Third Eye Blind - Dopamine

My initial impression after listening to Third Eye Blind's Dopamine for the first time was something along the lines of "People are going to hate this." That's not because Dopamine, the long awaited fifth full-length from these 1990s hit makers, is a departure from what Third Eye Blind has done in the past. On the contrary, this is definitely a Third Eye Blind album. There's still the same mix of power pop and alternative rock that endeared this band to listeners in the first place, and frontman Stephan Jenkins still writes songs just like he always has: with cutting lyrics and big choruses. In fact, there are a lot of songs on Dopamine that call back to each of the band's previous albums.

But in spite of the fact that tracks like "Shipboard Cook," "Something in You," and "Exiles" should be easy home runs for anyone who has kept listening to Third Eye Blind since they stopped having radio hits, the odds of Dopamine getting positive reception from most fans seem low to me. How come? Take your pick of reasons: the six year wait between Ursa Major, Third Eye Blind's last album, and this; the expectations and disappointments built up by all the times Stephan Jenkins said a new album was in the works; endless questions about the scrapped Ursa Minor album; the controversy surrounding the departure of guitarist Tony Fredianelli, or the subsequent lawsuit where he was awarded almost half a million dollars in damages for denied songwriting credits and wages; the fact that most long-time Third Eye Blind fans didn't like Ursa Major anyway, or that plenty of people still haven't learned how to appreciate this band without the presence of original guitarist Kevin Cadogan. Stephan Jenkins being a well-documented dick, of course, doesn't help matters.

To be sure, being a Third Eye Blind fan these days comes with a lot of baggage. That much was evident in 2009, when the popular reaction to Ursa Major was that it "lacked the magic" of the band's early records. Those willing to get past their own nostalgia were able to uncover beauty in Ursa, though, from the summer night swells of "Bonfire" and "Sharp Knife" to that line about a "muffled 'I love you' through an oxygen mask" on "Water Landing"—one of the five best songs Stephan Jenkins ever wrote. The same is true for Dopamine: there's a classic Third Eye Blind record here, but you're not going to find it on first listen—especially if you're only comparing it to all the memories you have of screaming along to "Semi-Charmed Life" with your best friends, or driving through the rain and having a personal epiphany while "Motorcycle Drive By" blasted in the background.

Case-in-point is leadoff single and opening track "Everything is Easy," which has already been labeled as "lifeless," "emotionless," and "a pale imitation of former glories" by fans. I was personally sold on the song by the time Jenkins dropped a direct lyrical reference to Springsteen's "Darkness on the Edge of Town" at the start of the final verse, but others might take a little bit longer: this is the song that has to shoulder six years of expectations, after all. It's also Third Eye Blind's least upbeat album opener ever, a patient mid-tempo anthem from a band that has typically kicked off their albums by kicking down the door. Finally, some fans might be frustrated that Stephan Jenkins is still writing break-up songs with lines like "Now I'm just haunted by you constantly" or "Go ahead take my heart up/Roll it up like a joint" at 50. But all told, "Everything is Easy" is a prototypical Third Eye Blind song: verses tinged with darkness; a pure pop chorus; evocative lyrics about heartbreak; a lengthy mid-song break that epitomizes Jenkins' talent for building his songs up, taking them down a notch, and then building them back up again. If anything, the song is almost too Third Eye Blind, but complaining that it lacks emotion or commitment from Jenkins is patently false.

The same goes for the rest of Dopamine, which more or less follows the template of "Everything is Easy" to a T. Like Ursa Major, this is a surprisingly downbeat album from a band that made their name on big summer pop songs like "Semi-Charmed Life" and "Never Let You Go." Unlike Ursa Major, though, Dopamine utilizes more creativity and variation in the arrangements, to keep things from running together. The stellar "Shipboard Cook" opens with a repetitious piano line before exploding into a pounding rock song. "Rites of Passage" and "Back to Zero," meanwhile, are almost danceable, the latter playing like the band's attempt at a dark and dingy 80s nightclub tune. Sliding synths and piano kick off set highlight "Something in You," a huge crescendo of a track that feels tailor-made to be the band's main set closer. New guitarist Kryz Reed shreds dynamic solos all over the place, most notably on the lengthy shape-shifting closing track, "Say It." And the breezy "Exiles," the album's best track, is a 90s-flavored acoustic ballad (think "Deep Inside of You") that should be flagged right now as the anchor of your "end of summer 2015" playlist.

Dopamine's array of mid-tempo tracks and ballads means two things: first, this album doesn't have the immediacy of most of the band's work, and second, those hoping for a perfect summer driving soundtrack might be a bit disappointed. Tunes like "Exiles" and "Something in You" are still great for summer drives, but they're more tailored for sunset cruises or nighttime excursions than for scorching road trips or jaunts to the beach.

The again, most of Third Eye Blind's best songs are ballads anyway, and Stephan Jenkins is clearly in his element for the majority of this record. "Blade," for instance, is a callback to fan favorite "Slow Motion," telling a similarly blood-soaked story in a similarly fractured way. That's not the only place where Jenkins uses nostalgia to his favor, either. There's his personal nostalgia, like that Springsteen homage in "Everything is Easy," or the references to David Bowie that crop up in "Rites of Passage" ("Even diamond dogs have their days/It's like Bowie says/You pretty young things, you go through ch-ch-changes") and "Exiles" ("When 'Ziggy Stardust' plays at a karaoke bar/And I can't remember the DJ's name, everyone knows who you are"). Then, there are the knowing callbacks to his own music, like "Blade" or "Get Me Out of Here," which is like a stripped down version of "Company" from Out of the Vein. Make no mistake, Dopamine is a very "90s alt rock" flavored album—so much so that it often plays like the missing link between Blue and Out of the Vein.

In fact, the album that Dopamine sounds the least like is 1997's Third Eye Blind. In many ways, that record was lightning in a bottle, a one-time miracle that is remarkable not just for how well everything works (from the rock songs to the radio-friendly pop numbers, all the way to the trio of soul-shredding ballads at the end), but also for the fact that it probably couldn't have reached the success it did at literally any other time in music history. Jenkins is smart enough to know that he's not going to make an album like that again, but here, he's still clearly interested in looking back. It's a testament to his talent as a songwriter, as well as to the skills of the band he's assembled here, that he can still make an album that feels like it could have come out during his peak days. His distinctive tenor sounds the same at 50 as it did at 32 (no small feat), and he's still capable of writing catchy songs with deep, unique, and often devastating lyrics. Dopamine isn't his best record, and it might be his worst, but for one of the slyest songwriters from the past two decades of pop, "worst" can still be pretty damn great. Here's hoping Jenkins is full of shit when he says this is the "last" Third Eye Blind LP.

Jim Ivins Band - Everything We Wanted

Jim Ivins Band - Everything We Wanted

Unsigned, 2012

Three and a half stars

Late last fall, I stumbled upon Late Night Drive, a solo EP from Virginia songwriter Jim Ivins. It was a beautiful, introspective collection of acoustic music that culminated in one of the best songs anyone wrote all year. That song was "House of Three," a viscerally emotionally ode to his mother and the times they shared together, and it's broken my heart pretty much every time I've listened to it since. Everything We Wanted sees Ivins back in the company of his band (a four piece, including his older brother on drums), and far more buffeted by electric instrumentation and pop production, but at its heart, the record is a very natural progression for him. Ivins, who has worked with the likes of Ace Enders, opened for bands such as Switchfoot, The Ataris, and Parachute, and listed artists like Matt Nathanson, The Goo Goo Dolls, and Third Eye Blind among his biggest influences, channels all of his musical experiences into a record awash with nostalgia, introspection, and big life issues, all to a modern pop rock sound that hearkens back to bands of the late '90s or the early '00s. Indeed, while Ivins and his band remain fairly underground today, the sound of Everything We Wanted made me wonder how the band would have fared a decade ago, when this type of surging, melodic pop-rock was all over the airwaves.

