Best Of 2014, Album Edition + 2009 Best-Of Report Card

Don't let the title fool you; this is almost definitely going to be the only best-of 2014 post. Here's what this particular old man liked to listen to in 2014.


1. Wussy - Attica!, which dug right in and took over my consciousness in the last few months.

2. Sun Kil Moon - Benji, which did the same in the first few months of the year. I hear Kozelek is kind of a dick, but his bizarro rhyme-and-meter-denying confessional folk songs may be the best thing he's done since the second Red House Painters album.

3. Boris - Noise, because I love rock music in all of its variances almost as much as they do.

4. Bob Mould - Beauty & Ruin, which - like the last Mould album - is unexpectedly fantastic.

5. Fucked Up - Glass Boys/Glass Boys (Slow Version)/Year of the Dragon EP, in which I combine all of the Fucked Up releases for the year into one entry because all three have been inseparable on my playlist since I added them and because Glass Boys - while not their greatest effort - is great enough that I've essentially bought it twice in one year, just so I could hear the version with the more conventional drumming (which, ironically, actually made the songs sound less conventional).

6. Deerhoof - La Isla Bonita, which is the latest entry on this list, but after a few listens, I think this may be the best Deerhoof album in a few years.

7. Run The Jewels - Run The Jewels 2, which is jam-packed with ideas, many of which I have yet to parse, but all of which I like.

8. Sturgill Simpson - Metamodern Sounds in Country, because - like Fucked Up - it breathes life into a rigid genre.

9. Earth - Primitive And Deadly, which has abandoned the cello and electronics of the Angels of Darkness, Demons of Light era (and I really, really loved those albums) in favor of guitar work that is simultaneously massive and more subtle than their past and vocal work that is better-integrated into their sound.

10. Spoon - They Want My Soul, which is my favorite Spoon album since Gimme Fiction.



Also considered and regretfully not included:
Thee Oh Sees - Drop
St. Vincent - St. Vincent
Dean Wareham - Dean Wareham
Mastodon - Once More 'Round The Sun
Drive-By Truckers - English Oceans
Hartle Road - Hartle Road EP
Through The Sparks - Invisible Kids
The Hold Steady - Teeth Dreams
Andrew Bird - Things Are Really Great Here, Sort Of...

Bought too recently to be heard yet, but maybe a contender later:
Hookworms - The Hum
Melvins - Hold It In

----

Although I haven't been so good at doing this lately, I generally like to go back and look at my best-of from five years previous to see how well my end-of-the-year choices held up. So, my best-of for 2009 was, as of January 5, 2010, as follows:

1. (Tie) Yo La Tengo - Popular Songs
1. (Tie) Vic Chesnutt - At The Cut
3. Mastodon - Crack The Skye
4. Isis - Wavering Radiant
5. Dexateens - Singlewide
6. Andrew Bird - Noble Beast
7. Oneida - Rated O
8. Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavilion/Fall Be Kind EP9. Akron/Family - Set 'Em Wild, Set 'Em Free
10. Dinosaur Jr. - Farm

Other albums considered were:
11. Tortoise - Beacons of Ancestorship
12. Grizzly Bear - Veckatimest
13. Sonic Youth - The Eternal
14. The Bats - The Guilty Office
15. Pelican - What We All Come To Need
16. Darcy James Argue's Secret Society - Infernal Machines
17. Sunn 0))) - Monoliths and Dimensions
18. The Clean - Mister Pop
19. Mission of Burma - The Sound, The Speed, The Light
20. A.C. Newman - Get Guilty
21. The Soft Pack - The Muslims
22. The Clientele - Bonfires On The Heath
23. The Mountain Goats - The Life of the World to Come
24. Dirty Projectors - Bitte Orca
25. Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse - Dark Night Of The Soul
26. The Fiery Furnaces - I'm Going Away
27. Molly Berg and Stephen Vitiello - The Gorilla Variations
28. Sparklehorse + Fennesz - In the Fishtank 15

With five years of hindsight to work with, my Revised 2009 Best-of List is now:

