rock

Least and Most: Born In The USA

/ Tony / 6 Comments

“Sometimes records dictate their own personalities and you just have to let them be…. I finally stopped doing my hesitation shuffle, took the best of what I had and signed off on what would be the biggest album of my career”

Work on what would become Born In The USA began in early 1982. The years of sessions would yield close to 80 songs – including those that became Nebraska – would see the departure of Steven Van Zandt and an album that went through multiple versions before the forces that be put an end to the inertia that Springsteen seemed stuck in and his most grab-bag collection of songs was released to kick off BOSS MANIATM with Rambo Bruce rocking a head band or bandana and flexing his way across a stadium stage near you for a year and a half.

I’ve written about those multiple versions, those ‘what could have been‘ albums already. But here we’re talking about two songs from the album we did get. An album that’s a real curate’s egg. king at how this was the last of Springsteen’s albums where there were whole multiple albums of outtakes, you get the feeling that this is the point at which he was starting to get lost in his search and could’ve ended up carrying on to Chinese Democracy lengths if he wasn’t careful. Which certainly explains the reserve with which he’s come to view the album too.

Thing is, each of these songs work. This is still peak-period Springsteen so none of these songs are ‘bad’ in the traditional sense (don’t worry Human Touch is only a few years away) but the album lacks the consistency / sense of cohesion that previously embodied his work. As such, and not so surprising given that seven of its twelve tracks were released as singles, it feels like a compilation rather than an album.

Least: Cover Me

I feel like I’m in a minority with this one given that it was a hit single and all but there’s something about it that just means I don’t take it in as much as the rest of the album. Maybe it’s because it wasn’t written as his own song. It was intended for Donna Summer. While ‘Hungry Heart’ was initially meant for The Ramones it felt like a Springsteen song meant to be given away rather than writing specifically for someone else’s voice. As such the feel of the song in amongst the rest of the album doesn’t gel for me.

I will say, though, that in many respects, this song is a noteworthy one. Just as the message of ‘Born In the USA’ become overlooked some flag-waving Republicans (oh, those were the days, right America? How bad does Reagan seem now?),Springsteen’s singing a song written for and from the female voice without any alteration to lyric is a wonderful thing – here’s Springsteen with his stocky frame now bedecked with muscles calling for a lover to ‘wrap your arms around me, cover me’ and protect him a rough world that’s only getting rougher.

It’s the directness of those lyrics that make it tough for me to call it ‘Least’ but it’s the sound of it that I can’t quite vibe with. He struggled trying to find a way to get it right live on that Born In The USA tour too… it wasn’t a regular set list staple until Arthur Baker’s remix gave him a way in by slowing it and making it a little ominous and brooding. The live versions are now pretty fucking great, but we can’t count those here so let’s move along…

Most: Downbound Train

Only on an album where the majority of songs were released as singles could a song this strong be considered a ‘deep cut,’ but ‘Downbound Train’ feels like a piece of over-looked gold in amidst a sea of chest-thumping stadium pleasers. “Now I work down at the car wash, where all it ever does is rain” might be one of my favourite Springsteen lyrics but this song is fucking stuffed with them, all evocative… what about the whole fucking verse:

“There in the clearing, beyond the highway
In the moonlight, our wedding house shone
I rushed through the yard, I burst through the front door
My head pounding hard, up the stairs I climbed
The room was dark, our bed was empty
Then I heard that long whistle whine
And I dropped to my knees, hung my head and cried”

‘Downbound Train’ is one of those first clutch of songs that came from Springsteen’s home recordings that included Nebraska‘s songs and tracks like ‘Born in the USA’ and ‘Johnny Bye Bye’ that he put to tape in 1982 and appeared on almost every potential track list for release between then and the final album. In less than a decade since the thesaurus-groping first two albums he’d distilled his songwriting down to the point where he could render a full story of broken hopes, marriage and lives with much clearer precision.

Pain, hope, desperation… it’s all there in a tune containing some of his most aching lyrics put to a great driving (or train-like chugging) melody with just the right amount of that ’80s synth. To me, this is the biggest indicator on the album of where we’d find New Jersey’s finest on his next outing.

Least and Most: The River

/ Tony / 6 Comments

In theory this is where it gets easier. For while Springsteen was still churning work of unyielding quality some of those tracks, in retrospect, probably should have been left in the vault. Doesn’t necessarily mean that choosing a ‘most’ is going to be easier but singling those ‘meh’ tracks out gets simpler

The River, released – just before I was – in October 1980, was Springsteen’s double album statement of purpose. We’re deep into Bruce’s era of stockpiling songs here and between the end of 1979 and May 1980 when recording sessions began and ended across two different phases, close to 60 songs were recorded to a finished state. As the studio time began to clock up an antsy Steven Van Zandt already wanted out, he was convinced to stay put by being made part of the production team that already included Springsteen and Jon Landau. SVZ’s imprint is clear on many of the shorter, punchier tunes but The River is a sprawling beast of an album that for many years became the best one-stop-shop for all things Sprinsgsteen. It’s why he couldn’t let it go – despite a couple of finished, mixed versions going to the label – as a single album:

“It wasn’t big enough. It wasn’t sprawling enough. It didn’t include enough. I’d gotten to the point where I wanted to include everything that I did, from the party material to my character studies, and I didn’t think I could do that successfully on one album at that time. I didn’t take it back with the intention of making two…. I just took it back with the intention of making it better.”