A bell-like guitar heralds the arrival of "Run," the sunsoaked rocker that kicks off the set and one of the many highlights therein. Ivins' vocals sound more full bodied and confident this time, replacing Late Night Drive's falsetto atmospherics with fist-pumping choruses and a more optimistic lyrical outlook. Pounding pianos accent the song's bridge, while a drum section and a distant vocal harmony dissolve the song and give way to the anthemic guitar sound that kicks off the next cut, "The Sight of Fire." Rarely do transitions sound this good or well planned, and "The Sight of Fire" actually ends up being a better song thanks to the extended lead in that "Run" provides. The song (also the first single), is a perfect showcase of Ivins' ability to wrap difficult subject matter up in pop sensibility. Late Night Drive embraced darkness and sadness more completely, in both sound and content, while Everything We Wanted is a heavily produced, muscular set up pop-rock songs that could easily end up on the radio, but bits and pieces of that darkness still creep in here. "The Sight of Fire" is a song about the debilitating effects of addiction, a fact that passed me by until the song's key line ("Cause it's funny how we kill ourselves/When we're trying to feel alive") hit me and made me pay attention. Everything We Wanted is a catchy and sonically pleasing record from the get go, but it's also extremely lyrically driven, and it became much more resonant to me when I really paid attention to that aspect.

Three of the songs here ("Run," "Rollercoaster," "It's Getting Better") have been re-recorded from Ivins' first solo album, and while there is a notable difference in lyrical maturity between these songs and the new material (especially with "Rollercoaster," where Ivins indulges in a few cliches, only to directly acknowledge that he's doing so), it isn't jarring. Ivins has gone on record saying that the duality of the songs and their content means to represent the journey his life has taken in the years since he started writing. Where "Run" is a song about feeling young, immortal, and limitless, and where "Rollercoaster" is an irresistible depiction of first love, many of the other songs on this record are coming from a man who has lost one of the most important people in his life and been battered by the world around him. In that respect, it's a record about growing up and coming of age, where the naiveté of those three songs gives way to songs about a person who understands that life really can get hard some times, but who is still fighting through and searching for the good.

But even as Ivins seeks to find himself in these songs, the ghost of his mother still hangs heavily over the proceedings. Never is this more evident than on the title track, which carries the record out in a moving and uplifting fashion. It's a song about picking up the pieces of your life in the wake of tragedy, and in that respect, it's really a sequel to "House of Three." Where the last EP ended with Ivins packing up his life and driving away because he couldn't face the grief anymore, here he's mastered that pain and is ready to move on. As the song floats through a couple of stunning verses and an anthemic chorus, carried along by the talents of his band and the pristine, radio-ready production of Pedro Aida (Carbon Leaf), he finally comes to the realization that life really does go on. And when he sings "I'm not dead yet/Now I'm finally alive" at the song's climactic moment, it's both a catharsis and a commencement to a new life. While most of my listening tends to revolve around full length albums rather than EPs, and while I do really wish Everything We Wanted lasted beyond its 23 minute runtime, these seven songs constitute a musical journey that is both relatable and fully formed, and the result is my favorite EP of the year so far; I can only hope that The Jim Ivins Band gets the attention they deserve for it.

Don't give away the end: My favorite opening and closing tracks

Following a viewing of High Fidelity late last fall (one of my favorite films, thanks to John Cusack's honest and funny portrayal and Bruce Springsteen's brief cameo), I got into a bit of a list making furor. In the film, Rob, Cusack's character, has a tendency to compile everything into top five lists, including, at one point the film, his "top five side-one, track-ones." It got me thinking, for perhaps the hundredth time, about what my favorite opening and closing tracks would be, but I let this list fall by the wayside for a long time, until I actually read High Fidelity and got it going again. Needless to say, it's taken me awhile to sit down and actually write this all out, but the goal remains the same as it was last fall. A great opening track can turn a good album into a classic, a solid set of songs into a personal soundtrack. So many opening tracks have an anthemic quality to them, a mood that just sets the tone for the record so well that it's impossible to imagine it opening any other way. On the other side of things, many artists always save their best song for last, and I think that's the way I will do things when I make a record (someday). There's just something so profoundly emotional about a great album going out on it's highest note: it makes you feel like you can do anything, and maybe more importantly, it makes you want to listen to the entire thing again. Sometimes, an album can feel like it's just been building to the climactic moment of the closing track, and when that moment finally arrives, it's nothing short of cathartic. Whenever I listen to a new album, I always await that closing track: it's what separates the boys from the men, and every single one of my favorite albums goes out with a resounding high note. Keep in mind that this is not science. There are so many classic candidates for both of these lists, and trimming them to five for each was murder (and didn't really happen...), but what remains represents not only my favorite tracks in a (somewhat) narrow category, but some of the greatest songs ever put on record.

Rules:

1. One song per artist, per category. Otherwise Bruce would fairly easily have two in each, and Butch and Jimmy would both stand a fairly good shot at grabbing two of the slots in the album closer section.
2. The album in question has to be at least a year old, and I have to have been listening to it for at least a year as well. You never know what's going to stand the test of time.
3. Intros or outros don't count. A closer is a closer, even if there's an epilogue afterwords (though I will never understand the band who tacks on a lame outro track). Hidden tracks, if they were featured on the actual CD do count, however. Why? Because I want them to.

Openers:

1. Bruce Springsteen - "Thunder Road" from Born to Run (1975)

I don't know how many times I've gone on about how perfect a song and how perfect an opener this masterpiece is, but rest assured, I could go on for much longer. From the chilling piano/harmonica intro to the deeply poetic lyrics (especially the first verse), there's nothing about this song I would change. I'm not sure Bruce has ever sounded better than he does here, and I still get chills when I hear him sing "show a little faith, there's magic in the night." The song just builds and builds, eschewing the normal verse/chorus dynamic of most pop and rock songs, and just flowing in a way that I still can't describe, even after I've listened to it hundreds of times and played it myself on countless occasions. No album has ever opened with a more powerful or inspirational song: it sets the scene for what is to follow, gathering steam as it goes, with Bruce's vocal line getting higher and the band closing in, until it all collapses, in a cascade of piano keys, into Clarence Clemons repeating sax solo. I don't think there could possibly a more fitting introduction to the greatest album of all time.

2. U2 - "Where the Streets Have No Name" from The Joshua Tree (1987)

The opening minutes of this 1987 classic, still one of the greatest albums of all, brought this band from good to great, from a force in the music industry to an icon, and in this track, you'll find every reason for why U2 has been the biggest band on the planet for so many years. When the Edge's unforgettable guitar riff echoes through the intro about a minute in, it's one of the most chilling moments in all of rock music, and the way Bono sings this song is incredible: he sounds hungry, and it's that quality that makes him one of the finest frontmen in rock. The song is at once forcefully inspirational and completely moving, a massive, life-changing kind of rock song that has soundtracked countless personal victories for me over the years. When they played the Super Bowl halftime following September 11th, it was this song that they used to unite those in the stadium (and those watching all around the country), immediately delivering one of the most iconic television performances of all time. And even though Springsteen and Butch will always be my favorite artists and dominate my top live shows list, I don't think I've ever been as excited to hear a song live, or as thoroughly elevated seeing one as I was when U2 finally pulled this song out during the first encore when I saw them last summer. It sat a number one on my "songs I need to see live" list for a solid year, and when I finally witnessed it, it was everything I hoped it would be and more.

