The "Horse" Was Brought Down 30 Years Ago

Many things in music are hard to see coming, even in retrospect. In 1996, there was not a mainstream groundswell for rock music in the Americana style. Tom Petty had already cranked out the last of his long run of consistent hit singles, and there was a small bubbling in the underground with bands like The Jayhawks, but the appetite for a band that was a direct link back to Bob Dylan (in both intentions of the phrase) was not something apparent to this young observer.

The Wallflowers were an unlikely choice to be the biggest rock stars of the year, and yet it was "Bringing Down The Horse" that left as big an impact on that year as anyone else in music. Where we might disagree is the degree to which that is something we should talk about as an achievement of the album, as opposed to being singularly the result of "One Headlight". While the album remains a gem of the time, and it was a necessary reinvention of a band that would have otherwise quickly faded away, my thoughts on it are tinted by the fact I haven't considered it their best album since October of the year 2000.

The obvious parallel to draw is that of Bob Dylan, because both father and son are writers of a poetic disposition in a format that doesn't have many literary aspirations. That feels too cheap for my tastes, both because of how obvious such a statement would be, but also because The Wallflowers have always owed more of a debt to Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers. It would become more noticeable on their next album, but Jakob Dylan's band was more engaged in rock and roll than Bob ever was, at least rock as it evolved past the 1950s. When Bob 'went electric', he was just playing folk music through an amp. The Wallflowers are a rock band through and through, which comes with a different mentality of composing.

There is a muscularity to the guitar punch of "One Headlight", the cutting lead tones we hear on "Laughing Out Loud", and the ragtag backing vocals that propel "6th Avenue Heartache". The Wallflowers were able to distill their songs to the core, and focus the performances and production to cut out all the extraneous bits that sank their debut album. The difference between the two is much the same as listening to people like Jimi Hendrix covering Bob Dylan's songs, except in this case it was The Wallflowers getting there before others had to show them what the songs could be.

In spirit, this album is a sister to The Jayhawk's classic "Hollywood Town Hall", with that record being the folk sibling to The Wallflower's rock aesthetic. Both take the sound of classic Americana and bring it forward into the present day, updating the folk roots with melodies that borrow the immediacy of pop music. Every music snob who touts "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" as one of the greatest albums of their lifetime would not have that record to adore if not for The Wallflowers and The Jayhawks paving the way for that experiment.

Of course, nothing the record achieved would have been possible without "One Headlight". We can debate whether or not it is Jakob Dylan's greatest feat of songwriting, but there is no question it is the song that defines the band, even though it sounds like nothing else they ever wrote. The lone bass rumble leading into the droning organ and syrupy lead guitar is an atmosphere the band would never revisit, but it provided the perfect cold atmosphere for Jakob's obscure poetry. Perhaps it worked because it was the one song of the band's that could echo a hint of the dying grunge aesthetic, but that might be looking for a cause when only an effect exists.

The song was written about 'the death of ideas', which I'm not sure anyone listening to the song on the radio in those days picked up on. I will never claim to have been so astute at the time. What was enthralling about the song was the cryptic sound of the poetry, how the scene Jakob described felt like a noir mystery we needed to investigate and solve of our own accord. The answers might be present, but they were encoded in the language, waiting to be discovered by keen observers.

The great thing about songwriting is that the same song can mean different things to different people. For me, "One Headlight" was not a song about morality and the rot of society, it was a commentary on the death of self.

"I'm so alone, I feel like somebody else
Man, I ain't changed, but I know I ain't the same"

Those are the lines that say everything to me. They express the existential horror of life, the fact that like the proverbial Ship Of Theseus, we are both the same as we ever were and yet completely new. To look at ourselves on any given day is to see the person we are, but also to not see a glimpse of the person we were. Taken that way, it's a complex bit of contemplation that speaks to our battles with our own psyches, but also to the ways the connections we hold with others fray and unravel. When everything is changing, yet staying the same, we don't know whether the love we hold for people (including ourselves) is alive or dead until we reach out and test whether it will crumble into dust.

"Bringing Down The Horse" was the sound of Jakob Dylan finding his voice, delivering on the promise that could almost be heard on the band's debut album. He would refine these skills even further on "Breach", making what I consider the band's true classic record. That one is filled to the brim with that kind of philosophical songwriting, and has been my source of inspiration for twenty-five years. It would not have been possible without this album first, which makes it a keystone worth celebrating.

And just because "One Headlight" overshadows everything else doesn't mean we should overlook what's hiding behind it, nor should we ignore just how damn good that song is. Few songs embody the decade of the 90s quite like that one, and there are a lot of days I long to go back then. I miss life feeling simpler, when a record could convince me life makes sense.

Singles Roundup: Sailor Hunter, Morrissey, & Deep Purple

We haven't ventured into these waters in a little while, so let's see what has been released recently we need to talk about.

Sailor Hunter - Unbound

It might be reductive to say, but a singer can make all the difference in the world. I know I had heard the band's name before, but this song with a new singer has caught my attention in a way they hadn't before. Sailor Hunter blends many things in these brief four minutes, with deep riffs and hints of symphonics, and a singer who is able to go from screaming to classical wailing with ease. Dimitra is the revelation, using her voice to paint colors on the band's sonic landscape, pushing her voice to deliver the chorus with power and passion.

The song wastes no time, dropping from the chorus into a reprise of the riff, then straight back into the chorus for the outro. It's both progressive and regressive to break apart typical structure to have even less parts, but it focuses the composition on the massive hook and Dimitra's delivery. I can't fault that approach, because each time she cycles through it grows larger and more epic, and she has no trouble scaling even higher highs. If this points to where Sailor Hunter is headed, I'm definitely interested to hear where else that will take us. This is one of my favorite songs of the year.

Morrissey - Happy New Tears

Remember when I said rather harsh things about Morrissey's new album? Well, he's already announced a 'deluxe' version coming next month with a new song attached, so let's talk about it. This song is more of the glitchy electro-disco that "Notre Dame" was, which doesn't provide much of a melodic base for Morrissey's croon. The melody is rather lackluster, which only highlights the biggest problem with the song; Morrissey is a lazy-ass writer.

The two verses of this song are identical. I'm sorry, that isn't true. He adds the word 'for' to the start of a phrase the second time around. This penchant for repetition is not charming, and it grows tiresome on tracks that would be exhausting even with a developed lyric. Morrissey is getting by on his name and his 'charisma', and that's just not enough.

The song is a lament on how other people find happiness, and sometimes that is the only form of happiness we will ever see as possible. That sentiment speaks to me in this moment, as it's something I have noticed and commented on to myself, and yet Morrissey says it in such a meek and milquetoast way I don't feel the connection to the song I obviously should. The great artist is able to use their words to paint a picture that says more to us than mere words. Morrissey's great 'skill' these days is being able to say even less than face value with his words. It's remarkable how he can write a lyric about a deep topic that come across too shallow to drown in.

He once told us "there is a light that never goes out". Sorry, Morrissey, it has gone out on your career.

Deep Purple - Arrogant Boy

I've come to a conclusion; I don't like Ian Gillan. I don't like the shrillness of his voice, I don't like his increasingly bizarre and cringe-worthy lyrics, I probably wouldn't like him too much as a person if I knew him either. While I applaud Deep Purple for continuing to make albums this far into their career, I can't with any sense of honesty say I've enjoyed any of their recent efforts. The onomatopoeia album titles aren't cute or clever, and when they write songs with titles like "Vincent Price", I'm rather checked out when it comes to Deep Purple having anything of worth to say to me.

