Black Tambourine – s/t (Reissue) (Slumberland, 2010)

By Kyle | Published 5 June, 2010

Silver Spring, Maryland’s Black Tambourine were only around for a couple of years in the late ’80s/early ’90s, coming off the 80s wave of twee pop (or indie pop; whatever you wanna call it). They were in the same vein as The Pastels and the Jesus and Mary Chain,  combining minimalist production, song structures that paid homage to ’60s pop (particularly Phil Spector productions), and deafening feedback that was inspired by the Velvet Underground. Despite being influential, the band only released one single and only played a handful of shows during their brief existence. In 2010, their label, Slumberland Records, decided to compile their complete recordings into one package, probably in response to the emergence of twee-pop influenced acts, such as Dum Dum Girls and Best Coast. Despite their small output (Which totals 16 songs at roughly 41 minutes), Black Tambourine was a band that ultimately proved to be onto something truly amazing. “For Ex-Lovers Only,” and “Pack You Up” have well-constructed and commanding hooks that show that despite having pop hooks, Black Tambourine didn’t fuck around; Pam Berry’s vocals may sound sweet, but you can tell that she had attitude, which complimented both the clean chorus-y guitar that provided the melodies and the sharp squalls of feedback that permeated the track. “Pam’s Tan,” one of the band’s earliest track, is a hypnotic groove that reminds me of surf-rock on pot laced with acid; the guitars swirl, the drums play a simple, lazy beat, and the wordless track clocks in at a mere 1:19, but it makes its impact.

Slumberland Records did issue a Complete Recordings mix back in 1999, but they went one further and revisited Black Tambourine’s small but heavily influential output and expanded on it. In addition to the 10 songs that was on the Complete Recordings album, they added six additional tracks of covers, unreleased tracks and demos. Their versions of Buddy Holly’s “Heartbeat” and Suicide’s “Dream, Baby, Dream” show off their wide scope of influences and put their own special mark on those songs, with the latter being maybe one of the most beautiful songs ever.. Black Tambourine may be no more, with its members in different bands, but their brief time together was something special and at the time groundbreaking in indie music. Indie rock wouldn’t really experience such simplicity until early in the 2000s, and up until now, Black Tambourine would have been seen as a cultural footnote. These days, they’re pioneers!

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Retrospective: Van Halen (Part One: The Roth Years)

By Kyle | Published 4 June, 2010

I’ve been listening to Van Halen a lot lately to satisfy my classic hard rock urges. That and even before I started this blog, I wanted to do some sort of album review website, in the same vein as Mark Prindle or John McFerrin, but with more of Robert Christgau’s edge to it (and overall brevity of his reviews; McFerrin’s are a bit wordy, and Prindle tends to go off on scatological tangents on his reviews, not that I don’t enjoy them both). My first artist I was gonna do reviews on was actually Van Halen (or Tori Amos), and last summer I started writing reviews of their albums. needless to say, I never got started on the project. Well, today, I present to you the first part of the Van Halen saga in record review form: The Roth Years. As soon as I invest in more Pepto-Bismol, I’ll listen to and review the Van Hagar era!

Van Halen (1978)

Van Halen’s eponymous debut set the world on fire in the sense that a new breed of hard rock was unleashed to the world. They followed in the same vein as AC/DC or Aerosmith but were less bluesy and more electric, mostly due to Eddie Van Halen’s distinct guitar sound and David Lee Roth being as much influenced by Robert Plant as he was by Louis Prima.

This album has at least 5 songs that are classic rock radio mainstays -- “Runnin’ With the Devil,” “Jamie’s Cryin’,” “You Really Got Me” to name a few -- but other than the band’s distinct sound that influenced a while generation of wannabes, it doesn’t offer much else. At times, Van Halen sounds the same after a while, and they they do try to “experiment,” such as the doo-wop influenced bridge in “I’m the One,” Van Halen just comes off as silly. Yet the band shows plenty of attitude, with songs like “Atomic Punk,” and “Ain’t Talkin’ ‘Bout Love.” Van Halen mixed fun with frenzy, considering the landscape of hard rock by 1977/78;  By then, Led Zeppelin had gotten way too serious for their own good, and Kiss were always a cartoon from day one. For better, and certainly for worse, Van Halen ushered in a new breed of hard rock that kicked your ass, yet also was able to be light-hearted at the same time. That said, half the songs on this album are so overplayed I never want to hear them again.

