Johnny Cash – Unearthed: Disc 4: My Mother’s Hymn Book

In the next-to-last disc of Johnny Cash’s posthumous Unearthed album, he decided to compile various songs that he had recorded with Rick Rubin during those first recording sessions that would become American Recordings into one last gospel/spiritual album. The particular songs he sang in those sessions all came from a very special place for Cash: his mother’s hymn book. Thus, the collection is titled My Mother’s Hymn Book:

I can’t think of a more peaceful or joyful album of songs than in any of the instances where Cash decides to do all spirituals. Sure, Christian beliefs and the music associated with them are hand-in-hand with Country music, but even in Country, there’s a right way and a wrong way to do things (ok that latter example is more like a really weird way to do things).

Having grown up in the country, in Texas, I have been to my fair share of churches and I have heard my fair share of hymns, in fact, I knew half of these songs before ever listening to them, and in fact this particular selection of songs that affected Johnny Cash so powerfully in his youth have had a similar effect on my own youth, so hearing this collection of songs is both reminiscent of my love of these songs, and my love of Johnny Cash’s music. Indeed, this is Cash’s favorite album he ever did, and though I feel differently about it, I can not blame him.

Really, if you look back on Cash’s discography, two things that he had wanted to accomplish was to make an album of Gospel music, and a little later in his career, to make an album utilizing just himself and a guitar. Both ideas were struck down by the powers that be, the former by Sam Philips and the latter by everybody that wasn’t Rick Rubin, but Cash persevered. Indeed, when Cash left Sun in order to record for the greener pastures of Columbia Records, one of his stipulations was that he must be allowed to record a gospel album, which would become his second album there. Columbia, however, was against the idea of Johnny Cash doing an album with just a guitar, echoing Sam Philips’ sentiment that such a thing would never sell. Sure enough, when Cash joined up with Rick Rubin’s American Recordings, his first album, an album with just Cash and a guitar, became one of the definitive albums of his career.

Cash proved himself twice over, and this time, with no-one to stop him, his idea was to release, as part of this substantial Unearthed collection, the hymns that were most important to him, utilizing nothing more than his voice and his guitar. In a way, this part of the album is the most important of the 5 discs therein, because it really puts into perspective not only how Cash was intending to end his career the way he would have wanted to start it, but that the end of his life would also reflect the beginning. From his earliest memories to his final thoughts, this music was always there.

This part of Unearthed was actually released separately in 2004, and charted semi-prominently; nothing compared to his American V album that we have yet to write up, but certainly better than some of his gospel albums from the past.

My own experience with this album is bittersweet. The songs are amazing, and the song selection is even better. It starts with the very apropos “Where We’ll Never Grow Old”, and includes some bright spots like guitarist extraordinaire Merle Travis’ “I Am A Pilgrim” (who some know from The Byrds), and a great one called “Where The Soul Of Man Never Dies” (co-written by Wayne Raney, yes, THAT Wayne Raney, from which Cash bought his $2.98 harmonica in CLINT, TEXAS as stated in “Please Don’t Play Red River Valley” on Everybody Loves A Nut). Thing is, the songs wherein Cash’s past and my own collide, is almost a little too much to take.

See, one of my best memories having to do with hymns is from my youth (about age 5-7 or so) where my mom and a friend of hers would sing some of these good ol’ hymns into a tape recorder with my dad finger-picking a guitar (a ‘61 Gibson Hummingbird) that now belongs to me. Every time I hear the songs “When The Role Is Called Up Yonder” and especially “I’ll Fly Away”, it’s a little too much to take, kind of like staring directly at the sun. Cash does extremely well with these songs, and in the liner notes for Unearthed, he makes the admission that “When The Role Is Called Up Yonder” was actually sang at his older brother’s funeral back in 1944, so that makes two of us who are powerfully affected by this kind of music.

There’s another hymn that Cash has a powerful story behind, and it’s a hymn that I actually had not heard before. It’s called “Let The Lower Lights Be Burning”, and the story goes that, when Johnny Cash’s father was on his deathbed, in a coma, Johnny and the rest of his family said their good-byes and decided to sing a song, and this was the one that they chose. Apparently, singing this song over his bed caused him to wake up singing along. That’s kind of amazing, actually, but that’s how some of these hymns affect people. Sometimes a good hymn will wake someone out of a coma, apparently!

So, despite some uncomfortable moments, there is nothing I can recommend more to a lover of hymns than this album. No matter how jaded or silly or pretentious I might get about music sometimes (actually most of the time on this blog), it’s songs like these that remind me what it’s all about. Indeed, I learned how to sing songs from my mother’s hymn book, and having that connection with Johnny Cash is a powerful thing indeed, and it doesn’t hurt that he sounds a bit like my dad anyway. He’s like one of the family to me, which is probably why I enjoy his music so much.

Here ends the 4-part writeup to Unearthed (the other 3 parts can be seen in the 3 Monday entries preceding this one). I decided against writing up the 5th disc in the Unearthed compilation, as it is the Best Of Cash On American, and it seems silly to me to cover the songs I’ve already covered once on this blog. The only thing I will mention is that I’m slightly disappointed that the collection was nearly devoid of any Christian songs at all, other than “The Man Comes Around”, but since Cash arranged the compilation, I can’t really argue. I plan on writing up at least 2 more Johnny Cash albums before the year is out, so this isn’t the last time you’ll be hearing from me on the subject of the Man In Black. Until then, thanks so much for reading.

The Rolling Stones – It’s Only Rock N’ Roll

Seeing as how I have been a little lax in covering The Rolling Stones in this here blog, I’m met here toward the end of it with many albums to choose from. I considered many today but ultimately decided to go with one that I really love called It’s Only Rock N’ Roll, and not just because Exile On Main Street would have been too long to listen to on such short notice either:

The Rolling Stones, in or around ‘74, were making a lot of changes with the way they did things for a while. Of course, a lot of things had already happened since their original inception, but most notably with this recording, it would be the last album to feature guitarist Mick Taylor (who had replaced Brian Jones, whose last album was Let It Bleed), and the first to feature Ronnie Wood, who is still with the band. This is also the second album to be self-produced by the Stones (the first being Their Satanic Majesties Request), which is something the Stones would go with for the rest of their careers.

Another thing I noticed about this album, moreso than any that predate it (though elements have been there all along), is that it’s fairly hard on women. Indeed, songs like “Stupid Girl” and “Under My Thumb” had some fairly up-to-date and appropriately manly opinions on women, but a lot of It’s Only Rock N’ Roll is downright bitter and scornful. I’m not saying I don’t dig it, Rock N’ Roll, to me, is inherently sexist (“What’s wrong with being sexy?”), which probably explains why so many women suck at it. I have decided to call this phenomenon the “Bill Haley Curse”. Anyway, this album is ripe with it, almost darkly so.

In fact, one of the better examples (without getting too dark) is the opening track, “If You Can’t Rock Me”. Mick Jagger sings the song with such passion and energy (or he’s just throwing up, it’s hard to tell sometimes) that you really can’t understand the words. Well, here are some of them:

The band’s on stage and it’s one of those nights, oh yeah
The drummer thinks that he is dynamite, oh yeah
You lovely ladies in your leather and lace
A thousand lips I would love to taste
I’ve got one heart and it hurts like hell
If you can’t rock me somebody will

Which is all innocent enough, but then he starts going on about black girls with blue hair and hookers and wedding cakes and things just get freaky. I shouldn’t have to tell you that this is an awesome song.

