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Paul Westerberg – Come Feel Me Tremble

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Paul Westerberg – Come Feel Me Tremble (Vagrant)

One thing Paul Westerberg should understand: repeating a chorus and a guitar lick for 3 minutes does not constitute a song. On Come Feel Me Tremble he does this far too much. Songs like “Hillbilly Junk,” “Soldier Of Misfortune” and “Making Me Go” barely make complete thoughts, let alone a song. Westerberg can usually get away with this, because his skewed viewpoint and spot-on guitar can override the repetitiousness. This time, he doesn’t always make it work. On some tracks, he either didn’t have enough to say or enough music to say it with. Lots of filler.

The irony is that Westerberg’s filler is pretty good stuff, and when he shines he can blow you away. “Knockin’ Em Back” is a standout, whipsaw-rock track and a perfect example of what Westerberg does best. Other strong tracks include the thoughtful “These Days” and “Dirty Diesel,” a Stone-sy blues rocker.

Bottom line? There’s a lot of inconsistency. But Westerberg’s off-kilter approach (and stumbling-but-catching-himself-at-the-last-minute execution) somehow makes it more than the sum of its parts. Even though you might skip a track or two.

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The Shins – Chutes Too Narrow

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The Shins – Chutes Too Narrow (Subpop)

If you live in a warm weather locale (damn you New Jersey and you’re frosty cold winters!), tomorrow morning—very early—wake up and look out of your window. The sun should just be rising, only enough to cast a glistening light off of the dewdrops on each blade of grass. There will be a slight fog cast over the horizon. Now, go back at mid-morning. It’ll be warmer; the sun should have dried up every last bit of moisture in the air and on the ground.

And that’s the perfect metaphor for the progression from The Shins’ debut Oh, Inverted World! to their latest, Chutes Too Narrow.

Oh, Inverted World! was ultimately an incredibly hyped album, and for all its genius was also pretty juvenile and naïve, the band’s inexperience leading to moments of imperfection. Chutes Too Narrow finds those moments all but washed away under the strength of James Mercer’s songwriting ability. The haze that lent itself to Inverted World‘s duration, while strong on atmosphere, homogenized much of the album; leaving the songs consistent but like-minded. Each song on Chutes is an exploration of something fresh and new for the band, and the band pull it off quite convincingly. The only common bond between the ten songs on Chutes is Mercer’s voice, which hits its watershed moment during the bridge of “Saint Simon” when Mercer finds himself aching next to a pained string arrangement. This flourish alone is more moving then full albums usually are; the arrangement’s weightlessness is perfectly counteracted by the gravity of its emotion.

Elsewhere, “Kissing the Lipless” is all loud guitar bursts and pure pop fury, “Those to Come” is the long lost b-side from Sunny Day Real Estate’s How it Feels to Be Something On, and “Gone for Good” is the beautiful pedal-steel heartbreaker Ryan Adams is too cool to write. Chutes finds The Shins resting comfortably not on their laurels, but on a strong sense of the strength of the songs. At first, you won’t be able to find a track that’s blatantly original—all of the points of lineage are easily traceable—yet with each subsequent listen you discover that the hue The Shins project isn’t anyone’s but their own. Originality and experimentation are things to be celebrated, but there are only so many things under the sun. It is another breed of great band that can take a language and speak it in its own dialect.

You can download an MP3 of “So Says I” via Subpop.

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IRS – Welcome to Planet IRS

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IRS – Welcome to Planet IRS (Universal)

Welcome to another world, where rappers don’t shoot at each other over geographic feuds, where popular hip-hop groups advocate art, and where I-R-S does not spell taxes. Welcome to Toronto.

Welcome to Planet IRS showcases a rap trio who hail from the most multicultural city in the world and who represent their roots to the fullest. Although IRS’s style takes cues from West Coast rap, hardcore rap, and even gangsta rap, their open-minded musical experimentation and lyrical exploration reflect the diversity of their home base.

IRS’s progressive approach to beats and rhythms arises out of their underground roots in Scarborough, Canada, where IRS members Korry Deez, Black Cat, and T.R.A.C.K.S. teamed up with the Mighty Monolith crew. IRS, whose name stands for Instinctive Reaction to Struggle, formed in 1998 when the Monolith crew disbanded. In the year 2000 they released their debut, America’s Ghettos.

Welcome to Planet IRS is the next step along the IRS path. It is centered on themes of tolerance and understanding while promoting Toronto, local underground hip-hop, and music as an end in itself rather than simply a means to fame and glory. “The ignorance has to stop,” enunciate Deez and Black Cat together in the second track and the album’s first single, “Strictly for the Heads.”

