The Long Winters – Putting the Days to Bed

The Long Winters
Putting the Days to Bed
Barsuk, 2006

I will begin by saying that Putting the Days to Bed, the third LP from Seattle’s The Long Winters is an improvement to lead singer John Roderick’s formula. The melodies are getting tighter, the production is getting more interesting, and the songs are developing lyrically. The problem is that none of these improvements are that significant. Of course, The Long Winters were pretty decent to begin with, so this is by no means a bad album.

My primary concern is that Roderick suffers from a severe case of indecision, as evidenced by the dozen or so band-mates he has rotated through during the last 4 years. This also shows in his lyrics; he jumps from partial idea to partial idea, more often than not leaving the listener hanging. Often times I found my self connecting with the first half of a song, and completely losing the point by the end. Perhaps this can be partially explained by the awkward transition from writing pop-love-songs to pop-story-telling-love-songs. (A massive transition, indeed.)

The middle track Honest almost succeeds in telling the story of someone in love with the lead singer of a band (perhaps autobiographical.) But instead developing this picture, Roderick only leaves us with the lesson (and refrain) “It’s alright to be a singer / Don’t you love a singer.” Truly insightful and perhaps even O.A.R.-esque lyrics, there. In other places, the lyrics are simply confusing. For example, in Hindsight we get: “But I’m bailing water and bailing water / ’cause I like the shape of the boat.” I’m sure that’s some metaphor for a failing relationship, but as far as I’m concerned that’s fucking pushing it. Although to be fair, one chorus later we get one of my favorite lines of the album: “Are you still training for the big race / by hoping the runners will die?”

Where the album succeeds lyrically is back with The Long Winters’ bitter love song formula which is familiar from their previous releases. Here the lyrics are open-ended but still pointed. We get a snapshot – part of a thought or an emotion. As a side point, Roderick typically succeeds in conveying emotions and love-torn feelings without sounding emo or irritating. The only exception on this album is the closer Seven, which is a pretty standard breakup song. “Your new haircut is so unfamiliar/
Your new teases are so hilarious / But I miss you seven” Chris Carrabba would be fucking jealous of lyrics like these.

Despite my complaints, I have to admit that this album has seen daily play (and not just because I’m reviewing it.) The songs are catchy and upbeat while still interesting and often times emotionally poignant. One nice thing about vague lyrics is that you can insert your life and your problems into the song. (And then drown your sorrows with cheap gin while photoshopping an even goth-ier background for your Myspace.)

Perhaps what this album lacks in sophistication, it makes up for in timing. This is a perfect end of summer album. It holds onto the freedom and good times of the warm summer vacation while remaining completely aware of The Long Winter ahead.

(Sorry, that was bad, but I had to.)

Lifter Puller “Half Dead and Dynamite” (1997)

Lifter Puller
Half Dead and Dynamite

(No Alternative; 1997)

A decade and a half ago, long before Hallelujiah and Charlemagne got their crucifixes tangled down by the Mississippi River, Craig Finn went to college. I’m not really sure what he officially studied; in fact, when I asked Mr. Finn this same question a few months ago, he smiled and half-jokingly remarked, “I studied drugs in college.” (Again, I stress that he was half joking. Which means he was half serious.) Although in interviews he notes that his song lyrics about sex, drugs, drinking, partying, and rocking are not strictly autobiographical, I’m pretty sure that he did his fair share of “experimenting” with “exotic mood modifiers” while in his varsity days. I mean, c’mon, we all had a little too much fun in college. I’d bet that Finn had more fun than most of us.

Somewhere between stuffing rocks in his socks and going to concerts/parties that ended up bloody and ugly, Finn formed a little band he liked to call Lifter Puller. This band may in fact be the greatest band ever to grace God’s great earth. Finn, of course, knew this from the beginning, because he and God chat on a regular basis, and God was totally like, “Hey, Finny, you should release an album about your college days and make the it about sex, drugs, rock shows, and getting busted by the po-po, and it will divide the waters from waters, and it will kick ass.” And it was so.