So, twenty songs. Are they all gold? Of course not. Hell, this is the first of many instances where archival releases would beg the questions ‘how did X make the cut over this?’ With that in mind…

Least: Crush On You

“Ooh, ooh, I gotta crush on you, Ooh, ooh, I gotta crush on you, Ooh, ooh, I gotta crush on you tonight”… I mean, it sounds naff enough once, let alone when it’s repeated ad nauseum after just the second verse. Verses so slight they feel like they were put together with fridge magnets. No amount of SVZ styled garage-band-rave-up sound can save this – even Springsteen has called it the stupidest song he’d ever recorded and would sarcastically refer to it as ‘a masterpiece’ in 2009. It becomes even more questionable when you weight it up against the aforementioned tracks consigned to archival releases like ‘Take ‘Em as They Come,’ ‘Roulette’ or ‘Where The Bands Are.’

Most: The River

This is very tricky. I love ‘Point Blank’, ‘Stolen Car’, ‘Wreck On The Highway’…. ‘Two Hearts’ is an underrated slab of brilliance and ‘Out In The Street’ and ‘Hungry Heart’ are undisputed fucking gems. But the second that harmonica hits or Bruce utters ‘I come from down in the valley’ you know where you are. It’s a PIVOTAL song in his back catalogue and while he still felt he needed four or five songs in the same style to make an epic album, Van Zandt was right when he said you only need ‘The River’ and you’ve got an amazing album.

Least and Most: Darkness on the Edge of Town

/ Tony / 19 Comments

Have I mentioned that some of these are gonna be harder than others? That few artists have as impressive a streak of great albums as Springsteen? Good. Because I’ve now reached my favourite Springsteen album. One of my favourite albums of all time: Darkness on the Edge of Town.

This is the first of many Springsteen albums where – after legal wranglings stopped him going into the studio for a bit – the man they call Boss began writing more tunes than anyone could possibly fit onto one album as he racked up studio time searching for the right songs and final album. It meant that three years separate it from his breakthrough and that it would, looking back, become his first left-turn from what was expected in a move he’d repeat throughout his career. Who knows: had he gone back into the studio with Jon Landau when he first wanted to – his manager Mike Appel wanted to take advantage of Born To Run‘s success with a live album instead – we might just have got Born To Run 2: The Road Worrier. The songs on Darkness.. instead drew their inspiration from characters by Johns Steinbeck and Ford, the music lost the ‘everything but the kitchen sink’ production in favour of something leaner, rawer and tinged with attitude of the nascent punk scene somehow married to Springsteen’s interest in country too. These weren’t ‘losers’ anymore, they were working class heroes living tough lives against a tough sound in which The E Street Band provide the power to give them an edge.

The result is damn-near unimpeachable. This one, though, is an easy choice for me:

Least: Factory

To me ‘Factory’ sucks the air out the album just as it’s gotten going on Side B with ‘The Promised Land’. I get it; it’s the counter to ‘Adam Raised A Cain’ in as much it’s his exploring the mundane daily toll of his father’s working life but it lacks the urgency, the punch and visceral nature of both the album’s other songs and those others he would write dealing with the same matter. The music doesn’t work for me – it didn’t work when used as ‘Come On (Let’s Go Out Tonight)’ and makes Springsteen’s invite to party (at the flipping factory of all renowned swinging hotspots) as inviting as a cold-water enema.

Most: Racing In The Street

Hell, it might just be one of Springsteen’s best ever songs. I’ve still got a love for the ’78 version too but the original has always hit hardest. One of the first songs he started writing for Darkness.. it didn’t need to evolve so much as refine until the solo piano song ‘Dying in the Street’ until it became the epic call back to Born To Run‘s dreamers who now lived only to hit the strip. Who knows when or how he hit upon the line – “Some guys they just give up living and start dying little by little, piece by piece” – that pins the song down and grounds it but it makes it one of the best he’s put to tape.

Least and Most: Born to Run

/ Tony / 9 Comments

All the redemption I can offer, girl, is beneath this dirty hood…

I want to know if love is wild, girl I want to know if love is real…

Man there’s an opera out on the Turnpike, there’s a ballet being fought out in the alley…

It’s chapter three. In which our hero gives the E Street a shuffle, welcomes back an old confidante and gains a new one to boot, sharpens his street poetry to make it more universal, plucks his characters from their boardwalk hideouts and puts them into something chrome wheeled and fuel injected so they can bust out of Asbury Park en route to becoming rock and roll future. That’s right; it’s the Catalina fucking wine mixer Born To Run.

Once again – and certainly for the next few posts – I’ve placed myself in a tricky spot: citing a track that I find my least preferred on an album that’s easily one of Springsteen’s finest and no doubt a favourite album of many. Born To Run has become one of those albums – you know: an instantly recognisable cover that’s been parodied countless times, one that’s stuffed full of killer songs and tracks that delight night after night after night after night… one that routinely tops magazine ‘best of this or that’ polls etc.

Does it even have a track that I don’t love as much as the others? Well, perhaps not but that’s not really what we’re looking at here but there is one song that I certainly listen to and recall less than others and that means that..

Least: Night

AGAIN – this isn’t a slight of ‘Night’ but I can’t recall much about it even now after having run through the album again yesterday. It’s a great tune and on any other album wouldn’t be here – hell even Bruce’s least memorable cuts are better than many artists’ highs… but it has the misfortune of being a three minute blast of good stuff in between two fucking great cuts; ‘Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out’ and ‘Backstreets’. It’s like the definition of a filler slot, it would have to be a really remarkable track to stand its own there and it’s to the song’s credit that it’s still bloody good… but there’s nothing stand-out about it for me. That’s all.

