Eels - Electro-Shock Blues

Electro-Shock Blues (1998) ****

A five-star album if you are in precisely the right mood, a mere three-star album if you aren't:  you do the math.  Problem is, I haven't had a loved one die on me in quite a few years, so many that I have to think hard on it (not counting beloved pets, of course).  Yes, this is a concept album concerning the scythe of the Ol' Reaper, unmistakably inspired by a pair of recent deaths in E's nuclear family:  the lyrics are bluntly artless and there's no mistaking the specific subject matter, the specific real-life deaths that E is eulogizing on this long-player (and its great fault is that:  it's l-o-o-o-o-o-n-g).  The song-cycle begins by setting the scene of "Elizabeth on the Bathroom Floor," from a drug-inflicted suicidal overdose, and matters do not get cheerier from there.  Luckily, as we have seen from my previous reviews, E is contemporary pop's meisterburger of despondent clinical depression infused in sickly sweet pop nougats, so it's a listenable pop album despite the morbid weight of the subject matter.  But boy, can it get rough going, and not just because of the lyrics.  The songs are so crushingly sad that E seems determined to avoid anything so trite as hooks:  an easy way in would make the songs seem too trivial, y'know?  Whatever, this is probably superior to any similarly hookless Lou Reed character-sketch concept LP, and just as fun (which is to say - no, not fun at all).  On the first few listens the album seems non-descript, an emotional and wordy confessional album that certainly benefited the artist's therapeutic purging more than the listener's auditory pleasure.  And in truth, none of the songs truly stand out as knock-you-out highlights:  it's a seamlessly flowing concept album, and unlike most concept albums, the songs really do need to be experienced together as an album's flow of tracks - the whole, in this case, genuinely is greater than the sum of its parts.  Many of the songs seem fragmentary, or are literally fragmentary, such as the aforementioned album opener, whose ghostly presence in background melody floats over the succeeding two tracks like - well, a ghost (and not just because track #2 is entitled "Going to Your Funeral").  The tracks aren't stitched together musically a la Abbey Road, but they do flow together in such a thematic way that it's difficult to imagine them as separable, or in any other sequence.

Which is another problem:  for whatever reason, E has decided to save the best for last.  There are good songs scattered throughout the first 11 tracks, particularly "Speed," a pretty acoustic ballad that is only marred by a wincingly trite lyric, "Life is funny, but not ha ha funny," that bumps up like an uncomfortable lump in the throat.  Oh well, he's not the world's greatest lyricist, even if he does manage the ocassional coup, such as this album's most oft-quoted line, "Grandpa's watching video porn / With the closed-caption on".  And there's the ocassional bad song, as well:  I know that the jazzy shuffle, "Hospital Food," is supposed to be a touch of goofy humor designed to lighten the painfully morbid mood, and I can see how it's necessary, but as E has no discernible gift for cracking a joke or even a smile, it comes as irritatingly hectoring.  But just as you're ready to write this off as a mildly interesting but unexceptional exercise in Plastic Ono Band self-confessional, beginning with track #12, E trots out his trusty acoustic and hits you over the head with his talent, as the remaining five songs are not only deeply, heartbreaking emotional (hell, the whole album is - have you been paying attention?) but effectively moving musically as well.  I suspect that the simple, unadorned singer-songwriter approach of the final five cuts (relatively unadorned - there's some rather obtrusive orchestration in the background) has everything to do with it.  Oh yes, I've dwelt so much on the lyrical side of things that I've almost forgotten to mention the actual music, haven't I?  There's a mild hip-hop influence that shows up most firmly (and a bit awkwardly) on the album's most commercial track, "Cancer for the Cure," (with a title like that for the catchiest A-side, you can see why this wasn't a blockbuster), and "The Medication is Wearing Off".  Mostly this is E-music, however, with toy-like children's instruments mixing with E's world-weary nicotine rasp, his confessional singer-songwriting with the musical focus squarely on the lyrics, and heavy-handed background orchestrations mixing with the conventional alt.rock. 

Best lyric:  "I was at a funeral the day I realized I wanted to spend my life with you."  Read that line again if you didn't get the tragic implication the first time around.

The Go-Betweens - Oceans Apart

What would you do if you turned around and saw me

Not in a dream, but in a song?

