Daniel Knox's Self Destructive Self Titled Third Album

Daniel Knox's third album, and first for Chicago based indie label Carrot Top Records, contains a cobbling together of ten songs, all much ado about houses, stores and cars with no drivers. All things as stationary as the album itself, which kind of plods along lifelessly - unless you take an interest in monotonous and painfully redundant things. 

It's a shame, really, because Knox's previous full length efforts - his self released 2007 debut Disaster and its 2011 follow up Evryman For Himself (which thus far marks his finest recorded hour), showed such promise for the evolution of his sound, and in turn, his popular appeal. He could be likened to a male answer to the Regina Spektor camp... but a lot less cutesy, with songs a lot more sinister, and leaps and bounds more appealable to an adult audience who would surely find Knox's wicked lyrical remarks, told from his decidedly bitter disposition,  a more reflective mirror for their own dark and brooding propensities.  

Granted, this self titled effort (originally slated to be entitled Chasescene, and the finale in a trilogy formed by his previous two albums; why that changed, we're not sure) is still brimming with that trademark form, but Knox seems tired here, despondent, and as such, significantly less dangerous.  While the song "Don't Touch Me" has some pep behind it, the track just sounds like a leftover from Evryman or Himself, revisiting the very same curmudgeonly theme that dominated that album, and the interestingly titled, but disappointingly presented "Incident At White Hen" comes off as a cast off as well, but from Disaster.  

The liner notes suggest a number of songs on Daniel Knox's tracklist were culled from previous work with and around photographer John Atwood (whom Knox is known to be quite taken with), and being that the album is self-titled, complete with a cover depicting only a less than alluring painting of Knox's own bust, one has to wonder if this album is more a memento for his own strictly personal reasons, and less to appeal to, or widen, his audience?  And if all that is the case, the question begging answer then is: why would you do this to yourself so early in your career?  A large, dedicated fan base for a grown and seasoned artist (even if said artist isn't exactly a radio hit maker) will generally suffer whatever syrup their champion drools out, but for Daniel Knox, a move this bold and perceived to be this self indulgent, this early on - when he's just on the cusp of being widely recognized, is either fool hearty or arrogant... or both. 

21 Hit Singles That Never Were, But Coulda Woulda Shoulda Been...

Keeping in mind the general rules of what makes a proper radio single, e.g. tight running time, verse-chorsus composition, conventional "catchiness", here is a suggestion of 21 songs by 21 artists that coulda woulda shoulda been popular, career changing singles, but for whatever reasons, never saw such glory, and instead fell into relative obscurity. Some of these artists have had hit singles in the past, others never had a single - hit or not - at all, but the tie that binds here is that all these songs are fully deserving of that musical merit badge we've all come to accept for marketing purposes.  Regular readers of this blog might notice I've raved about some of these artists and songs before, but since you never got to hear these tracks over-played on FM radio, you get to instead find them shamelessly over-promoted here.  Enjoy...  

1. "SIDEWINDER" by Ass Ponys [from Some Stupid With A Flare Gun]

1994 saw Ass Ponys one and only novelty hit "Little Bastard", following which changes in label ownership saw them dropped from A&M Records, and more or less forgotten about. Nonetheless, they matured as artists until their untimely disbanding in 2002, but not before issuing a number of other albums with decidedly more sophisticated songs - one of which was "Sidewinder" from this, their 1999 indie label release.  "Sidewinder" is the heart-wrenching tale of a farmer's non-acceptance of the fact that his crop has turned to crap, and his livelihood along with it, all the while his wife notices with unspoken trepidation ("the dirt farmer swears his fruit is as fresh as the early spring / what does he care she's finding worms in everything").  Though the subject matter might seem alienating to a modern audience, each verse is lush with vivid descriptors of decay and disappointment that build into a fantastic, soaring chorus.  

2. "I Blew Up The United States" by Was(Not Was) [from Are You Okay?]

A post Sept. 11, 2001 world might not so readily accept a single about a fanatical attack on American landmarks, just as a post "Walk The Dinosaur" Was(Not Was) song would never really properly explode the band's popularity a second time.  Still, for as schizophrenic as Was(Not Was)'s output tended to be (one might most accurately described their body of work as whole as a sort of Yello meets Ween type mess ), "I Blew Up The United States" would have appealed on the same tepid level as "Walk The Dinosaur" did to those who wouldn't care much to explore Was(Not Was)'s more bizarre compositions.  It's a bass heavy song with maniacal piano refrains scattered throughout... and it came out 6 years before Fiona Apple would take the exact same, though better received, liberties. 

