Making Flippy Floppy

Bat For Lashes: "What's A Girl To Do?" (Parlophone UK) The recipe is delicious: One cup of Goldfrapp, 1/2 cup each of PJ Harvey and Kate Bush, a heaping tablespoon of Cat Power, and a dash of Peggy Lee to taste. Hailing from Brighton, UK, Natasha Kahn records under the nom de plume Bat For Lashes, and her debut album "Fur and Gold" is destined to be a classic, in fact it's already been nominated for England's prestigious Mercury Music Prize. This track is the latest single from the LP and it's sheer pop grandiosity masterfully evokes the sad wonder of lost love. Khan prefers to use genuine instrumentation over synthesized sounds, resulting in an exotic, orchestral backdrop that seems lifted from some dramatic, cinematic 60's girl-group record. The spoken verses recall the detached psychosis of Lee's "Is That All There Is" and the all-cried out vibe of the Shangri-La's "Walking in the Sand." The mood is decidedly dark, but without any cheeseball goth trappings, just classic crocodile tears rolling down the dewy cheek of a forlorn medieval maiden. Bat for Lashes are a truly magnificent proposition.

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Annie Lennox: "Dark Road" (Sony) In my book, the Eurythmics are one of the best acts of the '80's and they're not given nearly enough credit for their pop experimentalism and lasting influence. Granted, the reunion a few years back was a bit of a snore, but the original six albums are full of wonderful, well-written and edgy electronic-based pop. Her previous solo records saw her gradually treading toward Adult Contemporary irrelevance. Although it's not exactly cutting edge material, "Dark Road" sees the diva returning at least to an intriguingly listenable place of grace and high drama. If anyone had forgotten what a incredibly divine voice Lennox possesses, here is a not-so-subtle reminder. Her glossolalia ranges from ethereal mist to soul sister, often in the same phrase - she's all over the map here, and it's a pleasure to hear her go to town. Musically, this slow burner teeters between dull and snoozy, but the sheer impact of Lennox's voice and the power of her sentiment render the Glen Ballard produced backdrop fairly unimportant. As gorgeous as this is during certain moments, I fear the entire album will be filled with bombastic ballads like this, all too similar in tone and texture, rendering the whole affair useless and uninteresting. Maybe it's a little shallow, but I really hope she puts at least a couple of fun, upbeat dance tracks on there to remind us of the glory years.

Labels: Music Reviews, Videos

Tiny Masters of Today: Radio Riot (Mute Irregulars) 1. They're from Brooklyn, New York. 2. Brother and sister duo: Ivan is 13, Ada is 11. 3. David Bowie says: "Used to be you had to be well into your teens to develop this kind of attitude. Genius." 4. Guests on album include Karen O (Yeahs Yeah Yeahs), Fred Schneider (B-52's), Gibby Haynes (Butthole Surfers), Kimya Dawson (Moldy Peaches).

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Devendra Banhart: Tonada Yanomaminista (XL) 1. He was hatched on Planet Texas in 1981 and raised in Venezuela, but now calls LA home. 2. His band, currently known as Power Mineral, renames themselves wherever they feel like it, and has previously been known as Fried Hummingbird, Hairy Fairy Band, Hairy Fairy and First Woman Millionaire, Las Putas Locas, Stoner Boner, and Bathhouse Of The Winds, among other names. 3. The new album hits on September 25.

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Against Me! - White People For Peace (Sire) 1. Founded in 1997 by singer/guitarist Tom Gabel at age 17 as an acoustic solo act. 2. Accused unfairly of "selling out" by voracious fans after signing to Sire Records, much to the indifference of the band, who say they just want to reach as many people as they can. 3. New album, their third full-length, is a classic political punk masterpiece and was produced by the legendary Butch Vig (Nirvana, Garbage, Smashing Pumpkins, Sonic Youth). 4. "Protest Songs in a response to Military Aggression. Protest songs to try and stop the soldier's gun."

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Beep Kitty: According to Plan (unreleased) 1. Best synth pop act in Walla Walla, Washington! 2. Brother and sister duo: Jeff and Elizabeth Knight. 3. So far, they've only released music on cassette format. 4. http://www.myspace.com/beepkitty

Labels: David Bowie, Devendra Banhart, imeem, Music Reviews

Drop these bum-shakers at your next Summer hula and watch the hips fly! M.I.A. - Boyz What's in the water there in Miss Maya's home of Sri Lanka? Purple microdot? Her last album Arular was totally coconuts and from the sound of her new single, the next one will be totally pineapples. She spills Rum and Berry Blue Kool-Aid on her sampling unit until it glitches pure hot funk and ponders that eternal summertime quandary: "How many...boys there?"

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Eartha Kitt & Bronksi Beat - Cha Cha Heels I always loved that this high camp 1988 classic was written for Divine to sing but the poor dear dropped dead before they had a chance to record it. The lyrics were inspired by Divine's films as well, and I can envision his voice instead of Eartha's in my head singling lines like: "Going back to Boise / I'm itching for a fight / I'm looking for a lover who loves my dynamite." However, Eartha makes it all her own, complete with the requisite Catwoman purrs and snarls.

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Cazwell - Watch My Mouth Ex-New York club kid and best friend of extremely botoxy model/transexual Amanda Lepore, Cazwell claims to be America's first gay white-boy rapper. As unpromising as that might sound, Cazwell transcends the novelty and throws down some seriously catchy and terrific floor-fillers in classic NY style, drawing comparisons to Deee-lite and even Prince. Plus, he's so hot you could lick him.

Labels: Audio Flashback, imeem, Music Reviews

Prince: Guitar The Purple One is causing yet another uproar in the music industry by giving away copies of his new album Planet Earth free with a UK newspaper. I have to admire his complete and utter disregard for an industry that has been cheating music artists and the general public for years. His UK label pulled his contract, and labels around the world are freaking out in fear that other artists will follow suit and start giving away albums left and right. It's a brilliant publicity stunt; he certainly doesn't need the scant money CD sales bring in these days, and he's a hero among his fans, who get his new album for free. Even better is the rumored news that ex-Revolution ladies Wendy & Lisa make some sort of return appearance on Planet Earth. Is the water warm enough? First single, "Guitar" has a nice fuzzy groove but offers nothing really earth-shattering. In fact, the melody line kept nagging at me: where have I heard this before. I realized it was another Prince song I was hearing in there, "Girls and Boys" from 1986's Parade album. Can he sue himself for plagiarism? Prolly not.