This song does nothing to rectify that. It's only three minutes, but it's half an instrumental that happens to have a weak and boring melody attached to the front end to make it into a proper song. Gillan sounds his age, and his lyric has all the aplomb of a Dr Seuss book. With lines like "he looked like shit" and he "didn't give a squirt", I felt embarrassed listening to ths song. Good on them if they aren't, but it just proves to me that Deep Purple for me is pretty much always going to be nothing more than memories of "Perfect Strangers" being the soundtrack to a wrestling character that has aged just as poorly.

Album Review: Crown Lands - Apocalypse

Over the years, I have described Dan Swano's album "Moontower" as 'if Rush played death metal' (I didn't invent the phrase, mind you), which has stuck with me as one of those phrases that seems too absurd to be true. It is, and every once in a while I run across something that cannot be explained in a way that doesn't sound utterly ridiculous without hearing the context. Today is one of those days, as there is only one thing I could think of when I played this album:

This is what it would sound like if Guns N Roses was a pop/prog band.

Yes, I know that sentence doesn't make a lot of sense, but it's the best way I can describe the basics of Crown Lands. Their sound is a combination of 70s prog riffing with 80s prog pop sensibility, capped off with vocals that sound like Axl Rose during his 'helium voice' period. It's utterly bizarre to wrap your head around, as something about the combination of sounds doesn't feel like it should work in the slightest, and yet... it does.

The songs leading up to the closing epic are tightly constructed, and do a fine job of balancing rock swagger with hooky accessibility. There is some 80s Rush in the sound, and maybe even a bit of yacht rock, but they are overwhelmingly entertaining songs. If they are cheesy, it's the type of cheese the band is well aware of, and melting into a silky fondue. I don't know if anyone can sing in this register and believe they can be taken seriously.

During the long wait for "Chinese Democracy", it was said Axl always wanted to be Elton John as much as he did a sleazy rock star. Crown Lands sound like what would happen if Axl's influence was 70s prog instead. It's a far more interesting perspective and 'what if' than Axl gave us with his industrial and electronic fascinations. The only place where it goes wrong is on the penultimate "The Revenants", which is more of a Zeppelin styled folk song, and happens to have the flattest and least interesting melody on the record. That the song goes absolutely nowhere doesn't help.

That journey is saved for the nineteen minute title track, which shifts its tone from moment to moment, trying to sum up and condense everything about the band into a single defining statement. It does that to a degree, but it suffers from the same problem a lot of prog bands fall victim to; the epic track is long, but not epic. Too often, these bands build their greatest statement from lesser parts, and trust that the size alone will be enough to set the narrative. That doesn't work for me, because I'm not impressed by the number of ideas you can stitch together one after the other if none of them leave an impression on me. The art of songwriting isn't amassing ideas, it's about creating great ones. There aren't nineteen minutes of them in this song.

That leaves me in a difficult position when it comes to telling you what I think about this album, because I'm torn. On the one hand, I find the first four full tracks strangely fascinating. If the album was fleshed out with more songs that continued that trend, I would be calling this an underdog contender for surprise of the year. The last two tracks, though, are half the record that finds the momentum running headlong into a brick wall. I can't say I enjoy those much at all. So are four short songs enough to recommend an album?

Yes and no. I can't tell you it's enough to want to revisit this as a whole, but I do think it's worth hearing the songs once just for the way it messes with your mind.

It's Still Not Easy Being "Green"

At its core, art is humanity. Yes, art is also a commodity these days, and we are all well aware of the ways it is produced and marketed for the sake of making money, but I like to think there's still some nobility in the hearts of most artists. They dig within themselves to pull out art because they have something they are trying to say, something they are trying to share. Art is the way we connect to one another that goes beyond words.

So what happens when art strips away all the pretense of being... well... art? That's what we faced when Weezer returned from their post-"Pinkerton" exile. Rivers Cuomo reacted to that albums very public failure by going into seclusion, and when he returned only doing so with music that stripped away everything personal that could be seen as a criticism of the man behind the music. He filled notebooks analyzing the formulas that created hit songs, and as he wrote through Adderall-fueled binges, he assembled songs as if they were Lego sets.

The funny thing about all that is that it worked. It really worked.

In hindsight, that isn't such a jarring statement to make. Given everything we have heard over the last twenty-five years, it's now clear that the less Rivers reveals about himself and his own tastes and proclivities in his music, the better off we are as listeners. "Pinkerton" was filled with toxic attitudes, but the records that followed "Green" were just as offensive for the blatant ways they tried to chase trends, manufacture hits, and basically laugh at anyone who ever took Weezer seriously.

"Green" was the turning point, and its success taught Rivers that he didn't need to bleed for his art, so to speak. As we had been told a few years earlier by Blues Traveler, "it doesn't matter what I say, so long as I sing with conviction". The idea that the hook of a song is all that really mattered was already out there in the ethos, but Rivers too it not to new heights, but to new levels of being obvious. He did nothing in interviews to hide the fact he had written dozens, if not hundreds, of songs that meant absolutely nothing to him, all in the hope of striking on a few hits.

The songs on "Green" are the most basic and obvious of platitudes, if they mean anything at all. No one can even agree on what the lyrics in "Hash Pipe" are supposed to be, but that's because whether Rivers is singing about having his 'eye swipe' or his 'ass wide', it's a collection of nonsense words regardless. Arguing over what gibberish means is a futile experience. And with the complete dispassion he sings with as he closes the album by telling us he's "love without [her] love", the delivery doesn't invite us to care either.

And yet, despite the mechanical nature of these songs, Rivers proved a point on this album. His study of the pop charts did reveal something about the songs that became inescapable, something he was able to capture and funnel into his own work (although why he lost that ability soon thereafter is a thorny issue). Even when we know these songs are cookie-cutter, and came from an assembly line of chord progressions he was scribbling by the dozens, it's hard to say they aren't power pop doing what power pop does best. These songs are tightly constructed balls of infectious melodies, and time after time they do exactly what they were written to do.

"Hash Pipe" is Weezer rocking more than they did even when Rivers went through his beard and cranked amp phase. It takes the absolute most elementary note progression (A-A-B-C), and becomes a statement on the communal power of the riff. Does it matter that he's singing about turning tricks on the street corner? No, because he's also obscuring the words with a falsetto that is telling us the song is an absurdity to him. The performances, both the hammy and apathetic, are signals to us not to get invested.

The smartest thing Rivers did with this album is keep it comically short. At just twenty-eight minutes, it punches the clock and ducks out of sight before the illusion can be figured out. The repetition of melodies as guitar solos would be an even more obvious formula if we heard it three or four more times. The vapid lyrics would be more cloying if Rivers had to recycle the same phrases another time (or if they were printed in the booklet). Like Slayer's "Reign In Blood", being short might have been an accident, but it was the album's saving grace.

In the years since "Green", two things have been made very clear about Weezer; Rivers has no idea what he's doing anymore, and I don't want to know anything about Rivers the person. Rivers is the guy who didn't want "Buddy Holly" to be on "Blue", he's the guy who wrote "Beverly Hills", he's the one who thought revealing his fully selfish sexual desires was a good idea. We have more than enough examples of Rivers being a very uncomfortable person to have in our minds that "Green" becomes a soothing antidote to everything else we have been subjected to.

That brings us back to the fundamental question of what art is. I do believe art should say something about the person who made it, but when we are cognizant that we don't want to know more than we already do about them, that thinking starts to shift. Maybe the boldest artistic statement someone like Rivers can make is to admit he has no art within him. He has songs, he has melodies, but he has no art. In a way, "Green" is anti-art; in its construction, and in it's own theft of a gimmick from "Blue".

Weezer is not a band you go to for art, and enough time has now passed to admit that's ok. We live in a commercial world, and Weezer provides us the jingles for the ad breaks. If we keep them in that role, I won't completely burn down their legacy... not yet at least.

