IN REVIEW: Eels “End Times”

If you’ve listened to any album by Eels before, you’re likely well aware that Mark Oliver Everett’s music can trend towards the wrong side of depressing from time to time.  However, Everett has always possessed an undeniable gift for keeping things light and wryly humorous, even when the sentiment on display was markedly down in the doldrums.  On the band’s latest album, End Times, Everett is primarily singing about his divorce, so you can imagine that the music is as depressing and downtrodden as anything that he’s written today.  Unfortunately, it’s also completely free of any of Everett’s winking mischievousness and is also surprisingly melodramatic.  The result is an album that is one of the more densely inaccessible and less enjoyable pieces of work in Everett’s long career.

Some folks have described End Times as being impersonal, which I find to be a pretty unfair accusation to be lobbing at the album.  In reality, if anything, the music is probably hyper-personal, in the sense that Everett was writing as an exercise to be understood and enjoyed primarily by himself and by those around him.  So, in the truest sense of the word, it doesn’t get much more personal than that.  However, at the same time, the music is also extremely hard for the listener to relate to, as the feelings that Everett explores are universal, but his perspective and direction in doing so are far from it.  For example, on the interlude “Apple Trees,” Everett describes a car ride where they drove past rows upon rows of trees.  He says that at one point he “picked one tree that I could see about eight trees back in this one row in the middle. Just one in a billion. And that’s how I felt.”  That’s all well and good, and it may encapsulate a moment in time for Everett, but for the rest of us it’s just kind of hollow and puzzling.  Too often on this album, it’s exactly this place that Everett’s music strays towards.

There are some moments of success across End Times, even if they are only successful in the same haggard and tired manner that the beat-up old man depicted on the album’s cover would suggest are therein contained.  Perhaps the track where Everett is most able to tap onto some combination of his old winking wit and some honest-to-god emotional resonance is on the album’s lead single “A Line In the Dirt”.  Here smirking lyrics like, “she locked herself in the bathroom again, so I am pissing in the yard,” are found side by side with more serious and tear-stained lines.  What gives that track its depressing honesty is that Everett is putting that old impish sense of humor on display, if only to illustrate what all of his heartache has robbed him of.  It’s pretty affecting stuff, but it also is too rare across an album that seems mostly content to exist floating on the surface.

Another high-water mark for the band is the strumming West Coast centered “Mansions of Los Feliz,” which marries Everett’s own personal miseries with the image of a nearly-apocalyptic moral wasteland in the City of Angels.  Here he sings; “Well the city’s on fire, you can smell the flesh, and the screams like dogs in the wilderness / and where do all the poor souls go, looking to mend their hearts, like it’s everyone else’s business / and at best they’ll find the secrets, that live within the walls, of the mansions of Los Feliz.”  It’s a pretty endearing combination of theme and grandiose imagery, and even better yet it’s done in a manner that is intensely listenable and entire free of pretension.  But once again, it also serves to highlight something that is by and large missing on End Times, and that is Everett’s usually keen appreciation for what it is that makes a good hook.

Perhaps what disappointed me most of all was how often Everett’s attempts to provide the listener with lyrics that were stripped bare with honesty came off as, at best, vaguely superficial.  On “Gone Man,” he subjects the listener to gems such as “she used to love me, but it’s over now,” and “some things you can fuck right up / other things, well, you better not screw up.”  Maybe it’s supposed to be pithy, but it’s heavy on the melodrama and light on the humor, and it clashes distinctly with songs like “I Need a Mother,” which is certainly sung with a very straight face.  Everett is really all over the map on End Times, but he never really seems to find a place where he’s comfortable, and it leaves the listener constantly off balance.

While the stronger tracks, like “A Line In the Dirt” and “Mansions of Los Feliz,” could potentially find themselves on Meet the Eels: Part II someday, it’s unlikely that anybody is going to mistake End Times as being one of the band’s better efforts.  It’s clear that Everett has suffered some personal trauma recently and that this is his release, it’s just too bad that he wasn’t able to channel those feelings into the same kind strong musical compositions that we’ve grown accustomed to hearing from him.  It’s not necessarily the worst thing that I’ve heard from an album bearing the Eels name, but it’s certainly in the running.  With a band that has been as solid as they’ve been for the last decade plus, that’s just a big disappointment.

