NOTCHES IN THE SPINE OF TIME
Impossible as it may be to alter your place in time by force of will, truth is we are all threads in a four-dimensional tapestry stretching backwards and forward for as far as memorabilia becomes memory. And motion through, though not directly affected by our will, will submit to our senses if only to be noticed. My evidence of this is as follows:
1. I Wanna Be Around (Tony Bennett- The Essential Tony Bennett, Track 17)
One of pop culture's more perfect examples of "right place, right time," Tony Bennett has routinely peeked his suave bedroom eyes around time's door post just as the market was ready for him. To say he has a genre-defining voice is redundant in the extreme for anyone who's seen movies or TV in the last handful of decades. There only so many options to perfectly evoke both sophistication and carnal desire. In the fifties and early sixties he was one of a field of great songbook professionals that included Nat King Cole, Frank Sinatra and the whole Rat Pack roster besides. By the eighties he was a comfortable fit for the semi-annual nostalgia waves one could nearly set a clock by, and now he's the last of a breed. The Harry Connick Jr.'s and Michael Buble's of this world will only ever be shadows of their heroes, of which Tony Bennett is the last great example. Starting off with a smooth jazz piano stating the melody in an enticingly roundabout fashion, this sad eyed (and deceptively barbed) ballad stays nimble over its entire length and never sinks into the sort of orchestral blandishment that can sometimes turn this kind of pop to twaddle--
2. A Shot In The Arm ( Wilco- Summerteeth, Track 3)
Wilco, though adventurous and perpetually name dropped by the musical literati, can often come off as sodden and excessively downcast. But every now and again they turn that corner toward daylight, as they do here with jingling percussive bells, a strong snare beat, bright piano and occasional fogs of sound effects, "A Shot In the Arm" is easily one of the most bombastically theatrical selections Wilco's ever worked up. The first self-encouraging mantra-like refrain hands off to a more surreal repeated statement before the first verse repeats and finally hands off to a third over-and-over assertion all of which lend the illusion of narrative arc, but really just amounts to a piece of fully realized if slightly opaque chamber pop--
3. Dear Darkness ( PJ Harvey- White Chalk, Track 2)
Trying to keep up with Polly Jean Harvey's album by album code-switching can become a bit tiring. From urban sophisticate on 2000's Stories from the City Stories From the Sea to lo-fi indie rocker grrrl on 2004's Uh Huh Her, and all the ones before that that I didn't really keep up with. With White Chalk she stands atop the stairs in a pale night gown, like a haunted child in an Edwardian ghost story, and tells of her visions and darkness. This is one of those songs that, if you like it, tells you that you should immediately buy the whole album. It's of an inseparable narrative and stylistic piece with the entire work. Harvey is said to have learned piano just before this recording. And the childlike clarity and simplicity of the piano parts, surrounded as they are by a nearly audible emptiness and Harvey's purposely pianissimo vocals, will nearly spook your socks off--
4. Ceremony (New Order- Substance, Track 1)
This song marks the moment that Joy Division ceased to be Joy Division. But neither was it yet New Order. Lead singer Ian Curtis had died and the remaining band members were attempting to carry on. To a very real extent it still sounds like a Joy Division track. Specifically the thin guitar tone guitars and syncopated bass line. But the content and mood are on an ascension, looking up. You can hear what was and also hear what would happen next. An anomalous song, there are people who disliked both Joy Division and New Order who might like "Ceremony"--
5. Loose Nuts on The Valendrome (Liars- They Threw Us All in a Trench and Stuck a Monument on Top, Track 3)
You know that venomous mood that accompanies city driving on a hot day? The traffic jams, noise, rude drivers and cavalcade of idiots? Well, on their first album, Liars bottled that, stuffed it in their garage and made a rock band out of it. No surprise they hail from NYC and less surprising still that they are most easily described as prog-punk. But there is always a loss of substance in the transfer to a category; "Punk" doesn't quite say it. This music is loud and dense but also catchy and semi-melodic. It counts as angry/mad and just plain insane/mad, like mercury poisoning. I would welcome any viable explanation as to what this song is about. The lyrics seem to be notes from an extended free associative therapy session and the music reminds me of The Minutemen, The Pixies and Bone Machine-era Tom Waits--
6. Parachute Woman (The Rolling Stones- Beggar's Banquet, Track 4)