Album Review: Rexoria - Fallen Dimension

Being fickle, or particular to be more generous, is something hard to put into words. I've never figured out how to explain to people what it is about one band among many who read from the same playbook that elevates them above all the rest. Why a vocal tone, or a melodic ear, hits me harder than others is the sort of thing that drives philosophers crazy. We think and argue for the sake of explaining the world, and yet we can't even explain ourselves. Sometimes even to ourselves.

Rexoria is one of those bands that stands apart from the crowd. Their last album was one of those power metal records that doesn't reinvent the genre, but reinvigorated it. While power metal is often rigid and played out, Rexoria had a flair and flourish to their sound that won me over. They were powerful and gritty, but melodic and unforgettable. The song "Fading Rose" was one of the best songs of that year, and there hasn't been much in the genre since that has reached the same heights. That makes Rexoria's return something to look forward to.

They call their sound 'royal metal', which might not be the best timing for such a declaration. With the world being in the state it is, reminders of royalty and their 'divine right of arrogance' is not going to go over well with anyone but tabloid publishers.

This album picks up where "Imperial Dawn" left off, utilizing their melodic metal with hints of electronica to balance Frida's massive, gritty voice. They can play on both sides of the light/dark line, giving more heft to the emotional moments, and more melody to the heavy moments. There's a similarity here to what Battle Beast was able to do with Noora Louhimo, but that band was more focused on being hard-charging and relentless. Rexoria has more shade and color to play with, which lets this album feel entirely different than "Imperial Dawn" in a way that, for instance, Battle Beast never achieved.

That record was power metal at its core, but with elements of almost hyper-pop boosting the choruses to massive levels of infectious energy. This record, on the other hand, is more focused on its power. The songs don't bristle with the same manic energy, and the choruses go for bigger notes than they do hooky melodies. Frida finds herself chanting the same line over and over on both "Metallic Rain" and "Malleus Maleficarum", which is a change of pace from the way they were writing the last time we heard from them. This record is more, dare I say, traditional in its approach to metal.

Now we get to the heart of the matter. Rexoria are still great at what they do, and there is a lot to like about this album and these songs. That being said, the overall tone and approach are very different, so this album is not an immediate sale for anyone who was a fan of the previous one. This might prove to be more successful, as there are surely a lot of fans who love traditional metal for its traditional aspects, but I would be remiss if I didn't acknowledge I found myself disappointed as the record played out. I was hoping for more songs that immediately dug into my mind and begged me to sing along, and instead these feel much more like songs I've heard before from other bands.

We do get one perfectly Rexoria track in "Break The Wave", where they tap into their gloriously pompous pop-metal. Hearing that song juxtaposed with the rest of the album only reinforces that they are missing a piece of the spark that made them so great, at least to me. The majority of "Fallen Dimension" is still good, but it doesn't stand apart from the crowd as much. Rexoria sound more like everyone else this time, which makes it even harder to explain why they hit me the way they did. The crowd has gotten a bit more crowded, so even though Rexoria is good, they blend in more.

That leaves this feeling like a step backward, and it makes me want to hear "Fading Rose" again instead.

Album Review: Geoff Tate - Operation Mindcrime III

Here's the problem with being a nostalgia act; you can't make new nostalgia. Geoff Tate has been trading in that ever since he left Queensryche, both by regularly playing "Operation Mindcrime" in its totality during his live shows, and by forming a band named after that album. Now, after years of being utterly irrelevant in terms of making new music, Tate has brought back the one piece of his legacy he still has access to for yet another go.

What's different this time is that "Operation Mindcrime III" is not a sequel, as the first sequel was, but rather a retelling of the original from a different perspective. We're nearly forty years on, so the chances of Tate capturing that magic again are virtually zero. That's both because my own experience as a writer tells me he likely doesn't remember the mindset he was in when we wrote the original, but also because he hasn't written a single decent song since the much derided "Frequency Unknown".

But here's the thing; "Operation Mindcrime" might be the most overrated album in metal history. Yes, it brought concept albums into the metal vernacular, but I don't consider that a good thing. I have never understood what about the songs is supposedly legendary, but then again, I don't know why people call Tate one of the greatest metal singers of all time. I know my brain is weird, but there's something about Tate's tone that is almost Muppet-esque. And since his voice has obviously been damaged by his own mistreatment of it, a new installment of this saga is something I will fully admit I only listened to out of morbid curiosity.

After the scene is set, the first song is titled "You Know My F*****g Name", which tells us all we need to know about the nuance and maturity that will be on display throughout the record. Hearing Tate bellowing about doing "whatever the fuck I want" is very much like watching a rebooted movie or tv show that tries to be 'gritty' by adding in more sex, violence, and profanity to cover up the fact they don't have a story, or an understanding of the original characters. At that point, all you're doing is borrowing names people recognize in an attempt to con them into accepting your subpar writing. If something once worked, and you can't make it work again without changing the entire identity of it, that's a 'you problem'.

Much of the same can be said of the melodic songwriting, which is non-existent. Tate turns this album into a slog of slow setups with little in the way of a payoff. The sparse verses highlight the peculiarities of his voice these days, where he slurs through words in ways that could understandably invite questions about his health. He does not sound good at all, which is amazing when you consider he sounds far better when doing guest vocals for Avantasia. How can he get less out of his own voice less than Tobias Sammet does?

"I'll Eat Your Heart Out" almost does something good, as the melodic swell sets the stage for an epic chorus... but it is the chorus. Everything about the album feels like it needs 'more', as this supposedly cinematic narrative comes across so small and inconsequential. With Tate's almost weeping delivery, we're supposed to feel some sympathy for what turned the character into what he became, but the warbling sound more like he is in physical pain than emotional pain, so I come away feeling sorry for Tate, not the character.

Coming in at a brief forty-four minutes, including multiple scene setting pieces, the record winds up feeling more like an EP that got stretched into a full length by slowing things down and adding some extra padding. Adding up just the real songs doesn't come close to matching the weight of the original "Operation Mindcrime", and those songs are largely slow and flaccid attempts to capture a time and sound that is entirely in the past. The entire project lacks energy, and has none of the creative ambition Tate's trilogy of albums had, even if they turned out to be terrible. You could tell form them Tate was interested in making them, while this feels like something he made only because it was the only way he could get the funding to keep making music.

I might not like the original "Operation Mindcrime", but I can at least understand what other people see in it. I can't see what appeal this album would have. The songs aren't there, and Tate's voice is a smoke and alcohol damaged disgrace. Nostalgia might be a powerful drug, but I don't know if it's strong enough to make this record something you'll actually enjoy sitting through.

Album Review: Cage Fight - "Exuvia"

Occasionally in this line of work, it’s difficult to explain why an album grabs attention.  Such is the case with Cage Fight’s new album Exuvia.  It’s an explosive record with a comfortable balance of hooks and brutality, and while that seems like an overly simple explanation for why the record is worthy of discussion…that’s more or less the crux of it.

Chris and I talk a great deal here about how one of the ways to stand out in a choked and overcrowded musical sphere is to do something familiar really well, and that’s the camp Cage Fight calls into.  Is there anything on Exuvia that makes the listener say ‘holy crap, I’ve never heard that before’?  No, not really.  Instead, the album offers a clever collection of established pieces - thrashy riffs, the relentless cadence of death metal bordering on grindcore, and big, thumping breakdowns like we’re used to hearing from Knocked Loose or Alien Weaponry.

Skip on down to the anthemic “Pick Your Fighter,” and you’ll hear what we’re talking about.  Sure, there’s a metal-on-metal crunch to the drawn-out second half of the song, but the big chorus that lends itself to crowds cheering along ties the piece back together.  It’s a similar phenomenon to Arch Enemy or the best works of Destrage, that no matter how far the band may go down the rabbit hole, there’s always a comeback hook to put it all back in sync.

