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Tuesday, January 15th, 2008

The Popdose Guide to The Call

by Jeff Giles

guidelogo.gif Welcome to the Popdose Guide to The Call, a semi-forgotten group that had a couple of hits in the ’80s, but has seen its catalog fall out of print and into obscurity over the last ten years or so. It’s a shame, if you ask me. Of all the bands making earnest, sweeping Heartland Rock during the decade (see: U2; Alarm, The; BoDeans, The), The Call were among the most talented and consistent. Though songwriter Michael Been flirted with overt Christianity in his lyrics and themes, his faith was often so tortured that even the most devout atheist would find it hard to listen without feeling a little of that old-time religion. In other words: While freshly scrubbed, L.L. Bean-wearing chumps like Michael W. Smith — or the always-vile dc Talk — were busy bringing Jesus to the mall, Michael Been and The Call were digging bare-handed through the bloodstained soil of Gethsemane.

In discussing the band’s religious leanings, I realize I run the risk of scaring a few readers away from the music. For what it’s worth, I tend to find “Christian rock” mostly neither Christian nor rock — but I think what the open-minded listener has to appreciate about The Call is the music’s passion, regardless of its source. Been often sings — and the band often plays — like it’s pulling barbed wire through its vital organs. I’m not talking Slayeresque rage here, but commitment. Perhaps you’ll listen and hear what I mean. (more…)

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Tuesday, January 8th, 2008

The Popdose Guide to Nanci Griffith

by Jon Cummings

guidelogo.gif Nanci Griffith is arguably the most important folk-music artist of her generation. That statement is risky not so much because there are so many other contenders for the throne, but because we live in an era when the term “folk music” itself has lost considerable meaning — falling victim to record-biz economics and radio-industry pigeonholing. Indeed, during the most successful period of her career Griffith shifted (or, on occasion, was shifted) from indie-folk to country to pop and back to folk — pardon me, I meant “Americana” — based as much on the demographic-targeting whims of industry marketers as the evolution of her music. Griffith herself describes her music as “folkabilly,” which fits about as well as anything else. (more…)

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Tuesday, January 1st, 2008

The Popdose Guide to John Mellencamp

by Anthony Kuzminski

Act I: Johnny Cougar

Chestnut Street Incident (1976)
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I remember finding a cassette of this album back in the ’80s and enjoying the hell out of it, most notably for the fun covers of “Jailhouse Rock,” “Twentieth Century Fox” and “(Oh) Pretty Woman” and whenever I found a book that claimed to review every album ever made, I’d look up my favorite artists and Mellencamp was on that list, so whenever I came across the entry for Chestnut Street Incident I was always shocked to see it get one star (and in some cases, less than one). This album is despised — I think I even read one review which claimed it was one of the worse albums ever made. At the time, I thought the writer was being overly harsh; however, I was lacking history and context. (more…)

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Tuesday, April 10th, 2007

The Popdose Guide to John Hiatt

by Jeff Giles

For the first decade or so of his career, John Hiatt was a case of mostly unfulfilled potential. Everyone knew he was a good songwriter — particularly other songwriters — but, for one reason or another, his albums never showed much more than the occasional flash of brilliance. This was partly due to the idiocy of major labels — Hiatt was signed to a few in the ’70s and ’80s, and all of them tried turning Hiatt into a different flavor of a different month — and partly due to the lack of focus and self-destructive behavior of an angry alcoholic in a seemingly interminable downward spiral.

In fact, Hiatt’s early efforts are interesting primarily because of what was going on behind the scenes, not the music itself. Rare is even the most diehard Hiatt fan who will tell you that Warming Up to the Ice Age or Riding With the King are great albums. The songs were often there — a fact attested to by the number of artists who have cherrypicked those albums for songs to cover on their own releases — but the performances were occasionally underwhelming. And the production? Whoa. Early Hiatt albums are notorious for being victims of some of the flattest, most dated production of the ’80s.

Taken in context, however, within the body of Hiatt’s work, they’re more consistently enjoyable than conventional wisdom would seem to indicate. These albums still pale when compared to 1987’s Bring the Family and the best of what followed it, but even from the beginning, he had an uncommon knack for stripping a song down to its most essential bits.


Hangin’ Around the Observatory (1974)
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Like a lot of songwriters, Hiatt got a publishing deal before a recording contract; unlike many — at least at the time — he couldn’t read or write music. This didn’t stop him from writing songs, obviously, but it meant that he recorded all his own demos rather than simply transcribing the arrangements for other people to perform. Thus, when Three Dog Night had a hit with Hiatt’s “Sure as I’m Sittin’ Here” (download), he was more prepared than most to present interested labels with examples of his work.

He ended up signing with Epic, and releasing Hangin’ Around the Observatory in 1974. It isn’t a particularly distinguished debut, but it’s got an undeniable — albeit limited and unfocused — charm. The set hints strongly at what Hiatt would go on to do in the late ’80s, actually; not only with “Sure as I’m Sittin’ Here,” but wry, uptempo numbers like “Maybe Baby, Say You Do” and quieter fare like “Little Blue Song for You” (download). Like a lot of first albums, it meanders — closing track “Ocean” (download) is unlike anything else on the record, or anything else Hiatt would ever release — but it holds together surprisingly well. Unfortunately, that didn’t help it sell.


Overcoats (1975)
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A year later, Hiatt returned with Overcoats, which is about as similar to his debut as the short turnaround would lead you to believe. The album isn’t as consistent as its predecessor — it’s here that Hiatt shows what would become a career-long willingness to confuse cleverness with smarts, with fluff like “I Killed an Ant With My Guitar” — but if the valleys are lower, the peaks are higher too. The breezy mid ’70s charm of “Down Home” (download) and the title track (download) eclipse pretty much anything on Observatory, for instance, even if he stumbles on tracks like “Ant” and “I’m Tired of Your Stuff,” on which he seems to be vocally channeling Shel Silverstein.

If Epic knew it had a major talent developing in the roster, though, the label had a funny way of showing it; after Overcoats failed to find much of an audience, Hiatt was out of a deal — and he’d stay that way for four long years.


Slug Line (1979)
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Even with the four-year gap, the difference between Overcoats John Hiatt and Slug Line John Hiatt is pretty startling. The countrified blues of the first two albums are replaced here with taut, New Wave-tinged rock; the obvious points of reference are Elvis Costello and Nick Lowe, and both would seem to have been intentional. Lowe, in particular, was a profound influence on Hiatt, and the two would develop a lasting friendship that would have an impact on the latter’s career on more than one occasion — but more on that later.

Of the two “New Costello” albums Hiatt recorded for MCA, Slug Line was the more favorably looked upon, both critically and commercially, but looking back, I tend to think it’s actually the weaker of the two. Though the mean streak Hiatt reveals here would go on to serve him well, on Slug Line it feels slightly forced; if he wasn’t trying to chase a trend, he was almost certainly making a conscious effort to duplicate a sound he admired, and it rings just a little hollow. These aren’t Hiatt’s catchiest songs, either — “The Negroes Were Dancing” (download) is a nifty little “Hand Jive” lift, and and “Long Night” (download) is authentically slinky, but he’d done better before and would do it again.


Two Bit Monsters (1980)
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Panned as an inferior follow-up to Slug Line when it was released, Two Bit Monsters has aged better than its predecessor, partly because it’s a better set of songs overall, and partly because Hiatt seems more comfortable in his skinny tie and sharkskin jacket than he did the year before. This album’s nervous energy and casual sneer are a better fit for its stripped-down approach; more often than not, Denny Bruce (who co-produced with Hiatt) is content to simply sit back and let the four-piece crew — including Howie Epstein on bass — go to it.

The songs are solid, if not among Hiatt’s finest. Emmylou Harris would go on to cover “Pink Bedroom” (download), and “String Pull Job” (download) is a nice early example of his jaundiced take on the war of the sexes, but for the most part, the album is just fine without being exceptional. When it failed to chart, MCA decided it had heard enough, and pulled the plug. Four albums and two labels into his career, Hiatt had yet to crack the album charts; all that was left was to find another home.


All of a Sudden (1982)
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For his first Geffen album, Hiatt tabbed Tony Visconti to produce, and those who thought Visconti’s best-known work with Bowie, T. Rex, and the Moody Blues would make him something of an awkward fit for the project found themselves vindicated when All of a Sudden was released. The production isn’t bad, necessarily, it’s just inappropriate — lots of gloss, lots of messing around with vocal effects — which is a shame, because it’s as least as good as anything Hiatt had already done. In particular, “I Look for Love” (download) is an early Hiatt classic, and coulda-shoulda been a hit, but the whole album shows signs of maturation. If not his best set of songs to this point, it’s arguably his most consistent. “Something Happens” and “My Edge of the Razor” (download) are other highlights.


Riding With the King (1983)
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It’s two, two, two albums in one! Not really, but because of the way it was recorded — side one was produced by Ron Nagel and Scott Mathews of the Durocs, with Mathews acting as a sort of one-man band behind Hiatt’s vocals and guitar; side two was produced by Nick Lowe, with support from Lowe and his Cowboy Outfit — it basically feels that way. There’s a marked difference in the way the record feels from one side to the next; neither is better than the other, unless you have a marked preference for one versus the other, but Lowe’s tracks bear his unmistakeable mid-’80s sound.

If Nagel and Mathews aren’t quite as distinctive, they make up for it by getting the album’s best songs, including “Girl on a String” (download), “Lovers Will,” “She Loves the Jerk,” and “Say It With Flowers” (download). The whole thing is brighter and not as sharp as what he’d go on to do, but it marks the spot where he (or his labels) stopped trying to squeeze him into places where he didn’t belong. Future albums would have their problems (sometimes many problems), but from this point forward, he wasn’t a country blues artist, or an Elvis Costello knockoff; he was simply John Hiatt.

Of course, this had its own set of inherent difficulties, especially at first, but it was a step in the right direction.


Warming Up to the Ice Age (1985)
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Hiatt’s producer for this project, Norbert Putnam, made his bones in country music, but you wouldn’t know it from listening to this thin, sodden mess of a record. It was 1985, so “everyone was doing it” is an acceptable, if limited, defense — but a great band (including a terrific horn section and Willie Green, Jr. and Bobby King on background vocals) was criminally wasted. (Bass player Jesse Boyce, however, deserves a rough, prolonged shaking for his obnoxious playing here.)

Considering that Hiatt was nearing an alcoholic bottom at the time, the songs hold up surprisingly well, if you can ignore the way they sound; “When We Ran” (download) is lovely, and “I’m a Real Man” (download) has some funny (if obvious) lines, also among his best are “She Said the Same Things to Me” and “The Usual” (later covered by Dylan). Elvis Costello even shows up for a duet.

Again, however, the album failed to chart. And so, in 1986, when Hiatt found himself without a record deal, it wasn’t exactly a surprise. The cognoscenti shook their heads and clucked about how wrong it was that such an undeniable talent had been consigned to the periphery, but all things considered, he’d been given his shot.

And then a funny thing happened: Hiatt hit bottom, cleaned up, got sober, and turned the experience into the best music of his career. He showcased the new material during a residency at McCabe’s in Los Angeles, and word spread. The next step was a new deal with a new label, and sessions for what would become the certifiably classic Bring the Family.


Bring the Family (1987)
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John Hiatt - Bring the Family

Bring the Family was a watershed for Hiatt, and since its release in 1987, it’s become a touchstone for countless songwriter dorks with a soft spot for smartly written roots music. Asked to name his dream band, he responded with “Nick Lowe, Ry Cooder, and Jim Keltner” — and then discovered that all three were ready and willing. It was a case of the perfect musicians for the perfect songs at the perfect time. Though Hiatt didn’t have an American label at the time, he still had friends at Demon in the UK (he has said he was told he could “fart in a bathtub” and the label would release it), and with their backing, he got to work. Getting these four cantankerous talents (and egos) into a studio together would prove to be much more problematic in the future, but for the four days it took to record Bring the Family, lightning met bottle. There are no wasted moments: Lowe’s bass is a fat, wondrous thing; Cooder’s guitar barks, bends, and snaps; Keltner’s drumwork is predictably stellar; and Hiatt’s warm, elastic growl brings it all together.

And the songs are superb. (Is there a better opening line for a love song than “You’re a little on the thin side/But that’s all right,” from “Thank You Girl” (download)?) It’s an album about growing up late, about coming to terms with regret, about getting a second chance with love and family. And in exploring these subjects, Hiatt lost none of the caustic humor that had typified his earlier work; instead, he learned to channel it through a more — pardon the pun — sober outlook. Take “Your Dad Did” (download), for instance. There might be, somewhere, a better song about fathers, sons, and domestic bliss, but I haven’t heard it:

You’re a chip off the old block
Why does it come as such a shock
That every road up which you rock
Your dad already did

Yeah you’ve seen the old man’s ghost
Come back as creamed chipped beef on toast
Now if you dont get your slice of roast
You’re gonna flip your lid
Just like your dad did

Well the day was long, now supper’s on
The thrill is gone
But something’s taking place
Yeah the food is cold and your wife feels old
But all hands fold
As the two-year-old says grace
She says, “Help the starving children to get well
“But let my brother’s hamster burn in hell”
You love your wife and kids
Just like your dad did

The album wasn’t a huge hit, but it earned the best reviews of Hiatt’s career, and its songs have gone on to be covered by too many artists to mention here. “Have a Little Faith in Me,” in particular, has probably paid for a few summer homes, as has Bonnie Raitt’s cover of “Thing Called Love.”

There are no wasted parts. In fact, because of the budget and the brief time allotted, Hiatt had to scramble just to get ten songs in; Lowe, who took no money for his participation, shared a hotel room with Hiatt; and John Chelew, who produced — and did a stellar job — was the booker at McCabe’s. All it took was thirteen years, but with Bring the Family and A&M, Hiatt had hit his stride.


Slow Turning (1988)
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John Hiatt - Slow Turning

A little like Bring the Family, but with more moving parts, Slow Turning took the rich, darkly personal material the previous album had been built from and added a slightly more commercial sheen (courtesy of Glyn Johns’ production) and thicker arrangements (courtesy of Hiatt’s on-again, off-again band, The Goners, featuring Sonny Landreth on lead guitar). It isn’t as powerful as the previous album, but it built on the commercial promise suggested by it; the title track (download) took a chugging rhythm and the line “Now I’m yelling at the kids in the back, ’cause they’re bangin’ like Charlie Watts” and turned it into something like an actual hit. Elsewhere, the made-to-be-played-live “Tennessee Plates” features a memorable scraping riff, “Ride Along” makes terrific use of Hiatt’s pitchy growl, and “Trudy and Dave” (download) gives Bonnie and Clyde a signature Hiatt twist.

