Reconsidering “Brighten The Corners”

I, like many young marijuana smokers of the turn of the century, spent the ages of 18-22 thoroughly obsessed with Pavement. It was a fine band to be obsessed with at the time. They were smart but lazy as hell. They could be weird and trippy just as easily as they could be down to earth. They made being a bunch of scrawny geeks that couldn’t sing and barely play look like it was the most awesome thing in the world, but they also wrote one of the most well-rounded and leanest song catalogues in contemporary music. If one of the marks of a great rock songwriter is their ability to identify an entirely new emotion, then Stephen Malkmus was a gatdamn Thomas “Apple” Edison of feelings. Let’s take a look at some classics:

Lay-love is gushed, chained and perfumed/I don’t need a minister to call me a groom

Freeze, don’t move/You’ve been chosen as an extra/In the movie adaptation/Of the sequel to your life

Out on my skateboard the night is just hummin’/And the gum smacks are the pulse I’ll follow if my Walkman fades

You know, if we could we’d sell the air

and of course:

I’ve got all this Harvard LSD/Why won’t anybody fuck me?

As the definition indie rock gets more and more convoluted and bankable, knowing and loving Pavement’s music still remains a prerequisite for bands that want to tag themselves as such. Before them indie was split between bratty punks too stoned to play fast and arty noise bands too pretentious to write songs. They united the two camps unassumingly and seamlessly then exported the sound and made it a global phenomenon. And through it all they managed to remain a bunch of decent guys. You can’t ask for better from a band.

However like most bands that work over an extended period of time, they have an album or two that gets considered weak. In Pavement’s case it’s 1997’s Brighten The Corners. This album is often panned as meandering nonsense. What’s worse on a couple of songs our fine young lads flirted with that genre of music that must never be heard and can only be referred to by the dreaded E-word. Of course back then the shitty emo bands were pretty standard heart-on-sleeve punk/powerpop acts like Jimmy Eat World and Jawbreaker, and the word didn’t quite have the stigma that it does because folks still remembered badass bands like Fugazi and Rites of Spring were considered emo, and Jawbreaker kinda rules anyway. Nonetheless all of these fine points belong in another entry and they don’t stop the dash for the TRACK SKIP button when “Date With IKEA” comes on.

I own this album like I own every other Pavement album. I never listened to it very much and I confess I don’t listen to very much Pavement anymore either. Until a couple of weeks ago this one was easily tagged in my memories as the album with three great songs and a bunch of crap. I pulled it out for a relisten because I’ve logged the least hours on Brighten The Corners and figured it would be the freshest sounding. This was true. I was also blown away by how un-bad it was. At times it was the opposite of bad - it was GOOD!

Starting on a high note with “Stereo”, “Shady Lane”, and ‘Transport Is Arranged” we have ten minutes of the logical follow-up to the brilliant weirdness of Wowee Zowee, now more mature and streamlined. The songwriting is tighter than ever and catchy as hell. “Stereo” and “Shady Lane” were the stuff of many a singalong. Unfortunately, soon after the album descended into directionless wank and cutsey lyrical couplets about nothing. There’s 2 Spiral Stairs songs that go over like wet farts in a crowded room. They would be his last offerings, SM went on to write every song until the band broke up.

The record’s gravest sin is that many of the songs are just pointless and sound forced. There’s also a long guitar jam. I stand up for a lot of Pavement’s more questionable elements but I maintain Stephen Malkmus is a terrible guitarist. He doesn’t solo so much as he moves his hands around! He’s had some moments here and there and knows a good riff when he hears it but I don’t understand the conviction of someone that would put all five and a half snoozer minutes of “Fin” on a tracklisting.

That aside, there’s an infectious experimental energy all over the album. I respect that Pavement made Brighten The Corners. In its weaker moments it still sounds like a sketchbook from a group of very talented people. Sure some of the songs make no sense, but they always exemplify Malkmus’s talent for writing truly absurd lyrics. Most people would fill a bad idea with platitudes and horseshit but only SM could give us, Embrace the senile genius/Watch him reinvent the wheel.