3. The Wallflowers - "One Headlight" from Bringing Down The Horse (1996)

"One Headlight" introduced The Wallflowers to the world via the sound of the couple of ringing guitar notes that echoed through the speakers of car radios everywhere in 1996. Next to the harmonica wail that kicks off "Thunder Road," I don't think there's a moment that's ever drawn me into a song, and album, or an artist as fast than the first few seconds of "Headlight" do. But where those notes were merely introducing the world of mainstream music to the presence of Bob Dylan's son (Jakob Dylan, who fronts the band), for me, it was where this whole big, messy, all-consuming obsession with music began. Back in '96 or '97, whenever my older brother got his hands on Bringing Down The Horse, I had him make me a cassette tape copy of it, and "One Headlight" soon became my first ever "favorite song." A decade and a half later, it still wouldn't be far off. Jakob Dylan tackles death and broken hearts, all in a killer five minute pop song, surrounded by a bed of rootsy-rock glory (to this day, I find myself comparing similar bands to the Flowers' performances on this record). I love the song for all of those things: for the lyrics that continue to confound me to this day, for the stellar musicianship on display, but especially for that hook, which never fails to take me back in time.

4.  Bob Dylan - "Like a Rolling Stone" from Highway 61 Revisited (1965)

Rolling Stone called it the greatest song ever written, and there are days when I've felt inclined to agree (though I've probably committed some sort of blasphemy by putting it below his son's song). Springsteen described the song's opening as "the snare shot that sounded like somebody'd kicked open the door to your mind," and the song as a whole shattered the boundaries of the pop song, dragging onto six-minutes, electrifying Dylan's sound, and delivering verse after verse of impossibly good poetry (his best) before exploding into that iconic chorus. "How does it feel? To be on your own? To be without a home?" he asked, over and over, destroying Dylan's folk roots, sending the world of pop music reeling, and bringing rock 'n' roll to a height that Lennon and McCartney (and all who came after them) never reached or matched. It is not my "favorite" song of all time, but objectively, it's almost certainly the greatest.

5. Matthew Ryan - "Return to Me" from Regret Over The Wires (2003)

What can I say about the song that has probably landed itself on more of my mixtapes and playlists than perhaps any other in my collection? This slow burning track, juxtaposing a lurching electronic drum beat with a gentle acoustic swell to create an atmosphere that is both hopeful and relaxing, and Ryan's low, soothing vocals sound rich and warm from beginning to end. In my collection, I don't think there's a single song that I've returned to (no pun intended) for comfort, time and time again, like I have this one. In turns, it's been a lullaby, a soundtrack for thoughtful drives, a farewell to important things in my life, and even a victory anthem, and for that reason, it's become one of the most played songs and best kept secrets in my collection. I love it today as much or more than I did the first time I ever heard it, and while I think it would have worked just as well as a closer as it does an opener, it remains one of my all time favorite songs, and therefore deserves a slot on this list.

6. Chad Perrone - "Blinded" from Wake (2008)

I discovered Chad Perrone two summers ago, on a recommendation from a guy on a message board I frequent. He's an independent artist out of Boston with a knack for writing killer pop hooks, and the perfect voice with which to deliver them. This song was my introduction to his solo material, and I'm honestly not sure if there has been a more perfect pop song written this millennium. The hook feels so effortless, and yet so completely flawless, that it attached itself to my brain on first listen and has yet to let go. And Perrone sings with such emotion and conviction that it's hard to believe that he's a complete unknown. The level of talent on display here, especially in the way he sings the song's massive bridge, is infectious, and I honestly believe that this song could have been a huge hit had it been marketed correctly. It's a shame it wasn't, but as it stands, it's my own personal treasure, a perfect opener to a ridiculously varied set of songs that has quickly risen up my list of favorite albums over the past two years. But even after he took my album AND song of the year titles in 2011 (with his album Release and the song "Under Different Circumstances," respectively), this one perfect song is still him at the peak of his powers, and still manages to blow me away every time I listen to it. If you need an opening track for your summer playlist this year, I don't think there's a better one than this.

Honorable Mentions: The Who - "Baba O' Riley" from Who's Next (1971)

"Baba O' Riley," next to "Born to Run," is probably the biggest anthem in music history. Is there a more satisfying chord progression in music than the one that explodes at the start of this song? Roger Daltrey gives one of the all time great vocal performances, and Pete Townshend's bizarre electronic textures create an atmosphere that is impossible to resist. Few things scream rock 'n' roll as loud as this song's massive, crashing verse sections, subsiding eventually into an Irish, folk-tinged violin solo that carries the song out. For me, it was one of the songs I found myself blasting at maximum volume on my way to my high school graduation. When you listen to this song in that situation, you feel immortal, and the song is immortal because of that. It's so good, in fact, that I've never been able to love Who's Next as much as I would like because it just cannot live up to the impossibly high standard set by this song. 


Counting Crows - "Round Here" from August And Everything After (1993)

Counting Crows are one of those bands that undeniably peaked with their debut album, and it's hard to think of many opening tracks that establish a more immediate impression, not just for an album, but for an entire career, than "Round Here." Legend has it that the recording that ended up on the album was the the only time the song was ever played in that arrangement, so this is a rare case where the live versions of the song (which go on for ten minutes, with singer Adam Duritz singing variations on a melodic line, with a bunch of alternations, extra lyrics, and emotional build thrown in for good measure) are actually the signature versions. If that's the case, then the band stumbled upon something genius when they recorded that take, because the album version is one of the most beautifully understated openers on any album. Duritz is clearly the star here, delivering some of his most poetic lyrics with what is perhaps his best vocal performance today. His delivery is at once yearning and heartbreaking, and the song's arrangement showcases a full range of emotion, building to an incredible climax 3/4 through. The 10 seconds of silence that kick off the record only add the breathtaking intimacy and power of the song when it finally hits.

But how can I have an opener list without at least mentioning Augustana ("Hey Now"), The Beach Boys ("Wouldn't It Be Nice?"), Beck ("The Golden Age"), Black Lab ("Mine Again"), Butch ("The Weight of Her"), Cary Brothers ("Ghost Town"), The Damnwells ("Soundtrack"), Dashboard ("Hands Down" or "The Brilliant Dance"), Bowie ("Five Years"), The Fucking Eagles, Man! ("Hotel Calfornia"), Elton John ("Tiny Dancer"), Fastball ("The Way"), The Gaslight Anthem (a wash between "American Slang" and "Great Expectations"), Goo Goo Dolls ("Big Machine"), any of the Jack's Mannequin openers, most of the Jimmy Eat World ones (especially "Futures"), Lennon ("Imagine"), Jon McLaughlin ("Industry"), Josh Ritter ("Girl in the War"), The Killers ("Jenny Was a Friend of Mine"), Lydia ("This is Twice Now"), any Marvelous 3, Mat Kearney ("All I Have" or "Undeniable"), Matt Nathanson ("Car Crash"), Oasis ("Hello"), Pete Yorn ("Life on a Chain"), Ryan Adams ("New York, New York"), Ryan Bingham ("Southside of Heaven"), Safetysuit ("Someone Like You"), Sister Hazel ("Your Mistake"), either Something Corporate opener, Switchfoot ("Needle in Haystack Life"), Third Eye Blind ("Faster"), Valencia ("Better Be Prepared"), Will Hoge ("Hard to Love"), William Fitzsimmons ("It's Not True"), 1969 ("Why the Suspense"/"Wreck Me"), or extra Springsteen ("Badlands"), U2 ("Sunday Bloody Sunday"), Wallflowers ("Days of Wonder"), Dylan ("Tangled Up In Blue"), Chad Perrone ("OK") and Counting Crows ("Hard Candy").

