OCEANIA by The Smashing Pumpkins

Billy Corgan seems to have found his space between sordid viciousness and dream-like mellow-ness. ‘Oceania’ is alternatingly haunting and raging. This may well be the most refined record to date released by The Smashing Pumpkins. Album-opener ‘Quasar’ is noisy, forceful and hard-hitting. In a similar vein, ‘Panopticon’ is a grungy, dirty mess with drums and guitars fighting for space which magically manages to remain up-beat. Again, ‘The Chimera’ is familiar, catchy and reminiscent of ‘Gish’-era The Smashing Pumpkins with wailing notes over heavy distorted punk-ness. On the other hand, ‘Wild-flower’ features strings-heavy riffage, almost-Gregorian choral backing and chiming piano chords over some lovely verses (“Wild-flower in the wilderness outside, take your chance with love and laughter and every word I write.”) that make this track memorable. 

However, the sophistication that The Smashing Pumpkins seems to have discovered sears through in their musings in the really, really remarkable pieces off this album that are ‘The Celestials’ with its acoustic chord progressions and orchestral swells poured over Corgan’s trade-mark belting, ‘Pinwheels’ with its spine-tingling embellishments and Pink Floyd-influenced melody and the uber-chic ‘Violet Rays’, which features a shimmering entrance of notes leading to an undistorted strumming passage that quickly culminates into a crunch-packed body, complementing Corgan’s wails with bags of melodic thunder. 

‘Glissandra’ is a smooth, tight, glimmering piece, but along with the plunging, synthesized ‘Pale Horse’ is one of the weak songs on this record. This record is odd, inasmuch it does not have the melodic consistency of ‘Adore’, nor the from-the-hip attack of ‘Siamese Dream’, which might let some down. What it does have is a fair amount of effort and thought devoted to production, arrangement and structuring. So, with Oceania, expect a clean-cut record, which does not work wonders but manages to keep The Smashing Pumpkins relevant.

EL CAMINO by The Black Keys

Over a decade of existence, seven studio albums and a creeping acquisition of cult status for this two-piece garage-rock unit and I paid no mind until I heard of their intended collaboration with Doctor John. For this limited audience of one, initiation has always been through endorsement. Ergo, Pink derived her legitimacy from the fawning of Aerosmith, John Mayer from the preaching of Eric Clapton. As with them, I lent an ear to The Black Keys much later than I should have, and as with them, I stand impressed. ‘El Camino’, much like ‘For Your Love’ by The Yardbirds and the ‘The Rolling Stones’ by The Rolling Stones, sounds exactly like what it was meant to, a white discovery of the blues. The influence, of course, is derivative, because the palette of ‘El Camino’ extends to all of American music (which arguably, is a hopped-up variant of the blues), rather than the blues itself, and the final product is washed with a pop sensibility (the indubitable touch of co-producer Brian Burton, also known as Danger Mouse) without which the record might not have been as memorable as it is. Record-opener ‘Lonely Boy’ begins with that lovely analogue-distorted tone half-way between a drawl and a growl that segues into a chord progression sourced from the 1960-1970 era, complete with up-strokes synchronizing with the snare. The lyrics are minimal and visceral, but just listen to the anthemic refrain, “Oh, oh, oh, I’ve got a love who keeps me waiting”; this track was meant to be a crowd-chanter, and it works. There is a reason why people don’t sing along at concerts by Tool. The song is also perfect for the long drive home after a fight with a lover. Actually, it’s perfect driving music in any situation. Singer Dan Auberach has a voice with an adolescence belying his thirty-three years, and lyrics that emphasize on parity with the melody, as opposed to poetic appeal. ‘Dead And Gone’ has a pounding rhythm with plenty of chanting interspersed with rhyming lyrics (which I have always been partial to). The absence of detailing keeps the context broad enough for young women, lawyers and ex-convicts relate to and identify with, which could either be a brilliant or a tragic aspect. There is an unmistakable off-handed tribute to ‘Stairway To Heaven’ in ‘Little Black Submarines’, with an extended acoustic-guitar-and-vocal beginning that breaks, pauses and melds with a power-chord laden chord progression for the remainder of the song. ‘Stop Stop’ is another strong contender, with its eerie melody that sediments over a faster-paced beat. The clear winner, however is ‘Gold On The Ceiling’, with its swinging beats, backing vocals on the refrain and the tension between the haunting verses and the loud, hard bridge. This song, you cannot miss for love or money. There is something to be said for the arrogant nonchalance responsible for the lines, “They wanna’ get my gold on the ceiling, I ain’t blind, just a matter of time before you steal it, it’s alright, ain’t no guard in my house.” On the other hand, ‘Money Maker’, ‘Sister’, ‘Nova Baby’ and the remaining tracks on this album, whilst extending the tone of ‘El Camino’, do not leave an imprint and are forgettable, indistinguishable. The problem is, as with the entire rock-and-roll revival brigade, that we, the audience are jaded, and it takes a lot for us to remember individual pieces of music as opposed to the sound of an artiste. The warm familiarity of ‘El Camino’ is pleasing, but blunt. This is not the kind of music one would dare call, “interesting”, but, it is also the kind of music one would most likely listen to with the last cigarette of the day.