Picking a ‘most’ from Born To Run is almost as challenging to be honest. I mean, there’s ‘Thunder Road’ which is one of his finest, there’s the title track itself and the the previously mentioned ‘Backstreets’… but there’s nothing really like..

Most: Jungleland

It’s beyond compare, really. It’s like everything great on this album was building up to the magnificent epic that straddles nearly ten minutes of pure delight at the end and manages to encompass everything great that Springsteen had hinted at in his music to come and would for decades yet to arrive. The street poetry is there, the surging hope for better tomorrows, the ridiculously moving saxophone break, the builds and release and powering along, and the fact that, somehow, he manages to make the whole thing still feel like an anthem to be blasted to a stadium full of fans giving as much passion as they can ‘tonight…. in… JungleLAND’.

Fuck yes.

Least and Most: The Wild, The Innocent & the E Street Shuffle

/ Tony / 7 Comments

Might as well tackle the bull by the horns, as they say. Though who in their right mind would want to tackle a bull at all, let alone by the pointy end. Probably the same person who’s trying to find a ‘least’ track on a pretty-much faultless album. I reckon this is more one for Tom Cruise and his IMF team than it is for me. I don’t grin “like an idiot every fifteen minutes” though.

Put simply The Wild, The Innocent & the E Street Shuffle is the beginning of Springsteen’s unimpeachable run of albums. It delivers on a promise that wasn’t all too apparent on his debut released just eight months prior. After plenty of shows with the fledgling E Street Band and with keyboard player David Sancious as his first musical lieutenant, the songs on The Wild.. add strains of jazz and other styles to Springsteen’s street-life scenes and boardwalk characters and while the lyrics still feel like he’s falling through the pages of a thesaurus, they’re getting ever tighter and more evocative. The run of ‘Incident on 57th Street’, ‘Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)’ and ‘New York City Serenade’ mean that Side B is easily the greatest second half of any album out there alone.

Given the sheer brilliance of these early albums, while I hope it’s not needed, I’ll add a caveat to this that I’d rather take these songs other plenty of others and that ‘least’ is meant only in a relative sense. Now, with that being said I’m also fully aware that I’m probably committing an act of Bossphemy when I say…

Least: The E Street Shuffle

That’s definitely the sound of ‘boo’s not ‘Bruuuuce’ I hear right now, I’m sure. Again: I fucking LOVE this album. But there’s something about the opener in comparison to everything that follows that feels a little, well; lesser. It feels a little like Bruce is trying too hard to get that live show stopper song into the mix that he’d perfect with ‘Tenth Avenue Freeze Out’ and ‘Out In The Streets’.

Lyrically…. it’s a jumble. While just one song later we’ve got pure evocation with “the fireworks are hailin’ over Little Eden tonight, forcin’ a light into all those stoned-out faces left stranded on this Fourth of July” on ‘The E Street Shuffle’ we’ve got a ‘man-child’ giving double shots to ‘little girls’ and some dude called Power 13 and his girl Little Angel? Again, this is only a relative ‘least’ because I’m comparing it to the utter ‘provoke a gold-rush and mass migration to the west’ level of quality the rest of the album has both lyrically and musically.

There, that’s the hardest ‘least’ I’ve faced while putting this together. I need a lie down. But before I do…

Most: New York City Serenade

I’m not one to reinvent the wheel or work too hard – or hard at all – when I don’t have to. As such I’m going to borrow from my Least to Most take on The Wild The Innocent.. and say “there’s a few, a small few songs that I’ll listen to where the opening bar is so immediately ‘right’, so ‘spot on’ and tuned to me that it affects me to the core. It’s like an instant high. ‘New York City Serenade’ is one of those. That hammer of the piano strings, the cascade of notes that follows. Sometimes you’ll hear an intro that’s perfect and you’ll think ‘ok, how’s this gonna get marred?’ because not everything that follows can be as good. With ‘New York City Serenade’ everything works beautifully, the arrangement is so perfectly put together that every element just flows into the next in a way that makes it seem like effortless poetry. There’s not a single bum note or misstep in the entire song. Bruce Springsteen was 23 when he wrote and arranged ‘New York City Serenade.’ When I was 23 I though it was a good idea to call a band ‘Wookie Cushion’”.

This isn’t just my favourite song on this album, it’s one of my favourite songs of all time.

What are you thinking? Should I be strung up for suggesting ‘The E Street Shuffle’ is lesser than ‘Wild Billy’s Circus Story?’

Catch-up spins

/ Tony / 3 Comments

It’s been a while since I was ‘here’ having pretty much taken most of summer off. It feels like a fitting way to get back up to speed with a review of what’s been going on in my ears over the past few months.

Air – Radio # 1

I spent a good chunk of time in France, again, this summer. Arriving in time to watch the Olympics’ closing ceremony from a hotel bed and marvel at – after hours of more pointless faff that rivalled the opening ceremony for fuckery – how wasted Air were. It did mean that I spent time in a number of Lyon record shops hunting for Air albums though and came home with their first trio. Following up the faultless Moon Safari was never going to be easy and while 10,000 Hz Legend wasn’t as successful or well-recieved I’ve always had a soft-spot for its willingness to experiment.

Soccer Mommy – Driver

It sounds like the upcoming new album from Soccer Mommy is a bit of a retreat from the production of 2022’s brilliant Sometimes, Forever to a more organic sound and I’m all on board for it.