1.  Vic Chesnutt - At The Cut/Skitter On Take-Off (was 1/unranked)
2. Dexateens - Singlewide (was 5)
3. Baroness - Blue Record (was unranked)
4. Sunn 0))) - Monoliths and Dimensions (was 17)
5. The Clean - Mister Pop (was 18)
6. Dinosaur Jr. - Farm (was 10)
7. Yo La Tengo - Popular Songs (was 1)
8. Tortoise - Beacons of Ancestorship (was 11)
9. Jay Reatard - Watch Me Fall (was unranked)
10. Darcy James Argue's Secret Society - Infernal Machines (was 16)
11. Shrinebuilder - Shrinebuilder EP (was unranked)
12. Mastodon - Crack The Skye (was 3)
13. Isis - Wavering Radiant (was 4)
14. Pelican - What We All Come To Need (was 15)
15. Andrew Bird - Noble Beast (was 6)
16. Sonic Youth - The Eternal (was 13)
17. Om - God Is Good (was unranked)
18. Che Arthur Three - Like Revenge (was unranked)
19. Bob Dylan - Together Through Life (was unranked)
20. The Bats - The Guilty Office (was 14)
21. Girls - Album (was unranked)
22. DOOM - Born Like This/Unexpected Guests (was unranked)
23. My Dad Is Dead - New Clear Route (was unranked)
24. Mission of Burma - The Sound, The Speed, The Light (was 19)
25. A.C. Newman - Get Guilty (was 20)
26. The Fiery Furnaces - I'm Going Away (was 26: SCORE!)
27. St. Vincent - Actor (was unranked)
28. Wooden Ships - Dos (was unranked)
29. Strange Attractors - Sleep And You Will See (was unranked)

30. The Clientele - Bonfires On The Heath (was 22)

Now unranked:

7. Oneida - Rated O
8. Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavilion/Fall Be Kind EP9. Akron/Family - Set 'Em Wild, Set 'Em Free
12. Grizzly Bear - Veckatimest
21. The Soft Pack - The Muslims
23. The Mountain Goats - The Life of the World to Come
24. Dirty Projectors - Bitte Orca
25. Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse - Dark Night Of The Soul
27. Molly Berg and Stephen Vitiello - The Gorilla Variations
28. Sparklehorse + Fennesz - In the Fishtank 15

In short, there were 13 2009 albums now in my top 30 that I had not heard at the time I made my list. Seven albums moved up and nine ranked albums moved down. Ten slipped off the list altogether, including three from my top ten. Pretty poor showing, Childs. I'm giving myself a C- for 2009.

Music Library: The Velvet Underground plus Notes On The Third Album

The Velvet Underground & Nico (1967) and The Velvet Underground & Nico 45th Anniversary Edition (1966-67). I picked this up with the Verve reissues in 1987 because of Kurt Loder praising it on MTV. I'd also read about them in the Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll, which quoted the familiar line about how only 5,000 people bought this album when it came out and they all went on to form influential bands. And my mind ripped open. There was so many types of music! But they all were served up in a drone-y faux-primitive style. The songs were perfect. The Super Deluxe 45th Anniversary Edition has versions of the album in stereo and again in mono, then a copy of Nico's Chelsea Girls, which the album rightfully claims is pretty much a VU album, then a bunch of demos, then a cleaned-up copy of the 1967 Valleydale Ballroom show from Columbus OH, which is also a part of the Caught Between The Twisted Stars four-disc bootleg set, reviewed below. You already know if this is something you must have. I'm sure everyone reading this has heard "I'll Be Your Mirror," but there's never a bad reason to listen to it again. Even the most emotionally direct country song can't light a candle to this: "I find it hard to believe you don't know the beauty you are/but if you don't, let me be your eyes/a hand to your darkness/so you won't be afraid." I mean, dammit, that's gorgeous.



