Joseph's Picks Of The Week 6/8/12 - Public Image Ltd and Grass Widow



By its very title, This is PiL, the first studio album in over two decades from John Lydon’s post-Sex Pistols’ post-punk entity effectively becomes a state-of-the-band address. While nodding superficially at times toward the unkempt wilds of Public Image Ltd’s groundbreaking early work, there is far too much of the Lydon-dominated calculation and missteps that unfortunately defined the group’s later material.

Some will immediately balk that Public Image Ltd has always been John Lydon’s band, and in a sense that’s very true. But on their initial three studio albums, they operated as a real band not in the democratic sense but in the undeniable reality that a gang of immensely talented musicians were butting up against each other and creating something huge.

John Lydon, guitarist Keith Levene bassist Jah Wobble and drummer Jim Miller conjured up First Issue in December of 1978, an exceptional debut album and a bold maneuver in the development of post-punk. This was followed up less than a year later with Metal Box aka Second Edition, recorded by Lydon, Levene, Wobble and a shifting lineup of drummers, and it stands as not only the finest release in the oeuvre of Public Image Ltd, but also one of the truly masterful post-punk albums.

Following this Wobble was out, drummer Martin Adkins was in, and instead of following a route of refinement, the group came up with one of the more uncompromising records ever released by a major label, which isn’t to insinuate that their first two were mellow going. What made The Flowers of Romance so fascinating was how it largely made no attempt to replace the gap left by Wobble; the group essentially shifted in focus from one of the darkest manifestations of post-punk’s dub-reggae influence into an equally foreboding atmosphere of rhythmic experimentation that was very conversant with simultaneous expressions emanating from the industrial music scene.

Simply put, these three records cohere into an astonishing achievement, and it’s somewhat of a drag to find people underestimating them in the here and now, either because their vast influence has somewhat dulled the cumulative effect (though in my case at least, this hasn’t been the case) or due to folks’ aversion to Lydon’s persona and his later, lesser work subconsciously sabotaging their assessment of PiL’s most crucial documents.

On previous occasions I’ve likened my lingering reaction upon discovery of PiL’s early stuff to the impression of younger associates after they were first introduced to Radiohead. While older listeners more up to speed with dub, Can/Krautrock and experimental music in general were expectedly a bit (or a lot) more measured in their appreciation of Public Image’s first few records, for the fresh ears of me and others, they really sounded like something new under the sun. And please keep in mind that in my case the early PiL records were being digested simultaneous to hearing their later LPs like Album and Happy?

After The Flowers of Romance, the band basically exploded, with allegedly stolen master tapes resulting in the Levene-instigated The Commercial Zone bootleg LP, a frankly underwhelming record matched only by its legit counterpart This Is What You Want…This Is What You Get. Adkins remained as drummer, but it was increasingly clear that Public Image Ltd was now Lydon’s show from top to bottom.

It was this period that found the man’s attempted piss-take “This Is Not a Love Song” becoming his biggest chart single to date (#5 UK), an occurrence that’s perhaps indicative of the point where he began replacing the musically challenging with the merely vitriolic. From the point of First Issue, Lydon had made sure to mix his disgust with true antagonism (see “Religion I” and “Religion II”) and the presence of Levene and Wobble pushed it all very far into the deep sonic weeds.

This Is What You Want…This Is What You Get effectively ended Public Image Ltd as a band, but the nadir was the live record Live in Tokyo; as problematic as the group’s rather obscure ’79 live dip Paris au Printemps was, that LP’s contents simply blew the doors off of the blandness of Tokyo’s session-musician plagued undermining of earlier vital material.

So if the contents of Album were an undisguised move into pop territory, it was all much easier to swallow than the often blatant missteps of the prior two records. Plus, Album was undeniably aided by the production presence of Bill Laswell, who brought in a bunch of creative ringers to sessioneer and effectively stifle the genericism proffered by Live in Tokyo; if Lydon no longer desired a band dynamic, it certainly helped to stock the studio with names like Tony Williams, Ginger Baker, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Bernie Worrell and Malachi Favors.

But his subsequent records, if created with a pretense of a working band, were all clearly situations where Lydon called the shots, and from inside the pop realm they were a story of diminishing returns, effectively ending with PiL’s studio low point, 1992’s That What Is Not. A few live records have come out since, but I honestly didn’t think I’d ever encounter another PiL studio release.

But here is This is PiL, and beforehand, being unable to do otherwise, I braced myself for the worst. And the opening title track still confounded me with the sheer level of its wrongheadedness. If “This is PiL” seems intended as a hearkening back to such early tracks as “Theme” and “Public Image”, it flounders threefold; the declamatory nature of Lydon’s early vocals benefited from being somewhat sparse, this sparseness was aided by the considerable levels of musicianship that surrounded him, and lastly his lyrics contained varying amounts of substantive content.

“This is PiL” is instead burdened by Lydon’s voice overstaying its welcome; it’s weakened further by a musical bed that’s uninspiring, and ultimately ruined by a lyrical sentiment that’s simply banal. Twenty years out of the studio and the best Lydon can come up with for an opening salvo is to incessantly tell us that this is indeed PiL (alternately spelled out or spoken as the word “pill”, maybe the most surprising aspect of the song), and that we’re “entering a PiL zone”.