The Cure – Alone

It seems strange that as we near the end of 2024 I’m still enjoying a new Pearl Jam record, I have pre-orders in place for new records by Smashing Pumpkins, Pixies and The Cure. On the one hand it’s akin to Pink Floyd and The Rolling Stones releasing new albums in 1994 which would’ve been pretty much unnoticed by the younger ears of the time, on the other hand I’m bloody loving the fact that so many of my favourites artists are still dropping records and that so many of them are hitting at the same moment. The wait for a new Cure album has been ridiculous but Song Of A Lost World is shaping up strong based on the two songs dropped thus far.

Girls In Hawaii – Flavor

Another album fittingly purchased while in France – the 20th Anniversary edition of Girls In Hawaii’s From Here to There, an album my wife and I listened to on repeat on our first holiday together some 16 years prior and soundtracked plenty of our driving around France at the time. While I’ve enjoyed some of their subsequent albums more, this Belgian band’s upbeat indie vibe is always a fun spin.

Kim Deal – A Good Time Pushed

In some ways it feels mad that we’re only getting a Kim Deal solo album in 2024 but given how many wonderful Pixies, The Breeders, Amps albums we’ve had it’s not like she’s been shirking. Given that she walked from working on new Pixies material it’s not too surprising just how sonically wide-reaching the sound of the songs released ahead of the album are.

Crowded House – Together Alone

I’ve been trying to listen to whole albums at a time again on my commute. Together Alone, the final of Crowded House’s first run of albums and still their finest, has popped up a couple of times. I adore this album’s sound and vibe especially the Maori choir and log drummers on this track.

Pearl Jam – Other Side

Anywho, here’s more Pearl Jam. As much as I’ve been enjoying Dark Matter since its release, I’ve been listening to tunes from their ‘lost’ era – Binaural and Riot Act – lately and Other Side, the other side to ‘Save You’, is a great tune that should’ve made the cut.

Least to Most: Foo Fighters, Part 3

/ Tony / 1 Comment

Foo Fighters

It’s surprising the amount of stick Dave Grohl got for moving forward and making new music. Or, as some saw it, daring to make new music after the death of Kurt Cobain. As the man himself has often pondered – did they just expect him to stop? Music was all he’d done up until that point and he was only 25, why should he stop? In October of 1994, six months following Cobain’s suicide, Grohl booked some time at Robert Lang Studios in Seattle – where Nirvana’s final, aborted studio sessions had taken place (which yielded the demo of what would become ‘You Know You’re Right‘) earlier that same year – and recorded a fifteen-track demo, playing every instrument (save one guitar solo) himself.

Not sure where his future lay Grohl considered looking for another band with a vacant drum stool. One such stool had recently been vacated by Stan Lynch and there’s a great video of Grohl going full Animal with the Heartbreakers on SNL – “it was the first time I’d looked forward to playing the drums since Nirvana had ended.” Ultimately, though (and even after a couple of shows sitting on the vacant Pearl Jam drum stool*), Grohl wanted to give his ‘Foo Fighters’ project his attention as the demo tape he’d circulated was now picking up major label interest. The name was applied to the demo tape as Grohl wanted some anonymity post-Nirvana and to suggest that a group was behind the music.

Released in July 1995, there’s something wonderfully charming and warm about Foo Fighters. It’s very much a product of its time – the guitars are very grunge-like and loaded with the same levels of fuzz associated with Grohl’s former outfit but the songs quickly jump into more melodic and lighter routes and there’s an overwhelming sense of lightness and, yes, goofiness that wouldn’t be present on any other Foo Fighters release (likely down to the fact that the largely nonsensical lyrics were written 20 minutes before recording). It’s loaded with hook, charm and warmth and positivity. Though I have to wonder if I’m the only Foo Fighters fan that doesn’t care for ‘Big Me’.

Highlights: ‘This Is A Call’, ‘I’ll Stick Around’, ‘Alone + Easy Target’, ‘Good Grief’,’Floaty’

Wasting Light

Fuck but I love this album. This is the one instance in which the Gimmick behind it paid off in spades. In an effort to recapture some of the rougher sound of earlier Foo Fighters releases, Grohl decided that Foo Fighters Album 7 would be stripped of all the production bells and whistles that had been draped over Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace and bought in Butch Vig and to record the entire album on analogue equipment in Dave’s garage.

At this point, though, it would be futile to expect such a process to result in a raw sounding record. It’s not like Dave Grohl has a small garage for that matter either. But, what makes Wasting Light such a late career highlight is that Vig captures a sense of purpose and drive in the band that had been lacking for at least three albums previous. It’s a big, anthemic rock record shorn of production sheen and filled with a sense of energy that comes from the fact that they recorded the entire album live and – with Pat Smear back in the ranks – a heavier, three-guitar strong attack.

From the off with ‘Bridges Burning’ powering into ‘Rope’ and ‘Dear Rosmery’ there’s no let up. Instead, when you’d expect it at track four, ‘White Limo’ has been described as “a blistering, paint-stripping thrash track” with Grohl’s vocals lost as he screams at what must be the top of his register. There’s no slowing down on Wasting Light. No ballads. ‘These Days’ looks like it’s gonna be that track until it turns into a thumping Foos classic that will no doubt rub shoulders with ‘Run’ and ‘Something From Nothing’ on the inevitable Greatest Hits 2. No, Wasting Light found a revitalised band firing with an energy and power few thought they had left in them and got me really paying attention to the band again and, depending on the day of the week, could just as easily sit right at the top of this list.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkHp_JLtxck

Highlights: ‘Bridges Burning’, ‘Rope’, ‘White Limo’, ‘These Days’,’Arlandria’, ‘Walk’.