White Light/White Heat (1968), White Light/White Heat Super Deluxe (1967-68), and Live At The Gymnasium, NYC (bootleg, 1967). Just as legendary as the first one, WL/WH is a blast of noise that takes the screech of "European Son" and amps it up. Or, at least, part of it is. The opening song is really more of a boogie song built on John Cale's piano rolls. "The Gift" is a fusion of the instrumental track "The Booker T," which is a grungy take on Memphis soul, with Cale's chilly-comic tale of poor Waldo Jeffers. "Lady Godiva's Operation" is not too different from the two-chord drone-art of "Venus In Furs." "Here She Comes Now" is utterly gorgeous, showing the way to the dreamy third album. Then side two, with the frenetic and loud "I Heard Her Call My Name" and the furious 17-minute bashathon "Sister Ray," is where WL/WH gets its reputation. The Super Deluxe version adds both stereo and mono mixes of the album, a bunch of single mixes and outtakes, most of which appear elsewhere, and a cleaned-up version of the 1967 Live At The Gymnasium bootleg. It's a killer bootleg, and the cleaner version well worth the price.



The Velvet Underground (Valentin Mix) (1969), The Velvet Underground (Closet Mix) (1969), and La Cave 1968: Designs In Urban Living (bootleg, 1968). The two mixes of the VU's third album are significantly different in places. In fact, I've worked up a long blog post about them, which I'll append below instead of leaving a separate piece. While all four of the VU's proper albums are essential, this is my favorite. It's not perfect - I mean, after about a million listens, "The Murder Mystery" gets on my nerves a bit now - but that may be why I love it more. I assume that whenever they make the Super Deluxe version of this one, the La Cave bootleg, which is pretty good and features early versions of these songs, will be included. See below for lots of videos.

Bootleg Series Vol. 1: The Quine Tapes (recorded 1969), The Legendary Guitar Amp Tapes (bootleg, 1969), "Sweet Sister Ray" (bootleg, 1969), 1969: Live With Lou Reed, Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 (1969, natch). The Quine Tapes consist of three concerts recorded by superfan Bob Quine, who was also one of the greatest rock guitarists ever. Excellent all around, capturing the VU's less arty and more rocking live show. The Legendary Guitar Amp Tapes is a bootleg that sounds like it was recorded from the inside of Lou Reed's amp with the rest of the band much diminished in the background. It's interesting, but falls flat over the course of the album. "Sweet Sister Ray" from a bootleg called The Wild Side Of The Street is a recording of the long jam that the VU would use to warm up for "Sister Ray." The Live With Lou Reed albums are from shows in Dallas and San Francisco, and they're cooking.



Loaded (1970), Loaded: Fully Loaded Edition (1970), and Live At Max's Kansas City (1970). Loaded with hits, in Lou Reed's words, but still unable to find a mass audience, the VU's last proper album gets short shrift from some fans, but I think it's fantastic. The Fully Loaded Edition adds a bunch of outtakes, demos, and alternative mixes, many of which appear elsewhere. Max's Kansas City is a great live show from the period.



Peel Slowly And See (1965-70). This five-disc box set came out in the 90s and included all the album (with the Closet Mix of The Velvet Underground) and a bunch of demos and outtakes from all the way back to a very early practice tape of Lou and John with their first drummer Angus MacLise. Many of the outtakes were from VU and Another View, and few of the other tracks don't appear elsewhere. When I bought it back in the 90s, I had all four of the album on vinyl but no digital copies, so this helped out, but I can't see any reason to own it if you already have the other stuff. The early recordings are interesting to hear once, but that's about it.

Squeeze (1973). Ugh. This is the rightly-reviled rock album made by Doug Yule and three other people after Lou left the group. Anyone trying to tell you this is good is a contrarian who is trolling you and you should feel free to ignore that person thereafter. Consider:



VU (1985) and Another View (1986). VU consists of a bunch of tracks that might have been the follow-up to WL/WH. Even though it's more garage-y than their eventual third album, it is freakin' excellent. Another View is a bunch of other demos and outtakes that's pretty rough outside of "Hey Mr. Rain" and the extraordinary "Ride Into The Sun."



Caught Between The Twisted Stars (bootlegs, 1966-91). This is an odd four-disc bootleg box set that unfortunately mixes up recordings for no clear reason. Disc one is mostly the Valleydale Ballroom show, but the final "Nothing Song" is too long, and is moved to the start of disc two, while the rest of the tracks are a grab-bag of bootleg tracks from many different sources, such as La Cave and The Gymnasium, plus--oddly--a few from the ill-fated 1993 VU reunion tour. Then there's a couple of remixes and "A Short-Lived Torture Of Cacophony," which is "Melody Laughter" backwards. Weirdly chosen.