3. "Speed" by Bran Van 3000 [from Discosis]

Bran Van 3000 made a small wave in the middle 90's with the single "Drinking In L.A." and "Supermodel" (the music video for the latter had some moderate rotation on Mtv in those days] from their preceding album Glee; but by the time Discosis was released in 2001, the Beastie Boys' Grand Royal label, to which Bran Van was signed, folded and it likely took a toll on this very commercially viable, potentially successful follow-up.  Two singles did squeak out before the collapse, however: "Astounded" and "Love Cliche", though neither charted in the U.S., which is just as well, because they were poorly chosen.  If the promotion had been there, "Speed" would have been this album's guaranteed royal flush.  It's a sun-tanned summer anthem complete with cutesy "tickled kitten" female vocals, driving electro-percussion and - here's the left turn - some pretty bad ass accordion instrumentation.

4. "The Fire Song" by Company of Thieves [from Ordinary Riches]

Company of Thieves sort of came and went in 2009, for the most part, unnoticed. Not really one hit wonders, per se, with the abstinent airplay of the song "Oscar Wilde", they toured extensively in 2010, produced a follow up album in 2011, and then disbanded under the weight of overbearing frontwoman Genevieve Schatz.  Still, Ordinary Riches is an elegantly well-crafted album, and while the song "Pressure" was a well chosen follow up single, maybe the album's commercial sparkle began to fade before "The Fire Song" could be selected as a potential third promotional. A grungy staccato number similar in sound to Shirley Manson's band Garbage, "The Fire Song" had every bit of playlist power as "Only Happy When It Rains" did.

5. "I'm A Dog" by Crash Test Dummies [from A Worm's Life]

Forever relegated to the ranks of top 100 One Hit Wonders of the 90's, Crash Test Dummies' hit song "Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm" skyrocketed the success of their 1994 sophomore album God Shuffled His Feet... and then 1996's A Worm's Life pretty much tamped it back down;  and then 1999's Give Yourself A Hand more or less murdered it.  But while frontman Brad Roberts writing became increasingly la morgue littéraire with each subsequent Dummies album, one track on A Worm's Life offered some philosophical genius, and some hope at sustaining the band's success just a little longer: "I'm A Dog". It's the last example of the charmingly refined, endearingly inquisitive writings on topics of all things curious that Roberts has produced to date, and that said, the last proper Crash Test Dummies song.  Sadly, though, it remains forever buried as the second to last track on this, the beginning of the band's end.  In fact, re-release God Shuffled His Feet with "I'm A Dog" included as a bonus track (and oh yeah, "Superman's Song" from The Ghosts That Haunt Me), and you have a "best of" compilation for this band that's perfectly consistent and missing nothing.

6. "Act of Creation" by The New Red Moons [from Mesmérisme]

This selection might be a bit premature, as The New Red Moons' fantastic sophomore effort Mesmérisme is only about six months past its release date as of this writing, however it's pinned here with dual intent: (1) because the Moons are a smaller independent act, not signed to a label, this self released effort is unlikely to produce more than the one single it already has ("You Can Run") - and even that was an abnormality for a self-releaed album; and (2) because the Moons are a smaller independent act, not signed to a label, this self-important blogger tends to think he might just capture the band's attention, thus prompting them by suggestion.  Granted, "Act of Creation" isn't really an accurate representation of the band's overall sound - and typically you want the single to be that (which is probably why they chose "You Can Run") - but it's such a striking and dissimilar song, even in terms applied beyond the album it's on.  Frontman Joe McIlheran explores an impressive and anomalous vocal range on this track, and the composition as a whole captures one of those rare moments of inimitable progression in rock music, the likes of which were the blue print for what would properly be labeled Alternative Rock, in the days before the label started being improperly applied to everything.

7. "With My Own Bare Hands" by Ween [from La Cucaracha]

Ignoring the fact that the song is laden with profanity, "With My Own Bare Hands", even as a clean radio edit, represents the next best whack-job single Ween could offer since their catchy lo-fi mainstream breakthrough "Push Th' Little Daisies" back in 1992.  It's a staggered, guitar driven, hard percussion hitting yeller about all the things lead vocalist Aaron Freeman (formerly Gene Ween) is capable of doing, from the scientifically delicate ("I could take your DNA and replicate a man") to the sexually explicit ("I'm gonna be your ass shaker, stick it up in your ass").  In the usual, and so amusingly, Ween-like fashion, the song devolves from its already pretty primitive delivery, into a sort of stream of consciousness, Tourette Syndrome vulgarity that is as hilariously juvenile as it is disjointed. The song is completely indecent, lyrically radio unfriendly, but quite frankly hearing a radio edit version nonetheless would only add to the novelty of this.