Now, the differences between those two bands and Cage Fight are myriad, but the principal one is that while those bands strayed into other, sometimes abstract musical concepts, Cage Fight, when they venture into the unknown, defaults to being heavier than they were a minute ago.  ‘Heavier’ is the only word in metal that gets used more than ‘darker,’ to the point where both words have been rendered meaningless, but it applies here.  “Un Bon Souvenir,” is the perfect example.  There’s a melodic chorus (a rarity on the album, with clean vocals and everything,) but just when it seems like the track might get mired in melodrama, here comes the big 2/4-time breakdown to drag the track into the mud.  Which in this case is a compliment.

As the title track rolls around, it would be easy to think Cage Fight has shown all their cards, but this song brings another to the fore - suddenly, Exuvia becomes a melodic death metal record.  Where did this come from?  Who knows, and who cares, the song works, and provides an important and attention-grabbing change of pace just as the album was otherwise starting to lose its head of steam.

For all that, there is a ceiling to Exuvia. As stated earlier, what Cage Fight is trading on is the ability to be really good at the familiar; as with everything, there are levels to it.  To make a poor comparison - Cage Fight is really good at this music, but they are not, for example, as good at what they’re doing as Graveyard is at making blues rock.

In the end, what Exuvia really represents is a summer fling.  It’s a great, listenable record with many high moments and some unique puzzle pieces that fit together in interesting ways.  It’s an album that the listener will have fun with over the next few months, but by the time the leaves start to turn, attention may divert elsewhere.

Am I Really Writing About 'Cherry Poppin' Daddies'?

Often, we find ourselves cursing the torrent of new music being released, and the overwhelming amount of information we need to take in if we want to feel as if we are keeping up with the events of the world. That is exhausting, and frustrating, but there are some benefits to the sheer amount of noise we are subject to. The main one is that details get lost in that haze, and we never hear about many things we would rather not ever be aware of. That's where we start today's discussion.

While nostalgia for the past continues at an nearly unabated pace, one small fragment of my youth that has not seen a revival was the short-lived swing craze of the late 90s. We seem to have collectively pushed out of our minds that we had a brief fling with horns and fedoras, which is really for the best. While we can look back and cringe at a lot of the pop music of the time, the childishness of pop/punk, and the ridiculous eyeliner of the emo and nu-metal beginnings, those were at least moments of time that were of the time. The swing revival was silly, but it was also an anachronism that makes it stand out as being worse than everything else that was terrible.

The most notable offender, and I use that word deliberately, were Cherry Poppin' Daddies. With a name that could be read as an allusion to lusting for the underage, they put out a collection of their swinging songs that concentrated on drinking, drugs, and violence. While other groups were using the old-time sound as a means of having some nostalgic fun, Cherry Poppin' Daddies were doing a gritty reboot that no one wanted. We didn't want to think about zoot suits covering up the frail figures of heroin addicts, nor the days when men could smack flappers around for daring to be independent people. That was all part of the past, but Cheery Poppin' Daddies did it without any of the wink-and-nod that told us they were in on the joke.

No, they sounded as sleazy as the characters in their songs. The creeps crept into our consciousness, but not far enough to get pushed back out when the fad died out.

Recently, I was reminded that not only are Cherry Poppin' Daddies still around, they're still putting out new music with regularity. In fact, they released an album earlier this year that features a song I feel needs to be talked about. In it, they include one of those lyrics that takes your breath away, because you cannot fathom how anyone can think it was a good idea to release when you are not known for being a comedian.

"I get boners in the street."

Yes, the band wrote a song about staring at beautiful women and getting aroused in public. Why? We could say it's an attempt to be funny, but is there any comedy in telling random women that you've gotten off to them? If you even have to think for a second about that, you might want to do some serious re-evaluating of yourself.

The song tries to frame all of this as the story of an innocent boy taking in the beauty inherent in the women of the world, but this is the story of a person trying to drink when there is no thirst trap. This is the mindset of someone who isn't saying it, but would absolutely be wearing gray sweatpants while leering so the women would be forced to see what is happening. They wouldn't be impressed, obviously, but that's beside the point to someone like that.

So we revert to the question of why someone would write this song. For me, it falls into the same category as when Meat Loaf sang, "I can barely fit my dick in my pants".

There was a genre derisively called 'cock rock' because it seemed none of the purveyors were able to think with anything else. That can also describe a pantheon of songs written by men about their manhood, all of which beg the question of who they are trying to convince. Much like how someone who is truly cool or confident doesn't need to tell you all about it, the people who are constantly talking about their junk give the impression of knowing it needs to be hyped up to make any sort of impression.

Sometimes, we can write these things off as being the follies of youth, and that we simply hadn't learned yet how to be better people. Cherry Poppin' Daddies have been around for thirty years, so that excuse is out the window. Meat Loaf was old enough to collect Social Security when he sang his lyric. And yet, we are still confronted with old men acting as if they have magic wands in their pants, apparently believing that rock and roll means you can be a lecherous creep. Given rock's history, maybe it does, but that's the problem.

I would sum it up with this quasi-joke: If the sexiest thing about a man lies in the four inches between his ears, perhaps singing about the other thing that's four inches isn't a good use of that limited brain power.

Album Review: Foo Fighters - Your Favorite Toy

Is rock dead? Of course the answer is no, but there is a similar question we should be asking that isn't quite so easy to answer. Is rock cool? That's the one we really need to think about. Ever since rock and roll became a thing, it has been a source of cool, but it's easy now to look back and see how each generation of cool became lame as time wore on. That leaves us with a situation today where there is no new generation of rock in the mainstream, so the bands currently undergoing the lame-ing process are still the faces of rock.

No one fits that bill more than Dave Grohl, who has been spending the last decade destroying all the credibility he acquired from being in Nirvana. Foo Fighters have been growing stale, boring, and reliant on the kinds of gimmicks that make it feel as if they don't want to even be a band anymore. Maybe the passing of Taylor Hawkins was the right moment to put the band to rest, but instead they carry on making us question when the long fall finally hits the ground.

This album is centered around the concept of noise, and some harsh instrumental pieces Dave had been writing. They had 'energy' he felt the band needed, and became the basis for this record. That's at least an artistic choice, rather than the way they tried to usurp the vibe of different cities, or recording in different studios just for the sake of crossing them off their bucket list. It's been hard to defend the band's artistic process, and this record again shows Dave often forgets what made Foo Fighters (and Nirvana, for that matter) beloved in the first place.

This record shares the most DNA with "One By One", but the difference is stark; "One By One" was a record of tight songs that were played with raw intensity, while this record is a set of raw ideas that lack the songwriting polish to make them memorable. It's very much an illustration of the difference between music and sound. Plenty of people will enjoy this because it's loud and raucous, while those of us who appreciate the craft of songwriting more than the sound of a particular amp will come away disappointed.

The title track is where things hit rock bottom, as Dave buries his voice under a wash of distortion that is truly painful to listen to, which is baffling, because he can still scream well enough to get the distortion the natural way. Choices like that would engender long discussions if this was an album that was worth such investment, but these songs offer little for us to grasp and enjoy. It's a record that looks back at "Wasted Light" (their last good album) and thinks "White Limo" needed to be remade three or four times on a single record, when that was the worst song they had ever recorded up to that point.

Maybe Dave shouldn't be writing a song called "Child Actor" when his daughter is currently trying to get a music career off the ground. It plays too much into the narrative of nepotism and industry plants to feel obtuse, and Dave's continued shout of "turn the cameras off" sounds more like a man screaming his frustration about his personal life imploding in public than it does anything centered on the song's narrative.

I know I've been harsh on Foo Fighters over the years, and that's because I know they know better. "There Is Nothing Left To Lose", "One By One", and "Wasting Light" are great albums that kept rock going in the mainstream maybe longer than it would have otherwise. It's because they're reached those heights that the depths look as dark and depressing as they are. Dave hasn't completely forgotten how to write a decent song, but he doesn't pull them out very often anymore. This is one of those albums that will be successful on a name-brand basis only, and unfortunately that will be enough to keep Dave thinking he's on the right path.

