But from there… from there it’s up a big, long hill.  I listened to the album the first time in a state of confusion, trying to figure out if I was being blown away or let down.  Weird place to teeter, huh?

I really love the lead guitar lines on this album.  It could be the mixing, maybe they were always this killer and just mixed down on the previous albums?  Almost every song has a riff that kills.

Track 3 has a title like “Bring it On” and still manages to kick ass without the title line sounding awkward.  All the while reminding me thematically of Springsteen’s Tunnel of Love wearing some ass-kicking boots.  How cool is that?  (Yes, there are probably always going to be Springsteen comparisons in my Anthem commentary.)

Here’s a live version (I like the album version better, but those are harder to find these days):

www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CQxnFDjNFA

Track 4 (“The Diamond Church Street Choir”) veers into I dunno, something else.  The old school r&b (?) “bleeding out” (no idea what the name is, but I’ve always called what he’s doing here something like that as it sounds like pushing your voice just beyond what it should into something raw and beautiful and painful but not yet tired or dying do and I fucking love it) he does in this track kicked me in the gut when I heard it.  Not because it’s super amazing so much as that I just did not expect it.  It’s a sign of a lot of other little risks they take on this album.  I found NOTHING stale here – although there are a few times where I don’t think the risks paid off as well.

One of these was the semi-spoken intro to track 7 (“The Boxer”), which I do not love, but damn the rest of the song destroys so who cares?  Chop it out of the mp3 if it annoys you that much (Yes, I have done this in the past to songs with obnoxious spoken word intros or outtros that throw off my enjoyment of the pacing of an album).

Track 6 (“Orphans”) reminds me a little of “No Surrender” thematically, and that’s about as far from a bad thing as you can get.

Track 10 (“We did it when we were young”) is the one I find weakest.  It’s mining the same vein as The Killer’s Sam’s Town, so of course it’s digging in a pretty rich vein (but also may be a little overblown and retro for some modern ears)… but I’m not convinced that it’s as good as the rest of the album.  In a sense it’s the “requisite ballad”, but I’m also not convinced that was necessary.  It’s not a bad song in the least, but I think it would fit better as the 10th track in an 11 track album than as the 10th in a 10.  Make any sense?  Hard to articulate.  The lyrics are good.  I think they could have been great with a stronger chorus.

General thoughts:

• Either they’ve mostly abandoned the musical references that so colorfully checkered their first two discs, or they’ve  taken it to a whole new level that I’m not picking up on.  I miss it a little, but the album is so good that I can’t justify being annoyed about it.
• I’m not sure there is a single song as good as the title track from The ’59 Sound (because that song kicks me in the gut – pretty much every time I hear it it’s a workout), but this album itself is just (man I want to use “fucking” as an adjective so many times in this post that I’m trying not to use it at all) so much stronger that it doesn’t matter.  8 songs @ 4.5 beats 1 song @ 5 & the others in the 3-4 range, you know?
• I’m not sure if I think the album is better than Sink or Swim (their 1st) or not.  It certainly showcases some improvements in musicianship and writing, but it’s hard to beat that strong of a debut album.

So far I’m gonna call it at least

FOUR AND A HALF STARS

and one of the better albums of the last few years.

Good year for music (Hello High Violet!).  Although I’m still bitter about the new Son Volt being such a let down.

Ahem.  Anyway.  So!  I’ve always been somewhat of an evangelist – but not in the religious sense (although I did go through a phase that could be said to approximate that O.o).  I’ve always been maybe a little too motivated (at least internally) about sharing the music & books that I enjoy with others.   Not so much TV & movies – I just don’t care enough.  But music and books… those are two things I’m way into.

I’m sure some of it is born of the standard loner desire to have others to actually enjoy your interests with – people you can shoot the shit with about your favorite bands or books and know they won’t be out in the cold.  But, there’s at least a touch of genuine altruism in there.  If I really enjoy something, I want to share that in the hopes that it will make someone’s day the way it made mine.

