Josh Ritter - The Beast in Its Tracks

Josh Ritter - The Beast in Its Tracks

Pytheas, 2013
8.5/10

After Josh Ritter’s last couple releases, I was beginning to wonder if his music would ever connect with me again like it had in the old days. His finest albums, 2006’s The Animal Years and 2007’s The Historical Conquests of... were both loaded with terrific melodies, astounding lyrical content, and emulations of musical influences that sit directly in my wheelhouse, from Bruce Springsteen to Bob Dylan to Leonard Cohen. 2010’s slow-burning return, titled So Runs the World Away, largely sought refuge in a sunnier folk-pop vein, a la Paul Simon, but despite a few stellar stand-outs, fell short. And last year’s EP, Bringing in the Darlings, failed to connect with me on any level.

But heartbreak has a way of bringing about creative rebirth. It did for Dylan in 1975, when his break-up album masterpiece Blood on the Tracks reignited a decade that otherwise failed to reach the heights of its creator’s heyday; it did it for Springsteen, who wrote what was arguably his most unique, introspective, and confessional set of songs with 1987’s Tunnel of Love, just before his marriage imploded; and it has done the same for countless artists across the landscape of music history, from Italian opera to classic rock ‘n’ roll to modern emo. In that case, the recently-divorced Josh Ritter is hardly unique, but the fact doesn’t make his latest album, The Beast in Its Tracks, any less striking. In fact, Beast is Ritter’s most engaging and consistent record since The Animal Years...and probably his best as well.

Ritter has never lacked for great lyrical content. His signature song, 2006’s “Thin Blue Flame,” thrived on nine-and-a-half minutes of illusion-heavy verses, while the finest songs on So Runs the World Away were sprawling narrative epics. The songwriter’s propensity for dense poetic imagery and well-fashioned turns of phrase are very much intact here, but they’re also accompanied by more welcoming musical textures and stronger melodies than we’ve heard from Ritter in quite awhile. Witness the tremulous explosion of strings and acoustic guitars that opens the rollicking and biting “New Lover” (“But if you’re sad and you’re lonesome, and you got nobody true/I’d be lyin’ if I said that didn’t make me happy too,” Ritter croons over the song’s final moments) or the classic folk harmonies that give “In Your Arms Awhile” its heaven-bound grace. Meanwhile, it’s the enveloping mix of organic instrumentation and ambient sonic textures that lend more innocuous album tracks, such as the intimate “Nightmares” or the country-whine of “Bonfires,” a sense of cohesion with the rest of the record.

But The Beast in Its Tracks wouldn’t be a Josh Ritter album without at least a few home-runs, and luckily, the hits here are plentiful. Early-album triumph “Hopeful” is Ritter’s “Tangled up in Blue,” a winding relationship narrative that relates the stab of watching the person you love pack up and walk out the door better than almost any I’ve ever heard. “The sunlight corroded and the days started to fail/The rocks in the road sharpened shadows to nails,” Ritter sings, his very world turning against him as life spirals out of control. The aforementioned “In Your Arms Awhile” takes heartbreak to near-anthemic heights, while the chiming first single, “Joy to You Baby,” is the record’s most immediate stand-out. The redemptive penultimate number, “Joy to You Baby” is a flawless freeway slow-burn, a thoughtful evening song with bittersweet flickers of forgiveness floating through its glorious strains. “There’s pain in whatever we stumble upon/If I never had met you, you couldn’t have gone,” Ritter notes. “But then I couldn’t have met you, we couldn’t have been/I guess it all adds up to joy in the end.” Simple. Universal. Beautiful.

So many of my favorite musical works are break-up albums: there’s something about an artist baring their soul on record, tearing down the walls and letting their fans see them bleed and break, that has always felt so noble and romantic to me. I suppose it’s the relatability factor, or maybe the fact that I’ve always been partial to emotionally charged songwriting, but there’s a reason that Blood on the Tracks or Tunnel of Love or Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours or Butch Walker’s Letters land so high on my all-time favorite albums list. The Beast in Its Tracks offers the same kind of catharsis, and just like each of those albums, Ritter finds a silver lining in these songs. This is no pity party; in addition to his divorce, Ritter’s tumultuous past three years have seen his second marriage and the birth of his child. So when light breaks through the clouds—something that happens, appropriately, on the lush, acoustic number, “A Certain Light,” and the organ-drenched, slowdance closer, “Lights”—the results are both comforting and viscerally satisfying. And Ritter, one of the most gifted songwriters of his generation, guides the whole thing with a steady hand, giving us love, hate, loss, rebirth, resentment, redemption, forgiveness, and nostalgia, and encapsulating it all into 43 minutes and 28 seconds of smooth folk bliss. 2013’s bar has just been raised.