Musically, Welcome to Planet IRS draws upon 70s funk and disco and old school hip-hop as much as it advances modern beats and techniques. With multiple emcees and skilled DJs on hand, IRS often create a dynamic similar to that of Jurassic 5, albeit with a more hardcore punch. And their occasional use of musical instruments, as opposed to exclusive reliance upon samples and programmed beats, lends the album a live performance vibe that enhances and expands the listening experience.

The most inventive song on Welcome to Planet IRS is “Munyam Jam,” a smoke break purposefully placed at the middle point of the album. IRS give the track a conceptual spin that changes it from empty filler into something worth hearing – as a deep breath inhales and exhales smoke, the laid-back beat lazily fades in and out.

The album’s opener, “Lift Off,” is another standout, featuring ex-members of the Mighty Monolith crew Nisk Rawks, Dan-e-o, and Wio-k. A space station countdown kicks things off before wicked scratching and passionate raps lift things up even higher.

IRS’s music is intelligent hip-hop with an underground ethic and feel that maintains mainstream appeal. The group’s tour with Shaggy in 2001 and multiple awards prove that they have earned the attention of people in power, while the reputation they enjoy within their scene in Canada ensures their street cred. Hip-hop world, beware: collision with Planet IRS is imminent.

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The Strokes – Room on Fire

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The Strokes – Room on Fire (RCA)

Seriously, what was everyone expecting from The Strokes?

From all of the backlash and disinterest about the group’s second album, Room on Fire, it seems as if people had high expectations. Did you want an exploration into drum’n’bass? How about some grandiose symphonic statement?

The fact is, on Is This It, Julian and Co. painted themselves into a bit of a corner. It’s tough to evolve a formula like that and come away successful. What The Strokes did was ignore over-thinking their sophomore release and focus on fleshing out the sonic characteristics of their first. Which we should feel lucky for, by the way, because Room on Fire is the most pleasantly surprising album of the year.

The biggest change to be found on Room on Fire is how much guitarists Albert Hammond and Nick Valensi have grown. They’ve honed their skills and are trying on a few new sounds—take for example tracks like “12:51” and “The End Has No End,” where the lead guitar actually sounds like a synth fresh out of the eighties. While the guitars still follow a direct line from Is This It, they’re tinkered with enough and feature more depth now. The bad news is that Valensi and Hammond are the only ones that have seemingly sought out to improve their playing. Julian Casablancas hasn’t bothered to broaden his range; the vocals, lyrics, and songwriting haven’t gotten noticeably better. Luckily, the songwriting was already strong to begin with and Casablancas’ vocals, while not a great example of how to sing, compliment the music well.

Highlights include “Meet Me in the Bathroom,” “Automatic Stop” and “Between Love and Hate,” but the best song on Room on Fire, and actually the best song The Strokes have ever written is “Under Control,” which finds the boys trying on their 50s hat and sees Julian crooning: “You are young, darling / for now but not for long.” It’s a gorgeous song, rivaling “Someday” in the pure strength that it carries.

So it seems, if we’re speaking retrospectively, that The Strokes are emerging from the 1970s garage-punk revival that made them so popular to begin with and are starting to carry a shade of the 80s as well. It may not change the world, and it may not be as good as Is This It. There is bound to be a split in opinion over Room on Fire between those who were expecting The Greatest Album of All Time and those who were expecting The Strokes to be a flash in the pan. Well, they’ve emerged in the middle. But The Strokes have never been ones to care about such things, that’s shown in the music. Love ’em or hate ’em, you’ve got to respect that kind of nonchalance. Maybe all the hype over The Strokes was overdone after all, but with songs like this, who cares?

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Raveonettes – Chain Gang of Love

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Raveonettes – Chain Gang of Love (Sony)

B flat major! Major! Raveonettes fans, take note – gone are your days of bobbing about in the effervescent surf melancholy of Whip It On. Since their 2002 EP, the photogenic duo has industriously acquired two new band members, a spotty full album, and a whole new (related) key to compose all their songs in. Leather has also been distributed liberally.

Chain Gang of Love still relies on the most celebrated gimmick of their first release. The “whiplash rock ‘n’ roll” promised on the CD cover is written and performed entirely in the aforementioned musical key, a major step (no pun intended) from Whip It On‘s entirely B minor landscape. The main difference is how its comparatively upbeat ringing allows singer/songwriter/guitarist Sune Rose Wagner to try a little tenderness; he’s the horniest, most exultant Danish boy in eyeliner since the creepy bald dude from Aqua. He uses almost every track to indulge his libido with first-person lyrics of prostitutes, sex, love, whips, sex, and somewhat uncoolly name-checking himself (“Let’s Rave On”).