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Siouxsie: Into A Swan If you head over to the website of Siouxsie's new label, W14, you'll be able to hear short previews of nearly every track on her forthcoming solo debut album, Mantaray, which will have every old goth's knickers in twist when it is set forth upon the world in August. Actually, it's a pretty raw sound for Sioux, a return to the harder sound of the early Banshees a bit with a touch of Marilyn Manson glam, and she's likely to pick up a whole new generation of fans. Early reports are that lyrically, she is more personally revealing than ever, and that the Ice Queen may finally be melting a bit. Her longtime Banshees and Creatures sidekick Budgie is nowhere to be found on Mantaray, sparking rumors among fans that they're also personally separated, which lends to the long held theory that they were just "beards" for each other, and that "Into a Swan" is Siouxsie's big "coming out" moment. I dunno about that, but the song itself is a delightfully brain crunching epic. Also, I have to say she is looking absolutely hotter than ever, not bad for a 50-year old punk.

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Erasure: Sunday Girl (12"Mix) Erasure might not always be at the top of the cool list, but I've been a fan since 1985, when "Oh L'Amour" made me swoop and swoon on the Club Mario's dance floor, and my love just grows stronger with each album. There was a mild rough patch during the Cowboy / Loveboat / Nightbird string of records where maybe the ideas were running a little thin, and the overall tone was on the depressing side, but even still, I loved them. The new album Light at the End of the World is a massive return to form, and to me the 2nd single "Sunday Girl" ranks up there with their best and biggest hits, a thumping, disco-riffic Abba-goes-Electro classic complete with octave bass lines and Andy Bell in full drama diva mode. The 12" mix differs only slightly from the version which opens the album but stretches it out a little, adding a few new sections that add just enough something special to make it a highly repeatable pop stomper.

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Swivek: Flirt I've been wearing my record producer hat this week, having fun adding some keyboard lines to a track emailed over to me by Bradley aka Swivek. I always like using his tracks to do remixes and I've even recorded entire music tracks for him to sing atop, but this is our first "true" collaboration in a way. I think it turned out pretty swell, a nice and sassy summer pop ditty. I'm releasing the EP via my Flexible Records net label on this coming Tuesday, but here's a preview for y'all:

Labels: Erasure, imeem, Music Reviews, Prince, Siouxsie Sioux, Swivek

I got in trouble for posting my Get Out columns here on my blog on Fridays, a day before they hit the actual newspaper. Apparently they think if my articles leak early, nobody will buy the paper on Saturday, since that's all they really want a copy for anyway (AS IF). Fair enough, I can wait until Saturday mornings to post them here. Meanwhile, I had a new idea to fill the space on Fridays from now on. I'll pick a random year and highlight a couple of albums that came out that year that I love and discuss them a bit as well as post some songs using my totally neato imeem music player thingie. I'm pretty sure every year has had it's great moments in popular music. Let's go right for the meat of the matter and start with the wonderful, woozy mid-70's. David Bowie: Young Americans This is a bit of a transitional album for Mr. Jones, released after the glittery death of the Ziggy Stardust persona and before the art-cocaine madness of the Berlin era albums. Remarkably, it was the album that finally broke Bowie into the big BIG time in the US, with the title track and the John Lennon collaboration "Fame" becoming colossal hits. White boy soul was literally invented on this album and tracks like "Fascination" and "Right" predict the disco craze that would soon take over the world. David's voice is different here than on previous albums, deeper and careening melodramatically from high to low like an art-damaged lounge singer. He swoops and soars impressively on his heartbreaking cover of The Beatles' "Across the Universe", which I always thought was such an unusual choice for this album. Somehow, it fits. The presence of a very young Luther Vandross and a set of soul-sister backup singers injects some real fever into the recordings, making this one of Bowie's most "human" sounding records. The recent deluxe anniversary edition adds two brilliant studio outtakes to the original 8 tracks, as well as the disco-fried and very rare single "John I'm Only Dancing (Again)"


Kraftwerk: Radio-Activity Their previous album Autobahn was the one that perked up ears around the world with it's exclusive use of primitive synthesizers and Teutonic Beach Boys schtick. However, Radioactivity is the record that would serve as the brittle blueprint for the rest of their groundbreaking catalog of electronic pop. This album has a spooky, otherworldly quality with it's beeping geiger counters, hissing radio signals, reverberating synth effects and tinny machine percussion. Like all Kraftwerk albums, it has a theme and here it's "the miracle of radio". 1975 seems a little late to be tripping out about such notions, which lends the album a weird retro-futuristic quality, like some fusty artifact discovered in your crazy great-uncle's workshop. Florian, Ralf, Karl, and Wolfgang lay down some darned chilly soundscapes here with electronic music machines that were barely just invented - I can only imagine how foreign and freaky this music must have sounded to people when it came out. Even all these years later, it has still been known to cause extreme reactions.


Abba: Abba When this album came out, Abba were huge all over the globe, everywhere except the US, where this album reached a meager #174 on the Billboard charts. It saw the Swedish foursome making a blatant attempt to harden up their sound, and while Abba is not exactly known for it's hard rocking, tracks like "Hey, Hey Helen" and "Rock Me" are at least as hardcore as say, Elton John was at this point. "Mamma Mia" and "SOS" are now classics, although most people never make it beyond those songs' presence on Abba Gold. Out of all of the original albums, this has the most variety; they try out reggae on "Tropical Loveland" and torch polka on "I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do". Bjorn and Benny had already perfected their full-to-the-brim, high-gloss production methods and Anni-Frid and Agnetha harmonize like only they can, creating that unmistakable, irreproducible Abba sound we love so much. The CD reissue includes THE most insane Abba recording ever, "Medley: Pick a Bale of Cotton/On Top of Old Smokey/Midnight Special". It's never been explained to me why Abba would stitch together a slavery-era relic, a children's standard, and a current pop hit, but if anybody ever accused Abba of being humorless, this proves them way wrong. Aw, Lawdy!

Labels: Abba, Audio Flashback, David Bowie, imeem, Kraftwerk, Music Reviews

The Mary Onettes: The Mary Onettes (Labrador) LISTEN HERE

Sweden’s Mary Onettes are not afraid to admit their love for the dark years of the early eighties, when ratty bangs hung over thickly black-lined eyes and all the cool kids wanted to be British and miserably filled with existential angst. The Mary Onettes website says the album “contains 10 great songs that reminds you of the great 80’s”, and although their English may be a bit broken, they do not lie. These boys want to stop the world and melt with you. They want to take on you. They’re lost in a forest, all alone. However, it’s done with a complete lack of irony or snark, and they’ve written a fantastic set of lush, memorable songs to wrap their mesh and lace around. With repeated listens, it rises above mere eighties pastiche and suddenly seems so here and now, so essential, so captivating, so important. “Void” is a devastatingly perfect pop song, stirring up emotions I hadn’t felt since 1987. “Pleasure Zone” and “The Laughter” lift the trademark glacial synth sound of The Cure’s Faith album, and “Lost” is totally Ringwald-worthy. Blame it on Abba, but there’s something intrinsically irresistible to me about pop singers with Swedish accents, and Philip Ekström’s voice is dreamy and soothing. I'm fully smitten with The Mary Onettes, it is no doubt the best debut album of 2007 so far. Rating 9/10

