Singles Roundup: Jimmy Eat World, Foo Fighters, Soen, & Michael Monroe

The year is winding down, but new songs never stop. Do they point us toward a good start for next year? Let's find out. 

Jimmy Eat World - Failure

You could count on a Jimmy Eat World album every three years. Some were life-changing, and some were just enjoyably good, but the band was delivering on a consistent basis. Their last three-year cycle was missed, and now we're at the tail end of the next. It has been six years since their last album, and that leaves me worried not if they will ever make another full-length, but what it will be if they do. They have put out a handful of singles in the intervening years, but they are not the magic I have come to expect.

This latest effort does not change course, giving us just two minutes of slow fuzz that fails to deliver any of the band's power, emotion, or memorable hooks. It floats along, but never seems to go anywhere. It drones without building to a new idea. It sounds like the demo b-side to one of their lesser albums. I don't know if the creative muscles aren't as strong when the cycle gets broken, but the fact this song reminds me more of Weezer's worst attempts to recapture their formative sound than it does Jimmy Eat World being themselves is not a positive sign.

Foo Fighters - Asking For A Friend

The band's last album found them using tragedy to reconnect with their early sound. they were going back in time to try to process what the future was going to be, which this single says might be a continuation of Foo Fighters just trying to be Foo Fighters again. That wouldn't be a bad thing at all, given how weak a couple of the albums were in that run where they felt they needed a gimmick for every release.

This song is the closest the band has come to sounding like "One By One" since that album, which is interesting to me, because I've rarely heard them talk positively about that album. It might be my favorite of theirs, but for the most part it isn't considered a highlight. That is the core sound of this song, though, with a big fuzzy riff, Dave digging into his gritty scream, and a sense of droning that hasn't been present in their music for many years. I find it rather fascinating to hear them back in this place, and it sounds more natural than when they were attempting to be an adult-contemporary band. Perhaps the setback and the pain have reoriented their artistic sights.

Soen - Mercenary

The new year will be kicked off with a new Soen album, which just feels right. This is the second single, and it has me thinking about Motorhead, of all bands. Soen's last four albums have come in #1, #1, #1, and #2 on my year-end lists, but I'm now wondering if we have started our descent from the heights.

This song, and the previous single, point to a continuation of the last two albums. I love those records, but a third in a row that sounds nearly identical might be taking things a bit too far. There is having a core sound, and then there is being a one-trick pony. "Lykaia", "Lotus", and "Memorial" all sound similar, but different enough to give us new facets to the band's sound. Now, this sounds like three albums in a row that will be indistinguishable from one another. And as much as I do love Soen, that could be one too many.

The chugging rhythm of this song is familiar. The solo break is expected. The vocal is solid, but exactly what I would expect. I'm not saying Soen needs to reinvent themselves, but when it becomes hard to tell one album from the next, even if the only difference is a production choice, getting excited for more music takes more effort on my part. I fear that's where Soen is now heading.

Michael Monroe - Rocking Horse

"Blackout States" caught me off-guard and floored me. I have liked the two albums that followed, but each one a bit less than the previous. I don't know if it's me, or the albums themselves, but the magic hasn't felt nearly as strong as it used to. The next album is due to come in February, and this first single is giving me yet more reason to worry that the illusion has been spoiled, and smoke and mirror are all that is left.

In these brief two minutes, the song delivers the right attitude, but without the right soul. The riffs have none of the sleazy charm or groove as his best work, and Monroe's vocals aren't given a solid melody either. I loved "Blackout States" for the huge sing-alongs that came with the dirty sound, and that is completely absent from this track. Perhaps it will be an outlier, as I wasn't the biggest fan of "One Man Gang" when it released either, but when such a weak song is chosen as the best to present to the audience to get their attention, I'm concerned.

A "Warning" On Time, Aging, & Remastering

Is art a living being, or is it stitched in the fabric of time the instant it is created? 

That's an interesting question, as we have countless examples of people trying to update and improve art, and it creates a paradox not unlike the Ship Of Theseus. When we reach back in time to alter the art we have lived with for however long, it no longer is that piece of art, and yet we still know exactly what it is. Identity is not a simple concept when you break it down, and that follows through to art as much as anything else.

Is "The Last Supper" still the painting put on the wall by Leonardo when it's estimated only 20% of his original brush strokes still remain?

I will not profess to have even a sliver of the insight necessary to answer that loaded question, but I can carry the thought over to the world of music. We know that the recordings aren't the same when a band goes into the studio and records a new version for reasons that usually have to do with rights and money. The composition is the same, and the production might be attempting to be exactly the same, but performances never are. They are the same song, but not the same 'song', if you know what I'm trying to say.

