On their own, Benjamin Gibbard and Jimmy Tamborello produce some really good music.
Gibbard is the singer and main songwriter of Death Cab for Cutie, while Tamborello crafts alien electronic timbres under the moniker Dntel.
The idea of Gibbard singing music written — or programmed, as it were — by Tamborello is fascinating in its own right, but the actual results seem rather, well, quaint.
Maybe not on the level of Chris Cornell singing with the guys in Rage Against the Machine, but there’s some parallel.
That doesn’t stop the Postal Service, as Gibbard and Tamborello call themselves, from being at the very least pleasant.
The duo’s debut album, Give Up, reveals the odd couple nature of the group isn’t very far-fetched — Gibbard and his sensitive croon, Tamborello with his analog chirps and squeaks.
It doesn’t matter whether Gibbard is fronting the guitars of Death Cab for Cutie or a polka band, for that matter — he still comes across the observant everyman with heart on sleeve.
“Clark Gable”, in which the protagonist imagines romance as a movie script, shares a lot thematically with “Title and Registration” from Death Cab’s Transatlanticism.
On “Sleeping In”, Gibbard dreams of a world of certainty that’s far better than the uncertainty of a waking state. His picturesque verses paint a vivid world, but it’s a simple chorus — “Don’t wake me, I plan on sleeping in” — that captures his sentiment succinctly.
It’s not much different from what he usually does.
Rather, the Postal Service is Tamborello’s show. He’s done far more daring work, but when forced into the strictures of the standard rock song, he handles himself incredibly well.
Tamborello gets to show off his true form on “Natural Anthem”, but everything else — from the college radio-friendly “Such Great Heights” to the moody “This Place is a Prison” — pretty much shores up Gibbard.
And it’s still far more interesing than other bands pillaging from the glory days of the Yamaha DX-7.
As a first effort, Give Up is an appealing work, melodic and textured, sythethic but possessing heart. It’s the work of two artists from opposite spectrums exploring the patch of middle ground between them.
Let’s hope the next time out, they’re willing to see how they can fit together the parts that aren’t common.
It’s easy to see why Death Cab for Cutie would be labeled with the pejorative title of “wimp rockers”.
Ben Gibbard has a pixie of a voice, and his lyrics can strike people as either profound or precious.
I bought a used copy of The Photo Album without much prior knowledge of the band — aside from the perception that a lot of people buy its albums — and liked what I heard. But not enough to be affected too deeply.
(Maybe if I were in high school …)
Transatlanticism is a different story.
Thematically, Gibbard pretty much sticks to the usual M.O. — songs about everday events triggering wistfulness.
On “Title and Registration”, he lobbies for an effort to rename the glove compartment since nobody puts gloves in there anyway. Of course, he makes this observation after running across photos of an ex-lover in said compartment.
But musically, the album contains a lot of subtle touches that make it feel larger than it is.
The main technique that conveys this feeling is the bleeding of tracks from one to another. The first three songs of the album meld with nary a pause between them.
“Tiny Vessels” leads directly into the title track, and if left on repeat, “A Lack of Color” finishes the album with the same white noise that opens it, creating a seamless loop.
Taking the pauses out of an album can only work if the songs fit well enough to allow it, and the ones on Transatlanticism do. Even the tracks that stand on their own (the ones with the pauses) have a snug fit.
It also helps that the band plays the hell out of these songs. By comparrison, The Photo Album is genteel next to some of the crescendos Gibbard and company hammer out on Transatlanticism.
The only thing that makes the album stumble is the 8-minute title track. The long-winded drama of “Transatlanticism”, the song, makes it feel like it’s building momentum to a grand finale. But it’s placed smack near the middle of the album.
As a result, Transatlanticism, the album, feels like it should have finished a lot sooner than it does.
Getting over that hump may take a bit of work, but repeated listening of the album produces greater rewards. After a while, it becomes apparent — there’s a lot of good writing on this disc.
The first time I listened to Explosion in the Sky, I scoffed, “Hmmph. A second-rate mono.”
That’s because Explosions in the Sky sits closer to the tonal end of the instrumental rock spectrum, where mono occupies the dissonant end.
Dissonance appeals to my inner-composer, so it was easy to dismiss Explosion in the Sky.
Until I got to know The Earth Is Not a Cold, Dead Place.
Even though the five-track album clocks in at 45 minutes — an average of 9 minutes per track — it’s not a length of time squandared by randomness.
The pieces on The Earth Is Not a Cold, Dead Place (they’re too fucking long to be called “songs”) have all the deliberate architecture of chamber music. There’s a momentum to these works, a greater sense of structure at play where paying close attention provides many rewards.
This album would definitely fail Musicwhore.org’s Music for Airports test.