At 33 minutes, though, the repetition of chords and nookie eventually becomes catatonic. The dogged theoretical consistency of B major gives the album the same languid flow of their past work but is just too much of the same; everything 20 minutes on dissolves into a sluggish Jesus and Mary Chain/Dick Dale/Vicodin super-medley. Singer/bassist Sharon Foo still matches with Rose Wagner note for note but offers nothing beyond the familiar Everly Brothers harmonizing; what worked for the short party furor of the EP just drags here. Even the coarse sexuality of “Little Animal” loses its shock value and seems familiar when sandwiched between similar items, and many of the songs (“Dirty Eyes,” “The Truth About Johnny,” “New York Was Great”) lose momentum without catchy hooks and choruses.

Problematic also is the group’s hesitant foray into efx backgrounds. “Love Can Destroy Everything” delivers an epileptic beeping of such head-smashing annoyance that it ruins the beautiful Santo and Johnny-inspired guitar swells below it. We’re never given a chance to ease into the slinking surf behind it; the prominent beeping marches on like a bomb that should just explode already. It stands in sad contrast to the varied clicking and sleigh bells of the album’s title track, which builds beautifully on its contrasting backgrounds and plays off the title with its clanking. The song shows a maturity in songwriting and positive expansion in their newcomers, guitarist Manoj Ramdas and drummer Jakob Hoyer.

With the distinct sound the Raveonettes often produce, it’s disappointing they don’t try to say more. Rose Wagner often sings like John Lennon caught in mid-sigh but offers lyrics that stay in a light, flirtatious realm and don’t extend past, which is not uniquely negative to the group but limits the variance and replay power of the songs. Only the tracks as darkly singsong as Whip It On stand out, as does the oddly angelic distortion in “Noisy Summer” and the sparsely cold “Remember.”

With Chain Gang of Love, the Raveonettes have found some lighter calling to life than the seething emotion of their first EP. Their gain is our loss.

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U2 Gets Back to Where They Once Belonged

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Bono and AdamU2 – U2 Go Home: Live From Slane Castle, Ireland DVD

Conventional wisdom says that bands play stadiums because they’re so popular that they need a huge venue to hold the fans. Because they play such large venues, the bands must then adapt their music to fill that space and the outcome is stadium rock. In the early 70s (at the very birth of what is now stadium rock), Pete Townshend turned this theory on its head and instead said that the Who played stadiums, not to accommodate the fans, but to hold the massive sound the band had been developing in the studio. While the Who developed the genre (with help form Zeppelin, Mott the Hoople, et al), U2 has perfected it with stunning effect. The proof is in the newly released U2 Go Home: Live From Slane Castle.

Continue reading U2 Gets Back to Where They Once Belonged →

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Ryan Adams – Rock N Roll

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Ryan Adams – Rock N Roll (Lost Highway)

It’s easy to hate Ryan Adams. But it’s impossible to hate his music. Heartbreaker oozed with honesty, Gold exploded with melody, Demolition screams with potential, and his newest release, Rock N Roll does just what the name implies: it rocks.

According to Adams, Rock N Roll was conceived the day Lost Highway decided that Love is Hell was too moody to release. Ryan being Ryan, he drank away his troubles, met up with Johnny T, and decided to give the record executives something that is everything except moody. Out came Rock N Roll, the final bullet to the head of Whiskeytown.

Adams’ newest release is a trip through his record collection. You can hear U2 in the first single, “So Alive.” “Note to Self: Don’t Die” is the best song Nirvana could never write. “Anybody Wanna Take Me Home” takes a page out of Morrisey’s playbook. But should Adams be punished for wearing his influences on his sleeve?

Rock N Roll features Adams’ most intricate guitar work and showcases his ever-improving voice perfectly. The songs exhibit a new sense of attitude missing from Adams’ previous work. We always knew Adams was a braggart—now his music proves it. Ryan doesn’t shy away from responding the public through his songs either. “Note to self: don’t change for anyone,” he growls, responding to recent criticisms from both fans and critics alike.

While the album showcases a slew of guest performers such as Billie Joe Armstrong from Green Day and Ryan’s current love, Parker Posey, they are neither a help nor hindrance to the songs. It is Adams’ record from the moment he says “Let me sing a song to you that’s never been sung before” in “This is It” (a tongue-in-cheek reference to The Strokes) to the album’s closing line “Los Angeles is dead” in “The Drugs Not Working.”