NOW.  I couldn’t tell you what the exact breakdown is between the two, but I’d wager it’s pretty close to 50/50. If you’ve known me long I’ve probably tried to turn you on to some band or another, or maybe even a book.  The funny thing is, for all the time invested, I don’t think I’ve succeeded much.  I’ve had the most headway with music I guess, but I can only think of one or two instances where someone has read a book on my recommendation.  I’m not sure that says anything about me so much as I tend to hang out with people with very different reading tastes than myself.  Which does get lonely I admit, moreso than differing tastes in music.

So maybe that’s why I still blog about books and music (and anything I can’t find someone to yak about with really)?  Talking to the air beats talking to nothing, or so I’ve heard.

In light of all this, I decided to make a nice, compressed list of things that I enjoy recommending to folks, just in case anyone ever happens to be open to that kind of thing.  Not complete of course, but a nice cross-section.

Some of these are my “favorite” things to one degree or another, others are just things that I enjoy talking about, or think deserve more exposure.

Books:

The Illuminatus Trilogy – The only book(s) I still re-read every 18 months or so.   Probably too weird for most people.  If you like weirdness, drugs, sex and a little violence and more weirdness…

The Dune series, particularly if you can make it through to my favorites  – books 4-6: God Emperor of Dune, Heretics of Dune, and Chapterhouse Dune.  Most sci-fi fans read Dune, but for some reason they stop there.  This baffles me as Dune, really, is not even the strongest book of the series (for me).  It’s the most simple, direct and “sci-fi-ish” though, so maybe that’s what does it.  After that, shit just goes off the rails in a way that a lot of casual sci-fi fans might miss, or be pushed back by.

Atlas Shrugged & The Fountainhead – The closest thing to classics I will touch.  No, I don’t agree completely with Rand’s Objectivism, but I still find the books enjoyable reading and great conversational fodder (when I’ve recently read them, I forget things FAST).

Night’s Dawn trilogy – Absolutely brilliant “hard” sci-fi.  The best written in the last 20 years (ie about the bounds of my sci-fi reading lifetime) IMHO.  Just, just brilliant really.  Lot’s of pages, lots of text, so you’ve got to have a love of the long works to enjoy this but man is it worth it.  I’ve re-read these a few times as well.  I’ve bought the entire series maybe 3 times as I’ve moved and lost (then re-found) older copies and even given the entire series to a friend once.  He has not yet read it.  Some “science” hero he is  ;p.

Mistborn trilogy – One of the best new fantasy series that I’ve had the pleasure of stumbling across.  A far cry from the simplistic lands of Tolkien this series asks a couple of interesting questions: What if the bad guy (Sauron analogue) won?  What if the bad guy winning wasn’t the worst that could have happened?

Serious fantasy fans already have their minds made up about the Wheel of Time series and the Song of Fire and Ice.  I say both are must reads, but the latter may appeal more to non fantasy fans.

Bands:

Starflyer 59 – The old stuff at least, I can’t really get behind the last 3 or 4 albums.  If you’re reading this post you probably know me (?sadly? in 6 years of blogging I haven’t picked up any non friend/family readers), so you’ve probably heard of and heard these guys.   I’m just putting them here (and at the top) for the sake of completion and history – them being the first band that made me want to share music with others and all.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=csPEitRRfuM

Gaslight Anthem – Awesome (but with room to grow) modern rock and roll.  I’ve extolled their virtues on a number of blog posts, so if you haven’t checked them out by now (at least to decide that you don’t like them),  you probably don’t think very highly of my opinion, at minimum.

Airborne Toxic Event -  Another band I’ve pushed a bit on this blog.  A little like the National in genre/sound, but a bit more energetic.

