Time Filler: Worst Rock/Pop Song of 20th Century

While we're waiting, a diversion.  Name your choice for the worst rock/pop song in recent history.

My choice is easy, since it haunts me still: "Broken Wings" by Mr. Mister.  Strident, screechy vocals, sententious, self-important lyrics, and nearly endless play in the summer of 1985, the summer I spent working in a greenhouse, a job I loathed to the core of my being.  If hell is other people, it'll be Mr. Mister for me.

Then again, if you like it, no big.

The Suburbs versus Picaresque

Hard one! Both are bands that I picked for my original list, though in each case I chose a different album. Both bands hit the scene post-’99, as well as the albums, which makes them particularly apt for this contest, in my mind. And while I was hooked on Arcade Fire pretty much from the get-go, and my enthusiasm for the Decemberists has come only recently, it’s the latter band that’s been hitting my speakers more often these days.

Regarding Picaresque — I must confess that this was only the second album of theirs I actually purchased and listened to in its entirety. After grooving on The King Is Dead I made a Pandora channel that featured them and a rotating assortment of one or two other bands for variety, and playing that pretty much all the time for a six-month period. I had it in my head that all the earlier albums were artsy concept albums of interconnected tracks, and that KiD represented something of a departure with its discrete tracks more along the lines of a traditional pop album. But Picaresque also fits that bill pretty well. Its songs don’t necessarily hang together.

But what songs! “The Infanta” is a classic album-opener — no surprise that they frequently use it to open their live shows. “We Both Go Down Together” is a perfect fusion of their folksy and pop-sy sensibilities. “The Mariner’s Revenge Song” is a perfect gem of a revenge ballad, and one of my favorite of their songs, ever. And the lyrics! They’re all a cut above the words of mere mortal bands, of course. I love a band that makes me use the dictionary once in a while. I could go on and on about the perfection of the couplet “Meet me on my vast veranda / my sweet untouched Miranda” — the way the wink of the archness of the rhyme masks the ominous nature of the proposal.

It’s a fantastic album, so any talk of “down sides” must be couched with that qualification, but the worst thing I can say about it is that there are indeed a few tracks that I’ll remove from iTunes once I post this review, because I can generally do without them. “The Sporting Life,” “From My Own True Love,” and “On the Bus Mall” would be songs many a band would be proud to have made, but they don’t stand up well in the company of the other songs on the album.

The Suburbs is actually much closer to being a concept album the way I imagined that all Decemberists albums were until I actually listened to them. Even a scan of the song titles — all nineteen of them — conveys pretty succinctly a narrative of suburban sprawl and modern ennui. The lyrics aren’t as incisive or memorable as the ones on Picaresque, but combined with the multilayered music they create much more of an immersive experience. This is an album I want to just-listen-to, as opposed to only having-on. I love me that complex sound — listen to the chorus on “City With No Children,” the way the vocals and the the choral backing vocals and that driving bassline are layered on top of ambient keyboards. So cool — and that’s one of the more stripped-down songs on the album. One disappointment is that the strengths on the album are somewhat frontloaded: the Modern Man—>Rococo—>Empty Room—>City With No Children—>Half Light I&II progression is transcendent, but the back half slows down, picks up a little for Sprawl I & II, and then just kind of peters out with the “Suburbs” reprise.

I have made it this far without having decided which album is going to win. They are both so good. The tilt is going to go based on my gut response, just having listened to them back-to-back yet again. And it’s going to come down to vocals. I like Win Butler’s voice, and I really like all the female vocals that harmonize and back him on almost every song. Colin Meloy’s voice, I … tolerate. It’s got the quirk factor going for it, and quirk is nice, but beauty is better. I might choose differently on a different day, but for this particular Deathmatch, advantage: Arcade.

WINNER: The Suburbs

Jesus of Suburbia Meets the Cloud Cult

It takes a certain kind of hubris to reinvent the gospel.  Think of the outsized egos of Anne Rice or Mel Gibson, both of whom have recast the story of Christ in recent years. As it turns out, the greatest story ever told works pretty well in its original version. It has a likable underdog for a main character, lots of exciting plot twists, some snappy dialogue, and a very happy ending.  Of course, this didn't dissuade Anne Rice from writing Christ the Lord, and it didn't keep Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day from writing his own Jesus story--or sort of, at least.

