This is a thread for spreading musical understanding

(The thread was inspired by Mark S' bafflement over Unrest and Nabisco's very reasonable and interesting explanation of why they're good, by the way. It didn't convince me but I liked reading it.)

It seems there's been a huge backlash on this. I guess the format of this thread precludes you from getting specific about what you don't like. Admittedly, the whole "experimental" and rebels-against-the-Man angle has been overplayed. The sound is pretty much descended from Sister Lovers, and holding out against Reprise was ultimately a kind of business decision.

So, I like YHF because I really love pretty much all the songs. Many of them delve poetically into a very American dread that I relate to, if I won't get hoisted on the petard for saying this. I like the mix of straightforward stuff ("Jesus, Etc.," "Pot Kettle Black," "I'm The Man Who Loves You," "Heavy Metal Drummer") and the stranger arrangements (a lot of the rest). To me, Tweedy's scratchy, tired moan is perfectly imperfect, fits the emotion of his tunes just right.

I think it may've been overhyped, but I still see it as quite an artistic achievement. It's stood up for me after hundreds and hundreds of listens, and I got a real thrill even hearing alternate versions of the songs in Sam Jones' documentary.

All of which might just mean I'm a fan, but I'm trying to give it a shot explaining what I like about the record. Hope this isn't too laughable.

(wl that is exactly the kind of reply I was hoping for when I started the thread, thanks)

I haven't heard this record for a long time but what i liked abt it was the quiet/loud structures but also he does use the vocal range in this amateurish manner and it comes off. I don't know what he talk about most of the time but it doesn't matter (when does it).

Unfortunately they have been lumped in with the post rock crowd and that hasn't helped but its a great 40 minutes. also I think it takes a while for the rec to sink in. It took me a few listens for sure.

nope, still not getting it.

do like the photos of his band though

The great thing abt this record is that it sounds as if the band are playing the music for two or three songs at once. They never settle onto a groove ('cause it's corny maaan!), the guitars, bass and drums never seem to go together but by some bonkers logic that beefheart applies it somehow does make sense. At the centre of it all is beefheart just belting out his 'lyrics', his wordplay. No poxy insights in to the human condition (thank god!). Again, all of this this takes a few listens. Part of the appeal though is that too many listens are never enough (you can never completely understand it), but that is part of the appeal.

This is my favorite of anything I've heard by them. Sure, they ripped off the Fall heavily in parts ("We need two states!"), as Mark E. Smith has often bitterly complained about, but then again they stole part of a melody from Jim Croce too. Which is pretty sweet in and of itself.

It's a more-than-minor masterpiece just for being all at the same time brainy, funny and desperate (the last of which is something they lost hereafter). The ramshackle, raw don't-give-fuck feel works just right. "Summer Babe" and "In the Mouth A Desert" are simply great songs. Malkmus's lyrical approach was (and remained, to his credit) pretty original and individual to him.

They also get points for parodying/ arriving at crusty rock 'n' roll disappointment ("Here") years before they ever even went for the brass ring and failed. Kind of like Bowie singing, "beware you rock 'n' rollers/ 'cause one day you're gonne be older." Only not at all.

Hold your applause, please.

its maybe the greatest sole mc/producer record ever, ems weird descending un-hiphop melodic bits and ugly sounding bounce stuff make his voice sound uglier and realer, turning the circus beat sarcasm of the dre stuff into thug life uncinematic pac realism. also the cartoon beat stuff is still there in fine form; the effortless 'business', 'drips' , etc and when he melds the two styles like on square dance its possibly the best style hes ever copped

Sometimes I think the idea of liking something has less to do with what you identify with, and more to do with what you're willing to forgive. I forgive Supergrass for their unrelentingly childish lyrics and their now-annoying britpop posturing, if only because they are the closest I have heard to capturing the same particular intensity as The Who's first album. They simply have more unrestrained gleeful manic energy than any other pop band out there. Listen to 'Lenny' or 'Sitting Up Straight' and tell me you don't feel it, even just a little bit. Try dancing - it helps.