The album also finds him reaching, and not always comfortably; “Is Anybody There?” is far too busy (and far too ordinary) for Hiatt — it sounds like a demo for another singer — and he’s occasionally clever when he doesn’t have to be. Still, following up Bring the Family couldn’t have been easy — Hiatt scrapped his first attempt — and if Slow Turning isn’t quite his best work, it was probably still the perfect album for its time, serving as a pleasant extended introduction for fans who’d picked up the story the year before.


Stolen Moments (1990)
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John Hiatt - Stolen Moments

The Goners were out, but Glyn Johns remained behind the board, and the result was the slickest effort of Hiatt’s career. Stolen Moments performed well on the charts — it reached #61, Hiatt’s highest peak yet — but it’s aged rather poorly, and isn’t one of his best-loved albums. Johns has taken some lumps for the record’s sound, but it’s hard to believe a cranky old dog like Hiatt would have released something he wasn’t happy with; it’s more likely that he was trying to fit in at AAA radio, and it’s tough to blame him for that — even if it’s also tough not to wish you could scrub some of the varnish off these songs.

It has its moments, though — a lot of them, actually — including the classic opener, “Real Fine Love” (download), the charging “Child of the Wild Blue Yonder” and “The Rest of the Dream,” the lovely “Thirty Years of Tears” and “Through Your Hands,” and the pleasantly off-kilter studio creation “Seven Little Indians” (download). The best thing about the record, though, is that it finds Hiatt happy and seemingly at peace — and still interesting. He’s dismissed the idea of songwriters needing to suffer for their art as a “bunch of crap,” and here, he proves it.


Perfectly Good Guitar (1993)
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John Hiatt - Perfectly Good Guitar

Perhaps reminded by grunge’s young lions that it had been awhile since he turned up his amps, Hiatt traded his family man’s cardigan for a faded flannel shirt here, enlisting producer Matt Wallace, School of Fish guitarist Michael Ward, and Wire Train drummer Brian MacLeod to help him craft the most consistently loud and ragged album of his career. Surprisingly, it comes across nowhere near as desperate as its description might make it sound — Hiatt’s ragged howl is perfect for the part, and the band buzzes and hums with loose energy.

If only the songs were better. There are a lot of really good ones — the snarling opener “Something Wild,” the funky, loping “When You Hold Me Tight,” the anthemic “Angel” (download), “Cross My Fingers,” and “Permanent Hurt,” the bluesy “Old Habits are Hard to Break” (download) — but there’s also a lot of filler, like the insufferably clever “The Wreck of the Barbie Ferrari,” or the dull “Buffalo River Home” and “Straight Outta Time.” And the title track? It isn’t as sharp or funny as people thought at the time. At twelve songs, Perfectly Good Guitar feels curiously long and woefully uneven.

It wound up being the last studio album Hiatt would record for A&M, but not by the label’s choice. After releasing the live set Comes Alive at Budokan in 1994, Hiatt celebrated his 20th anniversary as a recording artist by signing a big-bucks deal with Capitol Records. Gary Gersh, who’d taken over Capitol not long before, was looking to put his stamp on the label in a hurry, and Hiatt was one of his flagship signings. (Like most of those artists, Hiatt would wind up grossly underperforming, and his tenure at the label — like Gersh’s — would be brief. But first things first.)


Walk On (1995)
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John Hiatt - Walk On

Hiatt continued his prolific run — a 14-song album, only two years in the making — with 1995’s Walk On, probably the highest-profile release of his career. Capitol, still excited about wooing Hiatt away from A&M, promoted the bejeezus out of the album, not that it mattered; aside from “Cry Love” (download), there really wasn’t much here that stood a chance of gaining any radio traction, even at AAA.

Plenty of fans love this album, and it’s fine, but it’s near the bottom of my personal list. There are way too many songs, too many of them are way too long, and on the whole, hooks are in curiously short supply. New bandmates Davey Faragher and David Immerglück provide flawless support, and Don Smith’s production is a thing of warm, crystalline beauty, but it’s mostly for naught. There are some decent songs, to be sure — listen to “I Can’t Wait” (download) — but the chaff-to-wheat ratio is way too high.


Little Head (1997)
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A strange one. Capitol clearly had no use for Little Head — they barely promoted it, and a drunken intern seems to have been assigned the artwork — and the reviews were almost uniformly unkind. In the scheme of things, it’s definitely a lukewarm Hiatt record; the production (handled by Hiatt and Faragher) has little of the immediacy and grit listeners had come to expect, and a lot of the songs sound tired. Whether Hiatt was going through a slump, or the album was just an experiment that didn’t pan out, is hard to say.

On the bright side, there really are some good songs here. The title track (download) and “Far as We Go” (download) do a fine job of presenting Hiatt’s dumb and subtle sides, respectively, and throughout the album, sandwiched between painful fare like “Sure Pinocchio” and “Woman Sawed in Half,” there are small respites from the creative malaise. Undoubtedly for completists only, but still, not as bad as the reviews would have you believe.


Crossing Muddy Waters (2000)
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When it became clear to Hiatt that Capitol wasn’t interested in promoting him, or the results of his forthcoming reunion with the Goners, he wrangled his way out of his contract, taking what would become 2001’s The Tiki Bar is Open with him, and — since the album wasn’t done and it had been awhile since he’d released anything — recorded this loose acoustic set to bridge the gap. Released through a partnership between Hiatt, his new label, Vanguard, and eMusic, Crossing Muddy Waters is easily the least-produced album of Hiatt’s career; the percussion, such as it is, consists of old-fashioned stomps (as he put it, “we finally got rid of the drummer”).

As you might expect, the set drags a bit in places. Though Hiatt’s uniquely suited to this sort of thing, and the album finds him in joyously unfettered form, your ears might start getting thirsty for new sounds after awhile. It works flawlessly as a palate-cleanser after the fussy Little Head, but it’s definitely an album you’ll want to pick up after you’ve gotten a fair distance into your Hiatt collection. That being said, closer “Before I Go” (download) is one of his finest songs, and there’s plenty of worthwhile, enjoyable material here, including the down-to-earth ballad “Take It Down” (download).

For a quickly recorded indie release, Crossing Muddy Waters didn’t do bad for itself — it peaked at #110, outperforming Little Head, and earned Hiatt some positive press leading up to his return to plugged-in recording.


The Tiki Bar Is Open (2001)
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For the first time since Slow Turning, Hiatt reunited in the studio with the Goners, and if these songs overall aren’t quite as compelling as those on the outfit’s previous effort, they’re still solid, and the album’s worth seeking out for Landreth’s presence, if for no other reason. Consider it a victory lap of sorts for Hiatt — he doesn’t work up a sweat here, but he also seems much less self-conscious than he did on his later A&M and Capitol releases.

Still, it’s hard not to be a little disappointed in these songs, at least if you were at all anticipating this reunion; though he’d definitely moved beyond the point where he needed to explore new artistic territory, Hiatt still seems to be treading water here. The charms of songs like the title track (download) and the trippy, nearly nine-minute closer, “Farther Stars” (download) are familiar ones, and they don’t add much to Hiatt’s catalog, either with or without the Goners.

Though the Goners would stick around for another album, Hiatt’s run at Vanguard ended after Tiki Bar; though the label seemed a perfect fit for his music, he found an even better one in Austin’s New West Records.


Beneath This Gruff Exterior (2003)
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John Hiatt & The Goners - Beneath This Gruff Exterior

For their third outing with Hiatt, the Goners got front-cover credit — and, arguably, the strongest material he’d ever given them to play. Beneath This Gruff Exterior isn’t as fresh as Slow Turning was in ‘88, but the songs are sharper, not to mention darker and more unyielding; he’s always been a somewhat cranky performer, but by 2003, Hiatt had unquestionably earned the right and accumulated the experience to back it up. The result is a gnarled, feisty set, produced with minimal intrusion by Don Smith with Hiatt and the band — a definite late-period highlight.

As we’ve seen, on previous albums, Hiatt too often seemed to be striking a stylistic or thematic pose, frequently to the songs’ detriment. If Bring the Family found him coming into his own as a songwriter, however, the post-Capitol years have seen him coming into his own as a performer, and Gruff Exterior is a fine example; though Landreth and the Goners aren’t exactly given less room to stretch here, they do sound less like a separate band and more like an organic part of the material. There’s filler, naturally — like most of Hiatt’s longer albums, it’d be better at ten songs — but that’s a fairly petty complaint; it would be hard to name another artist with this kind of mileage who’s still going so strong. “Almost Fed Up With the Blues” (download) and “The Most Unoriginal Sin” (download) are vintage Hiatt.


Master of Disaster (2005)
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John Hiatt - Master of Disaster

When you’ve made as many records as Hiatt has (this is his seventeenth studio album), you’ve likely broken all the new ground you’re going to plow, and made all the grand statements you ever needed to make. Your music, if it was ever any good to begin with, becomes about refinement; about looking up and down the road, separating the ruts from the grooves, and settling comfortably into the latter.

And so it is with John Hiatt. Though he’s indulged in a certain amount of experimentation, in terms of basic sound, anybody who buys his albums knows what they’ll get. The only question is whether he’s feeling it; an extremely prolific songwriter, Hiatt releases an album roughly every 24 months, and he sometimes sounds as if he could use a little rest. Happily, the answer to that question here is a resounding “Hell yes.”

The album has two things going for it right off the bat: Hiatt enlisted the legendary Jim Dickinson to produce, and members of the North Mississippi Allstars to back him. Hiatt’s albums never stray too far from Memphis, but these two ingredients keep Disaster good and greasy, and wholly rooted in Cumberland mud. It smells like barbecue sauce.

Let’s talk about sound. The first thing you notice when listening to the album is how damn thick it is at the bottom — if Master of Disaster was a woman, she’d be Shakira, or Jennifer Lopez, except neither of them are from Memphis. Maybe Ma Rainey instead. Whatever. The point is that this is far and away the best-sounding record I heard all year; you get a fat and healthy low end, but it leaves plenty of room for the stuff on top. Dickinson recorded the album with a Direct Stream Digital console, and he and Hiatt couldn’t shut up about how great it sounded; that kind of crowing usually deserves to be dismissed out of hand, but in this case, it’s the truth. Every instrument on this recording glows with warm clarity.

It would have been a shame if all this had been wasted on subpar songs; Hiatt’s been known to reel off some clunkers, and is sometimes too clever for his own good. He’s at his best when refracting his beloved Memphis blues through a lyrical lens that is alternately warped and weary, but always brilliant. He’s at his best on Master of Disaster. In closing, I’ll just shut up and let him speak for himself:

Just a creature in the dark
Longing for one blessed spark
To burn the sky and heat the night
With love reborn by morning light
But nature doesn’t heed the call
Nature just commands, that’s all — “Howlin’ Down the Cumberland”

—

My daddy was a salesman
My brother was too
I would sell anything
Just to try to stay with you — “Thunderbird”

—

And it’s three, four
I’m stiff as Al Gore
Come on over baby
What have we got to lose
Just a nasty case of
These ol’ wintertime blues

Well, it’s the same old drill
For Punxsutawney Phil
If he sees his own shadow
I’m shootin’ to kill — “Wintertime Blues” (download)

—

When men become more ladylike
I’ll see you in the candlelight
When women come to be like men
We’ll be ashamed to fight again
No jealous God’s the only one
Father, mother, ghost and Son
Love’s unorthodox
Changes all of nature’s clocks
To time remaining
Just twenty-four hours
For lovers in training
Bitter, salty, sweet and sour — “Love’s Not Where We Thought We Left It”

—

Well he packed up his suitcase
‘Cause the deal gone down
She was slipping on her stockings
Lord it made the sweetest sound — “Cold River”

—

So I found some open country
I forgot the past
I don’t care if you want me
‘Cause nothing matters anymore baby
‘Til I find you at last — “Find You At Last”

—

Used to take seven pills
Just to get up in the morning
From seven different doctors
With seven different warnings
I’d call ‘em up to say I’m coming apart
They’d say, “Call us back when
“The fireworks start” — “Back on the Corner” (download)

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Tuesday, February 20th, 2007

The Popdose Guide to Jules Shear

by Jeff Giles

Here’s one I’ve been meaning to get to for a long time now — Jules Shear has always been on my list of perfect Idiot’s Guide artists. Many of you will see some irony here, but he’s perfect for many of the same reasons that someone like Nik Kershaw is perfect; specifically, he’s released a lot more music than most people are aware of.

This has a lot to do with the fact that significant portions of his catalog are either out of print or have never been released on CD here. That last hangup is what kept me from writing this Guide for so long, actually — it took forever to find transfers for Watch Dog and Eternal Return. And what you’re going to read about in this post doesn’t even tell the whole story — there’s an EP (Jules), a collection of demos (Demo-Itis), an acoustic promo disc (Unplug This), and a best-of (Horse of a Different Color) that have been left out, not to mention Shear’s earlier work, with the Funky Kings and Jules and the Polar Bears, or his one-off side project, The Reckless Sleepers.

You can see why these Guides are getting harder for me to put together. But I digress.

The thing is, Shear is a wonderful songwriter, and you probably think so too, even if you don’t know it. Cyndi Lauper’s “All Through the Night”? Shear wrote it. The Bangles’ “If She Knew What She Wants”? Yep, that was him. Those are the major covers, but Shear’s material has been reinterpreted by a wide array of artists, and he’s collaborated with many more. He’s got an uncommon gift for memorable pop hooks and laugh-out-loud-clever lyrics, and he’s a distinctive guitarist to boot. (Shear’s Wikipedia entry describes his technique as “tuning the guitar in an open-G with an E in the bass. The guitar was not left-hand style per se [with the strings installed in reverse order], but actually held upside down, with the fretting hand’s thumb wrapped down over the upper edge of the neck, barring across the strings, and the low E being at the thumb’s tip.”) Oh, and he also came up with the idea for — and hosted the first “season” of — MTV Unplugged.