Sleeping At Last - Atlas: Darkness

Sleeping At Last - Atlas: Darkness

Self-Released, 2013

8.0/10

*The following review was one I wrote a few months back for AbsolutePunk.net. Ryan O'Neal (the mastermind behind Sleeping At Last), has since released Light, the second part of the Atlas series. Check it out here.

As modern trends have begun to overwhelm the system of music distribution, washing away the old ways of doing things and moving further and further into the digital realm, artists have continually strived to do different things with their music. Radiohead famously offered their seventh LP, 2007’s In Rainbows, on a pay-what-you-want basis. Other artists have taken to kickstarter pages in order to launch recording projects, or offered free downloads in hopes of building a fanbase for their live shows. And keepsake physical formats like vinyl records—and, in some bizarre instances, cassette tapes—have been resurrected to suit the ever-shifting whims of listeners. But in many cases, the most important rules of the game have become accessibility, immediacy, and visibility. It’s increasingly rare for artists to take years off between releases and tours, and as a result, EPs, reissues, live albums, concert DVDs, and special fan-club collections have all become important tools for maintaining a foothold in the industry.

Within this swirl of modernization—even as the major record labels attempt to cling to the old rules—indie-folk rock outfit Sleeping At Last has proven to be one of the most interesting players. The brainchild of Chicago-based musician Ryan O’Neal, Sleeping At Last released four full-length records between 2000 and 2009, but never really caught my ear until 2011. And when they did, it wasn’t a full record that did the trick, but a series of short, conceptual EPs called the Yearbook Collection. Released between October 2010 and September 2011, Yearbook encompassed one EP for every month of the year, each with three tracks, and all covering a wide range of musical ground, thematic atmosphere, and varied musical landscape.

But Yearbook, offered on an innovative subscription basis through the band’s website, was more than just another musical project. It was an experiment in keeping listeners engaged for an entire year; it was a triple-album’s worth of material spread out over 12 months; and it was a reminder of why the actual sonic portion of a musical purchase is only a part of the experience. With beautiful artwork for each EP and constant blog updates providing insight into O’Neal’s artistic process, Yearbook was a perfect example of how an independent artist can thrive in the modern age. And as songs from the collection landed slots on various television programs, as O’Neal contributed a track to the oft-praised Twilight soundtracks, it was clear that his artistic experiment was working out fairly well

After taking a well-deserved break in 2012 (aside from a handful of singles, that is), O’Neal has returned to kick off another series of EPs, and this time, his vision has an even wider arc. Where Yearbook had an obvious end-date from the moment it was conceived, the new series, titled Atlas, will allow O’Neal the bountiful freedom of moving the goalposts whenever he sees fit. Atlas, as a larger series, will be an exploration of “the origins, emergence, and experiences of life,” and it’s easy to see how those concepts might be manipulated into a musical odyssey that lasts a decade. According to the songwriter, the first three years of the project have already been mapped out, with potential for more releases to follow.

Poetically, the first disc in the series is called Darkness. “Like all things, Atlas begins with Darkness,” O’Neal reasoned on his blog, following the announcement of the series. “The meanings behind the word “Darkness” are endless: beginnings, fear, blindness, the unknown, loss, even hope, and so much more.” Fittingly, “Overture” begins the set with the commencement of the universe, carrying us through the tides of human history as it goes. Over a bed of organic mandolin acoustics and an orchesis of musical flourishes, first swelling and then quickly receding again, “Overture” is a gorgeous introduction to the world that Atlas will undoubtedly continue to flesh out as it moves forward.

The pulsating intensity of “Woodwork” is even more interesting, with a flickering, Coldplay-esque intro and a soaring, guttural hook. In four minutes, O’Neal builds an almost apocalyptic atmosphere. He gives us a view of the world in chaos, of darkness falling across life, love, and civilization, but he also imbues that dire situation with an eerie calm. We feel like we’re watching the universe fall to its knees while remaining safe in the eye of the storm, while holding fast underwater because to break the surface would be to come apart. “It’s a cruel, cruel trick/How we lose ourselves when we find everything else,” O’Neal sings in the final verse. “Like a train wreck, the sound of your breathing hits my ears/Our world reappears and it breaks us new.” The imagery is rich and the message clear: we take the greatest things in life for granted until they are about to be taken away. We only cherish the light when the darkness has stolen it from us. And that’s a sentiment that appears time and time again throughout these five songs.

