A Tale From The Other Side: A Quarantine Commentary

Interview and discussion on Timmy Sean's 2021 album A Tale From The Other Side, featuring feedback from the artist.

Extended footage with Timmy Sean.

Van Halen's Diamond Days Part 2: Van Halen II

Review and discussion on Van Halen’s 1979 sophomore album, Van Halen II

Relevant links

Previous post in this series on Van Halen I

A freestanding post on 5150 from last year

My Bloody Valentine: the Nebulous Noise of "m b v"

My Bloody Valentine gave every reason to believe that the follow-up to the much-beloved 1991 album Loveless would never see release. For their vigilant fans, the reality of m b v was nothing short of earth-shattering. While I don’t have a decades-long investment in the band, my appreciation for My Bloody Valentine germinated in a slow simmer over the course of the last few years, which was culminating a few months before the album’s announcement. Fueled by my increasing interest, I was swept up in the excitement and ordered m b v through the official website at my first available opportunity.

All I really wanted was a CD, but this format was only available in an expensive bundle with an immediately downloadable version of the album. I was more than willing to wait until the CD arrived, but anticipation got the better of me. I downloaded the MP3s and burned by own copy to tide me over.  I pushed play, and:



It seemed like gibberish. I remembered how resistant Loveless was, so I tried to be patient.  Despite the many rave reviews it was garnering, however, I just couldn't seem to make sense of m b v. I felt a little disappointed, and I was uneasy when the CD came in the mail a few weeks later. I discovered, however, that the tracklisting for my burned copy was incorrect, and listening to m b v with the songs in the correct order was an entirely different experience.

As it turns out, m b v is more varied than its predecessor.  There are thunderous experiments that border on noise, and kicking off the album with a warp speed thrill ride was not representative of the album's overall statement.  There are also instances of relatively straightforward pop songwriting, but most of it falls somewhere between these two extremes.  With the correct tracklisting, the album coheres incredibly well, which is a tribute to songsmith and guitarist Kevin Shield’s sense of the album's larger arc. 



So, same songs, different order, and the album instantly clicked into place.  Although it was not exactly the equal of Loveless, m b v revealed itself to be a believable extension of My Bloody Valentine’s limited oeuvre. For m b v to be successful in my mind, it had to recreate the delicate, inverted balance between impossibly overdriven guitars and sighing, whispered vocals of its predecessor without duplicating it too literally. Generally, this is the case. The layer of overdrive and distortion on m b v is like a high-fidelity recording of David Bowie's Low as it might sound pumped through a set of 10 watt speakers. It is so pervasive that it almost becomes a soothing silence – perhaps the loudest silence possible. Within this cloud of fuzz lay sighing vocal lines whose exact language is all but obscured in the din.



Although it is enjoyable at quieter volumes, m b v, like its predecessor, is really meant to be listened to loudly. It makes more sense when it envelopes the listener, like the slowly swirling beauty of hyperreal nebulas might surround a lonely deep-space traveler. This enveloping characteristic seethes with sadness and melancholy and gives this iteration of My Bloody Valentine’s sound an introspective, almost meditative quality that distinguishes it from Loveless.  It still, however, captures a similarly unique and heart-crushing beauty that sets it among the better releases this year.

Call Me Ishmael: Death Grips' "Exmilitary"

Driving in the semi-rural regions of Texas might seem like an incongruous setting for the rabid hip-hop stylings of Death Grips, but for the compulsive music listener, not all music has the good fortune to become connected to perfectly relevant experience. I recently took a solo drive up to visit a friend’s new lake house, which involved a bit of winding around in unexplored parts of the state. I knew that I could assault myself with whatever music I wanted for this drive. Death Grips immediately came to mind.

As I prepped for the trip, I got out The Money Store to put back in rotation, but I hesitated. A part of me still idealistically hopes that sooner or later, an official release of its follow-up No Love Deep Web will end up in my eager hands. Clearly, though, this white whale was not available at the time. I poked around online and could not even find any of its tracks in “soft” form from a reliable electronic source.

While I was initially OK with blasting The Money Store on my way to the lake, all this searching around gave me a hankering for some new Death Grips. I decided that their debut album Exmilitary, which is available in its entirety for free from the Death Grips soundcloud page, might do the trick. Against my usual listening practices, I downloaded the tracks, created a CD, printed off some passable cover art, and hit the road.