----

Notes On The Velvet Underground:

I bought a vinyl copy of the 80s Verve re-release with the mix by engineer Val Valentin mix when it came out, and this was the version that I became intimately familiar with as a teenager. Then I bought the VU's Peel Slowly & See box back in the mid-90s, which came with the so-called "closet mix" by Lou Reed himself, so named because Sterling Morrison quipped that it sounded as if it had been recorded in a closet. Since I had a digital copy of that, it was only recently that I got around to picking up a digital version of the Valentin mix.

This is a track-by-track comparison. I knew going in that each has a completely different version of "Some Kinda Love," and that "What Goes On" had vastly different mixes. I didn't appreciate that every song except "That's The Story Of My Life" has different mixes that subtly (or not-so-subtly) affect the listening experience.

"Candy Says": Each version has a vastly different drum mix, not to mention that the tonality of the guitars is also different. The closet mix uses brighter, more trebly filters on the whole track, so the snare snaps more in the left ear, giving the song more movement, and while both guitars are louder and clearer on the closet mix, this is especially true for Sterling's guitar on the left, which is quiet enough to be barely distinct through parts of the song on the Valentin mix. The backing vocals are also louder. The Valentin mix, though, rides more on the bass and, by muting the snare, gives the tap-tap-tap of the high hat more emphasis, which is also appealing.

This is the closet mix. I can't find a copy of the Valentin mix on youtube.



"What Goes On," of course, is all about the organ. The Valentin mix pushes it and Lou's guitar into the red and rocks significantly harder. The closet mix has the organ much quieter and Lou's stellar rhythm guitar with a less-trebly filter. However, the drums on the closet mix sound great, maybe the best that Mo ever sounded. Notice the snare in your left ear in the closet mix below.



Here's the Valentin mix for comparison:



"Some Kinda Love," as I mentioned, has two different versions of the song. The Valentin version has a great performance from the whole band, but Lou's vocal performance is maybe a little too cool. The closet mix has only one guitar rather than the killer interlock of the Valentin version and Mo's drums are about as minimalist as possible (hitting on each beat of the 4/4 with a bass drum and woodblock and that's it), but Lou's vocal may be a career best. Here's the Valentin mix version:



And here's the closet mix version:



"Pale Blue Eyes": The closet mix again turns the treble up. Mo's playing a tambourine that is brighter and mixed all to the left in the closet mix, making it more snare-like. The Valentin mix has her darker and in the center, which gives the song more propulsion. In the closet mix, Lou's guitar is almost inaudible, as is the organ. This pushes Sterling's guitar part - one of my all-time favorites - further out front, which is a lovely effect. The more muddled Valentin mix has a better band sound, though.

This is the closet mix:



And this is the Valentin mix:



"Jesus" has the bass much louder in the Valentin mix. Sterling's guitar (the one with the high part) is quieter in that mix, though, and Lou's acoustic guitar pushes the song along. In the closet mix, Lou and Doug's vocals switch sides, and Doug's vocals are much louder in the closet mix, which sort of dampens how shockingly well Lou sings this song. No, I take that back. Lou's performance is a different in each take. His voice cracks more in the closet mix, and he goes falsetto more often in the Valentin mix.

Here's the Valentin mix:



And I think this is the closet mix:



"Beginning To See The Light" switches the pan on the guitars for some reason and does the familiar treble filter. On the Valentin mix, the acoustic rhythm guitar is on the right and the electric is on the left, but the closet mix reverses them and cranks the electric. I could be convinced that the closet mix is a completely different take on the electric because the bassiness and thicker tone on the Valentin mix suggest humbuckers or P-90s while the closet mix sounds thinner and more pointed like a Strat. Both guitars are quite loud in the Valentin mix. The closet mix pans the drums all the way to the left, making it sound less like a conventional rock song. I could be convinced that Lou's vocal is different on each, too. There's little subtle differences that might be my mind playing tricks on me at this point.