By the time the record reaches its final track, the heart-shattering climax that is “Uneven Odds,” it overpowers you. Of all the songs on Darkness, “Uneven Odds” may be the only one to address the concept of death directly. “I once knew your father well,” O’Neal sings at the outset, his mournful croon and a series of funereal piano chords distinguishing the mood. “He fought tears as he spoke of your mother’s health.” It’s a sobering beginning to song that rises from its tearful intro into a rousing, orchestral catharsis. The mother dies, the father leaves, and the child is left to battle a world of his own darkness. But the narrator is his guardian, a helping hand for the hard times whose parting words hint at where Atlas will give us next: “Darkness exists to make light truly count.”

One of my only issues with Yearbook was that each EP was only made up of three songs. No matter how good the highlights were, there was never an opportunity for O’Neal to really build any sense of thematic or musical tension, and as a result, each piece passed more as a snapshot of the month it was covering than as a meticulously composed portrait. Atlas: Darkness takes full advantage of its extra time though, constructing a radiant latticework of mournful energy and emotive force through its songs. The result is a weightier, more fully-realized work than anything O’Neal has tackled before, and with the Light EP on the way sometime this year and more pieces of Atlas to follow, I’m looking forward to watching this panoramic vision come into focus.

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.

Night Beds - Country Sleep

Night Beds - Country Sleep

Dead Oceans, 2013

8.0/10

That’s certainly the case with Night Beds, the musical project of Nashville singer/songwriter Winston Yellen and the name behind Country Sleep, my personal favorite album of the year so far. Yellen and I must come from similar schools on the notion of musical familiarity, as nearly every moment of Country Sleep echoes with some glimmer of sonic nostalgia, some shred of homage to the vast collective of influences he gathers throughout. But unlike another early 2013, homage-fueled record (the Rolling Stones/Beatles/Elvis/Velvet Underground collision that is Foxygen’s We Are the 21st Century Ambassadors of Peace & Magic) , Country Sleep never crosses the line into obvious reference. Ultimately, listeners will hear what they want to in these songs, whether it’s hushed atmospherics in the vein of Cold Roses-era Ryan Adams (see “22”), or earnest, sentimental bombast, a la Sleeping At Last (the sweeping romance of “Even If We Try”).

Still though, Night Beds does a terrific job of weaving borrowed sounds and textures into a vision that is thoroughly his own. Few will miss the way Yellen’s reverb-drenched vocals recall older My Morning Jacket records, or how the echoing a cappella of “Faithful Heights” and the dizzying vocal harmony of “Even If We Try” feel appropriated directly from the Fleet Foxes playbook, but those familiar pieces are merely threads in a much larger tapestry. Country Sleep, as a whole, is a condensation of Nashville sounds, from the stark singer/songwriter confessional that is “Was I For You?” to the propulsive indie-folk-pop of “Ramona” (and if The Lumineers can latch onto the mainstream, the latter can certainly follow suit). “Borrowed Time,” meanwhile, balances the longing of Appalachian folk with the rollicking, boozy drive of something you might hear at Nashville’s famed Bluebird Cafe. And album closer, “TENN,” is a timelessly nostalgic lullaby, a softly-strummed ‘song for the road’ whose wandering troubadour aesthetic gives the record its perfect coda.

All of Yellen’s best qualities coalesce on “Cherry Blossoms,” a trancelike piece of midnight balladry that at once feels both heartbreaking and euphoric. The song, like much of Country Sleep, is a sonic feast, Yellen’s gorgeous vocals padded and buffeted by a cloud of harmonies, a subtle electric guitar arrangement and the moan of a memory-laden pedal steel rounding out the symphony. The song crescendos as it goes, filling out in sound with each passing second until the whole thing boils over. Yellen’s voice leaps an octave, his repeated cries of the words “take me home” rising emotionally over the feast of sounds. And then, far too soon, it’s over.