The Colour and The Shape

Twenty years on (gulp), the moment when the practically-throwaway ‘Doll’ gets torn apart by the arrival of ‘Monkey Wrench’ and The Colour and The Shape shifts into gear remains shit-the-bed-amazing. So good that the band themselves would give the formula another go and top it with ‘T-Shirt’ giving way to ‘Run’ on this year’s Concrete & Gold. That being said, while ‘Run’ is a great song, it doesn’t match the sheer power and fire of ‘Monkey Wrench’ – an absolute stone-cold classic. And it’s not the only one on the album for is home to a tonne of em: ‘Monkey Wrench’, ‘My Hero‘, ‘Walking After You’, ‘Enough Space’ and, easily their best song, ‘Everlong‘.

The Colour and The Shape was the first Foo Fighters album recorded as a group (although Grohl would end up re-recording the drum parts himself leaving drummer William Goldsmith little choice but to leave the band. He’d be replaced by Taylor Hawkins before the tour behind the album began) and is the most cohesive and consistent set of songs they’ve put to tape, still. After an extensive tour behind Foo Fighters, the band were coming together with Grohl emerging more confident in his role as singer and band leader – if you go back to ‘Monkey Wrench’ when he hits his final “one more thing before I quit” you can here that confidence screaming through. On the downside his first marriage was ending in divorce. This meant that, in place of the nonsensical lyrics on the first album, much of Grohl’s domestic strife was poured into the lyrics – ‘Everlong’ in particular is a strange mix up as it was written against both the collapse of his marriage and the beginning of a new relationship.

What makes this album stand out for me is that in between the staggering strength of the obvious hits, the songs that are so often forgotten are really bloody good too. Take ‘Enough Space‘ – watching ‘Back and Forth’ it’s clear how important this song was as one of the first new ones Grohl wrote for the band, with a tempo inspired by the jumping up and down of European audiences to heavier tunes. Or ‘My Poor Brain’ or ‘Wind Up’ or the best Foo Fighters album closer to date – ‘A New Way Home.’ These are great tunes and on any other album would be stand-outs. When put on an album stacked with killer classics they’re almost forgotten but prove that The Colour and the Shape is an album full of strengths (and ‘See You’ which, frankly, you can forgive).

Check out any review for a new Foo Fighters album and it will be this one that it gets judged against and with reason. The Colour and The Shape built the template of every song and direction the Foo Fighters would make yet remains their benchmark in terms of quality and consistency.

Highlights: All of it.

*Despite all the MTV (and Courtney fuelled) Nirvana vs Pearl Jam schtick the animosity between members really wasn’t there. Grohl sat in for two shows in Australia pre Jack-Irons and it’s been suggested that, having heard and recognised Grohl’s direction, they told him he’d be better doing it alone rather than playing for someone else. Eddie Vedder would actually premier two of the album’s songs on his radio show in 1995 as well as playing alongside Grohl in Mike Watt’s backing band – whose tour Vedder’s band Hovercraft were on along with Foo Fighters.

Least to Most: Foo Fighters, Part 1

/ Tony / 3 Comments

This year Dave Grohl and his bunch of merry men released their ninth studio album and have embarked on another stadium slaughtering world tour. It seems somewhat strange – having been listening in attentively for most of the ride – for the Foo Fighters to have reached such a scale when the band’s beginnings were so decidedly quieter and personal.

A lot changed in the years between Dave Grohl recording the entirety of the first album across a one-week period in 1994 and topping the charts with Conrcete and Gold as a six-piece member band and with a total of nine studio albums to their name I’ve been listening back through the back catalogue and decided, once again, to try to share my thoughts on each

My previous undertaking of a Least to Most was almost too much of an undertaking. To keep the fun and momentum, I’m not going to be exploring every album in a separate post for one thing though will be looking at them ‘One by One’ but in three hits of three.

It’s worth noting that, as with that initial series; it’s just that, personal favourites – I don’t lay claim to my judgement of one album’s quality to being universal or true. It’s supposed to be fun after all. Though it may well correlate with just such features’ listings, this isn’t a ‘worst to best’ just a ‘least to most’ favourite and, again, I listen to these albums pretty regularly so I wouldn’t call any of them ‘bad’ or they wouldn’t be sat on my shelves.

So, let’s get on with it and get going from the Least end…

One By One

Relax, something had to start this off and I know that this album most definitely has it’s champions. Hey, I can understand it; there are some cracking songs on One By One – there’s just not enough of them and, overall, the album doesn’t gel cohesively. It suffers from both its troubled birth and the band themselves having seemingly stepped away from it.

Coming off the back of the successful There Is Nothing Left To Lose, the band started working up songs and demos before taking a break in 2001 to play some European festivals. I happened to catch em at V2001. Unfortunately, after that show Taylor Hawkins suffered a heroin overdose, landing in a coma for two days.

Once back underway, sessions on the album grew stale, the heavy use of ProTools and rough mixes left band members feeling unsatisfied and, amidst risig tensions, the “million-dollar demos” were abandoned and the Foo Fighters went on pause as Grohl headed out on tour as drummer for Queens of the Stone Age. One massive fight during rehearsals for Coachella and a blistering ‘make or break’ show at the same festival later, the band got back together to take another stab at some of those songs already recorded and get down some of Grohl’s newer compositions including ‘Low’ and ‘Times Like These’.