CIRCUITAL by My Morning Jacket

My Morning Jacket has managed to carve out a distinctive, recognizable and likable sound for itself, which is no mean feat. When I heard ‘Evil Urges’ for the first time, I was taken aback by the hold they seemed to have on groove, and I had that hateful feeling you get when you’re convinced a band you love has peaked. ‘Circuital’ proved me wrong. The record derives its name from the fact that the recording was done with My Morning Jacket playing together in a circle, but the heavy-handed reference to the groove was definite. Eerie, falsetto-driven vocals, the sort of low-end production that passes off for raw and an off-beat take on the traditional verse-refrain-verse formula packaged with shockingly tacky art-work make this a sleeper success to be cherished. The title song, ‘Circuital’ is a wave of staccato plucking, with a wistful melody peppered with up-beat acoustic strumming between verses. Think ‘The Killing Moon’ by Echo and the Bunnymen. In fact, the entire album sounds like an alternative sound-track to ‘Donnie Darko’, with the innocence-meets-disaster-contrast being evoked beautifully in ‘Victory Dance’, which resembles what a collaboration between Simon and Garfunkel and Type O Negative would sound like. ‘Wonderful (The Way I Feel)’ is your token finger-picked ballad with an overlay of strings. It also reflects their biggest strength. Sincere lyrics, that sound child-like, not childish. Lines like “Like a tropical forest, like a cop on the beat, when all is in order, you get lost in the heat” are difficult to find, and even more difficult to forget. ‘You Wanna’ Freak Out’ showcases an ascending chord progression and lyrics like a nursery rhyme, which offers the opportunity to let go, gently coaxing, never rushing, much like ‘Slow, Slow Tune’ which is now the first track on my rainy-day-love list. My favorite song on the record, of course, is the much-acclaimed ‘Holdin’ On to Black Metal’, which has phenomenal arrangement. School-girl choral backing vocals, horns and wah-pedals fight to be heard, and amidst the clamor comes out a eulogy to black metal. It is a sentiment I frequently ponder upon, and to find it resonating half the world away is a delight. The beauty of records like ‘Circuital’ is that even the weaker songs are so simply by comparison and criticism is largely academic. For instance, ‘The Day Is Coming’ grows on you, but it just is not ‘Holdin On To Black Metal’, and it lacks the urgency in its tone that the lyrics demand. Of course, with Jim James, that could entirely be on purpose.