So what gives? How come his biggest hit as a recording artist didn’t even crack the Top 40? We don’t answer the hard questions here, but you’ll probably have a few ideas by the time we’re through.


Watch Dog (1983)

For his solo debut, Shear was surrounded by what must have seemed to EMI like a slam-dunk supporting cast — Todd Rundgren in the producer’s chair, Elliot Easton on guitar, Tony Levin and Rick Marotta in the rhythm section, and former Polar Bear/future synthpop production whiz Stephen Hague on keyboards — not to mention a really solid set of songs. As a producer, Rundgren is often criticized for being heavy-handed, and that complaint could certainly be leveled here; from start to finish, Watch Dog is clearly a Rundgren production, and even, in spots, sounds more like a Rundgren solo album than anything else.

This is a fairly minor complaint, though. As much as Rundgren’s decision-making behind the boards tends to date these songs, none of them are really hurt in the process. It sounds like an album from 1983, yes, but not a bad one. And Shear’s reedy singing — probably the biggest thing keeping him from solo stardom — is either buttressed by reverb and backing vocals or polished to a soft sheen. It’s good stuff. It didn’t even chart, of course, but it’s good stuff.

It sounds like a good time, too — Rundgren goes nuts with handclaps and other assorted knob-twiddling on “I Need It” (which also features a nifty guitar solo from Easton, I’m guessing); Shear kneels at the altar of Brian Wilson on “Longest Drink”; and “Marriage Made in Heaven” is a 7:42 pop bonanza.

Since you can’t even get the CDs used anywhere, I’m going to break with tradition here, and offer up all the tracks for Watch Dog and Eternal Return. It’s a vinyl rip, of course, and there are some noticeable defects, but beggars can’t be choosers, I guess. Let’s hope the bandwidth holds up!

Whispering Your Name
Standing Still
All Through the Night
I Need It
The Longest Drink
Never Fall
I Know, I Know
She’s In Love Again
Love Will Come Again
Marriage Made in Heaven


Eternal Return (1985)

Watch Dog flopped, but Shear was on the radio anyway, with Lauper’s cover of “All Through the Night,” a state of affairs that not only padded his wallet and probably helped keep him on EMI’s roster, but also gave an indication of where his career was headed. Though Eternal Return spun off a minor hit — the Motown-inspired “Steady” peaked somewhere around #50 — The Bangles took their cover of the album’s “If She Knew What She Wants” much further up the charts. It probably came as no surprise to anyone involved that it’s easier to get things done when you look like Susanna Hoffs, but still, Shear’s songwriting success had to feel a little ironic at this point.

It was 1985, which is pretty much all that needs to be said about Eternal Return’s production, handled by Shear and Bill Drescher. Drummer Anton Fig, in particular, either played no actual drums at all or had his tracks put through one of the most vicious neuterings in all of rock & roll history. The entire band, though, takes a backseat to Rob Fisher’s synths. If you’re not the type to let production distract you, these songs still win out; they’re bright and hooky, and — as The Bangles proved — could have been hits.

With someone else in front of the mike, maybe. But still. And really, Shear’s voice is unusual, but it isn’t bad at all…just an acquired taste that most people hadn’t had a chance to acquire.

If She Knew What She Wants
Stand Tall
Steady
Change (Change)
The Fever’s On
Here She Comes
Memories Burn Hard
You’re Not Around
Empty out the House
Every Time I Get the Feeling


The Third Party (1989)
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Four years later, Shear resurfaced on a new label (I.R.S.) with a new sound, one about as far removed from the synth-heavy Eternal Return as he could have gone. The Third Party, produced with The Church’s Marty Willson-Piper, is an acoustic record — and by “acoustic,” I mean a guitar and a voice. The unplugged fad was right around the corner, complete with choirs and organs and all manner of not-quite-unplugged accoutrements, but Shear — who shortly would surface as the host of MTV Unplugged — stripped his songs to the bone; not only did he help usher in the trend, he was one of the few to do it right.

Not that anybody noticed — and really, listening to The Third Party, it’s easy to see why it wasn’t a hit. This isn’t to say there’s anything wrong with the album, but there’s literally not a single entrance point for radio; moreover, eleven guitar-and-vocal tracks can get dull no matter who’s doing the singing or writing the songs, and though Shear is definitely to be commended for making this leap — and though it’s definitely long on ragged, folksy charm — the record is sort of an uneven listen. Still a nice move in the right direction, though, and one which would clearly inform his following albums. Try on “Big Kid Face” (download) and “The Once Lost Returns” (download).


The Great Puzzle (1992)
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His brief stop at I.R.S. finished, Shear moved on to Polydor for his fourth album, 1992’s The Great Puzzle. It’s considered by many fans to be his best record, and though I’m not sure I share that belief, I do think, in terms of sound, that it’s his most perfect — on his two previous releases, he’d swung from overproduced to barely produced at all, and Puzzle catches him striking a comfortable balance. The first of multiple Stewart Lerman-produced Shear records, Puzzle boasts the involvement of highly-regarded session players such as Larry Campbell, Greg Leisz, and (again) Tony Levin, who contribute to a warm, deceptively intricate web of sound beautifully well-suited to Shear’s poignant, reflective songs.

Ah, the songs — they’re some of Shear’s best, which is really saying something, for two reasons: One, he’s written a lot of solid songs; and two, many artists in his position would have been too worried about selling records to worry about making them. And hey, maybe he was worried, and simply didn’t know how to make any other kind of album, but The Great Puzzle sounds completely, comfortably removed from any kind of commercial concerns. It marks the spot where Shear really begins to find his voice as a recording artist. Start off with “The Trap Door” (download) and “The Mystery’s All Mine” (download).


Healing Bones (1994)
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Though Stewart Lerman didn’t produce Healing Bones — those duties were handled by Rod Argent and ex-Van Morrison/Mike & the Mechanics drummer Peter Van Hooke — this album is the flip side to The Great Puzzle insofar as it weds a collection of excellent Jules Shear songs to full-bodied (but generally non-intrusive) production. The list of player personnel is shorter than Puzzle’s, certainly — it’s just Argent, Elliot Easton, Tony Levin, Jerry Marotta, and Shear — but the songs are arguably better. Shear makes room for a terrific cover of the Walker Brothers’ “The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore,” as well as a pair of cowrites with The Band’s Rick Danko, but it’s a testament to his growing maturity as a songwriter and performer that the album remains thoroughly, delightfully his.

Those seeking to start building a Shear collection would do well to start here. There isn’t a bad song in the bunch — and it’s perfectly sequenced, leading from catchy midtempo numbers to string-laden ballads to rockers — so it’s hard to pick just two songs from the album, but try “Listen to What She Says” (download) and the title track (download). Superb.

It flopped, of course, and that was the end of Shear’s major-label career.


Between Us (1998)
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Four years after Healing Bones came and went, Shear showed up on High Street, Windham Hill’s short-lived folk imprint, with Between Us. Smaller label, bigger cast — this is a duets record, each of the fifteen songs pairing Shear with a different partner, and each seemingly about a different love affair gone wrong. Not, in other words, the kind of album you want to play at a party, unless you and a bottle of hard liquor are the only ones on the guest list.

It’s an easy idea — you can just see the faces lighting up in the High Street boardroom — but it works; each of Shear’s partners works within the context of the song, and not just as a units-moving appendage. It isn’t the happiest of albums, not so much due to its subject matter but because of the spare, reflective production — think of it as Shear’s In the Wee Small Hours — and his voice, occasionally a slight liability in the past, is uniquely well-suited to the material. It’s still a limited instrument, but one that, frayed and loosened with age, is perfect for communicating clear-eyed regret.

If there’s a big surprise here, it’s that even on an album featuring vocal contributions from Rosanne Cash, Patty Griffin, Paula Cole, Carole King, Susan Cowsill, Margo Timmins, and others, the big standouts are two duets with men: “It’s All Over But the Smoke” (download), a Lowe/Costello-ish teamup with Ron Sexsmith, and the Freedy Johnston-assisted “Revenge” (download).


Allow Me (2000)
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Jules Shear - Allow Me

After High Street folded, Shear moved along to Rounder’s Zöe imprint and released Allow Me, an eleven-song collection that — though assuredly not without its high points — represented a bit of an artistic holding pattern. Most of it holds up, and tracks like “The More That I’m Around You” (download) and “Too Soon Gone” (download) are noteworthy additions to his songbook, but you periodically get the feeling Shear’s coasting; “Love With You” and “Deep” are particularly undistinguished.

Still, though, it’s a fairly solid, somewhat atypically cheery and domestic collection, brightened by backing vocals from Suzzy Roche, Vicki Peterson, and Susan Cowsill (the last two formerly of the Continental Drifters). Surprisingly, it wound up being Shear’s only release for Zöe, and prefaced a four-year break from recording.


Sayin’ Hello to the Folks (2004)
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Jules Shear - Sayin' Hello to the Folks

When Shear finally did release another album, it was, somewhat inexplicably, a collection of covers: 2004’s Sayin’ Hello to the Folks finds him running through material previously recorded by performers both easy to predict (Dylan, Woody Guthrie, Brian Wilson, Roger Miller, Todd Rundgren) and somewhat odd (Procol Harum, James Brown, Joe Tex). The obvious question is why Shear, always known primarily as a songwriter and not as a vocalist, felt the need to put his personal stamp on these songs; not to take anything away from these performances — some of them are actually quite good — but his natural gifts really don’t lie in interpreting other people’s material. (Particularly James Brown’s. This version of “Ain’t That a Groove” is clearly just for funsies, but still.)

That being said, as a lark, the album works fairly well, even if it is completely inessential for everyone but Shear completists, and Shear’s recordings of Dylan’s “In the Summertime,” Miller’s “Husbands and Wives” (download), and Rundgren’s “Be Nice to Me” (download) are not only beautiful, they actually add something to the originals.


Dreams Don’t Count (2006)
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Jules Shear - Dreams Don't Count

Here’s what I wrote about Dreams Don’t Count last March, and I still think it sums the record up pretty nicely:

What do Danny Kortchmar, Ric Ocasek, Elliot Easton, Cyndi Lauper, The Bangles, Peter Gabriel, Marshall Crenshaw, Tommy Keene, The Waterboys, The Band, and Aimee Mann have in common?

Well, lots of things, probably. But one of those things is Jules Shear, who has appeared on or written songs for all of them. He’s an old-school Songwriter (yes, with a capital S) — one of those guys, a la Jimmy Webb, who is better known for the songs he’s written than the ones he’s recorded. This isn’t entirely without justification; Shear the songwriter is responsible for modern pop classics such as “All Through the Night” and “If She Knew What She Wants” — soaring, indelible melodies, witty lyrics and all. When it comes to his own recordings, though, Shear has to make do with a rather limited vocal instrument. Reedy and short on range (one might even say “Dylanesque”), those vocals probably have everything to do with why Jules Shear never became a pop star in his own right.

His early recordings were sometimes guilty of trying to force a square peg (that voice) into a round hole (bright and shiny pop). But as he’s settled into elder statesmanship, Shear has played increasingly to his strengths — the sorrowful streak that anchored much of his best songs has grown heavier with age, and his voice, though still not exactly supple, has built up a few fine layers of salty grizzle.

Which leads us to Dreams Don’t Count, Shear’s ninth recording. If you ask me — and I guess, by default, you sort of are — Dreams is Shear’s best album. Though all his releases are full of great songs, they often left you wondering who’d sound good covering them, and that isn’t the case here. It’s true that his voice is still probably an acquired taste, and his phrasing on some of these songs can run toward the extremely languid, but those moments are few, and they pass quickly. Besides, it’s more than made up for by the fact that this is a stunning set of songs.

It isn’t party music, to be sure; there’s a mournful wind blowing through the album, one that only comes close to calming in the good-natured resignation of “Do What They Want” (download) — but it’s a mournfulness borne of honest self-reflection, not self-pity, and that makes all the difference. My personal favorite is the title track (download), a sad, gorgeous elegy to foolish expectations:

I’m afraid dreams don’t count
You can go dreaming on a star
I’m afraid dreams don’t count
It only matters where you really are
It only matters where you really are

Clearly, a far cry from the days when Shear made his bread and butter by putting words in Susanna Hoffs’ mouth. This is not a bad thing, though. Not a bad thing at all.

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Tuesday, October 10th, 2006

The Popdose Guide to Mary Chapin Carpenter

by Jeff Giles

She’s been steadily releasing well-crafted albums on a more-or-less consistent basis for nearly 20 years, and her music defies easy pigeonholing. Consequently, since her early ’90s breakthrough, Mary Chapin Carpenter has found herself on a downward commercial slope. Ironically, as her music has more deftly incorporated elements of pop, folk, and country, support from any of those formats has been harder to find. Like Shawn Colvin — who we covered not long ago, and who came up during the same period — Carpenter has settled into a sort of commercial limbo, one in which her releases are frequently lauded by critics and ignored by buyers.

As a fan of Carpenter’s brand of mournful introspection, I’d like to think this is because the major label machinery is simply ill-equipped to bring this kind of music to an audience that doesn’t know how to find it. Though a career-long Columbia Nashville artist (at least up ’til now:but more on that later), most of Carpenter’s releases are country albums only in part; that being said, she had the good fortune to hit her stride during a time in which a lot of country records were selling really well, and her best-selling album, 1992’s Come On Come On, was released before country radio was walled off to artists who tinkered so freely with the genre.

Anyway, as I said, I’d like to think that. But it could be just that there isn’t a huge sustainable audience for artists like Mary Chapin Carpenter, Lyle Lovett, Radney Foster, or Jim Lauderdale. Hey, either way, you’re along for the ride with me this week as we take a look back at Carpenter’s catalog. Maybe you were a fan awhile back and lost touch with her; maybe you’ve been here all along; maybe you’ll be impressed enough to pick up an album or two.


Hometown Girl (1987)
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Mary Chapin Carpenter - Hometown Girl

As we’ve discussed here on more than one occasion, there are two kinds of good debut albums: Ones that do such a great job of presenting the artists’ strengths that they’re nearly impossible to follow, and ones that hint at future potential. Hometown Girl is the latter.

Part of the problem is that it has mid-’80s country production, which was frequently even worse than what was heard at other points on the dial during the era. Pop and rock music sounded synthetic in 1987, but they were usually trying to; with recordings like Hometown Girl, what you usually ended up getting was San Antonio by way of Casio, and the sound has not aged well.

