so on. It’s not that there aren’t far superior performers out there; if you dig deeper, you’ll find your Kathleen Edwardses, Anis DiFranco, Regina Spektors, and Neko Cases. Neko Case, for my money, is the best of this underrated crop of women, and Middle Cyclone is strong enough on its own to back up my claim.

If you have a friend who is all about Neko Case and you’re thinking you might check her out, get Middle Cyclone and get it now. If this album is not in my top three at year’s end, I’ll eat a pound of steamed brussel sprouts and chase ‘em with a bottle of Boone’s Strawberry Whatthefuck. If you wanna try before you buy, come to my place and we’ll open up a bottle of red wine and make my girlfriend sick of Middle Cyclone (it’ll be a nice break from being sick of The Hold Steady and The National). We can let the beauty of the thing wash over us. But we’ll skip the last track, if it’s all the same to you.

Conversation with a Musical Pathologist Regarding the New Portishead Album

Over the Thanksgiving weekend, I, like many Americans, found myself drinking beer in an airport and watching the Seattle Seahawks dribble piss down their legs while getting mercilessly thrashed by the Dallas Cowboys (who, let the record show, I cannot stand. Especially Terrell Owens, the biggest douchebag in all of football). Obviously, the game wasn’t going to hold my attention (fortunately, my weekend football viewing was salvaged by the Oregon Ducks’ utter humiliation of the Oregon State Beavers in the 112th Civil War game. Nothing says “ass whoopin’” like giving up 65 points on your home field), so I started chatting with fellow travelers, as is my wont. Imagine my surprise when I found, sitting to my right and drinking a glass of red wine, none other than famed musical pathologist Rebecca Mellor. I have transcribed our conversation here and offer it to you now as a fruitful discussion of Portishead’s Third album.

Chorpenning: What the hell is a musical pathologist?

Dr. Mellor: Well, I analyze people’s listening habits and assess how their musical choices are impacting their physical and emotional health.

C: So you’re saying that listening to shitty music can be physically bad for people.

Dr. M: It absolutely is.

C: What’s the worst music a person can listen to and why?

Dr. M: Any of what I call the Diluted Genres: soft rock, smooth jazz, blues played by white mid-western teenagers. Accepting a watered-down musical experience trains you to accept watered-down emotional experiences and can lead to a mental breakdown if the cycle isn’t broken.

C: So Kenny G, say, dulls your senses? Like an opiate?

Dr. M: Exactly. But an opiate for your soul. It makes you care less about your music and soon, you won’t care about anything.

C: How would you place emo on that scale? I don’t think of it as watered down necessarily, but it’s so calculated and trite. It can’t be good for you.

Dr. M: You’re right. It’s a dilution of rock music – where a true rock artist might express social concern or any kind of awareness of the world around them, an emo “musician” is dangerously wrapped up in themselves. Mix that with the fact that the bulk of emo is targeted toward teenagers and you have a recipe for an epidemic of solipsism. Walk into any high school in America right now if you doubt that.

C: So what do you do about it? I mean, emo bands are huge. There are even emo bands now that claim to hate emo, like My Chemical Romance. And they’re not helping anybody.

Dr. M: They’re clearly emo.

C: Clearly.

Dr. M: The good news is that there are alternatives, if one is willing to find them. It’s important to have good music when you’re a teenager because that’s a very confusing time of life. You need to find music that not only reflects your confusion but offers some hope that it’s temporary, and it has to do that without sugarcoating everything in platitudes like “Everything is going to be all right.”

C: Because everything can’t possibly be all right.

Dr. M: Exactly. (There’s a pause; the bar watches as the Seahawks turn the ball over again. We order another round) How old are you?

C: I’ll be 29 in January.

Dr. M: So you were… fourteen when Portishead’s Dummy came out?

C: Yeah. Wow. I love that album.

Dr. M: Did you own it when you were fourteen?

C: Unfortunately, no. I was still weening myself off of shitty music back then. I did own the first Beck album though.

Dr. M: Imagine how much easier your adolescence would have been if you had Dummy.

C: I see what you’re getting at. That album has an earned sadness to it.