Paul Hartnoll: The Ideal Condition (ACP) LISTEN HERE He was half of groundbreaking British electro duo Orbital, who had a string of mostly brilliant albums in the ‘90’s. I’m honestly not too in love with this solo debut, it sounds like he’s trying to “pull a Moby.” In other words, it’s a mix of synthetic musical movie wallpaper with remotely classical influences and a mess of guest vocalists adding up to a semi-pleasant record which does nothing particularly groundbreaking. It tries to be a moody late-night classic, but doesn’t hold enough magic and falls mostly flat. Lead track “Haven’t We Met Before” sounds like the opening theme to a cheesy made-for-TV movie starring Teri Hatcher as a nun with a murderous secret. The Cure’s Robert Smith phones in his vocals for the single “Please”, continuing his run of lyrically limp guest turns on various mediocre techno tracks. If a cliche like “you know you got me” is the best hook he can come up with, no wonder we’ve had to wait so long for a new Cure album. To be fair, if it actually were a new Cure song, everyone would probably be rejoicing their return to electro-pop, and it's light years better than his guest yowl on Junior Jack's "Da Hype", the nadir of his entire career. Rating: 4/10

Ulrich Schnauss: Quicksand Memory EP (Domino) LISTEN HERE Wowee zowie, Captain Electricity! I always admired the earlier Ulrich Schnauss records, but never became too absorbed in them. The woozy, gauzy guitars and oceanic electronics were nice, but I kept waiting for something to really go off and it never did. On Quicksand Memory, his first release in nearly four years, Mr. Schnauss makes things go off with a brain-rattling bang. His main influence was always the opaque swirl of Cocteau Twins and My Bloody Valentine, but until now he never managed to be as massively titanic, or (in my opinion) as clever as those bands. Opening track “Look To The Sky” is as “pop-rock” as Ulrich Schnauss has ever been, with the usual cascading icy synths accompanied by the gorgeous squall of shoegazey feedback, a live drummer, and the whispery echo of a female vocalist. This song roars and soars its way through the air like nothing since Cocteau Twins’ classic Echoes in a Shallow Bay. “Medusa” is even noisier, building from some atonal bleeps into a full-on frenzy of guitar squalor and blurry vocals, bringing to mind the music of late great band Medicine. Cocteau Twins guitarist Robin Guthrie gives his nod of approval by giving the remix treatment to two older Schnauss tracks and the results are predictably Cocteau-riffic. This fantastic EP leaves me salivating for the full LP, which is unleashed June 25. Rating 8/10

Von Sudenfed: Tromatic Reflexxions (Domino) LISTEN HERE This record sounds like it must have been a gas to make. On paper, the collision of German electro-experimentalists Mouse on Mars and Fall head grouch Mark E. Smith might seem a little queer. In reality, the last few Mouse on Mars albums featured a singer who wanted to sound like Mark E. Smith, but he had nowhere near as much sneer and snatch. As well, Smith has never had a fear of dropping some electronics into the music of The Fall now and again. It seems both parties took the collaboration as an opportunity to step a bit outside of their comfort zones and create an oddball electronic pop record that’s additively weird and very cool. Take “Flooded” for example, wherein Smith announces “I’m the DJ! I am the disc! Jockey!” in his most classic rant voice, then mumbles something about another DJ showing up instead and yells “So I flooded the place!” Mouse on Mars’ Andi Toma and Jan St Werner create a rump-rattling backdrop of electro bass, machine groans, and general fucked-up noises that fly out of the speakers and bounce around the room. At times, Smith’s voice is treated like a wicked science experiment, his trademark repetitive outbursts, already nonsensical, reduced to silly non-sequitors and reverberated grumbles. These three guys have an incredibly bizarre sense of humor (“Chicken Yiyamas”? A lawnmower solo on “Jback Lois Lane”?) and they aren’t afraid to come across as loony maniacs if they feel like it. There are a few cuts where the schtick begins to wear a little thin, but overall Tromatic Refexxions is a real keeper. Rating 7/10

Johnette Napolitano: Scarred (Hybrid) LISTEN HERE

Concrete Blonde queen diva Johnette Napolitano has always dabbled a bit in the darkside of the human psyche, and on Scarred, her debut solo record, she does magic for the therapy industry by sending us on a harrowing trek though the mental murk of humanity. It’s a chronicle of her struggle to overcome the deep-seeded fear and anxiety that she’s just not good enough, not pretty enough, that she doesn’t belong. Scarred immediately takes flight, leading off with the scorching “Amazing.” Right away the listener realizes that Ms. N isn’t here to folk around, she’s looking to sear our face off with raw power and high drama. On “Scarred” her voice breaks with raw emotion, as if her nerves are about to shatter like glass, and a sinewy guitar riff comes pouring out like innards from an open wound. The gravelly recitation of her “Poem For The Native” recalls Tom Waits, and the vocoder and punk psychedelia of “My Diane” seems like something lifted from a favorite old Kate Bush album. A big conceptual and musical influence for her it seems is David Bowie in variety rock mode (The Man Who Sold the World, Lodger, Heathen). Scarred rocks harder than one might expect, even more than any Concrete Blonde album I can think of. The production is crisp and texturally varied - occasional synth loops and sound effects meander through effectively. However, the main star here is the Voice. Napolitano ranges from casually chatty to mad whisper to savage growl to soaring and operatic, sometimes in the course of the same song. She even manages to do a perfect Nico impression on her charming cover of the Velvet Underground’s “All Tomorrow’s Parties”. Rating 7.5/10

Labels: Mary Onettes, Music Reviews, New Wave

Post Graduation Angst It feels a little depressing and quite strange to realize that I'm totally done with taking classes. I thought I had a Geology final tomorrow but it turns out I don't need to take it. If I did, it would only change my final grade from a B- to a B, and I can live with a B-. So then, I'm done. After basically 15 years of having college on the brain in one form or another (especially the last 4 years), I have to start looking for other things to fill that space in my life. A part of me is a little sad that I have no more classes to tackle. I honestly think I am addicted to learning. I want to sign up for some of those "personal enrichment" classes that NIC offers, just so I can keep learning. I feel like I'm dead if I'm not learning something new, moving forward. Of course, in my chosen field of Web Design, the technology is always changing and you have to always learn new things to stay on top of the game. That's all well and good, but what I'm going to miss are the extra, unrelated things like learning Geology or Art History. Since I'm a big reader, naturally I will continue to pursue knowledge in different subjects, but it's not quite the same. There's something so satisfying about working hard and seeing that final grade at the end of the semester, earning those credits. I am thinking about going back in 2-4 years perhaps to focus more on writing (English? Journalism?) I already have enough credits stocked up that it wouldn't take me very long to do. Alas, I already owe a fortune in loans and I shouldn't really add more to the pile. In the words of the band Asia, only time will tell.