SCORE: 2.5 out of 5.0

St. Vincent “Laughing With a Mouth of Blood”

Annie Clark really made her mark on the musical world last year with the release of Actor, and as we cross into the second month of 2010, she’s still continuing to get some mileage out of it.  On this latest video, this one for the song “Laughing With a Mouth of Blood,” she’s getting a little bit of help from some friends.  In this case, the ever-talented Carrie Brownstein and the always funny Fred Armisen inside their fictional feminist bookstore, “Women for Women First.”  The video is funny and charming, even if it features only a small amount of Clark herself, and is definitely worth a view.  Once you’ve done that, head over to Clark’s MySpace page or her official site to find out where and when you can hear her play live.

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IN REVIEW: Spoon “Transference”

Transference is a very understated album, for lack of a better description.  In many ways, it’s a back to basics album that tosses aside any big popular music ambitions, and instead sounds like it’s coming from a band that aspires to nothing more than getting together and playing some music.  That’s not to say that there aren’t some real gems scattered across the album, there are, it’s just that the focus seems to be more groove than hook.  Maybe this is Britt Daniel showing some age and wanting to experiment a little more with his music, or maybe this is just the natural progression of a band that has been steadily grinding away and picking up steam for over fifteen years now.

In many ways, Transference has been something of an enigma to me.  I can say that I really like most of the songs, though I have had trouble pinning down exactly what it was about the tracks that thrilled me.  I feel as though the album has a sense of urgency to it, but the band plays as though they’re not in any kind of hurry to get anywhere.  Take the opening track “Before Destruction,” for example.  The track is a muted and hazy little tune that seems to be a bit nondescript as a choice for an opening song, but it sneakily is a nice compliment to the two more bombastic tracks that follow it in “Is Love Forever?” and “The Mystery Zone,” as though the guitar grooves were just a palette cleanser for the louder and more tripped out jams to follow.  It’s not exactly some kind of calm before the storm, since “storm” is the wrong word for what follows (so is “calm” for what precedes them for that matter), but there’s a definite sense of purpose as to how these songs were laid out.

There are a few tracks like this, where Daniel seems to take his foot off the pedal a bit and let the music merely coast quietly for a moment or two.  Nowhere is this more evident than on one of the album’s highlights, the gentle “Goodnight Laura,” a track which rivals the intimateness of any barroom performance that you’re likely to hear.  While they’re obviously completely different acts, Daniel reminds me a bit of Glen Hansard here when the Swell Season are at their best.  His voice just has that mournful property that is hinting at a deep reservoir of emotion that is swimming beneath the placid surface of the song.  This is pretty much the epitome of the album as a whole, stripped down and a bit different from most of the band’s work, but still both intriguing and immediately recognizable as coming from Spoon.

Even the more raucous and radio-ready tracks on the album have a heavy does of haze and less than conventional presentation.  As a matter of fact, with the exception of “Written In Reverse” (which sounds like it could have been plucked from Gimme Fiction), I would have to say that Transference might just be Spoon’s most experimental album yet.  That description is in itself a bit deceptive, as it conjures a far more unconventional sound than what actually exists, but by standards of mere comparison it is accurate nonetheless.  Perhaps the inclusions of the single “Got Nuffin” should have been some sort of indicator, as when the self-titled EP for that song was released earlier last year, I couldn’t help but wonder aloud whether or not this was going to be the direction that the band was headed in for the new album.  Turns out it is.    Songs like “Who Makes Your Money” and “Trouble Comes Running” are both thrilling in exactly how raw they sound, neither song sounds completely tightened-up yet, as though Spoon is still figuring out how exactly they want to play the tunes.  Normally this would lead to a bit of a complaint on my part, but in this case it makes the tracks seem particularly fresh, and gives much of the album something of a jam-band feel.