Supergrass: don't get enough credit. I mean, the norm has been for every rock band to hold up big signposts to their emotional weight and ostensible profundity -- either that or just have some jokey gimmick -- whereas I Should Coco had this interesting purity of sounding like a rock band playing rock for the sole purpose of its being fun. They didn't take themselves particularly seriously -- even though they could have, as a lot of the construction and composition on that record is quite sharp. I think I felt about them the same way I feel about the Strokes: they'd just made a hugely fun, energizing, blazingly-performed pop-rock record, and (possibly unlike the Strokes) they didn't seem to be asking you to think anything else. In fact, they initially reminded me of being 10 and watching Monkees re-runs on Nickelodeon.

david, those involuntary body movements to musick are a GOOD thing

That reminds me:

The Strokes - Is this It?

where to start is WHY YOU LIKE IT (that may be hard but it's your mission, should you decide to accept...)

The Clash: London's Calling (the LP as a whole, I like the song)

this record is easy to like because it is a labour of love - it is a home made record for the sake of recording rather than making good music . Simultaneously, the home recording asthetic is appealing and works well to create a continuous disc of changing ambience (rather than a bunch of singles cut together). Despite this casualness, there is some wonderful musical moments as well: delicate vocals, close overdub vocals, an interesting mix of easy sounds (acoustic intruments), non repetitive form and seemless yet sudden changes in direction. a good study of home recording and beautiful music

First rule of music: sometimes, you need to buy into the band before you can buy into the music. And the pinnacle of this concept is not Westlife or Slipknot or Aphex Twin, it's the Peaches. A recovering heroin addict dressed as a rabbit and her slightly dickish friend dressed as Robin Hood. They just radiate to be honest. And this record captures what we love about them.
Because they demand obsession. I went to see them live a few months back. I read a review once of a B&S gig that said that Howlin' Murdoch got a cheer for adjusting his microphone stand. Kimya would get a cheer for just thinking about adjusting it. It's devotional.
But you're obviously not a fan of them. So, what's gonna be in it for you? Well... it's fun. Not fun like skipping, fun like pissing in someone else's aftershave. It's a novelty song for people who hate novelty songs, a drinking anthem for the teatotal. It's a song that just begs to be screamed loudly at all comers, a Christshriek of a record that calls you to jump around, wail, and then sit down again when it's finished. Changed totally.

well, let's try pinkerton. proto-emo that makes emo seem like a good idea. rivers has the good sense to throw in some winks amongst the whines and shrouds his sobs in fuzz and riffs, but make no mistake: this is a primal scream from the 16 year old lurking in every nerd (once-nerd, sub-nerd, quasi-nerd, c'mon, you're on a music forum, this means you) too old for teenage kicks but with an unborn adolescent demon still writhing around in his pregant soul (huh?). the debut's cooed harmonies are now desperate birth-yelps (that's as far as i'm gonna take the birth metaphor thank heavens), the cute power chords are rubbing up (think carpet burn, not flesh-on-flesh) against petulant guitars and rivers is tired and beat and beet-red and he's gonna let out his undersexed fervour in the space of about 35 cathartic, inevitable, stained-pants, sissy boy, rock monster, penis-envy, fuck you, fuck me, lovelorn guitar pop minutes. also catchy.

Lunatic redheaded pianist = two best adjectives and best noun ever. And she is great, but I'll leave it to someone else to defend, as I'll go too fanboy if I try.

And that's all I have to say about that. (Why anyone liked them before they went all Bawow-bawow bawow-owow Bowowow-bada-bowowow. BOWOW-ba ba-dun-ba-ba ba-baden-ba bow-a wowowow can be my suggestion)

Matt's so cute.

As for the beats, well shit. I'm not sure how exactly to justify them. Grimy gritty dirty broken rusty machinery and sparking circuit breakers that set oily rags on fire where they catch on your pant leg and immolate you. I've only recognized one sample ever in El's post-CoFlow work, and that's Orbital's "The Box" used in an interlude on this record. Make of that whatcha will. If I were all Scott Seward style I'd call it "Kubrick and Philip K Dick get sick on NyQuil and Nestle Quik, recuperate with an 808 and Technics tactics for fantastic ass-kickin'". But I don't want to embarrass myself (oops too late!)