On the whole, these songs don’t have the depth of emotion or perspective of her later material, but there’s some good stuff nonetheless. Carpenter covered Tom Waits’ “Downtown Train” (download) before, and better than, Rod Stewart, and “Family Hands” (download) gives you a compelling outline of where she was headed.


State of the Heart (1989)
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Mary Chapin Carpenter - State of the Heart

Two years later, same shitty production, and State of the Heart offers a listening experience that today sounds as dated as Carpenter’s hair in the cover photo looks.

Better songs, though. “This Shirt” (download) is the earliest, best example of the kind of sweetly sorrowful storytelling at which Carpenter would later excel, and her first country hit, “Never Had It So Good,” demonstrates her gift for playing the woman scorned (not to mention her ease with a pop hook). “It Don’t Bring You” (download) closes things out with an old-fashioned moral-of-the-story number that, pleasantly, refrains from heavy-handed moralizing.

State put four singles in the Top 20 of Billboard’s country singles chart, poising Carpenter for a breakthrough.


Shooting Straight in the Dark (1990)
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Mary Chapin Carpenter - Shooting Straight in the Dark

Most people, if they know of Mary Chapin Carpenter at all, remember her for Come On Come On, but — as Shooting Straight in the Dark demonstrates — the template for that album’s (and, by extension, Carpenter’s) success was being laid down piece by piece well beforehand. That template, essentially, consisted of tossing in a couple tongue-in-cheek, overtly country uptempo numbers that would play to the cheap seats, a few pedal steel ballads that would tug at some heartstrings, and then rounding out the record with a handful of songs that defied easy categorization. It was always the songs from that last group that I liked best — and the songs from the first group that were big hits.

As time went on, this formula stopped working, and became awfully easy to see through besides, but for awhile, it proved a compelling magic act. Consider that “Down at the Twist and Shout” not only got Beausoleil on country radio, but rose all the way to #2, and it’s hard to begrudge a strategy that was likely motivated at least in part by crass commercialism.

Shooting Straight in the Dark spun off another four country hits for Carpenter, but the best stuff is found deeper in. “Halley Came to Jackson” (download) is a finely shaded portrait of a passing comet’s effect on a small town, and “The Moon and St. Christopher” (download) is an early entry in what would become a long line of songs detailing the death of innocence and a deepening acquaintance with regret.


Come On Come On (1992)
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Mary Chapin Carpenter - Come On Come On

Right place, right time: During a year in which grunge-fearing suburbanites were strapping on big belt buckles and learning how to line dance, Mary Chapin Carpenter released not only one of her best albums, but one of the best mainstream country albums of the era. Everything works: Carpenter is joined by a bevy of guests (including the Indigo Girls, Rosanne Cash, and Shawn Colvin) and covers some notable heavyweights, but the originals stand proud and tall against the outside material, and the focus is always squarely where it’s supposed to be. Aside from the hokey “I Feel Lucky,” there really isn’t anything here that could reasonably be considered a bad song.

Carpenter was rewarded handsomely. Come On Come On sent a whopping eight songs into the country Top 20, and her cover of Lucinda Williams’ “Passionate Kisses” crossed over to AC. The album was still spinning out singles two years later.

Fortunately — for the purposes of this Guide, anyway — my two personal favorites were never sent to radio. “Only a Dream” (download) and the haunting “I Am a Town” (download) are shining examples of the empathy and craft that move Carpenter’s finest work.

Up, up, up. You can’t go much higher than eight hit singles from a twelve-song album. Where to now?

You know. But first, here’s Carpenter performing “I Am a Town” on Austin City Limits:


Stones in the Road (1994)
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Mary Chapin Carpenter - Stones in the Road

Okay, so calling Stones in the Road Mary Chapin Carpenter’s fall from grace is jumping the gun a little — that wouldn’t really happen until the next record. Actually, it charted higher than any of its predecessors, hitting #1 on the country charts and #10 on the Top 200. Those peaks were on the front end, though; Columbia promoted the hell out of Stones, and there was no small amount of anticipation for the album anyway, so those peaks were to be expected. What this record ended up lacking was staying power: “Shut Up and Kiss Me” hit #1 on the country charts, and “Tender When I Want to Be” hit #6, but “House of Cards” missed the Top 20, and none of the album’s four singles made much of a dent at other formats.The songs are partly to blame. Whether the album’s sound was by design or due to a lack of strong material is impossible to say (at least for me), but where Shooting and Come On were smart, joyous amalgams of pop, folk, and country, Stones in the Road is mostly just sort of a dull echo. It’s partly a songwriter’s record — nothing is less than well-written — and partly a seemingly conscious attempt to imitate what got Carpenter on the radio before. The audience was getting hip to the formula, however. “Shut Up and Kiss Me” isn’t any worse than similar numbers from previous albums (in fact, it’s got a pretty decent slide solo from Lee Roy Parnell), but it definitely carried a strong echo of singles past.

It doesn’t help that this is a long album (thirteen songs), and ballad-heavy. It drags in spots. Her best songs are more than capable of carrying an album like this, but by and large, this collection doesn’t contain Carpenter’s best songs. “Why Walk When You Can Fly” (download) is a nice leadoff track, and “Jubilee” (download) is undeniably pretty (and boasts some nice pennywhistle from Paul Brady), but cracks were definitely beginning to show.


A Place in the World (1996)
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Mary Chapin Carpenter - A Place in the World

Like Stones in the Road, A Place in the World charted respectably — #14 country, #20 pop — but failed to register on the radio. “Let Me Into Your Heart” was a Top Twenty country hit, but nothing else had much of an impact.

It’s somewhat fitting. If Stones set out to be a songwriter’s record but wound up being too introspective by half, Place comes across as a transparent bid to win back the hearts of country radio programming directors. But the stuff that worked for Carpenter at the beginning of the decade wasn’t getting played anymore, and anyway, a lot of this record’s songs fall in the shadow of what made her famous. It was a disappointing step back for an artist who had always seemed to lead her audience.

Of course, it isn’t without its moments. “Ideas Are Like Stars” (download) is sadly gorgeous, and “Naked to the Eye” (download), but they’re tucked away toward the end of the record.

Commercially, Carpenter was suffering limited returns, but more importantly, she seemed to be treading water creatively. A change was in order.


Time*Sex*Love* (2001)
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Mary Chapin Carpenter - Time*Sex*Love*

If Mary Chapin Carpenter had always been a country artist mostly in a nominal sense, with Time*Sex*Love, she truly sailed off into uncharted waters. Carpenter and longtime partner John Jennings built a breezy, colorfully layered web of sound around the album’s fourteen songs, one which belied their often less-than-cheerful subject matter. Aside from archaic Billboard chart placement rules, it’s difficult to imagine how “Simple Life” (download) was considered a country song (and, by the same token, very easy to guess its fate on the country chart).

Time*Sex*Love is a big record in every way. Aside from its overstuffed length and intricate production, the album has grand ambitions: The full title is a Fiona Apple-esque Time Is the Great Gift; Sex Is the Great Equalizer; Love Is the Great Mystery. Maybe this was just the album she wanted to make at the time, or maybe it was a conscious reminder that — recent failed cops to radio aside — she was an artist worth reckoning with; either way, the whole thing works better than it ought to.

43 when this album was released, Carpenter was now, in age as well as predilection, thoroughly out of step with the new crop of country stars. If her peers had broadened the genre’s borders by tapping into the folk tradition and roots rock, newer platinum sellers like Rascal Flatts were more comfortable drawing on MOR dinosaurs like Chicago for inspiration. In this climate, an artist like Carpenter — who was never really “country” in the first place — stood as much to gain from releasing a wild, woolly mess of a record as they did from bothering to try and fit in. A number of the album’s songs deal with age, both literal and commercial, but even if you aren’t poring over the words, this is one exceedingly cool listen.

Too many artists, when faced with the same crossroads that presented itself to Carpenter, opt to keep frantically squeezing the dried-up teat of past glories. Aside from the loss of dignity involved, what’s sad about this is that the best music, by far, lies along the less-traveled path. There’s no reason to own just one of her albums, but if you insist for some reason, this might be the one. I don’t believe it’s her best — more on that in a minute — but it artfully presents all sides of what makes her special. I could easily include four, five, six downloads, but here’s “Maybe World” (download). Buy a copy for yourself to hear the rest.


Between Here and Gone (2004)
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Mary Chapin Carpenter - Between Here and Gone

How you’ll feel about Carpenter’s eighth studio album (and, curiously, her first to be recorded in Nashville) will have a lot to do with whether you prefer her quieter or more uptempo side. If it’s the latter, you might find Between Here and Gone to be a big yawn, at least at first; speaking as someone who has always felt Carpenter’s best foot forward is her most mournful, let me tell you that this album is a masterpiece, a thing of sad, luminous beauty, and her best album yet.

It seems safe to say these songs were strongly colored by events taking place between the release of her last album, in the spring of 2001, and this one, in the spring of 2004. Rather than soapboxing, though, Carpenter opts for the softer, richer middle road, seeking to provide comfort and understanding. Such sentiments could easily stray toward the dippy end of the spectrum in less skillful hands, but even when addressing the universal, Carpenter ties everything strongly back to the personal; rather than corny or foolishly pie-in-the-sky, these songs’ lyrics are full of tenderness and healing.

And what lyrics.

Folks who appreciate the words before the music are definitely in the minority, but put your ear to the surface of this album and you’ll be richly rewarded. Even for a songwriter whose lyrics have always been smarter than most, Between Here and Gone offers some lovely turns of phrase. They’re scattered throughout the album like jewels. Some casually surface — “The key to traveling light is to/Not need very much,” from “One Small Heart”; or the great couplet “Loneliness is like a cold/Common and no cure we’re told,” from “Girls Like Me” (download) — and some are more obvious. From the title track:

Up above me
Wayward angels
A blur of wings and grace.
One for courage,
One for safety,
One for “just in case”

From “Beautiful Racket”:

So your day will end like this
Turning slowly down your street
Silent worlds of kitchens lit
Front yards full of fallen leaves
Trees are bare, the garden’s done
Another season gone to earth
Before you blink a new one comes
To remind you what the old one’s worth

From “The Shelter of Storms”:

You can’t be free till you leave behind
Your bitter heart, but you can’t change
You curse the sun, and pray for rain
You always run
For the shelter of storms

From “Elysium” (download):

I could wonder if all of it led me to you
I could show you the arrows and circles I drew
I didn’t have a map, it’s the best I could do
On the fly and on the run
To dreams that were tethered like kites to the ground
To the bridges I burned, to then turning around
It was here in your heart I was finally found
And the last battle won for Elysium

The album didn’t reverse Carpenter’s commercial slide, naturally; records like this really aren’t made for the radio, or hell, maybe even mass consumption. It peaked at a certainly respectable #5 on the country album chart, but didn’t stick around long, didn’t generate any heat on the radio, and didn’t cross over to the pop charts. It wasn’t surprising — Carpenter always belonged more with the John Hiatts and Shawn Colvins of the world than the Billy Ray Cyruses — but a shame nonetheless. I can’t shake the notion that there are a lot of people out there who’d love this album if they only heard it.

Maybe you’re one of them.

Between Here and Gone was the end of the road for her association with Columbia, but it isn’t the end of the story for Mary Chapin Carpenter. Billboard recently announced that she’d signed with Rounder, the preeminent indie for smart, acoustic-based songwriters, and would be releasing an album in 2007. Personally, I’d hoped she’d sign with Nonesuch, and looked forward to hearing the willfully artistic and borderline strange music that such a marriage would no doubt have produced. But hey, as long as she keeps making albums, that’s the important thing.

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Tuesday, August 8th, 2006

The Popdose Guide to Chicago, Part One

by Jeff Giles

[Jefito's Note: So it's come to this. For as long as I've been writing Idiot's Guides (and/or hosting them — I realize it's been awhile since I've actually had to do one of these things myself), the shadow of a Complete Idiot's Guide to Chicago has loomed large. This is a function of both time (I was a wee, Top 40-listening Jefito when Chicagos 16 and 17 were all the rage) and questionable taste (I was also rocking to Chicagos V through X during the same timeframe). I saw the band in concert no less than three times from 1988-89. I owned 18 and 19 (not to mention Peter Cetera's first two post-Chicago solo albums):on vinyl. Yes indeed, I was a hardcore Chicago fan.

But things changed. After the cynical misfire of 1991's Twenty 1 and stillbirth of its intended followup, the lost and lamented Stone of Sisyphus, Chicago dove full-bore into the casinos-and-state-fairs circuit, and though they still pay lip service to the bona fide creativity that bought their homes and pays their alimonies, it evaporated long ago. Being that I'm really not a huge fan of the jammy earlier stuff, have long since ceased to defend the content of those platinum '80s albums, and no longer believe the band is capable of getting far enough up off its duff to fulfill its remaining promise, well:I decided awhile back that I'm probably not the guy to write a Chicago Guide.

But look who is: It's the talented and punctual reader harmolodic, who has agreed to scale the heights and plumb the depths of a nearly 40-year career. Regardless of how you feel about the band, you should be entertained over the course of his three-part Guide:and maybe you'll learn a few things about a band people started writing off before you were probably even born. Give harmolodic a hand! —J]

In the world of rock bands named after geographical locations, there’s only one that can claim to have its songs intermingled with selections from an identically titled musical-turned-hit movie inside your local karaoke bar’s song book. Adding to the confusion is the fact that this band has employed, over the years, no less than 6 lead singers, not counting occasional peeps from hired hands and a couple of horn players. Such is Chicago, the self-proclaimed “rock n’ roll band with horns.”

In the almost 40 years the band has been together (the big four-oh happens next year), they’ve managed to score almost as many top 40 hits, the majority of which are still heard on the airwaves today and in Chicago’s live concerts. Not bad for a band whose most recognizable face has been out of the band for more than half its life.

That life started in its namesake city in February, 1967, when Jimmy Pankow (trombone), Lee Loughnane (trumpet), Danny Seraphine (drums), Terry Kath (guitar), and Robert Lamm (keyboards) met in the apartment of Walt Parazaider (woodwinds). God pointed his finger down upon them and said, “make some noise!” The Big Thing, soon to be the Chicago Transit Authority, soon to be Chicago, was born. Add one blond, tenor-voiced bass player named Peter Cetera, and you’ve got your classic lineup of the band that would dominate AM radio throughout the 1970s and rule the Billboard charts with a series of albums bearing Roman numerals for titles. And of course, the logo the band adopted would become their most recognizable visual, becoming an American icon on the level of Coca Cola, Hershey and Disney.