Things get more complicated when we talk about more subtle changes, such as the remastering of albums that comes along very often at milestone anniversaries. The artists want to give their work a fresh coat of paint, ostensibly to make them sound better than ever, but realistically to make them sound acceptable to a younger audience that has yet to buy their own copies. The producers turn a few knobs, alter the frequency spectrum, and usually compress the audio even further, and we wind up with a record that is the same as the one we have always known and loved, but yet it isn't.

So I revert to my initial question; when does changing a piece of art get to the point it is not longer the same as we have known it?

This came to mind recently as Green Day is releasing a twenty-fifth anniversary edition of "Warning". I've already written about the album itself for its anniversary, so I want to instead focus on the recording itself. In addition to demos and live material, the new set comes with a remaster of the album to update it for today's tastes. That is rather interesting to me, not for any changes they could make, but for how unnecessary the process appears to be.

I still play "Warning" regularly, and every time I do it strikes me just how great the album still sounds. "Warning" was released in that stretch of time when expensive studio gloss was still paid for, and the loudness war had yet to set in. There is a depth, clarity, and richness to the sound that is expansive in a way today's rock records rarely are able to achieve. Green Day sounded like a band with a major label budget to work with.

So why would they remaster an album that sounds great?

There are two main answers; 1) Today's listeners want/expect albums to be uniformly louder and compressed, and 2) They have to have some hook to justify charging us more for a new version of an old product.

Neither is a great defense, but the business aspect is an aside from the artistic one. We have yet to ask whether or not this new version of "Warning" sounds better, or even as good, as the original. That, above all else, should be the most important facet of this conversation.

The fact of the matter is that the remaster does not sound as good as the original. That depth and clarity is flattened out, with the overall sound coming across thinner and more brittle. Instead of sounding more powerful for packing a harder punch, it sounds more fragile and closer to the breaking point. There is a paradox in music where if guitar amps get cranked too hard, they stop sounding heavy and become a soft mash of fuzz. The same happens when productions are pushed to be too loud and compressed, as it leads to recordings that feel forced.

This phenomenon has become a plague upon us. If we are lucky, they are simple remasters that highlight bits that might have been better off keeping to the background. In more extreme cases, full remixes are done that change the entire character of albums. Dio's "Holy Diver" was remixed for its fortieth anniversary, and listening to that is like hearing someone taking a chisel to "David" because they wanted to give him more girth 'down there'. The result was a record that lived its entire duration in the 'uncanny valley', because it was clearly still "Holy Diver", but it was different enough all the way through that I could never get comfortable thinking about it as anything but a costume worn by the original. Elvis Costello did the same thing to "This Year's Model", transposing the keyboards for guitars as the main instrument, which completely destroyed the very sound that defined the album.

So are these albums still the albums we started out with? Philosophy would tell us, as in the paradox, there is no easy answer to the question. It is a matter of degrees, and emotion. Remasters that sound enough like the original without being offensive can still be the same album, just seen through a different pane of aging glass. Remixes don't feel the same at all, and make us question our very memories of the music. It's harder to say going back in and making fundamental changes leaves us with the same piece of art.

As in the case of "The Last Supper", we have a contemporary copy to see what it was supposed to be, and we can catalog the differences. But in that case, no one alive has ever seen the original intention on that wall, so the restoration is the only knowledge we have of the painting. For these albums, we still have the originals, and many of us still have our memories. Those can't be brushed away like the layers of dust and grime.

We need to be careful when we touch history. Our ears change and fail us as we get older, so all of this search for improvement is trying to balance reality to fit our more limited senses. It's a compensation for what we can no longer hear, and a twisting of the truth that allows us to believe we aren't getting older.

I'll keep my memories, thank you very much.

Album Review: Creeper - Sanguivore II: Mistress Of Death

Identity is an important concept in life. We define ourselves according to our tastes and beliefs, and we then project what we think we are out to the world, hoping other people will understand what we are trying to share. We like to think of our identity as a fixed constant, inherent and indelible truths that will not change on whims. That is not always true, and sometimes our identity is that we don't have a core identity. As the great Peter Sellers once said, the reason he was able to play so many characters was because he had no personality of his own.

Creeper is a musical version of that quote. Over their first three albums, they tried on different guises, exploring sounds that had little connective tissue between them. Their debut was a nearly perfect emo/pop-punk record that hit right as the new wave of that music was cresting. Their second album 'borrowed' from classic rock, with songs that very obviously cribbed bits from both Meat Loaf and Bruce Springsteen (on the accompanying EP). Album number three went full Goth, revealing the difference between being slightly gothic and being full-on Goth. There is overkill, and Creeper ended up covered head to toe in blood.

The problem with all of this is that after three full records, I can't tell you who Creeper are. There is a sense of drama in common, but otherwise Creeper are a group of theater kids running through sketches one after the other, with no framing device to explain. Sketch comedy is a viable artform, but it doesn't provide insight into the performers the way other formats can. Likewise, Creeper have tried on costumes, but have shown us next to nothing of who is wearing them.