By some divine force or cosmic power, Lifter Puller’s first proper release Half Dead and Dynamite is one of the most confident, focused, and enigmatic debuts in the last 10 years. Perhaps more notably, it not only stands up to Finn’s later (and more well-received) work but in many ways surpasses it. It is not the story of a few mysterious/shady characters trying to wade through the sordid maze of the seedy netherworld of hipsters and hoodlums. It’s a mish-mash of random hazy memories (presumably college memories) of late nights drinking with borderline-whore girls, druggy frat parties, and ending up on the wrong end of the tracks when road trips go bad. There is no rhyme or reason to the album’s lyrical content, other than in it’s intentional fogginess and “what-the-hell-happened-last-night” feel to it. This isn’t that different from Lifter Puller or Hold Steady’s other releases, but there is a refreshing sense of incongruity that seems to mimic college life at it’s most random. It’s Finn’s way of saying, “I don’t need a story line just like the way I don’t need an excuse to get wasted tonight. It’s college!” As “Hardware” so aptly puts it, “That didn’t seem like 15 beers.” Probably a lot like Finn’s college days, and sure as hell a lot like mine.

It’s remarkable how confident Finn seems on this album. Fresh out of college and no record deal, he speaks/sings his way around some pretty memorable lines, dishing out some of his most abrasive and destructive images that he’s ever recorded. It’s also a bit more personal than his later releases. “Nassau Coliseum” is the album’s centerpiece, told exclusively in the first person about a date prematurely sidetracked because of excessive drinking early in the night. (“Schwinn” is the other name for the song.)

But while Half Dead’s lyrics are the stuff of over-privileged college kids who are experimenting with some fucked up stuff on Mommy and Daddy’s dime, the music is focused, muscular, and well-thought out. Time signiture changes, carefully placed math-rock guitar riffs, and precise and complex drumming off-set the seemingly random lyrical imagery. “I Like the Lights” spells out one of those perfect juxtapositions: as Finn sings that Jenny “didn’t quite know what happened/Woke up with my dress wide open”, the guitar line cascades down in an (almost) beautiful way before commencing with the power-chord ass-kicking.

Half Dead is the “college” album that the Hold Steady will not make. It captures the band, especially the lead singer/songwriter, at a time in their lives when life seemed wide-open, big cities held allure and danger, and when the stakes were on a much smaller scale. No religious zealots trying to reclaim the 80’s. Just some kids getting high and messing around with some townies, which, as any college kid can tell you, will only end up in some people getting stabbed. If there is any doubt that Craig Finn is the best songwriter of our generation, and that Lifter Puller broke up before anyone could fully comprehend the genius shit they were making, Half Dead and Dynamite may just seal the deal 9 years after its release.

Shooting At Unarmed Men – Yes! Tinnitus

Shooting At Unarmed Men
Yes! Tinnitus
(Too Pure, 2006)

There is a simple fairy tale that has been passed down over the years in my family, and I would like to share it with everyone today:

Once upon a time in a land far, far away (Cardiff, Wales) there was a Noise Rawk band called Mclusky. Then one day Mclusky quite literally exploded. I don’t mean this in the sense that they “blew up” and got really popular. No. I mean there was an actual explosion which killed 2 band members and caused a rather large crater on the coast of England. This explosion was so massive that the general population of Wales actually stopped playing rugby for at least 5 minutes.

Luckily Mclusky’s bassist Jon Chapple was carried a safe distance away from the destruction by the blast’s shockwave. Evidently he landed in Australia and decided to form Shooting At Unarmed Men. Clearly this name reflects what Chapple wishes to do to the men who performed the extreme and uncalled for act of incendiary terrorism on Mclusky.

It is possible that the last two paragraphs are complete bunk. However, it is certainly true that Shooting At Unarmed Men recently released Yes! Tinnitus. It is also true that this album is loud, simple, absurdist, and quite possibly meta-post-ironic. Any fan of Mclusky (and who isn’t a fan of Mclusky?) needs to get their hands on this album a.s.a.f.p.

SaUM, to put it bluntly, do not fuck around on Yes! Tinnitus. The riffs are loud, sensible, and could probably be played by any 16 year old shmuck with a crappy Fender and a “Learn to play guitar” book. But this is not a bad thing, if I wanted to listen to clever key changes and interesting time signatures I’d buy a jazz cd, or at least an OAR cd. (God, OAR are fucking geniuses. Or wait no. The opposite of that.) Bottom line is that the music resembles a good web comic in it’s first year — the drawing is simple at best, but the humor is inspired and that’s what keeps you reading. (Did I just make a web-comic analogy? That’s either incredibly pretenious or unbelievalby lame. Or both. Probably both.)

