silence kit #21

Paul Westerberg
Stereo/Mono [Vagrant, 2002]

It’s always fashionable to come across like a bit of an insufferable mope, and I remember 2002 being “chock-a-block” (fucking bureaucratic language) full of sad-sack records to mope along to. Let’s see, there were Aimee Mann’s Lost In Space and Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot for sulky starters. Beck released Sea Change, which a lot of his fans hated but which I love because it pretended to sound like the saddest shit. Listened a lot to Interpol’s Turn On The Bright Lights that year too, but not sure if it falls under this category of discussion (though “NYC” definitely sounds mopey as hell). Another one would be the double album by one of my favorite songwriters, Paul Westerberg. A lot of the songs on Stereo/Mono don’t come across as really all that gloomy to begin with (particularly Mono, credited to his Grandpaboy moniker, which contains several really good, Replacements-like rock tunes), but if you read enough of the interviews Paul was giving at that time, you’d notice he sounded totally depressed, disgusted with the time he spent on a major label (three average, commercially dismal solo albums on Reprise and Capitol, if I remember correctly, each containing a few stunning songs still, of course) and eager to disappear completely. These two albums were Paul’s basement tapes, performed and recorded all by himself. I listen to Stereo a lot more (mainly because I don’t have a clue where my Mono CD is) so I am more acquainted to its songs. I have always been drawn to the softer, sadly beautiful side of his songwriting more, and Stereo, while admittedly an uneven listen, got quite a few of these songs: “Boring Enormous”, “Let the Bad Times Roll”, “Nothing To No One”; and “Only Lie Worth Telling”, which to me is quite possibly one of most heartbreaking songs Paul has ever written – only if you’re in the mood for that kind of sad shit though.

it's not just the lipstick drawn on crooked

Right, work sucks and so I have just purchased tickets to catch Elvis Costello perform on October 5, and I’m pretty psyched. Likely that Costello would be performing a bunch of slower-paced ballads (just my guess) but that’s not bad at all. Here are six songs that I hope he’ll get around to performing in between chatters, will update on this after the gig:

“You Trip At Every Step” (Brutal Youth is actually the first Elvis Costello album I’ve ever heard – very good memories of those days – and this is my favorite track off the album)

“Nothing Clings Like Ivy” (From the recent, rather underrated album The Delivery Man, brilliantly parading his way with a nice old bittersweet ballad)

“Poor Fractured Atlas” (Not the best known of his songs, but I got a feeling Elvis would have a soft touch for this number, if only for the line “a woman wouldn’t understand it”; the All These Useless Beauty album also has this song co-written with Aimee Mann which is quite wonderful)

“Alison” (An old favorite, early promise in every sense, off his debut record in 1977 – "It's so funny to be seeing you after so long, girl/ And with the way you look I understand that you were not so impressed.")

“Little Triggers” (This Year’s Model is probably my favorite Costello album, and this is the one song that I’m betting he’ll pull out from this album, which got a 10.0 rating from Pitchforkmedia btw)

“The Sweetest Punch” (A song from Elvis’ collaboration with the man Burt Bacharach, incredible melodies and fantastic blissfully-yours lyrics: “You knocked me out, it was the sweetest punch/ The bell goes...”)

the right side of reflection

French band Phoenix have always been a reliable source of infectious pop songs in a guilty-pleasure sort of way for me. But their latest album, the fantastically named Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix released about five months ago, is proving to be a more than serviceable listen, if only for the equally fantastically named leadoff song “Lisztomania”, which is quite easily my favorite pop song of 2009. Part of why I’m starting to like Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix a lot more now – at first I thought it sounded a tad overproduced, especially with the two electro-pop numbers (“Fences”, “Love Like A Sunset”) the band threw right in the middle of the mix – is that singer Thomas Mars seems to sound more wizened and correspondingly less lovelorn than on their previous albums, singing in a slightly timeworn manner I think perhaps anyone who has ever felt caught in a rut can readily identify with; even when Mars indulges a little and goes soft-rock on our asses (“Rome”), the bleary-eyed sentimentality (romantic and not disgusting yet?) still kinda stick somehow. But it all comes down to the catchy and insanely melodic “Lisztomania” really, as you hang on to its ineffable lyrics (“Follow, misguide, stand still, disgust, discourage”) like a sacred code.

hope this life won't get you down

I was half hoping the Handsome Furs gig be something like the zombie video for their single “I’m Confused”; guess the fine young cannibals were out of commission last night, but that’s alright ma, we’re only bleeding. Eyes were saucered on the pair of excitable spouses, as Dan Boeckner and Alexei Perry manage to readily recreate the ragged inferno of the hopeful rock songs showcased on their latest Face Control. Dan was in great voice, his guitar howling with admirable resolve, and their performance of the Face Control songs like “Nyet Spasiba” and “All We Want, Baby, Is Everything” really have that whole fashionably uncouth insouciance nailed down so well. Everything you need to know about this band, it seems, is in Dan’s description of Handsome Furs being when he and Alexei first locked eyes – the love buzz in that momentous instant.

