The Afghan Whigs - Gentlemen

Release Date: 5.10.1993

★★★★★ Tracks:
Gentlemen
When We Two Parted

Ladies let me tell you about myself
I got a dick for a brain and my brain is gonna sell my ass to you
Now I’m ok but in time I’ll find I’m stuck
‘Cause she wants love and I still want to fuck

Greg Dulli croons on “Be Sweet” before the guitars and drums build into an excellently ugly bridge. These ugly truths Greg Dulli so candidly confesses populate the entirety of Gentlemen, and it’s what makes this collection of songs so compelling.

Gentlemen, a record that was released in late 1993, propelled The Afghan Whigs to the fringes of mainstream. At a time when grunge was dominating the airwaves, Dulli and Co., soaked up some airplay with a hard rock that was more soulful than the majority of what their counterparts were producing. The guitars didn’t rely so heavily on the power chords that had become so prevalent at the time; Greg Dulli and Rick McCollum combined melodic distortion with slide guitars, octaves and pedal effects. The strings combine with off-kilter 4/4 percussion and odd bass drum syncopations, and in reality The Afghan Whigs have a lot more in common with 90’s post-hardcore/indie groups Fugazi and Jawbox than they did with Nirvana or Stone Temple Pilots.

My introduction to The Afghan Whigs was when that memorable (and now humorously dated) music video they released for Gentlemen’s title track was played on MTV. As a new teenager who had just began guitar lessons, the distorted high string guitar strums and its interplay with the percussion was something I could only wish to replicate in my shitty garage band. In following one of the few 90’s formulas they did have in common with their grungy brethren, the quiet verse shifts into a loud chorus and Dulli yells “Understand! Do you Understand?!” Fuck, was I hooked to that track. I never bought the record though, and the seldom times I heard it at my best friend’s place nothing caught my ear quite like “Gentlemen” did.

My cousin however remained a steadfast fan throughout the years, and when he told me he picked up tickets for us to the Terminal 5 reunion show this fall, I decided it was time to finally download a copy. The aforementioned “Be Sweet” is a highlight, as well as the intensely guitar driven “Debonair” and “Fountain and Fairfax.” But the only track that nearly matches “Gentlemen” in songwriting prowess, with its slide guitar leads and Dulli’s signature implicatively confessional yet self-aggrandizing lyrics, is the ballady “When Two We Parted.” The second half of Gentlemen tails off a bit, but re-familiarizing myself with The Afghan Whigs has me pretty fucking excited for that reunion show in October.

Check out my cousin's post here.

The Stooges - Fun House

Release Date: 07.07.1970

★★★★★ Tracks:

Down on the Streets
Loose

Punk rock’s foundations are agreed to have begun sometime in the late 1950’s. But in my mind the first band to embody punk rock as we now know it is The Stooges. And it all starts with Iggy. Here on Fun House he screams, squeals, barks, claps, burps, cajoles, and sings as abrasively as he can for thirty minutes, trying his damnedest to replicate the energy from his legendary stage persona. And what a stage persona. A man willing to do anything to rile the audience, he would roll in glass, throw up on stage, dance like a lunatic, and his most lasting antic, stage dive into the audience, being the first to attempt what is now a concert past time.

As much as I like punk rock though, The Stooges are a group I appreciate more than I rotate regularly. Fun House is solid but I think punk rock works best in compact doses. The repetitive melodies are effective and outstanding on the shorter songs here (“Down on the Street”, “Loose”) but wear out their welcome on anything +5 minutes (“Dirt”, “1970”, “Fun House”). Still, I love to hear the roots of the genre. Everyone from the Wire to Fugazi to Nirvana to NOFX owes to the music of the The Stooges. And just as Iggy created his persona out of his idols (Jim Morrison in particular), countless others would study and follow in Iggy’s steps. Shit, Ozzy should be sending him regular royalty checks.

The Backbeat Band

It is my opinion that a great many bands, even a great many great bands, peak very very early, in some cases, even before their first album. Pavement's Watery, Domestic, R.E.M.'s Chronic Town, the first Arcade Fire EP, Nirvana's Incesticide-era stuff, all represent those bands at their freshest and most idealistic, and in these cases, I'll take the blueprint of their future sound over the actual building of their eventual songs. At the risk of sounding one of those pretentious instigating hipsters who say such things just to provoke outrage, I think The Beatles peaked with “Twist and Shout.” You can have your Abbey Road and Rubber Soul and Sgt. Pepper but I prefer The Beatles at this stage of the game, when their brand of rock-n-roll was in its purest form. The soundtrack to Backbeat is representative of this ideal; when there was nothing more exciting and innocent as being in a garage band with your best friends. No drugs, no money, no fame, no ego. No pretensions of changing the world and no delusions behind the meaning of what you're doing; just rock-n-roll for nothing more than the sake and the spirit of rock-n-roll.

