"WHY CAN'T YOU ignore the things I did before?" asks Julian Casablancas on "Out of the Blue," the lead-off track from his solo debut, "Phrazes for the Young." It's hard to determine just how he intends that rhetorical question, but it sounds like one of the funniest lines he's ever written as well as one of the most tragic, given what he's asking you to ignore.
Casablancas is the frontman for the Strokes, the Brooklyn band that released its ballyhooed first album, "Is This It?" back in 2001. At the time, they were supposed to clear radio of all the post-grunge pop bands the way Nirvana obliterated hair metal. Of course the band couldn't deliver on such high expectations (who actually could?), and after a strong follow-up they made a mess of a third album before going on a lengthy hiatus.
So it would certainly benefit Casablancas if this album really had truly come out of the blue, with little context and no expectations, but his past is hard to ignore, especially listening to "Phrazes."
Continue Reading "Debilitated Stroke: Julian Casablancas, 'Phrazes for the Young'" »
SERENA RYDER SOUNDS like a young Melissa Etheridge on "Is It O.K.", her third full-length release. Channeling Etheridge's husky voice and gutsy lyrics is hardly a bad thing, though, and Ryder pulls it off stunningly here. These 13 tales are devastating love songs, full of hurt and betrayal — and, occasionally, a little glimmer of hope.
Like Etheridge, Ryder's greatest asset is her directness: she confesses her feelings to an indifferent lover on "Weak in the Knees" and apologizes for her inability to open up on "Why Can't I Love You."
DO YOU THINK MORRISSEY ever gets sick and tired of being ... well, so sick and tired?
That's not to suggest that the English Master of Mope is getting old in the age-sense (even though he turned the big 5-0 this year). Rather, it's to inquire whether the man who once fronted The Smiths ever gets bored of complaining about loveless relationships and societal woes. If so, you won't find any of that evolution on his latest album, "Swords" — the 18-song collection of B-sides from Morrissey's three most recent albums veers between pleasantly formulaic and boringly unexceptional.
If you're down with that woe-is-the-world scenario, though, then most of this album will appeal to your glass-half-empty mentalities. If not, take your optimism elsewhere.
Continue Reading "B-Sides, the Point: Morrissey, 'Swords'" »
SINCE KURT COBAIN'S suicide in 1994, widow Courtney Love has done pretty much everything in her power to sell out his memory — if you've seen the Converses with his handwriting on them or played as him in the latest "Guitar Hero," you know what we mean. For real fans, though, the "Live at Reading" DVD set featuring Nirvana's legendary 1992 performance will be more satisfying than sneakers, video games or anything else Love could get her money-grubbing hands on.
Nirvana's second performance at the Reading Festival was a much-talked about — and plenty bootlegged — affair, coming a few months after Cobain's marriage to Love in Hawaii and the birth of their daughter, Frances Bean. As the concert's headliners, Cobain and Co. ripped through most of the material from their debut, "Bleach," the ridiculously successful breakout album "Nevermind" and the then-unreleased "In Utero," and the performance was later ranked No. 1 on Kerrang Magazine's "100 Gigs That Shook the World" list and voted as the band's greatest moment in a poll by NME.
So, then, it's obvious that "Live at Reading" will be a much-needed addition to your collection if you're still living the grunge dream.
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RIVERS CUOMO IS GETTING OLDER, but his music is pretty much staying the same age.
The Weezer frontman has been known for his wry outlook, reclusive lifestyle and unforgettable melodies, but mostly for embracing his own arrested development. Weezer, even in the members' relatively advanced age, perpetually invokes high school drama, hangin' at the the mall and kickin' in Chuck Taylors with infinite energy and a sense of fun, if ever-diminishing innovation. The Blue Album and "Pinkerton" were full of quintessential awkward rock anthems for kids who would soon find themselves at the center of hipsterdom, but later releases found Weezer still awkward but less eloquent. The band will always hold a unique place in rock, managing to convey a sneering attitude without actually resorting to profanity, but it's hard to say if its newer material will hold the place in the 2009 teenager's heart as it did for '90s kids. Cuomo seems to prefer telling over showing nowadays, proclaiming over-defiantly on last year's Red Album that he doesn't "give a hoot about what you think!" Well, if you say so.
The group's latest, "Raditude" (Geffen Records), is straight-up a pop-rock monster, but none of the tracks scream "Weezer!" even as much as the Red Album's "Pork and Beans" (the video for which is better than the song). The album dithers constantly, managing at times to be both generic and chaotic, and it's not clear whether Cuomo is still trying to discover the secret formula to every kind of pop song, or if he just can't make up his mind.
Dabbling in everything from punk-rock to R&B to straight up Top 40 teeny-bopper bubblegum, Weezer no longer inspires confidence that it is the master of its domain. In a way, the album is great, but only if you don't overthink it.
IT SEEMS LIKE a no-brainer to say that if you like the music on the Fox TV show "Glee," then you'll like the CD of music from the show, "Glee: the Music, Season 1, Volume 1."
