a coherent collection of random statements regarding God, words and tunes

Hit and Run, Volume III

So, one more for the road, and it's both familiar and a pleasant surprise. Two guys you oughta know, who've worked together in the past but with only one album under their collective names in the past 27 years.

Of the one: Even if you don't know what specific aural approach y'r gonna be on the receiving end of THIS time, you know you're always gonna get the buttload of ambiance he brings with  him everywhere he goes. That said, this is easily his most accessible album in more than 15 years.

The other: Once the wonderfully quirky leader of a wonderfully quirky (and surprisingly successful) band whose collaboration, and success, with said band ended ugly and bitterly, and whose attitude from that point on as far as I'm concerned has tainted his entire solo career. Despite his ongoing reputation as a purveyor of world-music, I'd honestly given up on ever connecting with the guy again years ago (like, pretty much around the time of his band's final album, some 20 years back).

So, hearing something this bright and hopeful -- and melodic -- from these two guys (especially since that other official collaboration, My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, was more curiously experimental than actually enjoyable), well... again, it's just nice to hear it after all this time.

Roll the credits, maestro...

Brian Eno and David Byrne -- Everything That Happens Will Happen Today. Again, besides finally being able to actually enjoy David Byrne again, this is Eno's catchiest album since the criminally overlooked Wrong Way Up with John Cale. (As past discussed, tim and I may be the only two people in the world to have owned that one.)

You can only get it, with any number of options to choose from, here: http://www.everythingthathappens.com. And here's why you should: Basically, it's Talking Heads' True Stories with atmosphere. Granted, nothing here is as rollicking as "Love for Sale" or "Puzzling Evidence," or quite as sublime as "City of Dreams," but there's a mood throughout that just feels right, while (particularly on the more Byrne-ish tunes) retaining much of the down-to-earthness that marked that particular album (which probably isn't even in my top 5 Heads albums, actually, but WAS their last good one).

So on to the songs.... "Home" feels like home, and again, I never thought I'd feel that way about a David Byrne song again. Behind a country-meets-noise arrangement, David actually croons again, "Heaven knows, what keeps mankind alive," before leading into one of those mundane-yet-enlightening choruses he'd done so well back in the day:

Home - where the wheels are turning
Home - why I keep returning
Home - where my world is breaking in two
Home - with the neighbors fighting
Home-  always so exciting
Home - were my parents telling the truth?

The next two songs highlight the different poles "Home"s already hinted at. "My Big Nurse" is even more countrified (even while containing one unfortunate line I won't quote here), while "I Feel My Stuff," while the longest and wordiest song here and featuring some curious white-boy rapping from Byrne that isn't quite "Crosseyed and Painless" but curious enough, is still ultimately a platform for some decidedly Eno-esque dissonance and atmospherics, although there's some great hairy guitar at the end that I'm assuming is David's.

"Everything That Happens" is a lovely, stately thing, while "Life Is Long" begs to be the single here. Again, it's been years -- crap, technically decades (since 2 IS plural) -- since a David Byrne creation has sounded this warm amd open:

Ev'rybody says that the living is easy
I can barely see, 'cause my head's in the way
Tigers walk behind me -- they are to remind me that
I'm lost, but I'm not afraid...

Now I can say those three little words
And ev'ry day, I'm dreaming a world
Soul to soul, a kiss and a sigh
Holding back the waters outside.

Life is long if you give it away
So stay, don't go, 'cause I'm fading away
Soul to soul, between you and me
Chain me down, but I am still free...

"The River" is a plaintive call for a better world, "I'm thinking of a song / I need you to remember it / The forest is alive / It asks us to participate / We lifted up our eyes / To promise and reciprocate / We fell down on our knees  / For ev'ry human being... / Oooh, but a change is gonna come / Like Sam Cooke sang in '63 / The river sings a song to me / On ev'ry St Cecillia's Day...."

"Strange Overtones" is a slowly funky thang that sounds a bit more Eno than Byrne, but either way enjoy grooving to it. "Wanted for Life" is even more unmistakably Eno, with its syncopated blasts, but Byrne puts in a nice vocal performance here to compete with it.

"One Fine Day," while again not quite "City of Dreams," has that same elegiac feeling to it. You'll like it. "Poor Boy" slides back into Eno-onics, right down to the slightly garbled treatment of Byrne's vocals.

"The Lighthouse" is the best of both worlds -- Brian brings the atmosphere, David brings the soul, and the result is both languid and moving:

I'll build a house so level
With 7 walls, long and true
The day we raised that roof up high
Unto the fading light
We sang the whole night through
& no one needed proof
& I could see the moon
out by the lighthouse.

If you've ever enjoyed either of these guys before, now's yr chance to actually enjoy them again. Thanks again Brian, and welcome the heck BACK, David.

(Update, 10/8: EMusic just added this one, too. Go FETCH.)