Fans of the band who are looking for more finely tuned tracks that they can sing along to should fear not, though, for there’s a little bit of that for you too.  The previously mentioned “Is Love Forever?” and “The Mystery Zone” are sure to satisfy any such desires, though the latter of the two songs stretches on for five minutes (though it doesn’t feel a second over three).  The same could be said for “Written In Reverse” or “Go Out the Lights,” which are both very accessible, but also pretty damn long.  Transference is certainly the album where even when Spoon is sticking to their previously established formula, they’re stretching and bending the borders, encroaching on foreign territory, even if they’re not actually breaking out into it.  Something which is indisputable, though, is the quite confidence that is present in the music.  It would be too dismissive to say that Spoon has finally come of age (or something equally ridiculous), in reality they have been “of age” for quite some time now, but perhaps it’s the case that the band themselves are now firmly grasping this.

How listeners ultimately react to Transference will undoubtedly depend on exactly what it was that they enjoyed about Spoon’s music to this point.  If you really dug the booming hooks and witty lyrics from Daniel, then this probably won’t be your favorite album, as he spends much of the time almost muted behind the music.  However, if you were one of the fans who was more into the mellow grooves of the guitar and the addictive rattle of the snare drums, then there is going to be plenty for you to love here.  I would be very surprised to find anybody who outright disliked the album, as there is something for just about every Spoon fan to enjoy.  However, on the flipside of that sentiment, Transference is going to be an album that is only going to be loved by a pretty specific subset of the band’s fans.  No matter which side you fall on though, you have to admit; it’s pretty damn good.

SCORE: 4.0 out of 5.0

Massive Attack “Splitting the Atom”

A new Massive Attack video is always a great way to start off the day, that’s what I’ve always said (okay, not really, but that doesn’t make it any less true).  The UK trip-hop band that’s nothing short of biblical in the world of music is back at it, this time with a bare-bones song that comes hand-in-hand with an animated video that is sure to amuse.  There’s nothing that I can say about Massive Attack that hasn’t already been said a million times by a million publications so I’ll leave it at this; watch the video, then go to their MySpace page or their official site, and be excited about every second of new material that you get from them. Heligoland is out next week.  Expect a review.

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A Letter From the Editor

So.  Remember that time it was 2010 and I vowed that regular posts would return?  Well, a month on the road for work and some bleary eyed seventeen hour days put that to a stop pretty quickly. However, I am back in Los Angeles now, resting up, and ready to get my write on again.

Though, one thing I have discovered is that if you stop posting for a few weeks you tend to hemmorage readers (meaning I have bled down from ten to five or so) — but the dance must go on, as they say (somebody says that, right?).  So here’s to me vowing that February will be a more productive month on the writing front.

Thanks for sticking around.

“The A-Team” Trailer

So I’m probably the very last person in the world to put this trailer up (it dropped last week, and was kind of a big deal), but I’m going to post the new trailer for the upcoming “A-Team” movie anyway.  Now, I never watched the show, and don’t really have even the slightest of nostalgic connections to material, but I am intrigued enough by the parts involved where I find it to be curiously interesting.  For starts, Bradley Cooper, Liam Neeson, Sharlto Copley, and “Rampage” Jackson is a bizzare cast no matter how you shake it.  Toss in one of my favorite directors in Joe Carnahan (Oh, why did “White Jazz” have to fall apart?  Why!?) and I just can’t look away.  I’m pretty convinced that even a by-the-numbers TV adaptation from Carnahan would be better than 90% of the summer movies that get trucked out each year, so it’s going to take a lot to dissuade me from being optimistic about this one.

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Massachusetts Picks Brown

Over at CNN it has been projected that Republican Senator Scott Brown has won the election for the seat previously held by Ted Kennedy.  While there are some surefire implications of this change in seating (most notably for the President’s Health Care agenda), there are some things that you can be sure to expect to hear. Republicans are going to tell you that this upset is reflective of the country’s indictment of Democrat’s failures. Democrats will tell you that it’s a disappointment, but ultimately no big deal.  The major news media outlets will either tell you that this is a ray of light beaming down on America, or that the sky is falling (depending on what your outlet of choice is).  Finally, Lucifer in the disguise of Matt Drudge will gloat and come up with some childish and obnoxious headline that is supposed to pass for conservative wit.

Brown’s victory made real the once unthinkable prospect of a Republican filling the seat held by Kennedy, known as the liberal lion, for almost 47 years until his death from brain cancer in August.

Voters across Massachusetts braved winter cold and snow for an election with high stakes — the domestic agenda of President Obama, including his priority of health care reform.

