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.

The Compound - Say It Again Now

The Compound - Say It Again NowSelf-Released, 2012
Three stars

Over the course of their new album, Say It Again Now, Ontario-based trio The Compound adopt a mélange of different sounds and styles, hitting everything from the classics (the ever-present Beatles influence), to rootsy rock 'n' roll (The Band), to more modern rockers. The bluesy moments of the Thrice discography come to mind numerous times (especially on the second track, "When I'm Away"), while singer and bassist Tommy Lowe sounds eerily like the ghost of Jeff Buckley on a few tracks. Add in the reference to Weezer's "Say it Ain't So" on "Feels So Good," a slow-burn of a blues song that contrasts that 90s hit in almost every way imaginable, and you've got a band that clearly adores the vast musical history that surrounds them as much as they love adding to it.
 
Say It Again Now is a hard record to pin down precisely because of the plethora of influences on display, resulting in a collection that, while only eight songs and 25 minutes in length, is far more diverse thank your average modern rock rock album. The aggressive guitar lines of the first two songs (the propulsive title track and the aforementioned "When I'm Away") morph into the southern rock drawl of "Memories," a song with a riff so sweepingly familiar that I swore I'd heard it before. "Memories" is the immediate stand-out on the record, a song that is at once both classic and remarkably fresh, and that it builds to a remarkable showcase for guitarist Simon Talevski (who also fills piano and synth duties, among others) doesn't hurt either.

Lowe gets his own shining moment on "Turning the Tables," laying down some impressive bass licks, in addition to sounding his most innately Buckley-ish on vocals, a compliment in and of itself for those familar with the late singer. Album highlight "Blues (Has Got Me By the Balls)" sounds like a Paul McCartney outtake, with a thumping piano line, dreamy back-up vocals, and some bluesy guitar accents straight out of the '70s. The Beatles influence is felt just as strongly on "Feels So Good," which builds from a softly ambient intro to a brilliantly soulful bridge, while "Holiday Heartache" lands somewhere between "I Want You/She's So Heavy" from Abbey Road (my favorite Beatles record) and the Red Hot Chili Peppers: believe me when I say that the combination is more successful than it sounds on paper.

The only problem with The Compound's shape-shifting sound is that Say It Again Now ends up feeling like a record distinctly lacking in any semblance of flow. That the album closes with "Enjoy Your Summer," an entirely instrumental track, proves this point perfectly. While they write terrific songs and have undeniable chops (nothing proves this more than the closer, which gives all three members showcases for their talents), The Compound seem like a band more tailor made for the live concert experience than for the album listening one. But ultimately, despite the fact that Say It Again Now does not equal more than the sum of its parts as a record, it's still a stellar collection of songs without a discernable weak point, and it still represents the work of three musicians with talents that should absolutely not be ignored. And since the entire record is available for free download, in high quality, directly from the band, I can see no argument for not checking it out and spending a half hour with these three gentlemen and their bevy of influences: there couldn't possibly be a better price to discover one of the best unsigned bands I've heard in ages.

"This is it, boys, this is war - what are we waiting for?"

fun. - Some Nights

Fueled by Ramen/Nettwerk, 2012

4.5 stars

 

Over the past few months, fun.'s "We Are Young," the first single off of their fantastic sophomore album, has been infecting mainstream music in ways that music by bands I love very rarely does: a prominent feature spot as the coda song of a Glee episode, a fantastically well positioned Super Bowl ad, and plenty of facebook statuses quoting the lyrics. A few years back, after my first listens to the gloriously strange pop record that was Aim & Ignite, I can't say I would have envisioned fun. as a mainstream pop act. No doubt, the songs were terrific, from the explosively catchy "Be Calm," to the gospel-infused "Benson Hedges," to the "Boys of Summer" reference at the end of "Walking the Dog," all the way to the Lion King-esque chants at the start of the epic closer, "Take Your Time (Coming Home)." To this day, I don't quite know how to describe the overall sound of Aim & Ignite: Glammy rock? A rave-up block party of musical influences? Some bizarre combination of circus music and alternative rock? The most straightforward song on the record, the lyrically driven love ballad "The Gambler," probably provided soundtrack for a lot of blooming relationships (including my own), but I could never have imagined hearing even that on mainstream pop radio.

