Neil Young

I just bought Neil Young's latest album, Chrome Dreams II, and while I haven't listened to it yet - there's a lot of other stuff in the stack to get through - I've already begun to notice what's becoming a recurring theme in Neil Young album reviews; something to which I'll heretofore refer as "The Neil Young Phenomenon." The blurb I just read describes this album as, to paraphrase, "the best Neil's been in years."

The problem is, as far as I can remember, every album Neil Young has put out since I've been old enough to read (seventh grade) has been described as "the best Neil's been in years." It is not possible that this can actually be true every time it's written. Neil Young puts out an album roughly every three-and-a-half weeks, each one better than he's been in years, which would mean that the new album must be better than anything in the history of recorded music, and probably since the evolution of the ear.

This is the problem with living legends: everything is judged against their entire body of work. Every album is essentially compared to the greatest hits album and, invariably, fails to live up. To overcompensate, music journalists - who love Neil Young because they're, you know, not communists - cross their fingers and hope that each new album is the next Harvest. (It's probably not.)

This is a classic dilemma for critics, because how can you objectively judge an album or a song when the whole time you're thinking, "It's alright, but it's no 'Cinnamon Girl?'" I don't think you can. Certainly I can't. So what critics do is decide how they're going to treat a living legend from here on out, and then stick to it. In Neil's case, the chosen treatment is optimistic rooting. At age 114, he's still making vital music, and for all the bluster about "the best album in years," he's basically one of the more rock-solid consistent artists out there. So I would like to introduce into the lexicon "The Neil Young Phenomenon," to describe any situation where a critic's opinion (or anyone's, for that matter) of a particular artist becomes written in stone, and every critical opinion will read the same, irrespective of the actual quality of the work.

For the record, my truncated opinions of Neil's last several albums: Living with War: alright. Prairie Wind: great. Greendale: alright. Are You Passionate?: Near-great, with the exception of the well-intentioned but hastily-written "Let's Roll." Silver and Gold: Awesome. As for the new album, I don't know when I'll get around to listening to it, but I'm looking forward to it. I hear it's a return to form, the record we've all been waiting for.

Jens Lekman - Night Falls Over Kortedala

In the wake of a truly great album, it's easy to forget that other music even exists, let alone is constantly being released. Lucky for me, my friend had been preemptively raving about Night Falls Over Kortedala - "the album of the year, so far" he says - for quite some time, so in a week otherwise dominated by listening to or thinking about In Rainbows, I somehow remembered to head on over to eMusic to download the latest from Jens Lekman.

(Quick tangent: In a world where last.fm records everything I listen to, Amazon remembers the last thing I've looked at, and lala can recall every trade I've made, it's worth noting that a personal recommendation still trumps them all (I was going to go with "it's amazing" or "it's incredible" instead of "worth nothing," but it's really not amazing or incredible at all. Listening to music, loving it, and then telling as many of your friends as humanly possible, isn't that what being a music fan's about?). With all of these online mediums trying to tell me what to listen to, I'll take a personal, human recommendation any day, whether it be from Hip-Hop Man at Lakeshore or from my friend Andrew, who gave me the Jens tip. Just no recommendations from priests. That's how I ended up listening to P.O.D. Anyways, back to the review.)

Night Falls Over Kortedala makes me want to move. Rich with glorious swirling strings, handclaps, and other oddball bits of percussion, Lekman's genre-bending album - also filled with samples, I'm told - is indeed one of the finest of 2007. None of the songs here feel predictable (notice the abrupt tempo changes on "Shirin"), and it is this unconventional nature of the album that helps make it such an exciting listen. The doo-wop style backing vocals that open "Kanske Ar Jag Kar i Dig" sure aren't expected but they sure are excellent.

Lyrically, Lekman isn't always overtly ecstatic, yet he still has crafted a joyous album by taking lyrics like "so just lick your lips/these are the good times that you'll miss/when you are sipping on the sweet nectars of your memories" to create a tune that is more playful than regretful. That sort of song craft is what best defines Night Falls Over Kortedala. The melodies are generally upbeat and energetic, with witty lyrics that are at times a bit silly - a charming sort of silly and not the "I got it from my mama" sort of silly. Ultimately it is that Lekman charm that will keep fans coming back for repeated listens.