8. "Betting On Trains" by Hem [from Rabbit Songs]

A quiet country stroll on a comfortable summer afternoon couldn't be more tranquil than this violin acoustic folk-rock piece from Hem's 2000 debut album.  Lead singer Sally Ellyson's vocals are the closest thing to Ella Fitzgerald you could get in the modern day, and the band's repertoire the best parlour music revival attempt since the general dissipation of the style in the late 18th Century.  The song discusses the familiarity one can establish with the people, places and things in one's life, and how this becomes a predicator, a gospel point of reference, for how everything is and will be - undeniably, whether the notions are factual or not.

9. "I Have Special Powers" by His Name Is Alive [from Last Night]

Never attempting, or pretending, to be a "singles" band, His Name Is Alive could have inadvertently struck fool's gold with the blue mood jazz fusion, late night insomnia feel of "I Have Special Powers", a track culled from their 4AD swan song album, and one that just as surprisingly, might have offered more potential singles than any of their previous or subsequent efforts.  Shame 4AD had already written them off by the time Last Night was released.  The album saw very little promotion, even though if the inclination had been there, the label could have capitalized on what this notoriously schizophrenic, near impossible to market, band produced here. After all, the annals of music history are rife with at-one-time successful musicians who will all agree: one hit is all it takes.

10. "Disengage" by The Honorary Title [from Anything Else But The Truth]

The now popular hokey-stern folk rock style of Vance Joy's "Riptide" and Milky Chance's "Stollen Dance" was preceded by The Honorary Title's "Disengage" back in 2004, but never found a foothold then. Doubtful eleven years after the fact, the now disbanded Honorary Title, or their former label, would be bothered to re-attempt finding fanfare for the song or album - especially after they did attempt a re-issue two years after the initial release, but to no real affect. Still to see "Disengage" fall into a obscurity is a crying shame, all things considered. While the song would have surely belied the content of the rest of the album, promoting a single is about shamelessly selling copies by any means necessary, and if that had been the case, no harm no foul, because the rest of this release would have propelled itself.

11. "The Northern Sea" by Jarrod Dickenson [from The Lonesome Traveler]

Resident Brooklyn, NY folk scene busker, Jarrod Dickenson's 2012 independently released album The Lonesome Traveler, as a whole, coulda woulda shoulda made great waves in the alt. folk music scene right alongside the likes of Bon Iver and the earlier works of The Handsome Family, but as is sadly all too often the case, the marketing dollars and prominent indie label support weren't there; and so until they are, the album will quietly reside in its own beautiful obscurity. The chosen hit, for the intent and purpose of this writing, is the album's second track, entitled "The Northern Sea": the stormy and treacherous sea shanty-esque tale of a fisherman determined to serve his trade, despite unrelenting danger, and minimal reward. Ironically, if this weren't such an obscure blog, the mere naming of the track here might ignite a bevy of downloads, reinstating the song - maybe even the entire album - as an overlooked "sleeper hit", and catapulting Dickenson into the limelight where he truly belongs.  Alas, unseen, on the other side of that tree on the album cover, Dickenson and I are resting our heads against the barked trunk, dreaming of fanfare...

12. "Let Me Go" by Kate Tucker + The Sons of Sweden [from The Shape The Color The Feel]

Considering the music consuming public's long time infatuation with the breathily sung, lustily articulated female vocal design, it's surprising Kate Tucker and her entourage's sophomore album managed to almost entirely land on deaf ears. Showing a bit of a stylistic shift from its predecessor, 2010's White Horses, Tucker regardless should have hit the trendy nail on the proverbial head with this album. "Let Me Go" especially embodies everything definable about the phrase "radio friendly".  Fit her in between Banks, Lorde and Tove Lo, and ne'er a disappointed yuppie-teen eyebrow would be raised.

13. "Tell Me No" by Lady Cannon [from Whiskey Dear]

Milwaukee's Lady Cannon is a whiskey soaked trollop, hellbent on illustrating all of the sinful misdeeds that alcoholism and promiscuity can bring to a life. "Tell Me No" sums up her penchants quite well, detailing the relationship between an "other woman" and a man who belongs to someone else. The real antithesis in her variety of drunken misdeeds, however, is the aching heart and soul behind it. She's naughty, but she's sad, she's malevolent but you're made commiserate for why she is what she is.  Insultingly, you could call her a slut who happens to have a way with words; realistically you could say the same of every great writer from Jack Kerouac to Charles Bukowski. Cannon makes her sins very digestible song compositions, nonetheless, and while "Tell Me No" is no crime of the century, the telling of her drama is expertly distilled, and goes down smooth.