Their politics? Eh, they cross my mind occasionally. But if "Spanish Bombs" is an analogy for various late '70s goings-on in Central America or wherever I'm too busy soaking in that guitar sound to notice.

Melissa, is the recording you've heard the Nonesuch one with Dawn Upshaw and David Zinman? That's the disc that sold umpteen billion copies, and it's the performance that by far the most people have heard. But my first exposure to Gorecki's 3rd was a totally different recording, on the British Vox label, conducted and performed entirely by Polish musicians [1]. I still remember the first day I heard it -- I had borrowed it from a friend in college, who picked it up on a trip back home to England. I put it on, not knowing what to expect -- indeed, not expecting much -- and heard an enactment of ideas I'd been carrying around in my head, not knowing they'd been written and realized far better than I ever could have, twenty-five years before. I especially remember the way that the harmony changes about halfway into the opening movement -- after more than a quarter-hour of an unrelentingly bleak, lamenting E minor, suddenly everything unexpectedly shifts into A-flat and it's like emerging into a hovering, luminous cloud. I'm not a terribly synaesthetic person by nature, but it feels like shifting from red -- an oppressive, apocalyptic, crushing red -- into something cool, dark and blue, moonlit and filled with fireflies. It only lasts a moment before we return to the lament, but that moment of respite makes the opening movement work -- without that, it'd be too crushing to bear, I think.

The Polish performers bring these things out beautifully, and through their performance I love the piece (the first movement, anyway -- I find the others less memorable). But Upshaw and Zinman don't really seem to "get" this aspect of it; Upshaw, in particular, is much too histrionic, and sings it like Wagner or Puccini, which doesn't work for me: she's a great singer, of course, but the whole point of the piece ("symphony of sorrowful songs") is lost if you turn its quiet spaces into big, grandiose moments. So maybe you might feel differently -- or maybe not, but I think it's worth a try -- if you took an hour and sat down with a CD of this other performance, preferably with a silent room (so that it has plenty of space to breathe) and a comfortable place to sit (so that you can more easily give it your full attention -- it doesn't work as background music, and even the noise of a computer's fan will obscure the way it comes out of silence and hovers in it).

[1] Jerzy Swoboda/Katowice SO, with Zofia Kilanowicz, soprano

the lyrics, the screaming and kim Deal's beautiful singing. the venom on those guitars, the drummer that only knows how to play one way (hit the drums hard, 4/4 time, that's it) and yet that is always more than enough. In the realm of rock, it's either this or hair metal. take your pick (i said rock).

Because "kooky" isnt necessarily a bad thing - Tori increasingly focuses on a strip of Kate Bush's career (circa 'The Dreaming') which went out of its way to conflate and confuse prettiness with ugliness, and analogy with arbitrariness. Kate herself seemed to be having a punk fetish at this point, which combined with her prog rock fetish to make music that sounds sarcastic and self-puncturing but at the same time earnest and over-ambitious. This is why it was so uncomfortable, and this is also why it was great.

What Tori learns from this, I think, is the value in a deliberate search for unneutered contradictions (we have to accept now that many "contradictions" within music are familiar enough as to no longer be surprising or unsettling, although they can still often be thrilling if executed well). A cursory inspection of the lyrics will show how Tori likes to mix up coherent narrative with a) indecipherable personal metaphors and in-jokes and b) a certain amount of random wordplay. Listeners can deal with any of these in isolation; it's the frustrating combination of meaning with non-meaning that people find off-putting/compelling; the conviction that Tori is (still) a "confessional" artist but the difficulty in piecing together a confession.