Over the years, these guys have been accused of everything from selling out, to making music for the lowest common denominator, to being wimpy, and just plain not being very cool or hip or what have you. Same goes for the Beach Boys, before everyone finally discovered how incredible Pet Sounds was. And since Chicago never made that one record everyone could agree was great from beginning to end, and since they had so many assembly-line, sappy, substance-free hits after their golden period was over, they have not received the same due as their two-time touring partners from Hawthorne, California. Taken together. their catalog is fascinating, frustrating, brilliant and awful all at once. Just like the Beach Boys, eh? Read on and judge for yourself.


Chicago Transit Authority (1969)
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Chicago - Chicago Transit Authority

Like many big hitmakers before and since, Chicago’s roots were with the college crowd, or the 1960s equivalent of the “alternative” scene. With the help of their buddy and producer, Jimmy Guercio, Chicago was able to take their hard work ethic out of the windy city and over to Columbia Records’ New York studios for recording sessions that resulted in a debut double LP. It was still kind of a big deal at that time for a new band to start out with a double album, even though the Mothers of Invention had done it already with Freak Out! The Beatles, Cream, and Jimi Hendrix had also released double albums by then, though they were already established stars.

So did these guys think they were the Beatles with horns, or what? Well, they certainly were fans, and even quoted the opening lyric from “I Am The Walrus” in “South California Purples” (download) I’ve always wondered where the idea came from to call this mutated blues jam “Purples.” My theory is that it’s the color of L.A.’s smog when one is tripping on acid.

Chicago Transit Authority was indeed a bold debut — not so much because it was a double LP, nor because Terry Kath’s “Free Form Guitar” (download) was 6 minutes of loud noodling and feedback that set the stage for Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music. Rather, it was because Robert Lamm wrote a killer bunch of tunes for these bad-ass musicians to play. “Beginnings,” “Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is,” “Questions 67 & 68,” the aforementioned “Purples” — all stone cold classics. But even better is Kath’s writing contribution. Though its title is about as imaginative as, well, their album titles, “Introduction” (download) makes a great case for letting the music do the talking. Everything you need to know and would care to love about Chicago is wrapped up in this 6-and-a-half minute mission statement/showboat of a song. The blazing horns, tricky rhythms, schmaltzy balladry, psychedelic guitar solo and gutsy vocals are all there. You could stop the album after that first song and be able to say “yeah, I know Chicago.” But as we’d come to realize over the years, these guys just love to keep going, and going, and going:


Chicago II (1970)
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Chicago - Chicago II

The first album fared reasonably well, after chopping their name down to just Chicago, but this second effort was where the big time success really began. FM radio loved the first release, with all its long-form tunes and endless solos, but AM radio was where the hit potential was, and as Columbia was eager to make some money off this band, they decided to chop a couple of pieces out of Jimmy Pankow’s “Ballet For A Girl In Buchannon” and turn them into two sides of a 45 RPM single. The single’s A-side, “Make Me Smile,” became Chicago’s first big hit single. The other side, “Colour My World,” has probably soundtracked more than a handful of weddings in its time.

Meanwhile, album buyers got an even greater treat. Terry Kath wrote and sang one of the best songs to ever grace a Chicago album, the lovely “In The Country” (download). And the long forms displayed on the first album got even longer. The “Ballet” and Lamm’s anti-war rant “It Better End Soon” (download) both ran over 10 minutes, while Kath’s maudlin “Memories Of Love” featured an orchestrated three-part intro. “Fancy Colours” (download) was inspired by an acid trip, and utilized wind chimes as an intro a good four years before the Doobie Brothers put out “Black Water.” They had collectively stepped beyond the “rock n’ roll band with horns” description into prog rock, though they wouldn’t stay there long. The shorter material, like the extracted singles and Lamm’s “Wake Up Sunshine,” were a closer indication of where this ambitious band was heading. And again, they produced another stone cold classic in “25 or 6 to 4,” perhaps the greatest rock song about trying to write a song.


Chicago III (1971)
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Chicago - Chicago III (Remastered)

Maybe this record happened too soon after the first two, but when you’re under the gun, you do what you gotta do.

From a pop standpoint, the third Chicago album lacks the monster hooks and memorable songs that dominate the first two albums. The good news is, these guys were an imaginative bunch when they were young and stupid. Meaning, we get to hear another side-long multi-part suite jammed with the most far-out ideas Chicago would ever commit to wax. Exhibit A: “When All The Laughter Dies In Sorrow,” a Kendrew Lascilles poem recited by Robert Lamm, which sets up the mood for the remainder of the all-instrumental “Elegy” — presumably for our mother Earth. This was, again, a Pankow composition. Lamm contributed his own lament for the planet, which again, very imaginatively, is titled “Mother.” Industrialization and pollution are bad! Bad! But avant garde, polyphonic horn solos are good, very good.

Elsewhere, a suite of songs about life on the road find the band pretending to be Crosby, Stills & Nash (“Flight 602″ [download]) while also venturing into avant garde territory yet again with a flute-piano duo titled “Free Country.” While “Mother” (download) and “Elegy” were thoroughly worked out pieces, “Free Country” clearly is not. Neither is the pleasant enough but seemingly pointless “Happy ‘Cause I’m Going Home” (sample lyrics: “la da da da da da da / da da da da da da”). Even the opener, “Sing A Mean Tune Kid,” sounds like a work in progress.

Elsewhere, Terry Kath sings Lamm’s jazzy “Loneliness Is Just A Word” and injects the third record with a strong dose of all-too-human personality with his song of longing from the road, “An Hour In The Shower” (download). It’s perhaps the first rock song to reference a vibrator (“Just reach underneath your bed / And turn on your electric friend / And turn your thoughts to me”), and arrived about a year before Walter Becker and Donald Fagen would name their band after one.

Nevertheless, Chicago was hot, and III was a hit. “Free” and “Lowdown” were also top 40 singles. And did I mention that III was the band’s third double album in a row? It would also be its last for a few years.


Chicago At Carnegie Hall, Volumes I, II, III & IV (1971)
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Chicago - At Carnegie Hall

Critics have always had harsh words for Chicago, and a lot of that bad blood dripped heavily over this mammoth set. Keep in mind, this was long before compact discs effectively extended the time limit one associated with an “album,” and before multi-disc box sets and live bootlegs became all the rage in the ’90s.

In 1971, four vinyl records of live Chicago was A LOT of Chicago.

Nowadays, a set like this is a treasure trove. And though I’ll freely admit that this is my “desert island” Chicago collection, it’s certainly not without flaws. For one, Danny Seraphine seems to drag “In The Country” down a bit, and the horns don’t sound too hot on that song either.

On the other hand, Terry Kath has brilliant guitar solos all over the place. “South California Purples” and “Sing A Mean Tune Kid” (download) both edge close to 15 minutes with Kath’s extended workouts, as he carried on in the shadow of the departed Jimi Hendrix, never to receive the accolades he deserved.

The most noteworthy aspect of this behemoth is the inclusion of “A Song For Richard And His Friends” (download), which Chicago never formally recorded in the studio (although an instrumental ‘rehearsal’ version eventually surfaced on Rhino’s re-release of Chicago V). It’s impossible to imagine these days, but Chicago at one time did have a political conscience. Back in the day, they weren’t just speaking out against the Vietnam War with “It Better End Soon,” they also were openly calling for Richard Nixon’s resignation with “A Song For Richard.” Musically, the song is filled with rage. The horns stomp and sulk, while Kath finds the perfect use for his “Free Form Guitar” antics in the context of an actual song. Lamm cooks the administration, and if one were to simply change the title of the song, it could easily be adopted by today’s Bush-bashers:

If you will think now, then you will see
How you can change things

People are waiting, turning away
Tired of killing

Hey now
Will you go away
We’re so tired
Of things that you say

Even though you never said word that would help anyone but yourself
Tomorrow is such a bad dream
Oh, bad dream

If you stay now,
It will only get worse
Let us pray now
‘Cause the truth really hurts

After the events of today with your brothers and sisters dead and dying
Tomorrow is such a bad dream
Yeah, Such a bad dream

Listen
Please be gone
Go away and leave us alone
Brain police
Go away and leave us in peace
Yeah

Please be gone
Go away and leave us alone
Brain police
Go away and leave us in peace

Will you go now
Will you take all your friends
Whoa now, If you’d stood like a man
Even though I know that you cannot be blamed all alone for the sadness
you’ve caused
Tomorrow is such a bad dream
Yeah, such a bad dream
Oh yeah, such a bad dream
Dig it

If you will think now then you will see
How we can change things
People are waiting, turning away
Tired of killing


Chicago V (1972)
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Chicago - Chicago V (Remastered)

How do you follow three double albums and one quadruple live album? Why, with a regular, everyday average single album, that’s how! The woodgrain take on the band’s iconic logo is boring as fuck, but the music was and is pretty great. In particular, “A Hit By Varese” (download) likely exposed a million or two people to Edgard Varese’s surname for the very first time, while finding room to fit interweaving sax, ‘bone and trumpet solos with superhuman guitar work and lyrics that bemoaned the state of popular music at the time. Again, one could easily take these lyrics and apply them to today:

Please won’t you sing me
A thing that will bring me right into the sky
If you would play it
Just lay it down, say, it will help me get by

Something to move me
Remove me and grove me, you want to know why?
I’m so tired of oldiess
And moldies and goldies, that I want to cry

Can you play free
Or in three or agree to attempt something new
The people they need you
A seed that will lead to a hit by Varese

That was Robert Lamm again, on a roll that seemed unstoppable at the time. Seven of the album’s nine songs were his, including the two hit singles “Dialogue” and “Saturday In The Park.” The former took a wry look at the apathetic mindset permeating college campuses (“I also hope to keep a steady high” was a rather clever lyric), with Terry Kath singing the ‘concerned citizen’ lyrics and Peter Cetera responding as the ‘blissfully ignorant student.’ “Saturday In The Park” fared much better on the charts. Lamm’s sunny pop song, inspired by a 4th of July stroll through Central Park, made the top 5, and is still a staple of Chicago’s annual summer tours.

Elsewhere on numero cinco, Lamm’s social and political consciousness drove bitter songs like “State Of The Union” (download) and “While The City Sleeps,” with his compositional style at a peak. The former was based on an actual occurrence at a Chicago concert, where Lamm was apprehended by police for uttering an obscenity from the stage.

Lamm found a way to make room for concise, hooky lyrics and for band members to stretch out and be heard. Jimmy Pankow’s horn arrangements were front-and-center, Terry Kath’s guitar was on fire, Cetera’s McCartney-inspired bass lines were hard to ignore, and Danny Seraphine was both keeping time and freely commenting like a jazz drummer. This, my friends, is the Chicago that should have always been.


Chicago VI (1973)
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Chicago - Chicago VI

After four studio albums recorded at Columbia’s New York studios, the band headed to the Rockies for their next five studio records. Producer Jimmy Guercio set up his Caribou Ranch in Nederland, Colorado, so Chicago dutifully followed him to the cold and snowy locale.

Whether it was adjusting to a higher altitude, artificially flying a little too high, or just the effects of cold weather, something about this move clearly changed Chicago. Oh, the hits kept on coming, all right. VI bore two more of those — the monster ballad and Walt Parazaider showcase “Just You N’ Me,” and “Feelin’ Stronger Everyday,” which can easily be heard as the blueprint for the arena rock of Journey, Foreigner and Boston. But suddenly, the fiery interplay and ambitious compositions of previous albums were gone, to return only sparingly.

Clearly, Lamm had been reading too many bad reviews in the press, and had been taking them personally. So much so, he wrote a song called “Critics’ Choice” (download), which he sings accompanied only by his piano, in defense of the band to which he was and remains fiercely loyal:

What do you want
What do you want
I’m givin’ everything I have
I’m even trying to see if there’s more
Locked deep inside
I’ll try
I’ll try
Can’t you see, this is me

What do you need
What do you need
Is it someone just to hurt
So that you can appear to be smart
And use a steady job
Play God
Play God
What do you really know
You parasite
You’re dynamite
An oversight
Misunderstanding what you hear
You’re quick to cheer
And volunteer
Absurdities, musical blasphemies
Oh Lord
Save us all

What do you want
What do you want
I’m givin’ every thing I have
I’m even trying to see if there’s more
Locked deep inside
I’ll try
I’ll try
Can’t you see, this is me

Lamm was still the majority songwriter, but now it was only a simple majority. Not only that, the best songs were Pankow’s. The two aforementioned hits were from Pankow’s pen, featuring the voice of Cetera (who gets a cowriting credit on “Feelin’ Stronger”), as is the funky “What’s This World Coming To.” They really tear it up on “World,” and the three-way tag team vocals add some excitement, but clearly, the socially conscious lyrics were best left in Lamm’s care. Case in point: “rich folks spend their time just counting money / poor folks really ain’t got much to say.” Maybe because their mouths are too busy eating cake?

Kath, meanwhile, helped elevate Lamm’s “Darlin’ Dear” to something of a majestic blues romp with his smooth and assured slide guitar playing. And Kath’s “Jenny” (download) finds him sounding less like Hendrix and more like Clapton as he sings to his dog, without even the slighest hint of irony, asking her to look after his woman while he’s on the road. If she could understand what he was singing, she might have wondered exactly what his intent was in admonishing, “there’s always someone waiting just to shit on you.”

To really underscore the fact that Chicago’s direction had changed in a big way, the album art provides the most perfect metaphor. If you have an original vinyl copy, you can feel how ornate the cover’s texture is, and just looking at it, be it LP or CD, any American would know that visual style. Stumped? Open up your wallet or your purse, and pull out a dollar bill. A ha!


Chicago VII (1974)
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Chicago - Chicago VII

The softer, less sparky vibe characterized by Chicago’s new recording environment ventured straight into easy listening territory with the seventh album. Fortunately, this doesn’t turn out to be a terribly bad thing at all.