Actually, that last bit sheds some strong light upon where Lydon’s inspiration, at least on this track, is derived; in ’82, shortly before it all hit the fan, PiL announced the imminent release of an EP to be titled You Are Now Entering a Commercial Zone. Please couple this informational tidbit with the return of Lydon’s proclivity from the same era to specifically inform the listener as to what they were or were not getting: this is not a love song, this is what you want, this is what you get, and now this is PiL.

It was easy to predict that our man would eschew jumping back into the dangerous waters of the group’s early material, but it’s disappointing that Lydon lacked the perception to avoid returning to the period immediately after Levene’s departure, when the music attributed to the group was at close to its lowest ebb.

Thankfully This is PiL improves somewhat from its ill-conceived start, largely because it doesn’t have much other choice. But the record is a study in often erratic ups and downs, and yet is also burdened by its leader’s desire to play it safe far too frequently. The lilting reggae of “One Drop” ends better than it starts, but it’s not very inspiring to hear Lydon in this mode, even after an absence of twenty years.

But the better tracks here, “Deeper Water”, “I Must Be Dreaming”, “The Room I Am In”, “Fool”, all display a desire to make an album of real value, and that’s commendable. Yet good intentions do not a great, or in this case even a very good, album make. This is to say that This is PiL’s is simply undone by too much subpar material.

John Lydon is back and those that deeply love him may find the contents of this LP to be enough. Those who feel the ball was fumbled after The Flowers of Romance should proceed with extreme caution.

Those with an unscratchable itch for stripped-down yet pop-savvy post-punk should give San Francisco’s Grass Widow a try. Their latest record Internal Logic hits upon many of that sub-genre’s best elements, all without being the slightest bit overbearing about the whole endeavor.

Grass Widow has arrived at their third full length in an admirable, tired-and-true manner; via gigs, practice, patience, networking and diligence. Debuting in ’09 with a self-titled 12-inch on the Captured Tracks label and a self-titled full-length on the Make A Mess imprint, they’d been playing shows from at least two years previous to those releases, as is evidenced by a demo CD-R that’s recently been discussed on the interwebs.

It should never be understated that one of the crucial factors in a band’s formative period is simply not being in a hurry. Far too many groups have let impatience squander their potential as manifested through the booking of studio time after just a few uncommonly smooth practices. And others have been given fatal advice by spurious third parties less interested in quality music than in the potential for profit.

Thankfully Grass Widow comes from a proudly DIY place. One listen to the angular, post-punk derived sound of those first two records and it’s clear that Hannah Lew, Lillian Marling and Raven Mahon march to the beat of their own drummer. This isn’t to imply the band don’t give off the vibes of precedent; upon first hearing them I heard the shaping influence of the UK’s unbeatable Rough Trade warriors The Raincoats filtered perhaps through some of the righteous ‘90s rocking of Washington DC’s underappreciated Slant 6.

Some of it was a trio thing, and much of it was the immediate feeling that Grass Widow didn’t have any qualms about their femininity. So it was no surprise that the band’s 2010 follow-up LP was on Kill Rock Stars, a label that since their ’91 inception has proven to be one of the strongest outlets for contemporary women musicians. And Past Time was a tangible advance in both songwriting and in execution.

To their credit, Grass Widow don’t make things easy for themselves; while never getting wonkily progged-out, their music undeniably possessed a palpable riffy complexity, and when coupled with the nature of trio rock (where nobody can hide, because everybody’s integral to the music’s success) they made it clear they weren’t just fooling around. Unlike the appealing shambolic aura of The Vivian Girls’ early stuff, Grass Widow’s music oozed like the product of a band that actually got a big kick out of practice.

If those ’09 records still featured an attractive hint of nervousness in the band’s delivery, it was gone by the very impressive Past Time; no sophomore slump for these three. And their new record Internal Logic posits that Grass Widow could easily become one of our best contemporary bands simply by emitting nary a trace of nonsense and getting right down onto tape and getting heard.

If Past Time was a record about growth, then Internal Logic is about boldness. It’s most immediately engaging quality (beyond the sheer strength of songwriting of course), is how they take a form of skeletal post-punk that’s often defined as a reaction against “pop” sensibilities and imbue it with a fully formed production sound that doesn’t detract in the slightest from the record’s heft. This is achieved mainly due to Grass Widow’s decision to not sacrifice instrumental muscularity. In other words, they haven’t forgotten they’re a rock band.

But all three members are strong of voice, and as their discography has progressed it’s been quite a gas to hear them harmonize; it’s this pop aspect of their sound that leads me to think they could come up with something comparable to The Raincoats’ third LP Moving. But Internal Logic is also a third album, and it’s become apparent that Grass Widow, unlike many of their post-punk predecessors (and I’m not referring to The Raincoats with the following) actually really enjoy what they sound like. Instead of bailing on it as they became more instrumentally adept and confident, they’ve instead honed their music’s considerable qualities through superb judgment into something exceptional.