Despite all this, when fun. started blowing up with "We Are Young," it really did make sense, because the song, regardless of the band's debut record, is a bonafide anthem in a time of far too few: it's a chorus just begging to be shouted by a crowd in any environment, from a college party to a huge music venue, and it is a song that a lot of people are going to identify with. Frontman Nate Reuss is no stranger to big choruses: he wrote one of the most infectious of the past decade on  "The First Single (You Know Me)" with his previous band, The Format, and he loads this album with so many of them that "We Are Young," while a terrific song, is hardly even a standout. 

The opener, the "Some Nights Intro" (strangely titled, since it's almost two and a half minutes and could easily have been a standalone song), builds from the sound of a broken down piano into a Queen-aping power ballad. Reuss sounds so much like Freddie Mercury here that for a moment, I almost expected a classic-rock record, but the band has other things in mind. The title track, with another killer chorus and a terrific delivery from Reuss, is an early contender for album highlight, while an autotune breakdown late in the song indicates the direction that this album is heading in. Ahhhh, autotune, such a ubiquitous, and yet widely misunderstood, tool in today's music industry: most mainstream pop music is positively drenched in it, always made more obvious when those artists perform live and a trainwreck ensues (several examples could have been found in last week's Grammy ceremony). Still, even the most talented singers in the industry tend to use autotune, mostly due to the fact that we as listeners have come to expect perfection in our studio recorded albums. Recently, a wave of T Pains and the like have given autotune a more gimmicky application, and fun.'s record uses it as such here, but it's done in a way that suits the songs and one that results in a record that is a true sonic feast. Make no mistake, Reuss is a terrific vocalist (for proof of this, look no further than "Carry On," another infectious pop song that would function just as well in a stripped-down acoustic arrangement as it does on record, with bass and heavy drum machines buffing up the sound). Even for those who have trouble getting used to the autotune as a part of this band's sound, by the time "Some Nights" explodes into a climactic spoken word section, I have a feeling they'll be hard pressed to care.

On my first listens to this record, I couldn't help marveling at the classic pop melodies Reuss and co. seem to come up with so easily: melodic verse lines and irresistible choruses that are so instantly memorable that I found myself wondering how no one else had stumbled upon them yet. "Carry On" is certainly one; "Why Am I the One," with an intro guitar part straight out of a Modest Mouse song and sweeping chorus harmonies, is another. "All Alone" and "All Alright" defy their titles, with the former being a ridiculously catchy pop song that's destined for a more than a few dance-in-the-car moments and the latter being one of the album's more subdued numbers (subdued being a relative term). "I've got nothing left inside my chest, but it's all alright," Reuss sings, over a bed of pianos, synths, bass and a choir, and surrounded by a massive wall of pop production. Much like Mat Kearney did with Young Love last year, Some Nights takes what is more or less fun.'s traditional sound and filters it through a more beat heavy, hip-hop influenced production. The result is a record that will prove polarizing among fans, but one that I think is ultimately more rewarding than the band's debut. 

That said, Some Nights isn't free of miss-steps, and when they occur, it's more the fault of the production than it is the songwriting. "One Foot" is a perfect example: it's a good song that circulated in a live version prior to the release of the record, but it doesn't quite gel with the studio arrangement or production. The song is still more than worthwhile, but there's a definitely sense that it could have been something greater. Elsewhere, "It Gets Better" is a textbook example of filler, a throwaway track with a grating chorus that steals a spot that would have been much better occupied by "Out on the Town," the album's "bonus track" and one of the best songs here.

Ultimately, the proper closer, the seven-minute "Stars" will epitomize everything that fans of the album love about it and everything that detractors think is wrong with it. In my eyes, it's the high water mark for the album: a masterfully climactic blend of pop, the band's alt-rock roots, hip hop and electronic music that serves as the perfect showcase for Reuss's vocal talents, the band's new musical direction, and the album's undeniably impressive production work. While it begins as a fairly straightforward pop-rock song, "Stars" builds into a haze of auto-tune and heavy beats, climaxing with a euphoric chorus of vocodor-enhanced voices. "No one's gonna save me now," Reuss sings, and despite the fact that his voice is layered with production and altered ten times over from its original state, it's the most vocally cutting and emotional moment of the album: even after a dozen listens, chills still run down my spine at that moment, and that alone is enough to make me a champion of the electronic influences the band adopts here. 