14. "By The Book" by Michael Penn [from Free For All]

Michael Penn came and went, as far as most are concerned, with the hit late 80's single "No Myth".  Truthfully, the artist continued to flourish well into the mid 2000's, offering an album only about every four to six years, but each and every was finely crafted, and showed exponential growth in his ability as a musician. His 1997 overlooked single "I Can Tell" was a fantastic piano rich alternative rock opus, but even more lamentably neglected was this track from his sophomore album Free For All. "By The Book" is a spaciously delivered, acoustic guitar and percussion alt. folk track about the determination behind decided ignorance. Forging forward to meet a desire, calling it acceptable by all terms, but yet... asking forgiveness for it? It's a psychologically challenging song, and maybe the difficulty most would have with getting their head around the message is precisely why it was never promoted. Consequently, Michael Penn is held in high esteem by the highfalutin musician's musicians elite, and a critic's darling to boot. But while those things are arguably impressive, they almost never equal commercial success.

15. "Lost My Mind" by Mile Nielsen [from Miles]

Much like Jakob Dylan, Miles Nielsen's connection to Cheap Trick's Rick Nielsen can be immediately off-putting to a younger audience interested only in discovering "their own thing". Yet, again - much like Jakob Dylan -  Miles Nielsen has been surgical and careful in his career thus far, not to ride on the coattails of his father's fame, and to keep a safe distance between his Rusted Hearts Band and Cheap Trick. Unlike Jakob Dylan, however, Nielsen has yet to see proper popular appeal, though he tours small to mid-size venues across the country frequently - and is acquiring a growing fan base.  "Lost My Mind" is the track most stand out in his two album repertoire thus far, though there are countless others that could easily build his appeal.

16. "Red Accordian" by Patty Larkin [from Perishable Fruit]

Though a little sparse in instrumentation to fit the typical requirements for a radio single, but a perfectly subtle album closer, "Red Accordion" speaks playfully and optimistically to the trials and tribulations of the human condition - a much needed outlook in any age and time.  "Don't listen to the din rising behind you; if you look at life like a train wreck, one will find you..." Larkin advises as the songs emotive sensibility swells to embrace the listener, who by then - if they've any sense of worldliness or self at all - is strongly holding back a cataclysm of cathartic tears.

17. "Wildflowers On Chene" by Rob Reid [from Prairie Shanties of the Landlocked Mariner]

Vaguely reminiscent of the cadence to the song Zorba The Greek (vaguely), Rob Reid's "Wildflowers On Chene" has the same sort of anabasis mood and structure, but fitted instead to a verse chorus song about an assortment of forms and variances on societal decay - both metaphorically and figuratively. The upswing of the song's chorus is among its most catchy and endearing qualities, wherein Reid lets a little sunlight part the deliberative, darkly hewn verses, as the tempo perks up into an upbeat, nonlinear reflection on the better days that existed before this presently dilapidated state of being.

18. "Strangely At Home Here" by Seven Mary Three [from Day & Nightdriving]

"Strangely At Home Here" comes almost a decade and a half after Seven Mary Three's bygone days of topping the Alternative Rock charts, with tracks mostly from their 1995 breakthrough album American Standard. 2008's Day & Nightdriving is a strong departure from the harder rocking of those early years, and though it's still firmly rock music they're performing, it's just not so much grunge rock music anymore. They've clearly settled down a bit now, applying instead more acoustic tones, and for the most part, writing more contemplative compositions; much ado about the home life and, perceptibly, frontman Jason Ross's own domestic relationship concerns.  Midlife maturity manifests itself quite clearly on the album, and "Strangely At Home Here" is aimed squarely at the hearts and minds of all those aging weekend pub crawlers, grappling with the shifts in their livelihood, and the fading but fond memories of the pastimes of their twenties.

19. "For The Sake of Drowning" by Stephanie Dosen [from Ghosts, Mice & Vagabonds]

In a similar vein as Jewel's Pieces of You album, but just shy of ten years after the acoustic aching heart female singer/songwriter fad ended, Stephanie Dosen offered up this under-promoted album about all things emotional, heartfelt and profoundly inner turmultuous.  "For The Sake of Drowning" plays as instrumentally tonal, lyrically yearning and vocally pleading as anything else similar, but that enjoyed much more success.  Dosen's writing, though, in contrast to all of them,  offers a variety of much deeper contexts than her peers were willing to illustrate, and her staying power as a new age Joni Mitchell never saw the potential it fully deserved.