The best description I can muster up for the lyrics is absurdist. Not in the “oh this is intentionally weird” sense, but rather in the “Jesus mother of fuck, what kind of drugs is this man on, and why is he not locked up for the safety of society” sense. Just for a tasty tid-bit: In A Horse by Day is a Horse By Night: “All the king’s horses / stuck their dick in my sister” (Really? Your sister is a fucking slut, Jon.) In the closer In Flight Instructions Are a Joke, Say I Chapple uses phrases directly out of a in flight instruction book: “Don’t save anyone / until you make sure you yourself are safe.”

Fans of Mclusky’s witty song titles will not be dissapointed either, besides the two mentioned previously we have Pat Yourself on the Proverbial, I Am the United Nations, and Pathos at Bathos to name a few. Comparisons to Mclusky are fitting, and while this album cannot replace the defuct band, it is the closest we are going to find for now, and enjoyable in it’s own right. At the very least, it is better than the B and C side suckfest that was Mcluskyism. Those who are not “down wit’” Mclusky should probably stay away from this though, as the apple did not fall far from the tree. In fact I think it landed in a branch on the tree.
But I need to go listen to some more OAR. (Or no, the opposite of that.)

Boys and Girls

Those who keep up with their indie music pundit websites surely know that The Hold Steady are poised to drop Boys and Girls in America on America in October. We here at MaxEnt are, shall we say, unbefuckinglievably excited. I am keeping my eye out for a leaked copy, but none have surfaced so far. (And no I don`t feel guilty about looking for leaked copies, I`m gonna buy the album anyways when it comes out, and I always support the bands I like by seeing them live.)

In the mean time I found some preview lyrics for Stuck Between Stations that look tasty.

Yeah, thats all I have.  Yeah I know I havent posting in a while and this is a pretty weak offering.  So I will leave you with this nugget of wisdom:  “Job searching is like fishing.  And Mr. dkraft is fucking terrible at fishing.”  The End.

Sonic Youth–”Rather Ripped” (2006)

Sonic Youth
Rather Ripped
(Geffen; 2006)

I’ve always had this theory about the Youth and the world of “cooler-than-thou” hipsterdom. In fact I’ve been known to call it the “SY Postulate of Indie Music” (I’ve also been known to use nipple clamps and anal beads, so take that as you will). It basically states that once a band reaches the “Critical Mass of “Cool” a few very important things happen. Among these are that the people stop holding the band to any sort of reasonable standards. In other words anything/everything they do is likened unto True Art by those that Understand True Art. If Radiohead releases a bluegrass album next year, most cool people will acknowledge that it is truly Pushing the Boundaries of Art even if it is complete and utter shit. Perhaps more interestingly, when a band reaches the CMoC people start buying their records to make their record collections look cool. It’s like adding a piece of expensive art to your living room. You don’t “get” it; in fact, you don’t even like it. You think it looks like two slinkies having hot, nasty slinky-sex. But it makes you look damn cool to all your friends.

If there’s one thing we can all agree on, it’s that Sonic Youth are basically the coolest thing in music. All you have to do is talk about how you’ve worn out you Daydream Nation vinyl record from all those afternoons trying to wrap your head around the 6 minutes of feedback on “The Sprawl”, or how Sister is the best self-released album ever made in order to score yourself some huge hipster points. Fans and critics know they’re cool. The band knows they’re cool. I owned Daydream Nation for two years before I ever made it past the second song. I didn’t actually have to listen to the record. It made me hip just by owning it.

In part because of their efforts to protect their undisputed coolness (whether conscious or not), Sonic Youth has always been one of the most frustrating bands for me to listen to. While on each of their albums there are numerous moments of sheer pop brilliance or focused guitar work, they seem to feel more comfortable when they are blasting mind-numbing feedback or indulging their talents in fretboard wank-fests. All this leads me to my point: Rather Ripped is their least “cool” album; not surprisingly, it also makes it the most listenable SY album to date. Die-hard Sonic Youth fans will hate this album: there is much more of a focus of melody (both in voice and guitar), conventional song-structure, and almost no traces of extended jam sessions.