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Music Notes: Today My Heart Swings First off, I have a real "thing" for the new single by Interpol, "The Heinrich Maneuver." Such a strong return for these New York boys, who were criticized early on for being too derivative of '80's post-punk but manage to shake off the lazy Joy Division comparisons by arriving at a sound that the band has made purely their own. "Heinrich" is fresh with propulsive rhythm and soaring guitar, the lyrics oblique enough to be interesting, whilst Paul Banks' voice cracks with raw detachment. Near the end, when the song roars to a sudden halt only to fire back up again full speed ahead, I get chills everytime. I've got my gizzy in a twirl waiting for the whole album. Before I'd ever really heard of Feist I read something about her living with my fave electro-tramp Peaches back in the day when they first started out. So a few years back, when I saw a video for her track "Mushaboom" I wasn't overly jazzed - it was nice, but I was expecting something more electro-dancey. It didn't stick, basically. So when her latest album the Reminder hit my download service, I didn't react. Then I started reading praise for it left and right, so I became curious and was delighted upon first listen. Wonderfully, it gets better with each listen, more colors emerge each time through. Her musical palette is broad, from the high gloss and hectic handclaps of "Sealion Woman" to the awkward pop of "1-2-3-4" and many more chill moments between, Feist's melodies are earworms of the finest caliber. Her voice is alternately crackly and plainspoken, her singing style varied but singular. The Reminder is an album that completes and compliments any particular moodswing. Was there ever a more fitting song title than "Icky Thump", the new single from the ever-brilliant White Stripes? Those words collide together in exact description of the dull thud of Meg's drums and the ooey-gooiness of Jack White's boiling, Zepplin-y guitar moves. This audio mud pie slowly melts with the addition of some sick and sticky Moog synth riffs lifted straight from some obscure prog confection from 1974. Like baked Alaska, Jack's frantic rant sets the song aflame, a few sly anti-war metaphors lend it some political currency. This shit is bananas Foster.

Labels: Graduation, Music Reviews, Random Thoughts

If you enjoy the tunes of that woozy boozy decade the 70's, you need to follow my link over to Bradley's Buzz blog. For the last few weeks, Brad has been counting down his personal favorite singles from 1970-1979 and with each entry he tells an interesting little story. I know Bradley, and I can imagine it must have taken many wine-soaked winter evenings in front of the old turntable making lists and narrowing all those thousands of possibilities down to a mere one hundred musical highlights of the feathered hair era. It's a huge task I'd never have the stamina to undertake, but Brad's not afraid, and the result is meticulous and entertaining. It's a very uniquely Brad-esque list, a world where Dolly Parton rubs her boobs on Gary Numan and The Partidge Family share a joint with Lou Reed. It's probably the only retro-70's list ever to include a Lisa Hartman single and not one but two Melanie singles (so far. We still have the Top 20 to go.) Check it out here: Bradley's taste is pretty (very) pop oriented, but if I were to make a similar list, it would wander off a bit into "artier" territories. Here's a few more singles from the seventies, not necessarily the best, but just some essentials off the top of my head... Brian Eno: King's Lead Hat T-Rex: 20th Century Boy Mike Oldfield: Tubular Bells The Cure: Killing an Arab Kraftwerk: Trans Europe Express David Bowie: TVC15 The Rolling Stones: Street Fighting Man Orchestral Manoevers in the Dark: Electricity Bauhaus: Bela Lugosi's Dead Can: Spoon The Human League: Being Boiled Donna Summer: I Feel Love Lou Reed: Perfect Day The Normal: Warm Leatherette Siouxsie & The Banshees: Hong Kong Garden

Labels: Bradley's Buzz, Links, Music Reviews, Retro Fun

Today, I think I’ll subject myself to one of my favorite forms of self-abuse: A random trip through the Billboard Hot 100 Singles Chart. OK, be brave, let’s motor…

Fall Out Boy: “This Ain’t A Scene, It’s An Arms Race” (Island) My friend Melanie says she drives her teenage girls nuts by referring to Emo as “Emu.” Emo is still a term that instantly gets my back up, bringing to mind floppy-haired miserable waif boys with some epic guitar riffs and a broken heart. It’s had a slow build in popularity, crossing from college-kid hip in the mid-90’s to alterna-mall-rock status today. I’ve never been a fan of the Emo trend, those boys just whine too much and they don’t really seem to bring anything fresh to the table.

Fall Out Boy almost seem too clever to fall into that exact trap, and manage to inject just enough originality to rise only slightly above the rest of the mall-punk pack. In a way I’d rather see something like this hit #1 on the charts than, say, Hinder or something really, REALLY bad. Still, I have very little love for this kind of thing. The voice is the most annoying yowl on the radio since Rob Thomas and Matchbox 20 reigned, the lyrics are striving for some kind of deep irony, but remain pointlessly obtuse, and the music is overproduced lip gloss smeared on the pouty lips of teen angst. Rating: 4/10 Current Billboard Hot 100 Chart Position: # 1

Nelly Furtado: Say It Right (Geffen) Nelly the barefoot gypsy hippie from a few years back didn’t really twirl my pinwheels, except for the Timbaland remix of “Turn Off The Light” that rattled pop radio at the time. I wanted to resist the new all-Tim version of Nelly, but like a not-unpleasant Portuguese-Canadian fungus, she has quite grown on me. “Maneater” especially was my jam, and here they keep it flowing. They slow things down a few notches here, getting all cozy next to the campfire where Tim throws beats instead of logs and they make the fire burn even hotter causing Nelly’s icy, robotic vocals to melt. I thought it was wild when I head that Timbaland would be working with Duran Duran, but I can actually hear some of their influence here. There’s a glacial, Nick Rhodes quality to the keyboard lines and the cheesy guitar riff comes in toward the end like a preening Andy Taylor stuck in time. Rating 7.5/10. Current Billboard Hot 100 Chart Position: #3

Daughtry: “It’s Not Over” (RCA) God, no. A hundred kinds of no. I was so happy to hear that Creed, the worst band to have ever terrorized pop culture, had broken up a few years ago. Little did I know there were dozens of Creed clones waiting in the wings like hungry rodents, ready to scamper out and bite the ass of music. Hinder. Nickleback. Stone Sour. Three Doors Down. Cobain died for somebody’s sins, but not these assholes. The evil Seattle-throat behind this generic post-post-Grunge-by-numbers yowler was a 4^th place American Idol loser. Honestly, I couldn’t listen past the first chorus, so gut wrenchingly bad was my reaction to this utter tripe. Anyone who would purchase this crap needs to be deprogrammed, and then given a copy of the new Bloc Party album, pronto. Rating 1/10 Current Billboard Hot 100 Chart Position: #6

Paula DeAnda: “Walk Away” (Arista) Paula DeWho? I can’t think of anything much to say about this bit of pointless R&B fluff. Her voice is only average, the beats are mid-tempo and nothing to write home about. I’m assuming the co-credit of “The DEY” is referring to the not-so-fab male rapper that makes this track turn from smooth to nerve-jangling. Just boring. Rating 2/10 Current Billboard Hot 100 Chart Position: #12

Avril Lavigne: “Keep Holding On” (Fox/RCA) I’m reluctant to admit I’ve often had a soft spot for Miss Avril. She came out of Canada just 16 and all punky-like and sang “Adult Alternative” hits that parents could enjoy as much as the kiddies while driving the minivan to the Soccer park. Not since Madonna and her wannabes in the ‘80’s have we seen one girl start such a fashion craze – “Complicated” and “Sk8ter Boi” destroyed the airwaves and left in their wake a gaggle of girls wearing raccoon eyeliner and a loose necktie over a t-shirt with a sassy message. Now our girl is all growed-up at 23 and gave up the skater look for haute-couture long ago. I do have to admire her for having a fair amount of self-respect and never being photographed with her hoo-hah hanging out, unlike some of the other pop queens.