Closers:

1. Bruce Springsteen - "Jungleland" from Born to Run (1975)

 Just as "Thunder Road" is the flawless introduction to this record, "Jungleland" is the only appropriate closer: an epic, 9 minute and 38 second masterpiece that, at times contends with the opener as my all time favorite song. Springsteen bid farewell to this type of extended, freewheeling narrative song after Born to Run (he'd attempt another on 2009s Working on a Dream, with mixed results), but the last one was by far the greatest, showcasing some of his best lyrics to date. But even as Bruce's characters progress and his words weave themselves into your brain, "Jungleland" thrives most on the strength of the performance of the E-Street Band, which is the best band performance ever committed to tape. Take Roy Bittan's powerful, expressive playing throughout; Danny Federici's explosive organ noise at the song's key moments; Bruce's rousing guitar solo at the halfway point; Max Weinberg's torrential downpour of drums; and then, of course, the granddaddy of all Clarence Clemons sax solos, a two and a half minute outpouring of emotion that has, at many moments, taken my soul to a higher place and brought tears to my eyes. Following his death last summer, I found many entire essays examining the "Jungleland" sax solo: how it saved lives, how Clarence Clemons' playing somehow tells a story of a million words without anyone saying anything at all, how when the solo collapses back into the sound of a broken organ and Springsteen's more broken vocals, we feel as emotionally exhausted as he does. It's arguably the single greatest moment in the history of recorded music, and that, along with Bruce's wordless wails that close the song out, makes "Jungleland" the undisputed BEST closer of any album, all time.

2. Jimmy Eat World - "23" from Futures (2004)

It's almost unfair that Jimmy Eat World have to contend with "Jungleland" here, because each of their albums sports the perfect closer, and most of them (the exceptions being Clarity and possibly Invented) save their best track for last. There have been days since the release of Chase This Light in 2007 where I've thought that "Dizzy" was the best thing the band ever wrote, but ultimately, I always end up coming back to "23." And it makes sense that I do, because Futures might have been the single most pivotal album in my musical evolution. When it came to me in the fall of 2004, it was the first album to show me the huge effect that music could have on me, to show me how an album could become something completely personal, could help me through the hard times, serve as soundtrack for the good ones, and become a part of me. And the best thing about Futures is that, over the seven and a half intervening years, it has never stopped growing and changing with me: I can still listen to it on cold fall nights and feel the same way I did the very first time. And as the sweeping chorus of "23" closes out that titanic record, it reaches through the crashing finale and wraps itself around me, swelling and exploding into one of the most gorgeous finales I have ever heard: one that has never failed to move me. It seems appropriate that Futures ends on its highest note, because it makes the message of the album that much clearer: that there’s no sense in waiting for life to come and find you, because you just have to get up and go after it. It’s a hell of a wild ride, and staring off into the great unknown can be the scariest thing in the world, but when Jim Adkins sings "Don't give away the end/The one thing that stays mine," I can just relax and know that, after all, that's part of the fun.

3. Butch Walker - "Stateline" from Letters (2004)

Here's a somewhat controversial (for lack of a better word) choice, since it's a hidden track rather than the album's proper closer. But like I said, a closer is a closer, and few reach the heights of this one. Butch made what is probably his strangest choice ever in relegating this track to hidden track status, as it is absolutely one of his two or three best songs, and provides a fitting emotional climax to a very emotional record. With little more than his acoustic guitar (and some tasteful reverb effects) to keep him company, Walker delivers one of his rawest and most emotional vocal performances ever, building, much like "Jungleland," to a cathartic wordless wail to finish it out. Walker channels every last ounce of his sadness and pain into the lyric (which depicts a man who never gets to see his kids) until it overwhelms him. As the crashing noise of that wordless bridge subsides, the song fades to silence and the guitar vanishes, making way for Walker's last words: "thinking of you with my last breath." Sung a cappella, the line is one of the most cutting and chilling moments of the record and the perfect encapsulation of the journey the record represents. And just for the record, had my rules been different, had I not allowed myself to choose hidden tracks, Butch would have been in this slot anyway, for the songwriting showcase of a singalong that is "When the Canyons Ruled the City."

4.  "Cigarette Lighter Love Song" from Readysexgo! (2000)

 Here's a stretch, since the Butch Walker-fronted band pretty much served as his personal musical vehicle, but since the artists are technically different, and since this song is simply too good to leave off, here we go. Marvelous 3 fractured and broke up after releasing Readysexgo!, their power-pop-meets-arena-rock masterpiece, which functioned as both a prophetic farewell to fans and a major "fuck you" to Elektra Records, who cut of the band's promotion and left them for dead after a single hit. Butch still plays this one today though, and when he does, he often describes it as "the last song we ever wrote, the last song we ever played as a band, and the last song we ever put on a record." It's not just a finale too a terrific record, it's the coda of the band's entire journey. The way it builds from a hushed piano opening to an explosive, guitar layered bridge (concluding with Walker's shout of "I guess this is the end"), is nothing short of chilling, and over ten years later, the song still stands as one of Walker's very best. For a long time, I thought it was the best song I'd ever heard; when I heard Walker perform it last fall, in an almost completely a cappella arrangement, I thought, for a few minutes at least, that I might have been right.

5. The Dangerous Summer - "Never Feel Alone" from Reach for the Sun (2009)

Reach for the Sun, for me, is an album thoroughly entwined with my final months of high school, my graduation, and the summer that followed: there's not a song on the record that I don't adore, not a single one that doesn't take me back to a moment or a feeling from my past. But every song on the record pales in comparison to "Never Feel Alone," which, even after The Dangerous Summer landed easily on the top of my favorite albums list for last year, will probably always be their definitive composition. By this point, the entire record has passed as a series of intense emotions: of love and loss, hope and fear, regret and nostalgia, happiness and heartbreak, and it all leads, in perfect design, to this crushing finale. "Never Feel Alone" is the purest kind of love song, and it hurts to listen to because it's so honest, so raw and naked. It describes so perfectly that moment in a relationship where you realize you're about to fall in love and let your guard down completely, for better or worse. And the way A.J. Perdomo sings the bridge and final chorus, surrounded by the band's customary wall of guitars, it just rips right through me, because the "better" and "worse" are really there. Because when he sings them, it feels like, even despite all the hardship and tragedy on this record, if he can just have this girl, maybe everything will be okay, like he's laying everything on the line and gambling it on a single possibility. As the Beatles sang, "All you need is love," and this song, with its ideas of falling in love, of giving all of yourself to another person, of finding refuge in that love, is one of the most perfect depictions of a single, distinct moment that I've ever heard, and one of the most beautiful and cathartic album closers I've ever heard.

6. The Killers - "Why Do I Keep Counting?" from Sam's Town (2006)

I've always found it incredibly irritating how Sam's Town, otherwise my favorite Killers album, is hampered somewhat by the way it is framed as a record. The "Enterlude" is strange enough, since it comes after the opening title track and is, as a result, pretty pointless. The "Exitlude," on the other hand, isn't such a bad song, but it does hamper the effectiveness of "Why Do I Keep Counting?" as a finale, and even makes it a questionable inclusion on this list. But there aren't a whole lot of songs that are more climactic or as innately, irrevocably final as this one, nor are there many "closers" that sum up their album's so perfectly. "Why Do I Keep Counting?" also come from a guy (Brandon Flowers) who has closed his other three records with what are arguably their weakest tracks, and is, as a result, all the more magnificent. It's a song that plays like a mini "Jungleland," at the end of a record that is so enthralled in Springsteen's influence that the band's sound is transformed entirely (something that earned the record decidedly mixed reviews back in 2006). But Sam's Town is actually the better record overall than Hot Fuss was, and "Why Do I Keep Counting?" is a climactic masterstroke, building to a bridge so huge and so vocally stratospheric that it wouldn't have been out of place on Born to Run. And while I wish the record really did end with the big drum hits at the end of this song, "Exitlude" ultimately plays like an extension of it.