Brown’s victory strips Democrats of the 60-seat Senate supermajority needed to overcome GOP filibusters against future Senate action on a broad range of White House priorities. Senate Democrats needed all 60 votes in their caucus to pass the health care bill, and the loss of one seat imperils generating that support again for a compromise measure worked out with the House.

Now, am I disappointed that Teddy Kennedy’s seat has been taken by a Republican?  Of course.  Do I think it’s a blow that the Democrats have lost their magic 60 in the Senate?  Absolutely.  Do I think that Massachusetts voters have made a mistake?  Of course.  But make no mistake, this isn’t the end of the world.  Health care reform was tricky with 60 and it will be even more so with 59, but that doesn’t make it impossible.  Additionally, as much as I don’t like the fact that the seat tipped toward the Republicans, I still think it’s way to early to attribute this upset to any real national trend to the right, we just don’t have the data to support that thesis.  Basically, at this point I am taking my political lumps and hoping for the best.

I was watching Rachel Maddow a little earlier this evening and did think it was interesting when she pointed out Massachusetts’ poor record when it comes to supporting female candidates for major elected offices.  I’m not sure that had a whole ton to do with the vote in Massachusetts tonight, but it is interesting to ponder where exactly somebody like Martha Coakley fits in post-Obama America, and how much has really changed in the eyes of voters.  Frankly, I’m unsure what makes me more uncomfortable, that voters dismissed Coakley because she was a woman, or that they actually understood and preferred Brown’s ideas. Distressing stuff either way, but as they say, the sun will come out tomorrow.

Some Words On Haiti

I haven’t posted about the situation in Haiti yet.  This is mostly due to the fact that it’s so unbelievably staggering, that I just have had absolutely no idea what it is that I could say.  The death toll is astronomical, the country is in a state of near-chaos, and so far the global community has been unable to provide the kind of aid that is needed.  In short, it is one of the single worst disasters that has occurred in my lifetime, and in the aftermath is a nation that is teetering on the edge.

I am not on the ground in Haiti.  I have never been to Haiti.  I cannot paint an accurate picture of what is going on in the country right now, or what needs to be done.  This being the case, here is the picture as painted by some sources with much more authority and expertise than I would ever claim to have.

From The Los Angeles Times:

For residents, the shortages of food, water and fuel carried the prospect of increased hardship in a nation with a volatile history. Chaotic lines formed at gas stations, though it was unclear whether any gasoline would be pumped. Those with enough fuel created a noisy traffic jam on one main boulevard heading out of the capital.

People scavenged for water, carrying empty canisters in the street.

One elderly man, who wanted to be identified by only his first name, Milton, said Haitians were hoping that U.S. Marines, who have been deployed during times of political upheaval, would come again.

“When the U.S. occupation is good and big, it creates work, builds roads, helps people,” he said. Not only that, Milton added, Marines tended to toss the remains of their meals into the city’s omnipresent mountains of garbage.

From The New York Times:

For rescuers and those buried, every hour that passed was the enemy.

“The time window is ever shrinking,” said Florian Westphal, a spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross in Geneva.

Residents interviewed through the city said that the cries that they heard emanating from many collapsed buildings in the initial hours after the quake had begun to soften, if not quiet completely.

“There’s no more life here,” said a grandmother Thursday, who nonetheless rapped a broom against concrete in hopes that her four missing relatives believed to be buried inside might somehow respond.

From CNN:

“If help doesn’t come quickly, it probably will [get worse],” Agnes Pierre-Louis, manager of her family-owned hotel, the Le Plaza in downtown Port-au-Prince. “We’re not hearing anything from the government. We’re not seeing any foreign aid yet.”

But Lt. Gen. Ken Keen, deputy commander of the U.S. Southern Command, said forces have not “seen a great deal of insecurity.” The priority now, he said, is cranking up rescue and relief efforts to stave off restiveness.

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates echoed that sentiment, saying that “other than some scavenging and minor looting, our understanding is the security situation is pretty good.”

“The key is to get the food and the water in there as quickly as possible so that people don’t, in their desperation, turn to violence or lead to the security situation deteriorating.”

