Music, musings and miscellanea

Has anyone else ever had this happen? You love a record, so much, you listen to it so often, you know every little word and noise burnt onto that plastic disc, that it’s absolutely IMPOSSIBLE for the artist to make another record that will grab you the way this one did. This is what happened to me after I picked up the Streets “A Grand Don’t Come for Free” when I was in London in 2004.

I had liked their first album “Original Pirate Material” enough to pick up the new one pretty much on spec, but when I slipped that disc into my battered discman (can you believe that was only 4 years ago?) I couldn’t believe what I heard.  Mike Skinner unravled his tale of woe; the loss of 1000 quid, the blossoming of a new relationship, his struggles with fidelity, the betrayl of his mates, the loss of his girl and the eventual recovery of his cash and faith in his friends. The songs were simple, at times understated, humourous and oh so catchy. Maybe it helped that I had just been dumped from across the ocean via email, but I’ve never felt so in tune with a record before that, or since.  It came as no surprise then that Skinner’s next record, “The Hardest Way to Make an Easy Living,” with it’s narcissistic ruminations on fame, didn’t really connect with me. It’s not that it was necessarily a bad album, there was just no way it could ever live up to my expectations.

So I’m quite happy to hear the new Streets tracks “The Escapist” and the title track from the forthcoming album “Everything is Borrowed.” The beats and production are pure Streets – thin and simple. But lyrically, Skinner is moving away from the self-reflection and attempting to create something more universal, out of his personal experiences, like a British hip-hop version of Bruce Springsteen. While he doesn’t quite achieve this, the evolution is refreshing, and Skinner once again has me salivating with anticipation for the next Streets record. Thanks Mike…

and just cause it’s kind of hilarious…

Oh. my. God…

How the mighty have fallen. Chris Cornell, former lead singer of Soundgarden has hit rock bottom. And I’m not talking alcoholism or drug abuse rock bottom. No, I’m talking about artistic bankruptcy rock bottom. For those not “in the know,” Chris Cornell has recorded his new album Scream with the help of uber-urban street cred studio guru Timbaland. The results are piss-poor at best.

Now I realize that since Soundgarden called it quites back in ’97 Chris hasn’t had the most illustrious career. His post SG solo record Euphoria Morning was a decent offering but didn’t exactly set the world on fire (not including the underrated “Sunshower” from the Great Expectations soundtrack didn’t help things in my opinion). And his collaborations with the former-now-current guys from Rage Against the Machine in Audioslave, though lucrative, didn’t match the heights of Soundgarden. Part of the problem is that Cornell was either unable or unwilling to let loose with his fantastic metal wail, the way he would in classics like “Outshined” or “Rusty Cage.” The whole project seemed so laboured compared to the cathartic nature of Soundgarden’s best work. This resulted in a band, one that could have been a real creative standout on rock radio, instead opting to simply be another angry band with a pretty-boy lead singer. The only thing that separated Audioslave from those ass-hats in Creed was the group members’ former glories.

When looking at Cornell and his career it’s hard not to compare it with his peers from early-90s Seattle. Unlike Kurt Cobain, Layne Staley or Eddie Vedder, Cornell always seemed destined for bigger things. He had the looks the body and the voice (Mudhoney figured this out early on and wrote the song “Overblown”). And regardless of where his career leads he was fortunate not to follow the paths Cobain and Staley chose. Still from leading one of the the early-90s most loved and respected bands to writing sub-par One Repbulic rip-offs is a leap worthy of Rod Stewart when he abandoned his Mod, blues-rock roots in favour of “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy” panty-waving excess. It’s worse when you juxtapose Cornell with Vedder. Vedder was the grunge poster boy, the one on the cover of Time Magazine, and Pearl Jam were the genre’s bread winners. By all rights, they should be the ones desperately trying to hold on to relevance in a rapidly changing cultural landscape. But instead they chose to forge ahead on their own path. It seemed tenuous at first (does anybody else remember the first time they heard “Who You Are“?) But in the process the group garned a new-found respect from their detractors, the kind that of respect that builds careers, not hit singles. They still get played on the radio (how awesome was it to hear “World WIde Suidcide“) and Vedder received some of his highest accolades for his soundtrack to Into the Wild.

Anyways, I guess what I’m trying to say is this Christmas do everyone a favour and buy your teenage neices and nephews copies of Superunknown and Badmotorfinger and keep the dream alive. And while your at it, maybe buy your single aunt a Faces record…you never know…

The Good

The Bad

The Ugly

In which I defend my desire to listen to singers, musicians, artists, bands and groups that are pretty generally regarded as fucking lame.

I like Jimmy Eat World…alot. I have most of their recorded output. I even listen to Singles, the collection of their indie output, with some regularity. I know that they’re mainstream, whiny and the band that a lot of people bring up when they want to talk about shitty emo bands. But fuck it, I don’t care.

Despite starting out on indie labels, Jimmy Eat World never really seemed to care much about indie cred etc. They were playing emocore before anyone knew what that was and had pretty much abandoned it by the time the haters started pulling ranks. They signed to Capitol Records during the first big round of emo signings in the mid-90s and quite unceremoniously dropped before the turn of the century. What’s more, their last record for the label, Clarity, is considered a stone-cold classic amongst their peers and fans (and “Lucky Denver Mint” is one of my favourite all time songs). Spin Magazine just published a story about the annoying emo whine that every punk band seems resigned to copy these days, and almost every singer interviewed points to Jim Adkins, Jimmy Eat World’s lead singer as an inspiration. They all want their voices to convey as much emotion as his.

The band’s commercial peak, Bleed American, a VERY radio ready slab of plastic was purposely a step towards the mainstream funded by the band themselves. They decided to make the leap and it paid off big time. Despite this flirtation with the mainstream, they’ve since seemed content to be too indie for the masses, to commercial for indie scenesters, entertaining a mixed bag of old-school fans and 15-year olds fawning over their blissfully sincere lyrics. And those lyrics on paper, are like a high-school diary.  So yeah, kids make heart shapes with their hands at their shows (I know cause I’ve seen them twice), and yeah, they’re on a major label. But like Counting Crow’s Adam Duritz, when Jim Adkins sings, you fucking believe.

Believe kids, believe.

Scandinavian pop princess (well the other Scandinavian pop princess) Annie has returned with a great new track called “I Know Ur Girlfriend Hates Me.” It’s somewhat reminescent in theme to the Donnas’ “Too Bad About Your Girl” It’s a worthy successor to 2005′s excellent singles “Heartbeat” and “Chewing Gum.” I’ve never been able to really articulate what it is I like about Annie – maybe it’s the way she substitutes ”Ur” for your –  and I may just have to admit that even this hardened music snob needs some good old fashioned bubble-gum pop everyonce in a while.

Annie – I Know Ur Girlfriend Hates Me [New] by elpolemico

So Weezer has a new record coming out in June and it’s going to be self-titled…again. But its red this time, so they’ll have the Blue Album, the Green Album and now the Red Album…clever, I know. But serously, I love this band to the point at which a girl I was dating during the long run-up to the release of Maladroit started calling me “DJ Weezer” in a really high-pitched voice cause I wouldn’t stop listening and talking about them. But their last album kind of blew, so I didn’t have such high hopes for this one until I heard the first single “Pork and Beans.” It’s produced by Jacknife Lee (who did that nifty new REM record among other things) and its essentially what Weezer fans have been waiting for since the band came out of hibernation in 2000. Check it out…