The Decemberists, The King is Dead (2011)

I broke with tradition this morning, and as we landed off NZ38 from London back into my undisputed favourite country in the world, I listened to The Decemberists.

This is a restrained, measured folk album. I love The Decemberists' earlier work but I'm not sure I was convinced by 2009's 'The Hazards of Love' - to me it tried to do a bit much and lost touch with what this wonderful band does best. So I'm pleased to see this album return to The Decemberists I know and love. 'Rox in the Box' in particular reclaims this spirit, a jaunty, shanty-esque track - but the album is not all jigs and giggles, and features some beautifully stripped back ballads, like the wistful 'January Hymn' and its counterpart 'June Hymn'.

This album marks a return to basics, but is by no means a regression in style. To me it displays a new, mature treatment of an already successful style. Colin Meloy has a superb, distinctive voice which is once again allowed to shine on this album. The album features a number of interesting collaborations which illustrate the folksy direction they're taking. The influence of REM's Peter Buck is clear in this album, and it is also immediately obvious that Gillian Welch's touch extends deeply into the album as well (she does, after all, sing backing vocals on almost all of the tracks). It features some beautifully wistful slide guitar (witness track 3, 'Rise to Me',) the first single, ''Down By the Water' takes on an Americana, almost country twang, and 'All Arise' also has something of a saloon feel to it. I couldn't help but get the feeling when listening to 'This is Why We Fight' that The Smiths' influence was sneaking in as well... so I wasn't surprised to read that the album name may well just be in homage to The Smiths' "The Queen is Dead".

In many respects this album takes everything I have always loved about The Decemberists and added elements from the folksy, country sounds that I can't get enough of at the moment. It was love at first listen. I rarely have time to listen to music when I'm travelling, except if I find time for a run - Ttis was the first album I've listened to from start-to-finish in 13 days, and it was a total treat and food for the travel-weary soul.

Brooks and Dunn, The Greatest Hits Collection (1997)

Sometimes I just need some good old fashioned country in my life, and Tuesday morning was one of those times. This is the only Brooks and Dunn album that I own, and I do sometimes find myself lamenting that it's not the later "#1s... and then some" (2009). I know this is very odd but I kind of have a little ritual with that album; for some reason I always listen to it on Air New Zealand's very good in-flight entertainment system, at the end of a long haul flight landing back in New Zealand. I don't know why, but it's kind of become a habit. So anyway, in a strange way I'm rather attached to #1s...

I always find the beginning of the Greatest Hits album a little slow in comparison with #1s, which has much more of an upbeat honky tonk vibe to it - tracks like 'Hillbilly Deluxe' and 'Honky Tonk Stomp' are just hard to beat. But the Greatest Hits album starts to hit its stride around track 4, the excellent 'Boot Scootin Boogie' (which, incidentally, also features on #1s...) and carries on with a number of other quite stellar tracks; I'm particularly fond of 'Rock My World (Little Country Girl)'. And, happily enough, once you get far enough into the album, there's a couple of of cross over tracks with #1s... including 'She's not the Cheating Kind', and 'Brand New Man'. It's Hicksville central, but it's a good listen.



In other, not entirely unrelated news, it's nearly a year since my massive Outrageous Fortune six-seasons-in-about-as-many-weeks binge. Is it really acceptable that I still kind of have a girl crush on Aurora? Can lace stockings and studded cowboy boots ever be classy? I hope so, otherwise I've unleashed a little bit of trash at work today....

My American Idol Obsession

I've been trying to figure out why I'm so obsessed with American Idol this season.... No doubt to be the subject of a later, much longer blog post. But my short answer is that this is the first season that I have seen real, genuine talent that I would pay good money to see live, and whose albums I would buy. I'm still with Scotty McCreery for the win, but just can. not. get. enough. of this version of the CCR classic by the insanely talented Casey Abrams.