The band then launches into a Temptations cover, because that’s the kind of thing you do, right? Only, instead of one of their classics, whose names elude me at the moment, we get a song that practically defines the word
“obsequious” called “Ain’t Too Proud To Beg”. Now, this song may seem like it’s deflating my previous claims that the album is against women, but really it works in the theme of the album because it demonstrates an inability to work out differences by any other way than begging and pleading. If that’s not a good enough explanation then look over there!

Wow, that was awesome!

Anyway, the next song brings us right back on course with one of my favorite songs in the Stones’ catalog: “It’s Only Rock N’ Roll (But I Like It)“. It’s really easy, especially if you’ve seen the band in concert, to confuse this song for a mind-numbing party song, but there seems to be a dichotomy between the verses and the choruses that may get lost in the mix of guitars that Mick Jagger doesn’t seem interested in singing over:

If I could stick a knife in my heart
Suicide right on stage
Would it be enough for your teenage lust
Would it help to ease the pain? Ease your brain?

If I could dig down deep in my heart
Feelings would flood on the page
Would it satisfy ya, would it slide on by ya
Would ya think the boy’s insane? He’s insane

I said I know it’s only rock ‘n roll but I like it

The verses give a lot of insight into the singer’s feelings about what he’s doing. There’s no real love for the audience of women for which he’s pouring his heart out (he states earlier “Would that be enough for your cheating heart?”) and the bridge even states “I bet that you think you’re the only woman in town”, but the music compels him to bleed himself onto the stage, and to stab his heart with a pen, which makes it almost seem like he’s a slave to this passion for performance. Yet, in the actual chorus, there’s almost an existential acceptance that, at the end of the day, it’s only rock n’ roll. To wrap up a thing that has control over someone’s life on such a level into such a phrase is deeper than I think even the author intended. Maybe I’m just thinking too much of it.

“Till The Next Time We Say Goodbye” is a ballad that I would normally pass off as “just another ballad”, but I just love the way this one just refuses to take the woman who keeps leaving the singer at all seriously. It’s a song that really says nothing more than “When you’re done crying, I’ll be over there”. The only other thing to really say about this song is that he says “Wine” and the pronunciation cracks me up every time. Wonderful!

“Time Waits For No-One” is another pretty great track, this time about the singer accepting aging and death, which is kind of funny because it’s 35 years later and he’s still aging.

“Luxury” apparently takes a page from reggae, but I don’t really hear it. It’s about working hard so that the singer’s wife can live in luxury, which goes well with that misogyny thing.

“Dance Little Sister” is a catchy number (especially for the slightly off-kilter rhythm) that is only really significant because it taught me a new word: “bacchanal”, which is an adjective describing drunken debauchery, and I just love learning words like that.

After another ballad and another bought of misogyny (“Short And Curlies”), we get an interesting ending to the album. It’s called “Fingerprint File” and it’s funky as hell. It’s also about “Big Brother” and government surveillance, which you might be able to tell through Mick’s unusual singing for this particular track, wherein he leaves out entire words if the lyric notes are to be believed. There’s also a jive-tastic spoken interlude half way through. It’s a pretty easy song to miss, being placed in the very back of the album, but even that makes it seem like they’re trying to hide the song from “Them”.

Either way, despite the rampant anti-femnism (or perhaps because of it), this album is what I’d consider a true classic Rock N’ Roll album. It’s frequently forgotten, usually passed over for things like Exile On Main Street, which is mainly why I felt compelled to pass the latter over for this album. I know it’s only a music blog, but I like it.

Coldplay – X&Y

Frequent readers of Album Du Jour may note that I had not, up until today, written about Coldplay’s second-to-latest album, X&Y. Well, the plan was to never talk about this album, because talking about X&Y meant I would have to listen to it, and I had not yet done that. Well, I have now listened to the album and I think I have some words to say on the subject:

A lot of you who have read my old Coldplay articles, particularly the Viva La Vida writeup, already know how this story ends; I only half-enjoyed their first two albums, and skipped this one entirely, and then was pleasantly surprised by the effort put into their newest album, to the end that it was actually a consistently good album from front to back.

What I didn’t consider, until researching X&Y, is that even more effort went into its production than with Viva La Vida, 18 months as opposed to 11 months, respectively. What was the band doing all this time?

Seriously, have you heard X&Y? The whole reason I never bothered with this album is because it seemed to take the most boring elements of Parachutes and Rush Of Blood To The Head and extended it to full album length. In fact, it’s hard to find “original” moments in this album without taking their other two albums, listening to them, and then marking comparisons. Believe me, all the coffee in Guatemala wouldn’t keep me awake enough for that. Not only did it take 18 months to finally record this album, but it’s the “best” songs out of over 60 that the band “wrote” for this new album.

Basically, the band wrote two albums before this one, but never released them because they “weren’t up to par” with the band’s previous release, so with no deadline, millions of dollars in capital, the love and adoration of fans of inoffensive adult contemporary pop, and all of their limbs intact, the band released an album they were happy with. It is thus, with great frustration, that I have to agree with the criticism that the biggest problem with X&Y is that it doesn’t meet the quality of their previous album, and it wasn’t even that good of an album!

There are a couple of songs on this album that could pass muster, “Square One”, the opening track, is a track that you may nod along to for a while once the beat and distorted guitars come in. It at least doesn’t have much of that terrible thing Chris Martin does where he can’t hit any notes without switching to a wimpy falsetto, so he does so with every alternating note. No, that move is a little bit later in the album.

What if there was no life?
Nothing wrong, nothing right
What if there was no time?
And no reason or rhyme

What if you should decide
That you don’t want me there by your side?

Those lines open up the second song, “What If”, which is basically a hook-less version of “The Scientist”. By the way, the song never really answers those questions, at least not in any audible way, because he spends the entirety of the chorus squeaking out a weak falsetto melody that may sound good in the hands of any capable singer, but in fact is completely drowned by instruments that aren’t even playing loudly. Also, those questions aren’t answered because Coldplay is apparently above hiring a songwriter for the group.

Ok, I just looked up the lyrics to this song that you can’t understand because they’re being drowned out by a guitar playing two notes. This is the answer to the questions presented all over this song’s verses:

Oooh, that’s riiiight
Let’s take a breath, jump over to the side

Masterful!

The album started off promising but just kind of drifts off into go-nowhere ballads like this one at least until the 9th song, “Low”, which at least has enough guitar in it to wake you up again. The songs that occupy that space are pretty cannibalizing, I noticed, take this line from “Fix You”:

Lights will guide you home
And ignite your bones
And I will try to fix you

What? Well anyway, here’s a line from the title song X&Y:

I know something is broken and I’m trying to fix it
Trying to repair it any way I can

In an interview, Chris Martin once said that he read “a lot of Charles Dickens” (presumably he read a book by Charles Dickens), and that’s what inspired him to write a lot of the songs on Viva La Vida, so I guess that means that during X&Y he was reading a VCR repair manual.