From MSNBC:

The situation is especially dire for children, who make up an estimated 40 percent to 50 percent of the Port-au-Prince population. They’re smaller and more vulnerable to injury than adults, but they also suffer faster from dehydration, blood loss and shock. Their immature immune systems also make it harder to fight back against illness and infection than adults, health experts said.

In the meantime, medical teams on the ground will continue to grapple with the aftermath of early triage, which postponed treatment for those whose injuries may have been serious, but not life-threatening.

Victims with arm or leg fractures, for instance, wouldn’t have been a top priority, Cummings said. But the untended wounded remain ripe for infections and shock and they’re more vulnerable to other illness.

It’s a no-win choice for health workers who have to make hard decisions about who gets care — and who doesn’t.

From the BBC:

Most of the bodies are covered in white bed sheets or rolled inside carpets, but others have been left exposed to the hot sun and the stench of rotting bodies has begun to fill the air.

Families who are desperately searching for their loved ones are gingerly uncovering the sheets that cover the corpses in the hope they can at least identify family members.

But even if bodies are identified there is nowhere for them to be laid to rest.

Mass graves are now appearing across the city.

The mood for the past 24 hours has been one of patience and solidarity, but there is now a sense of anger and frustration that could change the atmosphere here drastically.

From The Washington Post:

All day Thursday, it was mainly the people of this shattered city, working with bare hands and simple tools, who clawed at the rubble and pulled at slabs of concrete and blocks of debris to get at those still trapped.

The dead and injured were pushed through the streets in wheelbarrows. At the overwhelmed central hospital, anguished patients lay in a weedy parking lot on gurneys fashioned from wooden doors. Calls for help went unanswered, and no doctors were in sight.

Refugees in tent cities sang hymns far into the night, and a chilling series of strong aftershocks shook awake those who were sleeping.

There were scant signs of help from the Haitian government, itself scattered by the 7.0-magnitude earthquake Tuesday evening. The streets were filled with beleaguered residents milling about, left with no jobs, no instructions on what to do, and no place to buy food or to take the injured. Many said they felt totally alone and saw no evidence that relief was on the way, as their mournful pleas began to give way to anger.

Some very sobering stuff to so the very least.  As all of these words certainly indicate, the situation is dire, and immediate action is vital.  If you feel compelled to donate, which I would certainly urge you to do, here are some places that you can go to safely do so;  Unicef, Direct Relief International, Yele Haiti. There are countless other excellent organizations that are accepting donations, but I would caution you to make sure that they are legitimate before you donate.

Jay Reatard: 1980-2010

Wow.  I don’t usually find myself too affected by celebrity deaths, but I have to admit that this is really bothering me.  The New York Times is reporting that garage rocker Jay Reatard was found dead in his home today at the age of 29.  I realize that I am just about the last person in the world to post on this, but I really felt like I had to get something up.  There was just something so vital about Reatard and his music that made him feel so very full of life, making it all the more strange to me that he should pass away in his sleep  (as is being reported).  For such a spirited and talented musician to pass away at such a young age is really tragic.  It’s one of those moments where I don’t have anything eloquent to say, as I don’t think that it would truly do the man justice.  Given what I have read and seen of Reatard, though, I think he would support this crude and base reaction; holy shit.  Below is a more fitting tribute than I can muster, Reatard’s video for “Ain’t Gonnna Save Me” (one of my favorite songs of 2009 off of one of my favorite albums) — music fans the world over will miss him.

IN REVIEW: Vampire Weekend “Contra”

Vampire Weekend is coming out of the gate in January with the year’s first big musical release, and as a result, the band has the spotlight all to themselves.  The pressure’s on.  Now, I’m among what seems like the very few listeners who never experienced any feelings of backlash against Vampire Weekend whatsoever.  Their self-titled debut is something that I’ve listened to regularly since it was released, and in my opinion, it has held up wonderfully.  All of that being said, I was pretty skeptical that the band was going to be able to recreate the magic of that first album without merely xeroxing that sound.  The band’s mixture of indie-rock and Paul Simon recalling afro pop was fresh back in 2008, but has grown more and more common place ever since.  Inevitably, Vampire Weekend was left with the unenviable challenge of shaking up their sound without losing the spark that made people react so passionately to them in the first place.