Random musings on Sundays, and why The Black Keys are officially forgiven

If I had to pick, I'd say Sunday is my favourite of all the days. Part of it - also the reason I'm very fond of Saturday nights - is that, regardless of timezones, the rest of the world is also having a weekend, so there's less chance of work coming in from overseas. I seldom have more than a handful of emails to deal to on a Sunday morning, and that's a delight in and of itself. And Sundays always contain brunch, king of the meals. I do love brunch. I could write screeds about brunch. Yesterday it was pancakes and coffee at the beach with an old, cherished friend. Followed by shopping for a bridesmaid dress for the wedding of an older, no-less-cherished friend. A long run, a yoga class, and a cup of tea with another friend later, I was ready for the serious business of chillin'.

That's what I love about Sundays. I live a charmed, almost disgustingly unencumbered little life, where - at least on Sundays - there's always a little bit of time for whatever takes my fancy. And yesterday, my fancy was taken by a long, loud, session with The Black Keys. Three albums in a row - Attack and Release, The Big Come Up and Brothers - of that beautiful, rocky blues.

Attack and Release (2008) remains my favourite by far of their albums. It has a certain je ne sais quois - like a really raw, almost angry edge to it, but it's polished and professional and beautifully put together. It grabs you from the start - the opener, 'All You Ever Wanted', strikes me as blisteringly emotional, while simultaneously gentle and somehow resigned. It vies for favourite with the similarly intense "Lies" - less gentle, more combatant, no less brilliant. From start to finish, this album manages to be both intense but also somehow benign, a manageable listen. I suspect this album would sneak on to my (as yet unpublished) Desert Island List.



I confess, it has taken me this long to forgive The Black Keys for the Big Day Out abomination. I was irrationally hurt and devastated and betrayed that they cancelled that tour. They were to be the highlight of my summer and - as one of their followers on Facebook - I'm afraid I wasn't convinced by the "exhaustion" argument... activity did seem to continue rather unabated after the cancelled tour. 

But here's the thing: it's all about forgiveness. I've been mad at them for a couple of months, but at the end of the day I need that dirty guitar-driven blues in my life. I love them too much to exist without them. So on Sunday afternoon we had a rough, loud, distinctly emotional make-up session. It was beautiful and cathartic and seriously satisfying. In fact, it was so good, we did it again this morning before work.

When it comes to The Black Keys, at least, all, it seems, is forgiven.

In defence of Rebecca Black. Sort of.

Inspired by this column and a touch of jet lag, I have been pondering the big issues. Like, just how bad is Rebecca Black?

You all know the story. Rivalled only by Suri Cruise for parentally-sponsored age-inappropriate activity, 13 year old Rebecca Black recently recorded her "song", 'Friday', which - largely due to its car-wreck awfulness - suddenly netted over 61 million views on YouTube. And there's no escaping the fact that it's terrible, right? Insipid "lyrics" so bad that they surely must be a joke, a nasal whine devoid of any actual musical talent, and so on. Ok, we get the picture: this is another simpering indulging of a spoilt teen who'll trade on her averagely good looks and Mommy and Daddy's purse for a while, before maybe having some drug problems and then slipping back into obscurity where she belongs. Right?

Maybe. The part of this that gives me some cause for optimism is Black's donation of the proceeds from this abomination of a song to the Japanese tsunami relief fund. It would be easy to accuse any 13 year old whose parents had the spare cash to let their talentless child record a song (money arguably better spent on some singing lessons, for example) - of being spoilt. But I think this gesture of donation illustrates an awareness deeper than one of self-centrism, and I like that. (Then again, perhaps it was just a marketing ploy to make me despise her less. I just don't know anymore.) I also like that some of her little cronies (are they in the front seat or the back seat? It's such a tough choice) are pretty normal looking kids - my favourite is the girl with braces. Rock on.

So there's no denying the song is rubbish and entitled, but there are positive elements to it.  Moreover, while this song is an abomination, who is to blame for that? And who is to blame for its success? Black herself for having the temerity to pen such an awful number? (Did she even write it? I don't know. Heaven help whoever came up with those lyrics if it wasn't a 13 year old girl.) Her parents for instilling such a misguided sense of arrogance in her (did no one realise she had no talent, or did ambition just lead them to blindly overlook this?) or more importantly, for funding this nightmare in the first place? What role does the commercial music industry play in this? Certainly there's any amount of terrible music released on a daily basis, and yet as listeners we drive that. I consider myself a relatively discerning consumer of music, yet I've watched Black's video twice (once in a darkened Wellington bar, and once on YouTube before writing this). So I'm still part of a demand that, as long as it exists, one horrible "artist" or another will fulfill. Is there money to be made in deliberately writing Car-Wreck Songs, so awful that you just can't look away? Indeed so awful that we feel the need to look 61 million times and, despite our horror, inadvertently make it a "success"? And if so, who are we, the consumers, the demandeurs, to get furious about this rubbish music assaulting us? We created this.