The cover photo of Beggar's Banquet, along with being nearly iconic in it's own right, is possibly the most appropriate in subject and texture ever to its respective band and album. At their most potent the Rolling Stones play music that makes you feel as though you've stumbled upon a haggard musician doing lines in a stall with an ugly prostitute and slurring exclamation about privacy. "Parachute Woman" is a brief album track, not their best but among the middling crop of the Stones' strongest material, an example of a band in stride. Short and ragged with a good hook and hollow sound that suggests the band singing and playing are just too high to remember--
7. Summertime [organica remix] (Billie Holliday {Remix by Scott Schlacter}- Billie Holliday Remixed and Reimagined, Track 7)
A nearly unimaginable nexus of time and style... this is what music has the potential to be. Piece one in this puzzle is George Gershwin. His soulful-unto-spiritual American opera Porgy and Bess will be subject to revision and study for years to come. And "Summertime," the drama's opening scene-setter aria contains wistful sorrow and chiaroscuro flourishes of a tainted nostalgia that absolutely cry for the expressive range of a Billie Holliday. Which brings me to piece number two, Billie Holliday is an American Icon as only the twentieth century could've produced, a hybrid of jazz and blues with a romanticizing dark side that sits quietly beside the cultural tensions her position in history imbued. And in Gershwin's nuanced and loaded composition she finds a piece fully the equal of her assets. The current generation of musicians may have done little to rival Gershwin or Holliday but they have become master re-interpreters. It seems to be our historical task to forever reassess and gain new perspective, and this track is a masterful example of the re-mixer's art, collaging elements to enhance or re-evaluate or simply re-discover. It's a game of repetitions and for all of their talent these re-mixers can only be as good as their source material. This track delivers on the promise of its constituent parts. There is a fragmented adventurousness that fans of DJ culture will immediately recognize but there's also a strong imprint of the history contained. The result, on the surface, is a beautifully languid piece of trip-hop jazz soul. But with even a cursory sense of the history, it blooms into a rich montage of American song-craft and historical pathos--
8. I Will Dare (The Replacements- Let it Be, Track 1)
Youth and young manhood are eternal subjects of both rock music and the rock and roll mythos (self-aware post-millennial rockers Kings of Leon even named an album that very phrase). Few better examples of that fact exist than The Replacements. To listen to their albums is to stare into the hollow, laughing eyes of a slightly tweaked teenager with a guitar and knack for tune. To observe their reputation is to see in detail the less-than-superstar allure of living your youth on tour, in the studio, and drinking with friends you didn't even know the night before. A bopping, countrified rocker, "I Will Dare" rides its bass up and down through the verses, hitching occasional chorus and bridge work from lead guitar. The thin production absolutely screams, "80's indie band!" and Paul Westerberg's John Lennon-meets-Johnny Rotten vocal makes you wonder if Billy Idol used to secretly listen to Replacements records at night and cry...into a pile of money--
9. This House is a Circus (Arctic Monkeys- Favourite Worst Nightmare, Track 8)
Of a thematic piece with The Replacements, The Arctic Monkeys had the good fortune of coming up in a market that had an ever-burgeoning demand for "snarky lads." They played the same cards but two decades later and a full ocean away. So they till the same fields of youth and noise as The Replacements but boast the massive sales their elders never managed, as well as the critical acclaim they both share. Sounding more than a little bit like The Jam but with a tad of their contemporaries The Libertines mixed in, The Arctic Monkeys may have come into the decade barely teenagers but after two albums they were apparently the numero uno baby-Strokes legacy holders (it came down to them and Franz Ferdinand as the decade closed but neither band could manage a respectable third album and the question seemed largely moot as the only long lasting legacy of the 2000's garage rock boom was Jack White's career as an indie-rock tycoon)--
10. Comfort Eagle (Cake- Comfort Eagle, Track 7)
The Nineties have come roaring back of late but, lest we forget, quintessentially Nineties irony rockers Cake never actually went away. They survived the intervening decade by realizing a very important piece of industry wisdom; niches die slowly, and will likely return. As long as you can still deliver, chances are your audience is still out there somewhere. Songs like "Frank Sinatra," "The Distance," "I Will Survive," and "Never There" may have passed into nostalgia-night jukebox immortality but there's still more to be had. From their 2001 album Comfort Eagle, this song of the same name is one of the strongest tracks Cake's ever recorded. A spirited call down the corridors of power, the dryly spoken lyrics lampoon politics, religion, and the businesses of both as the strong melodic lines, handled by a growling guitar and occasional trumpet, turn it into an effective head-bobbing anthem--