Just in case you’re calling “BS” on my claim that the lyrics are pretty much interchangeable from song to song and that the above example was an isolated incident, may I invite you to check out a line from “Talk”:

Do you feel like a puzzle, you can’t find your missing piece?
Tell me how you feel
Well I feel like they’re talking in a language I don’t speak
And they’re talking it to me

Right, well grammar issues aside, now look at this line from the hit single “Speed Of Sound”:

The sign that I couldn’t read
Or a light that I couldn’t see
Some things you have to believe
But others are puzzles, puzzling me

Ok, on top of mentioning “puzzles” twice in songs only 2 tracks apart, apparently he has trouble understanding things too. There are many more examples of this all through the album, but I’m leaving you in charge of pointing them out.

So yeah, there’s no real use trying to deny it, this album disappoints on almost every level. I didn’t even want to finish the album, but I felt it was my patriotic duty, and yeah what awaited me was “Twisted Logic”, which is a bone-headed anti-oil-drilling song. Not that I’m all about using up the Earth’s natural resources to fuel such important things as NASCAR races or those horrible Hummer vehicles, but really, a band that incorporates as many trucks as Coldplay does in order to tour has very little room to speak on the subject of not burning so much fuel. I know that pointing out this kind of hypocrisy is old-hat on the internet, but seriously, look how many trucks they tour with:

And that’s not counting the tour van!

All that to support an album like this, that’s the real injustice, besides that an album this half-assed took 18 months to make. In fact, a perfect example of Coldplay taking their sweet time is in the very last track (in some album versions, it’s a secret track) called “‘Til Kingdom Come”. Coldplay wrote the song specifically so that Johnny Cash could sing it with Chris Martin, but as we all know, Johnny Cash died before they ever got the chance. He died in 2003 and this album did not come out until 2005, so that should give you some idea. The song itself is a pathetic attempt to recreate the sound of Cash’s later American Recordings albums, all the way down to the bottom octave piano, and with Chris Martin and his limp voice droning away at the very forced psuedo-Christian lyrics that might as well had been copied from a legitimate middle-era Cash song, the song is just downright sad. X&Y is sad. I have no idea why I thought listening to it for this writeup would be a good idea. I’ve made myself sad now, which should give you some idea of how sad this album is.

No, actually, do you want to know how sad this album is? It lost a Grammy to U2’s How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb. That’s how sad it is.

Sparks – Exotic Creatures Of The Deep

Once again, as our time draws to a close, I feel it only prudent to bring up Sparks at least one last time. Today, as is our wont, we shall be talking about their newest album, released only last year, called Exotic Creatures Of The Deep:

This album, having been released recently, finds the band further exploring that orchestral/metal/rock/but-still-synthy-pop sound that they started somewhere around Lil’ Beethoven and Hello Young Lovers, which we covered some time before. This new iteration of the band’s seems to have been the most consistently successful, perhaps because this decade, for many people, was a decade so polluted with crappy music that those with particular taste have been re-awakened by groups like Sparks who were innovative long before any of us were born. At least, that’s what I like to think. Above all else, I think these albums have succeeded because they’re really good. This album is no exception, in fact it’s one of the most polished and entertaining albums the band has come out with yet.

That may not be immediately evident from the first “Intro” track, but I’m fond of it all the same. What better way to get love from listeners than to mix in a rather generous amount of repetitions of “Love me” in the song’s 1 and a bit minutes?

“Good Morning” brings the band back to its roots, in that Russell sings it in a high, almost dramatic falsetto while Ron pounds away at a very “Ron” type of piano. To give this song an infectious hook, there is a lovely warm synth part laid over the whole thing, punching away at its own version of the disco rhythm that goes on here, ultimately guiding the song into a finish that really  makes the song. Lyrically, it’s about being confused over the nature of the partner the singer found in his bed:

Good morning, I’m thinking
I must have been drinking
And said something clever
It must have been the best line from me ever

Thank you, God, for something rare as this
What surely must have been a holy night of bliss
Gratitude for having thought of me
I know your time is tight, and yet you thought of me

Good morning, you woke up
Got dressed up, hair messed up
While I fix you breakfast
I hope it’s just your laugh that is infectious

Oh how I love these guys. Seriously that’s only the tip of the 4 minute iceberg of musing on the identity and nature of the one night stand.

“Strange Animal” takes a rockin’ approach to dissecting human nature in a rather abstract way, and the song is complete with some snazzy sounding (if a bit over-produced) distorted guitar. I would post lyrics from it and talk about it further, but there’s like 8000 words in this song, so yeah. It’s clever and long, and that’s what you need to know.

A strong contender for champion in the over-populated expanse of clever Sparks song titles, “I Can’t Believe That You Would Fall For All The Crap In This Song” is possibly at least winner of “longest title”. This song has an awesome distorted bass-line to go along with its swing beat as the singer sings it high and proceeds to say things like “I want you and only you and only you my love” and then stating the song’s title as a taunt. It’s kind of a great anti-love song, and features a beautiful bridge. The distorted synth-bass-line and beat not only make this song, but they made Muse’s “Uprising” as well, as they’re basically the exact same tune. Seriously, check it out. Thing is, both songs remind me of the “Slam Shuffle (Zozo)” theme from a game called Final Fantasy 6 (previously “3″ in the U.S.) Call me crazy, but that whirring octave instrument is mainly what I’m referring to.

Speaking of old video games, another one I quite like is a ballad called “I’ve Never Been High”. The melody and instrumentation remind me exactly of that 90’s era of those high fantasy games where orchestras of synthesizers would play a 16 bit symphony and somehow manage to be better than pretty much all other music in my ears. Then again, I was raised on Nintendo and classical music, so you’ll forgive a dying man for his lapses into nostalgia. Lyrically, if you’re curious (I know I was), the song is about never being high despite being famous and in music. It’s sung with a tinge of regret that I can respect, as I definitely relate to all but the “famous” part of this song.

The stand-out rocking tune in this set is a contender for “best idea for a song ever”, and it’s called “Lighten Up, Morrissey“. Of course, while the idea of Morrissey lightening up is a wonderful ribbing to the angst-ridden lead singer of such bands as The Smiths and Morrissey, the band, Sparks are not actually being negative on the fellow at all. They are all good friends and the song is really about the singer not being able to woo a girl because he’s not as good in her eyes as Morrissey, so if he lightens up, as the singer pleads, things will work out in his favor. Still, every time I listen to Morrissey (which isn’t much, I can tell you), this is usually the phrase I am screaming into my velvet pillow before drawing the curtains and weeping.

Another amazing song is “This Is The Renaissance”, which evokes a very “rock opera” kind of feel, only without that sticky “Queen” film that the band tends to expel during and after every performance (weird, I know, but I am in no way a fan of Queen). Anyway, the synthesizer orchestration of this song is quite lovely, and some very no-nonsense lyrics really makes this an entertaining affair. I especially like how, at the end of the chorus, they refer to both pronounciations of the word.