Initially, VII was supposed to be a jazz album. Given the the group’s ability, this should have been a no-brainer. However, lack of agreement within the band forced a compromise. The risk of releasing a jazz record would be reduced with a number of standard pop songs, in what was fast becoming classic Chicago fashion. This resulted in, ironically, their first double album since III.

The jazz sides are actually quite credible performances. They just sound like typical mid-’70s pop productions, rather than 1940s bebop throwbacks or 1960s Blue Note sessions. Lamm plays his electric piano throughout, lending “Aire” an almost proto-smooth-jazz feel, and the electronic blips and bleeps in “Italian From New York” are just plain weird. Danny Seraphine, meanwhile, sounds even more at home switching up rhythms and tempi in “Devil’s Sweet,” and swingin’ hard in the brisk “Hanky Panky” (download)

The pop sides actually start midway through side 2. “Hanky Panky” segues into Lamm’s cheery “Lifesaver,” making the transition from jazz to pop virtually painless.

Again, we don’t hear as much from Lamm on VII as on the first four studio albums, but it wasn’t for lack of prolificacy. The same year VII was released, Lamm dropped his first solo album, Skinny Boy, the title track of which was also the closer on VII — the only difference in the two recordings being the presence of horns and no fade on the Chicago version.

Lamm’s songs were moving further away from what was typical of mainstream pop — he was writing less hook-laden pop material, and fewer shout-along choruses. But those in the band who were writing what was selling — namely Jimmy Pankow and Peter Cetera — placed enough hits on VII to continue Chicago’s 1970s reign of the pop charts. “”I’ve Been) Searchin’ So Long,” Pankow’s string-laden ode to self-realization, scaled the charts, as did Cetera’s dreamy “Wishing You Were Here,” a song which fulfilled his dream of being a Beach Boy by featuring Carl Wilson, Dennis Wilson and Al Jardine on background vocals.

These hit songs, along with Lee Loughnane’s “Call On Me,” had this in common: All were huge hits, all were defining moments for ‘easy listening’ or ’soft rock,’ and all featured Peter Cetera on lead vocals. The band that once had credibility with FM radio and the college crowd, played the Fillmore and toured with Jimi Hendrix, had crossed over to the same crowd that was buying records by Barry Manilow and Anne Murray. It didn’t matter that Terry Kath wrote an engaging folk-rock story in “Byblos” (download) or had perfectly evoked the spirit of winter in “Song Of The Evergreens” (download) Chicago were officially typecast by this point.


Chicago VIII (1975)
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Chicago - Chicago VIII

Chicago rocks out a little bit more with their eighth album, though the songs were among the weakest they had released by this point. Pankow again provided the album with a selling point as Peter Cetera sang his way through the corny “Old Days.” All elements of rock in this song are negated by the fact that Cetera is singing about “drive-in movies, comic books and blue jeans, Howdy Doody,” etc. It’s almost like “We Didn’t Start The Fire” for ’50s nostalgia buffs, only with less listing and more reminiscing. And this was the album’s biggest hit!

Lamm did manage to turn in another relatively popular 45 with “Harry Truman,” but who was the idiot that decided the Japanese would appreciate a single record wishing that the man who dropped the A-bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki would return to fix up America?? I mean, sure, the song is pretty goofy and the little “son of a bitch!” exclamation heard during the instrumental break makes it clear that it’s not necessarily the most serious statement the band had made, but come on!

The saddest fate of VIII was the failure of Pankow’s “Brand New Love Affair” (download) to break the top 40. This is one of the songs that earned Terry Kath the proud moniker “the white Ray Charles.”

If only one type of listener truly must own VIII, however, it’s the guitar fan. Kath turns in one of most heartfelt Hendrix-inspired songs ever with “Oh, Thank You Great Spirit” (download). He captures the spacey vibe of the best moments on Electric Ladyland, and solos passionately throughout what was to be the last ‘jam’ one would hear on a Chicago album for way too long.

But again, with the hits on VII not too far behind and with the nostalgia of “Old Days” up front in the public ear, who was really paying attention to Terry Kath anymore?


Chicago IX: Greatest Hits (1975)
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Chicago “cheats” its fabled numbering system for the first time with this best-seller. For many folks out there, myself included, this was their first Chicago album. And really, it’s a fine collection of the band’s early mega-hits. But even though the band’s career would more clearly hit a dividing line in the ’80s, even at this point there was a clear divide in its music. Side One was primarily the ‘pop-rock’ side, containing mostly uptempo numbers like “25 or 6 to 4,” “Saturday In The Park” and “Feelin’ Stronger Everyday.” Side Two, for the most part, gives us ‘easy listening’ Chicago, with the three hits from VII weighing down the middle, and closing with “Beginnings.” It bought them some time and gave them something else to promote while touring the country with the Beach Boys, who had recently had a career resurgence:thanks also to a greatest hits album.


Chicago X (1976)
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Chicago - Chicago X

The schlocky easy listening direction that was slowly creeping into Chicago’s work was kept in check for the tenth album, but you wouldn’t know it from the singles — Peter Cetera became the all-time king of schlock rock with “If You Leave Me Now,” which was the band’s first number one hit single, and the other top 40 hit, “Another Rainy Day In New York City,” found Cetera softening and making more palatable the odd Caribbean feel of a New York-themed song. Huh? And then there was “You Are On My Mind,” which has a pleasant, enjoyably jazzy groove, but did the few that heard it on the air recognize it as Chicago? Jimmy Pankow sang the tune with a breathy delivery, but by this time, Cetera was the voice of Chicago. The logo could only support so many distinct qualities.

But fun, bouyant rock and soul makes X one of Chicago’s best overall ‘pop’ albums. Terry Kath does his best Otis Redding on “Once Or Twice” (download) and the bari voices sing in unison on “You Get It Up,” which holds the distinction of being the only song in the Chicago discography to overtly refer to male sexual arousal. Even Cetera gets into the party groove on “Skin Tight” (download) He kinda ruins it later, though, with “Mama Mama” (download), which couldn’t scream “1970s schlock” any louder if it tried.

And that’s kind of the story of Chicago from here on out — for every “Once Or Twice” there’s an “If You Leave Me Now.” [Or two or three — Ed.]The latter gets single status, becomes a hit, and defines the band’s sound in the ears of the public. Granted, there are plenty of ‘guilty pleasure’ moments to be found on almost every Chicago album, but with the competing musical personalities inherent in their releases as their success grew, the worth of trawling through their catalog post-1977 for some musical salvation becomes more and more questionable. Thank goodness for these Guides, right?


Chicago XI (1977)
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Chicago - Chicago XI

This one should have turned out a lot better than it did. Peter Cetera has only one vocal contribution on the whole platter, on his obvious follow-up to “If You Leave Me Now.” “Baby What A Big Surprise” went top ten, so it fell short of its predecessor’s success. But it’s still a better record. He goes for a Beatles kind of sound, with a strings-and-horns arrangement clearly inspired by George Martin’s work on “Penny Lane.”

So what happened with the rest of the record? Terry Kath can’t be blamed, that’s for sure. He carries the whole affair with the excellent “Mississippi Delta City Blues” (download) (collector’s note: this song was being performed in concert as early as 1972, and appeared on the live album issued in Japan documenting their shows there in support of Chicago V) and “Takin’ It On Uptown” (download). The latter especially holds a dear place in my heart. As a little tyke, I used to play the BWABS 45 on my Fisher Price record player, but I preferred hearing “Uptown” on the b-side for the funny guitar sounds Kath inserted at the beginning. His guitar almost sounds like it’s laughing. It’s another Hendrixian moment; sadly, it would be the last such moment to ever grace a Chicago album.

Kath also saves a merely OK song written and sung by Lee Loughnane, called “This Time,” with an awesome backwards guitar solo. Such a thing became a cliché of ’60s psychedelic music very quickly, but in this instance, it served as a breath of fresh air.

Kath closes the record singing “Little One,” the first in a series of songs drummer Danny Seraphine would write with David “Hawk” Wolinski of Rufus fame. Kath’s delivery is passionate enough to convince the listener that it could have been his own song. It was a welcome relief from the ultra goofy “Vote For Me,” in which Robert Lamm took “Harry Truman” to its logical extreme (though in defense of “Vote,” the candidate illustrated in its lyrics is so utopian that this humorous ditty is sadly all too relevant again). And then Pankow’s plodding vocalizing on “Till The End Of Time” came off like Joe Cocker with emphysema; fortunately, this would be the last time Pank would hog the mic.

Sadly, XI marked Terry Kath’s last appearance on a Chicago album. In January of 1978, Kath ‘accidentally’ blew his brains out in the presence of a band roadie. The stories surrounding this tragedy are varied, but a few things are for certain — Kath was not the happiest camper at this time in his life, he had a substance abuse problem, and he had a dangerous fascination with firearms. Whether he intended to end his life or not, the ingredients for an early death were in place. It was only a matter of time.

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Tuesday, May 16th, 2006

The Popdose Guide to Pet Shop Boys, Part One

by Jeff Giles

[Jefito's Note: Today begins a three-part Idiot's Guide to Pet Shop Boys, written with typical wit and flair by our pal John from Lost in the '80s. You read it on a regular basis, right? If your answer is anything other than "Hell yes," you need to repent of your wicked ways. Enjoy —J]

and someone said “it’s fabulous you’re still around today,
you’ve both made such a little go a very long way.” — “Yesterday When I Was Mad,” Pet Shop Boys

Pet Shop Boys (no, “the,” please, actually) are quite aware what you think of them, thank you very much. Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe have more than 10 albums, 12 Hot 100 singles and 20 years (!) behind them, yet are considered mostly as one- or two-hit wonders to the majority of American ears. Let’s dispel that myth right off — the Boys have five, count ‘em, five Top 10 singles to their name (“West End Girls,” “Opportunities,” “It’s a Sin,” “What Have I Done To Deserve This” and “Always On My Mind”), so that tag is hardly fair. Dig deeper into their catalog and you’ll find many more hit-worthy songs about love, longing, loss, sex, suburbia and shopping.


Please (1986)
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Pet Shop Boys - Please

Such polite lads.

An early collaboration with notorious dance producer Bobby O (who never met a hook he wouldn’t steal) led to club credibility and a deal with EMI. The one-two punch of the singles “West End Girls” and “Opportunities” (both re-recorded for this album) is surrounded by this very assured and focused debut. “Two Divided By Zero” (download) kicks things off, as succinct a mission statement as you can get — the 808s slap and clap while the synth bass bounces as Tennant narrates a tale of escape:

I think they heard a rumor / or someone tipped them off / it’s better to go sooner / than call it all off.

It’s all very mysterious:what rumor? Why the need to run? This theme of escape continues throughout the album; escape from dead-end jobs, failed romances, suburban hells, or in the case of “I Want A Lover” (download), loneliness. The PSB sound is fully realized right from the start, marrying deceptively jolly club beats with melancholy melodies and sometimes downright menacing lyrics, resulting in a strong debut that struck a chord worldwide.


Disco (1986)
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Pet Shop Boys - Disco

At first glance, Disco comes off as purely a stopgap, a remix album to keep the brand alive between full-length releases. But it was more than that — it featured re-recordings of some early songs and b-sides like “In the Night”(download), a couple of completely new songs and it also set the stage for a traditional Disco EP pattern we’ll see emerge as we go along.

Hardly essential, but fun nonetheless.


Actually (1987)
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Pet Shop Boys - Actually

:and the “difficult” sophomore album is anything but.

Actually is even more focused and well-crafted than the Boys’ debut, with only two real clunkers to be had (a new version of a leftover track from their Bobby O days, “One More Chance,” and the cringe-inducing “Hit Music”). Less dance-oriented than their first album, Actually features forays into Sixties-styled pop (complete with Dusty Springfield), ballads, and even a full-on Angelo Badalamenti-conducted orchestra. The hits continued, with “It’s a Sin” and “What Have I Done To Deserve This?” both hitting the Top 10.

Two standouts are “I Want To Wake Up”(download), which name checks “songs like ‘Tainted Love’ and ‘Love Is Strange,’” and the almost hypnotic “King’s Cross” (download), a mournful ballad with a strangely insistent, throbbing bass line.


Introspective (1988)
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Pet Shop Boys - Introspective

Remember that Disco pattern of remix EPs between albums I said we’d see emerge soon?

Introspective was the second remix/new EP in as many full-lengths, but it’s much more realized than Disco. In fact, there’s mostly new stuff here, with a remix of “Always On My Mind” thrown in for good measure. One of those new tunes, “Domino Dancing,” brought Latin Freestyle into the U.S. Top 40, thanks to Exposé, producer Lewis Martineé, while another, “I’m Not Scared” (download), was written (and became a minor European hit) for Eighth Wonder, Patsy Kensit’s old band. The EP also includes the Boys’ first collaborations with über-producer Trevor Horn.


Behavior (1990)
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Pet Shop Boys - Behavior

Phew. All that dancin’s made me tired.

The Boys must have felt the same, since Behavior is quite the mellow record. Produced by Harold “Axel F” Faltermeyer, the songs sound warm and organic, despite the decks and decks of synths involved. It’s also a bit of curveball for PSB fans, with the single “So Hard”(download) being the only “typical” Pet Shop Boys song on the whole thing.

Unfortunately, grunge was taking over, so there wasn’t much room for a “typical” Pet Shop Boys song in the Top 40 anymore, and “So Hard” sank without a trace. As for the rest of the album, guitars make more than a passing appearance (The Smiths’ Johnny Marr even plays on a few tracks) and there’s a wistful, melancholy tone to the entire proceedings.

“Jealousy” (download) continued the cheatin’ heart theme, complete with a bombastic ending. On the whole, Behavior was the beginning of the end for the Pet Shop Boys’ mainstream U.S. success, but as we’ll see in Part Two, it wasn’t for lack of trying — tune in next week as the Boys dredge up the corpse of the Village People, Liza “oh, she’s still technically living?” Minelli, and jump on the Latin Explosion bandwagon three years too early.

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Tuesday, May 9th, 2006

The Popdose Guide to Paul Simon

by Jeff Giles

Okay, okay, I know. Artists like Paul Simon don’t really need Idiot’s Guides. Who hasn’t heard of Paul Simon, or heard a bunch of his music?