Likewise her musical choices: coupling the first album's piano-based MOR-pop with hopelessly inappropriate lyrics; getting even *prettier* (if on a grander scale) for her second album's dissection of/"transference" of women hating women; only then pulling out the latent Swans/Diamanda Galas/"Tilt"-era Scott Walker elements for what would otherwise have been her "love" album. Tori is nothing if not a defiant advocate for un-unified perspectives. That said, unlike "The Dreaming" - which remains uncomfortable listening to this day - Tori is too much the musician to cross out any chance of her music cohering, gelling; the contradictions are still present, but they seem to exhibit a desire to resolve themselves as you are listening. So what tends to happen, I think, is that once you do begin to accept Tori's approach, her music begins to sound oddly normal and instinctive. What then might otherwise be "difficult music" becomes "contextually difficult music"... or "idiosyncratic music" or more simply "Tori music". It's for this reason that Tori is much more the pop star than any of her peers

Because three million screaming teenage girls can't be wrong - the accepted argument for obsessive Tori fans is that they feel like Tori is speaking for them. I don't believe this is probably true, though - as Tori's lyrics are *so* elliptical, it's hard to know if she's even speaking for herself, let alone guess at who else she might be speaking for. Better to suggest that what three million screaming teenage girls can identify with is Tori's sense of unified disunity, which allows her to, as a pop icon, absorb anything you throw at her (whereas for reasons coming out of the distinction made above, I think there are a couple of pre-existing "rules" to Kate Bush which make her a less "absorbant" figure).

In that sense Tori is a bit like Britney, in that she only really exists in the mind of the individual who receives her. But whereas Britney communicates with "us" through the medium of the media, Tori communicates with "me" (me the average teenage listener not me myself) through the private rite of repetitive cd replaying, the relative privacy of live performance. Thus while even a ten year old will probably understand that Britney is a widespread and multi-faceted socio-cultural phenomenon, a more clued-in eighteen year old can still insist that there is, to all intents and purposes, only "one" Tori - the one they themselves pay homage to.

I'm not sure if this explains why you should like her though.

I liked Eminem already, so my defense of him isn't specific to this album. Why do I like this album in particular, and more than the rest? Because fame, lawsuits, and a well-publicized personal life have given him his best material for lyrics. Because he can be famous, successful, wealthy, and STILL swagger like a kicked-in-the-ribs underdog. Eminem succeeded where every Rocky sequel failed -- and I've gotta give him props for that.

the dreaming is a great stab that probably really scared Kate's fans for once, and maybe there was some commercial lock-groove that was applied, explaining her periodic measured absence and the video cash-in experiment IV which was sci-fi enough to launch (greatest hits + one new song) clay pidgeon tablets

Tori's Indian angle, plus the writing partnership process she's empowered herself with in her quasi-shamyn way, is hopefully the beginning of more and more mature music, and based on form and what Tim said, i'm looking forward to it

Musically, it's probably their most diverse album, laughing in the face of those who say that The Smiths were either all jangle or all dirge. I dunno whether variety by itself is a valid reason to like an album, but I love the diferent moods- the polished Rockabilly of "Vicar In A Tutu", the bounce of "Frankly Mr.Shankly", the orchestral feel of "There Is A Light..". I know a guy who usually listens exclusively to Heavy Metal (meaning anything from Black Sabbath to Megdeath to In Flames), and even he told me that hearing the title track of this album made him gain new respect for The Smiths. Nick Kent called 'em the new Beatles, and while that is obviously a bit overwrought (they lack the universal appeal), I think it is a valid comparsion in that The Smiths were always looking around for new things, always on the hunt for something else to add to their music.

Lyrically, it's ages away from the uglyness of their debut (which I love, too, but I think that that album is mostly to blame for their reputation as a depressing band.) Morrisey is still a total sociopath, true, but he never discards either hope or humor. The great thing about these songs is that they exude self distance- and I don't mean a tiresome "irony", but simply the acknowedlegement that life can be absurd and unfair and all that, but in the end we love it anyway, no matter how much we complain (this comes forth especially on "Cemetery Gates"- for all of their gothyness and evil plagiarist ways, the music still implies that the protagonists are truly happy to meet each other.) Mozzer makes fun of his own bitchyness ("I was only joking when I said that by right you should be bludegeoned in your bed") and acknowedleges that, really, he just wants to be loved.