When One By One dropped – heralded by the spectacular ‘All My Life’ which remains one of the band’s strongest songs – it was initially well received. But time hasn’t been kind to this one and it’s not aged well. It’s a frustrating listen with a good few songs but bogged down overall by several that don’t really cut it after repeated listens. I very rarely listen to this one and when I did so recently I couldn’t remember most of the song titles or melodies beyond the keepers – ‘All My Life’, ‘Low‘, ‘Have it All’ and ‘Times Like These.’ Oddly enough these happen to be the first four songs on the album and, beyond that, I very rarely venture.

Some great moments on One By One but the band’s heaviest album is also it’s hardest listen. As Grohl himself has said ” “four of the songs were good, and the other seven I’ve never played again in my life. We rushed into it, and we rushed out of it”

Highlights: ‘All My Life’, ‘Low’, ‘Have it All,’ ‘Times Like These.’

Sonic Highways

It pains me to put this one so low on the list as it’s one I’ve listened to a lot – chiefly because my almost-four-year-old requested ‘Something From Nothing’ so often- but, while it’s less of a challenge to listen to than One By One the truth is that Sonic Highways is not a great Foo Fighters album.

This is peak-concept Foos and it suffers as a result, almost coming across as not a real Foo Fighters album but as a soundtrack to their documentary series of the same name. Each ‘episode’ would see Grohl adding lyrics to songs based on conversations and ‘nuggets’ from that city. As such the references to Muddy Waters in ‘Something From Nothing’ seem forced and even Grohl’s tribute to his DC punk roots ‘Feast and the Famine’ is glossed and buffed into sonic tameness by Butch Vig. The other problem with the concept is that it forced guest stars onto every track whether or not they were needed – even Cheap Trick’s Rick Neilson questions whether they need a fourth guitar on ‘Something From Nothing’ – as though the songs must be forced through a strict criteria in order to make it to the album rather than happening organically because it was part of the Project to have guests on every song.

Some of the songs and details are good, though, don’t get me wrong. The feedback squall and solo at the end of ‘Something From Nothing’, Gary Clark Jr’s solo on an otherwise turd of a song ‘What Did I Do? /God As My Witness’, Joe Walsh’s chilled guitar licks in ‘Outside’ and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band’s blasts on ‘In The Clear’ all give a good hit of enjoyment and ‘Subterranean’ is a great one.

The problem is that songs like ‘I Am A River’ and ‘ don’t hold up to repeated listens or justify their length and ‘Congregation’ still holds its place as my least-favourite Foo Fighters song ever. The album, to my ears, sounds like good songs left half-baked, their gestation and development into something better sacrificed in the name of Concept as borne out by the release of the Saint Cecilia at the end of 2015 – four songs recorded without concept or Vig’s production buffing it all out that managed to kick the arse of everything on Sonic Highways.

Highlights: ‘Something from Nothing’, ‘In The Clear’, ‘Outside’, ‘Subterranean’.

In Your Honor

Aside from the whole *Honour thing…. In Your Honor was the start of what I’ve come to regard as the Foo Fighers ‘gimmick’ phase. After touring One by One – a tour which saw them become a genuinely thrilling live act – Grohl was unsure where to take his Foos next and, after the gruelling sessions for that album, didn’t fancy rushing into a new album straight away. Thinking of looking for film score work he picked up his guitar and set about writing acoustic songs, managing to amass a whole album’s worth. But, this being Dave Grohl, he couldn’t just have an acoustic record, he’s a man who has ” to have loud rock music in my life somewhere” so decided it was time for a double album. One CD of “really heavy rock shit” and another of “really beautiful, acoustic-based, lower dynamic stuff.” Uh-oh, sounds like a Concept….

What handicaps In Your Honor, though, is that Concept. That it has to be twenty songs long rather than it being that long because Grohl had written that many belters. That it needs to have ten really heavy fucking songs of wall-to-wall riffs AND ten songs that are as gentle as a kitten’s fart. And to keep them as far apart from each other as possible too. As such while at least half of the ‘heavy’ songs are top drawer, the rest just sort of repeat the notions and many of the songs on the ‘soft’ disc wouldn’t be released were it not a case of needing enough of them to fill a double album and the sheer distance between the two make it hard to link the sides of the same album to each other.

But.. as with all misguided double album’s there’s one gleaming, top notch, single-disc album in here waiting to be heard once shorn of its excess. The opening two on the ‘rock’ disc – ‘In Your Honor‘ and ‘No Way Back’ are as strong and relentless as a viagra’d up trouser snake and break only to let in the album’s lead single (and Foo classic) ‘Best of You’* and ‘DOA’ is equally as catchy while ‘Resolve’ is a 70’s Rock tinged earworm.

Despite the sensation that the band aren’t quite settled in feeling out their gentler side, the ‘Soft’ half has some of the album’s more interesting moments. Opener ‘Still’ is bathed in backround ambience and sneaky piano, ‘Over and Out’ has some great tom-tom work from Taylor Hawkins (though his lead-vocal début ‘Cold Day In The Sun’ veers far too close to AOR Slush), ‘Miracle’ – with piano from John Paul Jones – is a definite keeper as is ‘Friend of a Friend‘, a hold-over written by Grohl while in Nirvana and undoubtedly about his bandmantes and ‘Razor’ features some great guitar interplay between Grohl and his BFF Josh Homme to bring it to a close.