Dr. M: It provides a catharsis that isn’t as cheap as you might get from screaming about black parades.

C: No shit. Hey, have you heard Portishead’s new one?

Dr. M: (nods) I’m writing a book about Portishead; their music is crucial to addressing the emo epidemic that’s plaguing this country right now. Bands like Portishead and The Hold Steady are two sides of the same coin – the yin and the yang of a cure for the shallow listening that is leading so many of us to shallow living.

C: Well put. Portishead does provide a great soundtrack for brooding. But it’s still musically very beautiful.

Dr. M: Beth Gibbons is one of the most under-rated singers of the last 20 years. And you’re right, their music does create an atmosphere in which it would be appropriate to wrestle with one’s personal demons, but it never tries to provide an answer for the listener. Take “Nylon Smile” for example. The lines “I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve you” are delivered with a sad sweetness that no emo singer could ever hope to duplicate.

C: And that song is followed by “The Rip,” which is one of the most beautiful songs I’ve heard this year.

Dr. M: The whole album goes back and forth between Massive Attack-style electronic music and this sinister sort of psychedelic music; it’s a blending of genres that escapes many emo bands as well. It reflects a deeper understanding of music and gives the album a much richer texture than you’ll find on, say, a Panic at the Disco album. To return to your earlier example of My Chemical Romance – the highest they’ve ever reached musically was on that dreadful Black Parade album and it was still, stylistically speaking, somewhere between bad Queen and Andrew Lloyd Webber.

C: Whereas Third is somewhere between Dummy and Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd.

Dr. M: Precisely. The organ parts on “We Carry On” and “Small” are absolute nods to 60s psychedelic music, not least of which is early Pink Floyd. Third reveals a musical intelligence that propels the listener on a much more satisfying and complex journey than any My Chemical Romance album ever will.

C: Don’t forget that wacky-ass saxophone part on “Magic Doors.” Is it a lack of weirdness that makes emo so harmful?

Dr. M: Not exactly. (sips wine, reflects) Not at all, actually. It’s merely a lack of depth. Not just in the lyrics, which are obviously awful, but in the music as well. Emo music as music acts as though no one has ever played a power-chord before. They don’t know where they’re coming from. Not to get off on a tangent here, but so-called power chords are not chords at all as played by many bands. They’re the root, the fifth, and the octave intervals of a scale and, since the octave is the same note as the root (just an octave higher), it’s not a chord at all. Where was I?

C: You were saying that emo music, not just the lyrics, but the actual music, is lacking in depth.

Dr. M: Absolutely. How mad do you get when someone compares an emo-punk band to The Clash?

C: Fighting mad, of course.

Dr. M: And you’re right to do so. The Clash’s music had many musical reference points – reggae, rockabilly, and The Ramones. Their music reflected those reference points to a T without ever sounding like they were merely copying them. Now, as a counter-example, consider Fall Out Boy. You can tell by listening to them that they like some good music, probably even The Clash, but their music doesn’t take in their influences and synthesize them into something wonderful. Fall Out Boy’s music partially chews its meal and then regurgitates back a mangled, saliva-covered and completely repulsive replica of their influence. The saying is usually “Garbage in, garbage out” but in this case, it’s “Gold in, garbage out.”

M: So obviously, liking good music doesn’t mean you’ll make good music.

Dr. M: Right. Now it just so happens that Beth Gibbons likes good music and makes good music, but I would imagine – and I’ll explore this more in my book – that if you were to sit down and have a conversation with Beth Gibbons it would be a lot better use of your time than spending an hour chatting up the goons in Fall Out Boy.

C: I couldn’t possibly disagree with that. Hey, I gotta get on a plane to Portland, but it was really great talking to you. In short, you’re saying Third is healthy listening for people, yeah?

Dr. M: That’s precisely what I’m saying.

C: Thanks! Can I interview you about other albums in the future?

Dr. M: Any time.

Sunday at Devil Dirt

Smart things Isobel Campbell has done:

1) Leaving Belle & Sebastian (sorry, sniveling indie kids, they are by far the most overrated band in all of indiedom)

2) Teaming up with Mark Lanegan on 2006′s Ballad of the Broken Seas.