It did, indeed, do the trick. I listened to the album in its entirety about eight times in a row. Exmilitary packs the same abrasive, intellectual punch as its successor, but it is also a bit more eclectic and perhaps not quite as consistent. Some songs are structured with the traditional hip hop sample loop while others take a more cacophonous, unconventional approach.



With the benefit of hindsight, it seems that Death Grips was exploring a variety of approaches to investigate their potential as a band. Some of these experiments are more engaging than others, but in the long run this self-examination was smart. The best tracks on Exmilitary serve as the stylistic foundation for The Money Store, and in my opinion, the latter simply would not have been as successful without the research conducted in the former.



So it was that I found myself driving through the idyllic scenery of east Texas, blaring the primal rage of Exmilitary and pondering the possibility that it very well could make an appearance on this year’s top albums. There was, and is, caveat that has nothing to do with the quality of the album, though. Several of the tracks on the album segue, which, as an album listener, I really like. Because it was downloaded, compiled, and burned to CD, however, my listening experience suffered from the annoying gaps that most CD writing software puts between tracks. On this first copy, these were a full second, which resulted in a jarring listening experience. I have since made subsequent copies and have gotten it down to a blip, but a perceptible one, nonetheless. To really get the full feeling that I think Death Grips intended, I think that a first-generation copy is the way to go, but hardcopy of Exmilitary is not readily available  It seems that I have added yet another rare Death Grips album to my wish list.  Sigh.

The Year in Rush Part 10: The Neapolitan Power of the Three

At twenty albums in, and with CDs quickly becoming a thing of the past, how many more opportunities would I have to pluck a new Rush album from a record store shelf? Realistically, not too many, but I unselfishly left that honor to the Little One, who, just days away from being 10 months old, was on my hip as I entered Waterloo Records. I let her pick out a copy (with some encouragement) and she carried it for me to the checkout. Considering the smugly aloof experience I had with the Waterloo staff last year when I bought the new Yes album, I was wondering what kind of reaction I might get when she plopped Clockwork Angels on the checkout counter. This time, I escaped without incident, but I heard snippits of discussion between a group of staff members from across the aisles of the store:

“The new Rush is out…….”

“Neapolitan ice cream?”

“You’re out of control!”

There was a perceptibly snarky undertone to this exchange, but I didn’t really care. Rush showed up at a crucial time in my musical and social development, and the unified persona of artistic excellence and ambition that the Geddy, Alex, and Neil strove for as a unit served as a role model for me. They have been, as I stated at the beginning of this project, “my” band ever since. Nothing that the hipster crew could do or say would ever be able to dislodge that.

Like most fans, I was already somewhat familiar with Clockwork Angels. The first two tracks were released as digital “singles” over a year ago and were also included in the setlist of last year’s Time Machine tour. The rest of the album was written and recorded while the band was engaged in this tour, which is a unique setting for Rush’s recent compositional process. For several decades, the material on their albums was written as the band was coming off a break and preparing for a tour, and Lee once lamented that their albums did not always capture the song's live rendering. Because it was recorded while the band was actively touring, however, I think Clockwork Angels more accurately captures Rush’s trademark live energy.



Unlike many fans, however, I resisted the temptation to examine these tracks too closely. As a single, Caravan, with its twisting time changes and exploratory structure, seemed a bit confounding, but as the lead track to Rush’s first concept album, it’s an explosive opening statement. Arguably, all of Rush’s albums are conceptual, but not since the long-form songs of the 70s has the band tackled the idea of a story with character development and a climax, and they never did so in the full-album format. Peart is in his wheelhouse when he can employ a story as a vehicle, too, especially one with the descriptive richness of Clockwork Angels' steampunk-inspired imagery.

As usual on Tuesday, I later went to the dojo. I make no secret of my Rush zealotry amongst my fellow aikido practitioners, and before I had my shoes off, a person asked if I had heard the local radio promo that Waterloo Records had released for “new music Tuesday.” The spot posited that if Rush in the 70s was vanilla, and 80s Rush was chocolate, and in the 90s they were strawberry, then the new album was "Neapolitan ice cream."  The cryptic secret explained!

As flippant as this description is, in a superficial way it’s pretty fair. Rush’s recent predilection for mining their own repertoire as a repository for inspiration is more pronounced than ever, and is skillfully navigated on Clockwork Angels. The incendiary, muscular riffing of 2112 and Caress of Steel coexists with the focused, driving intensity of Signals, unified under the melodic emphasis and consistency of Counterparts. Even more exciting than watching these flavors bleed together is the comeback of the instrumental excursion. In the past, these gave Rush’s songs a sense of exploration and return, and that is excitingly recaptured  on Clockwork Angels.