For those already familiar with the band, the two most notable tracks on Internal Logic will be “A Light in the Static”, which is 1:30 of unexpected Spanish guitar, and the album’s solo piano outro “Response To Photographs. While they do much to broaden Grass Widow’s palate, they also serve as something of a red herring, for the LP’s real strides come from within territory already established; opener “Goldilocks Zone” runs those splendid harmonies through a noticeably Bratmobile-like zone.

But that’s just for starters. “Hang Around” features some gradually grabbing guitar work, and “Under the Atmosphere” is a surprisingly pretty tune that’s antagonized by tough instrumentation. And longer tracks like “Spock on MUNI” and “Whistling in the Dark” provide platforms for every instrument to shine, particularly the bass, which alternates expertly between rhythm and melody, and the drumming, which is precise but never predictable.

The significance of Spanish guitar on Internal Logic can be stretched a bit and compared to the classical guitar included on Minutemen’s masterpiece Double Nickels on the Dime. Some might find this contrast specious, but for every obvious difference there is a similarity; both are trios, both this and Double Nickels are third proper full-lengths, and like those Pedro dudes, Grass Widow are highly influenced by Brit post-punk. Hell, these gals even covered Wire’s “Mannequin” on their “Milo Minute” 7-inch from last year, and that song’s long been a staple of Mike Watt’s set-lists, even getting recorded by Firehose.

But I don’t want to push the issue too much. Unlike Double Nickels on the Dime, Internal Logic isn’t a masterpiece, and it’s somewhat imperfect. But its main problem is ultimately a minor quibble, specifically the brevity of the LP; two years in the making and the album is shy of half an hour, retreading both “Milo Minute and “Disappearing Industries” from singles. Sure, it’s always preferable for a release to leave listeners wanting more instead of wishing they’d gotten less, and a lean, quick record is very securely in Grass Widow’s M.O. However, it would frankly be nice to see them stretch out and away from the expected a bit.

But one of the most pleasant extra-musical aspects of Grass Widow’s recent development is how they have retained a deep sense of that DIY spirit by releasing Internal Logic on their own HLR label. It’s not only reflective of the band’s sense of scale and their preference for artistic control over fleeting notoriety, but it’s also indicative of a recent spike in artists electing to not just remain with indies, but in many cases taking the initiative to actually coordinate the release of their own product, a trend that I can wholeheartedly cheer.

The above comparisons between Grass Widow and The Raincoats were certainly aided by seeing them play with that legendary Brit band in Washington DC last year, and indeed some might complain that the two bands display too few overt similarities to make the connection. I disagree; to these ears it seems clear that Grass Widow fully understand that when drawing upon the template of the truly groundbreaking, the sincerely influential is antithetical to the spoils produced by the rote copyist.

Again, Grass Widow is scaled differently than The Raincoats (or for that matter, Minutemen), being a band whose best qualities grow with time well spent. All their records are worth owning, but Internal Logic is the most fully formed to date, and its running-time posits that more is to come.



Joseph's Picks Of The Week 6/1/12 - Paul & Linda McCartney and Heavy Blanket

Ram, the second post-Beatle LP from Paul McCartney has just been reissued through Hear Music. There are numerous ways for the uninitiated to acquaint oneself with its contents, but the best is likely the two-disc Special Edition. It presents the contents of this hard-fought classic alongside a second album of appropriate bonus material.

Paul McCartney was the member of the Fab Four that so many used to relish knocking around. Whether it was in spirited bar chats or animated discussions at parties, when the tide turned to The Beatles somebody could always be counted on for a hearty jibe at Macca’s expense. And in my above use of “so many” I’m generally referring to males and by “somebody” I’m specifically speaking of those who indisputably considered John Lennon to be the Best Beatle.

While for those truly devoted fans of the band there could simply never be a Worst, for many Paul was the Square Beatle, a designation not borne out by the facts, for he was as interested in the avant-garde as any member. Hell, in ’68 he co-produced “I’m the Urban Spaceman” by The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band for Pete’s sake, an act that places him rather high up on the meter of cool.

However, others derided him as the Corporate Beatle. And yeah, it’s true that Paul never lost track of the business aspect of the whole affair, but his behavior in this regard hasn’t really played out as particularly odious in comparison to other rock star types of not even half his stature or talent.

But both Paul’s image and the assessment of his post-Beatle solo career has rebounded in recent years. Much of this might have to do with the constantly regenerating fanbase of the Four consistently growing older and perhaps letting go of the rebelliousness that inspired easy identification with Lennon or Harrison. It also might be related to the race for Coolest Living Beatle being down to him and Ringo “No More Mail, Thanks” Starr.

But seriously. In my estimation Paul’s general critical resurgence is a welcome phenomenon, if only because his first two solo records have finally gotten something approximate to the proper level of respect. And yes, for years I bought the baloney regarding the collective underwhelming nature of McCartney and Ram, too.

This was in part due to older acquaintances, even those quite favorable to McCartney’s work in The Beatles, being generally disapproving of his solo stuff, considering those early albums as grievous miscalculations of ambition (or lack thereof) and Wings (which of course wasn’t really Paul “solo”, being a band in its own right) as a severe pendulum swing into the other direction, offering safer though often more grandly scaled distillations of Paul’s talent.

But the kibosh was Landau and Christgau’s critical double whammy on Ram, which was enough to make me weary for years. And yet, as I kept stumbling onto really great albums that either Jon or Bob (or both) disdained, and as the general curiosity inherent to music fans started getting the better of me, I decided to take the plunge.