Here's the Valentin mix, but I can't find the closet mix on youtube, unfortunately:



"I'm Set Free": GodDAMN, what a song. The Valentin mix has drums and Lou's vocal in the center and both guitars panned all the way out on either side. The closet mix turns up Sterling's guitar a lot on the right and moves Lou's rhythm to the center, but turns it down a lot. Mo's drums are panned a little left, but she's almost inaudible until about a third into the song. Both vocals are louder in the closet mix. The solo is treated differently in both. In the Valentin mix, the solo is a little muddier with medium-dark reverb. In the closet mix, it's pushed up in the mix, brightened considerably, and the reverb is different - more small-room than dark-ampitheater. Both versions are absolutely fucking brilliant.

Unfortunately, again the only one on youtube is the Valentin mix:



"Story" is the same in both.



"The Murder Mystery" is different only in that the Valentin mix pushes the drums and rhythm guitar and dampens the vocals. There may be other differences, but I have a maximum of two listens per day on that song.

I think this is Valentin. They're very close:



"After Hours" puts a little more reverb on Mo's voice and turns the bass down a lot while panning it to the center. It's very loud and distinct (in the left ear) in the Valentin mix and so quiet in the closet mix that I thought it was a bass drum through most of the song. The closet mix also puts those neat deep reverb echoes on Mo's voice when the song rests, while the Valentin mix has a short repeat reverb instead.

Valentin mix:



Closet mix:

Beeswing: On Not Liking A Popular Song By A Favorite Artist

/

When I posted the second part of my review of Richard Thompson's oeuvre, there was some discussion on FB about whether the lady love of the singer of "Beeswing" was a junkie, as I described her, or a drunkard, with most of the commenters preferring the latter. Basically, I don't care whether her white horse/White Horse was Keith Richards' one favorite intoxicant or Keith Richards' other favorite intoxicant. Either way, I don't really like the song. Yes, it is pretty, but that is true of many of Thompson's songs. My problem is that it is, to borrow from Manny Farber's intentionally non-categorical categorization of art, his most white elephantish song.

In Farber's famous essay, one of the sins of white elephant art is its insistence on stuffing the canvas with meaning and thus robbing it of any organic life of its own.  "Beeswing," starting with its title, tries to cram significance into every verse but essentially devolves into an audience-pandering cliché. Its melody is intentionally designed to sound like an old English folk song, which is a trick that Thompson achieves to much better effect with his ever-popular "1952 Vincent Black Lightning," a song that, as I have written elsewhere, Thompson surely despises now. Anyway, the first verse of "Beeswing" goes:

I was nineteen when I came to town, they called it the Summer of Love
They were burning babies, burning flags. The hawks against the doves
I took a job in the steamie down on Cauldrum Street
And I fell in love with a laundry girl who was working next to me

There are a couple of moments that are interesting here, mostly related to the jargon. Burning babies? Steamie? I assume the former is a reference to Vietnam. The latter is Scottish slang for a wash-house. But it's the manic pixie girl love story that Thompson's after here.

Oh she was a rare thing, fine as a bee's wing
So fine a breath of wind might blow her away
She was a lost child, oh she was running wild
She said "As long as there's no price on love, I'll stay.
And you wouldn't want me any other way"

The bee's wing analogy is sharp, but not so sharp as to justify the missing apostrophe in the title. With the missing apostrophe, the title "Beeswing" sounds as if it means to suggest a second interpretation of "bee swing," but the term is meaningless for this song. The only bee is in the analogy to this girl (who is both physically and mentally delicate, I assume?) and the song doesn't swing. "Al Bowlly's In Heaven" swings, but "Beeswing" has neither the propulsion nor the rhythm. As a name for Thompson's publication company, though, Beeswing works well, but it feels shoe-horned in here. The line about the breath of wind is fine, neither great nor lousy. The "lost child/running wild" line, though, is Bon Jovi-worthy, and her demands for free love seem very specific in a "Me and Bobby McGee" way to the boomer audience to whom this song is clearly meant to appeal. This sentiment and the way that it is worded wouldn't be out of place in a song by Donovan or Cat Stevens, which is to say that it is somewhat beneath Mr. Thompson's usual standards.