Radiohead - In Rainbows

Two disclaimers: First, I can’t say anything about this record that hasn’t been said already. Second, I can’t take anything that’s already been said about it and say it better.

In Rainbows is the year’s best, biggest, and most significant release. Rarely do those three things intersect.

This is the album of 2007. We don’t need the rest of October or any of November or December to settle this. Every year there comes a moment when you realize that you’re listening to the best those 365 days have to offer. Last year, this happened for me at the end of April, as I sat on my suite’s couch, liner notes in hand, attention fixed on the new Pearl Jam album that had gloriously decided to arrive in my mailbox the Friday before it was due. After the beginning of the album kicked the shit out of me, I sat breathless as Eddie Vedder and Co. won me over with the stunningly beautiful “Come Back.” Two of my suitemates poked their heads into the room to tell me that they liked it, too. 2006 was officially over.

This year, I had to wait until October for the “It’s over” moment. I listened to the record two and a half times before finally stepping away the day it came out. The next day, I tried to listen to something that wasn’t Radiohead. I couldn’t do it. It was over. I’ve since been forcing myself to listen to other things in order to keep from killing the album and to delay some of its gratification. The problem is that everything has paled in comparison since I first heard In Rainbows. As I listen to other music, I am constantly catching myself thinking, “This is good, but why haven’t I listened to ‘Nude’ in the last fifteen minutes?”

“Nude,” perhaps the most beautiful vocal from Thom Yorke since “Fake Plastic Trees,” is a standout in an album chock full of standouts. The beautiful thing about this album is that the songs not only fit together beautifully into a cohesive album – in large part to the ever present but not overpowering sea of strings – but also make superb listens on their own, a quality that isn’t always present on even the finest of albums (Honestly, how many times have you listened to “Fitter Happier” when it hasn’t been sandwiched between “Karma Police” and “Electioneering?”). As beautifully as “Faust Arp” fits between “All I Need” – which invokes “You and Whose Army?” as the piano jumps in with just over a minute left – and “Reckoner” – a brilliant showcase of Thom’s falsetto – it stands fine on its own, perfect for those times when you’d love to hear lovely finger picked Beatles ditty that’s, you know, not by the Beatles. Even the one track that I don’t yet love, “House of Cards,” slows things down so as to make the opening guitar and bass of “Jigsaw Falling Into Place” feel all the more urgent, only to set up the closer “Videotape,” the only song on the album where the rest of the band finally indulge Thom and allow some Eraser-esque glitchiness to emerge over repeated fragile piano chords.

Not only are the songs on In Rainbows great, but they feel like they belong together. Maybe this is why the band let some of these songs sit unreleased for so long; they were simply waiting for the right group to put them with. The end result is a Radiohead album that is more immediately gratifying than anything else they’ve released. I loved Kid A for “The National Anthem,” but it wasn’t until few years later that I fell in love with “Motion Picture Soundtrack.” Many of my other favorites, like “Let Down” and “You and Whose Army?” were delayed discoveries, tracks that didn’t truly engage me for quite some time after I first gave them a spin. Even “Paranoid Android” didn’t grab me (at least not as much as it does now) the first time around. Aside from The Bends, Radiohead albums have tended to be growers and not showers. Such is not the case with In Rainbows. I’m tempted to say that this is the most accessible of Radiohead’s albums, but accessibility generally refers to people who aren’t fans; I haven’t known for years what it’s like to not be a Radiohead fan. What I do know is that, at least from the perspective of this fan, In Rainbows takes no time at all to love.

In Rainbows by Radiohead

As I write this, I am listening to Radiohead's latest album, In Rainbows, for the tenth time since it came out five days ago (yeah, I keep track of those things). Maybe it's the four year wait since their last album, the much-maligned but secretly awesome Hail to the Thief; maybe it's the fact that Radiohead is one of my all-time favorite bands; maybe it's the presence of the long-gestating "Nude." But whatever it is, this is one of those albums that I want to listen to again as soon as I finish it; in fact, I often want to listen to it again while I'm still listening to it the first time.

For the first ten or twenty seconds, it sounds as if the band has picked up where Thom Yorke's solo album left off: we begin with a warbly 5/4 electronic beat, which transitions into an actual Phil Selway drum beat. Then, at about the forty second mark, the guitar drops in and you're reminded that, oh yeah, Radiohead is awesome. They may have a lot of computers lying around the studio, but they're also pretty darn good at playing their instruments, as is evidenced by Colin Greenwood's bass lines later in the song. One track in, you're going to be glad you paid whatever you decided to pay for this variably-priced album.

