Heaven is Whenever by The Hold Steady

A record with this many problems shouldn’t be this good, but that’s life as usual for the Hold Steady’s Craig Finn, a guy just far removed enough from his songs of down-and-outs to act as a bar band moralist, but just close enough to them that you wander why and for whom he’s moralizing. You question his authority even as you start to think that maybe he wants you to do just that. His story-songs are hook-strong and delivered in the nasally grandeur of Finn’s singing (stronger and more nuanced than ever as he sings more than speaks) and they all have tremendous problems. The first is the production, which is steeped in power-ballad, roots-rock cliches (so many choirs!) second is the image Finn is trying to project. This band has always been too big for his britches, going for Bruce Springsteen and inevitably falling short and their ambitions are obvious here, as melodramatic as that album cover. The last minutes of the album are ridiculously maudlin

But I must be honest, and despite all I know about propriety, I love this record. Finn, like me, is more or less a rock and roll innocent who fantasizes about the girl he’s wrong for but curls up in bed alone instead (“Hurricane J”) who wishes he wasn’t so happy so he could write better songs (“Rock and Roll Problems”) who’s livin’ for “The Smidge”. He has a way with honesty that here he pairs with some of his strangest and sweetest sentiments without ever resisting the urge for an arena-filling guitar solo. In a world where tuneful nice-guys are confined to the wasteland of twee, indie pushovers, Finn’s nice-guy is inspiring because he understands how unappealing the nice-guy is, but wants to try for it anyway. 4/5

Exile on Main St. by The Rolling Stones (Deluxe Edition Reissue)

In 1972, The Rolling Stones were already a veteran band with eight years of experience and a dozen records behind them. While they had always been overshadowed by the Beatles in the sixties, the breakup of that group allowed the Stones to develop artistically on their own and produce some of the greatest records that the worlds ever seen. Beggars Banquet and Sticky Fingers were towering achievements of modern riffage, blues reinvention, and the playful hedonism that has both informed and tarnished the band’s reputation. But even with those masterpieces and era-defining songs like “Satisfaction” and “Gimme Shelter” to hang on their mantle, Exile on Main St. was a revelation. It stood apart in sound and technique from any other work the band made previous, and has served as the archetypal rock and roll record ever since.

Dense and dirty, this record takes multiple spins before the chaos of its grungy production gives way to the order of the songs, the soaring interplay of the guitars, and the bands genius rhythm section. Mick Jagger is at his most acidic on “Rip This Joint” and his most tender on “Shine A Lights” broken-down reverie (for this band tenderness and broken-downiness are the same). Enough has been said about this record that I can only add personal superlatives to the records sterling reputation. I never believed in this band, until this album, and suddenly it all made sense to me. I preferred the slickness of The Beatles and mistook Mick and Keith’s avant- layering of rhythms and tones to be lazy production, but The Beatles never made a record as primally satisfying as this one and they never really made one that stood as a unified whole quite the way these 18 songs ebb and flow against each other. If the sound hear has been cleaned up, it’s not as revolutionary as the treatment of The Beatles catalogue last year, but this record isn’t supposed to sound smooth and digitized, it’s supposed to crack and hiss and move like the notes are coming at you for the first time every time you play it. The deluxe edition has notable bonus material on the second disk (the Richards-sung version of “Soul Survivor” is a keeper for sure), but it’s the original album that stands as a monument to the best rock band of them all. One of the ten best ever made. 5/5

We Live in Exciting Times

Arcade Fire on the prowl = never a bad thing.

As per usual with this bad, play it loud.

High Violet by The National

The first thing that struck me about High Violet, the new album by these Cincinnati indies, is that it has a sort of sweeping beauty which matches the lead singer’s mournful baritone perfectly. This is the music to out an ache in your bones, that kind of beautiful sad-sackery that was mastered by bands like Joy Division and Interpol. They don’t quite maintain the atmosphere or pleasure-in-suffering that Ian Curtis did, and the story lyrics are too vague to put the dopey lyrics (“I live in a house that sorrow built”) into perspective. Every now and then they throw you a great melody like “Anyone’s Ghost” or “Conversation 16” to keep you listening but at the end of the day this is suffering for sufferings sake. The songwriting is additionally lazy; while the distorted guitar soundscapes are gorgeous and haunting, the vocals are often pastiches of unrelated phraseology. While bands like The Smiths could keep this songwriting method afloat with a good sense of humor, this album never relents in its indulgent morbidity. Those morbid hearts are in the right place, of course; it’s all in the name of the album-as-art conceit. But great art isn’t always tragic and great tragedy is always specific. The National aren’t the enemy, but as far as friends go, they’re pretty lame ones. 2.5/5

The Archandroid by Janelle Monae

Janelle Monae is garnering unabashed praise for this debut, which consists of two Afrocentric, neo-futurist suites that try to take OutKast into the stratosphere but are really just the irritating conceits of an ambitious newcomer who thinks she can tackle every genre imaginable while making a two part concept album about futuristic robot societies. Not a bad-sounding album nor a boring one - energy is Monae’s main export - its is regretfully filled with songs that seem strained before they finish even the first time. The lyrics are mostly irrelevant and twee, the kind of sweet nothings meant to draw listeners into a big tent of fellowship, but ultimately they're forgettable and painfully innocuous. Afterwards I can’t remember a lyric, a tune, or a moment that stirred me. This is the Avatar of R&B. 1.5/5