Just as the album began in Queen territory, it finishes thoroughly enthralled in the influence of Kanye West, whose 2010 album My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy served as the band's primary influence throughout the recording process. That album's co-producer, Jeff Bhasker, masterminds the sonic orchestra on display here, and Reuss and his vocodor carries the album out in a way that very much recalls West's "Runaway," another epic song that the band actually covered on their last tour. That song and album's influence run rampant throughout the entire record, supplemented here and there by hints of Bon Iver (also involved with Fantasy and another figure who's been redefining what autotune can do), or by the eternal presence of classic pop acts like the Beatles and the Beach Boys. The resulting album sounds as fresh as it does musically-referential, and despite the fact that many fans of fun. and the Format will probably find the pervasive hip hop and electronic motifs jarring, in time I think this record could easily be regarded as the album where one of the best bands working in the industry today rightfully rose to the top. Who knows, if these guys get a few more big hits under their belts, maybe a Grammy could be in their future. And while, in light of the new Bruce Springsteen album (which is a masterpiece--more on that later), I can no longer say what I initially wanted to about this album (that it's the best thing I've heard all year), it's certainly a more than worthy runner up, and I'd be willing to put money on it ending up somewhere in my top ten at the end of the year. There will inevitably be cries accusing the band of "selling out," but as long as their doing so sounds this good, all the more power to them.

Bruce Springsteen Retrospective Part V: The River (1980)

"But I remember us riding in my brother's car
Her body tan and wet down at the reservoir
At night on them banks I'd lie awake
And pull her close just to feel each breath she'd take
Now those memories come back to haunt me
They haunt me like a curse
Is a dream a lie if it don't come true
Or is it something worse?"

By the time Bruce Springsteen reached his fifth LP, he wasn't the international icon he should have been, but he was a star with a good following and a handful of terrific records under his belt. He'd moved from the Dylan worship of his first two albums comfortably into a rock 'n' roll sound that was all his own, and he had the eclectic, electric talents of the E-Street Band behind him. What better time to attempt the double album, that mystical Holy Grail of rock music? Ever since the Beatles entered into the double album conversation with The White Album in 1968, it has undergone a colorful history that has seen works from everyone from Pink Floyd  to the Smashing Pumpkins, Led Zeppelin to the Foo Fighters,  from the Red Hot Chili Peppers to M83. To attempt the double album is to enter into an ambitious task that has proven, time and time again, nearly impossible to succeed in completely. Double albums overflow with songs, sounds and ideas; they allow artists to indulge in their quirks or in their adoration of genres outside of their comfort zone, and while they often result in some of the most creative and engaging material of ant artist's career, they also often come out gloriously flawed, with more throwaway filler material than should ever make it onto a full length album.

Bruce Springsteen came into The River with enough material for three or four albums (and b-sides from it make up at least a full disc of the Tracks collection). Like his predecessors, he stumbles into a few of the double album's inherent traps, but the resulting record is one of his most brilliantly compelling. The River, like many double albums, could be considered a blend of Springsteen at his loudest and his softest, his most raucous and his most introspective. Throughout the album's two discs, Springsteen presents a set of songs striking in their duality, one half bar-band rock 'n' roll, the other half among the darkest material he ever recorded. The opener, "The Ties That Bind," is a classic Springsteen rocker and perfectly encapsulates the record's louder sound. At first, the record was going to be a single-disc effort, and "Ties" was going to be the title track. That changed as some darker material began to emerge in Springsteen's writing, ultimately resulting in the stunning title track that closes the first disc. If "The Ties That Bind" captures Springsteen's more joyful side, "The River" finds him at his most inward, as he takes us on a journey through memories shrouded in shadow and regret. His portrait of young love in hard times captures an entire relationship in the course of five minutes, from the ecstatic euphoria of first love to the end of innocence, and the result is one of his best songs. Next to "Thunder Road," I don't think Springsteen's lyrics have ever hit me harder. His vocal is also a revelation, as he delivers his evocative lyrics with emotional honesty and intensity that is, quite frankly, chilling.