Green Day's effort, the 2004 album American Idiot, is punk rock opera that imagines Jesus as a teenager living in modern suburbia.  This is an ambitious conceit, especially from a band whose oeuvre consists mostly of songs about masturbating and smoking pot.  But Jesus it is: the nine-minute second track of the album introduces us to Jesus of Suburbia, and the remainder of the album purports to tells his life story.

As devised by Armstrong, Jesus is a disaffected youth, trapped in the soul-crushing suburbs:

I'm the son of rage and love
The Jesus of suburbia
From the Bible of none of the above
On a steady diet of 

Soda pop and Ritalin
No one ever died for my sins in hell
As far as I can tell
At least the ones I've gotten away with

The description here is apt: "the steady diet of soda pop and Ritalin" seems fitting sustenance for the millennial generation.  Armstrong knows this generation intuitively, and knows how to create a compelling anti-hero to represent their anxiety and boredom.

What happens next in the life of Jesus of Suburbia (JOS) is less clear.  Sequentially, the songs suggests that JOS leaves the burbs for the big city--the city of the dead.  Here, he wanders alone until meeting St. Jimmy, another character in the drama, or perhaps an alter ego to JOS, depending on whose interpretation you believe. St. Jimmy meets and falls in love with Whatsername, a girl who eventually dumps him with a breakup letter.  JOS returns to suburbia and lives the rest of his life, unhappily.  For a more thorough, less grammatical explanation, see the video explanation below:

The story of Jesus of Suburbia unfolds through songs that sound, well, like Green Day always sounds--incredibly tight, three-chord punk rock, with Armstrong's nasally-but-charismatic singing over the top.  And there are some standout songs: "American Idiot" is not really a part of the Jesus story, but is about as good as Green Day ever gets.  It got me through the darker days of the Bush administration, that's for sure.  "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" has an unforgettable melody; "Holiday" could have been recorded on the Dookie.  Other songs blend together, and the Jesus concept doesn't quite work for me, but I think American Idiot is a solid album.

The Cloud Cult is a much different kind of band: musically and lyrically, it as ethereal as Green Day is earthy. The group has no shortage of indie pretense: the band tours in a solar-powered van, records in a geothermal-powered studio, and uses only recyclable materials for all of their music. These sorts of things would make Green Day want to punch Cloud Cult in the face, I would guess.

Like American Idiot, Light Chasing is a concept album--as far as I can tell, it is about an exploration of space or another dimension.  The album begins with a lush instrumental titled "Unexplainable Stories," and then moves through a kind of songs about journeys and arrivals.  Frankly, I am usually put off by aspirational / metaphysical  titles such as "Invocation" and "Journey to the Light #2," since they always promise more than they deliver.

Still, Cloud Cult has a rich, symphonic sound, and whatever journey I was on was pleasant enough until it was halted by the jarring autotune of "The Exploding People" and "Journey to the Light, #4." This and the sprawling instrumentation (synthesizers! violins! electric guitar!) made it, for me, an unengaging, emotionally distant album.  

Decision: American Idiot, Green Day. 

Glad to see the resurrection of DM'99.

I was tasked with reviewing The Weakerthans "Left and Leaving" vs Robyn "Body Talk".  These were both completely new albums to me which is the fun of DM. 

First listen was The Weakerthans.  The 40-second instrumental beginning to the first song is simple and pretty.  The rest of the album is worse.  The lead singer's voice (and there are no other voices) is not attractive.  That said, some singers with poor voices distinguish themselves by their distinctiveness.  Not so here.  Songs vary widely from hectic to slow from driving rhythm to singer-songwriter ballad.  I had hoped the album would pull together in some sort of direction as indicated by the title "Left and Leaving", but I couldn't find where they were going to.

Robyn's "Body Talk" is pop.  It's not trying to be smart pop, hip-hop, pop-rock.  It's just pure pop.  That's a synthesizer you're listening to.  It's not Madonna or MJ at their respective peaks, but good enough that I had it on during appetizers when dinner guests were over later in the day.  If I were a dancer I would be dancing right now.  Alas.  Simple melodies, and in fact, musically very sparce.  Most of what you hear is Robyn.  Not horribly offensive or offensively dumb lyrics. (Recently at a Triathlon, I was accosted by some pop song on the PA system, and eventually realized that it was all about some girl being late for her period as some future baby daddy had gotten one past the goalie (her words).  Great.)
I am happy to have Robyn in my rotation. 

Body Talk advances.