I sensibly started with McCartney, and was knocked plumb out by its stripped down feel; it’s been described as demo-like, and that’s accurate. In contrast to the over-slick efforts that were clogging the bins at my point of discovery, it was a real breath of fresh air. And unlike its rep, the level of the songwriting was excellent, and made clear that McCartney’s aims were indeed ambitious, though simply at odds with what the critical zeitgeist (it wasn’t add odds with the record buying public however; both McCartney and its follow-up sold an asston). But the high quality of Paul’s solo debut simply couldn’t prepare me for the exquisitely ramshackle affair that is Ram.

While I already knew and highly enjoyed “Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey”, I was a fresh-faced newcomer to the wonky blues of “3 Legs” or the rollicking smack-talk of “Smile Away”. In “Monkberry Moon Delight” I found a deliciously snide and considerably twisted stomp, and “Ram On”, with its distorted electric piano tones and strummed ukulele, is nothing less than a prototype for the 21st Century indie-pop sound.

The interplay between Paul and Linda on “Eat at Home” feels a little like a laid-back country-rock precursor to the Buck/Nicks-era Fleetwood Mac, its scale smaller, oozing with the nonchalance of a couple that’s discovered they have nothing to prove, so they’re just going to do what gets them off. It seems this was enough to drive many observers to vitriolic ends. That “Eat at Home” is apparently a tribute to the undying grandeur of Buddy Holly only adds to its panache.

And unlike some who find her co-credit to be a display of hubris or economic maneuvering, I continue to find Linda’s vocal contribution to Ram one of its most endearing traits. There’s a mixture of earnestness and palpable pleasure that’s sweetly accented by an appealing lack of polish in her delivery, and this blend really adds to “3 Legs”, “Monkberry Moon Delight” (I gas every time on how she sings “cats and kittens”) and the extended “Long Haired Lady”, another Ram cut that solidly presages the modern indie sound. And while we’re on matters of the up to date, the smooth folk-pop of “Heart of the Country” sounds downright contemporary. Bon Iver, anyone?

Over time I’ve detected a mild thread of similarity across the grooves of Ram to the songwriting of Brian Wilson. Not only can I hear it in the album’s terrific closer “Back Seat of My Car”, but I also perceive its presence on “Dear Boy” and even a little bit in “Smile Away”, mainly due to that song’s backing vocals. And this directly relates to one of McCartney’s most positive attributes, specifically the lack of anxiety in his influence. He’s always been pretty open about where his inspiration derives, maybe attempting to add a little modesty to the mantle of pop messiah that was thrust upon all three of the Beatles’ principal songwriters.

Unlike some hit songs, tunes which stick out on otherwise superb albums like an unfortunate mustard stain inflicted upon a finely-designed and well-worn shirt during a swank holiday picnic, “Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey” fits snuggly into Ram’s qualitative gist. In fact, it’s one of the album’s more important tracks in that it provides quite a template for some of the expansive tweeness that’s occurred over the following four decades.

It’s also a very weird song; to wit, the assumedly Linda-derived tongue-flutter in the cut’s first section. And while listening recently, it suddenly became tangible that “Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey”, again at least in its first section, isn’t that far removed from some of the more pop-inflected moments of Animal Collective. Yeah, contemporaneousness is surely in abundance on Ram.

By this late date it’s not likely too many people are continuing to harbor a lingering prejudicial grudge against McCartney’s pre-Wings solo work. Like this expanded issue of Ram, McCartney was released in a deluxe bells-and-whistle intensive set not quite a year ago, and if that effort had either stumbled commercially or been subject to a persistent persnickety critical evaluation, Sir Paul might’ve hesitated over putting this one in the racks in so quick a fashion.

And in my estimation, the two-disc edition of Ram edges out the same configuration of McCartney by a little more than a nose. Sure, both “Another Day” and “Oh Woman, Oh Why” were already added to the ’93 CD issue, but their inclusion on the vinyl of this impeccably crafted set is still quite jake. “Little Woman Love”, the b-side to Wings’ “Mary Had a Little Lamb” also turns up, and is sorta the odd track out.

For unlike the latter live versions that make up the bulk of McCartney’s extra material, Ram includes a bevy of previously unissued studio tracks, all of which date from the sessions for the LP (a big plus in my book), which makes hearing them an absolute cinch for anybody that’s stumbled onto the greatness of Ram.

And the verdict on the general worthiness of these extra tracks is a resounding positive. Quite interestingly, the unreleased songs don’t sound like completed tunes that didn’t make the cut for reasons of inferior quality, instead feeling like pieces that were worked on and then set aside unfinished, never to be picked up again. For a few examples, “Great Cock and Seagull Race” and “Sunshine Sometime” are both instrumentals, and the lengthy rocker “Rode All Night” would’ve likely undergone some editing in a non-bonus cut version.

Of course, McCartney maniacs might already be familiar with these tracks through unauthorized channels. But here they are in a Paul-instigated expansion of Ram, another installment in one of the most meticulously assembled and least mercenary of contemporary single artist reissue programs.

