Seriously, since last Friday, there’ve been four new albums that have come out that I have to listen to. So far, I’ve been able to give a couple spins to the new Dylan and the new Amanda Palmer, but not the BF5 or Avett Bros albums. It felt like nothing of consequence was going to come out for most of this year, then four must-listen albums come out at the same time? Well played, universe. Well played.
Yet another of my old album reviews, this time for a Minus 5 record. Man, I need to go listen to this one again.
I bought this CD expecting it to be, essentially, a Wilco album with a couple of extra guys involved. In that respect, I was sorely disappointed–this is not a Wilco album, it’s a Minus 5 album on which Wilco play most of the instruments. But that’s not a bad thing, I discovered, because the Minus 5’s Down With Wilco is an album of many pleasures in its own right.
Sonically, the best way to describe Minus 5 is that they’re a hybrid of the Beach Boys, Village Green Preservation Society-era Kinks, the Byrds, and Neil Young. The melodies are lilting and infectious, the guitars range from gently-strummed acoustics to chimming twelve strings and Neil Young-esque electrics, and the harmonies sound very much as though the head of this project (a man named Scott McCaughey) has a huge Beach Boy fetish.
And he does–several of the songs display a Pet Sounds-era Brian Wilson type of arrangement, utilizing Wilson’s modular techniques and a wide range of instrumentation. Wilco provides most of the musicians for the set, but they tend to accommodate rather than forcing him and Peter Buck (of REM, who is also a key figure in this project. A few words about the “group”–it’s the side project of Scott McCaughey and Peter Buck, and they just have a rotating cast of supporting musicians. This time around, they hooked up with Wilco) to bend to their sound.
The most entertaining aspect of this record is the loose, free feeling of the music. Everything is tongue-in-cheek, everyone is wearing a smile while they play. You can hear it. There’s a feeling of whimsy and playfulness in this record that’s usually missing from Wilco’s very serious albums. While Wilco is still a great band (and one of my current favorites, as I might’ve mentioned), they don’t often crack smiles.
All of the tracks on this collection are winners. The opener, “The Days of Wine and Booze,” is an ode to loss and regret, a commitment to remember the old times, whether they were good or bad. “Retrieval of You” is a fairly straightforward song on paper–a man who lost the woman he loves because she became a pop star. But with its jaunty tune and laugh-out-loud funny lyrics (“They call me DJ Minimart, ’cause that’s where I work”), it rises above its basic premise. “The Town that Lost its Groove Supply” tells you everything you need to know in the title–witty, humorous, bouncy, and just plain fun. “I’m Not Bitter,” the most Wilco-sounding track on the collection, has a chanted call-and-response chorus of the phrase “I’m not bitter” over and over again, as though the narrator were trying to convince himself or his audience (you’re never sure which). The album closes with “Dear Employer (The Reason I Quit),” a Dear John letter to one’s place of employment that is both humorous and bittersweet.
But really, there’s not a bad song on the album. McCaughey is an excellent lyricist, and Wilco rises to the occasion musically and vocally. Jeff Tweedy, Wilco’s frontman, doesn’t take lead vocal duties often (only once exclusively, on “Family Gardener”), but provides excellent backing and harmony vocals throughout to McCaughey’s lead vocals.
Overall, the Minus 5’s Down With Wilco is an excellent, well-crafted album that takes a familiar band and casts them in a slightly different light. The result is one of the more enjoyable and cohesive albums I’ve listened to in a long time, and that’s saying something for a side project.
Seriously, one of our students gave my wife a carrot today. Just…what?
Seriously, it shouldn’t be difficult.
Anyway, I’d been behind a comc for some time, and now I’m not. Huzzah!
Yeah, it was a pretty terrible movie. Glad I didn’t pay money to see it.
I’ve been wondering about this for awhile now. Seriously, the whole point of the song is the dude wants the lady he’s singing to not to say she loves him, but to get down and get busy to show him she loves him. It’s…really skeevy, if you ask me. Which of course you do, because why else would you be here?