'Past Perfect' Is Grammar, Not Judgment

"How about some new oldies?"

Those words were spoken as a joke by Carl in an episode of "The Simpsons", but like a lot of comedy, there is some truth to be uncovered if we dig a little bit deeper. We have talked many times over the years here about cultural stagnation, and how the last twenty-five years have basically been one long decade when it comes to music, movies, and television. That has not only left us feeling bored with everything that is offered to us, but it paints the varied decades of the last century in more vivid colors than can ever fade in our memories.

At the turn of the millennium, I noted the local radio station changing their slogan from "the 70s, 80s, and today" to "the 80s, 90s, and today". Twenty-six years later, they are using the same slogan, and playing all of the same songs from the 80s as they did back then. Rather than keep up with the times the way they were happy to do when it meant ditching the 70s, they instead have lumped everything that has come after Y2K into one bucket, which they just so happen to spend less time with than the older models.

Why does this happen? That's an interesting question, and I'm not sure if the answer is the same one, but we have seen the same thing happen in politics. There was a generation who refused to pass the torch and let the next generation lead, even as the world has moved so far beyond them they haven't the foggiest clue what life is like for people these days. It should have become evident twenty years ago when a Senator called the internet "a series of tubes", but we have seen the people in charge grow more and more out of touch with each passing year, to he point where now we have literal dementia patients telling us what the rules are supposed to be.

Music sometimes feels the same way.

I'm old enough now that I understand how hard it can be to let go of what was, and instead try to get on board with what could be. Leaving behind the forces that made you the person you are is terrifying, but it's an inevitable part of life. Those people who refuse to let any new pop star get played more often than Madonna miss the fact that she never would have been who she was if the disco queens of the 70s hadn't been tossed aside like three-day old roadkill. The people who insist on putting as much Led Zeppelin on playlists as the entirety of rock in this century are the same people who aren't self-aware enough to realize that 'rock and roll' was originally Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard, and that entire genre had to die for classic rock to rise up.

When I have occasion to hear the local 'modern rock' station, I'm struck by the fact that at least half of the music they play comes from the 90s. I love much of that music too, but there is nothing modern about that music, and refusing to move on from it tells all the new artists they have to fit that mold if they want to get any airplay at all. The previous century's shifts from decade to decade enabled, if not encouraged, artists to try new things and find new sounds, while our adherence to the past today encourages everyone to play it safe. When nothing has changed, it makes it harder for anything to change. Inertia, eh?

But here's the depressing part of all of this; the music I grew up listening to is now as old as what the 'oldies' stations were playing back then. It doesn't feel like I'm old enough for that to be true, but it is. When I write essays about how all the albums that were formative to me are turning twenty-five or thirty years old, what I'm not saying is that an entire generation has now passed since they were released. It isn't normal or natural for those records to still get more airplay than anything being released today. They weren't written for the people and mood of this current climate, and they don't fit the zeitgeist properly. They were records for my day and time, and I want to think I'm cognizant enough to realize this, and not demand a reversion to the historical record.

Psychology tells us most people lose their interest in new music at or in their thirties. I have made it past that point, but the effect is very much felt these days. The ways music has evolved are not largely compatible with what I want from music, which leaves the easiest option as living in the past. I have embraced all my old favorite albums as much as anyone, but I do still keep my ear to the ground for what it out there now, because I don't want to become fossilized. While I might spend the rest of my life primarily listening to the music I already know and love, I can't become one of those people telling the world to stop spinning just because I feel sick.

Do I wish there were more new songs and albums that sound like the new 'oldies' I built my life upon? Of course I do, but I also think to myself how disingenuous it would be if that was the case. When I hear the new bands coming up that sound like they're ripped out of the 80s, it makes me sad, both because I know they weren't even alive when that was the inspirational sound, but also because I know much of that is a direct result of people older than me drilling it into the heads of the younger generations that the future will never be as good as the past.

I once wrote a satirical bit saying that if we truly believed high school was 'the best days of our lives', caps and gowns would also come with a self-harm kit. What we're doing culturally isn't that much different, but we refuse to take the advice. If we don't hold out hope that the future can deliver us something great, why are we bothering to live into that future?

That's too deep for a conclusion drawn from a shallow groove in a slab of vinyl, huh?

Album Review: Admiral Sir Cloudesley Shovell - "The Trouble With The Shovell"

Lingering guilt. That’s what this review is about.

Way back in 2012, an editorial was written on the forerunner of this website, detailing the ten best albums of that year.  That editorial listed Admiral Sir Cloudesley Shovell’s album Don’t Hear it…Fear It! as the best album of the year.  On a list that included some all-time luminary albums such as The Sword’s Apocryphon, Cancer Bats’ Dead Set on Living and Graveyard’s Lights Out.

And there was nothing wrong with Don’t Hear It…Fear it!...but there is no way on this blue earth that it was the album of the year over some of the heavyweights listed above.  The mistake was immediate and irreparable.

So, each time The Shovell decides to release new music, the same guilty party that made that mistake devotes time and energy to the new record, to see if something can be gleaned from The Shovell’s progression that makes the guilt sting just a little less.

And so the exercise repeats, as the band stands to release their fifth full length album, “The Trouble with the Shovell.”

It’s…fine.  It’s an enjoyable record.  There are some great moments at the end, like “Blue Mountain Dust,” which evokes memories of the band’s best song, “Don’t Hear it…Fear It!” (not to be confused with the album of the same name,) and “Another Greasy Spoon,” which as the title suggests, is classic blues sleaze rock in its best and final form.  

Really, the whole record is a dirty, grimy rock experience, which fits well into what the idiom of The Shovell has always been, lo, these eighteen years.  Just pop on album opener “Laughing Gravy,” and be reminded of the same kind of mood that allowed Black Sabbath to open Master of Reality with “Sweet Leaf.”

The difference is, Master of Reality is so much more than that opening track, evolving into “Children of the Grave” and ultimately into the enduring classic “Into the Void.”  By contrast The Trouble With the Shovell never really moves past “Laughing Gravy” to become something more.  So, if you like the first track, you’ll like most of what follows.  And if you don’t, well…

There is the brief moment of “Kind Boy” which bops along with something almost akin to the upbeat tempos of classic southern rock, and that’s a fun interlude as The Shovell channels their inner Golden Earring.  As far as versatility goes, that’s about all that’s on offer, though.

The guilt remains.

Album Review: Hokka - Via Miseria

There are two strains of goth-related rock/metal; the kind that was embodied by H.I.M., and the kind that comes with the cliche baritone delivery. Personally, I have never been able to get much into that more traditional style of goth, because too often it sounds like an affect being put on because it is expected. Those baritone deliveries come across like a costume, and being able to see the edges of the prosthetic make it difficult for the emotion to come through. Goth is about darkness and pain, and yet the way it is often delivered is more like wearing day-glow paint under a black light and wondering why no one thinks you're scary.

Hokka is taking the other path, with a sound that is no less centered on anguish, but doesn't bother trying to equate lower frequencies with lower moods. This also isn't H.I.M, per se, as that velvety haze is not present here either. Hokka is doing something different, wherein they are bringing goth together with emo and melodic rock, giving us a record that would not have been out of place as the soundtrack to the viral dance scene from "Wednesday". This is Addams Family dark, not razorblades on skin dark. That difference is important.

With songs called "In The Darkness", "Death By Cupid's Arrow", and "Murder Ballad", it's obvious we are not dealing with music that is going to make us feel good. That's true, but by embracing a sound that has a bit more energy and sizzle to it, Hokka is reaching out from those shadows to ask us the question from the best version of Batman: "Have you ever danced with the devil by the pale moonlight?"