Which leads me to my next rant - the commentary. I couldn't agree more with The Guardian that if the best you can come up with is "OMFG b*tch you suck" then, well.... you suck. I am increasingly depressed by mindless public commentary on any number of issues - Libya ("what's so bad about that Garfy [sic] guy anyway?" ... an actual comment by a radio host recently), politics, and yes, pop culture. Are we so inarticulate that all we can do is call a video "gay", and a musically-inept teenager a "whore"? And if we are the ones mindlessly consuming this vapid material, then really, who are we to criticise? We become guilty of the very thing we accuse Black of: mindless, banal, simplistic "commentary" on mindless, banal, simplistic "music". I say it again: We. created. this.

Sadly, I think "Friday" could be something of a milestone in our consumption of pop culture. I can think of any number of struggling, yet exquisitely clever musicians out there who won't make 61 million views over their entire career. They will not experience "success" like a talentless 13 year old has, and that saddens me. But "success" comes in different shapes and sizes and ages, and there is also "success" in holding on to musical integrity and maturity, and a belief in what you create. It goes without saying that I admire that much more than I admire 61 million YouTube views.

In the end, we are to blame for 'Friday' being part of our world. And if it hadn't been Rebecca Black and 'Friday', someone else would have come along with 'Thursday' - something equally dire and yet equally "successful". And sadly, it's only a matter of time until our endless, insatiable need for easily-consumed idiocy leads someone - Rebecca Black, or some other aspiring nobody - to lead us to 'Saturday'. I mean c'mon, the lyrical options are endless: we could go to the mall, text our friends, trawl the internet for the next teen sensation to bag...

My short point is this: like it or not, we created Rebecca Black so until we're prepared to look away from the disaster, we're no better than her. And that's a scary thought.

Bedouin Soundclash, Sounding a Mosaic (2004) and Chris Knox, Seizure (1988)

Reminiscing, big time.

 

I spent Sunday afternoon doing some of my favourite things: reading, basking in sunshine, lazing in the newly-christened 'zen chair' (it's oh so zen) and listening to album after album after album of lovely, simple music. I unintentionally lurked around the start of the alphabet, enjoying the straightforwardness of: Ben Harper 'Both Sides of the Gun', Bic Runga 'Live with the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra' (very Mumsy but I thought appropriate since I couldn't be at the Christchurch charity cricket match), Anna Coddington's 'The Lake', and Bedouin Soundclash 'Sounding a Mosaic'. Sunday music. And it was the Bedouin Soundclash album that got me onto the nostalgia - I listened to that album incessantly and obsessively as I wrote the final stages of my honours research in Dunedin back in 2006. It was a very little happy time of my life: living and breathing for my research, just home from backpacking the former Yugoslavia, and in a fresh new and happy relationship. In hindsight I was just a baby, so in love with my work and living a lifestyle that I could now never hope to reclaim. But it was all sunshine and smiles, long days and longer nights of cheap beer and live music. Yes, this was the floaty dress stage; it was a beautiful stage of life, and Bedouin Soundclash was my soundtrack. So it was a refreshing little treat to dig that one out of the iPod yesterday.

 

It was a different kind of reminscing this morning, when my fancy took me to Chris Knox. Like The Chills, this album is one that just kind of sounds like home: Dunedin in the '80s - or, more accurately, the '90s by the time I caught up. (Contrary to popular belief, I was not cool enough to be listening to post-punk as a five year old.) But I definitely thought I was very cool as a teenager in the late '90s, when I would spend what felt like hours poring over albums in Records Records on Stuart Street as it was then, being simultaneously thrilled and intimidated that the guy behind the counter was Roi Colbert, the Roi Colbert, and ohmygod he was probably going to talk to me as I shelled out twelve bucks for a Toy Love EP. YIKES.