George Harrison was always known as “the quiet Beatle.” You had John, the outspoken, brash, social commentating wise-guy; Paul was the cute one, the one with the cherub cheeks and the delicious understanding of pop melodies; Ringo was the drummer, a nice guy, the one with the big nose; George was the quiet one. He was the weird one, the one who dabbled in Eastern music and Eastern philosophy. A hell of a guitar player. John and Paul would occasionally toss him a bone and let him have a song or two per album, but that was about it.
You could see towards the end of the Beatles’ career that George was starting to come into himself as a songwriter. His two contributions to Abbey Road, “Something” and “Here Comes the Sun,” are among the most-loved and best songs of the entire Beatles catalog. There were hints that George had more, much more, to say, and only needed the space and the opportunity to say it.
Well, he got the chance on All Things Must Pass, a triple-album chock-full of all the pent-up frustration George felt in those closing years with the Beatles. And damn if it didn’t make for some of the absolute best music ever.
The CD reissue of George’s opus retains all the original stuff from those three records, plus it throws in a handful of demo cuts and a new recording of one of the album’s key tracks, “My Sweet Lord.” And thanks to CD technology, you get it all on a very managable two CDs rather than three cumbersome vinyl records (though there is something to be said for the old records…I mean, c’mon, this stuff is what vinyl was made for).
To be blunt, there’s really not a bad cut on this set. The jams that made up the third record (the last about four or five tracks on disc 2 of the CD collection) are a little unnecessary, but you do get a sneak peak at the creation of one of the best groups ever, Derek and the Dominoes (the future members of that band all appear on this record, and all are involved in the jams. You kinda get a feeling for the direction Derek and the Dominoes would later take, which is neat). But the rest of the album is top-notch, proving that George could be every bit as inspired and prolific as Lennon and McCartney.
First, the music–George utilized Phil Spector’s “Wall of Sound” technique in recording this album, which means everything sounds big and full and lush. George brought in more musicians than you can shake a stick at (most of whom went uncredited, though some–like Eric Clapton–went uncredited due to record label issues). There are several tracks where you have a half dozen different guitars being played all at once, and each one is strumming a slightly different pattern, and it all just fits together. This record sounds big, sounds like it’s making a statement, and that’s exactly what it does.
Every song on here is good, which is impressive not only for an album of this size and scope, but for a solo project (though the inclusion of two different versions of “Isn’t it a Pity” seems a little unnecessary. Admittedly, it’s a great song with a beautiful melody, and the two different versions have enough variation that you don’t mind hearing it twice, so it’s okay). Most of these are originals (with the exception of a smooth cover of Bob Dylan’s “If Not for You,” a song which George helped Dylan come up with anyway, and the opener, “I’d Have You Anytime,” co-written by Dylan and Harrison), and Harrison makes some remarkable statements about himself, his history, the world in general, and life and death. These are heavy themes, but Harrison treats them with a stately dignity, and the songs never feel heavy handed or preachy (problems which some later Harrison songs would suffer from).
Lyrically, Harrison is in fine form here. “My Sweet Lord” is a beautiful meditation on the singer’s desire to know the nature of God; “Apple Scruffs” is an endearing tribute to a group of dedicated Beatles fans; “What is Life” is a rolicking, chugging love song with a punchy horn section; “Isn’t it a Pity” is a beautiful plea for peace, love, and understanding; and the title track is one of the deepest, most meaningful songs ever written.
That song, “All Things Must Pass,” is laden with meaning. On one level, it’s about the demise of the Beatles. On another, it’s about the end of a relationship. On yet another, it’s about life, death, and the transitory nature of reality. But Harrison never treats this passing as a negative thing. All things, he says, must pass; that is the nature of life. “Sunrise doesn’t last all morning,” he sings, but just as the good will pass, so will the bad: “Darkness only stays the nighttime,” and “It’s not always going to be this grey.” This is the ultimate song of hope: Harrison knows that nothing is here to stay, and that gives him a strange sense of comfort, because it means the chaos doesn’t last forever, either. It’s a beautiful, bittersweet notion that Harrison conveys in one of his most achingly beautiful melodies, a slow, strummed acoustic guitar setting the pace, and layers of guitar (slide and acoustic) and a subdued horn section only drive the point home.
