Blog posts have really slowed to a crawl since the manuscript editing and revisions have taken over my spare time, and the few posts that do make it up have largely been about that process. Just to update quickly: I’ve gotten some good feedback from several readers, I’m waiting for a few others to finish, and I have a few more waiting for a turn to read. All the while I keep playing over ideas of things I’d like to work on, so the process is going along very well at the moment.
With nothing new to add about writing, and since writing has dominated the discussion here lately, I think it’s time to get back to what was always meant to be one of the core reasons for keeping "Summer Vacation" going in the first place: Music. Here are my thoughts on the albums I’ve added to the music library up to this point of 2012:
The Black Keys - El Camino
This is an album that could have existed just as easily in the 1960s as it does in modern-day music hipster circles. I’m not sure it’s the same kind of one-sided partnership as The White Stripes, but it does seem like one guy is doing most of the work: He’s the singer, plays the guitar and just about everything else on the recordings, probably does the bulk of the songwriting, and then the other guy plays the drums. I like the drummer, though. He looks more like a data entry specialist than a rock drummer, and he plays with this intriguing style so far on the back end of the beat that if he was any slower he’d be dragging behind the song. It winds up almost sounding lazy, but he still keeps up. This album is quite a bit shorter than their previous one, but that’s a good thing. I thought that album, “Brothers,” went on longer than it needed to and wound up sounding diluted. I like this one much better.
Styx - The Grand Illusion / Pieces of Eight Live
It seems to be a trend now that some of these legacy rock acts will dig out benchmark albums and perform them start to finish while touring. I know Springsteen did it with "Born to Run," and I saw Rush do it with "Moving Pictures" twice. When I discovered Styx did it with two consecutive albums on one release, I was surprised. Styx was my gateway into rock music, my earliest favorite band, the band I saw for my first rock show. They are one of these bands that went through some ugly break-up / line-up change drama, which I always felt was unfair toward the one guy, Dennis DeYoung, who had been their principal songwriter and was essentially booted out of the band. I’ve seen them play twice in the past several years on classic rock tour packages, and even though the guy they hired to replace DeYoung sounds a LOT like him and is quite the keyboard player, it didn’t ring true. I was never interested in any of the new music they were putting out, especially after previewing some of it on iTunes. During one of these shows when Tommy Shaw announced they were going to play something off their new album, I began to clap politely along with 25% of the audience until my cousin reached over, touched my shoulder and said “Don’t encourage them.”
But then I saw Styx on a recent Behind the Music update on VH1 Classic, and learned that even if I was a Dennis DeYoung fan, he was kind of a megalomanic and wasn’t letting the band be a band. With that perspective, I saw the reasoning for cutting him loose, bringing in new guys and moving on. So when I saw this release show up on iTunes, I went for it. And I’m so glad I did. These two albums were very influential in my music fan development, and the recordings sounds great, enough like the originals to still be recognizable but with an added energy. One of the lead singers sounds like his voice gave out about ten years ago, and since he wasn’t a great singer to begin with, well.... there’s always the nostalgia I can appreciate. But it’s been great to rediscover some of these songs I had written off into the Back Catalog of Memory a long time ago. In fact, one of the strongest rediscoveries in this has been the title track from “Pieces of Eight,” which gave me some technical issues during the download and I had to rely on iTunes support staff to resolve, which they thankfully did. If you’re curious, the title of this post comes from a line in that song, which is one of of my favorites at the moment.
Florence + the Machine - Ceremonials
One of the ways I discover new bands these days is seeing them perform on TV. There have been some great albums I’ve found after seeing a band play on Letterman, at least during the summer when I’m still up late enough to see the musical act at the end of the show. Another good source of discovery is SNL.
I knew about this band from “Dog Days are Over,” because we all heard that one played too often a couple summers back. When I saw them on SNL a couple months back, I was curious enough to at least read the iTunes reviews and comments. Phases like “baroque pop anthems,” “majestic arrangements,” “booming percussion, echoing keyboards and big guitars” got my attention. And this album delivers with all of those things. But it also has Florence, and, I’m sorry, but her voice is just a tiny bit weird for me. I’m not saying I don’t like it, but there’s some incongruous quality to it that doesn't completely work with the music and keeps the album as one I like but prevents it from being one I could ever love.
Bon Iver
I’ve read about this in magazines a lot and felt it had the kind of critical buzz that usually means it’s going to be too esoteric to enjoy. But then another SNL performance got me curious. Turns out it is pretty esoteric -- the songs all blend together like one continuous but scattered idea, and a lot of the vocals are done in a falsetto register. The music is largely ambient with a lot of acoustic guitar finger-picking and some electronic overlays complementing it. Oddly though, it works pretty well. This will never be the kind of album I’ll play in the car with the windows rolled down on a summer afternoon, but it’s the perfect soundtrack to a Sunday night.
Van Halen - A Different Kind of Truth
Okay, first off -- this is NOT a reunion album. I know, David Lee Roth is doing the vocals again (notice I didn’t call it singing), and that’s what a big chunk of rock fans have been dreaming about for decades. But for this to be a reunion, it would have to include Michael Anthony playing the bass, not Eddie Van Halen’s teenage son. Therefore, instead of this being a Van Halen reunion I’m calling it what it really is: The seventh version of a Van Halen line-up where they only constant members have been Eddie and Alex. And since it seems the reason Michael Anthony isn’t playing is because Eddie’s feelings were hurt when Michael wouldn’t shun Sammy Hagar the way Eddie wanted him too... well, Eddie Van Halen is a truly gifted musician, but he comes across in a way that makes Dennis DeYoung look like a professional mediator.
That said, it’s mostly an awesome album. There’s been a lot of Internet talk about how the band dug out old song ideas from thirty years ago and recycled them into new arrangements, but who cares? Speaking as a writer, I take no issue with revisiting an old idea if there’s something new to do with it. It’s a little creepy listening to Roth (who’s old enough to be a grandfather now and possibly could be several dozen times over, as I can imagine he’d proudly admit) singing songs about girls like he’s still twenty-six years old, but the music all works on a level that any hard rock fan would have a tough time not appreciating. Not every song is a classic, but even the ones that don’t measure up to the rest aren’t complete bores. And some of them are really, really great.
So to recap, two months into 2012 has the year in music starting off well. Five new albums added to the library, and all of them are at least good. A better average than usual for me. I guess we’ll see how much longer that holds up as new music shows up. But until then, I'm going to go listen to "Pieces of Eight" again.
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