The 1994 album is a veritable supergroup of the era's alt-rock stars, with Greg Dulli, Dave Grohl, Mike Mills, Thurston Moore and Don Fleming (with Dave Pirner chipping in), covering some of the best rock-n-roll songs ever recorded before The Beatles came along and changed everything. Twelve tracks of the best singer in rock-n-roll with a dream team behind him throwing themselves with reckless abandon on “Twist and Shout,” “Good Golly Miss Molly,” “Rock 'N Roll Music,” “Please Mr. Postman,” and eight more glorious tracks that capture the purity of rock-n-roll at its most primitive in the days of Buddy Holly and Chuck Berry.

Over the past couple years, this has been my go-to album when I can't decide what I want to listen to or when I don't feel like paying the attention a more sophisticated record may deserve. Clocking in at just under a half-hour, this is perfect record to play when you don't want (or need) anything more than delirious instant-gratification. And I'm so disappointed in the audience who were lucky and privileged enough to see the band live. How the fuck can they just sit there?

Wavves - King of the Beach

Release Date: August 3, 2010

★★★★★ Tracks:

Super Soaker

Idiot

Convertible Balloon

Green Eyes

Anyone who follows Wavves knows about Nathan William’s meltdown at the Barcelona’s Primavera festival, culminating in an early return to the states and Nathan’s drummer leaving the band indefinitely. Nathan later admitted to being under the influence of a heavy-duty cocktail: xanax, valium, xtc, and some drinking. That’ll do just about anybody in. He said afterwards he has a bit of a substance abuse problem (ya think?), but anyone following Wavves on twitter knows Nathan still likes to party. And that’s alright by me, because weed is an integral piece of King of the Beach -- a perfectly blended cocktail of surf rock, marijuana, Nirvana-influenced power chords, and a touch of electronica. It makes for the perfect record to close out the last half of the summer.

You might think the break-up of the old Wavves would hurt their sound, but Nathan Williams made two major changes which markedly improve upon his last attempt. The first is recruiting the rhythm section of Jay Reatard’s band (Stephen Pope and Billy Hayes), both of whom tighten up the sound Nathan has been developing over the years. The second (and most important) is going to an actual studio to record, as opposed to self producing it in his bedroom. The superior quality gives the guitar that crunchy 90’s alternative sound Wavves so endears, while also allowing him to add some touches of electronica to break up the sound of the record.

“King of the Beach” opens and sets up the sound for most the record, relying on a heavy dosage of power chords and quick tempo. Williams acknowledges his TMZ music-scene critics in “Idiot,” which, along with the Miami-bass pounding “Green Eyes” dive in to Incesticide for musical inspiration. There are a few nods to Animal Collective in tracks like “Mickey Mouse” and “Baseball Cards.” And there’s a great walk through childhood on the nintendo-powered “Convertible Balloon,” one of the two songs written by Billy Hayes.

King of the Beach delivers an improvement over Wavvves in both quality of production and songwriting. There isn’t a weak track included here. The lyrics can be extremely childish, but Williams's songwriting is intentionally simplistic, perfectly accompanying the rock and pop Wavves produces so well . King of the Beach isn’t here to challenge your wits, it’s an album to tune on, tune in, and drop out to as you close out the last half of your hazy summer, and a definite album of the year contender.

Wavves - Wavvves

Release Date: February 3, 2009

What the fuck is up with this recording? Is that a guitar or a collection of grinding gears? Are those backing vocals or a recording of a girl drowning?

Back in the 80’s and early 90’s, lo-fi made sense. Recording studios were expensive. Smaller bands and record labels were having difficulty putting records out on a tight budget. Enter the 4-track cassette recorder, which was already being used for demos for quite some time before artists like Daniel Johnston, Pavement, and Guided By Voices recorded entire albums using it. A creative and cheap way for an artist's music to reach the masses.

But this was 2009. Artists are putting out quality sounding songs and records with as little as a laptop and a USB mic. And Wavves, signed to a label like Fat Possum, could have afforded to up the studio production. This puts Wavvves in the category of “lo-fi for aesthetic purposes.” And this isn't just lo-fi, Wavvves just might be the lousiest quality of record I have ever heard. Challenging listeners with this shitty of a recording for artistic purposes is something I lack patience for -- it’s literally too much work to work my way past all the fuzz.

But if you can work your way past the fuzz you’ll hear a few good tracks. "Beach Demon," "So Bored," and "No Hope Kids" bring to mind a mix of Nirvana’s punk rock and pop, and Guided by Voices lo-fi sensibilities, but when I listen I can’t help but think what if. What if Fat Possum sent Nathan Williams to a cheap studio to re-record Wavvves how good it could have potentially been.