Contra opens with “Horchata,” which in addition to being the first single that leaked, is also undoubtedly my least favorite song on the album.  It’s not a bad song by any stretch of the imagination, it’s just very by the numbers for this group of musicians.  It takes some of the more obvious elements of their first album and magnifies them, almost as though it were some act of defiance against their remaining critics, signifying that they won’t break for anybody.  Fortunately, though, the band quickly settles in and unleashes another album full of pop-gems, starting with the very next track.  ”White Sky” features Ezra Koenig singing lyrics that seem to be set in the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan, and unleashing a hook that is nothing more that a series of syrupy falsetto yowls.  It’s a simple but pleasing turn for a band that is perhaps best known for their complicated an bookish lyrics, but it also is indicative of an album that features a fair share of experimentation musically.

“Cousins,” which was the second track leaked off Contra, is essentially the polar opposite of a song like “White Sky”.   While the latter is all about that glossy pop surface, “Cousins” is all about a nervous and twitchy energy, complete with an urgent and belting hook, and it makes the track absolutely thrive. Koenig is again weaving a complicated web of tongue-twisting and head scratching lyrics (“Interest in colors / I discover myself / If your art life is gritty you’ll be toasting my health”), but the words thrill as their presentation is every bit as rhythmic as the Chris Tomson’s pulsating drums.  The song definitely rocks harder than what we’re used to hearing out of the band, it’s decidedly less poppy, but it’s no less catchy than any of their very best jams.  This is perhaps the greatest trick that the band keeps pulling across the album, playfully experimenting their sound without really losing any of their dance-along appeal.

On the subject of experimental sounding tracks, give one listen to “California English” and you’ll be able to tell that the band has been taking notes from groups like Dirty Projectors and Grizzly Bear.  It’s by far the most abstractly “musical” song that Vampire Weekend has ever released, but it’s yet another thrillingly infectious tune.  Here the band utilizes some of the auto-tune skills that Rostam Batmanglij must have been perfecting with his Discovery side project, as Koenig’s voice is filtered through the device and layered on top of itself.  Additionally, the band throws in some violins and soaring background vocals to bolster the mishmash of California-laden lyrics (my favorite being; “Living like the French Connection, but we’ll die in LA”).  If this is a sample of what the band’s music will be sounding like in the future, than as far as I’m concerned the future can’t get here fast enough.  This is a track that feels like it could have easily been a cut off of Bitte Orca, except with Ezra Koenig at the helm, and if that description doesn’t get the music fan inside of you excited, than I’m honestly not sure what will.  (It’s also worth noting that the bonus track, “Giant,” is in a similar vein)

None of this is to suggest that the album doesn’t have some more subdued moments.  Both “Taxi Cab” and “Diplomat’s Son” could effectively be described as being ballads (even though the latter features an M.I.A. sample), but both provide a welcome change of speed to Contra rather than weigh it down at all.  ”Taxi Cab” is almost a spoken word song, as Koenig’s voice is slow and softly monotone, creating an intimate story-teller feeling, while “Diplomat’s Son” mixes its hip hop influences with varied instrumentation and a slowed-down tempo.  Meanwhile, both songs also have been purported to be packed with Joe Strummer references and to have been inspired by the artist in interviews with the band and discussions by fans.  If this really is the case, than it’s quite fitting because it perfectly matches the tone of the album.  If Vampire Weekend’s debut was reminiscent of Paul Simon, than it must be said that this one is reminiscent of Strummer (though, in my opinion, not so much his work with the Clash as his later stuff with the Mescaleros).  You could certainly can’t accuse the band of suffering from a poor choice of inspirations.

If you’ve gotten the impression that Contra is a real melting pot of ideas and musical styles, fear not, it’s an accurate one.  Vampire Weekend is displaying the kind of creativity and willingness to push their boundaries that will keep the band improving and evolving as their career progresses.  The fact that they’re able to maintain their pop-sensibilities at the same time is just a reminder of why listeners have found this band to be such a special one from the very begging.  While the more avant-garde and experimental nature of Contra makes the album a little more difficult to fully embrace at the outset than the band’s debut, I think the detail and multiple layers to the songs just might make the album even more rewarding to listen to over the long haul.

SCORE: 4.5 out of 5.0