The first edition of Season One's music (Volume 2 is due out in December) collects 17 songs from the show in all their melodramatic, campy glory.
The only problem is that outside the context of the show, these songs lose some of the perspective that makes them so charming on screen.
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WHEN AUSTRALIA'S WOLFMOTHER burst into the rock stratosphere with its self-titled debut in 2005, critics couldn't be happier with the band's hard-edged, '70s-steeped sound, the kid of grungy raw rock that fuses AC/DC with Led Zeppelin and never really looks toward the future.
On the band's sophomore album, "Cosmic Egg," Wolfmother basically pulls out all the same tricks — but with some Coheed and Cambria-like influences thrown in for good measure. The result is a similarly hard, slightly trippier sound that gets repetitive about halfway through the album and lacks most of the catchiness of previous singles "Woman" and "Joker & the Thief."
Maybe that stuck-in-a-rut-ness stems from the band's personnel problems. Bassist Chris Ross and drummer Myles Heskett, both co-founders of the group, departed last August. Singer and guitarist Andrew Stockdale pressed on, taking a few months to replace the other two spots in the trio. The band is now a four-piece with guitarist Aiden Nemeth, bassist and keyboardist Ian Peres and drummer Dave Atkins.
Continue Reading "Scrambled Shell: Wolfmother, 'Cosmic Egg'" »
THE SWELL SEASON is living the American dream.
Glen Hansard of Irish band The Frames struggled for years to make it on the scene in the U.S., then finally stumbled upon major success — and an Oscar for best song — with the greatest sleeper indie movie of the decade, "Once."
Along with young Czech singer Marketa Irglova, the pair, now known as The Swell Season (also the name of their first album), sell out concert halls all over the world. Hansard and Irglova were a couple for a while, but even though they've since split up, they've put their mind-blowing chemistry to use making more poignant music. Hansard's particular brand of cathartic angst-rock has been brilliant from the start, but it's Irglova's textured voice that gives The Swell Season its unique and evocative flavor.
Hansard and Irglova's debut album "The Swell Season" (featuring many of the songs later heard in "Once") bled raw emotion. While their debut project ripped your heart out and stomped all over it, "Strict Joy" (Anti-) apologizes politely and hands your heart back to you. It's not necessarily the breakup album to follow the love story, but it is more contemplative and carefully laid out.
Continue Reading "Falling Slowly (Out of Love): The Swell Season, 'Strict Joy'" »
TRAIN WOULD BE just another boring mainstream band crooning sunny love songs if it weren't for Pat Monahan's soaring voice. He could easily be fronting a classic rock tribute band, just based on his choice of cover songs (chief among them: Aerosmith's "Dream On," Led Zeppelin's "Ramble On" and "Going to California" and The Doors' "Light My Fire").
With that power and prowess, it's no surprise that the best song on "Save Me, San Francisco" (Columbia) — Train's fifth album (and first after a three-year hiatus) — is "I Got You," which is a mash-up of an original tune and the Doobie Brothers' "Black Water." The two songs work together seamlessly — it's just a shame that Kid Rock already played the same trick with last summer's "All Summer Long."
Of course, Monahan is a better vocalist — and Train uses more interesting source material here than Kid's choice of "Sweet Home Alabama." The note-by-note rendition of the original that closes out the song (complete with the low, walking bass melody, "with you all night long") is fantastic and really shows off Monahan's flexibility.
The rest of "Save Me, San Francisco" is almost a bit of a letdown compared to that song.
Continue Reading "Adult Contemporary Classic Rock: Train, 'Save Me, San Francisco'" »
IN 1976, AN accordion-playing teenager and self-proclaimed geek from Lynwood, Calif., sent in a tape of home-recorded parody songs to Dr. Demento, the Los Angeles radio DJ who spun such novelty fare as "Fish Heads" and "Star Trekkin'" on his weekly show. The young songwriter, named Alfred Yankovic, had written a tune called "Belvedere Cruisin'," about his parents' Plymouth, as well as a parody of "Jesus Christ Superstar." Demento played the former on the air, which no doubt thrilled the boy.
More than 33 years later, there are surely geeky teenagers all over the country sending their own homemade songs to "Weird Al" Yankovic, who has become pop music's most durable and beloved parodist. In fact, he has evolved into something of a national treasure, a patron saint of pop goofs, and his rubbery smirk, long hair and wiry frame are as iconic to certain audiences as Madonna's pointy bustier, Kurt Cobain's tattered sweater or Flea's stuffed-animal pants.
Beginning with his career-making "My Bologna" in 1979, Yankovic's parodies have been generally good-natured, more silly than satirical. In his world, there's nothing funnier than a bad pun or an accordion polka, and while some of Yankovic's songs can get a bit dark ("The Night Santa Went Crazy"), his send-ups are mostly harmless. He lobs spitballs rather than firebombs, but at his best, he creates amazingly sustained works of pop culture criticism. His epic "Trapped in the Drive-Thru" is almost as sublimely humorous as R. Kelly's original.
Oddly, "The Essential 'Weird Al' Yankovic" doesn't include "My Bologna," despite its historical importance.
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