Month: January 2012

Record #24: The Beach Boys – Pet Sounds (1966)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

Were I given to brevity, this post would say one thing.

“This album is perfect.”

However, I am not given to brevity, so I will be expanding that review to varying degrees of verbosity.
This album is perfect because…

Having heard The Beatles’ Rubber Soul, the Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson quit touring with the rest of the group to focus on creating the greatest pop album ever. By all accounts, he succeeded. Pet Sounds so far surpasses the easy-going, vapid California-centric music the group had gotten famous for that it’s hard to understand that it’s the same five guys. While the lush harmonies are still present (What would the Beach Boys without their vocal interplay?), there’s less of the ba-bas and doo-wahs, with more emphasis placed on the small orchestra Brian Wilson hired to play on the tracks, to the point where there are two fully instrumental numbers (which are excellent, despite what anyone says).

And where their earlier material rode the waves of West-Coast beach culture and a nation’s desire to party, Pet Sounds finds them diving into personal waters for the first time. There’s a self-doubt that pervades Wilson’s lyrics, even on the love songs (“I may not always love you…” starts God Only Knows). While tracks like I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times and Don’t Talk (Lay Your Head On My Shoulder) are easily identified as sad songs, other, bouncier tracks are a bit more deceptive. Here Today, with its raucous orchestra and delayed bass solo, tricks you into letting the top down and singing along–until you realize he’s warning his ex-girlfriend’s new boyfriend about what a Jezebel she is. In fact, only Wouldn’t It Be Nice and the cover Sloop John B showcase purely optimistic lyrics; the rest of the songs are more complex, like the ballads You Still Believe In Me and I’m Waiting For The Day. Without exaggeration, this is the saddest happy record I have ever heard.
​
When all is said and done, The Beach Boys haven’t made too extravagant a statement. None of the songs last much longer than three minutes, nor is there any experimental tinkering in the studio (not to discount the round-about process Wilson used to actually record the album). They simply made a pop record with lush orchestration and wonderful songs. But, it was (and remains) the Greatest Pop Record.

Record #21: Atlas Sound – Let the Blind Lead Those Who Can See but Cannot Feel (2008)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald
Bradford Cox is, for lack of a better word, prolific. Not only does he manage to fill the role of primary frontman and guitarist in Deerhunter, he also maintains an equally impressive solo project at the same time.
Between his main band and his Atlas Sound moniker, Cox has released new material every year since 2007. 2008 saw four releases, with Deerhunter’s double-release of Microcastles and Weird Era, Cont., and this LP/EP set.
​What’s even more remarkable than his great prolificacy is his consistency. Every album released in the past five years has been truly great, even as far as his musical center has traveled in those years.
With this in mind, it’s just about impossible to talk about Atlas Sound without talking about Deerhunter. Unlike other main band/solo project relationships, there is a constant dialogue between Cox’s full-time job and his hobby.
This album, his first official solo release (he had recorded under this nom-de-plume since he was a teenager) finds him delving once more into the ambient meanderings of Deerhunter’s excellent Cryptograms. But, while that LP featured hazy atmospherics that would recede to punk-tinged pop songs, here those atmospheres serve as the basis of those songs instead of transitional pieces. It’s an incredibly laid back record. When necessary, tape loops and drum machines are called in to add a beat to swirling drone of heavily effected guitar and synth pads that serves as the focal point of most of the songs.
Cox’s use of his voice supplements the haunting textures. Whether he’s singing single vowels or stretching his words across measures, he takes his time to say what he wants to say, which is unclear–the lyrics are ambiguous and the vocal track is drowned in the mix. Instead, the emphasis is on the wash of sound flowing out of the speakers, and it is an excellent wash of sound, to say the least.
Another Bedroom EP, included on the vinyl version of the release, is very much in the same vein. However, this time around the wooshing guitars and ambient vocalizations are paired with softly played drums and the occasional acoustic guitar. Unlike most other EPs, the non-lead tracks don’t feel like filler. Rather they are all fully fleshed ideas that flourish in the same way as the single (even the loop-based Spring Break).
​
Previous listens to this album (all digital, as I procured the physical copy less than an hour ago) rolled over me like a warm breeze; it was a pleasant experience, but I wasn’t left with too much of substance. This closer listen reveals much to latch onto. It’s a subtly wonderful record that exists in the realm of ambient without falling into the realm of boring. But what is important to remember is that this is primarily a bedroom record–Cox performed, sang, and recorded every sound here himself–and while it maintains certain elements of DIY, the record never forces you to listen through the limitations of the recording process. Instead, it is a beautiful and pleasing affair that I’m certain will become a frequent visitor of my turntable.