That said, it’s pointless to distinguish stand-out tracks. The negative adjective would be “homogenous”, which the album certainly is. But it’s the kind of homogeniety that feels cohesive.
It’s not symphonic, though, because the album isn’t that complex.
But it is quite beautiful.
The guitar parts interweave in way that’s almost canonical, and that goes a long way in keeping a listener interested.
In fact, it’s almost easy to hear The Earth Is Not a Cold, Dead Place orchestrated, or at the very least, arranged from amplified string quartet.
That said, The Earth Is Not a Cold, Dead Place is less an album and more an orchestral work, performed without an orchestra.
Bands have been ripping off Joy Division for years, but in the last 18 months, they’ve gotten a lot of attention.
Interpol is perhaps the most popular of the bunch, even though it’s not the best. The Stills seem to have a lot potential, but my money is on Longwave.
I Love You But I’ve Chosen Darkness could probably be accused of dipping into the same creative well, and on some level, the Austin, Texas, band could compete with the likes of the aforementioned groups.
But it’s not going to do it with this self-titled debut EP.
Produced by indie rock It-boy Britt Daniel — who hates being associated with indie rock — I Love You But I’ve Chosen Darkness, the recording, possess all the limp fidelity of, well, a Spoon album.
(Yes, I’ve listened to Spoon many times, but like Mishima Yukio novels, I don’t comprehend the appeal.)
The playing is messy, which is fine, but the recording sounds thin. The rhythm section — especially the bass work of Eddie Robert — seems to get lost, and this collection of songs needs a rhythm section with a strong presence.
The opener, “We’re Still the Weaker Sex”, has a lot of untapped potential. Everything on that track could have been bigger — busier guitars, deeper drums — but instead, it’s half a step up from demo quality.
The disc doesn’t really shine till the middle two songs. “I Want To Die In The Hot Summer” hints at how a crisper sound may benefit the band, while “When You Go Out” possesses enough guts to overcome its sonic trappings.
In terms of songwriting, I Love You But I’ve Chosen Darkness crank out a decent set of tunes, atmospheric and just a bit rough. It will be interesting to see how the band stretches that writing out for an entire album, but before then, I Love You But I’ve Chosen Darkness should find a producer who can do it justice.
Is that an acoustic guitar on a … Trail of Dead record? Sounds like it.
The Secret of Elena’s Tomb finds the band exploring the inverse of loud, with “Counting Off the Days”, the fourth track on this five-track EP, sticking to a relatively sparse arrangement and a slower tempo.
But this EP isn’t a token unplugged effort.
Everything that makes … Trail of Dead distinct — seismic shifts within songs, a penchant for distortion and fucking chaotic drumming — is still very much present.
It’s just interspersed with some decidedly quieter moments.
“Mach Schau” distinguishes itself for starting off the EP slowly, not blistering like most every other … Trail of Dead disc, while “All Saints Day” starts off as a close cousin to Sonic Youth’s “Dirty Boots”, till the thundering verses crash in.
But it’s “Crowning of a Heart” which marks the most notably zip in the band’s zag. It almost sounds radio-friendly.
“Intelligence” concludes the EP, first indulging in the quieter aesthetic but then giving way to the white noise of … Trail of Dead’s sturm und drang.
This more nuanced sound fits the band well, and it wouldn’t sound bad stretched over an entire album. But like Source Code and Tags before it, The Secret of Elena’s Tomb feels structurally tight — it’s more a suite than an EP.
As such, the five tracks on Elena’s Tomb feel complete, even if the tweak in … Trail of Dead’s usual modus operandi leaves a listener starving for more.
I know I’m in the minority when I say one of 10,000 Maniacs’ best albums is Love Among the Ruins.
Hell, I’d rank it No. 3 behind The Wishing Chair (#1) and In My Tribe (#2).
Love Among the Ruins was the first album the Maniacs recorded after Natalie Merchant left. Former member John Lombardo re-joined the group and brought singer Mary Ramsey along with him.
The pair, calling themselves John and Mary, had already recorded two albums for Rykodisc while 10,000 Maniacs became darlings of early 90s alt-rock radio. It was easy to mistake the duo for 10,000 Maniacs, especially since Maniacs drummer Jerome Augustinyak and guitarist Rob Buck played on their albums.
However much charisma Merchant possessed, Ramsey was a better fit for the Maniacs’ folk-rock sound, and her sweeter voice rooted the band more to its folk influences than Merchant’s political conscience.
But the death of Buck in 2000 found the two groups separated again — John and Mary going off on their own, with the rest of the Maniacs left to fill Buck’s and Merchant’s shoes.
The Pinwheel Galaxy is John and Mary’s third album, and its first without an overt influence by their once and future compatriots. (Well, not quite — Augustinyak still provides the drumming.)