Rating (out of 10): 8

Van Halen II (1979)

Fuller sounding than their debut, and Alex Van Halen finally got rid of that awful echo effect that bounced off his snare drum on their last album! The first four songs are awesome, and they turn Linda Ronstadt’s “You’re No Good” into a kick-ass hard rock tune! “Dance the Night Away” is one of their best singles ever, and “Somebody Get me a Doctor” deserves more radio play than it gets. However, like every Van Halen before or since, Van Halen II has a few songs that just aren’t memorable or hooky. “Light Up The Sky” starts off incredible, but the middle part sees the song losing itself in Roth’s vocal exercises and an ill-adivsed drum “solo” by Alex. And Eddie shows off way too much on this album, especially when he tries to play “Eruption” on a nylon-string guitar on a track called “Spanish Fly.”

Rating (out of 10): 6.5

Women and Children First (1980)

OK, I’m not gonna lie. This album sucks for the most part. Van Halen fans seem to love it, whereas I don’t. The introductory one-two punch of “…And the Cradle Will Rock” and “Everybody Wants Some” (brilliantly used in Better Off Dead; David Lee Roth as a dancing hamburger!) raises you up, but the third track “Fools” just shows the band fucking around for the first two minutes of the 6-minute song, and then just using recycled riffs for the rest of the song. “Take Your Whiskey Home” is one of the Roth-era Van Halen’s worst singles, and I don’t even remember the rest of the album. That’s how boring it is. Iceberg, right ahead!

Rating (out of 10): 5

Fair Warning (1981)

Many people consider Fair Warning to be the “dark” album of Van Halen’s career. Sure, the cover art most certainly is more bizarre than before, and the songs take on a more menacing approach, but it’s not dark the way one would think Joy Division is dark, or Black Sabbath -- or even the more ominous moments on Rush’s Moving Pictures. It’s more like the band is having a bad hangover type of dark (or found one too many brown M&Ms in their bowl).

Fair Warning opens up with “Mean Streets” which has a lightning fast double-tapping solo by the ever-so-impressive Eddie, and is easily one of their strongest songs ever, and as the title implies, is a tale about street life. “Hear About It Later,” one of the few tracks that reflects on Fair Warning’s supposed “darkness,” shows David Lee Roth lamenting about having no money or house on the hill, and “neighbors complaining about the noise next door.” The song has a good melody, but if that’s their idea of a bad day, I’ll switch places with them in a heartbeat. Side One closes with “Unchained,” the lone radio staple on this record, featuring your typical Van Halen-styled awesome riffage. Unfortunately, Side Two of Fair Warning sees the band losing focus. “Sunday Afternoon in the Park” is a misguided bass solo (I’ve defended Michael Anthony to the teeth about how the Van Halen brothers screwed him over, but he really wasn’t that good of a bassist; adding weird effects doesn’t make a bass solo great, Michael!!!!), and “One Foot Out the Door” sounds like they shat it out in about 10 seconds. Supposedly, there was infighting within Van Halen (basically David Lee Roth VS Eddie), and it probably helped mold the overall “brown” tone of this album.

Rating (out of 10): 6.5

Diver Down (1982)

A pretty hodgepodgey album, and a rather bizarre mix of tunes, Diver Down contains 5 covers, including some very surprising ones, a lot of White Album-esque genre-shifting (at about a third of its length), and some classic Van Halen styled songs. They do yet another Kinks cover, “Where Have All The Good Times Gone,” and it’s as good if not better than “You Really Got Me.” “Hang ‘Em High” rocks, and I always thought “Little Guitars” never got its due; Its intro is a brilliantly played flamenco-styled ditty by Eddie, showing his versatility, and the song itself is one of the band’s most light-hearted rockers. Diver Down also has no problem in being probably the most unusual album in the band’s entire career. It’s not straightforward at all. “Cathedral” is a short instrumental, showing eddie having fun with delay and volume pedals; It’s interesting -- indulgent but interesting nonetheless. They manage to cover both Roy Orbison’s “(Oh) Pretty Woman” (with an awesome instrumental track entitled “Intruder” preceding it), and “Dancing in the Street” by Martha and the Vandellas, paying homage to early rock & R&B (even if “Dancing” doesn’t quite work that well). They also switch things up by covering “Happy Trails” and “Big Bad Bill (Is Sweet William Now)” an old Jim Yellen and Milton Ager composition from the Roaring Twenties, with Eddie & Alex’s dad on clarinet (!!!!!). This album seems to be a tug-of-war between the more serious side of the band (Eddie, basically) and the light-hearted, humorous side (With the main perpetrator, no questions asked, being Roth).  There’s some filler, but it’s overall pretty enjoyable.