Record #20: The Ataris – End Is Forever (2001)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

And here we are with another piece of nostalgia. If Blue Skies was 8th grade, End Is Forever was 9th. It was my first year of high school. I had friends that were getting into drugs. I made more friends en masse in a month than I did until college, and a lot of those friendships dissolved very quickly, and sometimes with a lot of bitterness. And for the first time in my life, I really, truly hurt someone I cared about. It wasn’t exactly the most fun time in the world.
And End is Forever isn’t the most fun record in the world. Sure, the punk rock tempo remains consistent, and the bass still chugs along in picked 8th notes. But the guitars are more contemplative, the songs are centered more around minor chords, sad keyboards peek through some of the tracks, and the lyrics often border on depressing (even the uptempo pop blitzkrieg of “Bad Case of Broken Heart,” complete with tongue-in-cheek classic rock guitar solo). This melancholy even permeates the cheer-up song, “Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, Start,” giving the youthful, friendship-championing anthem a between-the-lines temporality.
To my borderline depressed 15-year-old who was trying to figure out who exactly he was anyway, it was a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it gave me a place of solace to find solidarity with someone. On the other, it didn’t give me a lot of hope. The “follow your dreams” message of Blue Skies, while still there, is muted considerably. The loudest voice in this album says, “love is a lie, which sucks because it’s the only thing worth living for.”
And when Kris Roe isn’t disparaging his love life or contemplating his loss of youth, he’s throwing up a middle finger at anyone who “just doesn’t understand,” on tracks like “If You Really Want To Hear About It…” or “Teenage Riot” (not to be confused with Sonic Youth’s much more respectable “Teen Age Riot”). These tracks never spoke to me very much. Rather, they hit me like a bucket of cold water to the face on an otherwise cathartic album. Hearing them as an adult makes them sound even more inane and unnecessary. “Song For a Mix-Tape” likewise is a jolting experience, with its brash, unsubtle opening section awkwardly transitioning into an ironic country song by the track’s end. Even though some of the songs are better than anything on Blue Skies, the random, poorly sequenced deviance from the contemplative songs that made this record and the last permanent residents in my Discman causes End Is Forever to suffer in comparison (but not in comparison to So Long Astoria. God, help us).
The side 2 opener, “Fast Times At Drop-Out High”, opens with the most overarching sentiment of these two records: “Alone at last, just nostalgia and I/And we are sure to have a blast.” Admittedly, that’s more true of Blue Skies…I mean the having a blast part.
Whereas that record was attached more to a general era of my life, End Is Forever is attached to too many specific memories (taking a drive through farmland just to get out of our friend’s house, being bored in gym class and singing to myself, blasting one of the songs in the computer lab when the teacher left, writing the lyrics to one of the songs while blowing off a lecture, etc) to be a quick and easy listen.
Music has always been one of my biggest triggers for my memory, and this album is like a machine gun, and for whatever reason it’s only firing out my saddest memories; memories like how much I felt solidarity with Kris Roe in the otherwise-life-affirming “How I Spent My Summer Vacation” when he sings “I’m still waiting for the world to come crashing down ahead.”
Thank God high school doesn’t last forever.

Record #19: The Ataris – Blue Skies, Broken Hearts…Next 12 Exits (1999)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald
​It’s the year 2001. I’m fourteen years old. I wear skating shoes, shorts so long they could be considered baggy capris (except capris haven’t come into fashion yet), and a ball chain choker necklace. My hair is spiked with Elmer’s glue mixed with water.
I’m learning to play the bass guitar, but I’m skateboarding too much to get any real practice in. I’m dating my first girlfriend, until she breaks up with me after five weeks for my best friend, who likes another, older girl what has her driver’s license and a Toyota Tercel.
I like her too.
The whole time, one CD is on repeat in my portable CD player, and my best friend’s boombox, and our older friend’s car stereo…
​Blue Skies and Broken Hearts… by The Ataris.  In a point in my life where all I was listening to was Christian rapcore and Weird Al, The Ataris were a revelation.
“You mean,” I said to myself, “there’s someone who’s felt exactly the same way as I do right now? And he’s in a band?” The marriage of happy pop-punk with adolescent problems written about in an adolescent language was something that the heavy handed wartime language of Christian nu-metal couldn’t offer me.
After buying Blue Skies, my tastes switched from POD and Project 86 to MxPx, Green Day, and, of course, Blink 182. But The Ataris was always the band that spoke to me the most. Kris Roe writes songs with morals. Not like the, “hey, don’t do drugs,” or “don’t make out with everyone you know” morality being spouted by the armies of Christian pop-punk outfits (I listened to most of them, too…Ghoti Hook, Hangnail, Sidewalk Slam…), but a nonreligious, common sense, post-teen-to-teen morality that reads like an older brother putting his arm around a little punk kid and saying things like, “Don’t ever compromise what you believe,” or, “the choices that we make may involve someone else,” or, more importantly in my own life (as I never listened to it until very late in my life, yet it was stuck in my brain), “If you think you found that one that you really love, make sure they love you back.”
Sentiment wins out over poetry, but there’s a real and legitimate pain there–22 at the time of recording, Roe had already broken up with the mother of his daughter, who lived in Indiana while he had moved to California. This experience wears on him, and despite his attempts to keep things teenaged, the pain of being an absent father rears its wounded head on a few of the tracks.
Musically, there’s nothing surprising here. Heavily distorted guitars, 8th note basslines, and a drummer hyped up on Mountain Dew pounding out 4/4 are all par for the course (barring one acoustic rehash of a song from an earlier album). It’s all a bit amateurish, although the lead guitarist flexes his riffwork during the instrumental passages, keeping the wordless moments interesting.
But what is punk if not amateur? Especially when the lyrics are likewise so unpolished. In the end, it’s the sentiments that run through the album, and the punk rock advice column Kris Roe seems to be writing for that gives this record its appeal to the teenage punk kid that still lives inside of me.
And it’s that teenage punk kid inside me that sang along with every. single. word on the first side of the album (the second half never grabbed me as much).
​And it’s the teenage punk kid inside me that made me track down a copy on vinyl as a college student, because every once in a while, you just need to let your inner punk kid have his way.