While some of the first disc gets tiresome and some of the “really beautiful” second disc is more “really coffee shop background” – take half of one and half of the other and you’ve got a great album here. Keep them restrained by the Concept and they’re dragged down.

Highlights: ‘In Your Honor’, ‘No Way Back’, ‘Best of You’, ‘DOA’, ‘Resolve’. ‘Still’, ‘Miracle’, ‘Friend of a Friend’, ‘Over and Out’, ‘Razor’.

*Why is Dave Grohl so popular on Amazon? He’s always giving the best the best the best the best reviews.

First Impressions: Concrete and Gold – Foo Fighters

/ Tony / 19 Comments

This bloke from the Foo Fighters looks a bit like the drummer from that band Nirvana, doesn’t he?

Despite the PR, expecting the Foo Fighters to break new ground in 2017, some two decades plus into a career that has seen the band grow from a one-man project to stadium-filling rock heavyweights, would be optimistic to say the least. Since In Your Honour Dave Grohl, however, seems determined to try so we fans have been offered our Foo in separate acoustic and electric discs, a ‘serious musicians’ flavour, with ‘raw analogue’ toppings* and with added documentary options on the side. It’s still been Foo, though, no matter how much Mr Grohl has tried to spice it up. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, mind, but, after There Is Nothing Left To Lose, there’s nothing that really sets aside, say, ‘The Pretender’, ‘All My Life’ or even ‘Rope’ as having been on different albums no matter the supposed narrative rules that rock’s smiliest ambassador has sought to apply to them.

Take Sonic Highways as an example – despite the concept and execution, there was nothing, really, to show in terms of sound or execution that differentiated its nine songs from any of the bands other mediocre cuts**. It’s as though there’s no concept or production technique that could change the established loud-quiet-loud-louder and colossal thump of the Foo Fighters at this stage of their career.

I found the concept behind Sonic Highways increasingly odd given how much time and effort the band had put into building their own studio (Studio 606 West) and HQ less than a decade before and seemingly abandoned after two albums – Wasting Light was recorded in Grohl’s garage. In fact, when Grohl declared that he already knew how the next Foo Fighters album would be recorded and that it was something so exciting that no band had ever done before…. I groaned a little inside. Why couldn’t they just get in their studio – or any studio – and apply themselves to the songs not to achieving some wacky concept?

Thanks to PJ Harvey, it seems, I’ve got my wish. Turns out that Dave Grohl’s ‘big idea’ for Foo Fighters Album 9 was to set up a studio on stage at the Hollywood Bowl and record it live in front of a 20,000 strong crowd. Shame, then, that discovering that PJ Harvey’s The Hope Six Demolition Project had been recorded in the same manner (albeit a far more English approach via an art installation in Somerset House) took the shine off the idea for him.

Instead Dave did what he describes as the most unexpected thing for his band to do and took the Foo Fighters into a big studio – EastWest Studios – and hired a producer to oversee their next album, gimmick-free. Well, I say that… this wouldn’t be a Foo Fighters album in the 21st Century if there wasn’t some form of ‘gimmick’ involved, would it? This time it’s the involvement of producer Greg Kurstin. Picked by Grohl for his work with his own band The Bird and the Bee, Kurstin is perhaps better known for his work with acts like Kelly Clarkson, Sia, Lily Allen, Ellie Goulding, Pink and that moaning banshee’s god-awful radio-melter ‘Hello’. Given the combination of a pop and rock heavyweight’s, the ‘gimmick’ of Concrete and Gold is that it’s being pitched as sounding like “Motörhead’s version of Sgt. Pepper.”

So…. does it? Of course it fucking doesn’t. Don’t be daft. But….. it takes a very very good stab at doing so and feels pretty much unlike anything else Dave and his merry men have done before. Yes, the sound is unmistakeably Foo but this time around the band are stretching out in ways they haven’t before and deliver plenty of unexpected and, frankly, great twists to deliver an album that offers  psychedelic, prog-metal, abstract, heavy and, yes, Beatles-esque shades against a Foo Fighters sound that is, for the first time in a long time, suitably balanced and mixed by a producer.

Kicking off with a short throwaway ripped apart by a heavy rocker will inevitably draw comparisons to The Colour and the Shape but ‘T-Shirt’, for all it’s brevity, is a superior song to ‘Doll’ and pushes Concrete and Gold‘s confidence and palette front and centre and – even after maybe a hundred listens at my son’s request – ‘Run’ is an out and out fucking BEAST that ranks as one of the Foos’ best:

‘Make It Right’ offers more than the straight-ahead rocker it initially suggests itself to be, there’s a funk of a groove behind it, unexpected chord changes and a surprising slab of background harmonies that when combined bring, to my mind that is, Aerosmith’s Draw The Line*** album. Initially I’d been slightly less impressed by ‘The Sky Is A Neighbourhood’ when catching the videos of its live reveals but the album version, along with many of the tracks here, shows that – despite their straight ahead live mode – on Concrete and Gold the Foos have actually become a studio band with plenty of unusual-for-Foo song structures and production choices that blend so well. Take the strings that slip so unobtrusively into ‘The Sky…’ as to change a song type they’ve churned out many a time before into something that genuinely lifts skywards.