Also, uncharacteristically for such a self obsessed soul, he goes beyond himself and looks at the problems of other- I mean, consider the title track; surely Morrisey (or at least the persona, the myth of Morrisey that has been established through his records) is hardly affected at all by either church or pub? And then there's "There Is A Light And It Never Goes Out", where it's explicitly mentioned that the road to happiness comes not through sitting alone in your room but through human interaction. Plus, I've always thought "to die by your side, well the pleasure and the priviledge is mine" to be one of the highest compliments you can pay to anyone.

And if it sometimes sinks into maudlin self-pity well, damnit, so do I, and in those moments of weakness, I'd rather listen to someone who actually handles it all with a bit of wit instead of, say, Limp Bizkit or Depeche Mode. I mean, "I Know It's Over", "Never Had No One Ever"- even the titles are so willfully over the top that you can't help but laugh at your own misfortune.

So summing up, I love "The Queen Is Dead" because of its musical variety, its humor and its hopeful spirit. I might also add that all these tunes are as hummable as your average Spice Girls hit, and that I love it when Morrisey sings in tongues even moreso than when MIchael Stipe does it. Hope that helps.

It manages to make pop rock sound cool, without being 13 years old and spotty at the same time. Basically I'm saying the Strokes managed to make a perfect pop/rock album without fucking sounding like Ash or the countless other fucking awful bands whose only purpose seems to be as an alternative for people who like to go on rants about manufactured this, britney spears that.

(Sorry, Melissa)

bbbut you have to pick a record. choose one up through Green and I'll rush to defend.

Cam'ron "Oh Boy". Still not convinced.

LCD Sounsystem "Beat Connection" Most disappointed i've been in weeks when finally acquired it this morning.

A joyous celebration of the physical, both carnal and rythmic which sticks two fingers up to the matriarchal conservatism of Thatchers moral crusade. It's a subtle and funny construction as elaborate as a pavlova full of whipped cream and spun sugar but it's slyly subversive too. I mean how many number one singles have suck me off as a refrain?

And if the Rose Royce steal doesn't make you want to dig out your dancing trousers, well...

"destiny" is gorgeous.

Pink – M!55UNdAZ700d

Lots of reasons why I love this LP. First and foremost – great songs. As I’ve said before, I know not and care less if they are autobiographical, but I can respond to them as if they are. Moreover, several songs are at least insightful into strained and broken relationships, be it with family, peers or authority figures. What’s really fascinating however, considering the LP is a whole, is the absence of any pro-male perspective (apart from the nods to US army vets). There’s not a single traditional lurve song to be found, and men in general get short shrift. All these issues are sometimes described with rather simplistic analogies, and in schoolgirl-journal terms, to be sure. But this happens to suit Pink’s persona / p.o.v. perfectly. And even if that is just a carefully constructed image, so what? I realise I’m making the album sound ultra-serious, when it’s just a pop record. It’s full of very funny lines too, if that helps.

Musically, it’s strong, full of simple but memorable hooks, and Linda Perry’s production and arrangements are excellent throughout. A lot of people were disappointed when they realised there was almost nothing else like "Get The Party Started" on the record. But when guitar-based pop is done as well as this, it’s time to reevaluate your AOR prejudices. Hell, I even like the Aerosmith collaboration, and I never thought I’d say that about any record.

(p.s. i promise nevah to write the title like that on ILX again)

anything by Interpol

Mysterons
After having followed the ILM thread Portishead - are we fickle or did they deserve to become dated so quickly? and having read Josh's recent post on them I relistened to "Dummy" as well. I was sure that the record would not have the same impact as in 1994 when I heard "Roads" on MTV and was completely overwhelmed by the tristesse and Verlorenheit (forlornness) emanating from that voice, the trembling synthesizer and the slow beats. I hadn't listened to it for a long time and back in 1994 I definitely had listened to it too often so that it had become one of those loved-to-death records. But I had a nice surprise. Especially the first track "Mysterons" with the extremely addictive slow drum machine rhythm which has a drum roll at the end did it for me. Already the start of that song is gorgeous. A guitar plays some ascending notes and the synthie sounds like a quacking duck. First the duck is quite shy and not too loud and then it bursts into some serious quacking which comes from scratching I guess. The song is then dominated by a low synthie sound layer. After a while the theremin (apparently only a patch on a minimoog according to this thread) joins in and produces some long beautiful sounds. They seem to come from the sky and remind me of the whoosh of a fast-blowing wind. Absolutely otherworldly. At the end of that song the drumming becomes very shaky and rolls like a thunder in slow motion. The less poetic technical term for this is reverb I think.