Like McCartney, Paul’s second solo stab has endured the tide of time to distinguish itself as one of the more interesting and most personal works of the ‘70s, easily ranking in the top three Beatle solo albums alongside All Things Must Pass and John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band. Hearing Ram in its original form is essential. This well conceived expansion of its contents does nothing to interfere with its disheveled majesty.

J Mascis plugs in and freaks out on Heavy Blanket. A blissfully heavy slab of instrumental scorch, it’s an expansive yet tidy expression of one aspect of his musical personality. It’ll likely appeal to only a portion of Dinosaur Jr.’s fanbase, but it’s no less interesting for that.

In case you didn’t already know, J Mascis is quite the adept guitarist. In fact, along with Thurston Moore, he served the role of guitar hero to a late-‘80s u-ground rock scene that was still close enough to its punk roots to consciously disdain the concept of string heroics as antithetical to what made the period’s hip crux of bands bubbling under the radar such a supreme kick.

That is, if Moore was Jimi Hendrix then Mascis was Jimmy Page and most of the wigs getting flipped by their abilities, if presented with such an analogy, would’ve likely sneered in disgust and berated the person making such an uncouth comparison as a total, um, dinosaur.

Yes, some folks comprehended the significance of the moniker Dinosaur (the Jr. being added after some real dinosaurs from the San Fran psyche scene demanded they change it), but for most listeners back then the name was simply a name, and indeed most of those same listeners didn’t know or particularly care that Dinosaur Jr. soaked up influence from such relics as Crazy Horse, Sabbath and the general blunt sludginess of power-trio rock.

Now, the above analogies are extremely loose ones meant to represent importance rather than specific stylistic similarities, for as one listen to Hendrix and Moore proves, the two are highly dissimilar. And Mascis for that matter doesn’t aurally reflect Page, or Clapton, or Jeff Beck. He does recall Neil Young in his roughest period with Crazy Horse mixed with the sort of head down, back to the audience heaviness that spread like a rogue STD in a free-love commune from ’69 to roughly ’73 or so.

But give that description to someone who’s never actually heard any of J Mascis’ stuff, then play them a few choice cuts from either incarnation of Dinosaur’s original lineup, and the difference between what they imagined and what they actually heard will likely be quite large. This helps make a great case for the crème of the ‘80s u-ground guitarists (a group that also includes Black Flag’s Greg Ginn, Minutemen’s D. Boon, Big Black’s Steve Albini and Mission of Burma’s Roger Miller) as standing up tall in terms of individuality next to the late-‘60s team of string warriors.

In the case of Sonic Youth, this individualistic streak is unsurprising, for that band is maybe the apex of rock music made by actual record collectors. But in the case of Mascis, I’ve been consistently struck by how successfully he’s avoided falling into a retrograde zone. His obvious inspirations are unchanged, and yet while his most impressive, groundbreaking work is behind him, he’s retained his vigor in both performance and recording, surviving a bout of post-grunge ‘90s celebrity with no noticeable side effects.

A big reason for Mascis’ sustained distinctness from his influences and the continued creative spark in his work boils right down to punk rock. I know that upon my first hearing of Dinosaur, specifically the “Repulsion” 7-inch, I made no immediate connection to Crazy Horse and Sabbath. A helping hint was provided in the liner notes to Homestead Records’ The Wailing Ultimate, a compilation LP that also included “Repulsion”, and where the band was described as “ex-hardcores that like to jam”.

That liner blurb on ol’ Dino also served as my introduction to Deep Wound, the suburban Massachusetts hardcore band that’s taken on legendary status as the first group of Lou Barlow and J Mascis. Over time Dinosaur’s HC pedigree became general knowledge: their cover of “Chunks” by Boston fly-by-nights Last Rights, J’s professed love in interviews of the UK band Discharge, and the bootlegging and eventual legit issue of the Deep Wound discography, a big beautiful throttling blur of a thing, as the nooks and crannies of hardcore gained retrospective value and respect.

And it became apparent that while what Dinosaur’s music was no longer appropriately categorized as punk it was also impossible to remove vital elements of the music that shaped them from their aesthetic, and it was why so many crabby observers refused to accept that You’re Living All Over Me was a natural extension of elements derived from Everybody Knows This is Nowhere and Paranoid.   

Hell, by the ‘90s there was a certifiable ton of bands that had strapped on the mantle of able musicianship while retaining a connection to punk’s leveling globular impetus. One such example of this would be the obscure but very worthwhile instrumental compilation Guitarrorists, released in 1991 on Terry Tolkin’s short-lived but quite interesting No. 6 label. It lined up twenty-six tracks from as many contributors, one of which belonged to none other than J Mascis.

If deep down always connected to his roots, J’s use of Dinosaur as essentially a solo vehicle that had a fleeting pop-chart flirt caused many to knee-jerkily disassociate him with the movement from which he was creatively spawned. This was a big mistake, for the 21st Century found Mascis easing into his status as a not very talkative sleepy-lidded elder statesman of indie-rock, fronting a smaller scaled band The Fog as well as working in groups such as The Witch and Sweet Apple. But reconvening with his original Dino partners was the icing on the cake, knocking out two expectations-exceeding albums and some even stronger tours.