(one) Honorable Mention: Green Day - "Whatsername" from American Idiot (2004)

There will never come a day when people stop giving Green Day crap: crap for the pop-punk hits they scored in the early 90s, crap for the cultural ubiquity that "Good Riddance" earned as "that one graduation song," and especially crap for American Idiot, which spawned five reasonably successful singles and was termed, in different circles, as sell-out garbage and as a masterpiece. I'd be in the latter group on that one: I will never be able to discount the massive personal importance this record had on my musical evolution back in 2004, and while it hasn't aged as well as a few of the albums I was listening to at the time (Jimmy Eat World's Futures being the obvious pick), it's still a record I still love and revisit fairly often, still spawned some of the absolute finest radio rock singles of the decade, and still has one of the best album closers I've ever heard. Sell out bands don't make records as deep as American Idiot, records where the album tracks trump the singles and where the thematic elements are as important as the musical. "Whatsername" is the realization of everything American Idiot actually is, even if people didn't quite get it at the time: American Idiot got saddled, rather unfortunately, with being the "Bush protest album," released around the time of the 2004 election, but at it's heart, it's Born in the U.S.A. all over again: the politics are there, but they serve as subtext for the story, which is just about friendship and love (and their later disintegration) in a fucked-up modern America. "Whatsername" is the epilogue, a break-up anthem for the ages where the end of a whirlwind relationship also symbolizes the end of youth and innocence for the protagonist, and the realization of the cruelty the world can throw. Years later, I appreciate the album so much more because it's basically a condensation of the arc Springsteen pursued across five or six records, and this song is what makes that so evident. "Forgetting you," Billie Joe Armstrong sings in the song's final moments. "But not the time." Could there be a more apt or honest statement about youth?

The "they don't quite count in the ways I want them to, but are still killer ways to close an album" category

Third Eye Blind - The last three songs on Third Eye Blind (1998)

While a band going out on their highest note is certainly something I appreciate, I could hardly have gone through a post like this without acknowledging the perfectly executed beauty that surrounds the last fifteen minutes of Third Eye Blind's masterful debut album. While much of the album was full of bratty, high energy, tongue in cheek pop rock, the final trinity ("The Background," "Motorcycle Drive-By," and "God of Wine") showed just how deep and hard the band could hit, and all three of those songs rank amongst my personal favorites ("Motorcycle Drive-By" would be in the top ten). These songs explore death, fractured relationships, and every stage of grief, and in doing so, they join to form one of the most powerful and emotionally exhausting conclusions to any record I own. When the band hit it big with "Semi-Charmed Life" (which could be the catchiest pop song of all time), I doubt many listeners expected the band had songs like these three in them. I certainly didn't, and I can't remember actually listening to the full record until about 2004 (though I loved all the singles as a kid). Still, I remember listening to "Motorcycle Drive-By" on some summer evening, and having it hit me right in the gut. Over the next few years, the song would earn a massively personal spot in my heart, but it was just one piece of three, and both "The Background" and "God of Wine" are songs that knock me down and blow me away whenever I listen.

Dashboard Confessional - "Dusk & Summer" and "Heaven Here" from Dusk & Summer (2006)

"Heaven Here," as the proper closer, could have made its way onto the list proper, but I figured by doing that, I would be doing a disservice to the truly impeccable juxtaposition between it and the penultimate title track. I've already written about these songs in regards to the summers they have soundtracked, but I'll say a few bits of it again. That Dusk & Summer ends up being, rather surprisingly, my favorite Dashboard record (and at least two others would stand a good chance of scoring a spot on my all time top 50). But here, in the space of a mere nine minutes, Carrabba captures a single feeling, a single atmosphere, as well as I've ever heard any songwriter do it. It's that feeling I get at the end of every summer, looking back over the season, sitting on the beach with the girl I love as the sun goes down and trying to hold onto the brilliance of summer and of youth, even as it slips through our fingers and out the door. The summer I fell in love for the first time, those two songs immortalized themselves and became a part of who I am: the former played as I realized that I loved this girl, and the latter the next morning, as we said goodbye to each other and began a long distance relationship. Carrabba's voice soars at the climactic moment of "Heaven Here," reaching impossible heights as he sings "Heaven is here, and tonight we are the only ones who feel it." Hearing that song, as I kissed my girlfriend goodbye, as the entire season and our entire romance flashed before my eyes, as tears poured down my face, was the most intensely emotional connection I have ever felt with a person or with a song. In that way, I guess "Heaven Here" should be number 1, but I just wouldn't have felt right listing without the title track, since after all, I couldn't have had one without the other.

I could go on all night listing honorable mentions for closing tracks. More often than not, the closer ends up being the peak of the album (or at least one of them), and there are so many songs that could have made it onto this list easily. Springsteen has more great closers than I could ever have fit on here, even if I had allowed for more than one per artist. "Darkness on the Edge of Town," all of side two from The Wild, The Innocent ("Incident," "Rosalita," and "New York City Serenade" could have easily made it into that last category), "Valentines Day," or certainly "My City of Ruins." As I said, every Jimmy album sports a great closer, same for Butch (including the Marvelous 3 material). I love closers that reprise bits and pieces of their albums' earlier songs, like Chad Perrone's "Keep Us Around" (all of his closers are incredible, including "Goodnight, Goodbye" from his old band Averi), or Valencia's "Free," and could have easily swapped them in for that fifth slot. And even then there's Will Hoge ("This Highway's Home"), The Gaslight Anthem ("The Backseat"), Anberlin ("*Fin"), Arcade Fire ("Sprawl II"), The Beatles ("A Day in the Life," the Abbey Road Medley, "Twist & Shout"), Ben Folds ("The Luckiest"), Billy Joel ("Everybody Has A Dream" OR "Miami 2017"), Black Lab ("Circus Lights"), Bloc Party ("Ion Square"), Bon Iver ("Re-Stacks"), Counting Crows ("Walkaways," "A Murder of One"), David Bowie ("Rock 'n' Roll Suicide") Death Cab For Cutie ("A Lack of Color"), Doves ("Caught by the River"), Fastball ("Whatever Gets You On"), The Format ("If Work Permits"), Guster ("Parachute"), Idlewild ("In Remote Pt. 1/Scottish Fiction"), ANY of the Iron & Wine closers, The Injured List ("Wait"), Jack's Mannequin ("Into The Airwaves" or "Caves"), Jesse Malin ("Aftermath"), Lifehouse ("Everything"), Matchbox Twenty ("The Difference"), Michael McDermott ("Carry Your Cross"), Motion City Soundtrack ("Hold Me Down" OR "Even If It Kills Me"), The New Frontiers ("Who Will Give Us Love?"), Oasis ("Champagne Supernova"), Peter Gabriel (the iconic "In Your Eyes," thanks to ANOTHER John Cusack movie), Radford ("How Does It Feel"), Ryan Bingham ("For What It's Worth"), Safetysuit ("Life Left To Go"), Something Corporate ("Miss America"), more Third Eye Blind ("Good Man") Van Morrison ("Slim Slow Slider"), The Who ("Won't Get Fooled Again") and Yellowcard ("Back Home").

Even with that exhaustive list, I'm certain I've missed more than a few of my favorites, and if you asked me the same question next week, any of the above could jump up even higher in the conversation. This list was also made, in accordance with rule number two, by completely ignoring 2011, which took more than a few terrific songs out of the conversation on both sides. Ultimately though, these songs represent some of the greatest, most emotionally moving, and most lasting music in the world, at least to me, and really, what else even matters?

"And all at once you look across a crowded room to see the way that light attaches to a girl..."