In a way, this record reminds me of "The Black Parade", if that one was filtered through a sieve that took the sharper edges off of it. MCR went on tangents, threw in more anger and theatricality, but the core sound underneath that is similar to what Hokka is offering us here. Hokka is more singularly focused, and their stories of hurt are more internal, but the expression stems from the same place.

I would also compare this to the record Cemetery Skyline put out, which also blended goth and melody to great effect. That album had a bit more of the traditional goth baritone, which might have made it more acceptable to the old-guard than this record will be, but it also means Hokka is able to feel less like an intentional piece of nostalgia. Hokka's music sounds fresher, which might give us the impression it's more honest, because it's hard to talk purely in the past and have it make the same impact as something new.

Across these songs, Hokka shows a knack for delivering soaring melodies that are more memorable and engaging than a lot of goth croaking tends to be. They aren't content to set an atmosphere and cloak themselves in it, they want to give us the anthems for our pity parties, which they do.

I don't know if the goth and emo renaissance has passed us by, but whether the numbers are declining or not, Hokka has given us a record that would be a highlight regardless.

Music, A Movie, & Rewriting My Life

Editor's Note: Today's essay is only tangentially about music, and is entirely self-indulgent. My apologies for both, but writing this is far more interesting to me than finding a thousand words this week to describe an album I wasn't actually interested in listening to.

And thus:

Our relationship with music can become complicated to the point of knotting, the threads of thought winding around themselves so often finding the way back to the origin can be impossible. Of course, there is music that exists as nothing more than a good time we bop our head along to while never pondering if it has any meaning to life beyond reminding us how ridiculous we look when trying to dance. That might explain a lot of people, but it doesn't explain me. When music gets under my skin, I start trying to unravel the how and why, and in the best of circumstances I discover something I had not yet figured out how to put into words.

That is true of the music I listen to, but it was also true of the music I made. Or attempted to make, if we want to be more realistic than generous. Music was not just a hobby, it was a form of therapy that allowed me to speak the truth without worrying about anyone hearing it. The metaphors and melodies obscured the message enough that I was free to be honest without incurring any of the judgment that comes along with saying things I would otherwise find too uncomfortable to mention. It worked well, until it didn't. Eventually, I learned that my assessment of my own talent was grossly exaggerated, and the very act of trying to pry music from myself became self-inflicted depression I could set my watch to.

Even after setting down my pen as a musician, and as a writer of prose and stories, I could not shake the nagging voice in my head that tells me I need to be creating something. I tried my best to ignore it, and to find what my next chapter would be, but that was wishful thinking. Eventually, when a certain scene kept playing out in my head as I was trying to sleep, it became clear the only way to excise that demon was to write it down. As fate would have it, when I sat down to do just that, I realized it was the key to unlocking the ultimate cliche of the wannabe writer; the screenplay.

Film is not my preferred medium, but there has always been something about the movie "High Fidelity" that has stuck with me. I didn't understand it when I first saw the movie, but the years have shown me that despite the character Rob Gordon and I being entirely different, we also share pieces of our psychology. As such, the idea had occurred to me at one point to write my own version of that movie, if for nothing else than to go on my own journey similar to Rob's.

I never did that, but I did write script pages that were intended to be a sitcom set in a record store. It amused me, but it felt self-contained, and I had no idea where to take the story if I wanted to write more. That was true... until that recent episode.

With a plot point in hand, I was able to quickly sketch out the remainder of where the story should go. What started as the thought of writing my own version of the movie became something different, but in actuality exactly what I intended all along. I was not writing pages to catalog my own history of failure in a ranked form, but the writing did become about working through aspects of my story.

The writing went quickly, and within a week I had completed a screenplay that feels perhaps more satisfying than anything else I have written over the years. Writing a novel is a massive undertaking, but a purely fictional story has a level of detachment that lets me forget about the very act of writing it. The songs I've written were more honest, but since I cannot voice them in any way I want to ever hear again, they too exist in a recess of reality I often overlook. This script, though, is something I was able to pour my psyche into that I enjoy playing through in my mind.

We write fiction for many reasons, some of which are only apparent to our subconscious. Only after I was finished did I realize what I was doing the whole time was using the format to write an ending to a chapter of my life. When I stopped writing music, it was anticlimactic. Something that was so important to me ended with a whimper, and left me with an empty feeling. I was done writing music, but I didn't feel like I was done with music.

My script is a fictionalized version of myself, where giving up was not the end of the story. In the pages, I work through the fact that sometimes quitting is more an act of trying to convince ourselves than anything. Despite the pain it causes, there is still hope that it might work out in the end. More than that, I wrote a line that was far more honest than I intended it to be. Upon hearing his artistic fantasy brought to life, he realizes that fantasy has always meant more to him than anything we would typically call a fantasy. He didn't care about the more lurid or intimate things ever as much as he cared about his music. I know the disappointment of being without that dream fulfilled, but I didn't realize until penning the line that I not only regret that failure more than my personal embarrassments, but that it means I may have locked away the possibility of ever truly being happy.

More than that, the pages also fictionalize a happy ending for a connection I know I should have let fray along these years. It has been unhealthy for me, which I have admitted not just to myself, and the act of writing the words down was akin to telling myself the lie enough times to begin believing it might be more real than reality. Writing an ending, even if it exists only in my head, might let me move on from being stuck in that desperate cycle. That's wishful thinking, perhaps, but that's the point of writing fiction.

Much like how writing lyrics allowed me to say things without people understanding, writing truth in the form of jokes allowed me to be honest while claiming to be able to laugh at myself. It counts even if I'm laughing at the absurdity, right?

Music has been a constant companion, in both relationships, and it seems all too fitting that music was the key to letting me find my way back to being a writer. Music is supposed to connect us to something in ourselves, something in other people, that is otherwise difficult to put into words. It would be too dramatic to say music saved me, but it certainly has kept the water from rising past the drowning point. In this case, music led me to write something that showed me what it is that truly matters to me, what it is I should and shouldn't care about... who I should and shouldn't care about.

That's giving a lot of weight to jokes I wrote without any of this psychology behind them. I was trying to amuse myself, but there is an old saying about how great jokes have a grain of truth in them. That is what happened here, and I'm thankful for it.

I've written essays here about some of these issues, but that was me talking to/with myself. Writing a screenplay put my words into a character's mouth, and that minor distance lets me hear them differently, or perhaps hear them at all. Nothing that this year's new releases have to offer is going to be able to impact me the way this experience did, but it all gets thrown into the pot.

My colleague here was struck by the concept when I wrote that music is "my currency of thought". Even when music seems to be behind me, it paints the way forward, which only goes to prove the point. Reality may never live up to the fiction I have now written for myself, but having that story to live inside is a sense of comfort, if only because I have a better idea of what I want the remaining pages to look like.

That's not bad for a bunch of jokes I thought I was writing just to amuse myself.

Still Waking Up To The "Nightmare Of You"

The anniversary of the debut album from Nightmare Of You came and went without me saying anything, because by the time I realized I should have been saying something about the record, I had already shut down for the year. This record is one of those things that has lingered in the back of my head for the last twenty years, often seeming like a curiosity, but etching the lines deeper with each passing year. Over the last few months, it has been a more important album than it ever has, and to talk properly about it would entail saying things I felt like I was done talking about.

My fascination with the record may have started simply from the band's name, because if there is a recurring truth in my life, it is that there have been several people who could be 'you' who have made me question the difference between a dream and a nightmare. It has not necessarily veered into the philosophical/psychological territory wherein I say that the dream coming true is the worst thing that can possibly happen, and that 'yes' is the worst thing someone can say to me, but it is pulling water from that well.