In the next verse, we have:

Brown hair zig-zag around her face and a look of half-surprise
Like a fox caught in the headlights, there was animal in her eyes
She said "Young man, oh can't you see I'm not the factory kind
If you don't take me out of here I'll surely lose my mind"

Now this is up to Thompson's usual lyrical panache, at least in the first two lines. Farber's other category of art (and these were not meant to be conclusive, by the by, in that Farber describes them as two categories without closing the system to further categories) was termite art, by which he meant that the art was so alive and unfettered with portent that it eats it own frame. Those first two lines, with their immediacy and specificity that calls to a quality that is difficult to name but easy to visualize, are excellent examples of termite art. The second two lines only push along the plot, though.

We busked around the market towns and picked fruit down in Kent
And we could tinker lamps and pots and knives wherever we went
And I said that we might settle down, get a few acres dug
Fire burning in the hearth and babies on the rug
She said "Oh man, you foolish man, it surely sounds like hell.
You might be lord of half the world, you'll not own me as well"

But we're back with the white elephant stuff right away. Thompson's singer and his manic pixie lady become abstract people meant to flatter the hippie nostalgia of the audience. They're living by their wits off the land! He wants to settle down, but she's too free, man! She even specifically ties her hippie dude to white male privilege! I mean, even the reference to Kent is more of a placeholder to make a rhyme than anything particular to the town of Kent. While there's nothing specifically wrong with going abstract in a song to make the people seem more relatable to the audience, in this case it feeds the grand overarching narrative.

We was camping down the Gower one time, the work was pretty good
She thought we shouldn't wait for the frost and I thought maybe we should
We was drinking more in those days and tempers reached a pitch
And like a fool I let her run with the rambling itch

Oh the last I heard she's sleeping rough back on the Derby beat
White Horse in her hip pocket and a wolfhound at her feet
And they say she even married once, a man named Romany Brown
But even a gypsy caravan was too much settling down
And they say her flower is faded now, hard weather and hard booze
But maybe that's just the price you pay for the chains you refuse

This is ostensibly more her story than his, but she isn't real in it. She's a flibbertigibbet, a manic lady who ditches her hippie man over an argument about migrant labor, who married a gypsy (which is more Gregg Allman than the usually literate Richard Thompson), and who has now become an ugly homeless lady. But, as the chorus reminds us, she was this other special thing. And the singer, by being her hippie man for a time who could see her for the special thing she was, is the element of the song who is more real. Her post-singer history is condensed into four lines.

There's an element of the song that is meant to be feminist to some degree, as the singer clearly finds her demand for free love and free agency to be two of her aspects that make her special to him. But the song itself judges her harshly for these very things in the last two verses. Her independence and strongheadedness leave her homeless and drunk (or strung out on heroin, which is a drug that many users can actually put in their hip pocket before it is heated into liquid and put in a syringe, but whatever, this isn't the point) and that's the price she pays for being free, says the song. The suggestion is that if she'd consented to the hippie singer's domestic proposal, she wouldn't be drunk and homeless.

Consider "1952 Vincent Black Lightning" as an alternate. Like "Beeswing," it is written as a modern take on an old English folk song, but unlike "Beeswing," it tells a specific story about specific people with specific traits and it doesn't try to make them particularly likable or universal, but instead hangs the story on a powerful emotion and a weirdly specific metaphor for freedom. People like the song because it eats its own framing device.

"Beeswing," instead, idolizes a manic pixie love interest, judges her harshly for abandoning the protagonist, and flatters the audience with silly hippie nostalgia that most of the audience probably never experienced firsthand, but nevertheless knew from the movies and music of the time. It attempts to create a universal feeling out of a clichéd story, and the central metaphor is ultimately crushed by the weight of its trappings. It is a white elephant. You can hang it on your wall if you like, but it seems cynical to me.

Oxford American 2010 Music Issue

Among the many items I have been remiss in posting is a plug for the 2010 Oxford American music issue.  I have an article in this issue on Vern Gosdin and the Gosdin Brothers that's halfway to decent.  But my contributions are lifted by the stellar quality of the writing throughout.  Buy it!

In the meantime, here's a link to an interview with OA editor (and all-around helluva guy) Marc Smirnoff.

At Dog Canyon: Animal Collective Hates Your Freedom!