20. "The Well" by The Vega Star [from The Night]

The Vega Star's sole album The Night, by and large, holds rank as the most overlooked independent folk rock album to be released in the last twenty years. The album deals heavily in dread and despair, dark nights and heavy hearts - all matter of things that have appealed very strongly to a larger music consuming public for decades, but that so few songwriters could manage to incarnate as chillingly and with as much melancholy as Vega Star frontman Justin Rolbieki does here. "The Well" acts as what could have been both a single capable of launching the band's career on a larger scale, and a defectless representation of the group's gloomy boutique style and design.

21. "Creature" by The Fatty Acids [from Leftover Monsterface]

In the form of a radio ready single, The Fatty Acid's "Creature" might require some edits for duration, but ultimately represents a unique combination appeal of something like Nine Inch Nails' "Closer" and a number of things by The Residents in the early 80's.  If "Creature" had become a popular single, it would have most definitely defaulted the band into one-hit-wonder categorization, as the song is really the most digestible in the the group's repertoire to date. Nonetheless, credit given to a band whose normal penchant for being bizarrely abstract can be pushed aside to compose a piece with as much mainstream chart appeal as this without even trying.  Milwaukee hasn't seen sui generous in the form of The Fatty Acids since the Violent Femmes, and it's a crying shame they, unlike the Femmes, didn't arrive on the scene in the days and times when "sounding different" didn't equal the same as "sounding sort of like".

Redundancy Reigns On The Last Internationale's Debut

The Last International - "We Will Reign" [Epic Records]

While dozens of remarkably talented up and coming bands with profound, creative - and if not, at the very least, somewhat unique - things to express, struggle to market themselves and/or garner the attention of a major label, somehow The Last Internationale managed to rise above all of them, and then celebrated by pissing out this mediocre album of middle aged biker anthems.  Having ex-Rage Against The Machine drummer Brad Wilk in their personnel likely helped them get attention, and surely with producer Brendan O'Brien (Pearl Jam, Michael Penn.. he's got a decent resume) on deck to orchestrate the whole thing (strings were maybe pulled? Favors called in?), the label suits couldn't help but green light this belly flop by virtue alone.

The brass tacks: We Will Reign is a tepid "classic rock" sounding album that borrows more than it offers, stumbles more than it strides and bears with it the shame of a band touting a lot of clout over little content.

From the opening track, "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Indian Blood", you get a pretty thorough summation of what this album has to say.  The song presents the Orwellian concept that "one does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes a revolution in order to establish a dictatorship", as vocalist Delila Paz belts in her reedy Annie Lennox meets Florence Welch tone: "the seeds of revolution will grow tight around our children's necks, like nooses that are used to keep the slaves in check / And decades later we still can't figure out why it remains the same...".  The subsequent title track "We Will Reign" then goes on to say... well, the exact same thing: "We might have seen it all / We're building walls because we love to see them fall".  And this same principle is revisited on the 4th track "Killing Fields", the 5th track "Battleground" .... and yet again on the closing track "1968" - the latter most title possibly being a veiled reference to the infamous shootout between military police and the Black Panthers socialist party in April of that year - or maybe the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., or any number of other Johnson Era unrests and resistances. A theme album concept is one thing, but dedicating five songs on a ten song album to an identical message is verbose, to say the least (hah! - PUN intended!), especially when the remaining tracks are left feeling alienated, random and disparate: three lover's soliloquys, a working man's lament, and one painfully ham fisted, but surely intended to be bittersweet, rock ballad ("Baby It's You"); the last mentioned's refrain worded in kitschy "white-trache" dialect: "It doesn't matter what they say, I know I'm gonna love you any old way....blah blah blah don't want nobody, cause baby it's you...".  

All this criticism aside, the basic song structures on We Will Reign's tracklist are all fundamentally boilerplate rock n' roll;  no different than you'd hear in any American dive bar or in any episode of Sons of Anarchy you choose.  You can sing along, fist pump, air guitar or dance drunkenly to any song on here until the bartender kicks you out, or you knock over Tig's beer and he beats your ass. These are stereotypical American outlaw anthems here that, vexatious and cliche as they might be, still appeal to a certain segment of the population (ref: all above made projections). Rock n' roll music was a revolution once upon a time, and while The Last Internationale can attempt to present themselves as juggernauts of the movement; their claims are imperious, their arsenal is lacking - and the only aspect of them that might be a reigning force to be reckoned with are their delusions of grandeur.  