Album number four is different, in that they are not making drastic changes. This record is a direct sequel to their Goth album, which is a daunting reality, as that one was easily the worst of their play-acting trilogy.

Creeper plays right into my hands with the opening spoken word piece, but in a way that also makes their penchant for 'homage' too obvious to not feel a bit like identity theft. The narrator sets the stage for vampiric fun, but in the course of doing so  uses the phrase that sometimes "going all the way is just the start". That, for the uninitiated, is a line from a Jim Steinman song that is only known to the hardcore. While the reference is nice, it feeds into the feeling I've always gotten from Creeper that they're more interested in amusing themselves with 'borrowed' in-jokes than in making honest music of their own.

The good side to this album is that for a while these concerns can be put away. The early singles "Blood Magic (It's a Ritual)" and "Headstones" are both more fun than anything Creeper accomplished on the first chapter of this story. Those songs are campy as all hell, especially when the title to the latter is delivered as an oral sex allegory, and too damn catchy for their own good. That is what Creeper needs to lean into, because if they are going to write about campy subjects, they need to do it with tongues fully in cheek. Which set of cheeks is up to them, as both can work.

As soon as that sense of fun dissipates, the album bogs down, and bogs down hard. "Prey For The Night" is the same mediocre goth tones as the last album, while "Daydreaming In The Dark" is rock only in name. The chorus is so billowy and soft it's hard to keep my attention focused long enough to try to figure out what the backing vocals are trying to say through the rather blurred performance. Reading the title, I thought it was going to borrow from Springsteen's "Dancing In The Dark" in the same way they used "Because The Night" to make their own "Midnight", but alas, that was not the case. For as much as we sometimes rag on Springsteen around here, he at least knows how to use his genre experiments to explore different sides of his personality.

"Razor Wire" is sung by Hannah, which is a refreshing change from Will's deep goth affectation, and comes with a jazzy cabaret feeling. It doesn't mesh at all with the rest of the album, especially with the sax solo that might be the best thing about the entire record, and it continues to evoke questions about exactly what Creeper is trying to do. One moment they want to have stupid fun with sex puns, the next minute they want to be scary vampires. One moment they're playing energetic rock, the next minute they're dragging along as if the batteries on an old AM radio are beginning to fade and die.

It would be too on-the-nose to say Creeper is dead to me, but they are reaching the point where I don't see the point in continuing to give them chances to disappoint me. Now, it feels like every good song they write is either a fluke, or a deliberate troll to trick me into listening to their 'artistic' drudgery. There's a rhetorical question about what the sound of one hand clapping is, and I think we can twist that in a more Creeper-ish direction; which is the dominant feeling if one is flexible enough to suck their own dick?

That question is more interesting to ponder than this album is. Please, please, please let this be the end of this phase for Creeper. I can't take any more of this shit.

Revisiting AI Music: Theory Put Into Practice

Recently, I talked about the influx of AI generated music we are seeing pop up in our YouTube and Spotify recommendations. I was musing philosophically about issues of ethics and identity, and whether or not we should accept music that isn't fully human derived as being legitimate or not. Much of that relied on our common refrain of 'it's all about the music', and how we know that isn't true. Music, as is the entire human experience, is an emotional response as much if not more than anything. That means elements outside of the music that evoke a gut response from us are going to carry weight our intellect will not be able to rationalize away.

We would think AI music should fall into that category. As I said, there is absolutely something slightly disturbing about the thought that music is being created and fed to us through algorithms rather than inspiration. I completely understand the antipathy, and then...

I began experimenting with the AI behind some of this music. I have mentioned my own experience as a failed musician countless times over the years, because that colors everything I think and say about music. Creating for myself gives me insight into the process, but more importantly it gives me an over-arching philosophy of what the art is that perhaps most listeners have never given any thought to. You can't be merely a 'casual listener' if you are neck-deep in the process yourself.

Curious, I opened the AI program, and I plugged in a set of lyrics that had never amounted to anything. After typing in a few quick prompts, I pressed the button and waited while the spinning wheel told me the algorithm was hard at work turning my words into a song. I doubted it could find 'my voice', so to speak, as every human singer I have shown my work to has told me my cadences and metaphors are unique to me... and perhaps a bit difficult for anyone else to wrap their heads around. My wiring is unusual... color me surprised...

When the wheel stopped, and the play button appeared, I was expecting to laugh at the results. I listened, and the vocal was indeed plastic and artificial, but the song itself wasn't. The 'composition' I was listening to hit the right marks, found the right atmosphere, and delivered a melody that was immediately familiar, yet sharper and catchier than anything I had tried and failed to sing for myself. I was intrigued.