“Reena” kicks off the solid first three songs of Ripped with Kim Gordon’s best Nico impression. Under a driving bass line and focused guitar work, Gordon relates a cryptic message of devotion to her husband (“you keep me coming home again”) despite the best efforts of a rather special female “friend”. Rather than aprubtly abandoning a straightforward rock song for a wash of feedback and dissonant solos, the band is content to be focused on keeping their pop gems to a easily digestible length. Gordon has always been the Youth’s secret weapon: typically her unique vocal style takes precedence over Thurston Moore’s spaz-rock solo adventures, which allows songs to progress at a better pace.

The single “Incinerate” is the highlight of the album. With it’s Broken Social Scene lyrics/delivery and blissful little guitar melody that sings more than it snarls, “Incinerate” is an example of how a great rock song can be well-sculpted and fun at the same time (!). You can almost see the band, tongues wagging and V-kicking on stage, enjoying the 4/4 rocker as much as the crowd. And, perhaps more amazingly, the lyrics are not head-slappingly moronic: “I ripped your heart out from your chest/Replaced it with a grenade blast/…You douse my soul in gasoline/ Flick a match into my brain.” (Let’s not kid ourselves: SY has never been that concerned about lyrics and it will always be their weakest aspect. On Rather Ripped, they are at least giving it a second thought.) No less impressive is the beautifully stark and delicate “Do You Believe in Rapture?”. Slow harmonics strums and a drum machine sets the atmosphere for a rare glimpse into the band’s personal side. This is the band at its finest, splitting the difference between pop perfection and art-rock noise in a way that is surprisingly successful.

Gordon makes good use of her other lead vocal appearances with “Jams Run Free” and “The Neutral”. The first is actually quite the misnomer; it is a carefully crafted work between bass and guitar that breaks in the middle for two dueling fuzz-solos that seem rather well rehearsed, and the second is a pristine, almost spectral reverbed number that wouldn’t seem out of place on a Clientele album. Both songs are clearly concious efforts to stay within the “I-can-still-sing-along-to-this” range, as opposed to going into atmospheric guitar freak-out world. Sometimes it seems a little forced. If you ever listened to a Sonic Youth record before, you know they can’t continue with a “pop song” for more than 2 minutes without itching to break out the distortion pedals. There are times on the record where you can almost picture guitarist Thurston Moore tapping his foot impatiently like a 8 year old, asking his wife Gordon, “Can I play with the effects pedals yet? Pleeeese? I wanna play weird sounds!” and Kim just shaking her head like a disapproving mother.

But here’s the rub: when they do play the Dissonance, Feedback, Weird Guitar Sounds Game, they do it very subtly, as if they are indulging in a forbidden act. More than often it the type of noise rock that is more readily accepted by the casual listener. In fact, it sort of reminds me of Perfect From Now On, Built to Spill’s 1996 masterpiece. Don’t get me wrong, this album is nowhere near the caliber of Perfect, but it does indulge in some feedback/abstract guitar work that contrasts nicely with the hummable and catchy tunes on either side of the atmospheric fuzz. This might have something to do with the exodus of producer/guitarist Jim O’Rourke who (in my humble opinion) completely fucked up the band while he was a member, focusing way too much on artistic masturbation and the Wall of Sound and spending less time on the songs themselves. Ultimately this album is a conscious effort at making “pop songs” while showing restraint with the quirks that make the band so beloved in many circles.

Unfortunately not all of Rather Ripped is successful in this goal. “Turquoise Boy”, while not unpleasant, seems lacking direction and quite dull, and album closer “Or” falls prey to the same issues. In general the last part of the album loses a little bit of the steam that the first two thirds of the album worked so hard to build up. Also, there are no barn-burning, four-to-the-floor rockers in the last half of the album which tracks like “Incinerate” make you want to hear more of. Also, the lyrics: I’m sorry, some of them just don’t it for me.
But let me say this: the Youth have made a record that I can get through the whole way, every time. You have no idea how incredibly shocking that is for me. It seems like they stopped trying to impress people with their ability to make “unlistenable” records and make one that was palatable for the majority of indie rockers. Guitarist Thurston Moore said in an interview that the increase in popularity of noise-rock in the last few years was as good an excuse as any to make a “pop” record. I found myself chuckling when I heard that. I guess SY will never relinquish that relished role of staying ahead of the “cool” curve. At least with Rather Ripped they have made a record that the casual, un-cool Sonic Youth fan (like me) can enjoy rocking out to on a summer evening.

*Check out the video for “Incinerate” at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCpjtYqpWp8