Rilo Kiley - The Execution Of All Things

Rilo Kiley - The Execution of All Things
Published in 2002
Wikipedia

First off, many thanks to Grant. I got this on the first day of the project, and wanted to get back to it quickly. Hope that you'll make some more suggestions, but later, I've got like 10 albums on my plate right now, and that is building space into them.

Rilo Kiley's Execution Of All Things is an album that presents a lot of questions to me. Why do I find it moving? Why do I like it? What is it that makes a good indie rock record?

First, I will say, I was pretty sure I was going to write the album off at the beginning. It's a little light, and it seemed like they weren't taking things seriously, including the music. I find that I really enjoy the music of indie music, while sometimes I find the lyrical genius that people espouse about insufferable. But you know what? This record won me over, and it's actually precisely because of the vocalist(s) (I enjoyed both of them, but I have to think that her's are more fondly remembered than his). Her voice is incredibly ethereal, and I use that word knowing that every other person writing about Rilo Kiley must use that word to describe it, but seriously, it's the best word for it. Angelic would be too far up the ladder, and Earthy is far too low down for her, so we mix angelic and earthy and get Ethereal. The band can play, and does enough noodling around with sounds to be considered indie, and they produce some stuff that stands up well. It's a good album.

But what I really want to talk about here is a concept. I want to talk about "that Song." You know that Song. The one on any album that takes it from just good, to something more. You know, when you hit Consequence (for me, maybe others have a different one) on Make Yourself and you realize that these guys are not fucking around here. When you hear something that takes the whole album and kicks it up a notch, fucking makes it something that you are no longer just hearing and move over to 'Listening to'?

For me, that Song on this album was Hail to Whatever You Found In The Sunlight That Surrounds You. I don't know why, maybe I'm just in love with the weird sound of a slide guitar, and her voice mixing together, but all I can think about while listening to this song is that blue western sky, streaked with clouds and beautiful. It just felt perfect, and it really shifted how I was percieving the album. It made a huge difference in the way that I was listening to it.

I'm going to suggest you aquire this album, but I won't say that it is anything but optional. It's a fantastic album, but it definately will not appeal to everyone, which is part of the appeal to some people. So, what I'm saying is that Grant is a hipster douchebag. Wow, this essay took a turn somewhere.

Next up: The Beatles - The Beatles (The White Album) in celebration of 09/09/09. If I had done it first, it would have been my 9th post too.

I don't think you're a hipster douchebag, Grant,

Matt.

Silver Jews - American Water

Silver Jews - American Water
Published in 1998
Wikipedia - Silver Jews

So you thought you got rid of me? You thought that just because I have no job and nothing really to do, I'd drop you. Well, that's what you get for doubting me, because here I am, back with another update to The Album Project.

First of course, we must thank our generous opinion donor. Zach T, thanks for the suggestion.

Unfortunately, I don't have a lot to say about this album. It was a good album, and I enjoyed it, but it didn't really stick with me that much. I enjoyed the songs in general, and the music was good, it just didn't really leave that much of an impression.

I will say, I really enjoyed the sound of the album. They had a great sound going, and the vocals are quite nice, especially when the two vocalists are singing together. It's an album that I think I would enjoy more if I listened to it more.

Zach, I'm psyched to try out some more of your suggestions, I'm sorry I don't have more to say about this.

More later,
Matt

The Black Keys - The Big Come Up

The Black Keys - The Big Come Up
Published in 2002
Wikipedia

First, of course, I want to thank Dalton for suggesting this album to me. I'll be coming back to this point, but I just want to make sure that I get this usual thanks out of the way.

Holy Fucking Shit.

Seriously.

Like for real.

That was fucking incredible. Like right now, I'm still listening to the album, too psyched to not start typing. If you enjoy music, fucking get this album. At this point, I'm almost thinking of starting an Optional/Not Optional system of judging these things, and this motherfucker is squarely in the Not Optional Category.

Have I made my point yet? Can I stop telling you to go listen to it? No? Okay, if you don't hear this album once before you die, you have failed life as a human being. Like Christ, if you died before it, you missed the fuck out motherfucker. You gotta pray that he comes the fuck down to Hell itself to drag your ass up, pull your shit back up to heaven.

Anyway, lets get serious here, put on the old journalist fucking beanie, and start talking some sense, man. Remember the first time you saw Blues Brothers (you did see Blues Brothers)? When you realized that there were some great songs out there that you had always known, but they were just a little out of your range? You saw all those great fucking artists all together, making some fucking awesome music?

Then remember when, like Jake, you had the Revelation that the Blues Brothers was actually really fucking light on the actual fucking blues? You know, when you realized that it was kind of poppy and meh, especially whenever the Brothers themselves were performing? Their band was fucking kicking, but there was something missing? You know, like, I don't know, fucking grime? Some dirt on those suits, a little downheartedness that they just couldn't pull off. They were having so much fun, how could they really be singing the blues?

Well, I have come down from the mountain bearing some motherfucking tablets for you. God damn, this is a good fucking album. There is one arguably weak track in my mind, and that one I'll talk about later. Dalton, this is exactly what I started this project for. I wanted to find these kinds of gems, and expand my library. I am not a huge fan of Blues in general, I mean I can dig some BB King, some Ray Charles, a bit of Muddy Waters, but this is exactly the kind of thing that could get me into the genera.

Speaking of which, me and my mom were listening to it together, and we were talking about who it sounds like. She said "It's got a Jimi Hendrix kind of feel to it." "Yeah, and BB King and Muddy Waters." That is what it sounds like. Like they took everything you fucking want about fucking down dirty rock and fucking roll, slammed it together, and fucking put it in your ears.

Were I to be someone who engages in rampant overstatement (see entire article above, and probably below) I'd say that this album is fucking cataclysmic. It is one of those fucking albums that starts a chain reaction in your brain that breaks all the fucking rules, slams down the construct and really makes you think about what you like about music.

Every song they do is their song. Even the fucking covers are their song. These songs are stripped to the fucking bones, except for a couple of samples they play over top. Just a voice (my god that voice!), a guitar (downlow, dirty, grimy guitar), and some drums. We don't need any fucking thing but that to rock, the album fucking screams at you.

If I were to identify a weak track on the album, it would be Them Eyes, which is just a bit too poppy for me. Sounds a little too much like what a band that was hugely influenced by the Black Keys would do, but fuck man, it's a fucking good fucking song still.

I want The Black Keys to do an entire tour where they never fucking touch a stage, but they just come around fucking playing on back portches with fucking lemonade and piss fucking cheap American fucking beer, a grill going and fucking people sitting around on freshly cut grass, getting drunk and fucking singing songs, and hanging out. Playing whatever the fuck they want. Spreading those god damn blues around to everybody.

I'm doing that gushing thing again, but I really would suggest that you aquire this album however you need to, and give it a listen. It's fucking worth it, back to front. I'm also marking Dalton down for a Eppy, the award I just made up for Epic Album Suggestions.

Keep the suggestions coming, American Water by the Silver Jews is up next.
Fucking god that is a good album,

Matt

Queens of the Stone Age - Era Vulgaris

Queens of the Stone Age - Era Vulgaris
Published in 2007
Wikipedia

Of course, first and foremost is giving thanks to the person who suggested this album to me, both this time and the first time I listened to it. So, thank you Kristin for suggesting that I do a write up on them and getting me into them in the first place.

Queens of the Stone Age is one of my go to bands on my iPod. They are one of the bands that no matter what I am doing right then, I can find one of their songs and find something that will pump me up or slow me down. They have made some great albums, and have a constantly developing sound, that always is consistantly good. Their production values are always high, and their experiments are few and far between. I don't think I have heard a song by them that I haven't appreciated, and I find them to constantly have good albums. I'm a fan, and that makes it difficult to approach writing this from any other position but the fan position.

Actually listening to this album without my fandom in mind reminded me about how much I miss when I just put it on and forget about it. It's a surprisingly deep record for a band that is known for really driving rock. Lots of very meditative tracks, that are all over the spectrum. It fits together well though, for two major reasons. 1. It always seems like they are writing a song. What I mean about this is that they don't have the problem of figuring out where the song is going to go, or how it's going to get better than the last one or different, it's just one song at a time. This allows the parts to develop on their own, and you end up with something that has a shared heritage while not trying to connect too much. This is no rock opera.