Rating (out of 10): 7

1984 (Wow, I wonder what year that was released….)

1984 just so happens to be the best album of the original lineup, and the best in their career, and it helped elevate the band to a wider audience, due to the band’s more prominent use of synths (which lead to in-band warfare between Roth and EVH, and lead one way or another to Roth exiting the band a year later), memorable MTV video classics (“Jump, “Panama,” “Hot For Teacher”), and their first quasi-ballad (“I’ll Wait,” which is a lamentation about jerking off to a playmate pinup, which I guess is balladry to David Lee Roth). There are some underrated songs on the album -- “Drop Dead Legs” and “Girl Gone Bad,” namely -- that proved that Van Halen were still capable of gut-blasting rock & roll, despite their new widespread success. After 1984, Roth either quit or was fired from the band (details on the matter are murky still), and the band was never the same after this album. They tried new sounds, hired new singers, created new (and more complicated) drama, leaving 1984 as a culmination of Van Halen Mach One, which were undoubtedly the band’s glory years.

Rating (out of 10): 8.5

Next up (or at least when I get to it), the Van Hagar Years!!!!!!!

Now to close this post off, here’s that scene from Better Off Dead using “Everybody Wants Some” is the coolest way possible!

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Retrospective: Stone Temple Pilots

By Kyle | Published 4 June, 2010

I reviewed the latest album by Stone Temple Pilots sometime last week, and decided to revisit my youth. I listened to their first four albums (I never bothered with Shangri-La De Da and don’t intend to), and found that while STP never equaled many of their alternative/grunge contemporaries, they released some worthwhile material throughout the ’90s. Here’s a rundown of the band’s first four albums.

Core (1992)

This was the first band that was pegged as a knock off of Pearl Jam because at the time Scott Weiland did take cues from Eddie Vedder as far as vocals go. Except Weiland sounded more intelligible and more macho. Yet, the band’s “ripping off” of Pearl Jam isn’t the worst thing on this album. Eric Kretz’s drums are too bulky sounding, and Dean DeLeo, an excellent guitarist, just sounds overbearing in many of the songs. There are some solid songs on this album, even if some of them just seem to drag on forever. And there’s a ramble somewhere about Weiland wetting his bed.

Key Tracks: “Sex Type Thing,” “Sin,” “Creep,” “Crackerman

Rating (Out of 10): 7

Purple (1994)

An improvement over Core, the band begins to sound more “alternative” on Purple. The DeLeo brothers write some hard riffs, but they’re not nearly as meaty as they were on Core, which is good. Weiland comes more into his own as a vocalist, and the band is not afraid to show off their pseudo-Zeppelin experimental side: You’ll hear mellotrons on “Army Ants,” and Eastern-influenced acoustic ragas with “Pretty Penny.” That, and two of the best singles of alternative rock’s mainstream heyday (“Vasoline,” and “Interstate Love Song”).

Key Tracks: “Vasoline,” “Interstate Love Song,” “Kitchenware & Candybars,” “Meatplow”

Rating (out of 10): 8

Tiny Music…Songs From the Vatican Gift Shop (1996)

Do they sell books on not touching little boys at the Vatican Gift Shop?? HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!

Catholic jokes aside, this is where STP gets weird. Weiland began using heroin a little too much, resulting in drug busts galore. STP may have been slagged off as Pearl Jam rip-offs on their first album, but Weiland comes off sounding more like Kurt Cobain on this album. The band strays from hard rock on many of the tracks, and experiments in everything from Beatlesque pop (“Lady Picture Show”) to cocktail jazz (“And So I Know”). Even heavier tracks, such as “Big Bang Baby” and “Pop’s Love Suicide” are far more quirkier and echo The Eels more than Alice In Chains.