And they still sound like 10,000 Manaics — early 10,000 Maniacs, that is.
Lombardo introduced Fairport Convention to his former bandmates, and its that influence that still informs his writing. If anything, he’s probably stuck closer to that original sound that his former band in Merchant’s latter days.
Although Buck was a wonderful guitarist, his participation on John and Mary’s earlier albums was a bit distracting. His presence, oddly enough, is missed on The Pinwheel Galaxy, but at the same time, it’s nice to hear John and Mary on their own terms.
Ramsey, in fact, flies solo as a songwriter on three tracks, two of which happen to be most anamolous on the album — the slightly psychedelic “Gaze” and the jazzy instrumental “5 Days in a Balloon”.
John and Mary give a nicely understated interpretation to the traditional “Lady Margaret and Street William”, while “Halo of Stars” and “Vacant Chair” ventures more into the folk half of the duo’s folk-rock sound.
The rest of the album is pretty much more of the same music the pair were producing a decade ago, but Ramsey’s light voice is magnetic enough on its own.
Still, there’s something charmingly dated about The Pinwheel Galaxy, despite attempts at coating the songs in a patina of reverb. No one makes music this unassuming and honest, and it’s been a decade since doing so was considered cool.
I fell in love with Natalie Merchant like everyone else in 1988, when 10,000 Maniacs scored its first hit album with In My Tribe.
And who wouldn’t?
She had a distinctive voice, and she penned literate lyrics. In context, she wasn’t Paula Abdul.
But somewhere along the way, audiences forget there were four other members in the band. Hell, Rob Buck’s guitar work probably has a more forceful presence than Merchant’s vocals.
Yet Merchant was the guiding force of the band, and by the time she left 10,000 Manaics, almost everyone perceived her as a solo artist already, relegating the rest of the group to session players.
Myself? I couldn’t contain my joy when I learned Mary Ramsey was taking over as 10,000 Maniacs’ singer.
I didn’t think much would come from Merchant’s solo career, and as it turned out, nothing much has.
So when the first strains of country fiddle opened The House Carpenter’s Daughter, I thought, “Damn, woman — why didn’t you do this sooner?”
The House Carpenter’s Daughter, Merchant’s first album since leaving Elektra, is something of a covers album — the singer performs traditional material throughout.
Merchant still can’t shake off the dour seriousness that saddled most of her post-10KM work, but with the songs she chose for this album, it works to her advantage.
These songs are time tested, so when Merchant reads “Crazy Man Michael” with an overdramatic flair or puts a dash of soul into “Which Side Are You On”, she can stay true to the song as well as to the canon of her work.
Of course, most traditional songs work best when they’re not overly modernized, which The House Carpenter’s Daughter does quite a bit. In that regard, “Weeping Pilgrim”, “Wayfaring Stranger” and “House Carpenter” stand out for letting Merchant service the song instead of vice versa.
One of 10,000 Manaics’ b-sides, a cover of the Carter Family’s “Wildwood Flower”, demonstrated Merchant sounded fine being a bit more country, something “Solider Soldier” and “Sally Ann” reinforce.
Merchant sings in a lower key nowadays, and that range has a nice resonance when she’s not mumbling.
In all, The House Carpenter’s Daughter is nice marriage of material with performer. Wish she could have done something this daring a lot sooner.
It was wise of 10,000 Manaics to subtitle Campfire Songs as “The Popular, Obscure and Unknown Recordings”.
For such retrospectives, “greatest hits” or “best of” are the usual prefixes, and what subjective ones they are Popularity, on the other hand, can at least be gauged on some empirical level.
The fact In My Tribe, perhaps the Maniacs’ most popular album, dominates the program of Campfire Songs’ first disc bears the subtitle out. While In My Tribe deserved the success it garnered back in 1987, it doesn’t possess quite the charm of 1985’s The Wishing Chair, represented by one track on this collection.
But like I said — subjective.
John Lombardo was the group’s main songwriting on The Wishing Chair, and despite Joe Boyd’s reportedly lassez-faire production, the album contained some of the Maniacs’ best material.
It’s interesting to note, then, how the band opted to include earlier versions of The Wishing Chair’s strongest songs — “Tension Makes a Tangle” and “My Mother the War”.
Campfire Songs is a fascinating document of a band’s rise to fame. Before they became alt-rock radio mainstays, 10,000 Maniacs were quite quirky.
Thematically, the earliest tracks were far more diverse — the machinations of a mother working to support a war effort on “My Mother the War”, the impact of science on belief in “Planned Obsolence”, even the psychological effects of cloudy weather on “Like the Weather”.
In My Tribe marked a transition for the band, between its bright, folk-rock sound and singer Natalie Merchant’s darker, socially conscious themes. That tension is reflected on the album’s most memorable tracks — “What’s the Matter Here?”, “Don’t Talk”.