However “Keep Holding On” is nothing to jump up and down about, a massively mega-produced epic power ballad that’s nothing special at all and is instantly forgettable. Avril’s voice is fine (cute Canadian accent still intact) but she’ll never really be considered an artist until she ditches the syrupy pop gloss and does something edgy and unique. Maybe she’s not smart or talented enough to pull anything better off than this middle-of-the-road tanker. I don’t think the parents or the kiddies can manage to stay awake through it. Rating 3/10 Current Billboard Hot 100 Chart Position: #21

KT Tunstall: “Suddenly I See” (Virgin) Actually, I like her. I saw her perform on a talk show awhile back and she had just her guitar and a series of pedals – she was able to somehow create loops of her tapping a rhythm on her guitar and of her voice with these pedals. The result was a massive sounding one-woman band and she came across as energetic and fresh. This single isn’t quite as sonically engaging as that, but it’s nice and breezy like a shampoo commercial. It’s mercifully free from the hi-gloss and airless overproduction that so much pop music suffers from these days. She’s not a true original, but she has her own style, like Melissa Etheridge minus the Bruce Springsteen quotient. Rating 6.5/10Current Billboard Hot 100 Chart Position: #23

Unk: “Walk It Out” (Koch) Ugh. Unk’s name is short for Unknown and I wish he would have stayed that way. As open as I like to be toward Hip Hop, lately I’m just amazed how bad it’s gotten. This is to Hip-Hop as The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus is to Punk. There’s a grain of the real deal buried somewhere deep within, but it’s certainly not worth suffering through the muck to find it. There’s no originality whatsoever on display. The music is Old-School 101 for Ghetto Casio – totally canned. The sound is about as fresh as Nelly’s (not Furtado, but the rapper) rejected demo tapes from 2002. Unk’s shouty, moronic rhymes make me crave an instrumental version. Totally abysmal. Rating 1/10 Current Billboard Hot 100 Chart Position: #28

The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus: Face Down (Virgin) Terrible name. Here’s another overproduced slice of rotten emo-mall rock for moody suburban boys (and girls) trying eyeliner for the first time. This has no personality whatsoever. Who’s to blame for this insipid, generic brand of commercial pop music that sounds like it was manufactured specifically to be the background music of the Warped Tour TV marketing campaign? Who did this crap first? Do we blame AFI, maybe My Chemical Romance? At least those bands have some schtick. “Face Down” is faceless, clichéd and miserably overwrought. Rating 1.5/10. Current Billboard Hot 100 Chart Position: #43

Sigh. I want the last hour of my life back. I could've listened to the the new Of Montreal album again.

Labels: Music Reviews

Marnie Stern - In Advance of the Broken Arm LP It's pretty rare these days that it happens: a record so original, so unlike anything anyone's ever heard creeps out of a dark corner and bites the ass of the avid music listener. I think the absolutely noisy and jaw dropping debut from New York guitarist/vocalist Marnie Stern is bound to be one of those albums. It's a wicked mix of punk-metal acrobatic guitar riffage that seems totally random at times, scattered - overly arty, but amazingly concise - nothing proggy here, she molds what could be ten-minute over-the top epics somehow into economic three-minute tunes. Stern's guitar skills are otherwordly and purposefully noodley - at times she comes straight from Planet Eddie Van Halen. Yet, just when the big-hair and spandex quotient of the speed-metal riffs begins to become enjoyably unbearable, the song shifts into something else and bam - another complete shift is chasing right behind it. Stern's voice is feminine and powerful, childlike at times, chanting unintelligible mantras. The drummer seems to just complicate matters - his patterns totally random and improvised, heavy, but when they click with the rest of the cacophony, the effect is gripping. The closest comparison I would make is to the first Throwing Muses album from 1986, only if Kristin Hersh had loved AC/DC instead of the Violent Femmes. But it's much noisier than that. Or maybe if Joanna Newsom did an album with Lemme Motorhead, and it was produced by Sonic Youth. A Yeah Yeah Yeahs record played at 45 instead of 33 RPM. None of these comparisons do really do In Advance of the Broken Arm a lot of justice. It's wild and untamed, experimental but familiar. Stern's lyrics are sufficiently arty as to create an appealing shroud of mystery and chemical imbalance. This album might not appeal to everyone - it can truly be a bit much at times - but I have a hunch it's going to have an impact and influence that will linger for years. Rating 8.5/10 Deerhoof - Friend Opportunity I've always had a bit of a hard time wrapping my brain around the music of San Fran's Deerhoof. Early works were pure noise and nothing but squawkity-squawk to me. They seemed like a band that was just being weird for the sake of being weird, abandoning any inroads toward actual listenability. Fortunately, recent releases have seen Deerhoof shift the focus to more direct melodicism and aesthetic appeal. Last year's release The Runners Four finally intrigued me enough to merit repeated listens. Friend Opportunity is even stronger, brimming with pop riffs and unexpected melodic shifts. The band retains an experimental edge, and keeps it sonically exciting by dropping in some intriguing and occasionally oddball electronic elements. A major part of the appeal is Satomi Matsuzaki's voice which is light and pleasant throughout, avoiding the cloyingly cutesy tendencies of similar Japansese female voices. Deerhoof allows themselves a lot more breathing room here, at times drifting into cinematic territory (the wistful and gorgeous "Whither The Invisible Birds." There is a nice balance on this record between these delicate moments and guitarist John Dieterich's more in-your-face classic rock riffage, such as on the Beatle-esque "Cast Off Crown." The album for sure has a more mature vibe than earlier releases, with the exception of the silly "Kidz Are So Small", a wacky Cibo-Matto style old-school hip hop farce. Also, closer "Look Away" meanders tunelessly for eleven slow minutes, causing the listener to crash into a naptime nightmare of noise. Rating 7/10 Hinder - "Lips Of An Angel" I don't know exactly why I would torture myself by even putting this absolute turd of a song into consideration. When something comes along that's this bad and actually makes it into the upper regions of the pop charts, I feel it's my duty to heavily make fun of it and anyone that actually takes it seriously. Like the irritatingly rotten Creed before them, the music of Hinder appeals to lazy consumers who cannot see beyond mainstream radio and the WalMart music section, and still believe that somehow hi-gloss grungy hard rock is edgy and cool, and that rock stars come only in one sensitive, uber-masculine, pleather-pantsed variety: some asshole with Seattle-throat and some bad junior high love poems. A glance at a publicity photo shows five hilarious young men who were plucked, tucked, and fucked by record company honchos, given a "rock star" makeover with a few facial piercings, perfectly messy hair just so, a bit of eyeliner, a moody glare. The corn-fed kids of Hinder claimed recently that they want to "bring the fun back into Rock and Roll!" On that front, they truly get a zero for effort, because this track is about as "fun" as toenail fungus and the surgery to have it removed. The lyrics and melody are just plain embarrasing, cloying and cringeworthy. Reading them is like being socked in the gut: "well my girls in the next room / Sometimes I wish she was you /I guess we never really moved on." or "girl you make it so hard to be faithful /with the lips of an angel." Yeah, it doesn't even make sense and manages to be pathetic and misogynistic at the same time. The production is pure '80's power ballad a la Great White. But even that makes it sound more interesting than it actually is. It reminds me of something from one of those TV soundtrack albums from the mid-90s, like "Melrose Place" or whatever, some anonymous post-post grunge song they used in the background of a pukey love scene. This track is just so fucking boring, it brings absolutely nothing new to the big table of popular music and mocks all other music by managing rise into the pop charts and sell millions of albums. Are the kids really listening to this or is it an older crowd, like a grunge-burnout crowd of some type? Personally I don't know anyone who would admit to liking it, even if they were trying to be somehow ironic. I guess no matter how much we try to flush it away, the bloated turd of post-grunge will forever float in circles in the toilet bowl of rock. Rating 0/10