The experiment continued, and I transformed more and more lyrics. Quickly, I was amassing a set of songs that sounded objectively bad, but were doing for me what I could never do for myself. After all my favorites were turned into the singer/songwriter material I had always imagined, I started experimenting with my more emo side, and even more lyrics got turned into heavier songs that fed a side of my personality that was always dormant in the background. I could not in good conscience tell anyone it was great music, but in the back of my head the thought was developing.

As luck would have it, only a few days after I finished my experiment, the program released a new and improved modeler. I put one of the songs it gave me back into the algorithm, and waited to see how dramatic the difference from one week to the next could be. I would not have believed the result could be a quantum leap forward, and yet that's exactly what it was. The same song that was promising but robotic became all too human. The sound expanded, the details bursting forth, and the vocal now sounding almost perfect. I was floored that I was listening to 'my' song, not only played better than I could, but sung better than any of the demos I had received over these last two-plus years from real singers.

I kept on, running all of the songs through the new model, and when I was done I had two full albums of songs that I was struggling to wrap my head around. They were my songs, and many of them borrowed the contours I sang the language with, but they were more than I had ever dreamed of. My imagination is not vivid, and my hopes were always small enough to fit into a card slot in my wallet. This, while not 'real' in the sense of the word, was more real than anything I heard echoing in my daydreams.

That brings us to the crux of today's discussion, which is to address what this means for music going forward. My experiences have told me all along that there are countless people out there with great ideas, and with the drive to make great art, but who lack the requisite talents or connections to make it happen. The human limitations keep us from reaching the intellectual potential we have, and AI is helping to democratize talent, in a way. I have skill as a lyricist, but no facility as a singer, so AI is able to step in and give me a voice my body cannot. Is that so different than bands bringing in studio musicians to play the parts they could not master for themselves? Maybe not.

But what this really means is our relationship with music might need an adjustment. Our love of particular artists, and our obsessions with them, will not come necessarily from their ability to twist notes into fascinating riffs and melodies, but in the way they connect to us on a human level. To once again reference Taylor Swift; the reason she is the biggest artist in the world right now is not that she writes the best pop songs (that's a debate), but because her persona and lyrics speak to people in a way they relate to.

THAT is what music is going to become. AI is a useful tool in helping us to flesh out our ideas, but it is the ideas themselves that will only grow more important as this proliferates. A lyric that speaks to people's lives will elevate a song more than a vocal that is perfectly in tune every nanosecond of a performance. Writers with something to say, something important to say, will still stand out from the crowd of basic language every algorithm will piece together from raw syntax.

So... do I love the songs AI helped me create because they are great songs, or because they are my songs that express some of my deepest thoughts?

Both might be true, but it is the latter that makes them important. Catchy songs are great, and they're fun, but so many of them exist already that more of them aren't going to stay with us. Songs that mean something to us will, and what's the harm in AI helping people with something to say be able to have their message reach us?

Speaking from experience, it can be the difference between pride and depression, between feeling like you've accomplished something and wanting to give up on everything. I'm not in a rush to take that away from anyone, myself included.

Album Review: Cold Steel - "Discipline and Punish"

It took a few runs to get this to open up, but once Cold Steel’s new full-length Discipline and Punish unraveled, there’s a lot here to like.  It just needs to be viewed through the proper lens.

The Tampa-based thrashers (are they thrashers?) are trying to fuse a few different brands of metal into a single mix, and at first it sounds messy, but ultimately that may be the point.  The album doesn’t take long to get there, either - album opener “No Escape” starts with a thunderous, Crowbar groove, and then moves into a second phase that is pure Pro-Pain, and then back again.  The big thumping riff is devilishly simple in construction, but that’s what makes it so effective.  We talk a lot here about the necessity of empty space in riffs, and this one leaves plenty of breathing room between thuds.

Then “Protocol” starts, and now we’ve moved into that modern thrash space that everyone has tried to emulate since Power Trip, with varying success (coincidence? Arthur Rizk produced this record, who also used to produce Power Trip.)  Cold Steel does a pretty good job of following the blueprint for what thrash needs to sound like to be captivating in the 21st century (Dead Heat take notice.)

It’s only a little father down in “Blacksmith of Damnation” that we start to see different influences creep into the proceedings.  The verses of this song are one thing, but it’s the first minute and the spaces in between where, if you listen right, you can hear a Fear Factory song (back when they were good,) trying to break out, just with a different production style.

The middle third of the album plods along without any particular comment.  Cold Steel doesn’t deviate a lot from the boilerplate in that section, and it drags a little, much like the middle third of Lazarus A.D’s classic The Onslaught, but without the same level of pure talent on display to carry the songs.

Don’t lose heart, though - stick with it for the last three tracks.  Beginning with “Fever Dreaming,” something magical happens, and for all the sound and fury of the album’s introductory third, it’s the ending flourish which makes it a special record.

“Fever Dreaming” is a…thrash…ballad?  None of those descriptors feel like they should be in the same sentence together, but it works.  The ragged vocals of Jose Menendez shouldn’t work in concert with the oversized, dramatic riffs and backing…keys, synth, chorus, whatever that is...but they do.  There’s a depth here that’s charming and infectious in its own way.