Record #17: Arcade Fire – Neon Bible (2007)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

My wife put off all of her grading this weekend and has taken over the living room with Harry Potter, so I’m listening to this record on the portable phono in our bedroom that skips every time a record gets too loud, so this listen has more struggling through quality than any of the others.
Caveat aside, Neon Bible was the first Arcade Fire album I ever heard. I heard “No Cars Go” on the local college radio station (that’s two bands I have to thank them for introducing me to…there will be many more), and I immediately knew that whoever made that song happen, I needed more of it in my life. So I purchased Neon Bible on a friend’s recommendation and a half-heard single (I had so much more faith back then), and I have never regretted it in my life.
Right off the bat, Neon Bible lets the listener know that the high stakes Funeral set are being raised. “Black Mirror” evokes a cynical “Back In The USSR,” with a sampled plane engine swooshing into a pounding piano figure, and Arcade Fire immediately takes off into a much more ambitious project than their debut. The pair of violins that sprinkled Funeral are replaced with a larger orchestra. The Farfisa they used to fill in spaces is replaced with a church organ. Samples are peppered throughout the album (like the thunderstorm that plays alongside “Ocean of Noise”). Synthesizers carry a few songs. Even the electric guitars are used to greater effect. In all honesty, the instrumentation and production on this album make Funeral look like a demo tape.
Like the White Album, they conjure in the opener, Neon Bible finds these Quebecois trying their hand at a number of different styles of songs, sometimes within the same track. The anthemic adolescent jams they filled Funeral with are still plentiful, but they’re accompanied with traditional French folk song spinoffs (the title track), bass driven ballads (“Ocean of Noise”), folk-rock singalongs (“Antichrist Television Blues”) and spaghetti Western blues (“My Body Is A Cage”). Unlike the White Album, Neon Bible never suffers for its breadth, and whereas the Beatles’ work was scattershot, the tracks on this album are still cut from the same cloth (and none of them are a labor to get through).
Musicality isn’t the only way Arcade Fire has matured, though. The forlorn teenager narrating Funeral is now a jaded adult with children of his own. His internal dialogues have grown from “what happens when I grow up and my heart dies?” to “I have grown up and my heart is dying. How can I stop it?” As someone in my early 20s throughout my entire knowledge of this album, I can pair each of the worries mentioned in the lyrics to many a sleepless night or unexpected look in the mirror (though I’m incredibly relieved that “Intervention” in no way reflects my own employment at my church).
It’s this universalism of lyrical themes, much more than channeling The Beatles or Neutral Milk Hotel or The Smiths or David Bowie, that has gathered unto Arcade Fire such a massive fan base. After all, everybody grows up, and growing up ain’t easy. But as far as capturing the terror and pain of the transition into adulthood, they certainly make it look easy.

Record #16: Arcade Fire – Funeral (2004)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

When I moved to Chicago, I lived with one of the most elitist people I have ever known. He had a collection of over 2500 records, listened to mostly krautrock, post-punk, and no-wave, and he was very proud to hate the Beatles and Radiohead both. I overheard him once describing my musical taste. “He likes stupid indie rock shit like Arcade Fire,” he said. “Gay hipster music like that.”
And let it be known, he had never heard Arcade Fire in his life.
One day, I gave Funeral a spin. A couple minutes in, he said, “this is good. Who is it?”
“Arcade Fire.”
“What?”
“Yeah.”
“But it’s…” he paused.
“Good?” I suggested.
“Yeah! I really like the stop-start drums. It’s real post-punkish.”
“I know.”
As the record turned, he continued to comment about how much he was enjoying it, and I said nothing, satisfied (there are similar stories that end with him wincing for a while, and then stating, “I don’t want to like Beatles/Radiohead. But they’re so good.”).
At the end of the day, that’s one of the only things there is to say about Funeral. It’s not very groundbreaking–—ndie rock anthems with accordions and violins had been done before, and lyrically capturing adolescence is indie rock 101—it’s just good (keep in mind that David Bowie himself was a huge fun from the beginning). And Arcade Fire managed to pull off great indie rock with more obtuse sincerity and consistency (Funeral is only the first of three consecutive home run records) than many who had gone before or have since come.
In the grand scope of their expanded catalog, its easy to pass Funeral off as little more than a twinkle in bandleader Win Butler’s eye that would bloom into a true masterpiece, but listen to Funeral again and you’ll be reminded that it is a masterpiece in its own right.