“Cherry Blossoms,” and indeed, the entirety of Country Sleep, plays out like a musical vortex, a song and album so beautifully written, so meticulously recorded and produced, and so passionately performed by its creator, that it’s impossible not to be swept away by it. Undoubtedly, there will be listeners who write Yellen off as no more than the sum of his influences. But while Ryan Adams, Jim James, Robin Pecknold, Justin Vernon, Gram Parsons, Conor Oberst and so many more are probably at least partially responsible for making Yellen the songwriter he is today, the guy has a gift that can’t be learned through simple imitation. It’s something that can’t be faked by ProTools or brought in with session musicians, something that can’t be paid for in promotion or acquired through positive critical reception. And I’m not even entirely sure what that is. Maybe it’s the intimacy on display here, the emotional honesty of it all; perhaps it’s the confident variations in sound inherent throughout, or the sonic splendor of the finished product. Or maybe, it all comes down to Yellen’s warm and welcoming embrace of familiar territory. Regardless of the reason, Country Sleep is more immediately accessible and rewarding than most of the records from the artists listed above, a stunning surprise debut that will be sitting somewhere in my annual top ten come December. Until then, though, I’ll just flip the record over and play it again.

On a lot of occasions, music lovers get to a point in their listening evolution where they start to rebel against the familiar. I’ve always found that interesting, since when we first start falling in love with music, it’s the songs and albums that we can relate to things we already love that click with us most easily. And I’ve always remained like that to a certain extent, something that will never make me the “hippest” music writer in town, but also something I’m really not at all ashamed of. I still have an emotional allegiance to the genres that made me fall in love with music in the first place, and frankly, I probably always will. Alt-country, folk, roots rock: these sounds were my entry point, the hallmarks of bands like Counting Crows or The Wallflowers that transfixed me as a child, and they remain the sounds that can hook me faster than just about anything else in music today. Because sometimes, familiarity doesn’t have to be derivative or uninspired or forgettable; sometimes, it just feels like home.

Westland - Intimacy w/o Intricacy

Westland - Intimacy w/o Intricacy - EP

Unsigned, 2013

7.5/10

Every once in awhile, a band comes along that feels like a collision of everything this scene is about, a band whose music reflects the records that made many of us fall in love with music in the first place and makes us feel like our younger selves again. A few years ago, that band was The Dangerous Summer, combining the likes of Taking Back Sunday, The Starting Line and Jimmy Eat World into an emotive blend of melodic pop rock. Last year, it was Daytrader, who took that Jimmy Eat World influence, drenched it in the dark atmospherics of their favorite Brand New records, and created something that was at once familiar and refreshing. And if I have to nominate a band for the title this year, then my earliest choice is Westland, a talented alt-pop group from Boston whose brand-new EP, entitled Intimacy w/o Intricacy, plays out like an infusion of the melodic sensibility of Sherwood and Good Old War, the radio friendly surge of All Time Low, The Maine, or Boys Like Girls, and a tinge of nineties radio rock.
 
Intimacy w/o Intricacy, only six songs and 20 minutes in length, acts less as a cohesive record and more like a sampling of everything Westland can do, but there’s nothing terribly wrong with that. We get the electronica-infused trance-ballad (“Slowly,” which carries the EP out in balladic ambiance); we get the slightly-generic play for modern-rock radio that is “For the Moment Star,” a song whose repetitive, “been there, done that” chorus nearly derails a foot-stomping guitar intro, strong verses, and a booming bass-line (courtesy of Nick Karidoyanes, who anchors the band on numerous occasions throughout this record). Still, frontman Aaron Bonus goes for broke here, bringing more than a little bit of rock ‘n’ roll edge to the proceedings, and while the song isn’t entirely successful on its own, it’s at least nice to know that this band, so good at dwelling in the earworm pop-punk department, isn’t afraid to turn the amplifiers up to 11.

But still, it’s hard to deny that Westland is at their best with a greater level of pop sheen behind them. Case-in-point is “Jack and Coke,” the first single from Intimacy and the band’s greatest bid for mainstream success. Building from a piano-heavy intro (one that nostalgically echoes Semisonic’s “Closing Time”), the song explodes into a visceral, shout-along chorus. Bonus’s voice soars on the high notes, the guitars crashing around him, and for an instant, Westland seem to have recovered the keys to Marty McFly’s DeLorean and gunned it to 88, taking us back to the golden age of pop punk. Indeed, the vast majority of Intimacy w/o Intricacy feels like something I would have been absolutely in love with when I was a freshman in high school. My tastes have moved forward quite a bit since then, but there’s still a lot to be said for a band that can generate such a clear frame of throwback nostalgia, especially when they didn’t even exist as a musical outlet when I was a freshman in high school (the band formed in 2009). I don’t know if I can quite explain the impact here, but rest assured that it’s a monumentally personal one, something that will keep me coming back to this record all year long, and I’d wager this band will do something similar to a lot of listeners from around here.

