Rhapsody Round Up No. 10
- November 22nd, 2011
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“Rhapsody Round-Up” is a semi-regular compilation of record reviews I’ve recently penned for the online music service Rhapsody.com.
Anika
Anika
Expertly produced by Portishead’s Geoff Barrow, Anika’s debut album is a striking fusion of arty chamber rock and post-punk’s mechanical, reverb-stained dystopianism. You wouldn’t think a dub version of Bob Dylan’s “Masters of War,” one that sounds like vintage A Certain Ratio, would work. Yet it totally does. The same goes for the punchy reworking of The Kinks’ “I Go to Sleep.” Much of this music’s success can be attributed to the way Anika’s voice, leaden and monochromatic, fits snugly inside her backing band’s percussive grooves, which Barrow has soaked in an exquisite decay. Killer stuff.
Van Dyke Parks
Song Cycle
After working with Beach Boy genius Brian Wilson on Smile, the pop masterpiece that never was, Van Dyke Parks set his sights on his solo debut. Released in 1967 on Warner Bros., the lavish Song Cycle is arguably the aesthetic peak of what music critic Paul Williams once tagged the “new wave of psychedelic Tin Pan Alley.” It’s a truly phantasmagoric listening experience, one steeped in American history, geography and mythology. Yet it’s also a deeply personal statement. Woven into the surreal poetics are the pain and anguish the composer was suffering from after the recent death of his brother.
The Beach Boys
The Smile Sessions
The five-disc Smile Sessions works better than any of Brian Wilson’s stabs at finishing this lost masterpiece (particularly the 2004 version). This mainly has to do with how experimental pop unfolded over the past five decades. Though unintentional, the music’s skeletal nature turned out to be wildly prescient in how it predated the psychedelic deconstruction central to modern lo-fi, electronic pop and ambient-based rock. It’s a crazy thought, but had Wilson actually completed Smile in ’67, it might have aged about as well as its counterpart Sgt. Pepper, which sounds awfully dated nowadays.
John Hartford
Aereo-Plain
Few folks outside of the bluegrass scene purchased Aereo-Plain when Warner Bros. released the album in 1971. Those who did were profoundly touched by its homespun warmth, old-timey nostalgia, visionary weirdness and innovative picking (which trickles effortlessly like a mountain stream). Inspired by country-rock, Hartford crafted a sound that reconciled the hippies’ “back to earth” spiritualism and the small-town culture unique to the rural South. It’s no accident such a record appeared when the first communes and collectives began to pop up below the Mason-Dixon Line.
Supreme Dicks
The Emotional Plague
Supreme Dicks’ last album is also their most fully realized. On The Emotional Plague, the group successfully blends all the delicious obscurities of their, up to this point, fractured aesthetic: lo-fi weirdness, Crazy Horse-flavored desolation, Krautrock groovery, rustic folk. Be prepared, because this is one hell of a journey. Individual songs melt effortlessly into one another, creating a kind of cryptic ebb-n-flow. There are moments — especially in and around the song “Adoration de l’Agneau Mystique” — when the listening experience is not unlike following a stranger into a dark alley.
Nico
The Marble Index
In 1969, while Joni Mitchell and Jackson Browne strummed their acoustic guitars up in Laurel Canyon, former Velvets chanteuse Nico released an album that dragged the singer-songwriter confessional into the darkest depths of existential despair. A modern form of classical music that’s both a product and rejection of American pop music, The Marble Index is often tagged the birth of goth. It’s more or less true, but this doesn’t nail the album’s scope and intensity. If you can weather the frozen hell from which Nico sings these songs, you’ll eventually marvel at their exquisite construction.
Pink Playground
Destination Ecstasy
Pink Playground isn’t the first band to worship My Bloody Valentine, and they most certainly won’t be the last. That said, Destination Ecstasy (an apt title, no?) proves they just might be the most adroit. The Houston outfit is a recording project first and foremost, a fact that goes a long way to explaining this music’s clever shading, fine textures and uncanny mingling of warm distortion and frigid feedback. It’s all rather exquisite. Moreover, Pink Playground nail the narcotic delirium that made the original shoegazers unique. The best example of this just might be “I Don’t Know You.”
Arthur Russell
World Of Echo
Many of these compositions — “Wax the Van,” “Treehouse” and “Let’s Go Swimming,” to name a few — lived alternate lives as cutting-edge plates for the dancefloor. But for World of Echo, which is a singer-songwriter affair more than anything else, Russell re-imagined them using voice, cello, hand percussion and echo. The end result is an intensely prescient batch of dubby, minimalist electro-pop that sounds like the bridge between One World-era John Martyn and the rise of 1990s electronica and post-rock. Be careful — this sublime record has a way of turning listeners into fanatics.