2. Josh Homme has a voice that could melt the panties off a corpse. I think this one is self explanatory.

I actually want to justify that last statement. One thing that Kristin has always mentioned about QotSA is how sexy the music is. I agree, but every time I pin a track as sexy, she always tells me another one is more sexy. It's a strange thing. What we both can agree on is that the man can sing, and he knows where his voice is best. It's a strange breathe-y whisper that just can make some real cuts emotionally. The man knows how to make you feel the burning desire that he wants.

Actually, to go a little meta on this, I think that were I pressed into best voices of my generation, Josh Homme and Brandon Boyd would be two at the top of the list. They both are just great vocalists. And of course it helps that the band backing them up is so fucking awesome too.

Having listened to this album so much, I actually was getting a little bored listening to it. But then I was struck by why I was bored. It was just so good that I had kind of gotten used to how good it was. I was trying to find flaws because I was enjoying it too much. It's a good fucking album, and it fucking rocks when it wants to rock, and pulls back when it doesn't.

You want some great QotSA tracks off this album, may I suggest that you immediately try out Make It Wit Chu and 3's and 7's. They are two of the tightest tracks off the album, and they both are just fucking awesome. I hope later in the project to come back to some of the older QotSA albums.

Anyway, up next is The Black Keys - The Big Come Up, which I have never heard before.
Thanks again Kristin and I love you,

Matt

The White Stripes - Icky Thump

The White Stripes - Icky Thump
Published in 2007
Wikipedia

First, I must thank Alex C. for suggesting this, it's exactly as eclectic as I expected from you. Your other request is on the list, but it's a bit further down.

You know what I'd love to do? Watch The White Stripes record an album. It must be a facinating fucking process, because I have no idea how they do it. Sometimes it seems like they have prepared these songs that have coaleced from the vapor, that are just these incredibly powerful forces of nature kind of songs, that make you sure that these guys kick ass more than anyone else. And sometimes it just sounds like they are tooling around, figuring out whatever they are playing as they are going along.

They have tons of Character though, and that is the word that would describe this album for me. This is not an album that you listen to and could think that anyone else was making it. Even other Jack White projects don't sound the same as the White Stripes do. This is an album that is permeated with the sound of the White Stripes.

One of the weird things about them is actually identifying what that sound is in particular. They used to be a rock band, or something like a rock band. But now we have mariachi horns, weird western country influences, and a lot of heavy guitars. Oh and some piano, some bagpipes, and weird other sounds. Once you think you have pinned them down, they shift up on you. They aren't just anything anymore. Once again, watching this process must be amazing.

I'm not sure if I like this album as a whole. Some of it is great, and some of it just left me cold. But I find that the good outweighs the bad. I think that for every experiment that goes off the tracks, they have two that usually hit well for me.

One thing that I will say negatively is that I miss when they were just a guitar and drums band. I have a weird enchantment with completely broken down simple bands, that cut it all the way down to two people, and I miss the driven rock of Elephant on this record (Another candidate for my first contribution is Death from Above 1979's first album, which was made with a bassist and a drummer). This sounds like a band that is growing it's sound into other areas, and I think that Jack White has trouble being confined to one sound.

What more can I say, I wasn't enchanted, but it's a solid album, that I'm glad to have added to my library, this one just didn't grab me and pull me in. There is a lot there, and a lot of good songs, but it's just not my cup of tea.

Up next, Era Vulgaris by Queens of the Stone Age
And they have a plan,

Matt

The Flaming Lips - Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots

The Flaming Lips - Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots
Published in 2002
Wikipedia

First off, thanks to Patrick Doomsday for this suggestion, I knew that you would come up with a good one.

Let's talk about Space.

Not the concept of the space within music, where rests can mean just as much as notes, nor the concept of space in the real world, where the spaces between things have important implications. No, the space that I am talking about is maybe the most important space to me at the moment.

It's 8 GB big, and it's the space on my iPod.

This is one of those unchangeable boundary conditions for me, one of those things that determines what music I can bring with me. A limit. A line in the sand that you do not...