“Bleed” layers vocals, guitars, strings, and acoustics for a similar effect, though its chorus isn’t quite as meteoric as “Jack and Coke.” The song’s break sounds like something that wouldn’t have been out of place on Jimmy Eat World’s Stay on My Side Tonight EP, and the use of acoustic instrumentation, though minimal, is a nice change of pace that I’d challenge the band to explore further in the future. “Too Late,” meanwhile, is the catchiest song on the record, opening with a gorgeous pomp-and-circumstance swirl of piano and strings, and transforming into a Something Corporate-esque showstopper. Producer Shep Goodman, known for his work with pop bands and solo acts, works his magic here, surrounding the bus-sized chorus with the kind of pop sheen that could make the song a global hit. Certainly, the radio waves have rarely embraced our scene, but with a shifting mainstream music landscape that put fun. on top of the world last year and made bands a force to be reckoned with again, could the hopeless romantics in Westland find themselves notching some national success? With a set of songs as solid as Intimacy w/o Intricacy, I must confess that I’d be happy to see it happen.

Green Day - ¡Tré!

Green Day - ¡Tré!
Reprise Records, 2012
7.5/10

Those who read my delayed review of Green Day’s ¡Dos! back in early December will likely recall that, for all of my disenchantment with ¡Uno!, the first piece of the band’s ill-advised triple-album, my distaste for the trilogy grew tenfold with its follow-up. ¡Dos! was an unmitigated disaster, a musical recycling pile of pop cliché and cardboard garage band imitations that ranked instantly as the worst release in the band’s catalog. But, as I noted at the end of my review, ¡Dos! wasn’t a complete waste: its vicious awfulness at least had the positive impact of making ¡Uno! sound decent. And luckily, that same impact counts for double with ¡Tré!, the final piece of the trilogy and the only truly “good” album in the bunch.

In a lot of ways, the songs on ¡Tré! are precisely what I hoped to hear from the band as they blasted past their rock opera phase and back into the realm of the more “fun” or “spontaneous” music they were making around the turn of the century. Indeed, the best moments of this record are collisions of the band’s most well-executed musical ideas to date, from the classic-pop-with-epic-sweep opening of “Brutal Love” (which sounds like it could have been an American Idiot b-side) to the punked-up, multi-part, soon-to-be live show staple that is “Dirty Rotten Bastards.” Even the songs that fall a notch below the highlights, stuff like “Missing You” or “8th Street Serenade,” come across as exactly what Green Day were trying to accomplish with this trilogy, and exactly what they missed the mark on throughout the majority of the first two discs. These are songs with solid hooks, full-bodied performances, and altogether more life than the band showcased on ¡Uno! and ¡Dos!, even on their best tracks, and the result is a record with infinitely more replay value than we've heard from Green Day in quite some time.

In fact, the band sounds so much more engaged here that it’s almost difficult to believe these songs came from the same sessions that produced drivel like “Troublemaker,” “Kill the DJ,” or “Nightlife.” Frontman Billie Joe Armstrong sings like a new man on “Brutal Love,” hitting notes hard, fast, and with more soul and attitude than he’s manifested since Idiot. Another key cut, the irresistibly addictive “X-Kid,” takes less than four minutes to boil down the band’s last 15 years into a should-be radio single, a song that’s both retro and fresh, nostalgic and of-the-moment. “Hey, little kid, did you wake up late one day?/And you're not so young, but you're still dumb/And you're numb to your old glory, but now it's gone,” Billie Joe sings over a halting guitar scratch during the song’s opening moments, revisiting the bored and restless kids that populated Dookie and the politically disenfranchised rebels of American Idiot, and showing us where they ended up once they hit middle age. For a band seemingly embroiled in the second identity crisis of their (still relatively brief) career, the song is a moment of clarity, an acknowledgment that they don’t quite know where to go next. Ironically, but perhaps appropriately, that revelation comes during the best song they’ve written in years.