Supreme Dicks
Workingman’s Dick
First off, what an awesome album title. Hopefully, somebody slipped a copy to Papa Jerry before he departed for the Dark Star. Released in 1994, Workingman’s Dick contains recordings that date from the late ’80s. This is rather astonishing, seeing as how the music — however strange and psychedelic, which it most certainly is — sounds like the birth of slowcore. Just about every stylistic touchstone is present: the creaky mantras, the half-spoken poetics, the somnambulant tempos, the sparsely plucked guitars. No idea if Low actually listened to Supreme Dicks, but it sure sounds like they did.
Pink Floyd
More
Though it’s a soundtrack to an obscure hippie flick, More is the beginning of the post-Syd Barrett era for Pink Floyd. As a result, it’s the sound of a band exploring different sounds and ideas: Byrds-inspired pastoralism (“Crying Song”), psychedelic heavy metal (“The Nile Song”), progressive electronics (“Main Theme”) and even fusion (“Up the Khyber”). The record definitely lacks the thematic unity of later efforts, but just about every track here is awesome. The spacey rocker “Ibiza Bar” just might be pop music’s first tune to acknowledge the island’s then-underground bohemian enclaves.
John Martyn
Inside Out
John Martyn’s two previous releases, Solid Air and Bless the Weather, found the sonic visionary exploring the Echoplex, as well as incorporating rhythmic repetition and delay/reverb into his songwriting process. On Inside Out he ventures even further out, crafting a hyper-modern brand of avant rock, a blend of folkie confessional, roots reggae, raga drone and jazz fusion. Ambitious, even challenging at times, the album ultimately shares more with the electronic funk experiments of Miles Davis and Shuggie Otis than it does with singer-songwriters like Nick Drake and Sandy Denny.
Ritchie Valens
Ritchie Valens
Valens’ meteoric rise and fall is so romantically tragic that the story has long clouded the innovative nature of his music. Along with Buddy Holly, Ricky Nelson and Eddie Cochran, all of whom lived well west of the Mississippi, the precocious Mexican-American teenager helped drag rockabilly out of the South, thus laying the foundation for the music’s transition into rock. What totally stands outs on his self-titled debut — released posthumously, mind you — is his chiming guitar strum. Its influence can be heard in the music of The Kinks, Del Shannon, The Searchers, Tom Petty and more.
Gong
Flying Teapot
Early Gong records are totally weird. We’re talking, like, Syd Barrett and Skip Spence levels of weirdness. That said, once you grow comfortable with the incessant onslaught of brain-rupturing time changes, cosmic goo, jazzy interludes and gnome-inspired poetics, the band’s profound genius really begins to sink in. Originally released in 1973, Flying Teapot contains several of their most impressive long-form pieces. Both the title track and “Zero the Hero and the Witch’s Spell” unfold with all the exotic splendor of a rare tropical flower coming to blossom underneath an eerie morning sun.
Rush
Time Machine 2011: Live In Cleveland
Time Machine 2011: Live in Cleveland is the companion piece to the DVD of the same title. Recorded in Cleveland, a longtime hub of classic rock fandom going back to the ’70s, Rush is totally on top of their game. As the title suggests, the 26-track set list spans decades, from the neo-Zep onslaught of Rush’s earliest output (“Working Man”) to cuts from the yet to be released Clockwork Angels (“Caravan”). Halfway through the power trio unleashes their 1981 classic Moving Pictures from beginning to end. By concert’s end you’ll feel as pleasantly wiped out as anybody who actually attended.
Bert Jansch
L.A. Turnaround
L.A. Turnaround is the closest Bert Jansch came to playing the country-rock game in the mid-’70s. Produced by Michael Nesmith (who around the same time worked with another Brit-folkie, ex-Fairport Convention singer Iain Matthews), the album is the fullest-sounding in the troubadour’s sprawling discography. Just listen to the way the ex-Monkee captured Jansch’s fingerpicking; it’s warm, spacious and enveloping. As for the songwriting, Jansch was at the top of his game. “Open Up the Watergate (Let the Sunshine In)” — which surely inspired Wilco’s “Kingpin” — is one of the best of his career.
Ritchie Valens
Ritchie
Valens’ career as a rock ‘n’ roller was brief. By Ritchie, his sophomore full-length, which hit the pop market only months after his death in February 1959, manager Bob Keane and the Del-Fi label were already opening up the vaults, so to speak. Nevertheless, there are some great tunes here. “Cry, Cry, Cry” is a killer rave-up, one that must have left deep impressions upon The Beatles, The Kinks and any other young Brit paying attention. At the other end of the pop spectrum sits the home-recorded demo “My Darling Is Gone,” a weepy ballad that’s utterly twee in its naked simplicity.