There are a lot more songs of consistent “Sparks” quality to be found on the album, and I would encourage you to seek them all out. Personally, I am hoping to see this band at least once, especially if they ever come back to America, as they really put on an amazing show. In fact, the band put on 21 shows in 21 days (playing, in full and in correct order, all 21 albums that preceded this one) in order to prepare for the release of this particular album, which I would have loved to see. Of all the bands I’ve discovered this year, Sparks has got to be the best one, and if not, then I can’t remember the best one, which makes Sparks automatically the best one again. Confusing, I know, but this is all very important, I assure you.

King Crimson – Discipline

Yeah sure it might have been less than two weeks since the last time, but time is short and I wanted to give King Crimson another shot before the end of the year. So today we are going to talk about the funky fresh 1980’s incarnation of Crimson, 7 years after band-leader Robert Fripp decided that King Crimson was “completely over for ever and ever”, and their first album to arrive out of that period, called Discipline:

While the 80’s destroyed a lot of music fans used to love about music before itself being destroyed by the 90’s and what music fans consider “better than the 80’s at least”, some bands came through the other side splendidly. Interestingly, the band to do that most successfully was a 70’s band that was destroyed by the 70’s. Indeed, after breaking up King Crimson, band members scattered all over the place*, taking with them a little bit of talent into some very undeserving bands (Foreigner, Genesis, and Asia, to name a couple).

Fripp, ultimately deciding against becoming a priest or monk or ice cream salesman, decided to keep doing that music thing that had previously been earning him millions. He did solo albums, collaborations, and just general musical floating. At one point he floated by a bassist called Tony Levin who was apparently so good at bass, he had no choice but to upgrade to the Chapman Stick. He was, in fact, such a master bassist, that Fripp didn’t even feel obligated to make him the singer, making him not only the longest-standing bassist in the periodic table of elements that make up the band’s ongoing roster, but also the second of a total of 6 bassists who didn’t have to take vocal duties either.

For vocal duties, Fripp enlisted not only the voice but guitar (!!!) of Adrian Belew, which turned out to be quite the smart move, as Adrian is still with the group, making him the longest-standing member of King Crimson besides Fripp himself. Bill Bruford, who once again joins as the group’s drummer (because he makes a terrible accordionist), is the third longest-standing member.

So here we have it, King Crimson round number *incoherent mumbling*, except that Fripp did think about calling the group “Discipline”, since he had broken up King Crimson “for ever and ever”, but ultimately decided to err on the side of success and revive the franchise. With this new stable line-up, King Crimson would finally be able to stay consistent with the personnel… for a total of 3 albums, of which this is the first.

With a nearly-completely new band in a completely new decade, one would expect a completely new sound for Discipline, and indeed that’s what one gets. Everything is different with this new group from the last, even down to the nationality (and therefore, accent) of the singer. Something else you might notice, as an added challenge, Bill Bruford decided to play a bit of the album without cymbals on his kit. In fact, sometimes his kit was this bastard.

Adrian Belew, on top of taking over singing duties, became the band’s lyricist as well. Though saying the word causes me to break out in a rash, I suppose the best description for his songwriting style is “quirky”. I will have to listen to more Crimson to really get a sense of what this entails, but I can tell you, based on this particular album, that it involves a lot of shouting/talking. The first track, “Elephant Talk”, is entirely spoken, but somewhat melodically.

“Elephant Talk” also features the tapping of the Chapman Stick from Mr. Levin, and to hear the song, you would probably swear you were hearing Primus. This is, by no means, a bad things, but certainly one can see the influence Crimson had on our favorite band with its own genre in this track. It becomes apparent that the song derives its title from one of Adrian’s interesting guitar effects, wherein he makes it sound like an elephant. The man can make that guitar make funny noises, for shore.

The second track, “Frame By Frame”, features something really fast happening on some kind of stringed instrument. Is it the stick? Fripp’s guitar? Someone else’s thing? I don’t know, but it’s awesome, I can tell you that much. The entire track, minus the singing (which is also pretty great), reminds me a bit of the ol’ Ozric Tentacles.

Then we get “Matte Kudasai”, an Eastern-influenced track with a title that translates from Japanese to “Please Wait” in English. I am pretty sure the “Matte Kudasai”, besides being in the actual song, also has the meaning that one should wait through this song before the album gets awesome again.

The album does indeed get awesome again, with a track called “Indiscipline”, which starts off sounding like nonsense, but erupts into this dissonant jam that… also kind of sounds like Primus. Either way, the lyrics are once again spoken by Belew, as he alludes to some kind of thing he has made and how much he likes it. A quick Wikipedia search reveals that it’s from a letter from Belew’s then-wife describing a statue she had made. While the song on its own merits is awesome and the lyrics mysterious, that revelation about the origins of the lyrics kind of undermines that a bit. If anything, it just shows that Belew was married to a very boring woman.

The next track, “Thela Hun Ginjeet”, once again features a lengthy spoken-word section by the singer, but at least it’s broken up by some nonsense singing (well ok the title is “Heat In The Jungle”). Either way, the talking is not as audible as the playing, so I’m confused as to which pointless thing I should be listening to. It’s like the song should have been an instrumental but failed to do so because someone wouldn’t stop talking.

Actually, the next track is a proper instrumental, called “The Sheltering Sky”. There’s not a lot to say about it besides that the extra-warbly guitar reminds me of an old Nintendo game called Zelda II: The Adventure Of Link at points. That’s it!

Finally, we get another Stick-tastic track that happens to be the album’s title track. There’s even less to say about it than the previous song, as it is also an instrumental, and there are even less changes in it. Still, a King Crimson instrumental is bound to be a better instrumental than most others you’ll find, so I’ll take what I can get!

Well, it looks like King Crimson did fairly all right for themselves after such a long pause, despite throwing their mellotron to the sharks. This album is widely considered a favorite, though I am still more partial to the grandios orchestral-sounding stuff. Still, this is a great album, and even if you aren’t the musically-inclined type that would go “oooh ahhh” at the techniques used to make this music, there might still be something to enjoy here… no? Not at all? I wouldn’t know, I’ve been in love with Chapman Sticks since I was a teenager, so I guess I’m just weird.

*Editor’s Note: an error in research previously led us to write that they had been eaten by bears, this apparently was only half truth. Jamie Muir, by all accounts, was totally eaten by a bear.

Radiohead – Pablo Honey

Well, I knew when I started talking about Radiohead albums in backwards chronological order, that I would have to eventually come to Pablo Honey, a terrible album that I’m afraid to say I actually quite like:

To many music listeners out there, and even most Radiohead fans, this album is pretty much “The one with ‘Creep’ on it”. To be honest, it should probably be left at that, but it would feel less like an album writeup if I were to end things here, so it looks like we’re stuck with 11 more songs that aren’t “Creep”.

To put things into perspective, Radiohead’s first album had all the makings of a “one hit wonder”. After changing their name from “On A Friday” (thank goodness), they released a really poor-selling debut EP and then sought out Paul Q. Kolderie and Sean Slade (who would later produce Warren Zevon’s Life’ll Kill Ya based on their merits as having “worked with Radiohead”) for their full length album. The album would feature some stuff that they did before they were a signed band, as well as some new material, but none of it was particularly good. Of course, bad bands make albums all the time, so nobody thought twice about it.