DAYS GO BY by The Offspring

‘Days Go By’ is an interesting record in terms of analysing the core of any artiste. Think of The Offspring, and the underlying idea is rebellion, mischief and micro-critiquing societal banalities in a light-hearted vein. ‘Days Go By’ is much more contemplative and mature than their previous offerings, but is it still The Offspring? Opening track, ‘The Future Is Now’ is unmistakably so, but closer in wavelength to The Foo Fighters, while retaining the devil-may-care punk-pop overtones that Dexter Holland, Noodles and the rest usually dish out. ‘The Future Is Now’ is not only the first track on the record, but also the best. There are other songs as passable fare. The incredibly titled ‘Slim Pickens Does The Right Thing And Rides The Bomb To Hell’ is true-blue The Offspring, straight from the 'Americana' era, immensely and equally fun to dance or bang heads to. ‘Secrets From The Underground’ is a self-affirmative power-anthem, with notes identical to the underlying chords passing off as a lead phrase, and Dexter Holland’s charismatic rant hollering overhead. ‘Hurting As One’ is a fast-paced, power-punk call-and-response chant that would work well in an arena. The rest of the album varies from the forgettable title song, ‘Days Go By’ to the disastrous ‘California Cruisin’’, which is a joke of a rock song, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it becomes the next ‘Moves Like Jagger’. The surprise find on the album is ‘Dividing By Zero’, which is practically a thrash song, with plenty of palm-muting and oozing wah-pedals. Think Trivium. The worst song on the album is undoubtedly, ‘All I Have Left Is You’, and that’s where the discussion on the core of The Offspring comes in. It’s a tolerable love song, but it is a drastic, radical step away from The Offspring we know and love, and neither sits well, nor is remarkable enough to forgive and accept. With punk/post-punk artistes, there has always been the route of The Sex Pistols and the route of Greenday. The former, much like The Offspring raised hell, never projected a thinking, feeling side, grew up and called it done. The latter maintained a steady balance between the energy and the emotion from the beginning, making their transition into forty-year olds believable and acceptable. The Offspring are a little too late to be making amends for their youthful antics, and should really reconsider the viability of a change in artistic direction.

OVEREXPOSED by Maroon 5

Even though I have, in my life, liked exactly two songs by Maroon 5. ‘Moves Like Jagger’ and ‘Harder To Breathe’, I was interested by ‘Overexposed’ to see what direction Maroon 5 would take post the obscene success of the former song. Adam Levine’s ability to write songs exclusively about women is baffling. This, from a unit whose maiden venture was titled, ‘Songs About Jane’ shows a deeper level of commitment to a cause than that of Bono to Africa. So, ‘Overexposed’ is about relationship troubles, seductresses and former lovers. It is also about replacing what little alternative rock Maroon 5 commenced their career with, with heavy electronic/disco music with liberal amounts of R&B thrown in. Apart from ‘Sad’, a piano ballad, which is the one song where you can discern that Adam Levine can actually sing, and ‘Lady-killer’, a brilliant bass-heavy, falsetto-driven tribute to Michael Jackson about a lesbian home-breaker, most songs are shockingly mediocre. ‘Pay-phone’, ‘Daylight’ and ‘Fortune Teller’ are trite and annoying, and make you wonder how the members of Maroon 5 other than Adam Levine put up with the obsolescence they seem to have been relegated to.

STRANGE COUSINS FROM THE WEST by Clutch

Despite their stunning, eclectic two-decade-old existence, only in recent times have I ‘discovered’ (and I use the term liberally) Clutch, and am yet to ‘discover’ a populace familiar with their works. That is unfortunate. Not merely because this Germantown, Maryland quartet has experimented with every modern (alongside some recent forays into more conservative (and I use the term literally) avenues, nor because they completely redefined the claustrophobic template of monotony that Sleep’s Al Cisneros insisted on putting us through (Remember the disastrous ‘Dopesmoker’?) that used to be the cognitive touchstone of Stoner Rock, and rendered it formless, free and flowing, transcending genre (funk, folk, bluegrass, blues, rock, metal and hard-core), nor because any band that Opeth claims as an influence, irrespective of how left-of-the-dial, is de facto respectable; but because the man (singer-lyricist-guitarist, Neil Fallon) who concocts a rant to the effect of, “Electric Hobo! So now you know not to clock the weeble-wobble-hot-rod-gang-revelator-big-bang!” has something to say that I want to listen to. “I always try to tell a story,” blurts Fallon, whilst acknowledging the free form lyrical approach that has come to distinguish Clutch. “I make up some kind of fiction and then act like I know what I’m talking about. I don’t really know about…UFOs or monster trucks, but I would rather tell a story instead of trying to sing about my life or how I feel.”