 A Tribute to the Music of Counting Crows

When I think about the bands that have defined my musical experience the most, there aren't many that I can list higher than Counting Crows. Back in the mid-90s, my music listening was limited to whatever CDs my parents would play in the car or whatever albums my brother would bring home one day to play on his boombox. I remember afternoons and evenings sitting around in the basement, listening to his CD collection, picking out the ones I liked most, and having him make me cassette tape copies of those. There are albums and artists I fell in love with back then that I still listen to regularly: The Wallflowers' Bringing Down the Horse remains one of my favorite albums; I'm still waiting for the new Matchbox Twenty album, still wondering what would have happened if Oasis ever made another record as good as Morning Glory, and most certainly still enthralled by the flawless trinity of songs that ends Third Eye Blind's self-titled album. Hell, I might even still have some of those tapes. I believe Green Day's Dookie and Weird Al's Bad Hair Day were also among the collection. I was super cool.

One of my earliest musical memories was hearing Counting Crows for the first time. We were climbing into the car after some bike trip, and my brother slipped my step dad's copy of August and Everything After into the CD player. "Mr. Jones" issued from the speakers, and I loved it immediately. It's a moment I would think of a lot a little less than a decade later, when I bought the band's greatest hits collection (called Films About Ghosts, after one of my all-time favorite lyrics from "Mrs. Potter's Lullaby"). At that point in time, I think I owned about six CDs, half of which were Creed (I am not proud of this), but that CD, which contained 16 of the Crows' songs, was a turning point. Throughout that winter, I played that record almost every day, and those songs brought life into the bleak winter weather that covers my hometown every year: the rip roaring electricity of "Angels of the Silences," the emotional swell of "Round Here," the lyrical perfection of "A Long December" and "Mrs. Potter," and the nostalgic beauty of "Recovering the Satellites," they all became a part of me.

Naturally, my impulsive purchase of the greatest hits record only made me want to delve deeper into the band's back catalog, a key event in my musical evolution. Up to that point I'd always pretty much been a "singles" guy. I had a couple of albums (again, not proud), but most of my listening revolved around the mix CDs that I made out of songs I heard on the radio or on TV shows (most of these are still at least partially listenable, thankfully). That was about to change. I dug up my parents' copy of August and my brother's copy of Recovering the Satellites and I dove in. I still maintain the former is one of the greatest records of all time, and I was shocked that most of the album's best songs ("Round Here" and "Anna Begins" being the exceptions) were left off of Films. Over the years, every song on that album has come to mean something to me. The lyrics of "Time and Time Again" took my breath away, while the climactic scope of "A Murder of One" (and an impeccable vocal performance from frontman Adam Duritz), made it one of my favorite songs. "Sullivan Street" became one of my go-to nighttime drive songs when I finally got my first car, and the palpable emotion I could hear in Duritz' voice on key album cuts like "Anna Begins," "Raining in Baltimore" and "Round Here" keep him on the list of my all-time favorite singers. For all of those reasons and many more, August remains my favorite album of the 90s. The loneliness and desperation of those songs have kept me coming back, year after year, even as other records that I loved as a kid have begun to fall hollow; that record was one of the first times I realized just how much visceral, emotional power music could have, and that discovery is one that continues to drive my love of music, even to this day.

 

Recovering the Satellites was (and is) a much more challenging record. On "Mr. Jones," Duritz sang, "when I look at the television, I wanna see me staring right back at me." It was a big pop song from a guy who wanted to be big and popular, and the irony was, it was just the song that granted him those wishes. Satellites finds him looking around at what his life has become since he wrote that song and rebelling against that fame. Right from the first two tracks, the scorching back to back duo of "Catapult" and "Angels of the Silences," it's clear that this isn't the same band that laid down the folky jams on August. The first half of the record finds them turning up the electricity and delivering a set of songs full of anger, confusion and nostalgic yearning for simpler times. It's a master class in intensity, from the blistering build of "I'm Not Sleeping" to the memorable riff on "Have You Seen Me Lately," though it's broken up a bit by the dusky nostalgic of "Daylight Fading" and the gorgeous alt-country lilt of "Goodnight Elisabeth." It's when the rage begins to dissipate and the amplifiers go down that the record becomes an enigma, and I've always had a much harder time getting a handle on the second half for that reason. The songs range from stark piano ballads ("Miller's Angels," the most depressing song Duritz ever wrote) to almost blues-rock experimentation ("Another Horsedreamer's Blues," "Mercury") to what might be the strangest album cut I've ever heard from an established band ("Monkey"), but amidst this oddly appealing collection of deep cuts are three of the best songs in the discography: the title track, "A Long December" and "Walkaways," which I've often thought of as my favorite Counting Crows song. It's less than a minute and a half long, just 16 bars of Duritz and an acoustic guitar, bidding a bittersweet farewell to...well, I'm not so sure. "Someday, I'm gonna stay," he sings in the album's dying moments. "But not today."

Satellites has never been my favorite Counting Crows album, but every time I listen to, it draws me in and beguiles me. I've always thought of it as an inconsistent record, not in the strength of its material but in its mood and sound, and the result is a disjointed, confusing collection of songs, but it's also a truly captivating one. It's a portrait of a troubled mind and of a man who got everything he wished for and realized it was both a blessing and a curse. Duritz has often stated his belief that Recovering the Satellites is the band's finest work, and while I don't necessarily agree with him, I can see where he is coming from.

 

The following summer, I bought Hard Candy, which was, at the time, the band's most recent record. Awhile ago, I wrote a blog post about the importance of the "summer soundtrack" album in my life, that album that comes along and defines the long, glorious months of that season. Hard Candy was my first summer soundtrack album, and even as I've grown up and summers have come and gone, I can still come back to it on a beautiful, warm summer night and feel the same way I always have. On "Up All Night," Duritz sings, "we could drive out to the dunes tonight, 'cause summer's almost here," and on "Miami," it's "the bus is running, it's time to leave, this summer's gone and so are we." Those songs are the cornerstones of this record, and they've pretty much bookended each of my summers since the day this record came into my life. The former takes me back to those nights just before summer breaks, when you can almost taste the coming season, and when I hear the latter, I hear the endings of half a dozen perfect summers and my heart still aches for them. When I listen to records for the first time today, the first thing that strikes me is the emotional aspect in the singer's voice, and that's all thanks to listening to Adam Duritz for so many years. I still remember the first time I listened to "Miami." The way that song builds into this climactic vocal tour-de-force still blows me away, but back then, I don't think I'd ever heard anything like it. And yet even despite how terrific that song (and many others) are, Hard Candy has always been written off by fans, considered by some to be the weakest link in their discography. There aren't many more misunderstood records in my collection. The naysayers saw Candy as the record where the long tortured Adam Duritz sold out, cheered up, and wrote bunch of bubblegum pop songs; nothing could be further from the truth. The hooks are the brightest the band has ever written, drenched in sunny pop production and instrumentation, but underneath that are some of the most strikingly dark songs Duritz has ever written, whether he's imagining a suicide ("Black & Blue"), struggling with his longstanding battles with insomnia and depression ("Goodnight L.A.," "Holiday in Spain"), dealing with a miscarriage ("Carriage"), or going through a particularly damaging break-up ("Miami"). The combination of the album's bright pop hooks with its dark subject matter has always been incredibly compelling to me, and it's something that's kept me coming back to this album over and over again. It reminds me, in that regard, of Butch Walker's Letters, and much like that album, it's an absolute love letter to all kinds of pop music, from rootsy classic rock ("If I Could Give All My Love"), to spiraling synth-pop ("New Frontier") to songs that sound like they would have been right at home in a classic stage musical ("Butterfly in Reverse," "Why Should You Come When I Call?"). There's not a bad song on the set, and for a long time, Hard Candy was my all time favorite album.

