From 'Darkness Racket & Twang' by Alex V. Cook

(3 excerpts)

VENI SUR! SENTI LA ILLINOISE!
Sufjan Stevens Illinoise (Asthmatic Kitty)

I had a cafeteria friend in college (College was great for that; you could have neatly segmented friendships that don’t infringe on your highly, highly important social network at large) where really all I remember is that we, both ardent followers of maverick 20th century American orchestral music, had this evolving routine about creating The Great American Opera, involving football players and frozen fish-sticks, Speed Racer and divorce, summing up the Modern Experience as we had Experienced it, and the key element is that it was to be sung in Esperanto, Language of the Future, which would preclude our lead to be played by William Shatner, who in a pre-Trek incarnation starred in an all-Esperanto thriller Incubus. A noble goal to be sure, one that would unite the People in a mix of college sophomore Marxism and “I’d-like-to-buy-the-world-a-Coke” communal consumerist convergence, but surprisingly it never got further than the planning stages, hashed out over slimy noodles and mystery chicken in Highland Cafeteria. No wonder opera is on a cultural downslide nowadays.

Fortunately, my friend and I were not the only ones wanting to do this sort of thing. Multi-instrumentalist and contender for becoming the new indie rock Steven Sondheim, Sufjan Stevens set forth a daunting project in 2002 of making 50 albums – one for each state – inaugurating this series with the transcendent epic Greeting from Michigan The Great Lakes State - a fantastic salad of Philip Glass minimalism and brilliant, sad melodies about hard life in the cold. It was his home state, so it’s a logical but easy place to start, and the fact that his next album was the exquisite but not geography themed “Seven Swans” I figured the checking-off of his music map would advance with the same pace as my Esperanto lessons. But no, Stevens, being of stronger stuff (and according to his bio, inventor of his own language in high school), kicked in with his second installment Illinoise, alternately titled in the graphics Come on! Feel the Illinoise! which ups the ante on Michigan in terms of complexity, consistency and élan.

It opens with “Concerning the UFO Sightings Near Highland, IL” which is one of the more concise titles he employs here (I am expecting that by the time he gets around to his Rhode Island installment, one song will consist of every name in the Providence phone book), all beautiful piano passages and his small, tranquil voice singing a hazy melody about God and stars which leads into the epic duo “The Black Hawk War, Or, How To Demolish An Entire Civilization And Still Feel Good About Yourself In The Morning, Or, We Apologize For The Inconvenience But You’re Going To Have To Leave Now, Or, ‘I Have Fought The Big Knives And Will Continue To Fight Them Until They Are Off Our Lands!’” followed by the two parter “Come On! Feel The Illinoise!” Watch, as your iPod explodes trying to fit that on its LCD. Seriously, there are some songs here where the song is over before the title finishes scrolling by on Windows Media Player. That aside, this convergence of strings and choirs and pulses is the most breathtaking thing you have heard until you get into “John Wayne Gacy, Jr.” a (gasp) touching song about the famed killer and the circumstances of his fame. Here is where Sufjan’s oft-mentioned Christianity is put to ideological task, in that toward the end he lets judgment fall aside, proclaiming

In my best behavior, I am really just like him
Look beneath the floorboards for the secrets I have hid

With the rush of black metal stuff I am getting for review lately, I would’ve guessed one of them to be the source of a Gacy tribute tune instead of this, much less expecting one that would be so genuinely touching.

There are a number of fun travelogue songs on this one, like “Jacksonville” and the resplendent “Chicago” where he matches Chamber of Commerce pamphlet copy lyrics to his innate clockwork of catchy chamber pop. No one trading in this strain, not even dearly beloved Brian Wilson, can match Stevens’ handle on how to craft a truly complex yet simple song.

One criticism I may lay upon our boy is that he can be a bit of a Pollyanna in his banjos and Up With People optimism, but all that slides away when you encounter lyrics that appear to have been ripped from his journal pages, like the so-sweet-I-wanna-cry remembrance of innocence challenged in “Casimir Pulaski Day”

Tuesday night at the Bible Study
We lift our hands and pray over your body but nothing ever happens
I remember at Michael’s house
In the living room when you kissed my neck and
I almost touched your blouse

I can’t think of a sweeter and more real depiction of the nervousness of exploring one another for the first time. I get that shudder reminding me of the first time I French kissed a girl: she from Denton, TX, we both escaping the RV’s of our families in a Colorado state park, with both of our little sisters issuing an alarm of I’m-gonna-tells. Delicious beautiful stuff.