In which I mock the cultural commentary at Fox News and wax on about one of my favorite bands.

At Dog Canyon: The Go-Betweens' Twin Layers of Lightning

In which I wax poetic about another of my favorite bands.  Go, read, and comment, if you feel so inclined.

At Dog Canyon: The Fall Vs. Whatever It Is That Is Encroaching

I forgot to post a link to my article at Dog Canyon from Thursday, but it consists of entirely too many words about The Fall with entirely too little about my central idea of how The Fall is like poetry: check it out!

At Dog Canyon: The Louvin Brothers' Tragic Songs of Life

I have an article at Dog Canyon up today on the Louvin Brothers.  Some may recognize this as a variation on a post that appeared at this very site only a few weeks back.

Link: The Long Cut: The Louvin Brothers’ Tragic Songs of Life

Why Should I Care? Driving's A Gas And It Ain't Gonna Last

Like much of the blogosphere, I'm in a state of shock over Alex Chilton's premature death last night.  I've been vocal about how I think he's squandered his considerable talent over the last three decades or so, but the fundamental truth is that squandering his talent was his prerogative.  When he was great - and I don't think it's humanly possible to overstate his greatness and importance to rock music - he was wholly unappreciated by the public. When public tastes finally caught up to him, he took one look at the mantle of "elder statesman of rock" and chose to Bartleby.  God bless him for his irascibility.  There was no one else like him. 

Here's some of what I've written about Chilton and Big Star at this blog:

Bach's Bottom and 19 Years: A Collection.

1970. (Here I should state that I have a bunch of Chilton's solo albums on vinyl and cassette, but I never listen to those media anymore, so I really need to replace them with digital versions.  Also: man, I was terse in those early days of my music listening project.)

Big Star.  (I beat up on In Space, which isn't as bad as I say, and John Fry - the engineer from Ardent Studios! - steps in to tell me that I'm wrong.  Sweet!)

Big Stars In The Radio City.  (In which I try to explain how sophisticated Chilton's approach to rock music was.)

I didn't know the guy.  In fact, based on his attitudes when I've seen him live (and man alive, did the guy put on some killer live shows), I assume he would have held me in nothing short of complete contempt for my starstruck fandom and my focus on the music of his youth over his more recent efforts.  But a world without Alex Chilton is a far crappier place.  He, more than anyone, should have been able to stare down his own death and simply state, "I prefer not to."

Incidentally, if I had to pick one, this would be my favorite Big Star song:



That's "Dream Lover," for anyone who reads this on Facebook without the attached video.  There's no reason in the world for this song to work.  The whole thing seems always on the verge of falling apart.  I especially love the long pause before the guitar solo and the way that none of the elements of the song seem even remotely close to the beat, and yet there's this aggregate effect that wraps the whole song together with dream-logic. It's an uncoverable song. Who could do it justice?

Big Stars in the Radio City

My friend Phil, a guy with an ear for extreme jazz and metal who just doesn't have much appreciation for guitar pop, was asking what makes Big Star so special to fans. I mentioned that I thought they were pretty sophisticated for power pop and quite different from, say, Tom Petty's three-chord, major-key songs. He asked me to clarify, and this is what I wrote:

Take "Feel," a Chris Bell song. That main descending riff that starts out "Feel" isn't anything too crazy, a variation on a traditional blues riff. The first guitar holds a G on the low string and then walks down a half-step at a time from the 5th, the D. They do this twice, with the lead guitar doing those high bends during the second run. Then the song changes keys to D for the verse. It's a Chris Bell song, so this is the big three-chord, major-key stuff: D G A. Back to the riff for the chorus. The second verse is a guitar solo (which is itself a variation away from how rock songs traditionally work), but at the end of the verse, they interrupt the progression of the song to throw in those Memphis horns doing R&B riffs for 8 repetitions (at least, I think it's 8 - I'm going by memory), back to the chorus although with minimal rhythm accompaniment here, then - do they repeat the first verse before going back to the chorus? I forget.