The Crush & Death on Wednesday – two long defunct bands, both of which I really loved and tried to share with others.  The Crush is alt/punk/rock in the grand Twin Cities tradition and DoW is rockabilly/rock/punk a la nothing quite like it at the time.  Both bands that I think had enough commercial appeal to blow up (but never did), and enough chops and genuine flavor to appeal to the rest.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzZwHbxWV28

Elvis Costello – the early stuff mostly. Hard to try and describe a guy who’s worn so damn many shirts.  His first 4 albums are where most of it is at, although there are many, many later tracks that I love as well – I just don’t find the complete albums as enjoyable to listen to.  Here’s a video of one of my favorite EC classics.  The video is from the year I was born…. which is crazy.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=3j7JFP6ZOCI

Joe Christmas – another favorite dead band of mine that never really got any kind of recognition. Sadly, the singer’s later bands well, sucked.

Hum – Yep, another dead band.   Post shoegazer droney wall of distortiony awesomesauce.  Albums 3 & 4 should be on any alt music aficionado’s shelf (or iPod) IMHO.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTl8HcvYRqg

Morphine – What is it with dead bands?  Well, not many had a dude playing 2 saxs at once and another on two string slide bass.  Don’t let that scare you off though :).  The saxophonist (?) is only playing one in the vid below, sorry.  Ahh, found one, second vid has the double sax action.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=985JGeGq_tc

www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6naQ195c_k

The National – NOT a dead band!   A band a certain Science Hero turned me on to that is chock full of awesome nuggets.  Not even sure what to call the sound other than some flavor of indie.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhA9ARZ6pjk

Tiger Army – Pyschobilly!  Like, faster rockabilly basically.  Except they’ve got a groovy little goth theme going on with songs about beautiful death and violence and the like.  Here’s one of their mellower songs:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=–NyHw8rQ3I

TV on the Radio – Another not dead band.  One of the pinnacles of alt/indie “rock” at the moment I think, quality and creativeness wise.   Past Arcade Fire imho, by quite a bit.  Not that there’s any reason to compare the two BUT I keep hearing references (still) to AF as “it”.  TVotR is also “it”.  QUITE.

Here’s an older one of theirs:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHrTOQ18yzU

Let’s call that enough for this post.  Hopefully this was interesting to someone.  If you’ve got the time, and you haven’t already formed an opinion about a given band, at least check out the various song videos.  Good for background noise if nothing else.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_8O52LAmkk

Click on images to play from my Vox blog.

The original:

Lyrics (from here):

“The River”

I come from down in the valley
where mister when you’re young
They bring you up to do like your daddy done
Me and Mary we met in high school
when she was just seventeen
We’d ride out of that valley down to where the fields were green

We’d go down to the river
And into the river we’d dive
Oh down to the river we’d ride

Then I got Mary pregnant
and man that was all she wrote
And for my nineteenth birthday I got a union card and a wedding coat
We went down to the courthouse
and the judge put it all to rest
No wedding day smiles no walk down the aisle
No flowers no wedding dress

That night we went down to the river
And into the river we’d dive
Oh down to the river we did ride

I got a job working construction for the Johnstown Company
But lately there ain’t been much work on account of the economy
Now all them things that seemed so important
Well mister they vanished right into the air
Now I just act like I don’t remember
Mary acts like she don’t care

But I remember us riding in my brother’s car
Her body tan and wet down at the reservoir
At night on them banks I’d lie awake
And pull her close just to feel each breath she’d take
Now those memories come back to haunt me
they haunt me like a curse
Is a dream a lie if it don’t come true
Or is it something worse
that sends me down to the river
though I know the river is dry
That sends me down to the river tonight
Down to the river
my baby and I
Oh down to the river we ride.