Key Tracks: “Big Bang Baby,” “Adhesive,” “Trippin’ on a Hole in a Paper Heart”

Rating (out of 10): 7.5

No. 4 (1999)

This album was released as Scott Weiland was serving a one-year sentence for a drug bust. It was really quite a shame because up until his release (which was thankfully only 5 months later), No. 4′s commercial success was hindered by them not being able to promote the album. And this was a pretty good album. Weiland’s lyrics still suck for the most part, but he begins to embrace his own vocal style. Musically, the band is also at their stride. “Down” is one of their best rockers since the Purple days, and I was always really moved by “Church on Tuesday.” There are a few mediocre tracks that are weighed down by overwrought ambitions and Weiland’s subpar lyrics, but this is in competition with Purple as their best album.

Key Tracks: “Down,” “Church on Tuesday,” “Sour Girl,” “No Way Out.”

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A Nerd’s Dream Come True…

By Kyle | Published 3 June, 2010

So, three things are happening in the world of Rush right now:

1. Two new tracks have premiered online (“Caravan” and “BU2B”)

2. They are going on tour this summer, and apparently, they’re going to play the entire Moving Pictures album live

3. A documentary of Rush will be hitting movie theaters across the U.S. and A. and Canada (Rush’s home turf)

Those who know me best know that I absolutely LOVE Rush. They’re definitely in my Top 3 of favorite bands ever, and whenever I hear something in the news that relate to Rush, I’m like a little kid in a candy store (by the NERDS section -- hahahaha!!!!). I also love documentaries, especially those pertaining to music. I watched Behind the Music episodes of artists I hate because I dig the archival footage and learning about an artist’s rise and fall, but I enjoy even more documentaries about bands that are/were awesome. I’m glad that Rush is finally coming out with one. It should be awesome. They are also touring this summer on a tour they’re calling the Time Machine Tour, where they will dust off old classics, play some new songs, and of course, play Moving Pictures in its entirety. I kind of wish that they would play Permanent Waves in its entirety, since that is my favorite album by them, but I’m not complaining about Moving Pictures. After all, it is their definitive album and their best selling one. It contains “Tom Sawyer,” “Limelight,” and “Red Barchetta,” which are still classic rock radio mainstays. And it’s definitely one of their best albums, and one of the most underrated albums in history.

Their two new tracks, from the upcoming Clockwork Angels LP, are actually pretty fuckin’ good!!!!! Rush has been on a creative resurgence since their triumphant return in 2002. A decade ago, Rush’s future was in question because drummer/lyricist Neil Peart lost both his wife and daughter a year apart from each other, and the band took an indefinite hiatus in light of Peart’s enormous tragedy. After a few years, Peart finally reconvened with bassists/vocalist/keyboardist Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson, and made a new album, Vapor Trails (Peart also remarried and recently his wife gave birth to a baby girl). It was definitely one of their best albums in a long time, since most Rush albums between 1984 and 2002 were hit-and-miss in a lot of areas; Albums, like Presto (1989) and Power Windows (1985) had maybe 2 or 3 good songs on them and the rest was just ordinary and dated. However, any band that has been around as long as Rush without stopping (except for that 5 year stretch) is going to release a dud or two. It’s just how it is. Since 2002, they’ve out out only one more studio album, 2007′s Snakes and Arrows, and a covers EP, 2004′s Feedback, which continued Rush’s creative renaissance. Peart’s lyrics are definitely more inspired than they ever have been (Hate to say it, but sometimes personal tragedy makes for great art), and the band’s playing has been at full throttle. I saw them on their first ever comeback show in June 2002, my 17th birthday actually. They were extraordinary. They sounded like they had taken no time off, and it was easily one of the most powerful shows I’ve ever been to, not only because they tore ass on stage for a good 2.5 hours, but because of the significance of the show. For fans of the band, it marked a triumphant comeback to the much-adored trio; Perseverance through unspeakable personal setbacks. Many people, including the band themselves, thought that this event would never happen. “Caravan” and “BU2B” are hard-hitting tracks that make most rockers half their age sound like wimps. Lifeson’s aggressive guitar, along with Lee’s crunching bass and Peart’s multifaceted drumming, shows the band getting heavier as they get older.I hope the rest of their new album is going to be this good. We won’t find out until next year, when Clockwork Angels sees release; They’re not even done with it yet. But if this is an indication of what the new album is gonna sound like, I would like to reserve my copy!

If I do miss the Rush documentary, entitled Beyond the Lighted Stage, the DVD is out in North America on June 28…. my birthday. I’m pretty stoked!

Here are the new songs, brought to you by YouTube!