Since my rediscovery I’m not sure why Brighten The Corners maintains its bad reputation. It was 1997 I guess. You had to compete with I Can Hear The Heart Beating As One. Plus at that point we were going on eight years of Pavement, I suppose it’s only natural that the public and critics alike would be getting somewhat sick of having them come up again and again. Hopefully it’s due for a reissue and a reappraisal, the Wowee Zowee one is three years old now and Brighten The Corners would be the next one in line for the two-disc treatment. In conclusion, please enjoy one of the greatest fuck-music-videos music videos since the Replacements’ “Bastards Of Young”.

Got a contrary woman I ain’t never controved…

I came across Tav Falco during one of my on and off again ventures into Chiltonology. As leader of the Panther Burns and Memphis underground mainstay, he’s spent the past 30 years crafting one of the most unique visions in rock music. The band itself works with a revolving international lineup, which over the years has included a who’s-who of rock and R&B luminaries not limited to Ben Cauley, Peter Dark, Ron Easley, Jim Sclavunos, Teenie Hodges, Andrew Love, Jim Dickinson, Robert Palmer, Will Rigby, Ross Johnson, and (obviously) Alex Chilton. Falco currently lives in Europe where he continues, in his words, working “to stir up the dark waters of the unconscious.”

Overlooked but far from obscure, his music has enjoyed a career-long status as a secret handshake of sorts among roots-oriented musicians. I realized this when I looked him up and noticed the amount of international Panther Burns fansites. Falco returns the favor as he’s a huge patron of his fellow musicians and does work as an art photographer. He also has some acting credits and is apparently an acclaimed filmmaker and choreographer. As a rennaissance man, he’s a pretty accomplished one.

Falco’s music is a brilliantly effortless mashup of traditional country, rock, r&b, and rockabilly with additional cues taken from South American tangos, performance art, and beat poetry. He’s wicked clever and he knows his source material inside out; he’s just as capable of writing thorough reinterpretations of his style as he is of the kind of honest parody that only a fan could make. And just look at him! How do you NOT get excited when you’re listening to a guy that looks like this:

What strikes me the most is he makes rock music as if the British Invasion never happened and it’s all an overwhelming labor of love for the preservation of styles that most consider antiquated. Needless to say it’s been some of my favorite stuff as of late.

You can find more information on the Tav Falco and Panther Burns Wikipedia sites. There’s also plenty of YouTube videos but here are some favorites:

“Funnel Of Love”

“Sway”

“Tobacco Road”

My Favorite Albums - Townes Van Zandt, “Delta Momma Blues”

It was a matter of time before I got around to the Townes Van Zandt posts. I named this blog after a song of his after all. Today we’ll be looking at his 1971 classic, Delta Momma Blues.

Begin with the cover. Looking over it quickly, it’s a picture of Van Zandt being a third wheel while a couple of his friends are making out in a doorway. Look at the track listing - fairly irrevelatory one-word titles for the most part. It’s easy to overlook this one. But put the record on and look at the cover again. As the soft tragic tones of the opening song come in, the first thing you notice is Van Zandt’s look is more smug than exasparated. And there is no obvious gender for either member of the couple. And what the hell is that position they’re standing in? Whatever they’re doing to each other isn’t very intimate at all. It looks like a cross between a choke-hold and something vampiric. Try to figure out the scene now with the central elements of what you thought was the context suddenly pulled out from you. And as you do, try to figure out the kind of neighborhood they’re in. Your only clue is a rusted matress spring. You don’t see the door or the sidewalk or the street to tell if this is even happening in a city. And the song titles - FFV, Rake, Tower Song - are too cryptic for any meaningful guesses. You have found that what you thought was an easily understood situation is out of the grasp of comprehension, probably never to return. This to me is Townes Van Zandt in a nutshell.

Like with the cover, the music unravels itself almost subconsciously. The simplest description is this is Van Zandt’s blues record. There’s even some excellent Lightnin’ Hopkins-style soloing on some of the songs, which to the best of my knowledge makes this the only Van Zandt record he took solos on. Very little reverb is used, lending a very intimate vibe. The musicians sound close in the mix and the band sounds like a handful of friends jamming together rather than the studio bands of Van Zandt’s other albums. The result is a record that doesn’t stand out immediately, but creeps up on the listener until its meaning becomes personal and its subtleties become essential.