Labels: Music Reviews

What’s been fading out, ker-chunk-ing, then fading back in lately on the Making Flippy Floppy 8-track tape deck?

LCD Soundsystem – Sound of Silver (released 3/12/07)

Lead track “Get Innocuous” comes creeping in from the dank cellar of the disco, through a secret door in the middle of the dancefloor. Its grouchy dance music, like something Eno might have dreamt up if he’d never been hit by a car, or maybe if he’d died that accident and his ghost helped Giorgio Mododer produce Bowie’s Low instead. What if Talking Heads were signed to Factory Records in 1982? LCD man James Murphy conjures a realm of musical “what-ifs” throughout the excellently titled new album Sound of Silver. The DFA sound is in full glorious effect here, bone-dry beats, all crisp and bright; cow-ca-bell, cow-cow-ca-bell; one half-snatch of funk; comfortingly glib detachment; basslines that are simultaneously moody and booty; the analog love from granny’s antique thingybox. The album is actually perhaps not as reliant on studio wizardry as prior releases, many tracks push a more traditional approach, like the pounding pianos of “All My Friends,” the everyday funk of “Us Vs. Them,” or the post-post-punk rock of “Watch the Tapes,” which is the best track The Fall never recorded in 1985. Closer “New York I Love You” is an effective homage to Tranformer-era Lou Reed and longs for the gritty city the Big Apple was before it became a safe and Disney-fied. Lyrically, the irony level never quite approaches the heights attained on earlier LCD classics such as “Losing My Edge” or “Daft Punk Is Playing At My House”, except “North American Scum” with it’s Jane Fonda aerobic vibe and shout-along vocals. “Something Great” is probably the best thing Murphy has ever written – the lyric is effective and sentimental without being at all cloying. The melody is something you can almost chew on – the rubbery synth bass could have been lifted from a lost Travelogue-era Human League demo, the chime of the bells evokes early OMD and you want to crawl into it like a warm, familiar synth pop quilt.

Strangest of all is the brilliant title track which repeats its awkward lyric endlessly, mantra-like, atop the most deliciously minimalist electronic funk since Kraftwerk played a little melody on their pocket calculators all those years ago. It’s an amazing track, and impossible not to move to, and it’s bleeps and bubbles slowly fade out to reveal – what else – an impossibly intricate cowbell riff was happening underneath the track the entire time. Sound of Silver looks to be one the essential albums of the year. Nelly Furtado – “Maneater” / Justin Timberlake – “My Love”

With few exceptions, I have never been able to resist anything producer Timbaland touches. The last few years seemed a little rough for him creatively, not even Missy wanted him around much. Happily, he seems full of fresh ideas recently and these two massive hits are modern pop at its absolute finest and most forward-looking. His sound is so instantly recognizable that his vision always comes though no matter what artists he is working with. He’s never afraid to branch out into new musical realms, bringing to

reality situations that seem absurd yet fully alive with possibility – he has recently worked on the new albums of Duran Duran and Bjork. “Maneater” does the seemingly impossible task of making Nelly Furtado seem almost likeable, reducing her voice to a delightfully sassy squawk, robotically sexing up a corny (but extremely fun) lyric. The steam-and-piston beat stomps your head in, the massive synth riff swoops your body to and fro involuntarily. It’s what the Human League may have sounded like if they were early Prince protégés. The swooshing synth sound makes a re-appearance on Justin Timberlake’s “My Love,” but Timbaland slows things down a few notches, replacing “Maneater’s” in-your-face bump and grind with a more sublte, skittery beat and Justin’s melt-in-your spleen falsetto. When I hear this song, I’m right there with him, walking down the beach hand-in-hand, throwing our clothes in the sand, and who isn’t? Apparently, there's a rapper caller T.I. on here somewhere, but he is instantly forgettable next to the expansive glory of Justin's lovelorn longing, and Timbaland's comforting-older-brother production job. Timbaland keeps the music relatively simple here, choosing to let the many layers of vocals do the effective part of the work.

Labels: Music Reviews

...or the shocking true story of a DM addict.

I’ve loved - or more accurately, have been addicted to - this band for nearly twenty-five years. If there were meetings for such things, my introduction would likely start out like this: “Hi, my name is Patrick and I’m a Depeche-Mode-a-holic.” I’ve been obsessing over these Basildon Boys since nearly the dawn of Depeche - 1981 to be exact, when I heard them on a K-Tel collection titled “The Beat.” This tremendously influential cassette held a magic new wave blend of things like A Flock of Seagulls, the Go-Go's, Bow Wow Wow, Duran Duran, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, and of course Depeche Mode whose "Dreaming of Me" (sadly, not included here on the Best of Vol.1) marked the band’s US debut, as well as my first taste of the stuff. I was instantly enthralled by the sound, which was so coldly synthetic and precise, but somehow warm like a chewy piece of bubblegum. The electronics were tinny and the voice was slightly detached, the lyrics abstract and futuristic: I loved it.