The last half of Campfire Songs’ popular recordings find the Maniacs giving into the demands of fame. Merchant became the focal point of the group, and her direction ultimately led the band’s creative focus astray. The Tower of Power horns on “Candy Everybody Wants” was as low as it could go.
The obscure and unknown recordings that make up Campfire Songs second disc is something of a de facto covers album.
Most of the disc contains cover songs that were released as b-sides to the band’s singles. “Wildwood Flower” shows a country sound the Maniacs’ could have done well to feature more often. A live performance of “To Sir With Love”, featuring Michael Stipe, is just plain messy.
(Merchant’s performance of the Smiths’ “Everyday is Like Sunday” is said tt have put Morrissey in such a tift, he wrote a song to rebuke her.)
While the post-In My Tribe songs may be somewhat painful to listen to — it’s amazing just how lifeless the band’s mainstream work became — Campfire Songs possesses enough moments to remind listeners what made the Maniacs special in the first place.
The post-Elektra years are not documented on this collection, but by then, both Merchant and the Maniacs had moved in directions different from the one they charted together.
Truthfully? I never really paid much attention to George Michael after Faith. Not that there was much to which to pay attention …
My interest was, of course, piqued when Michael was tossed out of the closet back in 1998, and it felt nice to know those impressionable pre-teen years lusting after him weren’t for naught.
But musically, he doesn’t really engage me. Perhaps it’s a cultural gap that prevents me from digging British white man soul.
And for the most part, Michael’s latest album, Patience, doesn’t go a long way to conversion.
Like Annie Lennox and Duran Duran before him, music video has frozen Michael in time, and the ubiquitous success of Faith back in 1987 makes it plainly obvious he’s mellowed out. A lot.
Rod Stewart has taken to covering standards, but Michael crossed that milestone years ago.
Patience starts out with a series of incredibly mellow songs. Some, like the opening title track, are plain pretty. Others, like “John and Elvis are Dead”, are plain plodding.
Half-way through, Michael puts four on the floor with “Shoot the Dog” and “Flawless”. A lot of people despise “Shoot the Dog” — I don’t mind it because I tune out the lyrics.
Toward the end, Michael gets interesting and combines the two styles. Although overly long, “Precious Box” seethes even though it’s propelled by a techno beat.
Unfortunately, a lot of the quieter moments the album are just indescript. They seep so far into the background, a listener’s subconscious can’t even pick anything up.
Save for one thing.
Michael’s voice has really sweetened over the years. Despite trying to style himself as a heir apparent of the crooner sect, Michael sings with a tenderness that isn’t easily faked.
In the opening moments of Patience, Michael makes a striking impression without barely raising the volume. It’s a far cry from the guy who crowed about wanting your sex or some such.
Patience isn’t going to win any new fans, and it may not even totally satisfy his current ones. But he sings mighty fine on this disc, and at times, it’s the only thing that saves the album from itself.
Back when people were tripping over themselves to sing high praises for Annie Lennox’s solo debut Diva, I stood to the side and said, “Damn this is the coldest album I’ve ever listened to.”
Lennox’s voice has always been described as icy, but in 1992, music technology wasn’t yet advanced enough to fake warmth.
And the mostly synthetic Diva, while striking a chord with Lennox’s emotional words, was limited musically because of it.
It’s been 12 years since Diva effectively shook off the MTV shackle of Lennox’s early days, and her voice is as chilly as ever.
Thankfully, her music has defrosted quite a bit since then.
2003’s Bare is the first collection of original material from Lennox since Diva — although a 1999 reunion of the Eurythmics came across more as a Lennox solo album with Dave Stewart in tow. (1995’s Medusa was pretty much a covers album.)
Lennox still offers up the same sprawling, reflective music she did a decade ago, but this time around, its lushness feels live.
The intricately arranged “A Thosand Beautiful Things” and “Honestly” demonstrate the still-amazing versatility of Lennox’s voice. The long power chords on “Loneliness” give the song a rock swagger, while the sparse “The Saddest Song I’ve Got” segues with “Loneliness” for a stunning contrast.
The more uptempo tracks, “Bitter Pill” and “Erased”, don’t sound as robotic as they could have been. “The Hurting Time”, though, meanders way too long for its own good.
There’s a lot that’s familiar with Bare, and Lennox is very good at what she’s done before.
Long-time fans will no doubt relish Lennox’s soaring performance on this album, but for casual listeners, the album can get nondescript.
The good moments — “The Saddest Song I’ve Got”, “A Thousand Beautiful Things” — are very good, but they also leave the rest of the album behind.
But Lennox doesn’t need any new converts. The folks familiar with her already know what to expect.