‘La Dee Da’ falls into the same category for me – I wasn’t impressed by it’s live rendering but, away from the bludgeoning and sonic flattening of radio too, on Concrete and Gold I ‘get it’. If it’s Fab Four you’re after, there’s one of em on ‘Sunday Rain’ – as Taylor Hawkins is too busy singing this spacey (seriously, check out his ‘Range Rover Bitch‘) rocker, Sir Paul McCartney plonked down the drums. Sequentially it’s a good fit because, to my ears, the preceding ‘Happy Ever After’ makes me think of ‘Blackbird’ or one of Macca’s early solo melodies.

‘Dirty Water’ is an early favourite for me; it brings forth sounds of both early Foo Fighters, a playful lightness and airy feel (and, again, some real Beatles tinges) but is bolstered by something sharper and more focused that comes from both a more practised song craft and production that, despite its length, it remains on track and charm. In that respect it serves as a strong summary of the album as a whole.

Concrete and Gold doesn’t quite achieve the premise of its PR but show me an album that does. It does, however, stand apart in the Foo Fighters cannon and is the sound of the band playing to those highs and strengths its achieved during its ascent to stadium rock act while also stretching out enough sonically to both refresh its sound and offer a welcome hand to those fans like me that had begun to wonder if Dave Grohl had anything interesting left up his sleeves. Turns out he does.

I hadn’t pre-ordered this one but I’m already on my third listen of Concrete and Gold and haven’t skipped a track left. For all his efforts to make a ‘concept’ of an album, Dave Grohl has, when he wasn’t even trying to, created a fucking belter of a Foo Fighters album that works not just track-by-track but as an album in itself. Well worth a listen or three.

 

*I’ll put this out there: Wasting Light is the best Foo Fighters album to date.

**Concept over substance unfortunately applies to the album and I wouldn’t slip any of its tracks onto a ‘Best of’ comp.

***Underrated.

Out of Europe: A Romanian Top Five

/ Tony / 8 Comments

Here we are, over a year from that colossal outpouring of Stupid that was the Leave vote and with all the idiocy that has fallen out of the government in its tailspin and while all the polls and surveys now indicate that the general consensus amongst us Brits is “holy shit that was a big fucking mistake, STOP STOP STOP” the stupidity continues.

So as we look to be the first country since Greenland to shoot itself in the face in the name of political turpitude, I thought it was as good a time as any to shift the focus of this series to one of the EU’s most recent members, a country to whom I owe so much and have a huge amount of love for despite its contradictions, my second-home in Europe as it were; Romania.

I can’t include one of the precious few songs sung in Romanian I know for even though Zdob și Zdub sing in the language, they’re from the neighbouring Moldova. So ‘Everybody in the Casa Mare‘ will have to remain a ‘linked-to’. I’m also anxious to use this one to show that the Romanian scene is far more than the ‘traditional folk‘ music associated with the country.

This post has been a little longer in gestation than many. My wife, having left the country a fair old amount of time ago, hasn’t kept up with its music and so we reached out to a friend who runs a concert promotion company out of Bucharest and a couple on here are her recommendations. OneDay is a self-financed, independent effort aimed at promoting Romanian new music and introducing emerging international bands to the local concert scene. Pretty cool, right? She’s been involved in getting some pretty big names to the country and is always championing new Romanian music.

As such this post has been something of a voyage of discovery for me, opening my ears to a huge and varied music scene in the country – I’m next heading over in September and am hoping to hit up a few record shops as well as getting back into the mountains.

But I’ll start this list with the first bit of ‘alt/rock’ in Romanian I heard, via my wife….

Omul Cu Şobolani – Depresia toamna-iarna ’06-’07

So, I have no idea whether Omul Cu Şobolani  (I believe they were formed in București) are ‘cool’ back in Romania anymore of it’d get me ‘ugh’ looks in a record shop but this group keep it simple – one guitar, bass, drums and vocals. It was the first bit of rock I heard from the country and I still enjoy it.

Greetings Sugar – Drunken revelations (with Bogdan Serban)

This one came via the recommendations list. These guys also hail from and describe themselves as a “dark hearted band from Eastern Europe”. There’s something of The National / Interpol to the vocals on this, their second single. ‘Drunken Revelations’ is the follow up / over half to their début single – Greener – also worth checking out.

Fine, It’s Pink – Waiting for You

Fine, It’s Pink (another from the list) hail from  Iași and categorise themselves with phrases like “electronic bluesy dream pop” and  “electronica post indie”…  I love the mix of different elements in this one topped off by those vocals.

Fluturi Pe Asfalt – Nu crezi că pot?

Now we come to the discoveries… That ‘Related Videos’ feature on YouTube can also be a blessing for it’s where I found Fluturi Pe Asfalt. This four-piece from Cluj-Napoca (Romania’s second biggest city) tick off so many things I love in music: soaring guitars, mood, thumping drums, post-rock elements, a BIG sound… I’ve been rinsing their bandcamp page for listens (not everything is on YouTube and Spotify isn’t as international as it would like to think) and once I’ve finally worked out how to shift my iTunes over to the new Mac at home I’ll be hitting the purchase button.

We’ve also switched back to Romanian too. The language (I hang my head at my limitations with it) suits the genre, I think and, for those who’s Romanian is as bad as mine – “Nu crezi că pot?”means “Don’t You Think I Can?”

Pinholes – Poza

These guys describe themselves as “alternative rock band with influences that vary from post/art-rock to shoegaze and post-punk.” Again – I’m really getting into this and there’s something about the dark, brooding tone to this, the thumping drums  that I love and, again, tick so many boxes for me. Oh, Poza = Picture.