Consistent with their 1998-present turnaround-throwback to the blues-tinged-southern-rock-sensibilities, ‘Strange Cousins from the West’ is familiar, like whiskey stains and cigarette burns, yet, from a Clutch-centric perspective ground-breaking. The synthesis of the post-1998 southern-rock embrace with the lyrical randomness of ‘Pure Rock Fury’ has finally arrived. So, on ‘Motherless Child’, expect aged-woman-slide guitar and a slight shuffle but no lyrical throwback (Essentially, nothing of the ilk of “I don’t have a mother, oh yeah, I don’t have a mother, oh yeah, I used to have one but she’s gone away”). Nonetheless, the content is much more personal than earlier works. “Sometimes I feel like a wandering dog.” Pause. Count. Cut to bridge. This, from the man whose erstwhile idea of a plausible refrain was, “Bang, bang, bang! Vamanos! Vamanos!” is a heart-wrenching confession. Follow-up, ‘50,000 Unstoppable Watts’ gets prima facie respect for being the heaviest, soggiest, deepest-pocket groove I’ve heard in the mainstream in 2009 (‘Minotaur’ off the record, comes a close second), and the pacing-shift is a mind-blowing memento to ‘Pure Rock Fury’. Funk prevails with ‘The Amazing Kresken’ and its Parliament-esque disco-funk bass-line. Two pieces off the record, although adequate, are evidently blatant attempts at appeasing old-school Clutch-lovers and seem incongruous with the generic palate that ‘Strange Cousins from the West’ mostly sets. ‘Abraham Lincoln’ (Classic retroactive continuity vis-à-vis  ‘I Have The Body of John Wilkes Booth’) and the furious, fire-and-brimstone vocal frenzy of ‘Freakonomics’, over guitarist Tim Sult’s hopped-up rendition of what, at heart is a classic boogie-woogie rhythm.

"I would rather tell a story instead of trying to sing about my life or how I feel." 

So the riffs remain sludgy, the solos remain improvised and the lyrics are as yet, little more than intelligent salad. What is definitive about the album is the no-nonsense statement of comfort it evinces from Clutch, and the obvious shift in technical dynamics. Many of the pieces carry one lead line from Sult and Fallon each, and the structuring of each and every song seems tailor-made for on-stage improvisation. With this album, Clutch officially achieves near-jam-band status. Infinitely more importantly, precious little is better than an album that rolls on like a single unit, evoking one uniform echo throughout, leaving no doubt as to the collective awareness of Clutch that they, themselves, have finally arrived. Admittedly, in ‘Strange Cousins from the West’ the echo is that of crickets in the night and batter-fried chicken crackling, but precisely like those metaphors, it lasts through the night, and there is a hint underneath it all that you’re not the only one on your backyard porch.

THANK YOU, HAPPY BIRTHDAY by Cage The Elephant

The influence of The Pixies is far-reaching, for a group of people as technically mediocre as Black Francis and his posse`, but the music of The Pixies was much, much more than individual lines, patterns and phrases. It was a low, mellow rumble of clever lyrics, interesting arrangements and a sound that was minimalistic, not simple. Comparisons between The Pixies and Cage The Elephant have been drawn frequently, and it does not take a lot to see why. Matthew Shultz is a blatant Black Francis imitator, and Cage The Elephant produces numerous elements (frill-free bass lines, straight-up four-by-four drum beats and whine-toned vocals) reminiscent of ‘Come On Pilgrim’, but their music is not so much uncomplicated as it is plain thoughtless. Take ‘Flow’, for instance, which features random platitudes over a marching beat and repetitive phrases separating what we are given to understand are verses. ‘Around My Head’ has Matthew Shultz singing verses in a Dylan-esque fashion, screaming twice, and then breaking into a refrain that is essentially every post-punk song of the last decade. The lack of depth shows further in songs like the futuristic ’2024’ which starts interestingly with three successive drum patterns in the first fifteen seconds, only to end in a predictable punk melody. ‘Indy Kidz’, which I figure is some sort of meta-mockery of the indie sub-culture could have been a lot subtler than hair-cuts and foot-wear and will fail to even budge the pedestal that ‘Juno’ has placed the indie sub-culture on. The only strong song on the record is ‘Shake Me Down’, where the melody-meets-edge concept of The Pixies is faithfully adhered to. Arpeggiated chords flow into distorted barre chord progressions and the beat is heavy on the ride. ‘Aberdeen’ is a tribute to grunge (obviously), with vocals ranging from mid-register to hoarse screeches, notable for the remarkable clay-mation music video accompanying it. ‘Thank You, Happy Birthday’ has received greater acclaim than its eponymously titled predecessor, ‘Cage The Elephant’, which is strange to me, because for me, Matthew Shultz, with his obsession with The Pixies, seems to have colonized the blues-rock influence on songs like ‘Ain’t No Rest For The Wicked’, which acted as a beautiful counter-point to the core of their music (slide guitar over a rap-rock-like structure that sounded beautiful). That counter-point is gone, and so is my interest in Cage The Elephant.

