Foxygen - We Are the 21st Century Ambassadors of Peace & Magic

Foxygen - We Are the 21st Century Ambassadors of Peace & Magic

Jagjaguwar, 2013
8.0/10

The first time I pushed play on We Are the 21st Century Ambassadors of Peace & Magic--the second full-length record from California duo Foxygen--and opening cut “In the Darkness” came cascading out of my speakers, I had to double check my iTunes to make sure I was listening to the right album. The sounds I was hearing--a wonky piano, a booming bass, a softly shimmering electric guitar, a chorus of distant back-up vocals, Sam France’s Lennon-esque croon, and some kind of vaudevillian trumpet roll--all of them told through a layer of 1960s vinyl distortion, instantly coalesced like some long-lost Beatles b-side. I felt like I’d just thrown on an alternate universe’s version of Sgt. Pepper (or maybe Magical Mystery Tour...), and it almost baffled me how perfectly France, band partner Jonathan Rado, and producer Richard Smith were able to capture that late-era, experimental Beatles sound. Indeed, “In the Darkness” is a thing to behold as an opener, a timeless slice of psychedelic rock, perfectly balanced between meticulous studio arrangement and tripped-out spontaneity, between avant-garde textures and pop sensibilities. I thought I was in for an album full of throwback Beatles imitation, and I could hardly have been more pleased.

But if there’s one thing Foxygen teach listeners throughout We Are the 21st Century Ambassadors of Peace & Magic, it’s that we shouldn’t make ourselves comfortable with one specific sonic niche. As early as “No Destruction,” the record’s second track, things shift. France drops Lennon, opting instead for the disorienting drawl Lou Reed showed off so memorably on 1967’s The Velvet Underground & Nico. And before the song is even over, things shift again: France’s Reed impression morphs into rambunctious Bob Dylan gravel, the song traveling with him. Once a steady bass/piano/organ groover, “No Destruction” doubles down on its percussion elements and charges forward, France’s voice sliding and straining between spoken word and melody like he’s ready to bust into a well-timed cover of “Like a Rolling Stone.”

And those two songs are, quite literally, just the tip of the iceberg of musical reference that Foxygen scales throughout We Are. There’s the Elvis tribute of “On Blue Mountain,” where France directly quotes the melodic refrain from “Suspicious Minds” a numerous junctures; there’s the hazy California pop of “San Francisco,” which references a signature Tony Bennett song (you know, the one where he leaves his heart there), even while grounding itself more in classic, A.M. radio doo-wop or modern indie pop than with love-struck jazz standards; and the riotous title track sounds like it should have been on Exile on Main St., its scratchy production values and France’s unhinged vocal style perfectly distilling the spirit of rock music’s glory days for a new generation.

Somehow though, Foxygen manage to make their blatantly obvious references sound innovative and fresh within their wider musical context. A big reason for that--though certainly not the only one--is the way France and Rado are able to construct unusual, shape-shifting song structures with astounding ease. Revisit “On Blue Mountain,” which begins in organ-drenched Rolling Stones territory (think “Shine a Light”), accelerates towards Elvis appropriation, and then alternately pumps the brakes and slams the on the gas throughout the rest of its nearly six-minute running time. When the song finally reaches its climax--a smooth Clapton-esque guitar solo, surrounded by a cloud of noise and accented by France’s Jagger-like snarls--lsteners will almost have forgotten where they started. No less loose in construction is album stand-out “Shuggie,” a power-pop gem whose late-song funk-breakdown is legitimately impossible to resist.

A lot of artists write their own stories by the light of their record collections, and why not? We all love making playlists and mixtapes, soundtracking our day-to-day lives while hoping to project our musical preferences onto friends, family, and significant others. What Foxygen have done here is ultimately just an extension of that tendency. And they aren’t the first artists to do so, by any means: The Gaslight Anthem, for example, have saw a meteoric rise within this very scene, largely because of their ability to appropriate pieces of Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty, Pearl Jam, and old soul records into their own distinct sound. Albums like We Are the 21st Century Ambassadors of Peace & Magic, however, are a rarer manifestation of this influence-collecting phenomenon. France and Rado show as much care for reference and tribute here, for capturing a distinct 60s and 70s mood, as they do for more conventional aspects of songwriting, to the point where We Are essentially becomes a treasure hunt for musical familiarities.

In lesser hands, such an intense focus on homage might have come across as a gimmick, or turned the finished product into little more than a glorified cover album. Foxygen pull it off though, and most of the credit for that triumph has to be pointed towards France’s chameleonic vocal ability. But if Jagger, Dylan, Reed, and Lennon are the singer’s main points of reference, they are hardly where the musical palette leaves off. Shades of Bowie’s trademark glam-rock, The Band’s rootsy Americana, The Kinks’ punked-up Brit-pop, and even the legendary L.A. “Mellow Mafia” sound, creep in around the fringes, while other listeners will catch everything from Creedence Clearwater Revival to the Byrds to Jimi Hendrix. And as France adopts a faux-Sinatra croon over the album’s final moments, things are at last brought back around to this century, his vocal quiver and articulation recalling hues of Brandon Flowers. All of this may or may not have been explicitly intended when Foxygen sat down to write We Are, but the impact is the same: the record is a jukebox boiled down to its greatest hits, a playground romp through the back-pages of pop music history, and in this case, the journey is well worth taking. The album title may call them the “ambassadors of peace and magic,” but the music inside tells a different tale: these guys are the 21st century ambassadors of classic rock ‘n’ roll, and it's damn nice having them around.