As some of you may have realized about me, I like to have complete albums on my iPod. This makes things very difficult. I have a very limited space in which to put music that I can carry with me. Some things on there are for the gym, for the ride to Annapolis, some for parties, some for just hanging out and chilling. (An interesting anecdote about this same space that I am talking about, my mom and I were discussing The Project, and she said that this was how people used to listen to music at parties. They were limited in space to one album, or a couple of them.)

Doomsday has in the past introduced me to a band that has been in competition for space on my iPod. I'm thinking mainly of Theviery Corperation. So, I do know that the man has some taste.

This is the record that I always hear Flaming Lips fans tell me that I have to listen to, and I can see why. It's a great album. It's obviously a continuous story, and it really conveys a defined 'other place'. I found myself just nodding along to the beat, just enjoying it. It's an upbeat album in a musical respect, but the lyrics are an interesting contrast to that upbeat sound.

This album is electronic. It sounds electronic. It makes you know that what you are listening to is an experiment in sound just as much as it is music. This is one of the things that I like about it. I'd compare it with great sound experiments like Kid A by Radiohead (which is on the list of my first picks for an album to do) or Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon, which if I do say so myself is not too fucking shabby.

I realized while I was listening to it, that two of the songs I had heard in the background of my life before. The titualar track is a great fucking song. It's poppy in just the right ways, and the lyrics just fucking pull you in. It's really a fun song, and totally deserving of the praise that is given to it. I've also heard Do You Realize?? a couple of times out of context at parties, but I will say, it works so much better inside the soundscape of the album.

One thing that I will say against the album is that you need to be in a mood to listen to it. This is one of those albums that would be grating to me if I were in the wrong state of mind. This is not an album that you can work off your rage with, but one to which you can commute. I'm not telling you not to try it out if you aren't a fan of this kind of music, but I am telling you to pick the time that you listen to it for the first time wisely.

So, back to the beginning. I'm not sure if this album is going to replace one on my iPod. I actually think that it is a great travelling album, something that would be awesome on a road trip, late at night, when everyone else is sleeping. It's pump you up music at it's best. I'm very much on the fence about whether I would choose it over some of the other stuff that I have, but I can see it's merits in some cases.

Anyway, if you've never heard a Flaming Lips album, I'd suggest you pick this one up, and give it a shot. It'll at least sound different than a lot of stuff you've ever heard.

Thanks again Doomsday, and up next Icky Thump by the White Stripes.
I said good day, sir.

Matt

Dream Theater - Train of Thought

Dream Theater - Train of Thought
Published in 2003
Wikipedia

Three posts in one day? Say it ain't so! I'd of course like to thank Zach for the suggestion, and for putting the word out to other people, Thanks!

Let me talk a little about my relationship with Dream Theater before I get to this album in particular. I've been trying to get into them for years, but have always had trouble just penetrating the surface. I find them to be a band that seems just out of reach of my tastes. When they go metal, they just go a little too far for me. Two of my good friends swear by them, so I keep trying. I've actually been more of a fan of Systematic Chaos (After Train of Thought), because that was the only album that really kept me listening. I enjoy it, and I find times to listen to it, but it's never gotten a hold on me the way some other music has. With that in mind, lets move on to Train of Thought.

First, and allow me to make this abundantly clear, this is a dark album. There is a lot of abyss in this motherfucker. Go too far in, and you'd be liable to find some old fucking gods. In the first couple of seconds, a triumphant sounding beginning is crushed by a pulsating baseline. The lyrics, which are hard to make out sometimes for me, but become more and more clear as you listen more and more, are deep and dark, just like the music. You want some fucking awesome 'getting pumped up to fucking rip shit apart' music, this is the kind of stuff that I'd suggest.

When Dream Theater is on top of it's game, they play some fucking great music. It's exactly what I'd have liked to hear from Metallica in their prime, but harder and more epic. I have a feeling that these guys heard guys like Metallica and said 'Why are you backing off, you fucking pussies?'