My next hit of Depeche Mode was administered to my system via MTV in the form of their 1984 video hit “People are People.” This was the band’s first big mainstream success in the USA, and there were thousands like me across the nation, young, moody and vulnerable, and suddenly elated by this massive Mode fix. “People are People” was unlike any record before it, its sampled clanks and clamors, its cascading whirligigs of metal sounds so brilliantly arranged like a clever, pop-art collage. It’s “why can’t we all just get along” message may have been a bit hokey, but at the time it seemed deep and life-affirming. The accompanying video was Middle America’s first glimpse of the band. Here were some fairly ordinary blokes in a record-pressing plant wandering about and watching big machines moving to the beat and pressing up records of the very song we were hearing – main singer Dave Gahan, synthmen Fletch and Alan Wilder. But who was this fair creature in the leather skirt and chains with the huge blonde brillo-pad hairdo and the swipe of thick black eyeliner? Who was this otherworldly girly-boy with the wonky-teeth and the melty croon? It was none other than Martin Lee Gore, whose look had an instantaneous effect on fashion, causing moody, disaffected girls (and boys) everywhere (but especially California) to buy stock in fishnets, kinky leather, bleach, and eye makeup.

The band camped up this image even more with the follow-up single and video “Master and Servant” (a peppy ode to S&M), and the accompanying album Some Great Reward began a stint in my walkman that lasted the entire summer of 1984 and beyond. I was in California for the majority of that summer, and Depeche Mode was a force you could practically feel in the air, the sound drifting from car windows, record shops, and nightclubs or roller rinks. Some Great Reward was their finest moment to date, taking earlier audio experiments in surprising and chaotic new directions. Lyrically, it was an album that lit up my teen angst like a flame lights a candle. “Somebody” taught me about love, “Master and Servant” taught me about sex, and “Blasphemous Rumors” made me question the concepts of God and religion.

At Tower Records in San Jose I bought the entire DM back catalog up to that point and began the descent into the throes of addiction, sinking deeper and deeper into Depeche world. 1981’s debut Speak and Spell was different than the other records, more poppy, something we can now attribute to the musical presence and songwriting dominance of Vince Clarke. There was something a little kinky bubbling under the surface of this sterile “New Romantic” synthpop. To this day, I think songs like “Boys Say Go” and “What’s Your Name” were my own personal introduction to homoerotic flirtatiousness. The album is represented on The Best Of Vol.1 by the classic “New Life” and “Just Can’t Get Enough”, a song that would eventually become one of the band’s defining tunes and still fills dance floors 25 years later.

In the photos on the inner sleeve of their second album A Broken Frame the boys look a wee bit serious, lost in deep thought. Suitably, the dark clouds which appear in the sky on the sleeve image actually do hang over the music itself as well. Fame-shy Vince Clarke had suddenly departed, taking with him a few new tunes (“Only You”) that were written for Depeche but ended up being recorded by Yazoo, his subsequent synthpop act with Alison Moyet. Seemingly unrattled by his absence, Martin Gore picked up the proverbial pen and Depeche Mode’s next single “See You” became their biggest hit yet in the UK. “See You” is as catchy and pop-oriented as anything on Speak & Spell, but like the rest of A Broken Frame, it has a subtle darkness, a muffle in the production, that gives it an odd, deeply olde and European vibe, like a noir Abba echoing through hushed, Alpine hills. The band itself considers this album to be among their worst, frequently dissing it in interviews over the years, dismissing it as drab and dismal. However, hardcore fans realize that the dark textures of album tracks like “Shouldn’t Have Done That” and “Sun and the Rainfall” created a template that the band would follow to this day, and that would heavily influence every slightly depressed synthesizer geek from Berlin to Boise, including me.

Alan Wilder showed up in time to record 1983’s Construction Time Again, and he apparently brought some Einsturzende Neubauten records with him. With this album, and its hit “Everything Counts”, Depeche Mode took the harsh clamour of the German Industrial scene they were so fond of at the time, and softened it, creating an entirely new sound in the process. According to legend, the band and their Mute Records label honcho Daniel Miller hit the streets with a primitive digital sampler, recording every junkyard clank, factory whistle, and metal-pipe-meets-spoon sound they could muster, creating a fresh, experimental framework for Martin to hang his increasingly gloomy, but continuously addictive songs. I absorbed these early Depeche Mode albums deep into my bloodstream, returning to them again and again over the years to get another dose of their naïve creativity and cold emotion. As I write this, “My Secret Garden” from A Broken Frame is my ringtone.

1985’s dryly titled Catching Up With Depeche Mode was the US counterpart to the international compilation The Singles 81-85. It was a fantastic collection and included the new single “Shake the Disease”, one of my all-time favorite DM tunes, accompanied by an effective video which had the band looking rather ill and still makes me nauseous with it’s sideways camera tricks. Although it was probably less than a year, at the time it seemed like an eternity for us Depeche Mode junkies before 1986’s Black Celebration saw the light of day. Oddly, this is the only album in their catalog that is unrepresented on The Best Of, Vol. 1 (What? No “Question of Time?” OR “Question of Lust” Blasphemy!) However, true fans recognize it as a quietly intense masterpiece, cathedral-like and full haunted open spaces as well as dense and doomy sonic epics like “Stripped” or “Fly on the Windscreen.”

The 1987 smash “Strangelove” was a straightforward dance track and hinted at a crisper, bolder sound. It was released well in advance of its accompanying album, but nothing could have prepared the devoted for the massive Depeche Mode narcotic overdose that is Music For The Masses. The album opens with the grandiose and dramatic choir and orchestra swells of “Never Let Me Down Again”, a single that sent shockwaves through Depeche world by featuring an actual guitar riff(!), a motif that was entirely new for the band at the time, but that it would expand upon over the years. Music For The Masses became the band’s biggest international hit to date, and Depechemania hit a peak with a huge world tour including sold-out show at the Pasedena Rose Bowl, documented in the band’s next project, the D.A. Pennebaker live film and double album titled 101.

I nearly wore out my VHS copy of 101,which not only featured an excellent live show, but also fascinatingly documented a contest sponsored by an LA radio station in which the winning fans would follow the band around on a bus during the last part of the tour, with their antics being filmed for the actual movie itself. In a way, it was a predecessor to reality TV, pre-dating MTV’s Real World by several years. I loved the movie, and I could so relate the lucky winning fans, who were made up of a couple of slightly gothy gay boys and their bitchy fag hags, a couple California princesses, and a game jock or two. This mix was pretty much a cross section of the band’s fan base at that point. It’s too fun to watch as this dramatically overdressed posse of DM fans drunkenly terrorizes astonished “regular folks” in middle-of-nowhere hotels and gas stations across the US. I was bitter with jealously, wanting so badly to be part of this DM in-crowd. I watched 101 not long ago and these fans that were once, to me, the ultimate in cool, now seemed hopelessly geeky.