See, there's a radio interview on Big Star Live where the DJ says that what they're doing is a big throwback to the British Invasion, but he was very, very wrong. They've taken the melodies and high harmonies and chugging guitars from the British Invasion and made something very domestic, something that could have only come out of Memphis. The section where they add the R&B horns (with trilling blues-rock guitar) doesn't sound like anything that the Beatles or Kinks ever did. But when Chilton wrote music, it was something else.

His first track, "The Ballad of El Goodo," is next. He's a big fan of Gram Parsons, and his first album (which is now called 1970) has a lot of the trappings of Parsons' art-country songs. This one is in that vein, but has a few chords that show that Chilton was raised on jazz. The song starts in the key of C (with a cool Am7 for minor dissonance in the first line). The second line starts on a Bm, which suggests that the key is now G, which is similar enough to C that most people won't notice, but then the line ends with a D#, which is a half-step up (or down) from any chord that would appear in either G or C. The rest of the song jumps back and forth between G and C without really drawing attention to itself, and, in fact, when he goes to an F (which translates to C, but not really G), the guitars bend the rules by adding a G into the chords. It's subtle, like I say, but it keeps the song off-kilter while still allowing Bell and Chilton to work out the gorgeous melody.

Most of the rest on #1 Record is more traditionally bluesy or garage-y or folky, although they keep the Memphis swing on a few of the tracks. The riff in "In The Street" is pretty neat with its disregard for keeping in key. "The India Song" is the only part of the record that sounds dated to me. But, man, when Bell leaves, and Chilton has the band to himself on Radio City, all the rules get rewritten.

Start with "O My Soul," a gospel-influenced funk-influenced rock song in A7 (I think), but played like no guitarist had played a song before. That opening ba-ba-ba-ba-ba thing is all in A, but he plays the note on two different strings to maximize the odd intonation difference between a fretted A on the low string and an open A on the next string. Then he hits his chords, playing a rhythm that's far enough off the beat to be the primary rhythmic element of the song, which is very much in the Memphis R&B style, very influenced by Steve Cropper. He hops up five frets and does it again, then back down. Then he hits those next notes, the second part of the song, which isn't a chorus or pre-chorus or anything, but just part of how he winds his progression around, and sweet Jesus, they're all over the fretboard - and he plays them with such ease that the listener can't tell how deeply weird this all is. Then he wraps it all up to a place where he has to stop and start again. And that's how the song proceeds, winding through this progression but changing it every time to add a new part or skip a part or play a section twice. There's no logic to it - less, I'd argue, than the logic guiding Trout Mask Replica, and yet it's freaking brilliant and as naturalistic as if, y'know, that's how songs go.

Andy Hummel [note: a guy Phil was about to interview] wrote much of the rest of the album with Chilton, and I'll point out "Back of a Car" as a song that makes no sense to people raised on rock guitar. The whole song is mainly in D, so it starts in a D chord, drops the A to an Ab (which makes it the only song I know of that's ever done this), goes to an A for a couple of bluesy chugga-chuggas, then a C (not in the key of D), pause, G, F#/D, Em back to G, and full stop. The progression is wrong, wrong, wrong with that Ab and C in there, but it has a powerful logic behind it and demands the resolution that it gets. The second part of the song changes key discordantly at the end of the 2nd line every time.

"September Gurls," too: such a beautiful, sunny song, but every chord on there is fractured and wrong. It starts with a D major, but often what seems like another D major in the progression is actually a G major 7. Actually, there's a lot of chords in that song that are maj and min 7 chords (which add a note a half-step down from the root, which can be extraordinarily pleasant) in place of the expected major chord. Then the bridge ("When I get to bed...") use a bunch of chords I don't even know the name of to simultaneously mirror the descending line of the melody, follow the basic A to G in the bass, and provide a counterpoint on the high strings. That's just fucked, especially in a song that seems so transparent.

There's quite a few other examples like this on Radio City where Chilton messes with the standard I-IV-V progression. And Sister Lovers is full of these. Most of those songs are unplayable on a single guitar. Well, you can play them, but they won't sound the same. In Robert Gordon's It Came From Memphis, there's a story about how they invited Steve Cropper to come over and play on some of the Sister Lovers tracks, but he refused to enter into the studio. "Bad vibes in there," he explained. So they ran him out some headphones and a long cable and he played his parts in the parking lot.