If there's one word that describes this album, it's "ethereal." The few moments of uninhibited rocking notwithstanding - most notably "Bodysnatchers" - the album's primary focus is atmospherics, more so than any past Radiohead release. The songs are generally mellow, meandering and wrapped in strings.

The production is also the cleanest of any Radiohead album yet. Gone is the ubiquitous hum of computer glitchiness and detuned radios buzzing; gone is the knob-twiddling that normally make Selway's drums sound like, you know, not drums; gone is the Mac voice saying things like, "I may be paranoid, but not an android." This not a White Stripes album, to be sure, but it's about as bare bones and stripped-down as Radiohead can muster. As a result of this production, you can actually hear empty space. Rather than plug every square inch of the album with sonic gadgetry, the band has allowed the songs room to breathe; Ed O'Brien even plays actual notes on some of these songs. It's also, maybe, their warmest album to date. Make no mistake, alienation is still a key ingredient ("Don't get any big ideas/They're not going to happen"), but the album is alienated with you, not at you.

What's most amazing about this album is how captivating it manages to be without much tonal shift. "Bodysnatchers" offers the album's one plain-faced rock and/or roll moment, a classic rock riff wrapped up in the Radiohead aesthetic, and "Jigsaw Falling Into Place" - "The Trickster" by way of "Knives Out" - gets the juices flowing; the rest of the tracks seem like the ballad you'd find between two rocking songs. Even "Reckoner," one of the loudest and most energetic songs in its original, 2001 incarnation, has mutated into a mid-tempo groove here. The album rarely drops into sheer balladry, the gorgeous "Nude" and the White Album-plucked "Faust Arp" being the exceptions; instead, it simmers on the edge of an explosion that never comes. The bulk of the songs threaten to explode into a three-guitar-and-strings song-along chorus at any moment, but never do.

What's on display throughout the album is the sheer number of things to which Radiohead need not resort to write a good song: the production is relatively spare; the structures are simple, often lacking even distinct verses and choruses; screaming guitars, loud-soft shifts and repeated refrains are conspicuously absent. No disrespect to the classic "Paranoid Android," one of the greatest songs ever written, but the Radiohead of In Rainbows would never write a six-minute, multi-sectioned epic of manic time-shifts, overlapping sound effects and blistering guitar solos. They'd rather drop a few piano chords and a plaintive melody in your lap, and wring from them every ounce of available beauty before abandoning them.

Perhaps this album is a shot across the bow of every band that's made a living aping The Bends and OK Computer, all those bands who think you can be Radiohead by throwing some sound effects and twinkly guitar layers on top of songs about not having any friends. Stripped of artifice and grandiosity, In Rainbows proves beyond any doubt that Radiohead's brilliance lies not in their frenetic production nor that piece of paper with Nigel Godrich's phone number on it, but in their sheer brilliance.

Call me Nano.

A little brother is like an iPod Nano, and not just because both are smaller and weaker versions of their older sibling, although that description certainly fits. The Nano was only born because the older brother wasn’t a total failure and mom and dad thought it would be a good idea to add to the family. The Nano is only recognizable as different from big brother by people who are familiar enough with the full iPod family, or when the two are standing next to each other in the family Christmas card. The Nano takes its cues from its big brother, and is in fact modeled after him. Essentially, the Nano does everything a real iPod does only with a smaller record collection. Even then, if you’ve a parent to both an iPod and a Nano, chances are there’s significant overlap in their musical libraries.

This is not to say that my brothers and I are entirely the same. Unlike my brother, Dan, I do remember what the first cd I ever owned was; it was the two disc soundtrack to Fantasia. The first pop album I bought was Third Eye Blind’s self-titled debut. Unlike Dan, I’ll probably wait a few more weeks before I drop 80 or so dollars to grab that Radiohead discbox. Unlike Dan, it took me more than just three or four tracks to realize that All About Chemistry sucked. Right here - with the Radiohead discbox or the Semisonic indiscretion - is the problem with little brothers: we are bound to end up in the same place as our older brothers, it just takes us longer to get there (To wit, Dan got his first post up before I did). Even in those rare instances where I’ve come across something first (for instance, lala), it is big brother who makes better use of it.