 

In all honesty it still feels like kind of a crap album to pick given the irony of the title in the aftermath of Chris Knox's stroke in 2009. But the album is an excellent one; loud, and low-fi in the extreme. It does always strike me that that song 'Not Given Lightly' was kind of an incongruous fit. It's a sweet, genuine ballad, a kiwi wedding staple, and fittingly understated - I love it, as does any self-respecting kiwi, but it does seem a little out of place with the rest of the album which is much more raw and noisy. It doesn't all fit, but then again I guess it's not meant to, and that's part of its beauty. The single is quintessentially kiwi, but the album is quitenssentially Dunedin - it sounds like home and that's what I like about it.

 

Nostalgia plus!

Martha Wainwright, Auckland Town Hall, 9 March 2011

Martha Wainwright is a truly unique artist, with a special place in my heart. I had been looking forward to this show for approximately forever, and she really was a treat-and-a-half (and then some.)

As previously catalogued Martha is an intense artist to listen to and, it turns out, to see live. You don't just "see" Martha, or "hear" Martha - you experience her; she kind of just happens to you and either you're there with her or you're not. She's the kind of artist you want to listen to forever, and she definitely indulged us, playing a nearly two hour set.

I've previously commented on Martha's "desperately emotional" lyrics, and at several points she explained her songwriting process, telling us that both of her parents were "very literal songwriters" which she found "hard to compete with" and thus resorted to "overly poetic" lyrics. Self-deprecating or otherwise, I love her ability to write truly beautiful - and yes, desperately emotional - songs, without ever resorting to tackiness or cliche. I think her "overly poetic" lyrics are one of her strongest points as a songwriter and hope she never changes. She is, as also previously catalogued, often quite depressing - it was little surprise to hear that following the death of her mother, Kate McGarrigle, and the premature birth of her baby, that she "put the guitar away" lest she write too many depressing songs. I love her honesty and I love her new material, so it looks like the hiatus worked.

It's evident that Martha lives, breathes and exists for music. It's a family affair, and even without knowing her family background, her live act made clear that she comes from something of a musical dynasty. She - seemingly nervously - played a number of her mother's songs, and offered her personal commentary on them ("my mother wrote this for a stage musical but, as with all my mother's songs, it ended up being about her. As it should be.") She also referred countless times to brother Rufus and their musical upbringing - there's either an incredible closeness or incredible sibling rivalry between the two. I suspect it's a bit of both. It was also a lovely dynamic to see her accompanied for part of the show by her husband Brad Albetta on piano and backing vocals.

I was thrilled to see Martha perform some of her Edith Piaf material, particularly her lovely rendition of "Adieu, Mon Coeur", dedicated to our lost friends in Christchurch. Typically Martha, this was a touching moment without going over the top. There are any number of Piaf tributes out there, but I think Martha does Piaf a great service by performing much of her lesser-known work. That said, the stunning close to her set was the ubiquitous "La Vie en Rose", performed unaccompanied and sans microphone (evidently a dare from Rufus) - just Martha, just her voice, and she absolutely filled the Auckland town hall. It. Was. Specactular.

She handles Piaf's material with care, and respectfully re-presents her work - it's an album I'll buy. But there is only one Edith Piaf and - perhaps more importantly - there is only one Martha Wainwright. And while I love her Edith work, I love her orginals more. This was - wait for it - a set for the fans, featuring plenty of her early work (highlights: "Factory", "Far Away" and of course "Bleeding All Over You") with an honourable mention for closing her main set with "BMFA" - before which she apologised to the largely middle-aged, middle-class audience if the lyrics offended. (Google it.)

It's her own work that allows her truly unique vocal style to shine at its full potential, and it was her originals that made the show for me. I was also glad to see that the same light cheekiness that occasionally sneaks through in her recorded works is front and centre of her live show - very cute crowd banter, and a light-hearted approach to often difficult themes. A wonderful set on all fronts, and worth the wait to see her. My longstanding obsession with this truly exceptional, desperately talented, wonderful artist: officially confirmed.