I'm just going to be lazy and reprint the deplorably overwritten review I posted on Head Heritage of Firewater's debut, GET OFF THE CROSS WE NEED THE WOOD FOR THE FIRE. It might not help you, but here's my take on it....

Firewater
Get Off the Cross We Need the Wood for
the Fire

Released 1996 on JetSet

Having spent a goodly portion of the early `90's irresponsibly ravaging my ears via the
serrated audio squal of Brooklyn's mighty Cop Shoot Cop (the initial sonic outpourings of
whom meshed with the workings of the inner ear as does the rusty screwdriver to spinning
bicycle spokes), I found myself virtually weeping bitter, caustic tears upon hearing of said
"urban guerilla industropigfuck noise squad"'s inevitable, acrimonious and messy implosion
in `95. Cop mainman Tod [A] (nee Tod Ashley) had jumped ship, having become bored by
C$C's rigid adherence to monochromatic malice. In my mouring, I halfheartedly consoled
myself with the anaemic drivel of lesser bands whose pathetic attempts to match the
scowling black-hearted sturm und drang of the Cop fell like runny, shredded condoms
in the shadow of the definite article. I badgered former band members, insiders, drinking
buddies, roadies and associates as to when (or even if) another chapter would be written,
and who would be in the cast of characters. Rumors came and went like johns through a
brothel. Having sucked up to the industry like the dutiful corporate cog I would later
(d)evolve into, I managed to sweet-talk my way into the good, gullible graces of a pouty
publicity gal who dangled promises of "Tod [A]shley's new post-C$C project" before me
like a can of frosty grape soda infront of a parched diabetic. Just when I was beginning to
give up hope and entertain thoughts of re-enlisting in the Kiss army, a package from
hitherto obscure indie label JetSet arrived at my door.
Hungrily, shredding open the plain brown wrapper, I was confronted with an image of our
supposedly would-be saviour, smokin' a butt and grasping one of the peoples' beers. So far
so good. Racing to my Mickey Mouse Close-&-Play, slappin' on the disc, ready to kick out
the jams like an undead Rob Tyner, I readied myself and started pouring over the liner
notes to discover....what's this??....bazouki?......djembe?........ACCORDION????!??? Before
I could realign my narrow musical prejudices, "Some Strange Reaction" broke through my
long-suffering woofers & tweeters and vanquished my momentary doubts. Wading deeper
into the album, however, it was clear that this was no workaday Cop Shoot Cop soundalike.
There would be no vitriolic call for urban upheval here. The guns had been holstered, the
soapbox replaced with a bar stool and the brass-knuckles had been hocked for beer money,
but somehow it still kicked the snots out of everything. This was an album that marched the
perma-frownin' 'No Wave'ers out of the East Village scenester bars and down to the dance
halls of Lower East Side's ethnic ghost town, where mohawks and black leather get swapped
for hasidic finery. How fitting that it came in a triagular sleeve, as it would not slip meekly
and comfortably in with the rest of my cd collection. GET OFF THE CROSS is a phoenix of
an album that flattens the competion.

It's funny, I'm going to say this one comes down to the lyrics. If the anarchic non-grooves and frankenstein stitch-up song constructions aren't your thing, it'll never really click. I particularly like how the amateur trumpet blatting is used as a kind of ugly glue throughout. Anyway, I think Ian Svenonius is a bona fide genius. From memory:

"Not talkin bout/A Beatles Song/Written a hundred years before I was born/they're all talking bout/the round and round/but who's got the real anti-parent-culture sound?"

self-dramatization of the Ulysses "myth," a hilariously extreme conflation of sXe, rasta, greaser, peter pan, anything that's "against." It's that "hundred years" that nails it, the wrongness of it (a petulant teenager yelp) makes the boast self-deflating.