Heavy Blanket is J’s latest effort, and it’s rather resistant to broad description and analysis. The self-titled LP finds Mascis shredding in the studio across six instrumental tracks, all of them basically templates for extended soloing. The press bio concocts an entertaining if obviously bogue story about J stumbling upon some high school band mates and, based upon an old demo tape they made, rerecording those tunes to unexpectedly high quality results. Um, yeah. In reality, the music is likely to be all Mascis via overdubbing; he was the drummer in Deep Wound, as well as Gobblehoof and Upsidedown Cross.

The fun fictiveness is understandable. A bio that stuck to the bare facts would be a short, uninspiring read. But interestingly, the creative untruths connect the music on Heavy Blanket, a sound that many would consider antithetical to the oft rudimentary nature of punk, to 1984, a point when Mascis’ was still running roughshod over the Massachusetts’ HC circuit in Deep Wound. Indeed, the bio directly references that band.

These fabrications unknowingly reinforce what becomes clear after time spent with Heavy Blanket, namely that if on the surface indulgent of Mascis’ boldest desires of heaviosity circa the early ‘70s, it is also indicative of the guy’s continued relevance as an exponent of contemporarily substantive din. And the whole racket may not be overtly punk in form, but it holds an abundance of what some describe as “punk in spirit”.

This is a cool development. Much as I liked the largely acoustic and tangibly laid-back atmosphere of last year’s Sub Pop outing Several Shades of Why, I also couldn’t help having mixed feelings over my impression that the man was mellowing considerably with age. Heavy Blanket makes clear that he holds no inhibitions about plugging in and throwing down. And as a display of such, it’ll obviously appeal to a fraction of Dinosaur Jr.’s legion of fans, a huge portion of which require the melodiousness that’s become a trademark of said band, not to mention lyrics and the instantly recognizable sound of J’s voice.

But the fraction that will welcome Heavy Blanket’s existence should be blown away but good. Throw in Savage Pencil cover artwork and the whole package feels a little bit like a project issued by the Twisted Village label around ’92 or so. It doesn’t stand as tall as the Fog stuff or the intense beauty of Mascis’ most unheralded work, ‘05’s J Mascis + Friends Sing + Chant for Amma, but it’s not far behind. Long may he wail.



Joseph's Picks Of The Week 5/25/12 - Best Coast and Sugarman 3

With The Only Place, Best Coast’s Bethany Cosentino joins up with Fiona Apple/Kanye West producer Jon Brion for the purposes of broadening her sound. But pop polish does her work no favors; the result is a record far inferior to the modest pleasantries of her debut Crazy for You.

As an unabashed fan of the sound of lo-fi and its contemporary descendant bedroom-pop, I can’t help but be afflicted by a nagging sense of disappointment over its practitioners consistently bailing on the small of scale and the unsmooth of texture, heading instead for the obvious comforts and potential acceptance of bolder sonic normalcy.

Outside of the garage rock realm, where a defiant persistence in unkempt non-streamlining is often considered a virtue, it seems that musicians who chose to explore the glories of four-track fuzz and tape deck hiss are expected sooner rather than later to step into the chilly confines of a spacious studio and “go pro”.

These days of course (with the appropriate software) a person can go pro in the dank confines of their very own expertly decorated basement. And that’s really the point. Lo-fi, no-fi, bedroom-pop, shitgaze etc; none of it sounds that way by accident or due to a lack of resources.

And while some folks thought otherwise, this was also the case back in the dawn of the ‘90s when the term lo-fi really started gaining traction. Pavement, Sebadoh and Guided by Voices all arrived at their individual if conspiratorial early sounds through savvy calculation. And by 1996 all three had made the necessary adjustments to go pro.

2010’s Crazy for You, the debut long-player from Best Coast was a solid nugget of bedroom-pop. While far from perfect, it soundly delivered on the promise of their assorted early singles and presented Bethany Cosentino as a name to watch. But when it was announced that Best Coast’s follow-up LP was to be produced by Jon Brion, I couldn’t help but feel that familiar twinge of disappointment; here goes another defection out of the bedroom and into the zone of relative refinement.

To be fair, the increase in fidelity between Crazy for You and 2009’s double seven-inch Make You Mine was palpable, but it seemed like Cosentino had found a sweet spot and would hopefully stay there a while. No dice. But just because I suffered that twitch of disappointment over her choice of producer and decision to go large didn’t mean it was a foregone conclusion that I would be disappointed.

For in a non-lo-fi context, I was also a bit bummed way back when after learning that for her third record PJ Harvey had chosen Flood as a producer. If I didn’t think that matchup was a good fit, proof to the contrary was very much in the pudding of To Bring You My Love. Sadly, I can’t say the same for The Only Place. And the fault lies not with Brion, who served his role to the fullest and delivered what’s essentially a mainstream indie-pop record. It’s just not a very good one, and the problem ultimately lies in Cosentino’s songs.

But first let’s backtrack. Crazy for You, if a strong record, was far from a masterpiece. That’s not a putdown. Debut masterworks have a tendency to represent artists that burn bright but brief. The listener gets everything (or close to it) in one big wallop, and then it’s all over but the inevitable letdown. Crazy for You on the other hand felt like a natural starting point, a record that presented the real possibility of growth.