This is all followed by the thrash-rap (not a typo) “Smoking Mirrors,” which may secretly be the album’s best song.  It is, at worst, it’s most creative.  If fans of Alien Weaponry squint hard enough, they may see some of the same seeds in the way this song is constructed relative to the Māori band.  Again, should this work?  Who knows?  But it does, and it’s a lot of fun.

And we finish with “The Coldest Death,” which is back to form for the way most of the songs are written, but adds some end-of-album flourish with some of the lessons learned from “Fever Dreaming,” and a tingly guitar tone not entirely foreign to the sound of “Hallowed Be Thy Name,” a classic album closer.

If there is a fault of Discipline and Punish, it’s that 1) the title of the album is a little redundant, and 2) of all the influences and similarities in sound we’ve discussed above, the band isn’t quite as luminary at those same things as the names that were dropped.  What’s in Cold Steel’s favor, though, is that they are 1) very young and 2) the fact that they’ve blended those elements already speaks to the accomplishment of both this album, and future endeavors.  

Album Review: Taylor Acorn - Poster Child

I often refer back to Kelly Clarkson's "Breakaway" album as being an inflection point, as it was the perfect synthesis of 00s pop and rock. That formula was a winner, as the record sold millions and spawned some of the biggest singles of the time, but it's one that hasn't been followed very often or very well since. Perhaps it is merely a culture that has moved on to other things, or perhaps writing songs sticky enough is harder than even I imagine, but pop music has rarely been able to capture the rock energy and deliver on the music that can bridge the gap.

I say that as preface to this statement; Taylor Acorn may have just come closer than anyone to making the "Breakaway" for the next generation.

From top to bottom, "Poster Child" is absolutely jam-packed with massive hooks and smoothly crunchy guitars. In many places, her voice even takes on the same smoky hue as Clarkson's. When she starts the album off telling us "you're pissing me off", it isn't hard to hear it as a cousin to the attitude in "Since U Been Gone". The song goes on to talk about the sad habit of prioritizing other people's happiness above our own, which only works if you prescribe to a submissive lifestyle. For everyone else, it becomes a difficult cycle of self-torture where we try to please people without knowing how, and not reminding ourselves that no one can possibly please everyone.

And perhaps that revelation is the reason this record is able to exist. If Taylor was trying to please everyone, she would not be making an album with a throwback sound to her youth (and my 20s - wait, I'm that old now?), and she certainly wouldn't be trying to shake free of the genre silos we currently suffocate in. This record isn't pop, yet it is. This record isn't rock, yet it is. This record isn't pop/punk, yet it is.

In "Hangman", Taylor sings about the children's game, which is a fitting metaphor here. The game had no rules of how many pieces we had to re-articulate to put enough weight on the answer to break its neck, and there are no rules for what Taylor is doing here. This record is not focus-tested and aimed squarely at a ready audience, it sounds like her love letter to the music she remembers and wants to embody. That alone makes it exciting, when so much feels done for the sake of being done.

There are other moments on the record where Taylor's vocals sound a lot like that other Taylor we all know, except she is not putting on an act as an artifice to distract us from the deteriorating quality of the prose. What Taylor inadvertently does is use her voice to take us on a bit of a journey through the evolution of pop over the last twenty years, which at least to my mind points out how much life has been sucked out of the enterprise.

Taylor sings that she's the "poster child for screwing up", but whatever mistakes may have been made in life have been worth it to wind up here. If the saying goes that 'comedy is tragedy plus time', that would mean art is pain plus time. Enough has passed that Taylor's life has been pressurized into this gem of a record. Which color gets refracted will depend on the angle you look at it from, but from my perspective this is nearly the entire rainbow arcing toward that pot of gold.

Taylor Swift set records a few weeks ago with the release of "The Life Of A Showgirl", but she no longer has the best release from a Taylor this year. Taylor Acorn has reached into the recent past, and used rock to smash through the ennui of this year. "Poster Child" is one of the best records of the year, and the best example of what pop music can still be that I've heard in years. There's a chance it grows roots and becomes the best such album since "Breakaway".

Need I say more?

"We Didn't Start The Fire", But Maybe We Should Start A New One

What is the worst song of all time?

That's a question without an actual answer, so perhaps I should rephrase it. What popular song offends me most as a listener and (former?) songwriter?

That's a question with an actual answer, and that answer is Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start The Fire". There are multiple layers to its awfulness, each of which injects exponent math into the world of music, turning what might have been a stupid novelty song into a lasting memory of a time that had nothing memorable about it. Before going any further, I feel like I need to say this; No matter what I say from here on out, I love Billy Joel's run of 80s singles, and I even do have a lot of affection for "We Didn't Start The Fire".