A Shout Over Whispers... Or, New York Times Music Critic Jon Caramanica Is An Ass Hat

Passenger "Whispers" NEW & SEALED vinyl LP record
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Those unfamiliar with Passenger (aka Michael Rosenberg, post 2009) might at first check the setting on their turntable to be sure the LP isn't playing at 45 RPM. Rest assured, though it's only slightly off putting, his voice really does sound a little leprechaun like, but that's fine; get past that and you'll find the craftsmanship of his compositions entirely endearing on Whispers, Passenger's 6th studio album, and fifth as a solo artist. 

Historically, when a founding band member goes solo using his previous band's name, you can expect a number of disappointments, ranging from haphazardness to jarring disparity in continuity. Some would hold that 2007's Wicked Man's Rest was the sole effort released by Passenger as a proper band, and those same would likely discount everything Rosenberg released independent of his former partner Andrew Phillips as "not quite".  The reality of the matter, however, is that Rosenberg continues to mature with each subsequent effort, and the Passenger moniker he continues to carry with him as a solo artist casts no shadow of shame whatsoever on his illustrious early work with Phillips. 

Unfortunately though, Whispers hasn't received the same positive critical support as Wicked Man's Rest did, having been called by one New York Times misguided (and, in my opinion, consistently mentally retarded) critic Jon Caramanica: "limited in its arsenal".  Caramanica goes on to fucking stupidly boldy

state that Rosenberg's writing comes off like, quote "a teenager's scribbled poems", and suggests that Rosenberg's criticism of the popular appeal of Twitter and other social media platforms is ironic, considering the role they played in growing Passenger's success early on. Now, whether or not Caramanica has any familiarity with the "scribblings" of teenagers is in question, alongside just what sort of teenagers he knows?  Teenagers most of us know could never pen, with any experienced intelligence, songs like "27", an upbeat, but at the same time deeply pondering, comparison of personal and social expectations ("The only thing I get told is I got to sell out if I wanna get sold..." and "I write songs that come from the heart, and I don't give a fuck if they chart or not...").  Sure, your average teenager could express the same level of frustration, fuck-all and angst, but what's missing is the qualification, the worldliness.. as in where Rosenberg states in the middle eight: "27 years done, written 600 songs only 12 get sung; 87,000 cigarettes have passed through these lungs, and every single day I wish I'd never smoked one; a week brushing my teeth, a week getting my hair cut, 8 years sleeping and I'm still tired when I wake up..." Your average teenager doesn't have the wherewithal or maturity to make these observations (not to mention your average teenager doesn't clearly state that he's 27). And while it's true social media played an enormous role in catapulting Passenger's success, that doesn't mean the artist has to love it and all it represents. It can be explained in the same way that even though your job pays your bills, you still hate going there every day.  So with this in mind, when New York Times critic Jon Caramanica tries to raise a brow at Rosenberg's criticism of people "slowly dying in front of fucking computers", it doesn't mean they didn't do anything for his career... for you, reader: doesn't the corporate cube farm that you spend 9 hours a day decomposing in pay for your vacation time, your home, your material possessions? See, it's not the ends, it's the sorrow in the means to them. How can a respected music critic be so obtuse? 

Why Whispers hasn't been critically acclaimed is baffling, really. The album runs in the same Irish folk vein as Mumford & Sons, though with a bit more Caribbean flavor here and there - but where Mumford's songs are arguably more or less just a bunch or rhyming words, and their appeal is more about form than content, Passenger meets - and maybe even exceeds - that same now popular form, but with songs that happen to include meaningful, well wrought lyrical refrains as well.  The only real criticism of this album is the occasional over-emphasized message in some of the tracks ("Hearts on Fire" and "Scare Away The Dark"), but all in all, Passenger's whispers here are very much worth listening to.

His Name Is Alive's "Tecuciztecatl": Unspeakable.

His Name Is Alive "Tecuciztecatl" [NEW & SEALED vinyl LP record]
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On their 10th studio album, and first recording of new material in six years (subtracting the sham and scam that was 2010's The Eclipse), His Name Is Alive continue to recover from the identity crisis they inflicted on themselves in the early 00's (reference 2001's Someday My Blues Will Cover The Earth as the pinnacle of this), issuing a collection here not at all dissimilar to the elocutions of 2007's Xmmer and plumbing the same feel (sorta) of 1998's Ft. Lake; though sparing the "Detroit booty rock" electronics of the latter, but harking back to the pronunciational awkwardness of the former (it's phonetically "Teh-zoo-ziz-teh-kattle", said real real fast).  As always, His Name Is Alive continue to be hellbent on making marketing and commercialization very very difficult for themselves and whatever record label might be brave enough to foster their releases. In the case of this one, it's found a home on Seattle based Light In The Attic's new London London imprint - which, if you peruse the rest of their offerings, puts His Name Is Alive in just the right place it seems... if ever there was one. 