TOGETHER THROUGH LIFE by Bob Dylan

Folks I know, they insist on seeing Bob Dylan as either of two avatars. Pre-1965/Pre-‘Bringing It All Back Home’/Pre-Newport Folk Festival/Folk Bard and Post-The-Same/Electric Musician. Other folks I know, they say it all changed with 1967, after that fateful motorized mishap, following which ‘John Wesley Harding’ and such materialized, with stoic contemplation of mundane comforts replacing all traces of social consciousness and spokesman-ship (willing or otherwise) hitherto on display.

Where I stopped listening to Dylan was with ‘Shot of Love’. It was still excellent song-writing, and arrangements are arrangements, electric or not. I just lost it with the voice that Dylan had. See, Dylan had forsaken smoking, and he sounded normal. Without a healthy layer of silt on his lungs, he sounded better, of course, but just not good enough. So, on ‘Together Through Life’, there is the intellectual critique of modern times in ‘Beyond Here Lies Nothing’. There is the soulful, broken-hearted-ballad, ‘Life is Hard’ and of course, the romantic, wrathful, ‘Jolene’, with the topical, thematic approach. This isn't the voice I expected though, inasmuch it is not him, though unquestionably his. Truth be told, this is not as much passionate as it is plain phlegmatic. Absent are the chords, the progressions of which may best be described as geometric. No trace of the uber-psychedelic Hammond-Fender-Rhodes-Vox arrangements.

The only two pieces off this that impressed me are ‘Beyond Here Lies Nothing’, with its wonderfully intricate underlying melody and the endless, endless ornamentation, sourced to David Hidalgo’s (of Los Lobos) accordion and the inimitable Mike Campbell (of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers) on electric guitar, and the shamelessly danceable ‘Shake, Shake Mama’. ‘My Wife’s Home-town’ has its moments, but it does not transport me to the actual geography of it, nor does ‘Forgetful Heart’ impress or overwhelm me as did, say, ‘Don’t Think Twice (It’s Alright)’. The closing piece, ‘It’s All Good’ has a skiffle-bar rhythm section with lyrics both abstract and temporal, as only Dylan can provide, which is a relief. Irrespective of any and all other ‘transitions’, what Dylan has not lost is his ability to simply say things. “If you ever go to Austin, Fort Worth or San Antone, find the bar-rooms I got lost in and send my memories home” croons he, on ‘If You Ever Go To Houston’, trumping introspection and poetic ability in one smooth typewriter stroke. He promptly destroys it with the silly sappiness of ‘This Dream of You’ with its opening blunder, “How long can I stay in this no-where café before night turns to day.”

The upside of everything on ‘Together Through Life’ is the answer to The Band. Campbell and Hidalgo are resplendent, and Donnie Herron is a straight-up, back-up entity of solidity. It must be fulfilling for Dylan, to finally have three multi-instrumentalists supporting him, leaving him be to speculate and introspect unworried, especially considering Dylan’s touchstone, his voice is no longer the dominant force behind his music (though the literature still remains) and is better drowned down by electric washes and accordion licks than it would with a stripped-bare acoustic guitar and harp. The record is not contrived, no. Nor is it unintelligent. What it is not is Bob Dylan, circa 1970 (substitute with era of preference).