Bob Dylan - Tempest

Bob Dylan - Tempest

Columbia Records, 2012

Four stars

Of the living legends still making music, none have created a legacy as remarkable, as challenging, and as endlessly rewarding as Bob Dylan. Since releasing his debut in 1961, Dylan has recorded 35 studio albums, altered the boundaries of both folk music and rock 'n' roll, won a Pulitzer Prize for his lyrical prowess, been the subject of numerous fascinating (and baffling) accounts, both in writing and on film, and morphed his sound, voice, and writing style on countless occasions. Along the way, he's made almost as many disappointments or duds as he has classics, but as of late, he's settled into a groove that it's hard to find much fault with. Ever since he entered his "late career renaissance" with 1997's Time out of Mind, Dylan’s output has been solid and occasionally brilliant. It’s also been relatively safe, resting mostly within a comfortable blues-rock tradition that suits his increasingly raspy voice incredibly well.

His 35th album, evocatively entitled Tempest, doesn’t look or sound too different on the surface. Songs like “Early Roman Kings” and the incendiary “Narrow Way” offer up the same kind of enjoyable yet derivative blues-rock exercises that have made up the bulk of Dylan’s last few albums. But as one delves further into the dense lyrical matter of these songs, or into the musical sweep of the album’s finest moments, they will find a collection that feels remarkably unsettling and resoundingly final. Rolling Stone called it Dylan’s darkest album to date, and the assessment isn’t far off the mark. The songs on Tempest are deeply mournful, saturated with death, doom, and defeat. “Long and Wasted Years” plays like a sequel to Time out of Mind’s masterful “Not Dark Yet,” from the warm, muggy instrumental atmosphere to its minimalist musical structure and meandering lyrical form. “We cried on a cold and frosty morn, we cried because our souls were torn/So much for tears, so much for these long and wasted years,” Dylan growls at the song’s conclusion. He sounds resilient, even in the face of regret and death, and that resilience is one of Tempest’s most palpable themes, as well as its greatest strength.

But while “Long and Wasted Years” may show off the album’s triumphs, from the aforementioned themes to Dylan’s strangely wry sense of irony, and especially to the warm and full-bodied musical backdrop (the band is in top form here, adding violins, banjos, mandolins, and steel guitars as the texture requires), it is also a textbook example of its greatest drawback. “Meandering" is a term that could be applied to much of Dylan’s work, even in his heyday. It’s that excessive aspect of his songwriting, along with his rough and unorthodox vocal style, that makes his music divisive for many listeners. And Dylan’s excesses are alive and well here: the average song length is just shy of seven minutes, and too many of them overstay their welcomes. There are exceptions of course: sometimes, Dylan’s strophic manner of songwriting works perfectly, like on the rollicking first single and album opener that is “Duquesne Whistle,” or with the haunting murder tale that he constructs on “Tin Angel.” Elsewhere, Dylan shows that he is capable of being concise, like with the gorgeous romantic sweep of “Soon After Midnight,” or the dusky guitar-driven “Pay in Blood," but occasionally, he just sounds like a broken record. Take the lurching, interminable weak point that is “Scarlet Town,” or even the centerpiece title track, which clocks in at just under 14 minutes. It goes on for twice as long as it should but it's still a vintage Dylan ballad that needs to be heard. A fiddle intro lends the song a lovely Irish lilt, and Dylan’s lyrical narrative – all 45 verses of it – gives the Titanic disaster the epic folk legend it deserves...right down to a referential appearance from Leonardo DiCaprio. It sounds like the kind of song Dylan would have written decades ago, more reminiscent of his folk-music roots than his rock ‘n’ roll revolution or his latter-day blues, and the return-to-form is a welcome change of pace. It’s too long, but that’s part of the form.

When Dylan announced the name of this record, many speculated that it was a curtain call. After all, Shakespeare’s final play bore the title The Tempest, and it seemed that, if the rock ‘n’ roll poet was going to go out on his own terms, he might as well do it in a similar fashion to the legendary artist with whom he shares the most in common. Dylan was the first to point out the lack of the word “the” in his own work, stating that its absence resulted in two different titles and no connection between them, but throughout, Tempest sounds like a man who is about ready to pull his last job. If that’s the case, then the gorgeous closer that is “Roll on John” functions as the perfect finale. “I heard the news today, oh boy/They hauled your ship up on the shore/Now the city’s gone dark, there is no more joy/They tore the heart right out and cut it to the core,” Dylan sings, over a ringing organ that evokes church scenes, and in the same ragged, Tom Waits-esque vocal style that has marked every line of the record. He doesn’t sound tired: he doesn’t sound broken or used up or even particularly old, but he does give off the air that he knows something we don’t. It’s in the manner that he references and borrows from old Beatles songs without pause, in the potentially parodic way that he eulogizes a man who has been dead for almost 32 years; and it’s certainly there in the music, a simple wistful melody which recalls that moment in a film right before the credits roll. If Tempest is the last piece of Dylan’s untouchable legacy, then it’s almost the perfect cap, one last curveball from rock ‘n’ roll’s most uncompromising figure. If it’s not, if he still has a few more surprises left in him, then it’s still his best record since Love and Theft. Coming along 11 years to the day after that record hit the streets, 11 years after it coincided with the most tragic day in recent American history, it seems like that might have been the point. But you can never really know with Bob Dylan.