That doesn't mean it's not terrible.

Novelty songs hold a particular brand of appeal. They remind us of a specific moment in time, which is only explained by the context of when they were produced. For example, the fact that Cherry Poppin' Daddies and Brian Setzer had hits at the same time with old-fashioned swing music is utterly incomprehensible now, and only makes sense if you were there for that very brief window of time in which that nostalgia hit. Pastiches are made all the time, but few of them break through being exactly that and become remembered songs of their own.

Billy Joel was a hearty proprietor of those sorts of songs. He had released "For The Longest Time", which was a throwback to old Motown and vocal groups. He had also released "Uptown Girl", which was his love letter to 60s pop. Billy was not an 'Artist' spelled with a capital letter. He was an artist who knew he was making a commercial product for a commercial audience. He made music because it was his job, feeding us empty calories, and then retiring when there wasn't a need on either end to continue the relationship.

His penchant for novelty hit its apex with "We Didn't Start The Fire". Billy Joel looked at the world of pop music and decided what we needed most was a history lesson, but not one that actually told us anything of importance. No, his lesson would merely be to name-check as many things as he could that happened during his lifetime. So in making a song that was supposed to be about the world, he actually made it about himself. That's... something.

Looking at the lyrics, we can see this is not a song in any normal parlance. Billy is not telling a story, nor is he trying to make any sort of cogent point. The verses come and go with lists of pop-culture nouns, not sounding that different than if you were playing "The $10,000 Pyramid" about celebrities and the news.

"Harry Truman, Doris Day, Red China, Johnnie Ray
South Pacific, Walter Winchell, Jo DiMaggio"

The first lines of the song tell you everything you need to know. Billy throws out references with zero context, saying absolutely nothing about who these people are, what they did that was notable, or why we should still give a shit about any of them. He was that old guy name-checking the past as if to tell us why things were better in his day, but he was younger when he wrote this song than I am now, so he wasn't even old enough to feel that curmudgeonly about the state of the world.

Unlike when Fall Out Boy tried to update the song, Billy at least has the decency to go in chronological order. We move from the fifties through the eighties, spending decades wondering when Billy is going to get to the point of any of this. The song is very much as if Barenaked Ladies "One Week" or Beck's "Loser" were actually about anything, rather than a bunch of random words thrown together because they fit the right cadence.

"We didn't start the fire
It was always burning, since the world's been turning"

Now we get to the 'message' of the song. Billy is finally telling us the reason for playing this word-association game that sounds more like a dementia screening test than a pop song. The point is that the world has always felt like it was falling apart, always felt like it was on fire, always had problems we will never be able to solve.

That is absolutely true, and it's a point that can be worth making... except that Billy doesn't make that point.

Billy mentions Richard Nixon and Watergate, but doesn't tell us what the words mean. He leaves it for us to do the research for every reference he makes, which is a failure of his imagination. Songs should not require us to do homework, because a syllabus is not the same thing as learning. Billy has given us the outline of what he thinks is an important story about how the world hasn't changed, even as it constantly changes. The outline is nothing, though, without the meat-on-the-bone that fills in the story.

If you read the cast listing on a movie's IMDB page, you haven't seen the movie. If you've only heard Billy list a bunch of historical names, you haven't learned anything about who or why he mentioned them.

"We didn't start the fire
No, we didn't light it, but we tried to fight it"

No, Billy, you didn't. Fighting against the inertia of cultural rot would involve telling us what's actually going on, what was so wrong with it, and maybe giving us an indication of how things could have been fixed. To bitch without providing any answers is bad enough, but he doesn't even bitch about the problems that are annoying him. Billy assumes you can figure it out just by his stuttering out a few names. Complete sentences were too much for him at this point.

Billy Joel was rarely a good lyricist, and he only got worse as he could sense his own impending disinterest with writing songs. The nadir of that apathy is "We Didn't Start The Fire", a song so lazy few people can remember the words, let alone the point.

The worst thing that can happen to a novelty song is to become a hit, because when that happens, it serves as an aural wormhole from one shitty moment to another, echoing its stench throughout time. I would ask what we were thinking making this song a hit, but that would be even more thought, and I've already put more of it into this song than Billy ever did.

Billy and his generation might not have started the fire, but they didn't let it consume the master tapes of this song. That blame falls squarely on him, and perhaps that shouldn't be so easily forgiven.

Album Review: Nine Treasures - "Seeking the Absolute"

It’s hard to know exactly what to make of Nine Treasures, and that comes with the additional recognition that the quandary is not of the band’s own making.

Most folks’ first exposure to Nine Treasures came in the 2015 Mongol Metal compilation album, alongside Ego Fall and genre standout (and brief media darling) Tengger Cavalry.  Listening to that record at the time, Nine Treasures was clearly a band not like the other two - softer, with more emphasis on rock sensibilities and less reliance on metal beats and the juxtaposition of traditional throat singing against heavy guitar.