This Desert Life and Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings are the lesser pieces of the catalog, in my eyes, though the former is another fantastic, interesting direction for the band to take, and the latter contains some truly stellar songs. Desert Life was the last of the initial four that I got in to, and the one I liked the least of those, but there are a lot of moments on that record that still bring back great memories. The outstanding lyricism in "Mrs. Potter's Lullaby" put the song among Adam's greatest accomplishments, while "Speedway" is one of his most effective break-up songs and "Colorblind" is one of the most hypnotic songs ever, by anyone. And then there's the vaguely experimental atmosphere running through the likes of "High Life" and "I Wish I Was a Girl" (another very, very strange song), the gorgeously downbeat "Amy Hit the Atmosphere," and the gloriously climactic "get into my car and drive!" moment at the end of "St. Robinson in his Cadillac Dream," the album's finale. Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings is, I think, the only less than stellar record in the discography, though when it came out, I didn't think so. I bought it on release day, in March of 2008, nearly six years removed from Hard Candy's arrival, and I played the hell out of it. The Saturday Nights portion has always been great, revitalizing the sound the band used on Satellites, and culminating in "Cowboys," the kind of furiously angry anthem you play at full volume in the car when you're pissed off (I can't do this anymore, since I drive far too fast when I do). The Sunday Mornings portion is blessed with some truly gorgeous folk songs ("Washington Square," "On Almost Any Sunday Morning," "When I Dream of Michelangelo"), but I've always thought it gets more and more bogged down by its concept as it goes. That doesn't stop the Crows from delivering a typically strong closer (the fantastic "Come Around"), but there's a preponderance of filler ("Tuesday in Amsterdam" is the dullest song Adam Duritz has ever written), and the record ends up feeling both overlong and not quite effective in its themes. That said, and despite the fact that its fallen out of regular rotation since 2008, I'm not sure if there was a record I played more that year. It dropped three days before my spring break, after an endless wait for new music from the band and what had felt like the longest winter of my life, and it pretty much became the soundtrack for that break (an impromptu road trip to New York City) and the rest of the spring that followed.

And now there's a covers album on the way. It's called Underwater Sunshine, out March 27th, and featuring a long slate of songs that the Crows have been playing and making their own for years now. Many of them have made fairly regular appearances in live shows (and have likely made their way onto the iPods of Crows fans, thanks to the band's open door policy for bootleggers), and a few have even been recorded in the studio before (hell, I downloaded their version of "Start Again" on the same day that I first heard "Up All Night). My point is, I've always known many of these songs more for the band's covers of them than for their original versions, and as a result, I'm thinking this will almost feel like a brand new, full-length record from them, to me. Anyway, here's the song list:

"Jumping Jesus" by Sordid Humor
"Start Again" by Teenage Fanclub
"All My Failures" by Dawes
"Meet On The Ledge" by Fairport Convention
"Like Teenage Gravity" by Kasey Anderson & The Honkies
"Ballad of El Goodo" by Big Star
"Coming Around" by Travis
"Four White Stallions" by Tender Mercies
"You Ain't Goin' Nowhere" by Bob Dylan (originally recorded by The Byrds)
"Untitled (Love Song)" by The Romany Rye
"Ooh La La" by The Faces
"Hospital" By Coby Brown
"Return of the Grievous Angel" by Gram Parsons
"Mercy" by Tender Mercies
"Amie" by Pure Prairie League

I, for one, am excited about this record. One of the great things about the Counting Crows is their obvious love of music, a love that permeates every moment of every record they've made and probably every live show they've ever played. I still haven't seen them live, but their aren't many acts with better bootleg collections, and listening to live versions of their songs is riveting because of their tendency to reinvent things on the spot. It's still amazing to me that, even after months spent not listening to this band, a live version of "Round Here" can still pop up on shuffle and blow my mind. The way Adam invests himself emotionally in his live performances, that song in particular, is a stunning thing to hear, and it places this band near the top of the "artists I need to see live" list. My hope is that we'll get a tour for this covers record, or that maybe it will even inspire Adam to start work on another full length record. But even if Duritz is at the point of his life where he wants to do the band on a more part-time basis than he once did, and even if he never writes another record (this does seem possible, judging by the ever increasing gaps between albums), at least I still have the records: I'll always have August for those rainy days, Satellites for those gloomy, wintery afternoons, Hard Candy for warm summer nights and This Desert Life for every first day of Spring. And, above all, I'll always have the memories of how those records came along when I was 13 years old and changed my life.

"It's days like these that keep me on my winning streak."

Butch Walker & The Black Widows

Live at the Magic Bag

Ferndale, MI, 10/14/11

 There was a moment sometime last fall when I began to wonder if Butch Walker, one of my two musical Gods and one of the guys who I've followed for ages, was past his prime. He'd released I Liked It Better When You Had No Heart (his weakest record, by miles) earlier that year, and I'd seen him live for two phenomenal nights that May, but since then, Butch's record had fallen out of my regular rotation, replaced by any number of last year's great albums, and the live shows, as unbelievably unforgettable as they were, were merely memories. For the first time since I'd become a fan, Butch did not claim my album of the year title (though he still clung to my number three spot, a position he might not still possess if I re-assessed the list now), and I was wondering if Butch would ever write a record as emotionally moving as Letters or Sycamore Meadows, or as much fun as The Rise & Fall or Left of Self-Centered.

Fast forward a year, and Butch is as safe and sound at the top of my favorite artists list as he's ever been. On the tails of a terrific rock and roll record (The Spade, which just gets better with every listen), he's on tour again with his band, the Black Widows, and last Friday night, he returned to the Magic Bag in Ferndale, Michigan for his third consecutive tour.  Ever since I first saw him (back in August of 2006, also my first live show ever), I've always thought of Butch as the benchmark against which live shows should be measured: the energy, emotion, and charisma he puts into every show make some of my very favorite bands (Jimmy Eat World, Third Eye Blind) look almost amateurish in comparison. If you go to a Butch Walker show, whether you're a die-hard fan or a newcomer, whether you get all of your setlist wishes or none of them (I was probably closer to the latter, on that one), you are guaranteed to have a great time. I've heard stories of people who'd never heard of him leaving his shows as converts, as fans that will come back to see him time and time again, and that's one of the coolest parts of a Butch Walker show: his fanbase is small, but extremely loyal, and my brother and I recognized more than a few faces in the audience on Friday night.

Butch has always done a pretty good job with the acts he chooses to bring on the road with him. At my first show, it was a dual opening of As Fast As (a terrific, glammed up rock group that has sadly disappeared) and Boys Like Girls (a pop-rock outfit that became pretty famous a year or two later). The second time, the openers were the Films, another glammy group, half of whose members make an appearance on this tour as well, one as a Black Widow (bassist Jake Sinclair, though he played every instrument at some point in the set), the other as part of an opening band. Last year, Locksley, a Beatles pop-esque group opened. This time around, Butch let his band members (all of whom have their own projects outside of the band) warm up the crowd. After three of these, Shovels and Rope, a country-rock project consisting of Films lead singer Michael Trent, who's helped Butch write songs on these past two albums, and Cary Ann Hearst, a wailing country singer. The two traded off on vocals, guitar and percussion, and played an entertaining (if a bit overlong) set, converting many in their hour of playtime, judging by how many albums it looked like they were selling at the merch table after the show. 