Compared to his more extroverted records like Our Mother The Mountain, Delta Momma Blues might feel like mere par for the course. But again, the enigmatic cues have made me feel that this is some of Van Zandt at his most desparate. The lyrical content of almost every song is devastating and builds up to the brutal trio of Where I Lead Me (Ask the boys down in the gutter/They won’t lie ’cause you don’t matter), Rake (Now the dark air is like fire on my skin/And even the moonlight is blindin’), and Nothin’ (Sorrow and solitude, these are the precious things/And the only words that are worth remembering). His diction alone is a mystery that pulls you back over and over.

I’m not sure how exactly this came to be my favorite Townes Van Zandt record. I guess it’s all that subtlety I keep mentioning. I love records that take some work to understand fully, that grow with you, that seem bottomless without being pretentious, and that I can reinterpret into something completely different a few months from now. I guess I like records that work out the imagination, which are sadly few and far between.

Internet roundup

Chunklet memorializes a great moment in the history of forced community service.

Hippies = Platitudes + LSD. Couldn’t have put it better myself. (Thanks Simon!)

Some guy redid the oft-overlooked Metroid 2 and it’s nothing less than awesome. (Thanks Elijah!)

Metal Inquisition gives a 101 on wigger slam metal. Like most extreme metal circles it’s a blast to read about, but I don’t think I can stomach a listen.

Also I recently got a tattoo of a central symbol from a prominent classic Nintendo series:

I’m taking a short vacation on account of Easter and the free time will probably give me something more substantial to blog about. I won’t write about Vampire Weekend, but I will mention their name now since it makes my blog stats surge.

Backlash-Backlash Backlash

Eyeing over some SXSW blogs, it seems like 2 things are abundantly clear about 2 records of the year (declared at the start of the year):

1) Times New Viking kinda sucks
2) Vampire Weekend has stirred up more controversy than they’re worth.

2007 was a dismal year for music, wasn’t it? Indie rock’s bloated ass positioned itself firmly into major label behaviors and the prominence of every buzzed about record felt manufactured at best. Looking over year end lists it seemed like more reviewers were settling on what they heard rather than giving a shit. Or maybe the generation of writers that founded Pitchfork and their ilk is getting scenester fatigue. Regardless when I consider this environment as a factor, it’s easy to understand why folks would rush out and embrace a fuzzed out pre-talented blast of 90s-style garage (TNV)  and some nice-looking ivy league boys and their African anthropology class project (VW).

Vampire Weekend seems like the more interesting one to me, mainly because of the degree of polarization and confusion they’ve caused. They caused a stir around NYC last year with a fairly infectious approximation of African pop. The quirk wore down pretty quickly for a lot of people, but unfortunately this came just when it was catching on for others. Perfect condition for a backlash, right? Add to that some exponentially mushrooming appeal and some pissed off locals when a band that’s less than 2 years old is appearing on the cover of Spin and you have what we have now, where some people LOVELOVELOVE them, some people HATEHATEHATE them, and some people are genuinely disturbed that they can’t decide which camp to shack up with.

Their image is what does it in a lot of ways. It’s no coincidence that their record came out at the same time as Stuff White People Like. Both Vampire Weekend and the wildly popular/unpopular blog are 2 depictions of the same lifestyle. VW exemplifies it, SWPL knocks it. Both have been consistently skyrocketing in popularity from the moment they came into being. While VW doesn’t sing about multilingual children and NPR, they are a dead-on representation of a culture of well-meaning but painfully self-important pseudo-intellectuals. I sorta feel bad for them, having to suddenly be a prominent part of the face of a new stereotype.

It should all be meaningless in the end. They’ve got more hype than substance, but let’s be fair they’ve gotten a LOT of goddamn hype. “A-Punk” is a ridiculously awesome song, the others not so much. Also the hipsters are all over the new Meshuggah record for some reason, so it remains to be seen what the big controversy at the end of 2008 will be.

A quick one

Here is a list of albums I was at one point obsessed with, hadn’t listened to in a while, then pulled out recently to find they hadn’t held up well at all

Meat Puppets, Up On The Sun
It’s so spiritual! See, psychedelia works in lo-fi! Or so I thought back when I thought fast scales over 2 chord vamps and singing like Bobcat Goldthwait were cool.

Archers Of Loaf, Vee Vee
Goddammit, this record used to sound so INTENSE to me. But maybe I was confusing intense with self-absorbed and emotional. I pulled this one out today and the only thing more awkward than the lyrics was the music. Apparently Bachmann and co. felt that being experimental meant playing punk with ugly chords that made no sense.

