From The Vaults

Blue
Joni Mitchell
Warner Bros, 1971

Wait, so he's only been back for two days and so far he's only written about records from the seventies! Is he going soft in his old age?
Well, maybe so, but this record was such a constant companion to me on my travels that I can't see myself moving forward before I address it here.
Blue was Joni Mitchell's fourth album, and she already had some absolute classic songs - "Big Yellow Taxi," "Both Sides Now," "Woodstock," and "The Circle Game"- under her belt. But it was here that she really hit her stride, composing a set of ten songs consistent in theme and style, and every damn one of them a highlight.
The instrumental palate of Blue is very simple, led by either acoustic guitar or piano and occasionally augmented by upright bass and some light percussion. But the key instrument throughout is clearly Mitchell's voice, and she wields it with stunning expressiveness. At turns playful and sorrowful, she uses her full range, flipping into her upper register or swooping into her sonorous lows. And then there's her unique phrasing - she will often tack on another word after you think she has finished a phrase, which keeps the melodies rhythmically varied and leaves you hanging on her every word.
Of course, the vocal performance would be merely impressive if there weren't some solid songs to hang it on. And thankfully there are; in fact the material is so consistent it's hard to even know where to start. Opener "All I Really Want" sets the scene perfectly. One of the album's more upbeat tunes, it's light-footed yearning is deftly shaded with the deep melancholy that permeates even the album's happier moments. "Carey" and "California" both capture the intoxicating freedom of traveling, but also betray a deep-seated longing for home. "River" is an unquestionable classic, and has the added value of doubling as a Christmas song. But "Case Of You" is perhaps the album's high point. The chorus is that of a devotional love song, but the opening lines are a wry portrait of love lost:

Just before our love got lost you said
"I am as constant as the Northern Star."
And I said, "Constantly in the darkness; where's that at?
If you want me I'll be in the bar.

It's the perfect ode to the complexities and contradictions of love, which just so happens to be the primary focus of the album.
"The Last Time I Saw Richard" closes the album on an unquestionably melancholy note, with Richard observing that all romantics end up "cynical and drunk and boring someone in some dark cafe." Mitchell still manages to insert some hope into the song, though, like a dusty streak of light cutting through a dark room:

Only a dark cocoon before I get my gorgeous wings
And fly away
Only a phase, these dark cafe days

But the somberness of the music shows no sign of letting up as the piano brings us to the end of the album alone.
A songwriter with this kind of talent is a small marvel in and of itself, but to find her creating such an unflinching and detailed portrait of herself is something to be cherished - the greatest confessional singer-songwriter album ever released.

MP3: A Case Of You

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From The Vaults

You Can't Hide Your Love Forever
Orange Juice
Polydor, 1982

Joe Strummer once said that his band's role was to rebuild everything that the Sex Pistols tore down. The Clash certainly did this admirably, but they were not the only band who undertook the endeavor. The late 70s and early 80s found a whole slew of bands taking the punk aesthetic in different directions.
One of the most engaging (and obscure) of these acts was Glasgow's Orange Juice. As the title of their debut album You Can't Hide Your Love Forever clearly implied, they were interested in stripping punk of it's nihilistic edge and injecting it with a dose of human vulnerability and emotion. Since, at his heart, punk was always actually more about "outsiderness" than toughness, this worked remarkably well. It's a formula that has been reapplied several times, perhaps most notably by Glasgow's current reigning kings and queens of melancholy - Belle and Sebastian. B&S's Stuart Murdoch cited this Orange Juice effort among his top 10 favorite albums, and his band's single "Legal Man" directly name check's the OJ tune "L.O.V.E. Love."
But indie cred aside, You Can't Hide Your Love Forever is a thoroughly enjoyable listen top to bottom. It pits shambling (and very white) R&B and Soul rhythms against Edwynn Collins' inimitable warble of a voice. The sound is very much like New Wave, but without all of the icy remove and with a cheeky sense of humor. The second track, "Untitled Melody," slyly references the Righteous Brothers classic ("Unchained Melody") and features the adorably clever turn of a phrase, "I need you more or less/You need me more and more."
The highlight for me, though, is the bouncy, almost bluesy "Consolation Prize." You can almost hear Collins smiling to himself as he sings "I wore my fringe like Roger McGuinn's/I wore it hoping to impress/So frightfully camp, it made you laugh/Tomorrow I'll buy myself a dress." But the self-deprecation goes from charming to poignant when he lays bare the heart of the matter, repeating "I'll never be man enough for you" over a closing guitar jam that would be copped countless times by indie rockers over the years. But they can't hide their influences forever - if this album ever gets a damn reissue in this country, indie kids far and wide are sure to pick up on Orange Juice.