Then again, there’s a fairly significant misunderstanding of Simon’s work, in my opinion; it’s one that he’s probably largely responsible for, but nonetheless, the popular concept of Simon as a self-important, pompous, feckless musical dilettante/thief doesn’t really tell the whole story. Regardless of his music’s flaws — and there are definitely flaws — I think he’s earned a place among the great American songwriters. More importantly, his hits have often failed to present an accurate picture of the depth of his talent; though stuff like “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover” and “You Can Call Me Al” has its merits, it isn’t really important music, of which Simon has written more than his share.

Paul Simon’s ninth proper solo album comes out today, too, so what better time for a fond look back? Buckle up, chilluns, and get ready for some relaxed, literate pop music.


The Paul Simon Songbook (1965)
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Paul Simon - The Paul Simon Songbook

I was on the fence about whether or not to include Songbook in this overview; it was mainly a UK release, and flickered in and out of print for decades before Sony’s Legacy imprint put out a remastered version in 2004. Recorded on the fly to satisfy a need for product during Simon’s brief run as a British solo artist in the mid-’60s, Songbook is of interest mainly as a curio for the most serious of Paul Simon fans. Though the Simon & Garfunkel versions of these songs were sometimes guilty of overproduction, they don’t benefit from the simple acoustic treatment as much as you might think.

Some of this is due to the engineering, which is as sloppy as you’d expect, given the album’s impetus and timetable; a larger problem, though, is Simon himself. At this point, his performances tended to be as heavy-handed as his songs, and without Art Garfunkel’s guileless tenor, large portions of The Paul Simon Songbook are never able to do more than feebly hint at Simon’s eventual capabilities. It’s interesting to hear new/old versions of these familiar songs, and some — in particular “Kathy’s Song” (download) and “Flowers Never Bend With The Rainfall” (download) — stand up well enough on their own.

It’s easy to see, though, why this never amounted to more than a short interlude in Simon & Garfunkel’s partnership, and why Simon worked for so long to prevent its domestic release. The weariness and wounded optimism that would eventually become his hallmarks are here, but they sound like a pose; he hadn’t earned them yet, and his lyrics — which always tend to waver between smart and insufferable — are hurt in the presentation. Anyone who ever said Simon didn’t need Garfunkel should hear Songbook.


Paul Simon (1972)
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Paul Simon - Paul Simon

Though his early forays into literate folk-pop territory sometimes edged uncomfortably close to silliness, Simon eventually emerged as a songwriter of uncommon depth and insight; by the time he and Garfunkel released their final album together, 1970’s Bridge Over Troubled Water, it was difficult to imagine where else he could go within the genre. Simon probably wondered the same thing — his restlessness is evident on a number of Bridge’s tracks, most notably “El Condor Pasa (If I Could)” and “Cecilia.” After the duo’s breakup, Simon faced the unenviable task of recording a solo debut as the follow-up to an album that most artists would have been lucky to call career-defining.

The result was 1972’s Paul Simon, an album both more intimate and more expansive than Bridge; though it lacks its predecessor’s intricately crafted, often grandiose production, it does a better job of reflecting Simon’s wandering musical spirit. His continuing fascination with Latin American music is evident in “Duncan,” but he also toys with reggae (in the hit “Mother and Child Reunion”) and the album in general has a looser, more open-ended feel than any of the Simon & Garfunkel stuff.

It’s also a very understated record. For most of it, Simon fronts a small combo (including some heavy hitters, naturally, including Joe Osborn, Larry Knechtel, David Spinozza, Mike Manieri, Ron Carter, and Hal Blaine, not to mention Stefan Grossman, Airto Moreira, and Stephane Grappelli), and the songs are generally fairly simple and quiet — hushed, even. “Duncan,” “Reunion,” and “Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard” were the hits, but they don’t tell the whole story; in fact, you could argue that the album’s real heart lies in lesser-known cuts like “Everything Put Together Falls Apart” (download) and “Run That Body Down” (download). They do a better job of illustrating how far Simon had come as a chronicler of small, universal human moments, rather than a guy who swung for a major statement every time he stepped up to the plate.

He’d been moving this direction for some time, obviously; that he continued thusly as a solo artist was no real surprise. The truly gratifying discovery in Paul Simon’s eleven tracks was how completely assured he sounded on his own. That Simon & Garfunkel was more than the sum of its parts, there is no doubt, and yet its creative principal’s growth continued unabated after the split. Simon’s easy boredom with himself — what would eventually become his Achilles’ heel — was still working in his favor.


There Goes Rhymin’ Simon (1973)
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Paul Simon - There Goes Rhymin' Simon

Like I was just saying, with his post-S&G debut, Paul Simon demonstrated an increasingly impressive ability to hone in on small, universal human moments. And though his angle and delivery were often subject to change, one thing about that focus remained relatively unchanged; namely, the human moments in question tended to be filled with emotional drift and dissatisfaction.

Enter There Goes Rhymin’ Simon. It isn’t that the rest of his albums are dour, exactly; he’s always been good at pointing out the silver lining along with the cloud. But none of Simon’s other albums are imbued with the quiet joy that runs throughout Rhymin’.

When it came to where and how to record the album, Simon chose perfectly, heading to Muscle Shoals and using local musicians (most notably the Dixie Hummingbirds) on several tracks. Rhymin’ might represent producer Phil Ramone’s finest hour — everything has a loose, organic feel. And the songs, almost to a cut, are classics; not just the hits (namely “Kodachrome” and “Loves Me Like a Rock”), but pretty much everything else — the passive-agressive kissoff “Tenderness,” the domestically blissful “Something So Right,” the wry lullaby “St. Judy’s Comet,” the calmly optimistic “Learn How to Fall” (download) — ranks among the finest work of Simon’s career.

Particularly powerful is “American Tune” (download), a song whose bloodied-yet-quietly-defiant patriotism remains just as painfully appropriate today. Warner Bros. ought to re-release it as a single every four years.


Still Crazy After All These Years (1975)
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Paul Simon - Still Crazy After All These Years

Just as quickly as he went all warm and fuzzy on his audience, Simon made a hard 180 with his next release: Still Crazy After All These Years is soaked through with flip resentment and spiteful humor. Crazy, like all of Simon’s albums, is eclectic enough to wriggle out from under blanket statements — the unbridled joy at redemption found in “Gone at Last” isn’t resentful or spiteful at all — but for the most part, the record reflects a sense of bloated urban disillusionment and self-loathing. Simon’s arrangements mask his sentiment effectively, to the point that someone could easily listen to Still Crazy and hear nothing more than tasteful soft rock, delivered with precision by a tight, jazzy combo.

That combo, again, included some heavy hitters; pretty much every member of the New York session mafia was present and accounted for, including Richard Tee, David Sanborn, Michael Brecker, Hugh McCracken, Ralph McDonald, Bob James, Steve Gadd, and others. Everything — from the drums to the electric piano to Simon’s laid-back vocals — has a warm, full-bodied sound. And so many of Simon’s bitter swipes are delivered in passing, or couched in such mellow surroundings, that it’s difficult to tell whether Crazy was a hit because Simon’s audience could identify with the feelings he expressed, or because the record is just so pretty.

Either way, it’s hard to argue with the command of craft evident in songs like “My Little Town” (download) and “I Do It For Your Love” (download). Awards ensued, along with the sort of paralyzing anticipation that causes an artist to take five years to release a follow-up.


One Trick Pony (1980)
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Paul Simon - One Trick Pony

One of the popular knocks against Paul Simon is the widespread perception of him as a pompous jerk — something that One Trick Pony, the five-years-in-the-making, not-quite-a-soundtrack to the film of the same name (written by and starring himself) did nothing to dispel.

Whether the film was an act of monumental hubris or an overlooked gem is beside the point of this article, but the idea of Simon playing a rock star on the big screen doubtless colored many people’s opinions of the album that he released alongside the movie. Though Pony wasn’t a complete flop, it did break a chain of unqualified commercial success stretching all the way back to Simon & Garfunkel’s second album. Factor in the equally tepid critical response to the record, and One Trick Pony becomes the fulcrum Simon’s solo career rests upon. Up to this point, he’d enjoyed a relatively chummy relationship with public and media alike; since then, the response to each release has consisted of equal parts palm fronds and brickbats.

On its own merits, One Trick Pony isn’t so bad. Musically, it’s surprisingly of a piece with Still Crazy — it’s got the same mellow, jazz-fusion New York vibe — and though only “Late in the Evening” was an actual hit, a number of songs (particularly “How the Heart Approaches What It Yearns” [download] and the title track [download]) still hold up.


Hearts and Bones (1983)
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Paul Simon - Hearts and Bones

If One Trick Pony represented a bit of a setback for Simon, Hearts and Bones was an unmitigated disaster.

The album had a troubled birth from the beginning; it was initially supposed to be a Simon & Garfunkel reunion, inspired by the duo’s well-received touring throughout ‘81-’83, but Garfunkel didn’t care for the songs (which are nakedly self-absorbed, even by Simon’s standards), and Simon, eventually, decided he didn’t much care for Garfunkel’s voice on the songs, and erased his erstwhile partner’s tracks.

In retrospect, it’s pretty clear that the album’s failure had more to do with a Paul Simon backlash than a real absence of quality on the songs themselves. Some of the synths haven’t aged well, and the production on the whole has the flat, glassy sheen of the era, but the set isn’t without its charms. You can feel Simon’s restlessness again — aside from working with Nile Rodgers and Philip Glass, he managed to write a song about numbers, songs about (at least on the surface) cars and the moon, and used doo-wop to tell an imaginary story about René Magritte and his wife (download); among the more ‘traditional’ songs, the title track (download) has aged particularly well.

The album’s failure was unfortunate, but some good came out of it; Simon — the kind of fussy perfectionist who takes even his successes personally — reacted to the sting by falling into a deep creative funk, one from which he wouldn’t emerge until he’d recorded the most successful album of his career.


Graceland (1986)
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Paul Simon - Graceland

Three years removed from the greatest disappointment of his career, Paul Simon returned with Graceland, the album that not only remains his greatest success, but remains, twenty years after its release, at the vanguard of continent-fusing American pop.

Coming, as it did, at the height of apartheid awareness in this country, Graceland — which melds South African gumboot music with American folk and rock, largely through the use of South African musicians — couldn’t help but spark controversy. Simon’s decriers accused him of breaking the cultural embargo against South Africa, a charge he flouted by taking his Graceland tour there; meanwhile, others dismissed the album as the feckless dilettantism of a creatively bankrupt musical poacher who sought to take credit for music he had nothing to do with. (Supposedly, the instrumental bed for the Graceland track “All Around The World Or The Myth Of Fingerprints” [download] consists of a Los Lobos jam that Simon took full writing credit for without the band’s knowledge or consent.)

Fortunately, I have the luxury of saying that the comments area is the place for debating accusations; what matters here is that Graceland — as a piece of musical entertainment, and perhaps even as an act of cultural ambassadorship — works supremely well. Though Simon was in the process of moving away from linear lyrics and song structures (wide swaths of Graceland’s lyrics consist of words that sound good together rather than form a coherent narrative), he still had enough of a pop tether to keep the songs from floating off into the ether. In fact, these are some of the catchiest songs Simon’s ever written.

What Graceland isn’t is a gumboots record, not really; purists used this as another excuse to wave away the album, but this criticism misses the point, because it never pretends to be any one thing. Simon mixes South African, Latin American, and American Southern/Northeastern ingredients into one big gumbo pot, and the result is a beguiling blend that isn’t wholly indebted to any one nation or genre. It’s just a fun listen. You’ve probably heard it all a thousand times, or have a copy of your own, but listen to “That Was Your Mother” (download) anyway.


The Rhythm of the Saints (1990)
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Paul Simon - The Rhythm of the Saints

Four years after he went to Africa and came back with Graceland, Simon attempted to repeat the experiment in South America for The Rhythm of the Saints, and fell victim to the law of diminishing returns — commercially, anyway. Saints has always gotten a bad rap, but I enjoy it just as much as its predecessor.

It’s easy to see why Saints has always been pegged as Graceland’s ugly stepbrother; Simon was moving further away from traditional song structures and linear narratives, and in the process, forsaking melodic hooks. For every old-fashioned verse-chorus-verse number like “The Obvious Child,” “Born at the Right Time,” or “Proof” (all of which were medium-sized hits), there’s a gauzy tune like “Spirit Voices” (download) or the title track (download). It’s the kind of album that needs to be fully absorbed before it’s appreciated, and absorbing it takes time. The fact that it wasn’t Graceland II, even though it may have threatened to be on the surface, kept a lot of people from bothering to discover this.

Having co-opted South African mining music and Brazilian polyrhythm, Simon seemed to have exhausted his globetrotting options, at least for the moment; short of making a pop album out of Icelandic folk music or Aborigine ballads, he was going to have to head back home for his next move.


You’re the One (2000)
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Paul Simon - You're the One

You’re the One sold half a million copies and earned a Grammy nomination, but that’s almost the default result of an artist of Simon’s stature taking ten years to make an album. To say that One received a warm critical or commercial response would be a bit of an overstatement — it wasn’t roundly panned, but for the most part, people didn’t know what to make of it.

It’s an odd bird, for sure. Musically, it’s a slight culmination of all the various forms and genres Simon has toyed with throughout his career, yet at the same time, it’s a continuation of his move away from anything you could legitimately call pop songwriting; though it contains its share of the lovely (“That’s Where I Belong” [download]) and the catchy (“Old” [download]), the majority of the album consists of songs that take their time to get where they’re going:if they’re going anywhere at all. It’s as though Simon, having already abandoned linear narrative, decided he wanted to see what would happen if he threw stuff like melody and easily discernible song structure out the window too.

It’s an ambitious decision, admirably so, but it makes for difficult listening. It’s surprising, because as often as Simon has struggled to carve out new territory in pop music, he’s usually been fairly good at adding a spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down. He knows his audience. You’re the One, though, travels into territory so insular that it’s almost as though Simon forgot anyone else might be listening to these songs. It’s charming, to a point, but ultimately disappointing.

What the album makes clear is the amount of emotional distance Simon has added to his songs. It’s been a development long in the making, but on Graceland and Rhythm of the Saints, he was able to use the natural warmth of the music he borrowed from as a proxy for the heart he’d once worn on his sleeve — well, maybe not on his sleeve, exactly, but someplace nearby. Here, the arrangements and instrumentation can’t — don’t try to — disguise the way Simon has largely moved away from telling stories and toward setting moods.