What they do very well is motifs and themes. Now copy and paste that about a hundred times. If you are not a student of music, this is what I think makes them a bit hard to pin down. These guys love repeating, morphing phrases. They want you to hear the same riffs over and over again in every possible permutation, drilling them into your head and then switching them up. When you notice the changes, it's kind of cool. Unfortunately, it is also where I sometimes get lost in their songs. They repeat so much it is sometimes hard to hear the subtle things that they are doing to change the music. I'm happy to report however, after really paying attention to the music, I've grown to appreciate them at the top of their game.

The reason that I am not in love with this album is because in some of what I thought were their best songs, there were parts that I found, to paraphrase Christian Bale, fucking distracting. Why do we need to have all of the whispering repeated lines over Honor Thy Father, when the music is plenty oppressive enough? What the fuck is with the loony tunes fucking interlude in Endless Sacrifice at 6:30? These kinds of things break my concentration and appreciation, but maybe that is just one of the things that they do, I don't know.

Don't let that last paragraph give you the wrong impression, I like the album, and I think it is a good one, I just can't find myself desperately wanting to listen to it more. Actually the song that I think is best on it is the shortest one on it. Vacant is what some would call a fucking tight song. It's brief, yes, but what it makes them do is incorporate what is good in a long song into a great short song. It's beginning is one of the perfect sinking chord progressions that you can really hear in their songs. It's slow, but it milks you for the emotion that it wants. It has a fucking Cello in it for fucks sake!

Maybe I've been trained to listen to short music by pop music, but I really do feel that they are at their best when they aren't wandering all over the place. When they are forced into a tight rhythm they can kick ass, and that doesn't mean that they can't get the permutations in. But I will say, I respect the hell out of these guys for not giving in to fucking assholes like me telling them to shorten it and tighten it up. These guys are obviously incredibly talented artists, and they can seriously fucking shred, to use the parlance of our times. This just might not be the album that gets me to jump down the rabbit hole, which in retrospect I should have known. A real fan of these guys suggested this album to me, which probably means that having spent a lot of time with the core course work of Dream Theater, this is one of the last bastions that he hasn't finished. If you love metal, you've already heard it, but if you haven't, it's an interesting experiment. This is an album I'd love to have a long conversation about.

Once again, thanks a lot Zach, it was a wild experience. I think I'm actually liking it more the second time around, so I promise to keep listening to it.

Up Next: Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots by The Flaming Lips

In the not too distant future,
Matt

Bob Dylan - Blonde on Blonde

Bob Dylan - Blonde on Blonde

Published in 1966

Wikipedia

Once again, thank you Grant for the suggestion. I'm going to go through everybody who has suggested an album's first album, but Rilo Kiley is the first second album.

Man, I hate having to start every essay the same way, but I love this album too.

My friend Micah actually skips the first track on Blonde on Blonde because he disagrees on principal with Rainy Day Woman. But hey, this project is about albums, and so I've gotta listen to it all the way through. Rainy Day Woman, for me, is one of those quintessential Bob Dylan songs, that even if you don't like Dylan, you like this song. It's an incredibly weird song that I couldn't imagine being sung by anyone else.

Actually that would be a good description for Bob Dylan songs on Blonde on Blonde as a whole. Motherfucker knows how to make a song his own. I could listen to covers of his songs and would probably have to argue that the song is actually a different one, depending on who is performing it. (Actually, I was a couple paragraphs farther down, when I thought about All Along the Watchtower as performed by Jimi Hendrix, but if there is an example that proves the rule, it's that song. Doesn't sound like the Bob Dylan version, but is great by it's own right.) Within his own catalog, you can compare the same songs sung at different times, and they sound like a whole new Dylan. It's pretty incredible.

Bob Dylan is one of those college records for me. I was never really exposed to him in a great general way when I was young, but I knew that he was admired as a huge influence and an 'important' change in American music. Listening to Blonde on Blonde, you can hear how incredibly true that is. The man just knows how to write a song. He has beautiful words, paired with some beautiful music. His voice, which I hear sounds nothing like the one he is singing with on this album now, is one of the great national treasures of the Untied States of America. It would take someone incredible to take this kind of place for me.

I've also heard it argued that what Bob Dylan does is actually Rap, and while this might not be the best record for seeing that, sometimes you get that impression. I wish that there were more criticism that I could give, to give me some cred, but this is one of those records that is justifiably gushed over.