While recording, the band half-heartedly tossed out an impromptu version of “Creep”, which got the producers’ attention, because it was better than the other stuff they had done thus far (despite being in the key of “G” like just about half of this album). Suddenly, the band had a hit on their hands, a song about being lonely and pathetic, with an easily recognizable hook and one of the most intense midde-eights (fancy talk for “bridge”) since Iron Maiden. Thus Radiohead the UK hitmaker band was born, even though they never liked the song and only after becoming huge without it did they start tolerating associating with it again.

As for the rest of the songs, well, they’re just there. A lot of them sound like attempted hits, especially “Anyone Can Play Guitar”, and the other half just sound like stuff that they tossed together because all the band could all play the chords without thinking too much about it. It’s kind of weird to hear something like In Rainbows or Amnesiac with their fancy effects and interesting melodies, and then to try and not crack up at the tune to “Ripcord” which, incidentally, has nearly the same melody right after the chorus as the theme to Disney’s Pepper Ann. Seriously, check it out! You’re welcome, internet.

Some of the songs are really good though. I can’t, in good conscience, say anything bad about the album’s opener, “You”. From having that lovely thick wall of distorted guitars to a single high note that Thom Yorke has refused to hit since the mid-90’s, it’s about the best English rock song about being a stalker that I know.

In fact, the album is bookended with goodness. I have always loved the album’s ender, “Blow Out” (Youtube warning: do not watch if you suffer from epilepsy). It’s only two chords, but after the second chorus, the thing just erupts into this rising guitar feedback effect that just kind of takes over the mix and rises like some tidal wave of barely discernible sound. It also stands as the only track from this album that the band itself is actually proud of, so that’s something I suppose.

There are other notable attempts on the band’s part to “rock out” in this album that never seem to get quite off the ground. Perhaps it’s Thom Yorke’s voice and how unsuitable it is for anything other than what the band would eventually start doing, but to listen to the song “How Do You?”, one may get the feeling that something is amiss. Yeah, there are distorted guitars all over the place, but Thom does not have the voice for punk rock, and despite turning his entire head into a nose in order to get such a nasally performance, it just doesn’t seem to work out for him.

Even worse than that is his performance on “Anyone Can Play Guitar”. Now here’s a song that shows a lot of promise, it’s in the Angry People’s Key of E minor, and features a catchy enough major-key chorus, but the words and vocal performance handily derail the whole thing. For one, it’s got words like this:

Destiny, Destiny protect me from the world
Destiny, hold my hand protect me from the world

Here we are, with our running and confusion
And I don’t see no confusion anywhere

And if the world does turn, and if London burns
I’ll be standing on the beach with my guitar
I want to be in a band, when I get to Heaven
Anyone can play guitar
And they won’t be a nothing anymore

For one, does London even have any beaches? For two, these are terrible lyrics. I understand that Radiohead occasionally considers themselves “above” rhyming (unless you count rhyming “guitar” and “guitar” and “world” and “world”), but even then, these words are entirely misrepresentative of what the band stands for nowadays. Heck, after the 90’s, it might as well had been “I’ll be standing on the beach with my Ondes Martenot”. I am not even going into how Thom actually sings the song, just go listen to it yourself.

Wow, I just watched that video for the first time ever, and… I have no more words. I’m just going to end this thing here.

So yeah, Pablo Honey is the most hated of Radiohead albums, and one that seems to be universally agreed upon as a stain on their otherwise amazing career, but still a necessary stain, for the embarrassment, pain, indignity, and most of all, money, was necessary to push the band in the direction they were meant to travel. The album shouldn’t necessarily be hated, there really is some fine work done on it despite some mistakes and lots of lazy bits, there’s just a reason Radiohead tends to only refer to it in hushed whispers or indignant moping. Oh wait, that’s how the refer to everything… nevermind.

Muse – Hullabaloo Soundtrack

Thought I couldn’t do another Muse album, didn’t you? Well, Hullabaloo Soundtrack kind of counts, and I’m in a Muse mood, so let’s get it on:

Since this is a collection of songs, I suppose it could be called an album, but what we have here is a 2 disc compilation of B-sides and obscurities, and then a live disc. It must be a “thing” in England to ship out a lot of singles, because at this point, the band had only really put out 2 feature-length albums, yet there is an entire album’s worth of throwaways here.

The thing that gets me about it is that these songs are actually really good, and about as worthy of being on a Muse album as anything. They’re a little on the harder side of things, especially if you take their recent works into consideration, and there are some other fairly odd tracks here.

It starts off with a track that goes all the way back to the single release of “Uno”, which you may remember as one of the less desirable tracks from the band’s debut album Showbiz. It’s called “Forced In” and it features possibly the most build-up to a slow shuffle I’ve ever heard. The song doesn’t really reconcile properly, it seems, but it makes a killer introduction to the second track, “Shrinking Universe”.

Basically, despite there being whole albums dedicated to the cause, you could probably condense the entirety of Muse’s first few years’ worth of sound and get a song that would sound remarkably close to “Shrinking Universe”. I’m not even sure why this is, besides the yelpy vocals, splashy drums, and distortion all over the place, but I feel in my heart that it is so.

“Recess” is a little more attuned to the quieter moments in Showbiz, but kind of stands on its own, except that it uses the same style of chord progression. This particular song features a lovely little guitar line after the first chorus that becomes something of a feature after the second chorus, that is to say, they throw about a hundred more guitars into the mix to really wake up the listener, which is good because you’ll need that alertness for the next song.

“Yes Please” makes up the other side of Muse’s somewhat predictable early material, that is, the riff-tastic rock. This is, however, one of the better riff-tastic rock songs they’ve come up with, and quite possibly the thickest 3 minute cut of guitar on this record. Even the vocals are distorted to an indiscernible degree that makes it sound like just another guitar in there somewhere. Good times.

After all this rock, is it wrong that one of my favorite songs on this collection is a weird acoustic pop song? Well, “Map Of Your Head” is just that, but despite its stupid lyrics and fairy-like instrumentation (except for the drums and that awesome low-octave piano), it’s such a memorable melody and overall has a sense of fun to it. I once had this song and only this song in my head for an entire week.

The next song, “Nature_1″, which hails from the “Plug In Baby” single, has a strange naming scheme. Why an underscore? Is this some kind of Yahoo screen name or something? Either way, it’s kind of a Spanish-inspired melody in a half-acoustic track that kind of sounds like the embryo to that one track from Black Holes And Revelations, yeah you know the one.

The next song is also quite fun, and is called “Shine Acoustic”. It’s apparently an acoustic version of a song called “Shine”, but I have no idea what “Shine” is supposed to be. It’s not on any of the band’s albums, and I can’t seem to find much reference to it that doesn’t lead back to this song. It doesn’t help that “Shine” is just about the most generic name an alternative rock band can give its song, but that’s beside the point. Either way, it’s got this lovely organ arpeggio and acoustic guitars playing against the false sounds of rain (unless there was a thunderstorm going on and their studio was just really bad at blocking sound), and the whole thing builds up to this lovely crescendo that, upon ending, is punctuated by gentle thunder. Definitely a unique track in the Muse catalog, now if only I knew what the electric version sounded like.