¡Tré! has no overarching theme or unity of sound, though it’s a bit funny to note that this album, which the band called a “mix” or “grab-bag” of styles going in, is the most cohesive installment in the trilogy. Where both ¡Uno! and ¡Dos! tried to veer close to a pair of genre styles (the former was supposed to be the “power pop” record, while the latter was all about “garage rock”), ¡Tré! masters both with more confidence and energy than the genre-specific records ever managed. See the album’s mid-section, which blazes through fast and loose pop numbers (“Little Boy Named Train,” “Amanda,” “Walk Away”) with effortless power-pop gravitas. That effective mid-section plays like a nostalgic time machine, its songs ringing with slick melodic sensibilities and crackling attitude that land somewhere between the band’s roots, early Weezer, and the pop-rock genius of Butch Walker’s Marvelous 3.

“Dirty Rotten Bastards” kicks things back to the 2000s, playing like a truncated version of “Jesus of Suburbia” or “Homecoming,” American Idiot’s shape-shifting centerpieces. “99 Revolutions,” on the other hand, is more indicative of the overall sound of the trilogy, an upbeat pop-rocker that sounds destined to be played over the opening or closing credits of teen comedies for the next decade. Meanwhile “The Forgotten” closes out the record with a sappy bit of piano-laced balladry, its Twilight soundtrack roots masking the fact that it’s a dead-ringer for some of 21st Century Breakdown's most dramatic moments. While the song doesn't have the climactic force of the band's best closers ("Whatsername" from Idiot, or "Macy's Day Parade" from Warning), it's a fitting conclusion for both the album and for the weird, disjointed trilogy that it's a part of.

Just like its predecessors, ¡Tré! is neither flawless nor game-changing. These songs very much thrive on their hooks, featuring mostly naval-gazing lyrical content that leaves no real impression on its own. Then again, Green Day has hardly ever been known as a force of great poetry, relying more on all the fun, energy, and attitude that they can generate with only three or four chords, and that surge of melodic sensibility is very alive and well here. ¡Tré! isn’t quite a great record: it’s not going to define a generation of scene kids like Dookie did, nor will it take over the radio waves and invade all public consciousness like American Idiot. (And don’t expect to see the album’s narrative, whatever the hell that is, played out in a Broadway musical). But the true strength of ¡Tré! is found in the way it redeems a trilogy that many had written off after its first two installments, and for me at least, that's enough to serve as a reminder that Green Day can still make music worth caring about.

The Bruce Springsteen Retrospective Part VIII: Tunnel of Love

Now you play the loving woman, I'll play the faithful man
But just don't look too close into the palm of my hand
We stood at the alter, the gypsy swore our future was right
But come the wee wee hours, well maybe baby the gypsy lied
So when you look at me, you better look hard and look twice
Is that me baby, or just a brilliant disguise?

I can't say I envy anyone who has to follow up a record like Born in the U.S.A.: anything that reaches that level of pop-cultural ubiquity is going to have fans waiting on bated breath for what's next and the record label scrambling for a repeat performance. While the true fans will always remain, the fact is that lightning rarely strikes in the same place twice, and that a record which spawns seven top-ten singles, sells millions of copies, and rockets an artist to the rarefied air of the world's biggest superstars cannot possibly be duplicated. In the three years between Born in the U.S.A. and Tunnel of Love, Bruce Springsteen was transformed from a working-class rocker into one of the richest, most recognizable pop stars of the era; his world was turned upside down, he had fans that had never known he'd existed before, and he could hear his voice on the radio at any hour of the day. And on top of all that, he also got married: to actress and model Julianne Phillips, in 1985. Springsteen was eternally on the road, rumors spread that he had begun a relationship with E-Street Band member Patti Scialfa, and trouble in paradise exploded quickly. Their inevitable divorce was finalized in 1989, but first came the record that tried to explain why. Bono said it best a decade later, when he had the privilege of inducting the Boss into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame:

"Something was going on though. As a fan I could see that my hero was beginning to rebel against his own public image. Things got even more interesting on Tunnel of Love when he started to deface it: a remarkable bunch of tunes where our leader starts having a go at himself and the hypocrisy of his own heart before anyone else could. But the tabloids could never break news on Bruce Springsteen, because as fans, he'd already told us everything in the songs."