"A hundred flowers bloom/A hundred schools of thought contend/Come one baby/Let's hang around."

From Mao to Pope to teenage lobotomy. Brilliant.

And terrific packaging to boot.

The best intro in rock. Guitar interplay that licks around the engine of the song like flickering lightening while Jagger punches the overload button. As the lyrics suggest, the song itself is like some sort of swirling storm, breaking moodily then bulding into a roaring tornado. Like a brooding apocalypse that bursts out from the speakers, Gimme Shelter is ragged, glorious, sheer rock. And nobody does it better than the Stones. Nobody.

“Give me two records and I’ll make you a universe,” DJ Spooky once wrote. Jace Clayton, a.k.a. DJ /rupture, goes him one better: not only does he have the skills to back up such a claim, unlike Spooky, but on this headwrecking two-part set, he reconstructs the sound of the world we live in. A former Boston drum & bass DJ currently residing in Spain, he mixes up hip-hop, dancehall, dub, Indian, North and South African music, gabber, glitchcore, and 20th-century composition into an unbelievably well-plotted whole: it’s simultaneously abrading and compulsively listenable like nothing since prime Public Enemy. Clayton’s spent the last five years obsessively studying North African music, and his emphasis on Arabicisms both real and received (the genius opening mix of “Get Ur Freak On” and “Oochie Wally”) has special resonance post-9/11: there may be no more haunting album sequence this year than the disc’s ending, which moves from Muslimgauze’s “The Taliban” to Paul Simon with Ladysmith Black Mambazo’s “Homeless” to a gorgeous live track by Miriam Makeba, a 30-year exile from her native South Africa during apartheid. All this plus Rude-Ass Tinker’s insane deconstruction of “U Can’t Touch This,” the funniest piece of hip-hop-mangling laptopia ever and a good match for Negativland’s “U2.” [taken from my blog on my declaring it my 6th favorite album of 2001; now it'd be third]

First off, there are the strings. Those are just glorious. Secondly, Caron Wheeler has a very clear, agile voice that just swoops wonderfully over the melody. The beat is toe-tapping to the extreme and the harmonization in the chorus is simultaneously simple and perfect. Few songs are as well-realized as this one.

I already liked U2 when I bought Achtung Baby. It seems like a continuation of everything I had heard of theirs in terms of subject matter, except more personal. I was unaware of the postmodern hoopla surrounding it. All I heard were what I thought (and still think) to be good songs, and good production. Yes, the production doesn't compare very well with the techno records coming out at the time, as well as My Bloody Valentine, but in America, these things weren't very popular. At 11 I was unaware of them.

The whole album, to me, seemed very European. It made me think of Cafes and the contrast between old buildings and modern ones. The album made me think about speed, about the possibility of taking trains to all of these different and wonderfully cosmopolitan places. In its own strange way, Achtung Baby was my Trans-Europe Express. The album became part of the excitment of discovering the world, especially the changes that were occuring in Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall (this is really the moment, in my mind, when Europe truly became the leading place for freedom, as opposed to America, which has been dying in its own way since the end of "Communism".) All of the above has little to do with the lyrics as much as the music and even the photos.

As for the songs themselves, my favorite is "Love is Blindness". I don't think the lyrics are breaking that much new ground, but the sounds are as evocative as anything I have heard. And the lyrical content and sonic environment match perfectly. All of the various guitars coming in and out, the organ that starts everything off, the melancholy (!) dubby baseline, everything. Especially chill inducing for me are the two "solos" that the Edge plays. The first involves him playing a few tearing notes before he aborts the whole thing. this could, if you read into it, be seen as a metaphor for the dysfunctional love being described in the lyrics. The second invloves the quick strumming of chords later on that takes the song to another level much the same way the Mullen's drums do on "With or Without you" on JT. I tend to react as much to the guitar sounds as anything else, and I don't tend to buy into Bono's lyrics as much as his attitudes. In this sense, "Even Better..." and "Mysterious Ways" are greats as well. As for "One" I like it! I think that the way that the song shifts subtly in dynamics makes it magic. When Bono rips into his open-throated vocalizing at the end, if you can like it, you will.