Another wistful moment is the acceptance of his stepmother in “Decatur, Or, Round Of Applause For Your Step Mother!” Many of us kids of this vintage, before the boorish Moral Majority decided to keep dysfunctional families together like Petri dishes growing discontent at geometric rates, can readily relate to the concept of having to get to know a new parent. And that moment where your decision is made final one way or another.

So much on this album. Sweet instrumental interludes longer in title than song like “To The Workers Of The Rockford River Valley Region, I Have An Idea Concerning Your Predicament, And It Involves Shoe String, A Lavender Garland, And Twelve Strong Women” or “A Conjunction Of Drones Simulating The Way In Which Sufjan Stevens Has An Existential Crisis In The Great Godfrey Maze.” Great little positivist stompers like “The Man of Metropolis Steals our Hearts.” Lotus flower explosions of choirs and chimes like “Prairie Fire That Wanders About” images of Carl Sandburg and Lincoln and cows and corn and snow and childhood and loss and love. It’s too much.

And yet, with all this going into it, it’s his sound of pulsing beauty and progress that holds it together. Personally I find this a musical Triumph, with a big T. I, like many who fell head over heels with Michigan, believed he couldn’t top it, and I’m not sure he did, but he at least produced its equal, with these two relatively uninteresting-to-the-outsider places creating such engaging works of art. It brings credence to the idea that all things are inherently fascinating if you submit to opening your heart to them. And since you and I have problems doing that, being as cool and been-there as we both are, Sufjan Stevens arrives in the nick of time with a crowbar to crack open those stones beating in our sunken chests, letting in the light of discovery. And it’s not even in Esperanto!

 

RELEASE THE WISER, OLDER BATS
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - The Lyre of Orpheus/Abattoir Blues (Mute)

What to do when you are an elder statesman in a community that reveres your continued commitment to the cause, but in reality favors the young? Do you try to “hang,” throwing in an awkward sampling of your misconstrued take on youth culture into your presence, creating deafening silences amongst your audience when you exhibit them? Do you wallow in your decrepit establishment, relying on mere reputation as Once Being Cool to propel you along? It worked for Elvis in his later years, sorta, but even he wound up like all the others falling into this trap, becoming living cartoon versions of themselves, relying on the animation skills of others to keep you moving. The nobler path is to rally your resources, milk the cow of your public acceptance, and become a Pop singer. And I don’t mean like Britney Spears or Usher, I’m talking the old school “Pop” section of the record store where Frank Sinatra, Tom Jones and Tim Buckley lie, a garden of perversity masquerading as lush topiary (ever listen to the actual lyrics to Tom Jones’ “Delilah?”) True, it may not be the most rock-n-roll way to go out, but really, you can only be in Van Halen for so long until you are doomed to become merely David Lee Roth. You might as well make the most of it.

Former punk rock poster boy Nick Cave has wedged nicely into this category of Pop Singer with his latest double LP The Lyre of Orpheus/Abattoir Blues. It is packaged as two separate albums, but really it is more of a large scale Special Performance (remember those? Used to be your couldn’t swing a dead cat at your TV without hitting “Bob Hope In Hawaii” or something like that) running the wide range of Nick Cave’s songwriting niches. It opens (if you start on the Lyre side) with the title track that harkens back to the carnival-in-hell theatrics of the mid to late 80’s. Man, I used to love this shit, but somewhere after numerous variations of this kind of lurching macabre-ity from him and many others, I discovered that the circus is actually boring.

Still, Nick can bring the goods as well as they can still be brought, but two back slides to this style (Abattoir’s “Hiding All Away” is the other) are the weaker points in this smorgasbord. The high points for me are the autumnal ballad “Breathless” (infested with a beautiful swarm of flautists), the overblown Neil Diamond storm burst of “Supernaturally” and the exquisitely contents-under-pressure soul-rock volcano of “There She Goes My Beautiful World” (my favorite of Nick’s adopted styles, this is his greatest example of it since “Deanna” some two decades ago.) The Sinatra-grade wistful gaze into the Mirror of the Past that is “Abattoir Blues” seems a surprisingly vulnerable revealing look at the man who is famous for staying in character. Maybe it’s the oft-mentioned line “I woke up with a frappuccino in my hand” gives this impression of exposure, since we have come to believe that Count Cave survives solely on communion wafers soaked in blood and whiskey.