One of the key features of the album is Harrison’s fascination with Eastern philosophy and religion. Several of the songs have religious elements or themes, whether it’s the prayer of “My Sweet Lord,” coming to terms with “The Art of Dying,” or “Chanting the Name of the Lord,” who is awaiting on us all (in “The Lord is Awaiting on You All,” of course). Harrison is nigh obsessed with the notion of God, deity, and the divine, and his own particular spirituality permeates every aspect of this album.
The CD reissue adds four new tracks–demo versions of “Beware of Darkness” and “Let it Down,” an alternate instrumental version of “What is Life,” and a new version of “My Sweet Lord” dubbed “My Sweet Lord (2000).” The two demos are excellent. “Beware of Darkness” almost has more impact in the simple acoustic guitar setting of the demo than in the final version, and “Let it Down” is more harrowing without the horns and backup singers. The instrumental of “What is Life” is interesting for the variation on the horn part from the original, and it makes for a fun karaoke verison to sing along to in the shower. The new “My Sweet Lord” featuers some breathtaking slide guitar work from George and a slightly varied arrangement and instrumentation, but the effect is rather ruined by the backup singer and Harrison’s own rather ragged vocal performance.
All Things Must Pass is one of the best rock albums of all time, hands down. None of the other former Beatles released anything like it upon the band’s initial breakup. It rivals McCartney’s Band on the Run and Lennon’s Imagine as the best ex-Beatle solo album, and for good reason. George may have been the quiet Beatle, but that was only because he was saving up all his words for this record.
I am very excited about the new Dylan album, Tempest, that’s out tomorrow. A year with new Dylan is a good year indeed.
Another album review from the vaults as I continue to cannibalize my younger self’s work for present-day self’s own enjoyment and sense of fulfillment.
Astral Weeks is an album unlike anything else in Van Morrison’s catalogue. The fact that this can be said about virtually every single album he’s made doesn’t discount the uniqueness of this record, nor does it mean there is no cohesion or a sense of connected style across his body of work. It simply means that Van is flexible enough to be able to ingest a huge number of styles, synthesize them, and make them his own.
Astral Weeks is Van’s first true solo album, and it marks a radical departure from his work with the R&B combo Them. The making of the album is an amazing story–originally, Van signed to Bang Records after he left Them in 1968, and recorded songs such as “TB Sheets” and “Brown-Eyed Girl” for the label. However, they wanted him to replicate “Brown-Eyed Girl” with other singles, and Morrison wanted to follow a very different muse. He was under contract to record a set number of songs for Bang, so he went about recording a couple dozen song tidbits that are so completely throwaway that even completists and total fanatics dismiss them as irrelevant. His contractual obligations thus fulfilled, Van struck out on his own, eventually landing with Warner Brothers.
The album he recorded for Warner Bros. came from left field. He had the engineer for the record hire a group of session players, none of whom had ever even met each other, let alone Van. They recorded the album in the space of a few nights, coming together in the studio at the tail end of the night after they’d been playing with other bands and musicians all evening. This adds to the tone of late night, pre-dawn dreaminess that pervades the record. Musically, the instrumentation–which is very sparse, consisting mostly of acoustic guitar, acoustic bass, light drums (usually just the cymbals and high-hat), a few dashes of strings, a flute every now and then, and Van’s vocals–melds together well, especially for musicians who had never really worked together and didn’t really know the songs beforehand. The music threatens to float off into the ether at any moment, and words like “effervescent” and “ephemeral” are good descriptors. Most of the songs consist of rather repetitive chord progressions with little variation within a single song, giving the songs a pulse that lulls you.
Thematically, Van attempts to create a new mythology of his hometown of Belfast. The songs not only address the town, but Van’s attempts to come to grips with where he came from and where he is going, which is far away from home. However, he can never truly escape Belfast, as he is always “caught one more time” there, unable to truly let go of the past, but wanting desperately to break through to someplace better.
The album boasts some exceptional songs, lyrically. “Sweet Thing” is a beautiful paean to a lover, “Cyprus Avenue” paints a portrait of Van’s Belfast in such striking terms and colors that you feel you are walking down the street with him, and “Madam George” is a character sketch that only really hints at the true identity of the titular character.
Overall, Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks is a beautiful, moving album, one which speaks quietly rather than screaming from the speakers. There are layers of sound and meaning hidden within the record, and for those willing to dig into it, the rewards are great.
Sketches From Memory 