It's an incredibly long record. Maybe that would be my one complaint. It is a record that is difficult to just sit and listen to. At an incredible 1:10 length, you could argue that today it would never be made. But, let's be clear, that would be a tragedy. If you can't weasel away a little bit of time, to sit down and really listen to this record, let's take a road trip together, and do a The Album Project road discussion. (Filing that idea for a future post. Could be fun.)

Shit, it's difficult not to just sit here and really gush. I just find it such a great album. I mean, we start off with the aforementioned Rainy Day Woman, which is just a great party mash song, with people yelling and screaming over the track, just a great noisy song. Then we move on to Pledging My Time, which has one of my favorite Dylan Lyrics ever.

Well, the room is so stuffy,
I can hardly breathe.
Ev'rybody's gone but me and you
And I can't be the last to leave.

I mean the hits just keep on fucking coming over and over. Every one is strong. It's also true, that the ones that I've known in the orbit around me for longer are the ones that seem hokey and overplayed, but seriously, this record is almost 50 years old! Of course it sounds a bit derivative, it's been ripped off so many times, especially the hits, that you just have to put yourself into the place where you think of things in a prehokeyness era. That's why I was glad that Grant settled on this one as his favorite. It was awesome to go back and listen to it again with fresh ears.

Right now, after having listened to it once, I'm back already, dipping my ears back into the brilliance of Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again. I'm having trouble even coming up with words to describe it. Let me go down the checklist. It's Poetry, it's beautiful, it's different, it's interesting, paradoxical. Ah, that might be a good road to go down.

One of the things that I've noticed about Bob Dylan is the amount that he relies on Paradox and wordplay on this album. In Stuck Inside, he has this great group of lyrics.

Mona tried to tell me
To stay away from the train line.
She said that all the railroad men
Just drink up your blood like wine.
An' I said, "Oh, I didn't know that,
But then again, there's only one I've met
An' he just smoked my eyelids
An' punched my cigarette."
Oh, Mama, can this really be the end,
To be stuck inside of Mobile
With the Memphis blues again.

The really interesting group in this, is the bit about the cigarette and the eyelids. It sounds perfect within the context of the rythym and pattern of the song, but the meaning is strangely contorted. Without listening closely, these kinds of wordplay could be lost, but it is what makes Dylan poetic. The whole song is a long formula, one verse after another, and once you've heard one verse, you know the pattern for the rest. The scattering of the words and meanings, the shifting sands of the lyrics are where he can lose you, or he can really pull you in.

I'm still kind of surprised at how bluesy the album is. A lot of it is too upbeat for me to call it proper blues, but it just feels down low, feels like a longing that is unfulfilled. I'm thinking particularly of Temporary Like Achilles, but a lot of it gives that feeling of wanting the thing that isn't there. Comparing (ugh) these longing songs to the love songs of Incubus, I find myself feeling these more. They just seem more like real love, hurting just the right way, making you feel every moment, and when the knife is truly in, twisting it as hard as it can. Man, that is one hell of a depressing sentence, but shit, I can't just turn off that feeling in me. Goddamn, this song is good. You tricksy fucking Bob Dylan.

This would be the album that I would introduce someone new to Bob Dylan with. It's pretty much all accessable, and you can get quite a lot out of it if you put the time in. It's a great album to listen to smoking a big cigar, in a dark room, drinking some good fucking alcohol, listening and singing along. You feel like you're being transported along with him, and you can feel the roots of something incredible spreading out around this album. By the end of it, you're either a Bob Dylan fan, or have some kind of begrudging respect for him, but if you're of the second kind, listen again. And again. Let it soak into your consciousness, make it something that you listen to when you're in different moods. One of the things that I never realized about Dylan till I was writing this up was that I never really got into him until I was immersed in him on my own. I needed to come to him, and make an effort to jump into his music.

I've been lucky enough for these first two to have listened to them extensively before I wrote these, so if they seem like lovefests, that's because they are. Bob, Incubus and I have a special relationship that has already formed, but part of the project is going outside of the bounds that I have been in before. With that in mind, I'm getting excited to start in on Zach's album, Train of Thought by Dreamtheater. What does that mean for you, dear reader? Really, nothing. If you want to compare notes and have never heard it before, I'd advise you to acquire it, and if you have heard it before, maybe give it another listen, or hey, don't, whatever, you know, I'm easy.