Longtime Rush fans are usually prepared for some sort of reinvention of the band when a new album is released.  Clockwork Angels, however, musically encapsulates the bands history in a way that embraces, rather than challenges, their identity.  It sounds like Rush at their most memorable, which, at this stage in their career, seems to be an artistically gratifying path, not to mention a strategically smart one.  Fans that have felt disconnected from some of Rush's more stylistically jarring experiments in recent decades can jump back on board, while new fans don't have to understand their entire career to get where they are trying to say.

There is, of course, the danger of empty nostalgia in a situation like this, and there is, admittedly, a nostalgic aspect to the album, but it creates a tone of familiarity for the band's further progression.  In fact, although Clockwork Angels would be a shining end to Rush's long, engaging career, its exuberance makes me confident that "my" band still has outstanding work ahead of them.

To see the previous post in this series, click here.
To start over at the beginning, click here.

A Lament for the Death of the Album

Photo Credit: Kate Wurtzel

The physical manifestation of a recording has always influenced popular music forms. Even today, our musical attention span is affected by the three and a half minute running time of the first wax cylinder recordings. For a long time, the recording industry revolved around this “single" format. Later, however, when the LP evolved, artists started to weave unifying narratives through the lyrical and musical elements of its individual tracks.  Its roughly 45 minute playing length began to be carefully sequenced in terms of a beginning, middle, and end. The album was born.

The album is my standard unit of musical consumption. It survived the portable but ultimately lo-fi trend of the tape and found a home in the late 80s on the CD in a slightly altered form.  Two sides became one, and album lengths tentatively began to stretch to fill an 80 minute capacity.

I had a few LPs and quite a few tapes for the walkman, but the CD was my medium of choice when I became a serious music fan. I began my CD collection in 1986 when they were touted as the ultimate in indestructible lossless hi-fi (lies, lies all!). Record enthusiasts bemoaned their lack of analog warmth, but we scoffed and thoughtlessly hit the “next track” button without fully understanding that this action laid the seeds of the album's demise.

Today, I almost always listen to an album from beginning to end. I never skip tracks, and I try to consider the context and potential of each individual song as it relates to the larger work. I find great satisfaction in this practice.  For example, When Wayne’s World just about beat Bohemian Rhapsody into the ground in 1992, I always found that the song was still profoundly moving nestled towards the end of Queen’s truly classic album A Night at the Opera.  I still do.



From my perspective, then, it seems that the Mayans were partially right about 2012. The apocalypse is coming.  Major labels are considering discontinuing CD production this year, which is a disturbing but unsurprising announcement. Simultaneously, streaming music services such as Spotify and (a major resource of this blog) Grooveshark have come under fire by what it is left of the music industry.  Their transparent desire to maintain the status quo, now the downloadable MP3, squeezes out music consumers using outdated, shortsighted, and intimidating methods.

Feels like Napster and the CD all over again doesn't it?

More to the point, although I am attached to the physical object of the CD, I might be able to let go of it if the delivery device is sufficient.  After all, I’ve already begrudgingly accepted a future of MP3s filled with slushy hi-hats and guitars compressed past the point of distinction. If I can see artwork, organize songs into albums, and enjoy tracks that segue together without a startling bump, I'd probably be relatively satisfied.

On the other hand, perhaps I’ll just revert to the trendy solution of purchasing a turntable to play "high-end" vinyl at exorbitant costs like I did when I was in sixth grade.  That'd be real cool.

Of greater concern is what this wholesale switch to "softcopy" will mean to the integrity of the album as a creative format. Without the constraints of a physical object, be it LP, CD, tape, or 8-track, the organizing principle of the album will most likely dissolve. Sequencing and unity will become pointless if there is no longer the expectation to refine 45-75 minutes worth of music into something cohesive.  Songs will be published as online, playlist-ready singles without consideration of a larger narrative potential. What was once like writing a novel essentially becomes more like blogging.

Some musicians, like the Flaming Lips and their recent “24-hour song” 7 Skies H3, will undoubtedly explore the limits of this freedom (the "hardcopy" version of this project is a USB drive mounted inside a human skull - promo shot to the right!).  It is also possible, however, that the music scene will, by and large, crumble into a deluge of unrefined “singles,” drowning out more unified and cohesive efforts in a sea of shortened attention spans.  As a representation of an artistic endeavor that is cultivated over a span of time, the album is very quickly headed towards anachronism.  Abandoning the CD format seems like its death knell.