I know I’m a tad behind the curve talking about the new Beatlesreissues that hit the shelves last month, but after much deliberation, I decided it would be remiss of me not to mention them somewhere on this blog.
Part of the reason for this delay has been my slow procurement of said CDs. 14 CDs x $12.99 = a lot of scratch. I still haven’t purchased them all (in fact, I’ve only bought half of them, spread out over several weeks), but this isn’t a bad thing. Buying the reissues slowly has given me the opportunity to approach each album with undivided attention and allowed me to absorb and dissect the wonderful remastering job done by the EMI engineering staff. I have to say, they haven’t disappointed yet.
One of the things that kind of blew my mind earlier in the decade was that the Rolling Stones’catalog got the state of the art remaster/reissue treatment before the Beatles; nothing against the Stones, it’s just that they weren’t really known for their pristine production and creative sound layering back in the 60s, so it didn’t really make a ton of sense to punch up the sound of comparatively simple mixes.
But anyway… I love these reissues. The packaging is great, the sleeve notes are informative, the mini-documentaries encoded in each disc are interesting, and the sound just pops so much compared to the previous 1987 CD releases. Vocal and instrumental parts have more separation from each other now, sound crisper, and things that I never noticed or heard before are now audible. As I said, I’ve only picked up the first seven albums, so I can only imagine how much better the latter seven sound, with all their inherent bells & whistles. That said, these are my Top 10 moments from the first seven discs:
This past weekend, the Redskins bounced back from their embarrassing Week 3 loss to the lowly Detroit Lions with an ugly but desperately needed win over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. It made me think of my grandfather, a huge ‘Skins booster who never got the chance to see them dig their way out of 17 years of failure and disappointment.
‘Stardust’ by Hoagy Carmichael was one of his favorite songs.
Probably the best track off of Moz’s somewhat average 1997 Maladjusted album. That being said, there are still a lot of excellent tunes on it—it’s just that the filler tracks are reallly filler-y.
2. Britney Spears-Gimme More
It’s Britney, bitch! I don’t think Brit has put out a stone-cold solid album yet, but that’s not the sort of “artist” she is. She’s a cipher really, merely a conduit for the songs and production work of genuinely creative people. Kind of like how a steak is a really lame piece of meat without a sauce of some kind.
3. Yeah Yeah Yeahs-Softshock
This latest YYY’s album was a nice surprise. Each successive album they release is more and more cohesive, and I was struck by the similarities between this one and concurrent Metric release Fantasies. It’s difficult to articulate why, but the two albums really have a Beatles vs. Stones, Blur vs. Oasis kind of vibe, not in a rivalry sense, but in how these two relatively evenly-matched groups sysnthesize their influences and interpret their chosen sub-genre’s musical conventions. The YYY’s are fuzzier, grittier, and rougher around the edges while retaining enough of a pop sensibility to get on radio and be popular with the kids (a la the Stones), and Metric is all about the gloss, even when they stretch out into more avant-garde territory in terms of song construction (a la the Beatles).
4. The Verve-The Drugs Don’t Work
The further away 1997 appears in the rear view mirror of my life, the more saccharine the production of Urban Hymns becomes. Still a nice tune, just a bit cloying if you’re not in the right frame of mind to hear it.
5. INXS-I Need You Tonight
Hahaha, OK, so, this song, for whatever reason, has become completely intertwined with the word “striptease” in my mind. There’s something very sexy about it, but in that very superficial, plastic sense that 80s sexuality possessed within the mainstream. Once grunge (and subsequently “modern rock”) entered into the equation in the early 1990’s, you had an altogether dirtier well of musical “inspiration” to draw from as a sex worker. Less Patrick Nagel, more Michael Turner. Compared contextually, ‘I Need You Tonight’ is positively oozing with innocence!
6. Speed McQueen-I’m In Love With
One drawback of the alternative boom of the early to mid 90s (there were many, but that’s a long discussion for another post) was the glut of indie labels that sprung up, were bought out my majors, and then shat out in the form of a tax write-off. A lot of promising bands couldn’t survive the constant upheaval, which is a shame, and everyone’s loss. One such group was New York’s Speed McQueen, who put out one very solid full-length before getting got by the powers-that-be. Protect ya neck, little bands that could!
7. Blur-On The Way To The Club
A stand-out cut from Blur’s underrated Think Tank, this is a weird song, because the band basically sabotage what could have been a really odd-but-beautiful single by only going through the “chorus” only twice, and then fading out into a strange dub coda. It reminds me a lot of their song “Death of a Party”, but without the sinister overtones.
8. The Jam-Every Little Bit Hurts
A nice, if lightweight, rarity from the band who built a career on mining 60s R&B and soul music and running it through a punk blender. Paul Weller’s voice isn’t quite up to the task of matching the nuance of the Brenda Holloway original, but he gets some points for feeling (he was totally closing his eyes when he recorded this.)