“Personal Jesus” arrived in the brand new “CD single” format in late 1989, right around the time I landed my first record store job. That song sounded absolutely revelatory and amazing on the store’s massive stereo system, cranked up to full volume after the store was closed. With a bevy of diverse remixes and a running time of nearly 45 minutes, that single seemed like a full album, and my boss and I played it constantly. I remember going insane listening to my boss sing along with the words all wrong (“Reach out and touch face…”) Spring 1990’s rather dark and foreboding Violator became Depeche Mode’s biggest international hit, zooming to number one on charts from Anchorage to Zaire and sold millions.

“Enjoy the Silence” followed suit, accompanied by a breathtakingly gorgeous Anton Corbijn video. This was to be their biggest US hit single to date, and deservedly so – its blend of cold electro and emotional warmth was classic DM and brought on board a whole new generation of admirers. It’s the song the band will probably be remembered best for, with Martin Gore hitting the highest heights of his songwriting ability. The song remains a favorite and has been reissued and remixed more than any other track in the band’s extensive discography.

Another sold-out international tour was followed by a few years off. Martin released the cover record Counterfeit, Alan made a Recoil album, Fletch counted the money and Dave began a classic descent on the downward spiral of rock-star drug drama. Grunge had hit big, and influenced nearly every corner of the music industry. Not even DM was immune to its cultural impact. 1993’s “I Feel You” was filled with insane layers guitar riffs and feedback – the sound was big and mighty. It was quite a shock for fans, but a pleasant one – the sound may have been touched by grunge, but the underlying pulse and sentiment of the lyric was classic Depeche. Even more shocking was the video which revealed a pale, skin and bones Dave Gahan, all tattooed up with shoulder length hair and smeared with eyeliner.

Songs of Faith and Devotion followed and again landed the band atop the album charts around the globe. Sonically, it’s everything-AND-the-kitchen-sink approach resulted in a gigantic and mucky production. Layers and layers of sound and effects come together to create a rather claustrophobic wall of sound. “Walking in My Shoes” was the next bombastic single, saved from the overproduction heap by a sinewy electro bass line and a great Gore-ian lyric (the usual themes: guilt and redemption.)

This wave of success found the band in full-on party mode for the following Devotional tour. These previously clean teens (at least in the public eye) were suddenly interested in good old fashioned rock-n-roll excess: cocaine and groupies, sweaty shirtless photoshoots in LA, spontaneous hotel lounge piano bar performances. I saw the band in Seattle midwat though this tour and gasped as a skeletal Dave Gahan rasped his way through the show, his infamous stage energy replaced by a zombie-like shuffle and an overused Jesus Christ pose. This tour was such a doozy for the band that afterwards Alan quit the band for good, Martin went immediately into rehab, and a heroin-addicted Dave had paranoid Weather Channel marathons and nearly succeeded in offing himself with a razorblade in a sleazy motel while talking to his mum on the phone. In 1996, after several more ugly and rather public overdoses, he decided to kick, and has been healthy and sober since.

A rather weary 3-piece Depeche Mode made their way back into the studio and the first taste of the new album Ultra was the less-than thrilling “Barrel of a Gun” – with it’s over the top rock vibe and confessional lyric it’s a throwback to Songs of Faith and Devotion rather than the usual step forward DM had always taken – mercifully, they chose to leave it off The Best Of Vol. 1. Faring better was the 2^nd single “It’s No Good” which also broke no new creative molds but was a solid club track with a pulsing bassline and a wacky video. The boys seemed tired and chose not to tour behind Ultra, choosing instead to hit the California sun and rejuvenate. DM finished the nineties with some singles collections and a sell-out world tour which found the boys refreshed and on their best behavior.

The sublime acoustic guitar and candlelit drama of “Dream On” was the first taste of 2001’s Exciter album, and with it’s shuffling break beat and spacious production it hinted at a new musical direction. However it turned out to be the highlight on an album that even the band themselves now admit was a bit disappointing. It’s not a bad record by any standard, just kind of boring. For a band who built a career out of dramatically experimenting with the format of pop music and influencing new genres of music, Exciter was simply not up to par. It seemed underproduced and underwhelming.

However, the accompanying tour proved they were back in the swing of things live-wise. I saw them play in Summer 2002 at the George in George, and DM came onstage with a huge, gorgeous sunset happening behind them and played a magnificent set that had the whole hillside full of fans dancing and singing along. Thanks to my friend Misty, we were able to sneak into one of the exclusive box seats that was occupied by some semi-famous Seattle band (I can never remember exactly who). They weren’t so into DM and were leaving so Misty asked if we could take their spot and we were served free food and drinks in our overstuffed armchairs with perfect views of the show. Highlight: Martin Gore’s disco ball suit.

“Precious” was the first hint of 2005’s Playing the Angel album and it was such a marvelous return to form that it made all us old DM fanatics swoon like we were teenagers again. Written for Gore’s children whilst in the middle of a messy divorce, the song’s tender melody and heartbreaking sentiment is met with one of Dave’s finest and most subtle vocal performances. Like the rest of Playing the Angel, it sees DM returning to their old experimental ways but maintains a certain warm familiarity as well. The album was released to rave critical reviews and is considered by many fans to be their best since Some Great Reward (1984), an album it shares some sonic similarities with: the high energy level, the bang and clank of samples, the depth and strength of Martin’s songs and Dave’s voice.

Best of all was “Suffer Well”, the albums 2^nd single which was the first Depeche Mode single ever written by Dave Gahan. Dave’s 2004 solo LP Paper Tigers had revealed for the first time that he had a few songs up his sleeve, but nothing on that album hit the ironic heights of “Suffer Well”, an excellent upbeat tune with a endlessly catchy guitar riff, sonically fresh electronics, and a lovely backing vocal from Martin. It’s already one of my all-time favorite DM singles and makes me excited to see how great the next album will be with two excellent songwriters now involved. The Best Of Vol.1 includes the obligatory “new track”, which in this case is “Martyr”, a track that was recorded during the Playing the Angel sessions, but was left off the album due to “not fitting in.” It’s nothing terribly new for the band, but it’s a solid, catchy track and fits in well on this best-of collection.

Although I’ve certainly heard the tracks that make up this collection a zillion times each, and even though I already own said tracks in varying formats, I still delight in The Best Of Vol. 1 each time I give it a spin. It really does represent the toppermost hits of a band which helped define my life, as well as the lives of thousands of other fanatics and casual admirers around the globe. Like The Beatles’ 1 collection from several years ago, we already know the songs up and down, but it’s the new context that lends pleasure to hearing them again. My own selection of the “best” DM tracks might have been a little different, but overall there is no reason to bitch. Plus, it comes with a DVD featuring the videos for all included tracks and a cool documentary about the band. If you are a seasoned veteran DM junkie like myself, of if you’re just dabbling in the stuff for the first time, The Best Of Vol. 1 will surely get you off.

Labels: Music Reviews