This Is Happening by LCD Soundsytem

As much as I love music of a myriad of styles and textures, there is a special place in my heart for what has come to be known as “Classic Rock” not because it has loud guitars and feverish singing, but because it has soulfulness, a spirituality that can’t be found on your average Kanye West or Radiohead record. There is, in records like Led Zeppelin IV, a hand-worn and labored over quality that resonates deeper than the tunes or lyrics might. Part of this that these records are old, part of it the analog tools used to record them, but a lot of it is that they were crafted with a spirit of adventure: the resolution of mysticism and mythos that bands like Zeppelin infused their albums with. They didn’t just play rock and roll, they believed in it. That belief is something naïve and archaic now, which is why LCD Soundsystem’s 2007 record, Sound of Silver was such a revelation. Singer and composer James Murphy found some of that classic spiritualism in the synthesizers and techno rhythms of modern dance music, making a blend of electric body and organic songcraft that captured the hipster zeitgeist of a generation who no longer believed the classic rock mythos, but longed to anyway. Needless to say, any follow-up to that record has some work laid out for it.

This Is Happening, the aforementioned follow-up, sounds a lot like it’s predecessor, a mismatch of influences that range from Talking Heads and Devo to Radiohead and The Strokes. These songs are more open though, less immediate and desperate than the tracks on Sound of Silver and they are much longer. The average song is upwards of seven minutes, but Murphy has always known how to get the most out of overlong tracks. The record starts off with “Dance Yrself Clean” in a Kermit-voiced accusation, Murphy regales a friend’s who’s “talking like a jerk except you are an actual jerk” before exploding into dance-floor euphoria. Murphy takes on the title in all its brilliant, knowing that the music he makes can never really solve people’s problems, but trying anyway. “Drunk Girls” is a frantic pop song, the only on the record, which spits out caustic one liners that aren’t so much about drunk girls but are more about drunk boys and how drunk boys chase and curse and need drunk girls. “One Touch” is a familiar development of Murphy’s Daft Punk obsession and “All I Want” has him peeking over David Bowie’s shoulder to create an infectious sad-sack anthem (It turns out all he wants is pity and bitter tears, and to be taken home. It wouldn’t be as sad if it wasn’t so funny or grand.)

“I Can Change” rips bouncy 80’s synth into the strongest melody on the album and one of the most depraved love songs I’ve ever heard. Murphy, truly grown as a confident and passionate singer, degrades himself for the love of a girl he begs to “bore me and hold me and cling to my arms”. It’s a stellar track about co-dependence gone wrong. Part of what’s great about LCD’s lyrics are the way they often blend the line of irony and sincerity, that they mean the opposite of what they say upfront. If we learn anything from “I Can Change”, it’s that Murphy can’t change and the girl doesn’t really want him to. It’s a vicious cycle of love and hurt placed brilliantly in the middle of the record, the way “All My Friends” cemented Sound of Silver together. The album then careens into the three-minute intro of the boisterously non-commercial “You Wanted a Hit” and then to the frantic rant/art-rock of “Pow Pow” which boasts a chorus of “it goes pow pow pow pow pow” repeated over and over again. The deconstruction of language is intentional here and denotes other Murphy tracks like “Get Innocuous!” where he derides the apathetic nature of music listeners. He seems to think that nobody wants his blend of humor, self-reflection, and nostalgia, and would prefer “pow pow pow pow pow”.

Indeed one often gets the sense that Murphy is getting tired of his audience. Several of the tracks like “One Touch” and “Hit” seem to mock listeners who are unsatisfied with what they get on this go round, or who hear his killer grooves without hearing the killer lyrics he wraps them around. It’s been hinted at that this will be LCD Soundsystem’s final record, maybe because Murphy feels the band or he is becoming stale or unappreciated. That insecurity makes this a fragile record, one that’s as easy to tear apart as it is to build up. It isn’t as tight as the bands first two outings, but there is something disquieting about the looseness of this record. Maybe it’s that archaic, naïve spirituality creeping quietly below the surface. You get a hint of it on “Somebody’s Calling Me” which distorts Iggy Pop’s “Nightclubbing” into a modern blues about the lack of connection in modern society. Murphy ironically relates it to the technology he uses to make the beautiful sounds through which he sings: “somebody’s texting me to be my girl/ constantly texting me to be my girl/ but the text won’t take away the nights that creep/ and my mouth don’t move when I’m in too deep”. He almost growls it, exhausted and sick. The track sticks out from the euphoria of “Pow Pow” and the brilliant resolution of closer “Home”.

“This is what you waited for but under lights we’re all unsure. So tell me, what would make you feel better?” asks what may become the final song by LCD Soundsystem. The irony dealer finally gone sincere, the fanboy finally grown, Murphy sounds like he’s listening for an answer. 5/5