Jimi Hendrix
Hendrix In The West
Released in 1972, two years after Jimi Hendrix’s death, In the West is a fine collection of live recordings that date from 1969 and ’70. This was a period of personnel transition for the guitarist. The original Experience appears on just three tracks: “Voodoo Child (Slight Return),” “Little Wing” and “Red House.” For the rest, his old pal Billy Cox has replaced original bassist Noel Redding. The music is excellent all around, particularly the stretch between “I Don’t Live Today” and “Spanish Castle Magic.” It probably goes without saying, Hendrix totally tears it up on these jams.
Supreme Dicks
The Unexamined Life
If you want to hear what lo-fi sounded like back when it was a living, breathing creature and not a retro-zombie of the 21st century, then you’ll need to explore The Supreme Dicks. These strange dudes (from the same western Massachusetts scene as Dinosaur Jr. and Sebadoh) were really kind of visionary. On the Dicks’ first full-length, 1993′s The Unexamined Life, their fusion of indie rock, folk music and psychedelia sounds particularly shambolic and disjointed. It’s difficult to formulate references for such cryptic music, but Eusa Kills-era Dead C meets Incredible String Band isn’t far off.
Rush
Moving Pictures: Live 2011
Rush constructed Moving Pictures: Live 2011 by removing tracks from the sprawling Time Machine 2011: Live In Cleveland. Though the latter is mandatory listening for any serious Rush fan, this abridged document makes for a potent experience in its own right. Unlike so many aging hard rockers from the ’70s, Rush have taken good care of their minds, bodies and spirits through the years. Thus, they still possess the vitality this intricate and intense music requires. The fact that Moving Pictures closes with a track titled “Vital Signs” has turned out to be really quite poignant.
Ritchie Valens
In Concert At Pacoima Jr. High
In Concert At Pacoima Jr. High, released in the wake of Valens’ 1959 death, is a wonderfully odd product of early rock ‘n’ roll frenzy. It opens with an intensely earnest introduction from manager Bob Keane. In addition to thanking fans for their continued loyalty, he explains the mishmash nature of the album: four raw live tracks, recorded at his client’s former junior high no less, plus a smattering of outtakes and alternative versions. The music is, of course, fantastic. Much is made about the mythology surrounding Valens’ demise, but setting that aside, the guy flat-out rocked.
Pink Floyd
Discovery
Discovery is basically Oh, by the Way 2.0: a massive box set that contains all 14 of Pink Floyd’s studio albums. This time around, however, it’s the 2011 remasters that are showcased. These have been released individually as well, but true Pink Floyd fans will want to press play and take the complete journey, during which they’ll witness the radical (and long) evolution of their heroes totally uninterrupted.
Roxy Music
Essential
Essential is a decent introduction for those who have never been exposed to Roxy Music, arguably the greatest art-rock band of all time. The first half of the collection’s 16 tracks was culled from the group’s first four albums; these comprise what is generally considered their golden period. The second half is an overview of the band’s uneven transition into new wave and disco pop. Fans of Roxy’s older music are on the fence about this stuff, yet it possesses its own special charms. To hear just how gloriously frantic these guys were on stage, check out the live version of “Do the Strand.”
Ry Cooder
Jazz
Jazz was very much an outgrowth of the nostalgia American music and cinema in the 1970s experienced for the early 20th century. Though always something of a revivalist, Cooder plays things exceedingly straight for this historical overview of ragtime, Spanish-American music, minstrelsy, blues and parlor music. The record is a pleasant enough listen, yet it definitely lacks the eccentricities that make Cooder’s earlier efforts, such as Into the Purple Valley and his self-titled debut, so striking. Be sure to also check out Van Dyke Park’s Discover America, which makes for a nice companion piece.
Little Feat
The Last Record Album
The Last Record Album is good, excellent at times, but when released in 1975 it was a clear step down from the heights Little Feat reached with the triumvirate Sailin’ Shoes, Dixie Chicken and Feats Don’t Fail Me Now. A lot of this had to do with singer and songwriter Lowell George, who began to withdraw from his bandmates. They in turn grew agitated. As a result, a palpable sense of melancholy hangs over the record’s best tracks, including “Long Distance Love” and “All That You Dream.” The latter really sums up what was going on with the band: “I’ve been down, but not like this before.”
Pink Floyd
A Foot in the Door: The Best Of Pink Floyd
When weirdo psych-pop tunesmith Syd Barrett departed in 1968, the thought of Pink Floyd as a viable singles act pretty much died. Besides “Another Brick in the Wall (Part II),” which topped the charts in 1979, the group sold few copies of the smattering of singles they did release. Then again, chart position is quite misleading when determining the popularity of certain Floyd songs. Classic rock radio has been incessantly spinning “Comfortably Numb,” “Wish You Were Here” and “Have A Cigar” for decades. Surely these have become greatest hits by now, right?