The Tecuciztecatl album, unfortunately, seems sort of "been done" by comparison to His Name Is Alive's back catalog.  That's especially disappointing for a band who have been so historically consistent in delivering remarkably interesting, disparately square peg albums.  So with the sort of resume they have, one might have expected this to be another bold and exciting new addition to their wholly pretty damn interesting catalog.  The potential for it is there, the marketing editorials surrounding it certainly make it sound hopeful - what, with terms like "rock opera" and "horror movie soundtrack vibe".  Ultimately, however, Tecuciztecatl falls significantly short of all of that, coming off instead a little fragmented, a tad repetitive.  In His Name Is Alive's younger years, they did quite well creating abstract sound conglomerate albums 

(reference their 1990 debut Livonia), that could be taken ala carte, but were much more properly absorbed in their entirety as textured soundscapes that segued from one song to the next.  They once upon a time did that really, really exceptionally well - but here... here it just comes off a bit tedious, a tad uninspired... and a lot boring. 

Missing seems to be the "found sounds" silent frontman/mastermind/engineer Warren Defever used to imbed into His Name Is Alive's work. The creepy whispers in Livonia, the shrill creature or animal shriek in "There Something Between Us And He's Changing My Words" on Home Is In Your Head, the woman sobbing "they're gonna take me to the insane asylum" inserted at the end of "Jack Rabbits" on Mouth By Mouth - the ticking clocks, the air compressor blasts, the birds chirping, the weird amped out squiggling metal sounds, even the haunted lyricism that speak only and strictly from the disposition of supernatural knowing and presence  - they're all missing here, but they're all so significant to what has become the most beloved elements of the atmosphere His Name Is Alive has proven themselves quite adept at enveloping.  And while it's true the band deviated from these claims to their initial fame long ago, this album seemed to promise a return to that. Everything about it would have been so very conducive to it... "a psychedelic rock opera depicting an epic struggle between identical twins, reflective in nature and mirrored in twin science, secret language and mythology..." Those are the words verbatim from the Tecuciztecatl marking material... so where the fuck is it?

To say His Name Is Alive have gotten lazy would be dismissive. This is by no means a lazy effort. It's clear the band had every expectation this album would have been received much differently, even if their promotional material was, to say the least, over-imaginative.  Tecuciztecatl's shortcomings amount to HNIA simply not living up to the unexpected this time around... or even the expected for that matter, paradoxical as it might sound.  The sum of all these parts, in the end, serve only to leave Tecuciztecatl as frustrating to listen to as it is to pronounce. 

Red Beans And Weiss - Chuck Weiss's House Speciality

Chuck E. Weiss Red Beans And Weiss [NEW & SEALED vinyl LP record]
$18.50 - includes shipping!!*
*domestic shipping only, no international sales

A longtime (and, at this point in his storied career, a lifetime) standard name on just about all of Los Angeles's downtown jazz club marquees, Chuck E. Weiss finds himself tucked in with ANTI Records for his fifth studio album Red Beans And Weiss.  No doubt a good word was put in by his associate, one Mr. Tom Waits, who has seen release of his own albums on the label for the last fifteen years. Having made numerous references to Weiss on a number of albums from Small Change to Rain Dogs, anyone aware of Mr. Waits's lineage also likely knows the name Weiss. The two co-inhabited LA's legendary Tropicana Hotel in the 70's, ran amok with the off center Ben Frank's crowd back in the same days (there's a coupon for a free breakfast there in the gatefold of the LP... no expiration on it either. Insert tongue in cheek), and in testament to Chuck's reputation on the scene, the late great Willie Dixon once called this "little jew boy with the big ol' head, the best damn musician in this town - this country even!"

Red Beans sees Weiss sounding significantly more relaxed, musically experimental and lyrically playful  than on his previous efforts - though it's been over half a decade since his last.  One would expect some change between albums for any other musician with that much time in between, but for Weiss, with his penchant for being so insistently insistent on all things nostalgic, it comes as a surprise to hear this album so undocked from its predecessors.  Not that the difference isn't a good one - it's quite good actually, as this effort by and large, contains a collection of Chuck Weiss's most enhancing work.  The rollicking pseudo-Primus sounding "Boston Blackie" is currently the only radio single from RedBeans, though as is often the case, it falls short of representing the album as a whole.  And that's just as well, because truly any song chosen from this, with so much individual character in each of them, just wouldn't do justice to its entirety, or allow the listener any chance at assuming its contents.  From the opening percussion of the cutely repetitive, hilariously titular "Tupelo Joe", on into the the smooth jazz whispered biography of "Shushie" (Weiss's own neighborhood stray cat), Red Beans And Weiss, right from the start, revels in its own idiosyncrasy, and urges a certain curiosity for the artist's characters... as well as for the artist himself. In example, "The Knucklehead Stuff" is a haphazard sung-spoken R&B rap that puts Weiss immediately among the elite who can pull off too cool to be concerned with being cool. This is furthered on the B Side track "Oo Poo Pa Do In The Rebop", an irreverent wink at jazz dance bebop, and in "Willie's In The Pee Pee House", which is about exactly what you'd expect it to be: guy named Willie, aside from being a general miscreant, has a tendency to slip into the women's restroom to get himself off. "Some may call him Herbert, I just call him pervert," Weiss sings in his sloppy Howlin' Wolf meets Beefheart falsetto, "Willie's in the pee pee house again!" 