Sure, Cosentino basically sounded like Neko Case if she cared less (much less) for being an alt-country chanteuse and more (much more) for smoking grade A skunk on a canopy bed whist writing songs that referenced a ‘60s pop sound, and all without feeling indebted to any specific predecessor.

But certain tendencies were apparent; for one, the general insubstantiality of her lyrics placed her less as a disciple of B. Wilson and more in the tradition of ‘60s-exponants The Ramones. And the production of Crazy for You was very much a part of its success.  

And in the divide between her tunes and the record’s production is where The Only Place’s weakness resides. A songwriting style that was well-served by echo, distance, and touches of fuzz is now shown to be seriously wanting. If Cosentino sounds more like Case than ever, the quality of her writing is nowhere close to that league, and if it seems like I’m damning her as being reliant on a bedroom-pop production gimmick to achieve a moderate level of success, that’s wrong.

For so much pop music is intrinsically tied to production for communicating its essence, from The Beach Boys’ Smile to Michael Jackson’s Thriller to Daniel Johnston’s Yip/Jump Music. And rockists will sneer, but again The Ramones; Craig Leon’s knob-work on that first album is absolutely crucial to why it’s such an important document. A move to the glossier and instead of incendiary “Beat on the Brat” would’ve just sounded silly.

Yes, the previous paragraph is concerned with brilliant records and Crazy for You is in comparison just a nice debut LP. But the concept is the same. It’s why the undeniably limited lyrical approach of that album’s “Our Deal” succeeds and the similar tactic of The Only Place’s “My Life” doesn’t. The former feels like someone crafting a swell if not particularly amazing little ditty, and the latter registers like someone under a spotlight attempting to stretch out an underdeveloped idea.

And stylistically Cosentino’s songwriting tends toward the middle of the road, leaving her better moments here (“Last Year”, “Dreaming My Life Away”) to wither amidst a batch of inferior material. To his credit, Brion really pulls out all the stops on the closer “Up All Night”, easily The Only Place’s most surprising moment. It’s a song strong enough in its root form that its lush expansion sounds truly complimentary.

But the majority of the album resonates like Cosentino fronting a sprightly if far from remarkable indie combo, and that’s not what Crazy for You sounded like at all. If it were possible to hear The Only Place’s songs through the sonic framework of its far superior forerunner, I’d surely be tempted to do so. And I don’t think Cosentino is anywhere near creatively spent, I just perceive her as having (hopefully temporarily) lost the plot of what made her music so interesting.

When Pavement, Sebadoh and Guided by Voices all went hi-fi (so to speak), all three proved up to the task. True, they were all bands, and in contrast Best Coast is Cosentino’s show (with help from multi-instrumentalist Bobb Bruno). But they also had great songs on their side, and again the lack of such is The Only Place’s unfortunate undoing. Its content might very likely improve by crackling out of a fuzzy transistor radio, but going to the trouble of testing that theory seems like a lot of unnecessary work when Crazy for You already achieves that synthesis.

In trying to graduate to a bogus manifestation of the “big leagues”, Cosentino has only managed in amplifying her music’s limitations. But she’s still an artist to watch, and The Only Place might eventually be considered her sophomore slump, especially if she manages further development as a songwriter. Her easiest road would be to just relax, pack it up and get back to the bedroom.

After a decade’s absence The Sugarman 3 return with What the World Needs Now and the long break betrays no signs of rust. The groups’ best record since 2000’s Soul Donkey, it shows off their impressive skill and superb judgment, but strays not one inch outside their comfort zone.

While the musical term “funk” really became common nomenclature in the late-‘60s/early-‘70s, where it was used to describe a particularly tough (and new) strain of R&B/soul, it’s employment as an adjective from within the jazz realm spanned back a bit farther than that.

If the lingo can in fact be located at the mythological point of jazz music’s very conception via the legend of Buddy Bolden and the tune “Funky Butt” (aka “Buddy Bolden’s Blues”), the word funky as a musical adjective really dates to the 1950s where it was occasionally used to describe the especially earthy strains of often organ-led combos, though it wasn’t bound to any defined area of specificity; the great saxophonist Cannonball Adderley, playing pseudonymously due to contractual reasons on trumpeter Louis Smith’s 1958 Blue Note LP Here Comes Louis Smith was credited under the moniker “Buckshot Le Fonque”. Additionally, clarinetist Perry Robinson’s killer 1962 Savoy LP of inside-outside explorations was titled Funk Dumpling.

The organ based groups to which the term funky was so frequently attached came to be more commonly known as soul-jazz, and some of the classics of the sub-genre are Baby Face Willette’s Face To Face, Brother Jack McDuff’s The Honeydripper, Big John Patton’s Along Came John and Jimmy Smith’s Back at the Chicken Shack and The Sermon! By the second half of the ‘60s the style had become quite boldly commercial, blending with concurrent strains of R&B and even the infectious Afro-Latin blend known as boogaloo.

The title of the 1998 debut LP by The Sugarman 3, Sugar’s Boogaloo, made readily clear just what type of experience was to be had from inspecting its contents. Indeed, an aura of unadulterated funk would be one of the first qualities noted in cataloging the nature of its grooves. To expand, Neil Sugarman’s group, a core trio often augmented with other instrumentalists, specialized in a celebration of the period when certain soul-jazz practitioners attempted to throw overboard the very notion of jazz as a self-conscious “art-music”, instead embracing its potential as a vessel of crowd-pleasing, body-moving party action.