And then along came The Hu, who subsequently drew attention away from all the bands who had come previously, and became the pacecar for all metal from the Far East.  Well, Nine Treasures is a little more in line with The Hu’s sense of rhythm and accessibility, but Nine Treasures isn’t like The Hu, either.

Nor do they have to be.  What they’ve shown in their career, and continue to show with this new full-length album Seeking the Absolute, is that Nine Treasures has a different idiom than the other three bands we’ve mentioned entirely.  Yes, they still have solid rock thump (look no further than “The Ultimate Evolution,”) but the band is also willing to explore the space in a style bordering on prog.  Nine Treasures is, and always has been, more Rush than Motörhead, or heaven forfend, Metallica.

That doesn’t stop the band from blending those lines and writing a few savory rock cuts that are easy to bop along to.  It’s hard to listen to “Just Like You” and not find yourself rolling your shoulders along just a little.  It’s groovy and catchy, neither of which are terms often applied to many of the Mongol metal bands who have come before (with some apologies to The Hu.) Either way, it’s eminently accessible.

“Steel Falcon” does the same thing, albeit it a little heavier.  Oddly enough, these aren’t the compositions where Nine Treasures feel at their best.  Which leaves us in an odd place, because the basic structure of “Lonely Old Horse” is awesome, but begs for a little more overdrive to slam the point home.  So, Seeking the Absolute is an exercise in paradoxes to some degree - it could punch harder in some moments, but the punch it does utilize doesn’t always equal the accomplishment of the more exploratory tracks.

That doesn’t even get into the largest complication of all, which is that Nine Treasures will invariably be judged against stalwarts like The Hu and Tengger Cavalry because of their associated heritage, but that’s hardly a fair comparison, either.  Nine Treasures is their own band with their own goals and skills, and to lump them with their countrymen is lazy at best.  To wit, to associate The Ramones and The Doors together because they’re both American is a fool’s errand.

Seeking the Absolute is an album with many strong points, and as noted, a few weaknesses.  The critical takeaway here is that the album must be judged by the listener on its own merit, and not compared against a preconceived notion of what a rock/metal album from a Mongolian band should be.

Singles Roundup: Megadeth, Rob Zombie, & Neal Morse

Human beings are losing out to the algorithm, as this week proves out:

Megadeth - Tipping Point

I don't really have any thoughts about Megadeth calling it quits. Aside from the fact that no one ever stays retired (*cough* Rush *cough*), Megadeth feels like a band that is already retired. Dave hasn't been able to sing at all for years, and their last four or five records have all come and gone without making a dent. The only thing notable about them retiring is that Dave didn't feel the need to stick it out past Metallica just for the spite of it.

The final album is introduced to us with this song, which doesn't make me feel anything. The song is centered around speed, which is perhaps the least interesting thing a song has to offer. The main riff is simple chugging that has no groove whatsoever. It's merely a picking exercise, without any of the charm of Slash's that became "Sweet Child O Mine". This one thrashes through the verse, getting to a 'chorus' where Dave recites the title, almost speaking. It has little musicality to it, and doesn't stick with me at all. A different riff and feeling are introduces as the song gets through the solos, which are what Dave really cares about, but by that time it's too late. Anything good that comes then is in service of a song that doesn't deliver on its core goal.

I won't say this song proves Megadeth should have retired long ago, but I won't say I'm going to be sad about no more music like this coming along.

Rob Zombie - Punks & Demons

I once described Rob Zombie as a filmmaker who still makes music to fund his real passion, and never has that felt more on the nose than it does now. To play to the fans, he has welcomed back some of his collaborators from his classic days, but as we all have learned by now, time does not wait for anyone. Despite the band being back together, so to speak, this is not a return to the days of "Dragula" and "Living Dead Girl" breaking our necks with how hard they made us headbang.

Instead, Rob has gone all in on not trying to write songs anymore. The guitars skitter along, the 'riff' mostly being noise. Rob growls his vocal atop that, a harsh attack that is utterly indecipherable to me, that culminates without even noticing when the chorus comes and goes. This is noise as art, which is a bit like a horror movie that is nothing but the kills without a narrative to put them together. If that's what you're doing, you are more or less admitting you want to make a fake snuff film. That's what this song sounds like to me; death put to tape.

And hopefully that will be the last I have to say about Rob.

Neal Morse - Reach Deep/Grab It All/LeavingCalifornia

These songs are all from Neal's upcoming 'songwriter' album, where he is going to eschew prog for something more straight-forward and personal. I do like when he doesn't get bogged down in the prog of it all, but over the years Neal has developed a habit of saving all of his good ideas for the prog albums, leaving the songwriter albums to be rough sketches of wandering thoughts that never hit upon the infectious melodies that make his best music work. That's the case here, as these songs find Neal rambling through his life story, with seemingly endless verses that culminate in some of his weakest melodic hooks.