Speaking of electric, you might feel a bit of a shock if you aren’t prepared for the feedback onslaught that opens up “Ashamed”. It appears, along with “Yes Please”, on the “Sunburn” single, which must be a really ripping single, as this marks the second riff-based song with distorted vocals. This one is actually a little bit better than the last one, deafening intro notwithstanding. It’s mainly that it features a bass-line driven verse that is broken up by rock-out segments with an interesting guitar effect that kind of sounds like a laser being shot or something, in an old sci-fi show. Yeah I know that’s weird but it’s quite late at night now so please forgive my lack of sense.

Speaking of lack of sense, “The Gallery” is about the weirdest thing on this album, and that’s saying a lot about it, since it’s an instrumental and all. It’s basically got this squishy sort of effect laid over the drums and sharing the beat, and a bass and piano sharing an arpeggio while the guitar impersonates a Theremin. The tune is undeniably “Muse”, so I guess the whole thing isn’t so weird, just a presentation thing I guess.

The final song on the collection is a weepy acoustic version of “Hyper Music”, from Origin Of Symmetry, re-titled “Hyper Chondriac Music”. It’s pretty much the song, only slowed way down and with this kind of “epic” feel about it, but missing that really excellent bass-line. Moreso the pity, but still worth a listen because it’s a good song anyway.

That rounds out the B-side album. The live album is available (apparently only in England) on DVD to watch and make fun of Matt Bellamy’s spiked hair, and most of it can be seen on Youtube. The only remark I really have on it is that it introduces “Dead Star” and “In Your World” to the world, and both of those songs appear later on the Dead Star EP and are radically different between the two versions. The EP versions are better, I feel. Also, the live version of “Space Dementia” is impossibly fast on the live version, which may confuse and even anger some listeners.

Well, I was hoping I’d get one more crack at Muse because the year was out, and indeed it was a pleasure listening to them again. If you can find this one in stores, this is a worthy collection if you felt like Origin Of Symmetry wasn’t long enough.

Johnny Cash – Unearthed: Disc 3: Redemption Songs

What a night! I just got back from this massive musical jam here in Austin, and it was quite fun. I almost forgot that it’s time to talk about Johnny Cash’s third album-within-an-album, the “Redemption Songs” disc from Unearthed:

This disc is largely compiled of songs that Cash recorded after his hospitalization episode between Unchained and American III: Solitary Man, with some songs thrown in from the American IV: The Man Comes Around sessions. However, it’s kind of the more unusual disc of the bunch; the songs are one part what you’d expect from Cash out of this era, and another part songs that come completely from left field. There is, however, one song in this set that I absolutely adore, and we’ll get to that one, for sure.

As with the other two collections thus far, Redemption Songs contains some songs that Cash had previously recorded, but instead of relying on the old “hits”, he took the path less traveled and sang the songs he wanted to sing, with no real concern over how popular the songs were at the time. In fact, the first song on the collection, “A Singer Of Songs”, had never been released or performed anywhere, and according to the liner notes, Cash didn’t even know who wrote it. It’s revealed that, in fact, the author was a friend of John Carter Cash’s called Tim O’Connell who is famous for (editor’s note: missing). The song is really grand though, written specifically for Johnny, it embodies his humility as a performer, as well as his spirituality. No matter what you may say about Johnny Cash, the fact is that he was a singer of songs.

Speaking of questionable popularity, Cash revisits what is undoubtedly one of the most unusual albums of his career: Silver. The first song from that album, “The L & N Don’t Stop Here Anymore” is finally given a more “Country” treatment as opposed to the horn-laden electronics-heavy version. Interestingly, it’s revealed in the liner notes that the song was written by a woman (Jean Ritchie) who took on a man’s name (Than Hall… Than? Really?) because she felt a coal-miner’s song written by a woman wouldn’t be taken seriously. You wouldn’t think that would be much of a concern since she’s a famous lady in the Bluegrass circles anyway, but oh well, people have their ways.

If I was to compile a list of bizarre Johnny Cash songs (and believe me it’s in the works), near the top of the list would be “Redemption Songs”. See how far you can follow this: It’s a song about redemption (so far so good), written by Bob Marley (Well I guess Cash did live in Jamaica and was a Marley fan so… ok), about literal and metaphorical slavery (what?) and not fearing atomic energy (I… huh?), featuring The Clash’s Joe Strummer (who?), and no effort is made to alter the language in the song, so both of these old white guys are singing a reggae song completely straight, and in its original language. Yeah, it’s a strange one all right. To be honest, it could have been fine with just Johnny, but Joe Strummer’s singing and the way the material was handled just doesn’t fit well together, so the song becomes something entirely weird and uncomfortable.

Still weird, but not quite as much so, is Cash’s second duet with Fiona Apple (they recorded two songs for the American IV album, only one of which was used). The song is “Father And Son”, a song written by Cat Stevens… err… Yusuf Islam, and was meant to be sung by a father admonishing his son for wanting to join some revolutionary cause. Indeed, Cash and Fiona sing it, without really changing the words, so there’s no real “characterization” going on here, as Fiona doesn’t make the world’s most convincing “son”. Still, the song is very pretty, so let’s not split hairs over propriety.

Another stone in the mountain of songs Cash has done about Tennessee, this one is a weird one indeed, “Chattanooga Sugar Babe”. Nothing is said about why this song came about, but there’s this mysteriously appealing quality to hearing 70-something year old Johnny Cash singing to a coke whore:

There ain’t no money to buy cocaine, sugar babe
There ain’t no money to buy cocaine, sugar babe
Ain’t no money to buy cocaine
Burn your nose and rot your brain, sugar babe

It has a very old-tymey feel to it as well, all thanks to the presence of a guit-banjo that Norman Blake (the guy who wrote the song) plays for the session. Again, a weird song, but interesting.

What better way to follow up a series of unusual songs than by singing the best Country song ever written? Surely, George Jones’ “He Stopped Loving Her Today” is as well-regarded in the Country scene and the Song-lovers’ right up there with “I Walk The Line” or “Your Cheating Heart”. Cash’s version is very respectable, and it may be a sin against nature, but I actually prefer his to the original, and I can’t really explain why. It’s a great song, if you haven’t heard it, you should, because it’s one of the best examples of tragic Country songwriting without relying on the old clichés like your wife dying, or your truck dying, or your dog dying.

It’s still about death though, so you won’t be too disappointed.

Speaking of death, the very best song on this particular disc, and one of my favorites that Cash has covered, is Marty Robbins’ old gun-slinger ballad “Big Iron”. The song is done up just like anything off of American IV, with the beautiful, rhythmic guitars and the pounding bass of left-hand bottom octave piano, in fact this was the final song on the Japanese release of the album, so it really fits right in (I prefer it as an ending over “We’ll Meet Again”, actually). Cash’s shaky voice seems to barely get the story out, but his frailty lends an ethereal yet benevolent feel to the song that makes it more effective than Marty’s original stompin’ version, or even if Cash were to have recorded this song at a younger age. It’s true, actually, that Johnny loved this song and had always wanted to record it, but apparently never found an appropriate place in which to do it. This song is up there with “Don’t Take Your Guns To Town” and any of Cash’s fine western ballads, but the beauty in the song’s story is in its simplicity. Good guy rolls into town, bad guy challenges him, good guy wins, yet by the time I get to the end of that song, I’m holding back a sniffle over how beautiful it is. Better than “A Singer Of Songs”, actually singing a song like “Big Iron” embodies what Johnny Cash was really all about, without having to say a word about it.