And he had. Even the most casual fan, with no contextual knowledge as to what was going on his life when he wrote this record, could have heard that Bruce was going through a rough patch. It was and is the most personally introspective record he ever wrote: not as hopeless as Nebraska, but every bit as resigned. A broken heart wasn't the only change evident on Tunnel of Love either, though: no, the first and foremost change here is the one that takes place in the overall sonic structures, all having to do with the fact that the by-then-trademark E-Street sound was nowhere to be found. The group's members all make appearances (with the exception of Steve van Zandt, who we bid farewell to on Born in the U.S.A.'s "Bobby Jean"), but drummer Max Weinberg was the only one to play on more than a quarter of the songs and Clarence Clemons was only used as a back-up vocalist on penultimate cut, "When You're Alone." His saxophone is undoubtedly missed, but Springsteen conjures something special here that almost makes us forget about the band. Like Bono says, he shielded himself from cruel rumors with this record, but it was also more than that: he gave fans the barest glimpse into his own life that they'd yet been afforded. He broke down a barrier between himself and his audience, and despite the fact that he'd only recently become one of the biggest names in music, he made a record of astounding honesty and intimacy. If fans had worried that he would stop putting himself in their shoes after he became a rich man, those fears were gone after a couple of tracks. But Springsteen wasn't just assuring his fans that he wasn't going to start writing fluff pop songs: he was wearing his heart on his sleeve, purging his soul, and healing himself, and in the process, he was making one of the greatest break-up albums of all time.

Some break-up albums seem like they are the result of a single creative burst following the disintegration of a significant relationship, like the songwriters sat down and channeled every ounce of their pain, anger, regret, nostalgia, and sadness into a single piece of art. In Springsteen's case, he seems to write himself into it as he goes, offering a wider portrait of a relationship that, at the record's outset, is just starting to fracture; by the time we get to the last five tracks, that same relationship is in disrepair. But like Bono said, Bruce broke the news here himself. For fans used to the guy who usually sang about the everyman, about characters and stories that he conjured up in his own mind, I can imagine Tunnel of Love must have been a confusing record. Because even though he's still singing about everyman issues and relatable life struggles, the character here is Bruce himself and the songs are, for once, almost entirely introspective.

The semi-autobiographical structure runs through the entire set, kicking off with "Ain't Got You," a tremendous opener where Bruce discusses his new-found fame and wealth, but suggests that all of it has done little to enhance his personal life. "Well I got all the riches honey any man every knew/But the only thing I ain't got honey I ain't got you" he sings, a cappella, at the song's outset, harmonica and swift percussion joining him as the song builds. It's a reserved commencement for an album where even the love songs feel steeped in caution, fear, and regret. "Tougher Than the Rest" swells with a gorgeous '80s atmosphere, complete with a faultless harmonica solo and a country-esque guitar to carry it into its fade-out. The protagonist declares, repeatedly that "if you're rough and ready for love/Honey I'm tougher than the rest," but make no mistake, he ain't the starry-eyed romantic that was trying to persuade Mary to climb into his car on "Thunder Road." No, here, love feels like a more calculated decision, like something to get through, free of the kind of spontaneous passion and youthful energy that fueled Born to Run: clearly, the cracks are already beginning to show.

Bruce gives himself a respite on "All That Heaven Will Allow," and whether its a flashback or something playing out in real time, the change in tone is welcome. Happiness abounds here, both lyrically and musically, and the love is real...if only it could last. The album's most potent rocker, "Spare Parts," sounds like a Born in the U.S.A. track and plays like a continuation of the story from "The River." It paints the portrait of a woman who loses almost everything, but somehow finds the will to carry on after pawning her wedding dress and ring, shedding the vestiges of her old life and her forgotten dreams, and showing the same kind of resilience that so many Springsteen heroes find at the conclusion of their stories. Adversely, "Cautious Man" sounds like a Nebraska outtake, revolving around a character named Bill Horton that, for all the song's narrative force, is little more than a thinly veiled alias for Bruce himself. The character here tries to marry and settle down, but the restlessness in his heart and the darkness in his spirit leave him walking along the highway in the middle of the night, even though he knows that that wide open road won't lead anywhere. Needless to say, we are once again seeing the escapism of Born to Run from the other side of the tracks, and it's harrowing.