"The River" follows in the footsteps of Darkness on the Edge of Town, and like many of the songs on that album, it examines what happens after we wake up from the American Dream, after Thunder Road runs out and we realize that maybe we weren't born to run after all. It's heavy subject matter, and it permeates the best songs on The River, like the gorgeously sad "Independence Day," a song that Springsteen wrote about the day he finally moved out of his father's house. Springsteen and his dad never saw eye to eye, often fighting when they were young, but even despite this, his love for the man is palpable on "Independence Day," and the result is one of the most revealing songs he's ever written. It reminds me of one of the greatest recorded moments in the Springsteen collection: a live version of "The River" that was released on the Live: 1975-85 collection, along with choice cuts of many of Springsteen's most notable songs. This version is arguably better than the one on the album, full of all the sound and the fury that comes out when Springsteen cuts loose live, but the best part is what comes before the actual song. Amidst an elegiac rain of accompaniment from the E-Street Band, Springsteen tells a story about his father and the relationship they shared:

"I remember I got into a motorcycle accident once. I was laid up in bed and he had a barber come in and cut my hair, and man, I can remember tellin' him that I hated him and that I would never ever forget it. And he used to tell me: 'Man I can't wait 'til the Army gets you. When the Army gets you they're gonna make a man out of you. They're gonna cut all that hair off and they'll make a man out of you.'

And this was in, I guess, '68, and there were a lot of guys from the neighborhood going to Vietnam. I remember the drummer from my first band comin' over my to house with his Marine uniform on, sayin' that he was going, and that he didn't know where it was. 

And a lotta guys went and a lotta guys didn't come back. And a lot that came back weren't the same anymore. And I remember the day I got my draft notice. I hid it from my folks, and three days before my physical, me and my friends went out and we stayed up all night. And we got on the bus to go that morning...man, we were all so scared.
And I went and I failed. I came home. It's nothin' to applaud about...but I remember coming home, after I'd been gone for three days, and walking in the kitchen, and my mother and father were sittin' there.
My dad said, 'Where ya been!?'
I said, 'I went to take my physical.'
He said, 'What happened?'
I said, 'They didn't take me.'
And he said, 'That's good.'"

The first time that version really hit me, I was in the middle of a lonely drive home after a weekend of concerts, one of which was my first Springsteen live experience. It was late a night, barely a car on the road aside from my own, and I had nothing but my thoughts and my music to keep me company. I played that version of the song, and by the end of Springsteen's speech, I was in tears. I never heard "Independence Day" the same way again after that night, and it remains one of my favorite things Springsteen has ever done. With so many Springsteen songs, it feels like he's writing from the point of view of another: telling a story with complex characters, giving voice to the everyman: hell, it was his ability to write like that which earned him the nickname "the Boss" in the first place, but "Independence Day" is such a special song because it is completely personal and because it comes right from his heart. As the years go by and my relationship with my own father continues to dwindle, that song just hits me harder and harder.

Aside from those two landmark songs, the first disc of The River is actually fairly upbeat and fun. "Sherry Darling," which first originated during the Darkness sessions, is one of the catchiest songs Springsteen has written (he'd imitate the song's style a lot two and a half decades later on Magic). Disc One also contains numerous great bar band rave ups. Springsteen and co. sound like they're having an absolute ball on "Crush on You" and "You Can Look (But You Better Not Touch)," and "Two Hearts" and "Out in the Street" are almost equally enjoyable. None of them are among Springsteen's best songs, nor can I say that they're more worth of being on the record than a few of the Tracks stand-outs ("Take 'Em As They Come," "Restless Nights," and "Be True," among others), but Springsteen has never sounded as spontaneous on record as he does here. Disc One also yields the pleasantly pretty slowdance of "I Wanna Marry You" and "Hungry Heart," a song with a radio ready chorus that earned Springsteen his first top ten hit.



I've often felt with double albums that the artist begins to lose steam somewhere during the second disc. Looking back at my favorite double albums, it's hard to find one where I legitimately prefer the second disc, but on disc two of The River, I think Springsteen laid down some of the finest songs of his career. The opener, "Point Blank," is one of the most haunting introductory tracks I've ever heard. A slow-burning masterclass in intensity, "Point Blank" epitomizes the kind of mournful regret that defines much of The River's second half, and it's only the beginning. It's the same sense of urgency that infects the narrator on "Fade Away," a simplistic break-up song that Springsteen injects with every ounce of heartache that comes with the end of a once brilliant relationship.