Well, since I last told you where I was on the second listen through, I've gotten to Absolutely Sweet Marie again, so I guess I'm going to listen to it all the way through again. I hope you'll give it a listen. http://www.bobdylan.com/#/music/blonde-blonde

So, for Grant, I sign off the way every censor should,

I yearn for you tragically,
AT Tappman, Chaplain, US Army

Matt

Incubus - Make Yourself

Incubus - Make Yourself

Published in 1999

Wikipedia

First, a thank you to Peter for suggesting this album.

Second, an explanation.

I've been trying to figure out something creative to do with my time, especially on weekends. While my life is in no way interesting enough to keep a running log of (hats off to Cole and Kristin), one thing that is constantly in my life is Music. I love listening to music. I know that is no real revelation, who doesn't love listening to music. But I figure combining writing with listening to music can never be bad.

So, this is the project. Every couple of days, on a whenever I get it done kind of basis, and more on the weekends, I'm going to listen to one of my friends favorite albums. I want to hear a whole music composition by one band, that will either make me reexamine what I like, or add something new to the mix. The theory is that this will sharpen my listening while sharpening my writing. I hope to have some people read this constantly, or just check it out when their album comes up.

This is not intended to be a review, or particularly objective. I hope that I'll constantly be writing new things inspired by the music, and so the essays will vary from really short to really long, track by track or just an overview of the album. I'd love to have feedback on what I'm doing, and if you have anything to say, comments are open for everyone.

So, on to the essay.

I love this album.

I loved it when I was 13 and hanging out with Zach and Peter, my two best friends from middle school. I loved it through high school and college, and I love it now. Listening to it again, all those memories came rushing back.

Incubus is one of those bands that has never done me wrong. I will submit that they have weaker albums and stronger albums, and that their music can sometimes be overwhelmed by the quirk that they decide to put in every track, but if I were to try to convert someone into an Incubus fan, I would strap them in, and make them listen to this album, from front to back.

I'm incredibly glad that Peter was the first one to respond, because I knew that this would be the first essay that I would want to write. I wanted to approach something that I knew very well, but try to open myself to it in a new way. I've listened to the whole record three times today, and I'm actually changing my opinion about it. It is not just one great album, it's a strange kind of mix of two great albums.

One album is a post apocalyptic rock album about the control and destruction of freethinking society, an Orwellian hell in which people are forced into lines and apathy reigns. The other is an album of love songs, written within the context of a storm around them. It feels strange to divide them, in this way, because the album is perhaps at it's best when the two are colliding. For example, to take two songs that are back to back on the album, Drive and Clean are strangely juxtaposed in the album. Drive is a song all about the taking of the reigns for ones self, and wondering about the ability to determine one's own actions. It is a quiet song. It's not loud, it's not even that Incubus-like. Brandon Boyd's voice penetrates it, but it doesn't need much more than the guitar and it sounds almost like a love song to me. Clean, is a loud, overpowering love song. It is about the misunderstanding between two people in love, and how they are thrust against each other in the strangest ways. This song is Incubus at it's most acid rock jazz funk rocky. They put so much into the song at this point, it's got tons of sound, and it is all about trying to find understanding in another.

I think the 13 year old me would hate me for saying this, but I think Battlestar Scralatchtica is actually the weakest track on the album now. Weirdly, it calls back in the middle of this soundscape described above to the albums that they did before, SCIENCE and Fungus Amongus, and I just don't think it fits in this album. I like the song, and I think it would have been a great addition to SCIENCE, but it just doesn't work for me here.

If you can find it, you should give this album a shot. It's one of those records that can make you like a band that you hadn't considered that good before. It also lets you know that the singles and bullshit that a band puts out isn't always their best material. In context Pardon Me and Drive get better, and the first three songs of the album are maybe the most in sync Incubus gets.

Hope you enjoyed it, and I'll be back later.
Different Bat-time, same Bat-channel,
Matt