It was 10:30pm by the time Butch finally sauntered out and began to sing "Cigarette Lighter Love Song," the last song his previous band, the Marvelous 3, ever recorded or performed together, almost completely a cappella. I've heard this song live two or three times, once where the full band came in near the end, and once where Butch delivered the whole thing from the piano, but this performance might have been the most stunning of all, offering a perfect showcase for Walker's vocal talents and emotional performing spark. He sat down behind the piano to finish the song, and then bantered with the crowd for a few minutes before launching into a pair of Sycamore Meadows cuts, "Passed Your Place" and "Atlanta." While I preferred when Walker's piano set (a live show staple, usually consisting of two or three songs) was near the end of the show, these songs both sound terrific live, though my brother and I are in agreement that both of them should be retired for awhile, since he opened the show in a similar manner on the past two tours. Complaints were silenced immediately though, as Walker got up and grabbed his acoustic guitar. "Freebird!," someone shouted from the crowd (because it's not a live show without that request), and Butch actually began to play it, before cycling through a few well known songs from Detroit-hailing artists, a perfect example of Butch's ability to take control of a live venue quickly, and to never let it go. 

Butch strummed the first chords of another Marvelous 3 song, "Every Monday," which immediately earned a big roar of approval from the crowd. Not every person in the venue was familiar with the music of Walker's former band, but the die hards in the front (where my brother and I were positioned), were ecstatic, and sang every word of the song while Walker sat down on the stage, playing his guitar with a huge grin on his face as the audience sang a song he wrote over 12 years ago. It was the same routine with "Grant Park," a gem from Marvelous 3's 2000 record, Readysexgo!, which Butch led from the microphone, jumping in to sing the bridge and the last verse. "I might as well play some old stuff now, since they don't know it!" he said, referring to the band, who had yet to take the stage. "Race Cars and Goth Rock" and "Going Back/Going Home" followed in their acoustic arrangements. Both are songs I've seen him play several times before, but both are among his best, and are welcome additions to the live set. Walker's solo acoustic/piano sets are so good that I would have been fine if he'd played the entire show by himself, but soon, the Widows took the stage (accompanied by the music from their ridiculous Spade promo video) and launched into "Summer of '89," whose huge "woah-oh" hook and catchy, singalong chorus, immediately made it the highlight of the night.

"Pretty Melody" and "She Likes Hair Bands" offered tonight's only foray into the Black Widow's last record, as the set very clearly revolved around material from The Spade, from which the band played nine of the ten tracks (leaving out "Bullet Belt," which was the one I most wanted to hear and probably Walker's most obvious live showstopper ever, but alas...) The band played a snippet of "Come On, Eileen" in the middle of "Synthesizers" (I called the song a rewrite of that 80's hit in my original review of the record, so this made me chuckle), while rhythm guitarist Chris Unck joined Walker at center stage for "Every Single Body Else," a song he co-wrote. Lead guitarist Fran Capitanelli delivered scorching guitar lines all over "Bodegas & Blood" and "Sweethearts," the two songs on the record he earned songwriting credits for, before Walker played an acoustic guitar lead in for the gorgeous country-folk ballad that is "Closest Thing to You I'm Gonna Find," another highlight of the night. The band clustered around a single mic to delivered a gloriously harmonized version of "Dublin Crow," an Irish folk-esque tune, and the formation recalled an Irish street performance. These two tracks, which, along with "Summer of '89," are the only songs from The Spade which Walker earns sole writing credit for, but those three are easily among the best, both on the album and in the live show, and support my thought that, as cool as it is to make a true full band album again, he's still better when left to his own devices.

  Butch delivered one of his most emotional performances of the night on "Day Drunk," a deceptively upbeat track that he wrote for his ailing father, singing about how nothing in life lasts forever. It's a track I've liked since the first time I heard it, but one that only really hit me when I saw Walker sang it live. An extremely familiar guitar intro heralded the arrival of main set closer "Best Thing You Never Had," the one song Walker has played every single time I've seen him live, and always at this place in the set. As has become customary, the band members traded off the vocal line until the bridge, where Walker takes command. Throughout the song's tremendously emotional build, Walker delivered his trademark performance of the song, jumping all over the stage, wailing the song's cathartic climax at the top of his lung, climbing on top the drum set and abusing the hell out of his guitar, breaking all the strings and letting it fall to the floor for the song's closing bars. This song has always been absurdly over the top, to the point of being almost ridiculous, but after seeing it half a dozen times, I think I'm ready for Butch to retire it for awhile (preferably in favor of "Bullet Belt.") Still, for a first time concertgoer, I'm sure the performance is as exciting and as viscerally moving as it was for me the first time I heard it. Watching him wail the refrain of "you never had" towards the end of the song has always been a highlight of the Butch Walker live experience for me. Sometimes, the whole thing feels like a big show, like Walker is engaging in sheer theatricality for the hell of it, but during that segment of the song, I always have felt like it was purely emotional, like Walker could still get to the emotional core of this song, to the place he was when he wrote it, every single night like nothing else he's ever written, and if that's true for the whole song, then he has no reason to retire it. 

Walker returned to the stage moments later with a different acoustic guitar (since he completely decimated the other one during "Best Thing") and quickly strummed the opening chords to "Closer to the Truth and Further From the Sky." The song, which used to be the full band entrance in the first part of the show, works even better near the end, closer to its roots as a penultimate track (one of the best in that function I've ever heard). "3 Kids in Brooklyn," another track from Sycamore Meadows, has become a live staple, and I'm quite fine with that, as it's one of the most fun rock songs in Walker's entire catalog, while "Suckerpunch," the closing track from The Spade, became both the set closer and the trademark song for Butch's foray into the audience, a role previously filled by "Hot Girls in Good Moods" and "Lights Out. Butch leaped off the stage, grabbed my shoulder to steady himself, and then made his way further into the audience for a game of call and response, with a small snippet of Lady Gaga's "Bad Romance" thrown in for good measure ("Bigger than any song I did here tonight, for sure. God dammit! That bitch is good!" he exclaimed). He came back and sang a few lines right between my brother and I before returning to the stage for one last guitar duel with Fran to close out the song, and the show. "When the Canyons Ruled the City" was on the setlist, but was not played, leaving both The Rise and Fall and Left of Self-Centered entirely unrepresented in the set.

By the time my brother and I finally made it back to our car, it was 12:40 in the morning (we had a 2+ hour drive back to his place in front of us, but we're not going to talk about that). I was tired, physically, mentally, and vocally, from singing along with every single word, but I didn't regret a minute of it. "I don't know how the hell he does that every night..." my brother remarked, and he's right; this guy gives his heart, body and soul to every minute of every show he ever does, playing rock and roll, drinking onstage, and just partying with his audience into the early hours of the morning, and then gets up the next day and does it all over again. And yet, every time I see him, he sings better and sounds more completely involved in his songs than any other artist I've ever seen live, with the possible exception of Mr. Bruce Springsteen himself. If there's a better act still touring the club circuit, I don't know who they are. This guy is a God onstage, he treats his fans well, and his entire band plays like they've been together (and been best friends) for years. Everything about his show has been a thoroughly unforgettable experience each time I've seen him, and Friday night, whether I was hearing songs I've loved for years or soon-to-be fan favorites from The Spade, I was always having a ball. With probably the best show I've seen this year (even next to U2, which was an amazing experience as well) and the current number two slot on my album of the year list, I can rest easy knowing the Butch Walker still is (and probably always will be) my favorite artist of all time, and I'll keep going to see him live as long as he continues to tour. I just hope that's going to be for a long, long time.

Setlist

1. Cigarette Lighter Love Song

2. Passed Your Place, Saw Your Car, Thought of You

3. Atlanta

4. Every Monday

5. Grant Park

6. Race Cars & Goth Rock

7. Going Back/Going Home

8. Summer of ‘89

9. Pretty Melody

10. She Likes Hair Bands

12. Synthesizers

13. Every Single Body Else

14. Bodegas & Blood

15. Sweethearts

16. Closest Thing to You I’m Gonna Find

17. Dublin Crow

18. Day Drunk

19. Best Thing You Never Had

ENCORE

20. Closer to the Truth and Further From the Sky

21. 3 Kids in Brooklyn

22. Suckerpunch