Next came "Dear Scene, I Wish I Were Deaf", which was a millennial retelling of The Smith's "There Is A Light That Never Goes Out", a song that once carried great meaning to me. When the lyric talks about having "jerked the steering wheel to the median/joking that we'd end out lives/but we weren't joking all the time", it carries a cynically unromantic variation on Morrissey's story about dying with the person you love not being such a bad way to go. Finding something more cynical and morose than Morrissey was interesting, both for realizing the limitations of his contrarianism, but also for understanding the way those thoughts were able to exist in my own head.

"I Want To Be Buried In Your Backyard" is a second chapter to that story, carrying through the ramification of not getting that 'happy ending'. The desire is to remain close even past the end, hoping the pain of being gone can feed a flower to serve as a beautiful reminder of what could have been. I used a different metaphor when I wrote something taking up a similar fear of being forgotten by the people I was stupid enough to care about, but the sentiment was similar. There is something uniquely painful about throwing your entire weight into something, only to realize you could not make someone's heart budge in the slightest.

I've been thinking bout this record for that very reason. Lately, I've been as detached and cynical as the characters in these songs, but for very different reasons. When the opening song sings, "if it feels like your heart's dried up, I can relate to that/and if you need someone at your side, I am out there", I hear the words in my own voice. It makes me wonder if it's possible for love to be classified as a long-term heart attack, given the damage both are capable of causing. That's the appropriate level of cynicism when listening to Nightmare Of You.

I could pick a few more lines to illustrate the connection, like when it is sung, "I scoured your town completely aroused, making love to your memory", but I think I've made the point enough. This record is a collection of sad and macabre stories on how love and connections are various shades of horror movies, but for some of us it gets even more cynical than that. The psychological abuse done is not shameful for the effect it has had on us, but shameful instead because it is the strongest desire we have. We want to suffer through that, because at least that means we had the experiences of life at all. When the lyric says, "I do want to fall in love, but I just don't know how to", it is absolutely something I have said to myself.

That isn't to say this album speaks to me like a kindred spirit, because there is a sense of irony baked into them that is very much a performance, whereas my feelings are all too real. No, the reason the record has continued to resonate with me is because I find it cruelly amusing that it took cynical fiction for an album to capture my own feelings. If we use stories and parables as ways of sifting down to the truth, there aren't many sieves fine enough to let such faint light fall through.

It's a story of inertia, and how a record can move closer slow enough to not notice the collision course until it's too late.

Singles Roundup: VK Lynne, Weezer, & Dogma

Some weeks require a bit more thought than others. We're going to dig a little deeper this time.

VK Lynne - Desperation

"There's desperation in the air. It leaves a stain on all your clothes, and no detergent gets it out." Those words were sung by Meat Loaf back in 1993, but the concept of desperation has taken on a much more present place in our lives in recent years. It's quaint to think about the malaise of the grunge years, and the mystique of sadness, and wonder what those bands would have come up with if they had to live through the shit-show every waking day is now. I'm not sure Jim Steinman, or myself, are cynical enough to find the humor in any of it.

VK Lynne's new single deals with the primal force of desperation, venturing as deeply into the groove of metal as anything she has done since Stork, creating a sound I am dubbing 'crushingly ethereal'. With a guitar riff that grinds the low strings into a buzzsaw, her voice floats and cries above the din like an angel who realized no one would feel like they were actually in Heaven if they had to listen to harp music all day. Whether cooing the truth about desperation, or belting the chorus about fury, there's a quality in VK's voice that melts our armor.

What exactly the desperation entails is unimportant, because we are all desperate for one thing or another. For some, it is desperation to control the world around us. For others, it is desperation to feel accepted for who we are. For yet others, it is desperation for the fires in our minds to be put out, even if only for a day. The reason we say things 'reek of desperation' is because it brings out the worst in us. That might entail gaslighting someone until they believe you, drunk dialing someone you know should be in your past, or chasing someone down the street the way Chandler Bing did after confessing to being "hopeless, and awkward, and desperate."

Musically, "Desperation" is a performance about performative rage, and the ways in which we beat our heads against the wall (or a dead horse in this case) when confronted with a post-truth world. We can choose to scream into the abyss, or belt out a message of warning instead. The question at hand is whether we are desperate enough to ask for help. VK is imploring us to be better, and to remember art tells us truths that may not have even been intended by the artist. Who among us hasn't taken solace in a song, only to learn the meaning was a needed invention of our mind? In this case, VK is slapping us back to reality. The taste of blood in our mouths isn't so bitter, now is it?

Weezer - Shine Again

The way I think of Weezer these days is a bit like flipping through my high school yearbook; they are a part of my past, and I only take note of them to see how poorly they have aged. As "Pinkerton" hits its thirtieth anniversary this year, my attention is finely attuned to how far Weezer has fallen, which is a feat when you consider how flawed and shameful even their heights turned out to be.

This new song is everything I have hated about Weezer over the last twenty years. They crank the amps a bit more to try to sound like the old days, but it's without the irony of "Blue", or the true ugliness of "Pinkerton". They are play-acting as themselves, but it doesn't work on a song this sterile, and facile. Rivers is singing the first verse about his 'honey-do' list, including dropping his kids off at school. That's not exactly fertile ground for a rocking song, now is it?

But that's the thing about Weezer. Rivers has spent his entire career living in 'cringe', but not able to control when he's leaning into the joke, and when he's being absolutely sincere about his legendary uncoolness. This song falls on the wrong side, where he sounds legitimately proud of performing his chores, but within the confines of a song that lacks anything that sounds inspired. It's a bit like taking the detached attitude of "Green", but trying to be honest, only to realize you have nothing of importance to say.

What all of that means is that once again Weezer reminds me I still hate myself for all the time I've spent listening to them over the years. You don't always want to see your ex find happiness, but you probably don't want them to sound this miserable either.

Dogma - Fate Unblinds

Music is supposed to be an escape, or a form of therapy, so I don't like it when music leaves me with a skeevy, uncomfortable feeling. Last year, stories came out that the people behind the 'band' Dogma were predatory businessmen taking advantage of the women who were the faces of the group. Their contracts paid them as little as possible, and took the rights to their very likenesses. The entire lineup has turned over multiple times because of this, and I'm not sure if I was encouraged that the story got as much play as it did in the metal press, or if I was more disappointed the industry didn't blackball the whole project right away.

Dogma is now back with a new lineup, and perhaps new people behind the scenes. There isn't any information to go on, which leaves us in a rather unfortunate space. I don't know if I'm supposed to treat this as more exploitation of musicians trying to make their way, or if it's a genuine effort to make right what wrongs have occurred. It reminds me a bit of the situation when Manowar was too tight-lipped about the status of their own predator.

That all being said, perhaps the reason all of that psychology is so frustrating is because there's something to Dogma that could be great. They were positioned as being akin to early Ghost, and that carries through on this new song. The band's image is what gets pushed front-and-center, but this song displays the same knack for turning terrible occult method-acting into hard rock flush with meaty hooks. The song is a memorable sing-along, the guitar playing just flashy enough, and the vocals sound great. This should be an easy recommendation, and a promising teaser, and yet... I'm more uncomfortable about Dogma themselves than the song talking about giving birth to a demon.

Wait... does that make this a meta-song about the birth of Dogma? I really need to stop thinking so much.

Album Review: Xtasy - Phoenix

When last we heard from Xtasy, they were epitomizing a phenomenon that occurs in music. No matter our preferred genre, there are bands that stand above all the rest, even when we can't explain exactly why. There are dozens of bands that will all use the same building blocks, but one will hit us in a way the others do not. What makes this even more interesting is when collaboration gets involved, and some of the same players and writers get different reactions with different bands.