“Caravan”

“BU2B”

Also: Kudos to Rush for stopping Rand Paul for using a Rush song during his campaign. The last thing Rush needs is a right-wing nutjob using their music to help spread his ludicrous beliefs. I’m guessing Rand Paul never got the message of “The Trees.”

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Thoughts at 6 AM, Approx. 12 Hours Before a Gig

By Kyle | Published 2 June, 2010

It’s 6 AM on a warm June morning, and I can’t sleep. I’m never up this early. Not since my newspaper delivery days have I really been up this early. I’ve gone to bed this late a few times since then, but I’ve hardly risen before 6 AM, unless I absolutely have to. I went to bed really early. I came home from work feeling like someone whacked my head with an anvil, and was fast asleep by 10:30 PM, which never friggin’ happens. I’m having pre-gig jitters/excitement. My band, A Slanderous Choir, is playing a half hour set along with with several other bands in Hamden, CT tonight (www.myspace.com/aslanderouschoir, check us out!). We went over the setlist yesterday, and it all went good. Now I just wanna get out there, strap on my Jazzmaster and rock (especially with my new amp)! I woke up at 4 hungry, so I had some watermelon and an ice cream sandwich and what was left of a bottle of Hawaiian Punch. Nothing was on TV, except for an episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (My motto for watching TV: when all else fails, SVU!), and I spent the hours of 4:30-approx. now  scanning old notebooks and trying to write some lyrics for some new songs. I’ve had this crazy idea lately of creating a Zen Arcade-like rock opera chronicling two late teen/early 20 lovers experience live and love during perestroika-era Soviet Union, but everything I’ve written so far ends up sounding like trite crap. I should head to the library and do some research.

I’m pretty impersonal on this blog, as it has to do with music critiques and that type of shit. But I think this entry is music related, so here I am. The sun’s out but barely. I feel like I just got home from delivering newspapers. I listened to a lot of music during that time; I did it for 5 months straight for 2-4 hours per day, so let’s just say thank god for iPods. I kinda wish I still had that job. It was decent money, even if I paid through the nose come Tax Day (it was considered self-employment), and I didn’t have to deal with anybody. The occasional phone call from my boss to see if I needed supplies, or if a customer bitched that her newspaper had blown away or had gotten wet from the rain (I delivered to a lot of elderly people), or an early riser greeting me. But other than that it was an ideal job: Driving around, listening to music, getting fresh air and not dealing with anyone. My girlfriend came with me a lot during my runs too. Then again, I was pretty depressed during that time. I had lost my job at Starbucks, I wasn’t in school, and I was fighting some demons that took at least 4 years of my life away in the form of bad decisions and self-esteem issues.

I first heard PJ Harvey’s “Is This Desire” during these paper runs, and it seemed like the right song at the right time. It was melancholy, with a very somber sounding guitar and her fragile vocals. I had never been too big of a PJ Harvey fan before, even if I thought Rid of Me was one of the most riveting albums of the 90s, but she won me over with that song. As sad as that song is, there’s also hope in it. I remember sitting alone in my room not able to sleep, and having that song on repeat for hours. I was able to feel whatever it was I was feeling (failure, loneliness, depression, anxiety), and the song proved to be cathartic. It always reminds me of moments like these, when it’s 6 AM, you can’t sleep for whatever reason, and the sky is that shade of cadet blue/grey, and the sun is visible if you look east far enough. So I’ll leave you today with a performance of the song in Philadelphia dated 1 November, 1998. Take it away, Polly Jean!

Photo credit: www.travelpod.com

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Lala.com: An Elegy

By Kyle | Published 1 June, 2010

Yesterday, on May 31, 2010, the streaming music site Lala shut down. Apple had bought it out late last year, and in April, it was decided that the company would get the plug pulled on. It’s a sad day for music, since I relied on it heavily to listen to and review new alums without having to resort to downloading them and let the files take up (usually unwanted) space on my hard drive. And there’s always the struggle in finding files with the right bitrate so you don’t get files that sound like crap. Lala made millions of songs appear instantly, and pristine-sounding for free and legally(with the option to buy of course). Now I’m going to have to find another site that has an endless library of full-length albums with amazing sound quality. Any recommendations? I don’t mind downloading, but when it comes to reviewing albums once and never hearing them again, downloading can tend to be cumbersome.

RIP Lala…. You have a place in digital heaven (2006-2010)

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