There are some other interesting songs on this collection, like the traditional song “Cindy” that Cash sings with Nick Cave (another holdover from the American IV sessions), and what I consider my favorite version of “Wichita Lineman” by Jimmy Webb (noted for having written the songs in A Tramp Shining, the amazing Richard Harris release). This may not be the strongest collection of songs out there (even Rodgers & Hammerstein make an appearance), but like with everything else, I’m glad that they have been assembled, as even the least impressive of Johnny Cash’s songs are still entertaining, because the whole idea behind being under Cash’s spell is not that the songs are good, or that the playing is that good, or even that the singing is all that good, but because it’s Johnny Cash, the best of them all. The sincerity and honesty that man put into every note and the love that he had for all music makes his own music shine, even when he’s singing something utterly bizarre or dull by any other standard. Within the songs lies the true redemption of Johnny Cash, which is why it’s absolutely fitting for this disc to be called Redemption Songs.

Mark Knopfler & Emmylou Harris – All The Roadrunning

Today’s album is one out of this big box of random CD’s that I obtained for free from a temporary job I did this year. The box was kind of an odd mix, but seemed to lean heavily on Country music (or music favored by people who would otherwise be Country fans), film soundtracks, and lots and lots of Christmas albums. Roseanne Cash’s Black Cadillac was in there, and since I’ve been feeling adventurous lately about talking about some of these albums, I think it’s about time to talk about the Emmylou Harris and Mark Knopfler album, All The Roadrunning:

There’s really about only one thing I can think of in common between Dire Straits’ Mark Knopfler and my favorite Country lady Emmylou Harris: both are prolific solo artists who seem to be prized collaborators. So what happens when two of the most sought-after collaborators collaborate for a collaboration? Well, at the risk of making the next 800 words a bit of a waste, it’s pretty great!

I gave this song its requisite 3 or so spins recently (sandwiched between many more Leonard Cohen spins but that’s beside the point) in order to prepare for this writeup, and something stuck out like an excitable nudist: the songs are all expertly crafted and mesh really well with each other for drawing from the variety of genres Mr. Knopfler gets mixed up with. The polish could be due to the fact that everyone involved in this recording are expert musicians, but it could also be that this album project took everyone involved 7 years to make. Mind you, that’s not “Guns N’ Roses” level of “still workin’ on it”, and certainly this album is actually good, but yeah, Johnny Cash could have done 30 albums in that much time. Still, the end result is what matters, and that’s what we’re looking at today.

The album certainly seems at home in the “Country” section of your local music superstore, but there are a few tracks that kind of stand on their own, genre-less and rad. The beginning track has enough oddity to have more of a “folk” vibe, but let’s not mix words over classification. “Beachcombing” seems to be about mixing some kind of feeling with some kind of imagery, like a metaphor or something? I don’t know how these songs work, man. This song starts a tradition of Mark Knopfler taking some extra time to throw out a few solos, which is kind of amusing to me. Emmylou is unaffected though, seemingly content to do her “Ohh-oh”s in the background until it’s her turn to sing again.

“I Dug Up A Diamond” is a thing where, for some reason, the guy is talking about this diamond he dug up, and describes other elements of it to perhaps imply that this “diamond” may be something other than literally a diamond? I guess. Either way, this song once again contains extra solos from a guitar that you plug into the wall via an intermediary that they call an “amp” in the circle of musicians.

When I was talking up there with my words about some of the songs being kind of genre-less, the song I had in mind was “This Is Us”, which starts with a synthy bassy synth and is kind of driven by it, with a more straight-forward beat that may remind one of 80’s rock rather than Country, and the lyrics sound like they’re coming from an old couple showing you a scrap-book of their adventures. It’s one of my favorite songs on the album actually.

Another one I quite like is right after, called “Red Staggerwing”, whatever that is. The song’s lyrical structure is amusing, since it takes kind of an adolescent set of “dream” material objects, and places them in the scheme “If I was a (car, airplane, guitar), you could do (verbs) to me”. The thing I like about it is the following line:

If I was a Taperwing
A Taperwing painted blue
I’d be barrel-rolling over you

Which, if you’re on the internet long enough, you should notice an unintentionally hilarious reference to one of the internet’s worst jokes in there, or else I’m just going crazy. It could be either.

Now that I think about it, it looks like pretty much all but 2 of the 11 songs on this collection were written by Knopfler. That’s kind of a shame, since Emmylous is such a fine songwriter. Then again, perhaps she was taking the Warren Zevon approach and saving her original material for her own album, who knows. Either way, I’m not entirely familiar with Mark Knopfler’s songwriting style, as I was never a Dire Straits fan (see my aversion to 80’s music for a clue as to why this is), but I have always appreciated Mark’s work on other people’s music, which I suppose is why I like this album so much. It’s not that the songs are the best in the world, it’s that the sounds that go on are really pleasing to me. The myriad of melancholy tones that lie under the strong melody behind “Rollin’ On”, the killer beat with droning synth driving my favorite song, “Right Now” (favorite possibly because it reminds me of Emmylou’s original stuff more than anything else here), are examples of elements to each song on this album that capture my attention in some small way. Indeed, this is an album I have easily listened to about 4 or 5 times now in the past couple of days, and I’m still picking up on sounds that I missed the first several times. I guess that’s the mark of a well-done album, is when one finds oneself re-visiting songs per chance to catch certain melodies or other subtleties within the mix. Mind you, in an album that took 7 years to make, one should expect no less than perfection, and I guess that’s what this album is, albeit in a small way.

Those might be considered bold words for an album containing a song called “Donkey Town”, but you know sometimes you have to be bold.

Jars Of Clay – If I Left The Zoo

As you can probably tell from reading this blog for any extended amount of time (and why would you do that), I used to be pretty into this whole Christian Rock music. Fact is, though I have since all-but dropped it in favor of the heathen music that I write about the other 6 days out of the week, it’s really only because “secular” music (how I hate that distinction) is a deeper well to draw from, whereas there are only a few Christian albums that are any good, much less actually stay with me through the years.

Well, If I Left The Zoo is one of those albums that has stayed with me for the 10 years it’s been out, in fact next to anything by Poor Old Lu, it’s my favorite Christian album. So let’s check it out:

Released just about a month and a day over 10 years ago, I always thought this was Jars Of Clay’s third album, but I guess they sneakily released a few little limited edition things in between 1994 and 1999, so this is actually either their fifth or sixth album, depending on who you ask. Either way, one thing is clear: this album marked a prodigious paradigm shift for our little acoustiternativerockers, as they were almost heading for with their slightly-electric album Much Afraid but without moving all the way away from their smooth, melancholy minor chord ways. If I Left The Zoo is a loose, laid-back, and overall fun album, with emotional intensity where it needs to be, smooth melancholy where it needs to be, and a lot of fun everywhere else. It’s not only one of my favorite examples of a good Christian album, but a good album in general.