Of course, sometimes it pays to be the little brother. On May 2, 2003 Dan took me to Buffalo for my first concert, effectively ending my days as a casual Pearl Jam fan. When discs get re-released with bonus tracks that Dan absolutely has to have, I get the discarded first editions. These aren’t crummy hand-me-downs either (although I do inexplicably have a Busta Rhymes single somewhere). Re-releases scored me my first Weezer (The Blue Album) and Elbow (Cast of Thousands) discs.

You could make the argument that Nano’s tastes are essentially handed down to him from big brother iPod, although Dan and I do have some differences. He refuses to let Kanye West or the Killers into his life. I’m not wild about that People in Planes disc that he recommended to me last year (and by “not wild” I mean “if I listen to it too much, my head will explode”). The problem is that even when Nano makes a conscious effort to distance himself from big brother iPod, he rarely can do it. Take this conversation Dan and I had about a Brazil album at the record store a few months ago:

Me: Is this any good?

Dan: Yeah.

Me: It’s not prog, is it?

Dan: (Smiles) It’s good!

I bought the Brazil cd. It was good.

Anyways, this is our blog.

...And on the seventh day, he created the Internet

I do not remember my first CD, my first cassette, or my first record. If I ever, through some confluence of improbability and slipshod editorial decisions, find myself the subject of a twenty questions magazine interview, I'll have to make something up for that particular question; something endearingly embarrassing, probably: the Little Mermaid soundtrack or Please Hammer, Don't Hurt 'Em, both of which I did, sadly, own on cassette.

I don't remember my first album, because for as long as I can remember, I've been listening to music. We used to get these big boxes of pretzel nuggets, and I would sit behind the armchair, right in front of the speaker, listening to records on my Dad's old record player and eating pretzels by the fistful. I'd listen to the Beatles and Zeppelin and the Who. I'd listen to the Crickets, who sounded suspiciously like Alvin and the Chipmunks. I'd listen to Huey Lewis and the News. I'd listen to Bill Cosby's stand-up. I'd listen to the story of Benjamin Franklin discovering electricity. I'd even listen to Billy Joel.

I don't remember the landmarks like first album; what I remember are the little things. I remember listening to Van Halen's "Jump" on one of those magazine inserts you could play on your record player. I remember the way that the number of songs you could listen to on the walk home from school depended on how long your batteries had been in your walkman. I remember our older brother buying a copy of Def Leppard's Pyromania in Sears. I remember seeing the video for Michael Jackson's "Beat It" on network television; Radiohead's "Creep," too, and our brother trying to explain the "chookah chookah" part to our parents. I remember never knowing which side was which on my Achtung, Baby! tape. I remember listening to "Batdance" in our neighbors' basement. I remember hearing "Hangin' Tough" every time I went to the rollerskating rink. I remember being in Pizza Hut and debating whether or not I should drop the five or ten bucks on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles album, deciding to save the cash and then regretting it for a really long time. I remember staying up until five in the morning one night in college, downloading the entire Ninja Turtles album off Napster from some kid with a dial-up connection, completely geeking out with my friend Joe and listening to "Pizza Power" for what must certainly be the most times in a row that that song has ever been listened to.

These are the things I remember; in fact, my memory is little more than a string of these innocuous musical details. I've listened to some great music in my life, and I've listened to some awful music. I've seen Neil Young in concert, but I've also seen Flickerstick. I've heard albums that I've wanted to tell the world about, like World Leader Pretend's Punches, which I pestered my brothers to buy every single time I spoke to them until they eventually both did, and which made all three of our top ten lists that year. And I've heard albums to which I've wanted to affix bright orange "Do Not Buy" stickers, to warn the record-buying public, like Semisonic's All About Chemistry, which very nearly went out the window on the QEW after only three or four tracks.

It was somewhere on I-90, while listening to either K'naan or the Shout Out Louds or Animal Collective, that my brother and I decided that it would be a good idea - although maybe not actually a good one, and not so much an idea, either - to start a blog about music. And so, a week and a day later, here we are. We've chosen a name and a layout and are prepared to unleash upon our imagined, hypothetical readership a sporadic dribble of uninformed and inarticulate opinions of a scattershot fraction of what all there is to listen to. And yeah, I've ended two sentences with prepositions in this post. That's right.

Enjoy.