9. Portastatic-I Wanna Know Girls
Perfect. Pop. Song.
10. Tom Petty-You Wreck Me
Such a great driving song, off Tom’s second solo joint. So many people I’ve met over the years usually have two Tom Petty CD’s: The 1993 Greatest Hits compilation, and Wildflowers. Which stands to reason, as those are unequivocally his two strongest discs, top to bottom.
For a pretty steadfast consumer of “indie” music, I really took my sweet time coming around on BSS. Part of the problem is the inherent flaws of this age of digital music consumption; my first impressions of the collective were colored by the fact that I was trying to gauge whether or not I liked them based on 30-second soundclips, and while this is generally enough time to hear at least one verse, chorus, and a handful of hooks in the average Britney Spears single, regardless of at what point in the song the clip starts at, this model doesn’t really work for a more free-form group of musicians like BSS. So I finally took the opportunity to give whole songs a listen a little over a year ago after being pleasantly surprised by head BSS-er Kevin Drew’s solo album Spirit If… in my local record shop. While roughly 50-70% of the tracks on all BSS albums proper are still a little too meandering and amelodic for my tastes, they do have a handful of gems, including this one.
This track is one of the b-sides/rarities recently compiled on the box set The Power of Negative Thinking. Beyond that, there’s not much else to say; it’s a JaMC track. Lots of feedback, a simple, undeniable melody, and some vaguely sinister lyrics about drugs/sex/violence, buzzing by in under three minutes.
A deep cut from their famously rejected Yankee Hotel Foxtrot album. It’s pretty straightforward, and relatively no-frills…could be justifiably mistaken for a Summerteeth b-side, but with less pristine production. Reminds me of The Cure’s “In-Between Days” for some reason.
One of the two strongest tracks off debut disc Employment (the other being “I Predict a Riot”.) Big comparisons made between these guys and Blur when this album came out. I can definitely see the similarity, but this is 100% artifice (not that Blur were particularly “authentic”) and sounds like a deep cut off Parklife or The Great Escape; it’s inherently catchier than anything off of Modern Life is Rubbish, if only because Blur had grown more accomplished at their craft, but still not close to the level of an iconic track like “The Universal” or “Girls & Boys”. As much as I’d like to believe Kaiser Chiefs have a classic album, or even classic single in them, I just don’t feel like they do.
A very flimsy, tossed-off b-side that somehow is still better than 99.999% of anything anyone else has ever produced in pop. It’s a lighthearted exhortation to forget one’s cares, because the end is nigh, but it’s presented in such a sprightly package that it’s hard not to want to hop in a hammock with a cup of tea and wait for the bomb to drop.
Probably the most “accessible” track off of the epic Loveless album. Somewhere, in an alternate universe, this is held in the same regard as “I Want to Hold Your Hand”.
This year’s You & Me album was a pleasant surprise. It’s a return to form after the flat and tuneless A Hundred Miles Off. There’s a lot of quaint romanticism on this album, perfectly reflected in the art that graces the sleeve, depicting the false innocence of a by-gone age that we all know was never innocent at all, but that we can’t help but feel wistfully nostalgic for.
As much as I love this (and many other) Husker Du songs, all I can hear usually is the lack of discernible low-end. These guys were post-punk White Stripes before the White Stripes even existed, but they actually had a bass player!
One of those perpetually unfashionable “nu-gaze” bands that never seems able to expand their fanbase beyond people waiting around for that Slowdive reunion that will never come. It’s dreamy pop, with lots of layered, effect-laden guitars, but you can actually tell what’s being sung!
A great song from an album chock full of them. Every time I listen to these guys, all I seem to focus on is the drumming. It’s just so integral to the success of The National’s tunes, not merely setting the pace, but really coloring and adding depth to what are seemingly simple songs. And of course, Matt Berninger’s voice is up there in the phone book pantheon*.
It’s almost 2009! That means every music magazine in existence either has already presented or is going to present their best-albums/songs-of-the-year lists in the coming weeks. I myself still have one or two last-minute purchases to make before I can comfortably assemble my own list. A lot of stuff came out this year, but I’m beginning to come around to the idea that the long-playing album is more or less dead. Meaning, it didn’t used to cause me a migraine to think of an album that wowed me from start to finish. No such luck this year. How these magazines can stretch out their lists to 20, 33, or even 50 (alternate) selections just baffles me. I buy way more than 10 albums every year, but I can truthfully say that there is rarely a 12 month period that produces more than 10 “classic” albums, and that number is most likely going to dwindle as we move forward into the iTunes age. I’m still something of a purist, prefering to use mp3s as a tool for discovering artists and albums that I may want to own an actual CD of. I like liner notes and sleeve art; I’m a graphic designer—sue me. But as quality long-player output continues to wane, I can already sense the impending, inevitable shift to a more digital musical diet. Progress! (Right?)