The Killers thematic twist/update/take from 2006:

Lyrics:

“This River Is Wild”

Leaves are falling down
On the beautiful ground
I heard a story from the man in red
He said the leaves are falling down
Such a beautiful sound
Son, I think you better go ahead

But you always hold your head up high
Cause it’s a long, long, long way down
This town was meant for passing through
But it ain’t nothing new
Now go and show them
That the world stayed round
But it’s a long, long, long way down

You better run for the hills before they burn
Listen to the sound of the world
And watch it turn
I just want to show you what I know
And catch you when the current lets you go
Or should I just get along with myself

I never did get along with everybody else
I’ve been trying hard to do what’s right
But you know I could stay here all night
And watch the clouds fall from the sky

This river is wild
This river is wild

Run for the hills before they burn
Listen to the sound of the world
Watch it turn
But shake a little
Sometimes I’m nervous when I talk
I shake a little
Sometimes i hate the line I walk
I just want to show you what I know
And catch you when the current lets you go

Or should I just get along with myself
I never did get along with everybody else
Ive been trying hard to do whats right
But you know I could stay here all night
And watch the clouds fall
From the sky

Because this river is wild
God speed you boy
This river is wild

Now Adam’s taking bombs
And he’s stuck on his mom
Because that bitch
Keeps trying to make him pray

He’s with the hippie in the park
Coming over the dark
Just trying to get some of that little girl play

You better run for the hills before they burn
Listen to the sound of the world
But watch it turn
I just want to show you what I know
And catch you when the current lets you go

Or should I get along with myself
I never did get along with everybody else
I’ve been trying hard to do whats right
But you know I could stay here all night
And watch the clouds fall from the sky

And pay this hell in me tonight
Because this river is wild
God speed you boy
This river is wild
God speed you boy
This river is wild

Now the cards are everywhere face in dust
The fairground
I don’t think I ever seen so many headlights
But there’s something pulling me
The circus and the crew
Well they’re just passing through
Making sure the merry still goes round
But it’s a long, long, long way down

And now Gaslight Anthem’s take/update/etc. from this year:

Anyway, on to the album.

We have an interesting situation here in the sense that I’m actually going to recommend buying something where every song isn’t awesome.

Now, none of them are bad mind you, but some do tend to “flame out” little bit (in the sense of a slowly crashing blimp, not a really gay party), but the crashes themselves are usually worth watching.

Maybe you hear them and immediately go “Hey this is just a punk rock updating of the Jersey Shore Sound, kinda like the last Killers album”, or maybe you just hear the bits and pieces of a modern Springsteen kinda thing going on (in the same spirit as the Hold Steady – but coming from a completely different angle).  Or maybe you just like good modern rock and roll – which seems to get labeled as “punk rock” a lot in the genre tags.  And maybe it is, maybe the two are so enmeshed now that it doesn’t matter…because I can definitely hear the punk influence here, but I’d still have to say it tends more strongly towards the rock.  Any which way you come at it, if you like flavors of rock, I think you’ll really like this band and this album.

So, I’ll embed what I think is the best song, and then what I think is the weakest song below so we have the whole spectrum out there.

Here’s “The ’59 Sound”, which is either a really touching personal story, or a “great and beautiful lie”.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sbi2ednaNk

And now here’s “Even Cowgirls get the Blues”, which sounds different from the rest of the album, and just doesn’t do it for me.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYwdl1UDzMo

So, somewhere in between there lies the rest of the album.

It starts off really strong with 5 good songs, then stumbles just a little bit with the almost-there-but-still-too-awkward  “Miles Davis and the Cool”, then kinda does the Ellen DeGenres running-after-trip thing (sorry, can’t find a vid link! :( ) for a 3 tracks.   Nothing horrible, just not quite connecting.  There is a random cameo from the Bosstones singer doing bgvs in one of the songs. I should note that nothing here is as jarring as the Killer’s “Uncle Johnny”.  Jesus that was a bad song in the middle of a good album.