Jane’s Addiction, Nothing’s Shocking
I like to think of myself as an open minded person that holds no grudges, but I know this is a bold-faced lie. Still, I’m not the only one that feels old Perry Farrell’s bullshittery puts young Perry Farrell’s talent in question. He hasn’t managed to ruin Ritual de lo Habitual for me yet, but I haven’t pulled that one out in a while either. Maybe now it’s best that way.

Spiritualized, every fucking album
Shit man, back when I fooled around with drugs I’d listen to ANYTHING. I still have some Phish bootlegs lying around somewhere. At least Trey Anastasio tried, instead of shooting up, going up on stage, strumming one chord, and singing one or two phrases per song (about how much it sucks to be a junkie).

Ryan Adams, Heartbreaker
I pulled this one out thinking it might not be that bad. And there’s 3 or 4 songs that are even great. In between it’s more “too tortured to try” posturing that only fools teenage girls and, evidently, me.

Les Claypool’s Frog Brigade, Live Frogs Vol. 1
When you stop caring about flashy technique, you realize Les Claypool is kind of a loser.

There’s probably so much more I could list but I am now scared as to how it will affect my cherished boyhood memories.

Like Flies on History

[T]his release is a dreadful disappointment. Production values are among the worst this reviewer has ever heard: sound quality is terrible, instrumental balances are careless and haphazard, and some selections even begin with recording start-up sound… Many of the songs here stop dead or fall apart rather than ending properly. Instrumental playing is universally slipshod and boorish, and vocals are sloppy and lackluster… [T]his album cannot be recomended under any circumstances.
–David Cleary, All Music Guide

30 years ago some local Memphis boozehounds booked a few days of studio time. Over some very hazy sessions, they slogged through some obscure covers, laughed themselves silly making strange recording noises, and beat up on some helpless old blues riffs. They put the sessions out through a limited run on a local microindie and gave the world a record that amused some and offended others, but was mostly ignored. This is typical and otherwise unremarkable except the primary singer, songwriter, and guitarist for the sessions was Alex Chilton and the resulting album, Like Flies On Sherbert, was his first concentrated LP effort since his former band Big Star’s ill-fated 1975 sessions for Sister Lovers, which effectively invented the way underground pop would be played until the end of the century.

While relatively unknown in comparison to Chilton’s Big Star work, Like Flies On Sherbert maintains a polarizing reputation. Listeners develop strong opinions for or against the record and unfortunately the side against has had a history of winning the argument. As such, the record is often maligned by people who experienced it with a prejudice in mind, or worse yet, they criticize it without actually having heard it. Regardless either side will admit that an exploration of Chilton’s solo work should not begin with this album. It sticks out as one of the great self-consciously bizarre recordings of the 70s (lord knows there were many), and while Chilton is no stranger to pushing the envelope only to jump back and wink it all away, there is simply no personal precedent for some of these moments.

Take the title track, for instance. A piano pummels fast 8ths on a rootsy progression as Chilton half-shouts between a normal tone and falsetto. Laser beams noises shoot overhead as background vocals step up to the action whenever the damn hell they feel like it before passing out across the soundfield. Or take “Baron of Love, Pt. II”, where drummer Ross Johnson drunkenly mumbles something between a come-on and an insult while the guitarist clings to the one lick he can grab because, evidently, he’s been pushed down a long flight of stairs. Or how about the one clear hit on the album, “I’ve Had It”, which sounds like a drunk R. Stevie Moore being forced to come up with a song at gunpoint. Friends, mind you these are COMPLIMENTS I’m paying.

If it isn’t clear yet I’m a fan of the record, the same way I’m a fan of Dr. John’s Babylon, or T. Valentine’s Hello Lucille, Are You A Lesbian?, or any recording or (better yet) live bootleg of an anti-hero posessed with a passion for the fuck-everything aspect of pure rock and roll and caring little about anything else. I’m not going to make the tired argument that rock stemmed from chaos and rebellion and we should feel bad for finding significance in complex music. This is not required listening, hell it’s barely recommended listening. But I think this is an overwhelmingly fun album. If this album can’t be a misunderstood classic, can we at least get a reconsideration that it’s more curious than terrible?