MP3: Consolation Prize

From The Vaults

In the Aeroplane Over the Sea
Neutral Milk Hotel
Merge, 1998

If you'll excuse me for a moment, I am going to set aside all journalistic integrity and level-mindedness and reduce myself to a puddle of unabashed praise:
This is my favorite album of all time.
Sure, if I am listening to Blonde on Blonde, Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, or I See a Darkness, I might be temporarily convinced otherwise. But it's a trick. It's Aeroplane every time.
This should come as no surprise to other indie fanatics - Jeff Mangum's masterpiece is one of the most beloved indie records of all time, and it gains new followers every year. It has its detractors, but they seem limited to those who don't care for Mangum's singing voice and limited vocal capabilities. It hardly seems necessary to point out the fact that he is clearly choosing to sing out of his range and that the results are uniquely affecting, or that this dude named Bob Dylan abolished the necessity of polished vocals back in the 60s.
But before I get carried away about Mangum's performance and songwriting, let me mention the rest of the band (who are, sadly, usually ignored). Jeremy Barnes' impassioned drumming makes uptempo numbers like "King of Carrot Flowers, Pts. 2 & 3," "Holland, 1945," and "Ghost" surge with an overwhelming punk-like energy. Scott Spillane's horn arrangements and the brass section's woozy, half-polished contributions add a surreal marching-band flair that elevates the album's emotional content to surprising heights whenever Mangum's taken a song as far as he could with words. The ghostly wails of Julian Koster's singing saw lend a singular spectral beauty to the vaguely Irish folk-like "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea."
Countless other inventive instrumental touches also add depth and texture to Mangum's songs, which are surreal, disturbing, breathtakingly beautiful, and hauntingly sad. He sings his impressionistic lyrics like someone in a fevered dream, and the burning passion in his voice adds emotional heft to the most unlikely of lyrical phrases. Perhaps what elevates this album above the others of its decade (and, for me, of all time) is the palpable inspiration and desperation behind it - no matter what Mangum is saying, it feels like his words are on fire and he can't get them out of his mouth fast enough.
I don't want too say to much about his lyrics, because I think they are best interpreted individually, but I found it helpful to learn that the album was inspired in part by The Diary of Anne Frank. It never addresses the subject directly, but rather creates its own unique world in which boundaries of time and place are blurred. Mangum takes the idea of living in a world where atrocities can happen and uses it to create a singular, twisted, frightening, and beautiful new reality. In a way, approaching In the Aeroplane Over the Sea reminds me of childhood. It is like discovering the strangeness of the world for the first time - sex is bizarre and disturbing, death is unbelievable and inescapable, and life and love feel so undeniably, overwhelmingly real that you could burst at any moment.
And though the lyrics are largely impressionistic and surreal, it would be misleading to suggest that they are completely obtuse. The album's closer "Two Headed Boy, Pt. 2" is gut-wrenchingly sad, and not just because of the way it sounds. Mangum concludes the album on a particularly direct note, singing:

Two Headed Boy,
She is all you could need
She will feed you tomatoes and radio wires
And retire to sheets warm and clean
But don't hate her when she gets up to leave.

I find myself completely relating to him, and suddenly the strange and terrifying world that Mangum has created has become my own. If you ever get to this point with the album, you will never be able to turn back.
After Mangum delivers that final line, you can hear him set down his guitar and walk away from the microphone. The fact that he has never recorded or performed another song since has added a symbolic weight to this final gesture; it seems that perhaps Mangum has truly said all that he has to say. Normally I would be upset about this - a favorite band calling it quits. But I hardly even consider Neutral Milk Hotel a band anymore. They're more than that. They're something else.

MP3: Holland, 1945

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From The Vaults

Pixies
Doolittle
4AD/Elektra, 1989

When did indie rock start? Conventional wisdom pins The Velvet Underground as the band that got the ball rolling, and that makes a lot of sense considering that they were the first significant cult band. But they can't be really be labeled "indie" or "punk" without the prefix "proto" out front, since they recorded decades before those terms were even coined.
So for the title of First-Actual-Indie-Rock-Band, I think the Pixies are as good a choice as any. They were perhaps the first band to successfully blend punk's aggressiveness, new wave's arty strangeness, and big pop hooks into a unified, inextricable mess. Their first album Surfer Rosa was downright brilliant, but that didn't stop them from one-upping themselves with their sophomore release Doolittle. Frontman Black Francis turns out a handful of absolute classics, and bassist/vocalist Kim Deal proves to be the secret weapon to end all secret weapons with her plodding bass-lines and melodic background vocals.
Doolittle is an extremely referential record that still sounds utterly unique - perhaps serving as the mission statement for the indie rock ethos of grinding up recognizable elements of popular culture into something new. In this sense, everyone from Beck and Pavement to Danger Mouse and Girl Talk are indebted to the album. But Doolittle's influence on indie music is also discernible in a much more direct way. Weezer directly quotes the melody from "I Bleed" at the end of their "Sweater Song," and "Dead" sounds like a near-blueprint for the upbeat freak-out numbers from The Dismemberment Plan's excellent 1999 album Emergency and I. And those are two of the most obscure tracks on Doolittle. The influence of classics like "Debaser," "Here Comes Your Man," "Wave of Mutilation," and "Monkey Gone to Heaven" is incalculable - these are the kind of songs that modern indie rockers trade right arms for in hypothetical scenarios.
But most importantly, none of this historical "significance" stuff get in the way of the fact that this is quite simply one of the most fun records to listen to ever. With the hooks and brevity of a pop album, the aggressive energy of a punk album, and the disturbing weirdness of an art rock album, this is a one-stop shop when you can't decide what kind of mood your in. Gouge away.