“Does anybody wanna take me home,” asks Ryan Adams. The answer is a resounding yes.

Read the Glorious Noise reviews of Love Is Hell, Pt. 1 and Demolition. And be sure to check out the silly online feud between Ryan Adams and GLONO’s Jake Brown.

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The Flaming Lips – Ego Tripping at the Gates of Hell

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The Flaming Lips – Ego Tripping at the Gates of Hell (Warner Bros.)

People residing in lands far enough from the equator in either direction deal with a decidedly different day/night structure then we’re accustomed to. Due to the tilt of our sphere, people in these regions either see 24 hours of daylight or 24 hours of nighttime. That being said, someone listening to a Flaming Lips album might think the band chose to exist only during those periods of continuous sunshine, as, over time and even more so with The Soft Bulletin and Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, Wayne Coyne and associates have consistently cornered the deep market of psychedelic, blissed-out indie popsters. Over the band’s lengthy discography, never before have they had as much popularity, praise, and artistic merit as they currently have.

2002’s Yoshimi caused a storm of publicity upon its release and later in the year on many critics’ year-end lists, highly-lauded for its approach to sentimental music, a farewell to a close friend deceased and a rumination on mortality. No less then four singles have been released from it, the latest, “Ego Tripping (at the Gates of Hell)”, finding the a-side backed by this supporting EP, which comes away with mixed results.

Four new tracks and three Yoshimi remixes appear here; the new tracks come off incredibly well and the remixes stand as basic EP filler. The new tracks are brighter and more expansive then most of Yoshimi and move the digital influence to the back of the mix in order to support a far more organic sound. “Sunship Balloons” and “Assassination of the Sun” sound like they could have come from The Soft Bulletin or even Clouds Taste Metallic, but are complimented a great deal better by Dave Fridmann’s much more evolved and advanced production. “A Change at Christmas” is a falling snowflake from the New York City sky, Coyne hoping that the world could behave just as beautifully as it does around the holidays. All in all, the new tracks provide much hope in a sonic landscape too often filled with negative sentiment.

The three remixes don’t come off as anything more than ordinary, “Do You Realize??” getting another remix treatment, this time from Jimmy Tamborello, the whiz behind Dntel and The Postal Service; whereas “Ego Tripping” gets two consecutive reworkings. All three settle on a cut up of the vocals placed over a drum’n’bass or used house loop with chiming bells thrown in for effect. They slow down the EP’s second half, but do their job as alternate takes competent enough to flesh out the running time of the release. They don’t block the power of the new material, which is all that fans of the band could ask for.

Coyne manages to keep an everlasting optimism despite the knowledge that things aren’t always perfect. The thing that makes The Flaming Lips so special, though, is that they realize that despite the fact that things are never perfect, Yoshimi does win from time to time, and that’s enough of an inspiration to get out of bed each morning and laugh.

Read the Glorious Noise review of Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots.

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Rachael Sage – Public Record

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Rachael Sage – Public Record (Mpress Records)

Rachael Sage’s deep blue left eye stares at me from the back cover of her fifth album, Public Record. As I listen to the poetically rockin’ soul-searcher “What If,” the first track on the album, I feel that the eye manifests Sage’s physical presence in the room. I can’t tear away, and out of some strange discomfort feel compelled to flip the jewel case over – but not before I catch of a glimpse of the galaxies within that painted and jeweled eye.

As Public Record continues, so does Sage’s intimate self-disclosure. All fourteen songs, which ambitiously explore issues of love, acceptance, and identity through a lush palette of pop, folk, and jazz, are written in the first person. Her words have a private feel that insists that she writes not from an assumed persona but from her own life.

“You say that you find me ‘intoxicating’…what dare I ask does that word really mean? / Could I be someone who you would rely on – or am I just someone you’ll always run from?” she asks in “Of Blue.”

Sage’s music is as vivid as her lyricism. The album features no less than sixteen additional musicians, who play drums, saxophone, cello, trumpet, guitar, bass, percussion, organ, harmonica, tambourine, viola, violin, and flugelhorn. She constructs moving and cohesive songs, skillfully calling upon her guest musicians to fill in and flavor her work. But her deft fingers on the piano keys drive most of the songs.

The last track on the album, “Frost,” is fittingly sparse, featuring only delicate violin, piano, and percussion while Sage’s whispered voice sweeps the foreground of the song. Its understated force lingers long after the album falls to silence. If Sage’s eye was the window to her soul, then her music, as the title Public Record suggests, has been an open door.

Rock and roll can change your life.