It starts to pick back up again with”Meet me by the River’s Edge”, a modern take on “The River” run through the “No Surrender” blender.  In this case, our protagonists aren’t going to the river as an escape, but rather as the escape  – instead of a stopgap, it’s a catalyst.  It’s an interesting take, and just for that it gets points.  Another random Killer’s comment, since both bands are doing the same kind of thing (except in the Killer’s case it was only for one album) – Gaslight does a better “The River” update than the Killers.  I think you could argue (I’m not sure I would though) that the Killer’s track is a better song, but I think Gaslight does a better thematic update.  “Meet me …” sounds much less forced than “This River is Wild” in its approach to me.  Neither can touch the original.

After that are 2 nice, mellow songs that I haven’t really had a chance to get into yet. I’m usually listening on the bus, or downstairs with the giant heater running behind me, so mellow tracks are often lost on me for a while.

So, why should I buy this you say?  Don’t I normally recommend against buying an album that has songs that aren’t 90% stellar?  Yeah, for the most part I do.  But sometimes I make exceptions for things that are exceptional for one reason or another.

Part of that “exceptional” comes from the amazingness that is their first album – Sink or Swim.  That one is just freaking killer, amazing debut album and it’s just another sign of how screwed up the music industry is that it didn’t at least kinda jump off.  Maybe that’s a good thing though and they’ll get in “the hard way” and be better for it.  I kinda doubt it, but I’m hopefully.  We need more bands crafting songs of substance and kicking ass.

Also, I should add that the album itself is pretty damn close to 90%, even if certain tracks falter a little bit.  As a whole it just holds together.

This band hit the ground running, and I’m hopefully that they don’t pull a Bloc Party on album #3, whenever that comes out.

Final Judgment: 87.3%

This was a really tough decision, and may get revised in the future.   I think for some people it’s gonna be a 95% album, but those 3 songs in the middle just haven’t done it for me yet, so that is gonna bring things down.  As a note, anything I rate over 85% is a “go out and buy me!!”.  Sink or Swim is probably around a 92-93%.

If I were I making music in a band right now, I’d hope it would sound something like Gaslight.  Not exactly, but it’s definitely the kind of vibe I’d enjoy and in the area I’d be going for.

I’ll leave you with a track called “Wooderson” from the first album:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXStIH3-SHw

New Bloc Party…not so much.  Glad I checked it out before buying it.  One song I hate, a few are decent, and the rest just run together.

new Gaslight Anthem is interesting, considering buying.  It really does sound like Bouncing [Souls +] Springsteen.

Rise Against sounds like this Christian band whose name I’ve forgotten.  I was thinking of a different band (Against Me maybe?) when I checked them out, not what I was expecting.

The new Raphael Saadiq is fun and entertaining in that current retro-motown (??) way.  What is this genre called anyway?  Neo-town?  For the most part I dig it (Sharon Jones & the Dap Kings being another great group in this genre).

Did I already mention that the new Hold Steady is awesome?  If so, I say it again.  Stay Positive.

What else have I been listening to lately…Sugar – a now defunct, previous project of Bob Mould, of Husker Du fame – you can find some tracks at a myspace fan page here. A bit of the Dismemberment Plan (Emergency & I & Change are great!)

I was listening to Rilo Kiley today on the bus.  For being the project of an ex-child star, they have some great songs.

The Raveonettes showed SO SO much potential, then very rarely ever hit that plateau.  I think they could be a band I really dig, but the albums fall pretty flat IMHO.  The sound though…the sound has serious potential and a couple of gems shine through.

I’ve had a weird craving for some strange chunk of country music from my childhood that I can’t place a firm grip on lately.  I went through Garth Brooks’ No Fences the other night…and that wasn’t quite it…still looking.  I know what’s wrong with me rigHT??  Nostalgia or something I think ;).

Anyway…looks like myspace is the new easy link of choice for music.  That amuses and saddens me.  I’d link to their main pages, but for the most part it takes too many clicks to get to the sample music (if any exists).

So, that’s me – what is everyone else listening to lately?