Xtasy worked in collaboration with Erik Martensson of Eclipse on that record, and again on this record. That is notable, because Eclipse has been gaining stature in the melodic rock world, and yet I have gone back to "Eye Of The Storm" again and again, while Eclipse has done exactly what their name implies. There's something about Xtasy's sound that is brighter, sharper, perhaps more exotic, and it leads to a band that stands out in a crowded field.

Much of that focuses on Silvia's voice, which is the unique piece of this puzzle. Her tone is unlike most everyone who sings this kind of music, a piercing siren with the ability to put just enough rumble into her voice to keep the band's sound from getting too light and airy. She keeps this melodic rock from becoming soft rock.

"Can't Get Enough" embodies Xtasy at their best, with gang vocals that anchor a chorus you would be humming to yourself long after the record is over, and a guitar solo that offers just enough shred to tell us there's more they have to offer than what we're being shown. Moments like those make clear they are playing for the sake of the song, because the most impressive thing is to write and play songs that stick with us. Xtasy certainly did that on "Eye Of The Storm", and they're doing it again here.

Xtasy makes the whole package sound easier than it is. Writing memorable songs is hard, and so is selling them to the audience. I think that's actually what separates them from Eclipse, as Erik's vocal performances can't match the charm Silvia has. Some of her deliveries come with something close to an audible wink, which invites us in to be part of the music. There's no effort to convince us how hard they're trying, which reads with an authenticity I certainly appreciate.

In the six years since "Eye Of The Storm" came out, and despite the incalculable number of bands and songs I have heard since then, I never forgot Xtasy. Every time a melodic rock album came out that impressed me, what it did was remind me of the benchmarks of the genre, which include Xtasy for me. "Phoenix" has a lot to live up to, and it does. It doesn't have the ability to catch me by surprise the same way as when I first heard Xtasy, but the harder task is to impress us once we know what to expect. "Phoenix" picks up right where the band left off, and that they can keep the momentum flowing without missing a beat is impressive indeed.

"Phoenix" sees the band rising up once again, this time hitting a little harder, rather than subduing us into submission. Both approaches work, and which one you prefer will be entirely up to you. I, for one, am just glad to have Xtasy back.

Jim Steinman Is Forever "Bad For Good"

The year was 1981, and it had been nearly four years since "Bat Out Of Hell" became the most unlikely best-selling album of all time, four years of wondering how Meat Loaf and Jim Steinman could possibly top their over-the-top spectacle of a record. In that time, Steinman was developing his grand idea for their next statement, while Meat Loaf was developing vocal problems. The relentless touring schedule, combined with Meat's dedication to giving all of himself to the performances, left his voice broken and battered.

Meat's voice was clearly in no state to be recording another timeless classic (which we would hear later in the year on "Dead Ringer" - his voice would not recover for another decade), but there were songs that needed to be sung. Steinman was in his all too brief productive period, and letting the songs sit any longer could have brought a premature end to his creativity.

Jim Steinman was not a frontman. He did not have the theatricality, despite writing theater pieces, nor did he have the voice/image to fill Meat Loaf's shoes. Steinman was quirkier, weirder, someone who would have fit in decades later in the alternative/artistic scene. For 1981, and for a big-budget follow up to a massive hit, he was the wrong actor cast in the wrong part. But the show must go on, and half the songs he had been writing became his one and only solo album, "Bad For Good".

To listen to Steinman's music not filtered through the voice of another artist is to get the purest sense of his personality. There is no one here to hold him back from making exactly the record he wanted to, which is both its greatest asset and it's worst downfall. Another singer would not have thrown their voice into muppet-esque trembles the way Steinman did, and perhaps some of the language would have sounded suave coming from someone with charisma. It's a variation on the Cyrano story, where the person responsible for the sentiment isn't always the best one to deliver the message.

The ensuing decades would teach us this lesson, as much of the record would get re-recorded by Meat Loaf in bits and pieces. Those versions would be more polished, more 'professional', and would be smoother deliveries that did a better job of carrying the romantic melancholy of Steinman's stories. When Meat Loaf belted the chorus of "Surf's Up", it was a more powerful statement than Steinman could manage (We'll get to how that sentence is wrong in a moment). Likewise, his take on "Rock And Roll Dreams Come Through" was a more desperate sounding plea to the power of the rock gods that eclipsed the original for obvious reason. A great song is always a great song, but legend is when a great voice is paired with it.

Jim Steinman knew he was not the voice for his songs. That was why he worked with Meat Loaf in the first place, but it's why even on his own solo album Steinman is not the voice we are always hearing. Session vocalist Rory Dodd takes the lead on several tracks, and makes clear the singularity of Steinman's writing. Dodd is a capable singer, but his voice is too clean, and lacks the personality and power for the scope of Steinman's vision. Steinman's music is not 'nice', but Dodd's voice is, which is a clash of styles that cannot be ignored.

The spoken-word piece "Love And Death And An American Guitar" makes its first appearance here, and Steinman's dramatic reading makes that point all too clear. He throws himself into the performance, shifting from whisper to scream, his voice struggling to keep up with as much emotion as he wants the piece to have. It's a man on the edge, losing control, which is exactly in line with the theme. That is what Steinman brings to the songs he sings lead on. His songs have always been the voice of desperation screaming at the gods for love (or sex, usually sex) to come his way, and that is what he sounds like more than anyone else who ever sang his songs. The singers who had fame, and charisma, and confidence, could never embody the character of Steinman the way he could for himself. It's a character I am well-acquainted with, and I hear in his voice what my inner monologue used to scream into the wind as well.

Steinman's baritone was able to project an undercurrent of madness and depression that not even Meat Loaf could manage, and when he sings of being lonely and desperate in "Stark Raving Love", I believe every word he says. Compare Steinman's take on the lines "there are no lies on your body/so take off your dress/oh, I just want to get at the truth" to Meat Loaf's. Steinman is nearly animal, not singing as much as begging and pleading. It's stark, and all too familiar.

The most remarkable moment of the record comes right at the start. The opening title track is the rare instance where Meat Loaf could not bring more to a song than Steinman himself. Meat attempted the song on "Bat Out Of Hell III", but his voice was beginning to thin out by then, and he appeared not to understand the song at all. He sang the song, but he did not live it the way Steinman did. Voiced by Steinman, the song is nearly nine minutes of a man turning his feelings into the most epic drama he can conjure. It isn't real, but Steinman convinces himself the connection is as grand and powerful as nature itself, even if it lasts only one night.

The song is a chronicle of a man's self-loathing, wanting to be someone else, someone the girl will want to be with. his pleas that they will both wind up "bad for good" is almost a confession that anything they would do together could be considered a sin, but he knows a sin is only worth the punishment if it lasts longer than the flash of a bad decision. And yet, one night is all he is asking for, because when you're that desperate, sins of the flesh will kill you just as much as the mortal ones. You hear none of that in Meat Loaf's perfunctory version of the song, because Meat could never understand what it meant to 'be' Jim Steinman. I'm being presumptuous here, but I think I do. It's the difference between acting and living, and that song is the best example of it I may have ever heard.

"Bad For Good" is an album steeped in melodrama, building a stairway to heaven just so Steinman could knock on the door and ask what the deal is with the meaning of life. It is as flawed as Steinman was, as self-indulgent, and yet it is the best illustration of how he was more responsible for Meat Loaf than Meat himself ever was.

If this record was made in 1978 with Meat's undamaged voice, the rest of music history might be entirely different. Perhaps this album is another massive hit, perhaps Steinman keeps writing at this pace for many more years, perhaps he burns out completely even earlier. There's no way to know, but if everything happens for a reason, it seems clear to me the reason "Bad For Good" exists is to show us who the man behind the music was. It would have been a shame to only know his music diluted through the voices of the singers he worked with.

"Bad For Good" is perfectly imperfect, and if nothing else, I would be worse off if I didn't have these songs to remind me of these things.