He has told these stories before, and subscribes to the theory of telling his testimony multiple times, so we are getting rehashes of rehashes at this point. The subject matter isn't even the problem, as you can get away with almost anything if the song is enjoyable enough to listen to. That's where Neal is falling short, as this is nowhere near as memorable as "Songs From November", which was the last one of these records that worked for me, and it's even further removed from his "God Won't Give Up" religious album, which might be the catchiest bit he's ever put out. These songs are just... flat.

Thinking About If I'm An Intellectual

Am I an 'intellectual'?

That's a difficult question to answer, because there is a very good chance you and I would draw different lines on where things shift into being pretentious. Intellectualism is more than mere intelligence, it's an attitude that embraces reason above emotion, and gives the impression of looking down on those who prefer to wallow in the shallow end of the theoretical brain vat. And yes, I realize just by making that allusion I am feeding into the perception.

The case for being an intellectual is obvious. I studied philosophy in college, and at one point wrote a twenty-page paper to work through my one original philosophical theory (which I have touched on over the years here) merely for the fun of it. As you have seen in the essays I post here, I find myself often thinking through the ramifications of the music we listen to, what our tastes say about ourselves, and how art can both explain and even define the people we are. That I can drop a pun about Duchamp and douche-bags is entirely in line with my personality.

The case for not being an intellectual is also obvious. I am the sort of person who claims Meat Loaf and Jim Steinman as my favorite artists, and the shapers of my identity. I listen to Steinman inserting 'boner lines' into several of his songs, and I find it stupidly charming. Depending on the day, I can still recite between most and all of the lyrics to Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start The Fire", which might be the single dumbest song ever written.

I wouldn't be helping the case to say we could look at this through utilitarian means, adding up the points on either side, which I think tells the whole story. While I am not generally the haughty type, and I have more than my share of moments where I go for the cheap option, I cannot deny that I prefer to actually use my brain.

There was a point in my life when I considered myself a Slayer fan. Not to any massive degree, but I enjoyed Slayer more than anyone who knew me would have assumed. Over the years, as the electricity running through the synapses in my mind has broken in my patterns of thought, Slayer has become a friction that now rubs me the wrong way. There's a specific point that illustrates this shift, which comes from the "God Hates Us All" album. In college, that was a record I listened to quite a bit, which is the sort of thing I shouldn't say out loud anymore.

They have a song called "Payback" on that record, which is a song that makes me question if evolution is theoretical like time travel, in that they can both go backwards. Kerry King writes, "Fuck you and your progress, watch me fucking regress." Nothing I can say will ever sum up Slayer's career better than that line. The man known how to be brutal.

The bigger point is there came a time when I simply couldn't put up with the pride Slayer felt for their ignorance. The same person who still gets a chuckle out of the name-dropping of Cracker Jack on "Two Out Of Three Ain't Bad" can't listen to Slayer explicitly write about beating people until they're lifeless carcasses anymore (to say nothing of Carcass, whose medical dictionary lyricism is the type of pseudo-intellectualism that gives actual thinking a bad name). To be more clever than Slayer has ever been in their lives, there comes a time when being so blunt means you can't make a point.

I've come to realize the mere fact I am writing these words, that I have given any thought at all to this issue, means that I most likely am an intellectual at heart. Perhaps I have always known this, but didn't want to admit it for the simple reason that I have known so few other people who fit the bill. To use an analogy from wrestling history, I will ask; Did you think the better story was Stone Cold giving his boss the finger, or Bret Hart blurring the line between heroism and villainy based on nothing but geography? The answer to that tells us everything, I suppose.

It was the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer who said intelligence is a 'curse', because it will lead to isolation and suffering. I'm tempted to believe in the psychological concept of the collective unconscious, because often it feels like much of humanity is pulling from the same well of mental resources, which would explain why there is so little to go around for each one of them.

I'm not saying that music must aim for the highest of brows. Some of my own songs were written about concepts such as the creation of the concept of fate as a rationalization to avoid the slings and arrows shot our way for having outrageous fortune (See, there I go paraphrasing "Hamlet"), or how inertia in our lives can make the past and future synonyms that make change a word that only exists in the language of our dreams, but we don't need to go to that extreme.

If it makes me an intellectual to want to be able to listen to music without feeling insulted by some of the language that gets used, I cannot deny the label. Whether it comes from songs that clearly have no intentional meaning behind them, no ability to communicate beyond an elementary school education, or an embrace of backwards social attitudes, I want something more from my music. Perhaps that explains why I have connected to so little of it over these last couple of years. The ways the world has shifted have made music more disposable, which has not been conducive to deeper thought.

So what does an intellectual do when he is given so little to think about?

I suppose he thinks about the lack of thought. The vicious circle continues. Ignorance may truly be bliss.