The problem with U2 is that they are overpraised without much thought. No canon-enforcing rock critic seems to explain the magic that they are capable of. JT, for instance, is always reffered to in the context of hair metal. Nobody says why they like them. For me, I always liked the idea of subsuming lots of influences completely under the pattern of the standard pop song form. That is why I like St. Etienne, Bjork, Everything but the Girl's latest work, and it it is why I like Achtung Baby. Yes, some of their songs are weak, but if you hate them, hate them for that fact. Hating them because Bono puts his foot in his mouth creates a double standard. MOST rock stars and pop stars are either pompous or idiots. Or both. But this is I*L*M*.
(Tom I hope this helps!)

I've always heard Achtung Baby thematically, as a prodigal-son kind of album; the songs seem to be about someone immersing themselves in media and the flesh, shaking off their puritan past and allowing themselves to experience things they'd have avoided in the past, in part to come out on the other side knowing more and better, in part to slap themselves in the face and face down some of their more irrational fears.

(Part of that has to do with my knowledge of what U2's earlier work was like, part of it to do with my most charged hearing of the album, on a Greyhound from Seattle to Minneapolis, having lost my job and apartment and having my back go out and landing in the hospital all within 24 hours: I'd always heard those prodigal-son themes in the album, but listening to it then and there, at 2am on headphones while everyone else on the bus was asleep, brought them home in an extremely personal way. I also happen to completely unabashedly fucking adore the Edge's multi-colored psychedelic guitar solo on "The Fly.")

At the risk of cracking Tom up completely, the album it's most reminiscent of, for me, is the Avalanches' Since I Left You, except that I hear the Avalanches album as enacting a (very similar) scenario of a woman breaking free of a constricting relationship and discovering the world. Both albums take off into parts unknown right from the git: "Zoo Station" announces Bono as ready for the gridlock et al--ready to surrender himself to the world rather than trying to control his corner of it--while "Since I Left You" is the bittersweet sound of a woman "discovering a world so new" following a breakup. In both cases, the music--"Zoo Station"'s industrio-guitars, "Left You"'s playful sample melange/groove--can be heard as signifiers of the world they're entering: post-Communist Europe where everything's up for grabs, the dizzy-dancing nightworld of post-rave clubland. And both end on an unresolved note: "Acrobat" and "Love is Blindness" (my two least faves by far) attempt to get a grip on the task at hand (caring for someone else), but Bono sounds uncertain of whether he can handle something that concrete; he's still woozy from all the movement he's been through. Similarly, the end of Since I Left You finds our heroine wistfully looking back at the end of the relationship, wishing she could go back, knowing she can't, because she's changed too much to ever enter something like it again.

Off the top of my head: I like pastiches when they are heartfelt. Pavement are more lovably vulnerable than any of the bands they ripped off. It's the guitar equivalent of a great IDM album: parasitic but wonderfully dysfunctional. It has the best 'bad' production (I've heard) since White Light/White Heat. The fuzzy/tinny textures are obviously a lot like VU/SY/MBV's, but more childishly playful. It's more pop (in a Beatles sense not Britney)and less rock than any of those bands.

(not that I'm actually a fan or anything)

It's tragic enough when people today think there's anything 'already done' about a rock-solid collection of great, catchy songs with enough melodic interplay to make the thing timeless, so to hear you say that pop was already done back in 92 is really, really bleak. Don't be bleak man, be happy!

The melodic interplay on this album is the best ever. The way it just seems like the songs are conceived in their final form: that no melody is inseperable from the others that accompany it, really is awesome. Also, the perfect use of the thin sound to bring out the enthusiasm of the band without crowding out the pop melodies, makes it one of the few records I can truly enjoy for the energy.

And it's a rock-solid collection of great, catchy songs, damn it!

(I can't get past the first song: so perhaps I may be convinced to give it another few goes, if you think there is really goodness in it. By the way, bad band name. Bad. Yes.)