Gorgeously downbeat electric guitar chords and piano flourishes herald the arrival of "Stolen Car," and over the course of four minutes, the song has consumed me, time and time again. Perhaps more than anything Springsteen has ever recorded, "Stolen Car" is entrancing and hypnotic, and to this day, even after listening to it hundreds of times, it still breaks my heart. Over the course of those four minutes, we watch the love between two people evaporate and drift away. Springsteen doesn't have to say much: it's three verses and two choruses, but the song's atmosphere is so utterly, hopelessly heartbreaking that the song, which comes at the end of the record's third side, has always stopped the whole thing dead in its tracks. Amidst the song's mournful atmosphere, Springsteen delivers what might be the most perfect lines about falling out of love that I've ever heard:

"She asked if I remembered those letters I wrote
When our love was young and bold
She said last night she read those letters
And they made her feel one hundred years old"

It's a simple verse, a mere four lines long, but in those four lines, Springsteen fits an entire relationship, from the first days, so full of excitement and spontaneity, to the falling in love, all the way to the present, where the narrator feels so broken and lost that those early days feel like a part of another life. Is he really driving a stolen car? Did he commit a crime to feel alive and spontaneous again? Is he really that far gone? Or is the car a metaphor for a life and a love that has gone so completely off course that he no longer knows how to find his way back. "Each night I wait to get caught, but I never do," Springsteen sings. With either interpretation, the line is drastic and powerful, and the song ultimately comes to the same meaning: this man is lost, and he needs someone else to wake him up again. Springsteen has never written a more shattering, hopeless song; I don't think any other songwriter has either.

The closing trio of songs (along with "Ramrod," another big bar rock song) make up one of the best sides to any record in the Springsteen catalog. "The Price You Pay" finds our protagonist (whoever he may be) in the same situations that have defined so much of the music on this album or on Darkness. The American Dream has faded, the age of innocence and youth has come to an end, and the characters of these songs have woken up to a world that is bleak and unforgiving, but much like Darkness's closing title track, "The Price You Pay" finds that character in a state of resignation and defiance. The song's gorgeous, often biblical lyricism, and simple, almost hymn-like musical structure build into an unexpected anthem, with Bruce's voice rising above the chaos until it reaches it's rousing peak in the song's final moments. "Drive All Night" is the song's spiritual sequel, and it is certainly no mistake that the songs are back to back, near the end of the record. That same defiance and redemption found in "The Price You Pay" continues to grow here, and Springsteen comes to an ultimate conclusion that has often left me wondering why "Drive All Night" isn't this record's finale. Despite the fact that his life has taken a different course than he envisioned in his dreams, the protagonist has, at very least, finally answered one of the key questions of life. On "Born to Run," Springsteen sang "I wanna know if love is real," and here, he comes to the realization that, not only is love real, but it has this massive power to heal and support. In the song's final verse, he sings:


"There's machines and there's fire waiting on the edge of town
They're out there for hire, but baby they can't hurt us now
Cause you've got my love
Through the wind, through the rain, the snow, the wind, the rain
You've got my love, heart, and soul."

Those lines are among my favorites that Springsteen has ever written. In the midst of this busy, disjointed record, full of boozy rock and roll and regret, there is this one grand moment of clarity. The protagonist knows there are always going to be hardships, but here, he's turning to face that darkness on the edge of town that's been dogging his steps for ages, and he's ready to fight. Love will be the thing to save him: what could be a more romantic ideal than that?




The River closes with "Wreck on the Highway," a moody, subdued post-script of a coda that does just what Springsteen has always been the best at in his songs: it tells a story. While driving home from work one night, the narrator comes upon the scene of a hit and run that has left a man half-dead on the side of the road. He calls the police, they take the man to the hospital, and then he continues home, but thoughts of the scene continue to haunt him. He lies awake at night, thinking about what he saw, imaging the death of the man and the reactions of the people that loved him, and he finally realizes the astounding brevity of life. Though The River seems to end in the same sadness and shadow that defines its best songs, I think there is a message of uplift here as well. The narrator realizes how our time here on Earth can be cut short in a split second's time, and though he doesn't say as much, I've always heard a resolve in his voice to try harder: to live more fully, to love more completely, to work harder and cherish the world around him and the people in it. For a record about characters getting over their regrets and failed dreams, there could be no more appropriate ending.

Over the course of The River's 20 songs, Bruce Springsteen covers a lot of subjects and sounds, from elegiac ballads to honky-tonk rock and rollers, from songs about family and love, both lost and re-affirmed, to fun ditties about fast cars and girls.  It feels disjointed, uneven, sometimes even completely directionless, but I'd argue that that's part of the point. The River, above all else, has always felt to me like a journey through adulthood: where Born to Run epitomized the endless opportunism of youth and Darkness captured the post-innocence shock of discovering a much crueler world, The River finds its characters settling into that world, learning to survive, love and (dare I say) thrive in it. Many have problems with the flow or the album's personality crisis, but life isn't consistent or easy or obvious: it's messy. Human existence is the messiest thing of all, and this record mirrors that. As a result, The River is a long, challenging record, and it actually took me quite a long time to recognize how truly spectacular it is. There have always been other songs I wish had made the cut, and it's length and tonal inconsistency has kept it from getting the kind of play Born to Run has over the years, but when I do put the record on, it still completely absorbs me. All double albums are flawed, but Springsteen made one of the greatest ones here, and I would argue that, aside from the untouchable Born to Run, he hasn't made another record nearly as compelling, memorable, or indeed, as great as The River.

***Lots of exciting news in Springsteen world in the past week, what with new album information and tour date announcements. Needless to say, I'll be offering my thoughts on the album as soon as it is in my hands, and I'll also be at the Concert at the Palace in April. Counting the days!***

"The picture in reverse": a farewell to R.E.M.

"On the scale of human accomplishments, turning out a classic album ought to rank up there with climbing Mount Everest. Stoned. With one leg. And no oxygen. Given the infinite potential for obnoxious excess within the Rock genre, it's no small feat to assemble an album that's so well phrased, so deftly stated, that its impact extends far beyond the realm of the audible. Turn out two or more such albums and you're headed for legendary status. Turn out five or six and you're R.E.M."

-Matt LeMay; May 14, 2001 (for Pitchfork.com)
 

The above excerpt, which introduced a review for the 2001 record Reveal, has always been one of the first things I think of whenever I hear an R.E.M. song. The band, which consisted of frontman Michael Stipe, guitarist Peter Buck, bassist Mike Mills and drummer Bill Berry (who left over a decade ago after he had a brain aneurysm during a show and collapsed onstage), announced that they were calling it quits today, writing on their website, "We walk away with a sense of gratitude, of finality, and of astonishment at all we have accomplished." The band have been a prevalent force in the music industry for over three decades, have released 15 albums, many of them considered classics, and almost single-handedly created indie and alternative rock. 

I can't really remember the first time R.E.M. resonated for me in a personal way. I remember hearing the slew of hits from their 1992 masterwork Automatic For The People pretty much all throughout my childhood, as well as laughing a few times at the video for "Shiny Happy People," but I think the first time R.E.M. really pinged my radar was when they released their "best-of" (well, there have been a few of those...) entitled In Time: The Best of R.E.M.: 1988-2003. Back then I remember thinking that this band sounded vaguely like the Counting Crows (which they really don't at all), and enjoying songs like "Man on the Moon" and "Losing My Religion"  on a purely nostalgic level, but very little of the music on that collection really hit me. My first full length R.E.M. album was Around the Sun, which I got for Christmas in 2004 alongside U2's How to Dismantle An Atomic Bomb, and which was the second album I ever put on my iPod. I really liked Around the Sun a lot, and I still do, even though most R.E.M. fans tend to rank that one at the bottom of their discography. I still don't quite understand that, since I love pretty much every song on that record, and a few, like lead-single "Leaving New York," the heartbreaking "Make It All Okay" or the sweeping title track, are probably still among my favorite R.E.M. songs, but at the time I had no point of reference for the band (and wouldn't really gain one for another six years or so).

It wasn't really until this past winter that I started delving deeper into their catalog, and when I did, I was a bit overwhelmed. R.E.M., I believe, hasn't made a single "bad" or even "mediocre" album. This is a band that makes masterpieces, great albums and good albums, but they rarely dip in quality below that, which means I suddenly had roughly 20 albums worth of material to dig through. In the R.E.M. catalog, depending on who you ask, Murmur, Reckoning, Fables of the Reconstruction, Life's Rich Pageant, Document, Green, Out of Time, Automatic For The People, and New Adventures In Hi-Fi are all essential listening, while you're bound to find a fan who will extoll the virtues of something like Monster (which Stipe described, back in the day, as the band's "big, dumb rock album") or wax poetic about the gorgeous pop of Up, rave about the comeback record that was 2008's Accelerate, or explain to you why Around the Sun is actually a great record (well, I suppose I'm that one). Most Springsteen fans will tell you his best album is Born to Run, most U2 fans will pull out The Joshua Tree or Achtung Baby, hell, even most Beatles fans would rally around one of five records, but every R.E.M. fan seems to have a different answer to that question. It's because R.E.M. have been such a consistent band, have made so many great records and so many different kinds of great records; because they have changed their sound around half a dozen times and gone in so many different sonic directions over the years, while almost always remaining true to what made them special in the first place. In a way, I think that's also why they decided to call it quits.

It seems like it's impossible for a band that has been around for a long time to live up to their own high standards. You stick around for long enough, your records become classics, and no matter how good your latest project is, it's impossible for it to live up to the albums that made people fall in love with you in the first place. Perhaps it's that the artists in question really are running out of ideas. Maybe they don't have another masterpiece in the them, but even if they did, would we recognize it as such? It's as much our problem as it is the band's. We forge personal connections to things, and they become something immortal in our minds, something that cannot be replicated or toppled by anything, least of all the artist that created it in the first place. In the break-up announcement, Michael Stipe wrote: "A wise man once said--'the skill in attending a party is knowing when it's time to leave.' We built something extraordinary together. We did this thing. And now we're going to walk away from it." They made a slew of great albums, they set a bar that they could no longer reach (at least in the eyes of the vast majority of listeners, and probably their own), and they didn't want to be the kind of band who overstayed their welcome. Like he said, they built something they can really be proud of, and now, they can walk away from it. Their legacy is one of the greatest of any band in the history of music.

It's perhaps appropriate that the band goes out with an album titled Collapse Into Now (released earlier this year), and more specifically, with that album's closing track, the dark and confusing "Blue," which ends the record with a resounding sense of finality, reprising the album's first cut, "Discoverer" in it's final two minutes, and seeming to bring everything full circle before it all crashes away. For me, and for many other fans, though, the R.E.M. story begins and ends with their 1992 masterpiece Automatic For The People, perhaps my favorite of all of their great albums. That album's hit singles, "Drive," "Everybody Hurts," (still regarded by many as the definitive break-up ballad), "Man On The Moon" and "Nightswimming," along with "Losing My Religion" from 1991's Out of Time, were the songs that introduced me (and probably many others) to this band in the first place, and they're also some of my favorites to this day. In the pantheon of truly perfect songs, I don't think there are many better than "Nightswimming," a track of such striking beauty that it moves me every time I hear it. The piano line shimmers and rotates around you as Michael Stipe delivers some of his finest lyrics, and the melody immediately attaches itself to your brain. The song is yearning, nostalgic, evocative, gorgeous, unforgettable, perfect. From first note to last, it sounds like a summer night, like youth fading away, and every time I hear it, each moment, each lyrical image, brings me back to a moment from my own personal experience. Only the best songs do that, and this one does it better than almost any other: that 's why it's one of my favorite songs of all time. On Automatic For The People it functions as the penultimate track, flowing perfectly into the almost equally gorgeous "Find The River," and it's these two tracks that I'm listening to right now, as I lay this band to rest. It's a farewell: I don't expect that there will be a reunion; this feels final. I'm sad to see them go, I'm sad that they will never make another record and I'm sad I'll never get to see them live, but one thing is for certain: I'll be listening to a lot of R.E.M. in the coming week. From the Chronic Town EP and Murmur all the way to Collapse Into Now, I've got a lot of ground to cover, and I'm looking forward to it. 

As a wise man once wrote, "It's the end of the world as we know it. And I feel fine."