To me, this is one of the freshest things he’s put out since the quiet “The Boatman’s Call” in that he is expanding on his personas, and breathing his own life into them and, for a change, not crashing every Hindenburg he inflates. Instead, the feel of the album is of soaring above the various landscapes he paints. And somehow, this distance makes the songs more believable, more direct than what I’ve heard in the past. He’s not trying to be Bruce Springsteen, aching to convince you he’s still mopping the floor of the Stone Pony, But he is letting you know he gets it, and he still has more to offer besides the same clown act. I just hope he keeps wiping off the makeup as he goes, one day letting that Bad Seed blossom like it wants to.

 

THE NO LONGER GUILTY PLEASURE OF HARD ROCK
Drunk Horse In Tongues (Tee Pee)

All hail the ass-kickers! I didn’t always feel this way. I’ve alluded to my formative music years embracing what could be graciously described as “less macho” musical groups in protest to the legions of idiots that held onto bands that fizzled out of their lumpen existences before we were born. My turnaround came in my late twenties, when at some point I acquired a rather formidable collection of 8-track tapes and would listen to them out of the steadfast irony that only a single man in the first third of his life can muster. Given the era in which these infinite loops of hissy splendor were the rage, there was a sizable Foghat and Nugent contingent in my collection. It was purely ironic, mind you, I still didn’t admit to being into this music.

Finally, the time came to move out of my kitsch-stuffed, shitty apartment and into a nice-smelling place with an actual woman and shed much of my superfluous hipster plumage. A friend expressed interest in my collection, so when I went over to his apartment to discuss the terms of his exchange, I was looking through his own hipster music collection and noticed the bank of Led Zeppelin CD’s, commented thereupon and he said he’d trade me the whole catalog for the 8-track tsunami. Best deal I ever made, because I found a whole classic wave of sound that I had dismissed. Intricate, emotional, powerful. I gleefully accepted Zeppelin into my heart as my personal savior. I won’t say it turned me completely, but it opened me up to the wide vista of rock.

My review of the Drunk Horse CD might take a whole different tone had this transformation not have happened. These guys take the hooks and drive and solos of all those grinding power anthems emanating from your classic rock station, mixed with the power/punk/metal/pop rock of the Foo Fighters to make one of the most kick-ass albums I’ve heard this year. And I know people love to say they hate the Foo Fighters, but you and I both know you love them. Just admit it, and move on with your life a better person.

In Tongues swaggers out the fence with the battering ram - the slide guitar-laden groove of “Strange Transgressors” and keeps that pace throughout the whole damn thing. The earth is duly scorched by the second track “Nice Hooves” with its early ZZ Top piston action and requisite crossroads story and the sky starts to collapse on “Howard Phillips” which evolves from a metal stomp into full-on progressive drill to the center of the earth.

The chorus on “Priestmaker” pushes things a bit into metal parody, but the song hits so hard that no foul can be noted here. But, in this den of killer riffs, the killer-est is the meat-slicer opening the Golden Earring gone ballistic classic “Self-Help”, easily the finest number on this jukebox, and while you are listening to it, the best song you ever heard. I fully admit to not having taken the Thrasher class on Metal Classification but I’ll stab at it saying that the eerily current “Vatican Shuffle” shreds, if I am using that word correctly. This is the hard rock album I have been looking for after trying to get into the likes of Queens of the Stone Age and never really grabbing hold.

Not to paint this as a redux BTO album or anything, I must inform you there is the artful instrumental epic “Grinding Teeth” that drags in traces of everything from Heart to Zappa to King Crimson to John Coltrane to form an unrelenting neo-prog runaway train the likes of The Mars Volta has never unleashed.

If you have been looking for something for your car stereo to bomb out the quasi-kick-assedness of all those adorable punky garage bands that cipher for rebelliousness, I point you to this snorting bronco kicking at the gate of this stable. This will garner the admirable knowing glance of the dude in the adjacent lane, even if you manage to not bang your head repeatedly on the steering wheel, and when the extended solo on “Reverse Close Encounter” begins to peal forth, it is time to test how loud that stereo will go.