"Walk Like a Man" is nearly as heartbreaking, offering a wistful flashback to the actual wedding day, to the same character that we've charted all along, a guy who's just trying to play his part and do what's right. A guy just trying to live up to those who have gone before him. Just like The River's "Independence Day," "Walk Like a Man" finds Springsteen still exploring the confusing relationship he shared with his father, and just like that song, this one stops the album in its tracks. It's the perfect conclusion to side one, marking a thematic divide between Springsteen's troubled attempts to hold his marriage together and his emotional need to just let everything go. The centerpiece title track is the other part of that divide, a carnivalesque beauty of a song, soaked in nostalgic summer night atmosphere, that uses a dark theme park ride as a metaphor for a crumbling marriage. "It's easy for two people to lose each other," Springsteen sings, "in this tunnel of love."

"Two Faces" is drenched in doubt and self-loathing, Springsteen's conflicting emotions and desires manifesting themselves as alternate personalities. He's torn between walking away to reclaim his old life and staying true to his wedding vows, between love and indifference, and though the song is a minor one, both on the album and within the Springsteen catalog, the imagery here is undeniably effective. It's also a minor song juxtaposed beside Tunnel of Love's most major songbook contribution, the rousing "Brilliant Disguise." Over the years, I've heard an interesting amount of support for this song from a wide cross section of Springsteen fans, from singer/songwriter Matt Nathanson delivering an introspective cover of it (and calling it the best song Bruce ever wrote) to an exuberant fan who, while ranking every Springsteen album track from worst to best, placed it at number five. I don't quite buy into that praise, but I do love "Brilliant Disguise," which brilliantly (pun intended) continues the question of confused identity and role-playing that comes at the end of a long relationship. This is territory that countless singer-songwriters have covered over the course of music history, but when it's done well, few things hurt more. It's the idea of fighting for our relationships, even as we fall out of love, of holding onto each other because it seems easier than cutting our losses, admitting we were wrong, and bidding farewell to the years we spent working towards something greater. The idea that it's easier to lie than to say goodbye. It never is, and "Brilliant Disguise" captures that shattering realization perfectly. "God have mercy on the man who doubts what he's sure of," Springsteen sings as the songs fades out.

"One Step Up" is the even-more painful follow-up, a mournful ballad that finds the narrator in a bar, gazing at a beautiful woman and considering doing the one thing that will cause more damage and pain to himself and his relationship than just being straight and calling it quits. But the genius of the songwriting here is that it doesn't go that way: rather than using "One Step Up" as a means of explaining his (possible) affair with bandmate and future wife Patti Scialfa, Springsteen flips the temptation around, transforming it into a lens for gazing back fondly at a marriage and a love at its end. "Last night I dreamed I held you in my arms/The music was never-ending/We danced as the evening sky faded to black," Bruce sings, "One step up and two steps back."

That same narrator makes one final play for redemption on "Valentine's Day," a gorgeous hymn of a love song that finds Springsteen at his most vulnerable, his most simplistic, and his most lyrical. The final verse feels like a vow to try harder, to be better, to love more fully, and to greet the next phase of life with open arms. Today, we know that Bruce's marriage to Phillips ended shortly after the album's release and tour, but this song, it's final verse especially, is one last invocation to her and to the love the two shared:

"They say if you die in your dreams you really die in your bed
But honey last night I dreamed my eyes rolled straight back in my head
And God's light came shinin' on through
I woke up in the darkness scared and breathin' and born anew
It wasn't the cold river bottom I felt rushing over me
It wasn't the bitterness of a dream that didn't come true
It wasn't the wind in the grey fields I felt rushing through my arms
No no baby it was you
So hold me close honey say you're forever mine
And tell me you'll be my lonely valentine..."

"Valentine's Day" is one of Springsteen's greatest songs, if only for the way that it completely tears down the walls between the man and his audience. Maybe that's why he had to make the majority of this album on his own, or why he had to say goodbye to the E-Street Band for a little while once the tour wrapped in August 1988. Born in the U.S.A. made Bruce one of the biggest stars in the history of rock 'n' roll: Tunnel of Love was the artist at the epicenter of that craze tearing down everything he'd built and gearing up for a new beginning. It was a break-up album, a rebellion against fame, a new direction, and the end of an era, all in one; it was a mid-life crisis and a life-affirming journey; it's an album fans love for its intimacy, and hate for how it decimated E-Street. And all told, it's a masterpiece, a shattering portrait of a larger-than-life figure who, through the honesty of his music and the resounding relatability of his sentiment, proved once again that, deep down, he's just another guy, mistakes, triumphs, and all.