I don’t know why people are calling this a collection of demos. It’s just another marketing ploy as far as I can tell. A demo implies some sort of prototype; a sketch from which to work. The songs on Demolition are polished and complete. If you’re expecting 4-track recordings with half-finished vocals and an insight into the artist at work, keep looking.
That said, Demolition stands on it’s own as a collection. Not an album, mind you as there’s no real cohesion in the tracking of this album and you can forget about any sense of an identity. It’s as schizophrenic as that guy in the dirty coat who calls you Number 3 every morning on your way to work. Maybe the Beatles and the Beach Boys (not to mention Pink Floyd) have forever ruined us on albums with themes. What happened to just having a bunch of songs? Perhaps that’s why Lost Highway and Adams decided to market this as a group of songs destined for albums never to be released rather than an ambling work of individual songs.
Barring a three-hour rockathon/revival starring Bruce Springsteen, featuring all the bells, whistles, and saxophone solos that a hero-starved American public can handle, nothing currently dominates the nation’s popular psyche more than The National Football League. Each Sunday in Autumn, enormous piles of meat meet their match. And that’s only in our kitchens! On the field, teams establish the run and slash into the backfield as dull-headed analysts pine for their own playing days from the broadcast booth. And in the end, if the home team wins, sports bars nationwide fill with the kind of harmony and hugs not seen since the big man joined the band.
Two friends of mine recently got married and gave every wedding guest a mix CD they’d burned. The disc is full of songs easily identified with the bride and groom. Some of it is music you might hear at a party at the couple’s house. Some of the songs from the CD were played that night at the reception as we danced and reveled towards morning. Other songs on the mix are just great tunes seemingly written about this particular couple. All of the music reflects the sentiments of their wedding day, the love and romance that the bride and groom shared with each other and their friends and family.
Of course, handing out this CD—this nice gesture towards the wedding guests—was illegal. Copyright law, you know.
It’s easy and simplistic to make comparisons to what this album sounds like. There’s a lot of Weezer and a lot of Ben Folds. But so what? What have those guys done lately that’s made you give a shit? When I first heard “Family Tree” on Loyola’s excellent student radio station, I was more reminded of the Grateful Dead and the Beatles. Tell me that the acoustic guitar break doesn’t remind you of “I’m Only Sleeping.”
This is a solid album with several great, engaging songs. Sure, there are some dumb lyrics (“Sex reminds her of eating spaghetti” — even if that did come from Doom Generation, it’s still stupid). This is the direction Weezer should have gone in, but didn’t. And even if he hasn’t totally found his own voice yet, cut him a little slack. He’s only 20. Ben Kweller is definitely one to keep an eye on.
The film 24 Hour Party People embodies the punk spirit it documents. But before I go into director Michael Winterbottom’s freewheeling, go-for-broke filmmaking style, I just want to say the movie’s kind of got old-fart appeal, being about the beginnings of British punk and the Manchester bands (Joy Division, New Order, Happy Mondays) who succeeded it in the 80s. The very few actual survivors of the Manchester 80s music scene who appear in the film look really, really old. I emphasize that because it seems so amazing that the punk revolution, which sneered at sacred cows from the Beatles to David Bowie, happened so long ago now. That was our revolution – the one that turned out the hippies, rejected wealth-driven spirituality and embraced a primitive brawling yelp. The movie brings back that hedonistic, artistically explosive era and plunges the viewer into its excesses, recreating the scene so successfully that it reminds you of how much plain fun it was (more than it seemed at the time, with all its confusion, drugs and attitude).
While I had the good fortune not to have to go to war in Southeast Asia during my teens, some of my friends were not so lucky. (Luck, it should be noted, was involved because there was a lottery system enacted, but in its case, the “prize” wasn’t exactly the same as striking it rich via the Big Game or Powerball.) Many of the stories they came back with were too grotesque to contemplate—Coppola’s Apocalypse Now wasn’t an exaggeration or caricature, it seems. One of the things that invariably came up in their stories was the music in the bars.
I don’t know why people are calling this a collection of demos. It’s just another marketing ploy as far as I can tell. A demo implies some sort of prototype; a sketch from which to work. The songs on Demolition are polished and complete. If you’re expecting 4-track recordings with half-finished vocals and an insight into the artist at work, keep looking.