One thing I can remember about the end of the last decade was the feeling of trepidation in the air that all the computers were going to lock down and the world was going to end because computers were going to get the clocks wrong. Believe it or not, “Y2K” was a real concern for a lot of people, and despite absolutely nothing actually happening, it created a lot of stress for people, not to mention how many crazy folk were going around predicting the end of the world (which they’re still doing, apparently we’re supposed to watch out for 2012 and 2061). Either way, there are a few examples of music I can think of in that notorious year 1999 that, whether subtly or not, referred to that apprehension lingering in the air, and Jars Of Clay opened their album with one of the best.

The first song is called “Goodbye, Goodnight”, and with its pushed-back acoustic guitar and accordion, sounds like a French street corner band playing to a group of soldiers or something as they wait to go to war, at least that’s how I always pictured it. Anyway, the words utilize the same flowery poetry that Jars are known for:

A flower for your vanity
A penny for your thoughts
About the world’s insanity
And how we’ve gotten lost

Strike up the band to play a song
As we go marching by
And fake a smile as we all say good-bye
Good-bye

…and more words about war. It’s a nice little folk song actually, and the melody is really hard to get out of your head (10 years and counting for me, this is usually the song that makes me pick up the album and spin it again). It doesn’t help that the little instrumental additions that come to join in the acoustic guitar are all full of character themselves. Cellos, tubas, a boisterous choir of voices that join in for one line, even someone quietly “cha cha”-ing in the background really adds an element of ease to a song containing the otherwise dire lines:

Raise a glass to ignorance
Drink a toast to fear
The beginning of the end has come
That’s why we all are here

Stike up the band and play a song
And try hard not to cry
And fake a smile as we all say good-bye
Good-bye

Interestingly, that’s one of the low points of the album, and with the exception of the middle and very end of the album, that’s about all there is for melancholy. The second song, “Unforgetful You” may distress or otherwise surprise fans of the band’s first two (five?) albums, as it’s a punchy, clean electric song with electronic effects, joyful lyrics, and is generally upbeat. Good stuff, too bad it was used in the soundtrack of not one, but two horrible movies, the first being the Melissa Joan Hart teen movie Drive Me Crazy and the second being briefly during the Britney Spears movie, not the porno, the actual movie she was in with fatty Dan Akroyd. Tragic.

The third song, in having no affiliation with terrible movies and being generally awesome, is a further improvement on the proceedings. The song is called “Collide” and has some interesting production techniques that I’ve never really heard in other recordings, even on this album. The drums are really pushed back, and the distorted bass sustains to the extent that it almost sounds like organ foot pedals. Dan’s vocals are pushed way up to the front, and all kinds of effects fill up the rest of the sound stage, including bleeps and blips, phase shifting guitar and other guitar notes that almost sound like they could be slide notes. Either way, the song is also punchy, and the rhythmic vocals are still hitting all cylinders with the whole “interesting melodies” thing. I don’t know, I just never get tired of this song is all.

Lest we forget that Jars Of Clay used to be an acoustic band, they return to those roots for a song or two, starting with “No-One Loves Me Like You”, which is another poetry session as far as lyrics go, but the acoustic guitars, instead of inundating us with cluster chords or “church” chords, present a bouncy tune accented by flourishes of mandolin and a nice, deep bass-line as the drums, being played with brushes, have a nice steady cadence going. The song is so calming and sunny that the intensity of the lyrics are somewhat lost, but that’s kind of the point, because the song is generally optimistic anyway.

There are a couple of examples of ideas in this album that don’t work quite as well as hoped, and “Famous Last Words” is one of those. It’s a great tune, don’t get me wrong, I think it’s just a case of lyrically trying to chase a good idea and not quite catching it:

You say you heard every word, but I watched you turn away
Your eyes grew colder than winter
“Love is so intrusive,” I thought I heard you say
And laugh so unconvincingly

Famous last words, “I’m not ready yet”
“I won’t be gone a minute” but I won’t forget
Those famous last words
If tomorrow never comes, will I ever know that I was in love?

I mean, these lyrics are fine and all, but I think they’re not quite getting the joke behind the phrase “famous last words”. It’s something you say in response to someone saying something that could possibly be unexpectedly dangerous, like “What does this switch do?” Oh well, I’m not complaining about the actual song, just its use of the idea.

Some of the ideas seem like they should be bad, but work in a way. The song “Sad Clown” is an example of this. I know that the idea of a “sad clown” is about the most cliché thing one can think of when one thinks of a clown. Still, the slow, bluesy ballad being played on a piano that sounds 200 years old being backed up by a toy piano actually works really well for giving the song a showy yet convincing feel. I’ll give the guys one thing, they chase that idea of the clown all the way to where it suddenly doesn’t seem like such a goofy piece and something one can sympathize with. The song is good, and I can tell because I usually hate the mention of clowns in songs (another exception is one of my favorite Nick Drake tunes, “At The Chime Of A City Clock”).

Still, now that we’re over the dire middle of the album, it’s time for a particularly inspirational piece called “Hand”. The melody has this very “love song” feel to it, but the driving beat and dropped-tuning bass keep it from feeling too “adult contemporary”. Still, if those elements weren’t in place, this song would sound more like a “classic” Jars Of Clay than anything else on this album, with the possible exception of the ending portion where Dan Haseltine really belts it out, which goes against his usual method of whispering out the vocals.

In fact, I noticed that a lot of the “new” elements that are introduced in one song on this album are usually fully realized in the very next track, and I think that shows a very good amount of cohesion in the album. This album couldn’t have come together any better if Hannibal Smith planned it (and he loves it when a plan comes together). In this case, Dan Haseltine belting out some noteworthy notes is more of a feature in “I’m Alright”, a positive song that has a very Gospel Music feel to it, thanks to the choir of backup singers and the general pop feel to the instrumentation. It’s a really excellent song, especially when you consider that the lyrics are actually a rather mature song about relationship problems, but it’s all done in such a sweet-natured way that there’s a farfisa(?) organ solo followed by whistling. Nicely played, fellas.

“Grace” and “Can’t Erase It” make up the late portion of the album, and are both fairly similar in feel and the fact that both are driven by guitar riffs, which is another new element developed in the first and seen to fruition in the second. I just didn’t want to talk about them at length because we’re running out of room here.

I did want to mention briefly the final song, “River Constantine”, which has a special place in my heart attached to some happy memories. It’s otherwise a really lovely acoustic number with thunderous percussion going on in the background, and the lyrics are just about a river representing God. Nothing too special, I suppose, but it’s one of my favorite songs ever, so of course I’m at a loss to describe why it’s so great, I can almost never do that successfully with my favorite songs.

So yeah, an amazingly well-put-together album to end the decade with, and as we end this new decade, and I listen to this album again, it really puts perspective into where I was 10 years ago and where I will be once that clock rolls around to “0″ again and we begin a new decade. Of course, that time is not quite here yet, and we still have albums to write about. So, until then, thanks again for reading!