Posted by: burninglight at 23:45 | link | comments (8)

Hit and Run, Volume II

This'll be the shortest one, because really, you know already if you want this. As I've said elsewhere, this one isn't gonna get the band any new fans, but anyone jonesing for a new album from these guys - and that includes me -- will certainly enjoy it.

The Verve -- Forth. I stumbled across these guys fairly early -- a friend back in Jersey bought an import of their second album, A Northern Soul, ear-unheard - just 'cause of its user-friendly-Clockwork-Orange look. (And c'mon, TELL me Richard Ashcroft doesn't have that "Alex" look about him.) And we both dug on it -- think: early Waterboys, without Mike Scott's great lyrics but with an entrancing English twist on that equally great "big music" sound (and Ashcroft's voice ain't entirely dissimilar to Scott's, either -- cut out all that joyous whooping and y'r danged close). All the vague spiritual guitar-laden atmospherics you could eat and enough snarl to put the just-OK lyrics across. A great album to crank up and not have to listen too closely to.

Then came Urban Hymns and a boatload of actual songs and lyrics and everything -- including the near-perfect hit that inadvertently made the Stones even stupid-richer, "Bittersweet Symphony" -- and the secret was out. And then the breakup, followed by a couple kinda uninspiring Ashcroft solo albums that had the songs to head for the mainstream but not the sound to put them across.

And so, back to Forth. Think: A tighter Northern Soul. Not a lot of specific songage here -- with the exception of the obvious single (for The Verve, anyway) "Valium Skies" and the epic closer "Appalachian Springs," probably the two best songs here -- but that sound is back with a vengeance. Every one of the 10 songs on the "official" album breaks five minutes (one of the two bonus tracks is a modest 3-plus, but that's it), but if you like atmosphere with attitude, you won't mind it a bit.

Here's hoping they can hold it together for another album and take it up a notch, but it's nice to have them back, 'cause again no-one this side of Mike Scott does it better (and Mike largely abandoned it for more Celtic pastures 20 years ago). And again, if this is all new to you, Urban Hymns is a more sensible starting-point. But one could do worse than to start here.

And speaking of "nice to finally have you back..." Well, that's for Volume III.

Posted by: burninglight at 01:03 | link | comments (9)

Hit and Run, Volume I

Since it's pretty clear that I'm not going to have time for an extended musical review column anytime soon, though I'd take them in bite-sized pieces and at least do them justice, if not necessarily ruminate at length. FWIW, none of the three I have on my plate right now are blow-me-out-of-the-water good; nonetheless, all of them are pleasant surprises to one degree or another.

So let's start with possibly the most surprising one, at least in one sense....

Paul Westerberg -- 49:00 (...of your time life). I have to recant somewhat from this column (scroll to bottom). While this is nowhere as good as Mono/Stereo, it's better than I had any right to expect a Paul Westerberg album to be at this point. And in terms of capturing the spirit of The Replacements (particular that part that extends a certain finger proudly, and decidedly yet defiantly at the artist's own expense), this is actually as close as Paul's been since Pleased to Meet Me, if not Hootenanny.

Let's start with the, um, marketing strategy -- namely, the one that offered the initial 43:55 minutes as a download on Amazon for 49 cents. (Which, by the way, 1) became the most popular download on Amazon, and 2) was removed two weeks later. Which basically means you need to rely on the kindness of strangers now.) The remaining 5:05, sometime later, was offered at a completely different site for either the standard 99 cents or, well, $5.05.

That Paul.

Anyway, if you have a way of tracking it all down, go for it -- then prepared to be equally thrilled and annoyed by the contents, and quite deliberately on both counts. And speaking of tracks... well, there aren't any, nor song titles, although paulwesterberg.net ("a bad idea whose time has come" - love it) was kind enough to try. So, armed with said attempt to make sense out of chaos, let's venture in...

"(Tell Me) Who You Gonna Marry?" and "With or Without Her (Kentucky Risin')" are both bright, bouncy tunes that would've fit late Replacements/early solo Paul (the good version) quite nicely. "Something in My Life Is Missing," as the title suggests, slows it down slightly while taking the heart-factor up a notch.

"Visitor's Day" brings things back to bouncy and smarkalecky, singing about an attempt to drive out to the old folks' home, and throws in some grunge & slide guitar in process, like some great lost Beggar's Banquet outtake. It's about here that the discord begins making itself known, as the song abruptly cuts out into several seconds of another song snippet, before cutting out into "Devil Raised a Good Boy," which cranks the amps up even further and closes with some great snarling guitar before kinda-seguing into a sweet half-minute of Paul singing "you're my girl" before segueing into the charmingly shambling and self-explanatory "Everyone's Stupid."

That Paul.