Ballad of the Broken Seas was one of the most underrated albums of 2006 and its follow-up, Sunday at Devil Dirt may be one of this year’s most criminally ignored albums. That may be due in large part to its dogged old-schoolitude: these songs sound old, really old, like as old as Tom Waits wanted to be when he was in his 20′s. There’s not much uptempo pep to go ’round on this album (Broken Seas at least had “(Do You Wanna) Come Walk With Me”, a kickass, shuffling acoustic number); where Campbell and Lanegan’s last outing lilted over hill and dale on its way to grandma’s house, Sunday at Devil Dirt smolders, sulks, seduces, and broods. So it’s not the sort of thing that’s going to be a hit at the clubs and none of your local radio stations are going to know what to do with it (unless your local radio station is The Current, which, thanks to the internet, it had damn well better be). It doesn’t have any soundtrack-ready songs on it, so it won’t get the one-year-later introduction that M.I.A.’s Kala did because of “Paper Planes.” And that’s just as well, really. These Campbell/Lanegan albums are custom-built for curmudgeons like me who are predisposed to liking stuff like this (I’ll give Mark Lanegan a listen anytime; even when he’s in The Gutter Twins).Point is, this may be the only place you hear about this album this year, so listen up.

Due mostly to the awesome combination of Campbell’s whispery, soft voice and Mark Lanegan’s wounded growl, the overall feel of Sunday at Devil Dirt is that of a beautiful woman out of an old western who gets you up to her room, talks you out of your clothes and gives you one passionate kiss before holding a knife to your throat and demanding your money. What, this hasn’t happened to anyone else? Put it this way: if Deadwood were still on TV, Mark Lanegan and Isobel Campbell could very well be the house entertainment at the bar.

This album is a fitting enough follow-up to Ballad of the Broken Seas, meaning that if you couldn’t really get into that album, you probably won’t find much to love on Sunday at Devil Dirt. If you loved Broken Seas, you’ll probably love Devil Dirt. If you didn’t even listen to Ballad of the Broken Seas, go do so right now. I’ll wait while you listen.

Done? Good.

Now, another dozen songs by this dynamic duo might strike you as a good idea, yeah? Like its predecessor, Sunday at Devil Dirt is wonderfully old-timey, packed full of songs about wandering the world, finding and losing love, finding and losing God, and of course, plenty of references to the sea, trains, and sad sad lovers. This go round even features the explicitly haunting “The Raven,” which should be released as the Edgar Allan Poetic B-Side to The Decemberists’ “Crane Wife” trilogy. Same story, darker bird, possible beastiality. Good times. The lost, unlucky-in-love characters of Ballad of the Broken Seas are more lost and even less lucky in love this time around and, lacking their former innocence, they’re looking for good times in some dark fucking places. Check out “Shotgun Blues,” if you don’t believe me. You’re greeted by a sauntering acoustic slide guitar and then Campbell slyly whispers, “Ooh, Daddy/ lay on my bed.” You’d better do what she says.

Sunday at Devil Dirt is the kind of album that you have to be in the right mood for. It’s a rainy day record. If you live in an area that’s cold and rainy this time of year, put this album on the loudest system you’ve got and crank it up. I’ve had this album since May (when it came out) and have had a hard time getting into it because I live in Los Angeles where it never rains and was 90 degrees today. You know, in fucking November. Sunday at Devil Dirt is the kind of album that should warm you up on cold winter days and put some impure thoughts in your head. Now I’m not saying that I’m lacking for impure thoughts here, but the sunshine just doesn’t fit with this album. I’ve had to work hard to get into Sunday at Devil Dirt, but now I don’t want to get back out of it. Campbell and Lanegan are a fantastic team and Sunday at Devil Dirt is a whispering beauty of an album.

I began this review with a list of smart things Isobel Campbell has done and I will end it with a list of people Mark Lanegan should always make albums with:

1) Isobel Campbell

2) Will Oldham (do this next, please, Mr. Lanegan. Those of you who bought the Soulsavers album last year understand where I’m coming from on this)

3) Tom Waits (because, I mean… Jesus, that would be awesome.)