MP3: Debaser

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From The Vaults

Dusty Springfield
Dusty In Memphis
Mercury, 1969

I was born in the American South (Kentucky - I don't remember it) and I'm moving to London after Christmas, so I suppose it makes sense that my favorite soul album was recorded by a British pop singer in Memphis.
Or maybe there's no connection there at all. But there is something inexplicable that draws me to this album.
Of course, a lot of its appeal is quite explicable - a great vocalist pushing herself in a new direction and recording a set of top-notch songs with an excellent studio band. I guess Dusty herself was a bit freaked out by the idea of recording in Memphis - they were known for gritty R&B, and her specialty was "big ballady things." And the band, The Memphis Sound, worked in a way she was totally unaccustomed to. Rather than laying down arrangements ahead of time, they worked the songs out organically with the vocalist in the room. As a result, the backing vocals by The Sweet Inspirations are woven right into the fabric of the songs and the instrumentation feels perfectly natural.
Maybe this non-traditional recording approach is what gives the album that extra something special - that makes it feel like more than just a good vocal pop album. I think part of the magic, too, is that Dusty brings something unique to soul material - and that is vulnerability and restraint. I'm sure you've heard "Son of a Preacher Man" plenty of times before - on oldies radio, in the Perkins' bathroom, in Pulp Fiction - but take another listen. The tune is pretty good, but it's Dusty's vocal and the deft arrangement that take it to the next level. The lightness and fragility of the verses just makes the huge hook of the chorus sink in that much deeper (I dare you not to sing along with the Sweet Inspirations on that one). It's telling that Aretha Franklin actually turned this song down before hearing Springfield's version.
My personal favorite of the album, though, is the dramatic, swirling "Windmills of Your Mind," an all-out technicolor ballad. It's big-screen psychedelic touches are perfectly dated - rather than detracting from the song, they make it all the more charming. It's also perfectly suited to Springfield's strengths, slowly swelling from a hushed whisper in her lower register to some all-out soulful belting when the drums finally kick in at the end.
Still, despite all of the pieces coming together so perfectly, I feel like this album should get boring. I mean, it's so immediately accessible that it hardly sounds revolutionary or challenging. And it's not - it's just extremely entertaining while still being convincingly emotional, delivering on all of the promises of what pure pop music should be. This is perfect for those days when I get depressed because it seems like everything's already been done, that there's no way to push popular music further. It serves as a gentle reminder that, even within the confines of middle-of-the-road pop, it is always possible for an artist to extend herself and create something singular.

MP3: Son of a Preacher Man

MP3: The Windmills of Your Mind

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From The Vaults

Sonic Youth
Sister
(DGC, 1987)

Their next album, Daydream Nation, would be their most critically acclaimed (Pitchfork picked it as the greatest album of the 80s), but I would rather listen to Sister anyday. To my ears, it is the best combination of their earlier noise experimentation and the more straightforward song-oriented work that would define their later career. The album opens with "Scizophrenia," which was their most mellow and melodic song to date. It is easily one of the best songs on the album in its own right, and putting it up front is a brilliant way to lull the listener into a relaxed state before thrusting them into the noise and aggression that surges through the rest of the album. But even when the rest of the songs are at their most aggressive, there is a subtle sub-surface creepiness to them that ties the whole thing together. The album is tangled, noisy, hostile...and absolutely addicting after a few spins. They create a soundworld that is utterly compelling, even at its most disturbing. Bassist/Vocalist Kim Gordon is at her spacey, abstract strangest during the gorgeously ugly "Beauty Lies in the Eye" and at her most sexually violent and unsettling during "Pacific Coast Highway." Every song she would write afterwards would be some variation on these two. Guitarists Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo also offer up some of their best songs, and their most varied. "Cotton Crown" is a rare Thurston/Kim duet that serves as the swirling, slow-motion eye of the storm. The fried, off-kilter garage rock cover of "Hot Wire My Heart" is a sound they would never quite revisit, and the hardest-rocking track they ever recorded. They even show a sense of humor on "Master Dik," as Thurston spouts out ridiculous macho lyrics, all swagger and saracasm. But they attack this non-standard material with the same verve and tenacity as the more "serious" songs, tying the whole thing - humor, violence, sexuality, beauty, indifference, noise - into one thick knot. They would push their sound even further on Daydream Nation, but Sonic Youth the idea was at its most compelling right here - a glorious tangled mess of all of their possibilities and contradictions.

MP3: Schizophrenia

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