After this roughly halfway point, imagine yourself at the mercy of someone who keeps changing the dial on the radio as you scream, "Hey! I was getting into that!" 'Cause that's pretty much how the next 20-plus minutes go. Especially with what sounds like a heartrending ballad in "Goodnight Sweet Prince," if not for the snippets and noise winding in and out of it on a deliberately and annoyingly regular basis. "Out of My System," "Be My Darling," and "It'll Never Die," also perfectly good songs all, are similarly abused. And some of the snippets themselves, such as "Money Goes Straight to Her Heart," leave you wanting for more.

Finally, the album descends into a would-be medley of snippet-hits -- including "Hello Goodbye," "Born to Be Wild," "Stupid Girl," "Dandy," "Rocket Man" -- before finally landing on, of all things, "I Think I Love You."

The closer, "Johnny Said So," is a rockin' little thing that's either kicked Chipmunk-style or being sung by Paul's little boy -- who knows?

That Paul.

And then there's the aforementioned "5:05," which kicks off with an 45-second-long old-time radio introduction of Hitler, before launching into a Byrds-with-a-deathwish little ditty declaring, "It ain't about the money... if you want to sue me, then SUE ME." Replete, of course, with FU-laden coda.

That Paul.

Again, this thing's a mess. But if that's one of the things you loved about The Replacements, then you owe it to yourself. And, of course, to That Paul.

Posted by: burninglight at 01:45 | link | comments (12)

Hello, I Must Be Going....
(didn't I use this header once already back in the day? o well...)

Especially since writing on a Saturday isn't my oeuvre, I'll try to be succinct here. But things being what they've been -- not bad, but busy -- it's easier to get back on the board this way....

Also to say, no musical entries here. I've got a few pretty-good-but-not-"omigosh, I gotta write about this NOW" ones from in the dock, but they'll have to wait a little longer. I'm gonna stick to recapping the life stuff for now. In ascending order from last time:

1) Yeah, I'm gonna go ahead and dip my toes in the water with this organization, which works with developmentally disabled adults. Start with setting up and putting out their newsletter, see where we go from there. They want me to join their board but I really gotta have my own relationship with them first. Marion's been teaching them art for the better part of a year now,  but I'm still just the husband right now. They've got a big event planned for November, so by that time we oughta know how deep I really want to get. But this is a start, and it'll still help them.

2) The one that's really sucking up my time right now -- probably obviously by the fact that I'm doing this on a Saturday -- is work. Post-yet-another-re-org (no casualties this time, thankfully, just a lot of age-specific restructuring), I now AM Adult Boy for Group Publishing. Curriculum, small-group materials, and books that supplement that, until further notice (and further notice is probably quite a ways away), I AM the team. Which, so far, has meant a lot more administrative stuff -- a lot more talking with authors and reviewing manuscripts, and dealing with production issues earlier in the process, on top of the standard prototyping, editing, and of course, trying to get my own stuff written (which needless to say has suffered the most so far -- that said, we may be only a couple months from a green light on said project, which our VP is very much viewing as the foundation for everything else we do going forward. As always, no pressure, though. ). Anyway, it's not a bad problem -- I'm just still sorting through how to do all this in the most effective way (being that "I'm Carl and I've been a recovering workaholic for 15 years." "Hi Carl!").

3) Which does kinda make its way back to the group. What started off as a field-test gang of friends has, not entirely unpredictably, grown into something more. To the point that for several (including, not initially but inevitably, us), this IS church. Which threw us into a bit of a dilemma -- what do we do? what do we need to change? What do we call ourselves (i.e., a house church? a church plant? Fred?) Blahdeblah. And so on.

After a lot of soul-searching and the previously mentioned prayer & fasting, we came up with a sort of obvious rhetorical answer/question: If, based on what we've been doing, people who are lot more spiritually mature than myself already consider this "church," do we really NEED to change anything?

Structurally/self-perceptionally, the answer was a clear "no." That said, we did add/change a couple things that were more "major" in content than in time commitment: Specifically, more regular worship (playing guitar and singing more regularly isn't a big jump), a separate once-a-month time to break bread both socially and spiritually (i.e., we'll be doing the Lord's Supper more regularly than the megachurch down the street), and a resolve to keep an eye out for other needs in town we can come alongside (such as #1, and the homeless shelter a couple of our guys are already involved in). And at the same time, recognizing that for some people, the group is still just "group" and that the fact that they go to a more "institutional" church is cool, too (and maybe even someone we could come alongside and help as opportunity occurs).

And as a rather odd consequence, as we've shared with others what's been going on, others are joining us. It's no longer the intimate little group it started out as, but hopefully will be an intimate somewhat larger group. And then? We'll cross that bridge when we get there. But we've decided not to sweat that just yet (you know, having already spent the summer doing so somewhat unnecessarily. )

Anyway, it's obviously a work-in-progress, but at least we're all on the same page even as we have our own circles to travel in. And that's not a bad thing, either.

So that's kind of that for now. Next time, tuneage. I think. 

Posted by: burninglight at 20:32 | link | comments (21)