Not only did that inaugural effort contain as a general declaration of principles a cover of James Brown’s “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag”, but it also saw them contouring their approach to such chestnuts as Dale Hawkins’ “Suzy Q” and Donovan’s “Sunshine Superman”. If the group’s second and third LPs, 2000’s Soul Donkey and 2002’s Pure Cane Sugar found them slowly moving closer to a less jazz-derived groove science ala Booker T or The Meters, they still threw in enough nods to the soul-jazz tradition to keep one remindful of that aspect of their background, e.g. a burning cover of Lou “Alligator Boogaloo” Donaldson’s “Turtle Walk” on Soul Donkey and showcases on both LPs for some assertive flute playing from multi-instrumentalist Sugarman.

Their new record is What the World Needs Now, and its title’s tip-off to the inclusion of a Burt Bacharach cover indicated the possibility that The Sugarman 3 were turning the tide back toward a more pronounced expression of their soul-jazz roots. And to an extent this possibility is realized. That titular instrumental reconfiguring (essentially a funkifying) of Bacharach’s pop warhorse is exactly the type of move many a late-‘60s soul-jazzer indulged without the slightest regret and much to the chagrin of jazz aficionados by the score. In fact, the fruits of that era’s funky-jazz scene lacked much in the way of critical standing until the ‘90’s acid-jazz movement located inspiration in its precedent and promoted a fair amount of reevaluation.

If the phenomenon of jazz musicians tackling Bacharach, The Beatles, Dylan etc is a complex one, it’s now all water under the bridge. Some observers stubbornly persist in ruing the fact that stately improvisers would soil themselves with contemporary pop covers instead of simply continuing on the undying (and by the late-‘60s, rather tired) course of interpreting standards (i.e. the contempo-pop of yesteryear) for the umpteenth time. However, most well-adjusted listeners in the present day acknowledge the tendency as just one more wrinkle in jazz music’s labyrinthine development.

And as such, it continues to be just one wrinkle in The Sugarman 3’s sound. What the World Needs Now features additional covers that reemphasize the group’s allegiance to the aforementioned MGs/Meters R&B axis, the unbeatable “But It’s Alright” by J.J. Jackson and the less typical Nuggets cornerstone “Dirty Water” via The Standells. Both tracks percolate with a relaxed assurance indicative of the group’s instrumental prowess; that is, the unfussy blend of chops and good taste in execution that’s helped make the Daptone enterprise (which Sugarman co-founded with Gabriel Roth) a go-to concern for discerning mavens of R&B classique.

This isn’t to say that What the World Needs Now doesn’t hold in its grooves a few surprises. For instance, the use of piano on “Witches Boogaloo” very much recalls “The In Crowd” by Ramsey Lewis, which along with Lee Morgan’s “The Sidewinder” and Les McCann and Eddie Harris’ “Compared to What” forms a massive trifecta of ‘60s non-crap jazz crossovers.

But other moments on the LP toe the funky line in the manner more in keeping with their last two albums. “Your Friendly Neighborhood Sugarman” hits a spot quite reminiscent of prime Junior Walker. And if “Got to Get Back to My Baby” registers like a scaled down version of fellow Daptone artists Budos Band, that’s basically due to the tune having sprung from the pen of that group’s bassist Daniel Foder.

I’m also pleased that the amount of vocals has been dialed back from that of Pure Cane Sugar. While I enjoy Lee Fields very much, for some reason his take on “Shot Down” by garage monsters The Sonics just didn’t resonate with me. And his was my favorite vocal from the previous LP. The Sugarman 3 are foremost an instrumental unit; they work best with only occasional accents of the human voice.

With all this considered, The group’s intense and finely tuned amalgamation of influences can’t help but leave a lingering aftertaste, specifically that the outfit is an exemplary style synthesis lacking a sense of personality tangibly their own beyond their status as ultra-cool kings of the throwback, of course. And there’s really not a thing wrong with that.   

However, it does separate them rather substantially from their influences, musicians that were largely operating in territory without a net. This goes both for the Booker T side of the group’s sound as well as the Jimmy Smith portion. And it also differentiates them from the most laudable examples of the jazz/pop dialogue both then (Dylan’s “My Back Pages” from The Keith Jarrett Trio’s Somewhere Before from 1968) or now (The Vijay Iyer Trio’s take on Michael Jackson’s “Human Nature” from this year’s Accelerando).

So The Sugarman 3 is undeniably great at what they do, but ultimately what they do doesn’t fall outside of an already very well defined context. They are exceptionally worthy distillers of a tradition, not estimable groundbreakers like Jarrett (or Morgan or McCann, for that matter) or valuable extenders like Iyer.

In the end, what makes the music of Neil Sugarman’s group so worthwhile is the collective level of sincerity necessary to pull off the whole endeavor. When listening to What the World Needs Now it becomes blatantly obvious just how much the whole band loves what they are doing, so much in fact that I’m sure they would continue to do it whether anyone else was listening or not.