mixtape (september 2009)

Funny how her mouth tastes like linguine
Aimee Mann “That’s How I Know This Story Would Break My Heart”
Mark Lanegan “Pill Hill Serenade”
Elvis Perkins In Dearland “Slow Doomsday”
Ryan Adams “Harder Now That It’s Over”
The Rolling Stones “Sweet Virginia”
Yo La Tengo “When It’s Dark”
Dusty Springfield “I Think It’s Gonna Rain Today”
Elvis Costello & Burt Bacharach “I Still Have That Other Girl In My Head”
Camera Obscura “James”
Bob Dylan “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright”
Bright Eyes “First Day Of My Life”
M. Ward “Post-War”
Belle & Sebastian “The Boy With The Arab Strap”
Joni Mitchell “Cactus Tree”
Aretha Franklin “One Step Ahead”

Worthy ventures: Not being the most articulate motherfucker out there, I’m not surprised that I struggle most of the time to explain why making mixtapes is one of my favorite pastimes. Usually I just fumble along: last time I explained (or, over-explained) that it’s just like imaging doing a one-hour radio show or something. That’s not quite it, I think - plus I'm no Jack Frost -but this mixtape comes pretty close to that perhaps, a special hour show of familiar but unknown pleasures on some lost-highway radio station. I’m particularly fond of how the Ryan Adams song runs into the old Stones track. Randy Newman’s “I Think It’s Gonna Rain Today” is such a classic pop song, and I think I like Dusty’s version best; “Cactus Tree” is probably my favorite Joni Mitchell song of all-time, if I had to choose.

the band come around

As a longtime fan, I must say that Wilco have never veered far off my radar. To me, it speaks volumes for Wilco that even when the band don’t seem eager to challenge themselves too much, Wilco (the album) still sounds effortlessly ravishing. Their seventh studio album, coming after the nice change of pace that was Sky Blue Sky (2007), practically finds Jeff Tweedy and company wielding out some outdated strategies with grizzled gusto rather than unease – yes, Summerteeth (1999) and Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (2002) would still be the watershed Wilco albums for most fans, but hey it’s kinda nice to hear Jeff Tweedy now sounding more comfortable in his own skin instead of indulging in light-duty moping. Indeed, Tweedy seems infinitely more relaxed throughout Wilco (the album); he has a good laugh at the expense of youthfully misdirected angst on “You Never Know” (“Come on children, you’re acting like children/ Every generation thinks it’s the end of the world”), gentles out a simple duet with Feist on “You And I”, and then combs over the mendacity of loneliness on “Solitaire”. Even the lovely “Country Disappeared”, for all its tender shades of Tweedy’s typical self-effacement, sounds more spontaneously rendered than usual. And Wilco (the album) is enough proof that the questing creativity of Tweedy is indebted to his band mates. For instrumentally wise, Wilco remains a pretty damn serious force to be reckoned with. On the standout “Bull Black Nova”, sort of a revisit of “Spiders (Kidsmoke)” which the band tackled with half indifference and half menacing ferocity, Nels Cline’s bellowing guitars perfectly match the uncannily ominous, Krautrock-driven setting the band whipped up. In a way, the brooding psychopathic groove of this inscrutable song will have you confounded and feels a little out of place with the other, more charitable songs – the darkened flashpoint where sunny feelings are taken away, indeed.

it's always fun and games until

Future’s looking pretty bleak for me personally of late, so it’s no better time than now for the music of Aimee Mann it would seem – that she performed her songs with such equanimity, while drawing on materials from almost all points of her career, is an added bonus anytime. Take her pensive delivery of “Amateur”, always one of my favourite out of her back catalogue, starting out a bit unsure, somewhat in the vein of the floundering confidence implied in her lyrics (“Despite conclusions I drew, there was a chance you’d surprise me”), then gathering momentum, tentatively, along to the sparse instrumental arrangements (this night, it was just Aimee and her two mates). Nice surprise too that she pulled off a rendition of “Invisible Ink”, probably one of the more surreal breakup songs that have been kicking around in my head somewhere. Then there were the few songs that found wider commercial applications in the frog-friendly movie Magnolia (the melancholic melodies of “Save Me” sounds particularly lucid, up close), where you find Aimee’s brittle songwriting still works best when listened as straightforward pop without too much interpretation. Modern life is rubbish, for sure – and so may it be, for we’re long wised up to that fate anyway – but it bears reminding that sometimes it really takes a sublime songsmith like Mann to make one feel a little less lost in space.

(Setlist)
The Moth
Nightmare Girl
Momentum
Build That Wall
Par For The Course
This Is How It Goes
Amateur
Wise Up
Save Me
Red Vines
You Could Make A Killing
Little Tornado
Little Bombs
31 Today
Freeway
Invisible Ink
That’s Just What You Are
Video
Ghost World
Deathly
Driving Sideways
Voices Carry