Surprise (2006)
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Paul Simon - Surprise

Leading up to its release, the big story about Surprise was that Simon had enlisted the aid of Brian Eno as a “sonic landscaper” for this set of songs; certain music dorks (myself included) also perked up at the news that Bill Frisell played electric guitar on the album. It wasn’t the most obvious of combinations, but it had no small amount of weird, exciting promise.

The reality is much more mundane than you might expect. Neither Eno nor Frisell exert the kind of influence they typically do over recordings they’re involved with — the production is a little more modern, and the guitars are a tad stranger in spots, but for the most part, the new additions are fairly subtle.

They work, though. Simon has ventured further out onto the insular, elliptical limb he started climbing with You’re the One; the statements these songs make — about love, youth, old age, and modern American life — are as indirect as the songs themselves. They’re mood pieces, paintings with words, and they benefit — more than is immediately apparent — from the extra color Eno’s “landscaping” provides. It’s subtle, as I said, but listen to “How Can You Live in the Northeast?” (download) and “Once Upon a Time There Was an Ocean” (download) and you’ll see how the added noise helps broaden the music’s appeal.

That being said, it’s hard to listen to Surprise without thinking that Simon’s constant restlessness has robbed his work of a lot of what made it great. His music and lyrics once evoked aspects of the American experience so powerfully that their impact remains undiminished, even after more than three decades; these days, he often seems to be talking mainly to himself. He deserves no shortage of credit for refusing to simply rest on his laurels, but ambition is often a poor substitute for emotional resonance. Simon’s creative journey doubtless has more than a few twists and turns left in it, and he seems to be in little danger of falling into a rut — but it would be nice to hear him settle into another groove.

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Tuesday, April 4th, 2006

The Popdose Guide to Lyle Lovett

by Jeff Giles

I’ve had the conversation plenty of times now, but I’m always stunned when it takes place: Me and a friend or acquaintance, jawing about music, extolling the virtues of this or that songwriter, and when the subject turns to Lyle Lovett, I get an indifferent shrug.

“Eh,” the friend or acquaintance says. “Never really liked him.”

Now, Lyle Lovett has certainly piled up enough critical hosannas over the course of his career; I’m not suggesting that nobody likes him, or even that you probably don’t like him. I’m just saying that I often meet people who don’t. People whose tastes in music, I’d think, would match up squarely with the sort of hyper-intelligent country/folk/pop/jazz that Lovett specializes in. People who enjoy a finely drawn character sketch set to music, or a songwriter who can comfortably and believably inhabit the skin of a lovable ne’er-do-well.

These are people who should love Lyle Lovett. Perhaps you’re one of them. (If you’re a regular around here, I’m sort of inclined to think you are, but you never know.) Perhaps you’ve written Lovett off in the past as “country music,” a description that, though apt enough, misses the point. He’s a songwriter, first and foremost, and even if he isn’t one of the true greats, he comes close often enough to transcend such narrow labels. You may not like country music — I don’t particularly like it — but that doesn’t mean you won’t find a lot to love here.

Anyway, enough of my soapboxing. On with the music.


Lyle Lovett (1986)
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Lyle Lovett - Lyle Lovett

There are people who will tell you that Lyle Lovett is a classic album. I am not one of them.

It isn’t a bad record at all. It is, however, the sort of album that has to be seen in context to be truly appreciated. 1986 was sort of a dark year for country music; the genre was caught between the massively successful rhinestone hokum of the early ’80s and the neo-traditionalist, pop-inflected stuff that would resurrect country radio in a few short years. As a result, Lyle Lovett has a sometimes disconcerting neither-fish-nor-fowl feel to it; Tony Brown’s production contains enough distracting countrypolitan touches to make you snicker when you shouldn’t, and the songs are among the safest of Lovett’s career.

At the time, though, it was part of a mini-revolution in country music. Though country listeners would abandon Lovett as soon as his music started to cross over, in ‘86, he was all over the radio. Lyle Lovett spun off no fewer than five Top 40 country singles. The best of the bunch is probably “God Will” (download), a darkly sardonic harbinger of what was to come.

It’s toward the end of the record that Lovett starts to shake his limbs a little — “You Can’t Resist It” (download) is the best song The Eagles never wrote, and with “The Waltzing Fool,” “An Acceptable Level of Ecstasy,” and “Closing Time,” he delivers a back-to-back-to-back punch, displaying the sort of empathy and attention to detail that would lay the foundation for his career.


Pontiac (1987)
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Lyle Lovett - Pontiac

In terms of that dated ’80s country sound, with Pontiac, Lovett still wasn’t entirely out of the woods. But he was getting there.

And the songs? Well, you could tell he was writing from a viewpoint a good deal more — for lack of a better word — skewed than the artists he typically shared playlists with; just two songs in, he’s already had Tonto tell the Lone Ranger to kiss his ass and referred to a woman as a “chipkicker redneck.” In terms of crimes committed against country in the ’80s, this certainly ranks well below those perpetrated by, say, Steve Earle or Carlene Carter (who famously promised to “put the ‘cunt’ back in country”), but in a genre that had theretofore prided itself on its staid, traditional nature, it rates a mention.

Elsewhere on Pontiac, Lovett starts to tinker more extensively with the formula — “L.A. County” (download) is a murder ballad with a breezy pop arrangement, “M-O-N-E-Y” is casually misogynistic blues, and the title track (download) cops such a plain Randy Newman vibe that it may as well have been written by Newman himself.

Like its predecessor, Pontiac was well-received, both critically and commercially; even in hindsight, though, it’s difficult to say that anyone could have had any idea what Lovett would do next.


Lyle Lovett and His Large Band (1989)
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Lyle Lovett - Lyle Lovett and His Large Band

And here is where the country audience officially bade Lyle Lovett farewell. Though “I Married Her Just Because She Looks Like You” was a modest country hit, and Lovett’s straight-faced take on “Stand By Your Man” earned him considerable press, for the most part, Lyle Lovett and His Large Band was a pop crossover album.

This wasn’t necessarily because of closed-mindedness on the part of country listeners, either; anybody would have had a hard time figuring out what to make of the opening tandem of Lovett’s cover of “The Blues Walk” and the musical monologue that is “Here I Am” (download) — not to mention the sly duet “What Do You Do/The Glory of Love” (download) and the infidelity blues of “Nobody Knows Me.”

It’s the kind of confounding, genre-busting album that critics love, in other words, and love Large Band the critics did indeed. Though his fortunes at country radio were dimming, Lovett was fast acquiring the sort of cachet that guarantees record deals (sadly, it also seemingly guarantees negligible record sales).


Joshua Judges Ruth (1992)
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Lyle Lovett - Joshua Judges Ruth

Lovett’s fourth album rode in on a huge buzz — particularly for an artist whose releases had never gone better than gold — and perhaps that’s why Joshua Judges Ruth has always been a record that divides the fans. It was a potential source of dismay for many segments of his audience, actually; listeners who had learned to depend on Lovett for a healthy number of feel-good country swing numbers on every album, fans who enjoyed his black wit, and people who enjoyed the Large Band were all among the disenfranchised. Judges is a spare, somber record full of despair and heartbreak; a single listen to the chills-inducing “North Dakota” (download) puts the album’s vibe in a nutshell.

He’s too squirrelly an artist to record an entirely miserable album, though, so of course there are the stray uptempo numbers — the riotous “Church” (download), the loose closer “She Makes Me Feel Good” — but on the whole, this is a dark set of songs, matched by George Massenberg’s chilly, austere production.

Joshua Judges Ruth is my favorite Lovett record. I don’t know if this makes me a mopey bastard or what, but it’s true. From here on out, Lovett’s release schedule slowed down (way down), and his albums became a lot less eclectic. Depending on your point of view, this change resulted in albums that were either more cohesive or less interesting.


I Love Everybody (1994)
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Lyle Lovett - I Love Everybody

I Love Everybody consists of songs Lovett wrote in the years leading up to his debut album, but it isn’t really your typical odds & sods collection; Lovett, ever the contrarian, recorded them anew for their first official release.

Albums like these often tend toward the somewhat embarrassing, but then again, most songwriters aren’t that talented. It’s interesting to compare this quirky set of tunes with the relatively normal bunch that he ended up recording for Lyle Lovett; it proves that, rather than growing into his idiosyncratic shoes as he went along, he was always the bastard son of Randy Newman and Townes Van Zandt — he was just waiting to prove it.

Everybody was recorded in the wake of Lovett’s marriage to Julia Roberts, and the peak of his celebrity; perhaps as a result, it’s got gobs of big names in the credits. No, seriously: Kenny Aronoff, Sweet Pea and Sir Harry, Rickie Lee Jones, Leo Kottke, Russ Kunkel, Arnold McCuller, Mark O’Connor, Lee Thornburg:the list goes on. (Roberts even does a backing-vocal turn.) It doesn’t really affect the material either way; these are eighteen relatively slight songs, all in all. That being said, songs like “Fat Babies” (download) and the title track (download) are no less enjoyable for their lack of earth-shattering songwriting — and “Creeps Like Me” (download) shows how well Lovett was cribbing Randy Newman, even as a wee tadpole.


The Road to Ensenada (1996)
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Lyle Lovett - Road to Ensenada

Having cleared his vaults with I Love Everybody, Lovett had no choice but to reveal himself as the decidedly non-prolific writer he was — The Road to Ensenada’s eleven songs arrived four years after Joshua Judges Ruth. Ensenada is a pretty straightforward set of songs, too; it’s definitely the most accessible album he had released since his debut. Again, whether this makes Ensenada a more cohesive or less interesting affair depends on your point of view.

Me, I liked Lovett when his songs were as unpredictable as his hair. There’s a certain amount of quirk here — “Her First Mistake” (download) and “That’s Right” are Lovett at his most pleasantly tongue-in-cheek, “Fiona” is enjoyably strange, and “Private Conversation” (download) is another of the pop/folk/country hybrids Lovett seems to churn out with absolute ease — but the whole thing still has a rather muted feel. It’s as though, with Large Band and Joshua Judges Ruth, Lovett scaled the mountain of pop ambition, and returned a humbler, less interesting man.

This sounds like an unkind dismissal of what’s essentially a very solid record — but it’s really only in comparison to what Lovett once suggested he could do that his later recordings fail to measure up. By any other standard, they’re examples of stellar, rock-solid songwriting and performance. Take that for whatever it’s worth.


Step Inside This House (1998)
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Lyle Lovett - Step Inside This House

There’s a long, proud tradition in pop music of artists finding strange and comical ways to burn their way out of a record contract (The Parkerilla, Metal Machine Music, et cetera). Releasing a double-disc collection of covers isn’t as direct a message as, say, putting out an entire album’s worth of feedback, but it makes for a much more enjoyable listen.

So here’s the deal: Lovett decided to reach back to his Texas roots for this one, and record twenty-one (mostly) little-known works by songwriters from the state formerly known as Mexico. Being that Lovett didn’t write a note here, it’s sort of pointless to judge Step Inside This House on artistic merits, at least within the confines of an Idiot’s Guide to Lyle Lovett; all that’s left, then, is to judge it as a listening experience.

By those standards, it’s pleasant enough, if a bit on the mellow side (I speak from experience when I say it makes for lousy driving music, especially if the driver in question is motoring through the Arizona desert). For Texan musicologists, it’s an interesting second look at songs by Van Zandt, Steve Frumholz, Guy Clark, and a number of other local sons. For Lovett diehards, it makes for an intermittently interesting curio. The rest of the world, however, could probably have done without Lovett’s interpretation of songs like “Bears” (download) and the title track (download).


Live in Texas (1999)
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Lyle Lovett - Live in Texas

As a live performer, Lyle Lovett will never be as electrifying as, say, Cheap Trick; neither will he ever approach the often spellbinding intimacy of a David Wilcox. As a result, though Live in Texas is a thoroughly enjoyable listening experience, its value was primarily as a de facto greatest hits (at least until 2001, when the real thing came along) than an audio revelation. Lovett’s band is beyond tight, the live arrangements hew closely to their studio counterparts, and Lovett keeps his between-song patter to a ridiculous minimum, so the only difference here is in the crowd noise.

That has its own limited value, actually — it’s interesting to hear the rapt silence in “North Dakota” give way to applause when Rickie Lee Jones takes the stage, and the knowing laughter when Tonto tells the Lone Ranger to kiss his ass during “If I Had a Boat” (download), but the only song that really benefits from the live makeover is “You Can’t Resist It” (download) — and that’s because the production on the original was so damn weird.

Bottom line: As contractual-obligation releases go, as with Step Inside This House, you could do a lot worse. Just don’t go into it thinking you’re embarking upon essential listening.


My Baby Don’t Tolerate (2003)
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Lyle Lovett - My Baby Don't Tolerate

Lovett’s last studio album arrived after a four-year wait; this time, fans held on for seven years before he returned from the wilderness. Listeners could be forgiven for thinking Lovett’s switch to Lost Highway, Luke Lewis’ indie-with-major-label-funding, would result in a return to wonderfully eclectic form — but ’twas not to be. My Baby Don’t Tolerate is, more or less, The Road to Ensenada II — a solid, decidedly non-eccentric set of songs that plays to Lovett’s strength as a “straight country” performer.

To beat a dead horse right into the ground, how you feel about this depends on your point of view.

The songs certainly aren’t bad. Lovett has tossed off some trifles in his day, but I’m really not sure he’s ever released a truly bad song, and he doesn’t include any here. The flip side of that coin is that they’re a little more — for lack of a better word — ordinary than some of us would like to hear from the man.

Now, look, Lyle Lovett even on his worst day is a damn sight better than many other artists could ever hope to be; I’m not trying to warn you off Tolerate, or even really suggest that it doesn’t measure up to his older stuff. Just for me, personally, things were more entertaining back when he hopped all over the goddamn map. Framed against his catalog as a whole, songs like “Cute as a Bug” (download) and “You Were Always There” (download) fail to break new ground while also refusing to yield any.

Is Lovett in creative stasis? Has he gotten as good as he’s going to get? Chances are good that we’ll have to wait until the next decade to find out:but even if the answer turns out to be “yes,” it’s nothing to complain about. Here’s a songwriter who got off on the good foot, stayed there, and probably has a lot of good years left in him. If you haven’t found this out for yourself already, do it now.

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