Weezer - (The Blue Album)

Release Date: May 10, 1994

★★★★★ Tracks:

No One Else
The World Has Turned...
Buddy Holly
Say It Ain't So
In the Garage

I was introduced to Weezer when most everyone else was, tuning to MTV and seeing that goofy Spike Jonze video for "Undone - the Sweater Song." It was refreshing to see a group of normal, somewhat nerdy guys playing such a great song at a time when rock music was all about long, dirty hair, ripped jeans and flanel. I bought the CD soon afterwards and immediately warmed to tracks "Buddy Holly" and "Say It Ain't So." Both to eventually make it as singles and videos as the record continued to sell. Not a lot of the other tracks appealed to me as a 14-year old, and "Buddy Holly" got so played out I shelved the Blue Album for quite a while.

When I went away to college, I lugged my 300-plus CDs with me to my dorm room and began playing the Blue Album all over again. It was there I realized how great "No One Else" and "The World Has Turned and Left Me Here" were. Cuomo sums them up best himself: "No One Else" is "the jealous-obsessive asshole in me freaking out on my girlfriend" whereas '''The World has Turned and Left Me Here' is the same asshole wondering why she's gone." I couldn't wait to put them on the next mix tape to my girlfriend. Now some ten years later, I find the escapism in completely opposite fashions of "Holiday" and "In the Garage" something entirely new to relate to. And so this record continues to hold up.

While it's unfortunate the Blue Album spawned a lot of those Get Up Kids / Dashboard Confessional-type pop-punk emo bands (I listened to my fair share of them for sure, and I still listen to Saves the Day!), I don't think they necessarily meant to. Weezer just wanted to take that whole quiet-loud, verse-chorus-verse approach that the Pixies and Nirvana perfected, throw in some simple Ramones power chords, and write some poppy, harmonizing Beach Boy vocals to make rock'n'roll a little more accessible again. And this album united everyone, even the friends of mine who could only stand to listen to 2Pac and Biggie were jamming to Weezer. "Say It Ain't So" is one of those 1am bar anthems that nearly everyone will be screaming along to regardless of where you are. "Buddy Holly" was one of the best MTV videos in its existence (yes, it is dead to me now). Meanwhile those self-loathing, over-dramatic emo-rockers claiming Weezer as their primary influence completely polarized the rock landscape a few years later, sort of the antithesis of what the Blue Album is all about.

The xx - xx

Release Date: March 30, 2009

★★★★★ Tracks:

VCR

Crystalised

Islands

Basic Space

It must be difficult to review an album for a popular publication. Not only are critics bound to write plenty of polarizing opinions, but they must often rush to judgement quickly, assuring their review is read near the time a record is released. The problem is that some albums take time to marinate, while others reveal they aren't nearly as good as we first thought they were. Rolling Stone reviewed Nirvana's Nevermind with mild interest at the time of its release, but added it to their top 20 albums of all time a decade later, a rather large change in opinion. Then on the other hand we have something like Bloc Party's Silent Alarm, which was praised by most critics in 2005, but does anybody really care about it anymore?

It will be interesting to see where the xx ends up. In the short term, catchy tunes alongside vast critical appraisal, especially that of Pitchfork's, have helped them in gaining a quick and large following -- selling out venues on their American tour, and even scoring a 2010 Winter Olympics commercial. But will it be something we'll continue to listen to a decade later? I think so. I played xx to death in the last half of 2009, loving almost every song on it. I shelved it for a few months but after re-listening I can say it still sounds as fresh as it did when I first heard it. The xx borrow elements from so many genres; composing a minimalistic and atmospheric mix of pop, rock and electro that's great for the morning commutes, as well as the late nights in the bedroom. From the opening "Intro," now a jingle to an AT&T commercial featuring Apolo Ohno, I was immediately hooked. It sounds dark and mysterious, building up to an infectious, head-nodding beat accompanied by a sleek guitar hook.

The "Intro" is followed by four incredibly strong tracks, a couple of which are unquestionably heard at the dance club, before reaching what sounds like it could be the score for a science fiction film in "Fantasy." And that's one of the things I love about xx, is that it can sound so otherworldly. My favorite track is "Basic Space," which exemplifies how the band's excellent arrangements combine whispered girl/guy vocals and sparse instrumentation to create a sound that's both intimate and spacious.

I'm pretty sure xx is something I will be listening to for years to come. I simply don't have anything on my mp3 player that sounds quite like them. One could argue that there isn't much variety from track to track, but for an album's worth of songs it doesn't suffer from tedium. It could be a problem when they begin writing a second album, but that's a discussion for another time. For now, the xx have created a nearly flawless record. That's something very few have been able to accomplish, and all the more impressive when considering this is the xx's very first attempt.