While Red Beans And Weiss did have a rather long gestation period, the album is a worthwhile addition to not only the artist's chronology, but to the annals of music history in general.  The circumspect might withhold from calling this a future classic, but to name it as one of those Trout Mask Replica type albums that a generationally accruing cult audience would put on their "top x" list of eccentric necessities - yeah, Red Beans And Weiss will undoubtedly be that. 

5 Vinyl Re-Issue We'll Likely Never See (But Really Should)

As the vinyl resurgence continues to take the recorded media market by storm, contradicting all practicality of the modern age, and becoming the single most sought after format available, it goes without saying that re-issues of bygone best sellers and fan favorites will continue to enjoy a second wave of sales volume.  Everything from dusty old Johnny Cash best ofs to Camper Van Beethoven and The Sea And Cake's early releases have all seen rebirth in the vinyl format - many of them for the first time ever!  

A lot of classic albums I recall from my youth - which I was certain would never see a vinyl incarnation - have come to be (Luna's Bewitched and Morphine's Cure For Pain come to mind most immediately), and with that in mind, I collected this index of other great albums that really would do themselves new found justice as vinyl re-issues... however unlikely they are to ever make it out there.

The New Red Moons - Mesmérisme [No Telescope Required]

There is no greater credit that can be given to a band than when there becomes a solid recognition of the uniquity of their sound.  Some bands take two or three or four albums of growth and development to get their formula down, while others hit the nail on the head on their first outing; and maybe they hold it, and maybe they devolve and lose it - personnel, circumstance and talent withstanding. The New Red Moons, on the other hand, staked their claim before they even had an album out to package it in, and on their forthcoming sophomore effort, Mesmérisme, they show no indication of losing any of that pre-emptive integrity, whatsoever.

What's Finally Becoming of Paul Heaton

In what is quite definitely his finest effort since the disbanding of The Beautiful South,  Paul Heaton at long last returns to some semblance of prior form with his newest "solo" release What Have We Become ... alongside none other than ex-Beautiful South female vocalist Jacqueline  Abbott.  

A fine point put there, as note: Heaton has struggled and flailed (though not entirely failed, mind you) on every effort he's made to re-invent his career as a solo artist.  Recall when The Beautiful South took temporary hiatus in 2001, his first attempt at a solo record, the aptly titled Fat Chance, was an utter commercial disappointment - even after a re-release effort was made very shortly after its initial release, aimed solely at trying to spark appeal for it!  Still, Heaton ignored that barometer, if you will, of things to come, shat out another three painfully lackluster Beautiful South albums, and then declared them disbanded - and himself pursuing a solo career.

"Guy Got Kilt"... How Columboid and I Became One.

I've always been one to strongly insist that any album, of any content, is significant if it lends itself to a new personal experience for an individual - or fosters one they may have already had at some time in their lives.  You think about albums that are considered "the best of all time" or simply "the best" by a given artist, and a few things come to mind: (1) If they are heralded as "best of all time", then they were likely best selling records because (a) they appealed to a lot of people on the same level (which is no small task), and/or (b) they were just really well marketed (i.e., any fucking album by the goddamn Beatles). (2) they made an impression on the jadedly unimpressionable (critics) who represent a select fraction of the population that wield the ability to propel them into stardom, or they made a tremendous widespread impact on a larger amount of people who were equally, though maybe less articulately, amazed at what they'd done (think Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot... in both scenarios, come to think of it).  In either case, music is never anything to anyone until it does something for someone. Arguably then, everything ever released meets that criteria for someone; but the true decider of the sides is just how many people were touched.  It's like the analogy that one person praising any single given entity is an unbalanced weirdo... but a bunch of people doing it gives that thing validity and makes the thing Holy - and therefore and therein, all accolades applied to said entity become Gospel.