Oceans Apart (2005) ****

After all these years, I've finally gotten the knack of discerning between Forster and McLennan.  Or rather to say, in their middle-age their styles have diverged substantially enough that even on first listen it's easy to spot who's who.  Would McLennan have opened an album with a jittery, paranoid and brittle rocker, "Here Comes the City," that awkwardly (but endearingly) drops a gratuitous reference to Dostoyevsky?  Well into his 40s, is Robert still trying to impress tantalizing librarians?  And the second track, "Finding You," with its clear-eyed soft-folk melodic strum and thrum, could only have flowed from the pen of Grant in his mellifluous middle age:  its instantly memorable lilt and tenderly poetic lyricism mark it as a clear highlight.  However, as on the previous album, Forster manages to come up with the smarter batch of tunes, mostly because they are smarter and tougher.  McLennan, traditionally the more pop-tuneful of the duo (Sir Paul to Bob's John), has grown more lush and atmospheric in his approach, and while I have no doubt that an entire album of lushly atmospheric soft-rock numbers would prove soporific, the flow of the 10 songs on this album (you expected a different number of tracks?) nicely balances the generally more pointed Forster numbers with the gentler McLennan tunes.  Not that Grant's anything approaching a slouch:  aside from penning the album's aforementioned highlight, he also snags in a few more with "No Reason to Cry," (which boasts an exquisite guitar solo), the lovely melodic wash of "Statue," the blink-and-it's-over-too-soon "Boundary Rider," and "This Night's For You," which adds some pleasingly coo-ing doo-wop "ba ba ba's" to the backing chorus, and all of which give Adult Alternative folk-pop a grand name.  Hmm, perhaps on second reflection, Grant's the clear winner this time out, with a stronger set of tunes despite the soft, blurry edges.  And with the exception of "Lavender," a straightforward ballad that gratingly lacks any discernable hook, none of Forster's tunes misfire, either.  Some might irk at "Darlinghurst Nights," dragging a little too long at 6 1/2 minutes, but hey - does the word Dylanesque mean anything to you?  The semi-autobiographical "Born to Family," in which Robert recounts of how he broke with the family tradition of hard, honest toil to follow the path he had to follow as a working musician, is another clear highlight.  And finally, rural elegy of "The Mountains Near Dellray," could be Forster's attempted rewrite of McLennan's classic from way back when "Cattle and Cane,"  - fittingly capping off the Go-Between's career, full circle with one of the strongest albums of their career, not to mention their most commercially successful:  after all this time, they were finally gaining the success and recognition they deserved, which makes Grant McLennan's death the year after this release all the more tragic.  From this evidence, the Go-Betweens could've kept cranking out quality albums at a steady pace until they were physically too infirm to pick up guitars.

Public Image Limited - The Flowers of Romance

The Flowers of Romance (1981) **1/2

Someone once quipped that John Lydon was the master of the influential but unlistenable, and this is one of those discs that is recommended listening for any adventurous music fan if only to try the limits of what you can define as 'listenable' (at least in a pop/rock context).  First, let's underline the difference between Metal Box and this followup, third PIL studio album:  no Jah Wobble.  Charming gent that Mr. Lydon is, he sheds members like a snake its skin, and this time out, he decided not to bother advertising for a replacement bassist.  Which means that the, ahem, 'tunes' revolve around Lydon's wailing over Martin Atkin's spare, tribalistic drums (well, how else can the music be described as anything but tribalistic when it consists of mostly drumming and vocal wailing and little else?).  Keith Levene is still present, but as a much more muted presence:  his contributions consist mostly of keyboard splashes (used as dry and minimalistically as anything else on the record), with his guitar only brought out occasionally as one more minor element of texture.  What it, in effect, amounts to is Metal Box II with all the bass parts deleted from the mix and subsequently much less interesting and much, much less danceable.  Oh, not that it's not interesting - the music carries the punk minimalist aesthetic to at least one of its logical conclusions:   drum'n'voice'n'cheap Casio.  The opening track sounds vaguely Arabic in its snakey call-to-prayer vocal wailing, but whether that was intentional or not - scratch me.  Maybe these potheads were adding some vinyl from Morocco to their steady diet of dub reggae.  The album also contains many stretches of instrumental meandering; perhaps that's why "Banging the Door," leaps out as the most memorable track, as it actually possesses a coherent and memorable vocal melody (chant, actually; I'd be hard to describe much of this music as 'melodic' in the traditional sense).  Have a I stressed enough how difficult this music is to get into?  If you want to clear a crowded room, this is one of those Top Ten 'Party Clearer' records, at least as far as nominally 'rock' albums are concerned.  This is Adam and the Ants' "noble savage drum drum drum" as conceived by John Cage, with all the fun sucked out of it.  Too monochromatically grim to take pleasure in the potentially colorful weirdness of the anti-pop concept.  As with Metal Box, PIL conjure a dour yet compelling atmosphere and proceed to coast on sheer sound for the entire album without writing any but the barest of 'songs'.  But as with most sequels, the quality is considerably inferior.  "No fun!"  But interesting.      

The Go-Betweens - Bright Yellow Bright Orange

I could carve you from memory and then carry you through these hills

Bright Yellow, Bright Orange (2003) ***1/2

These Antipodeans are genetically incapable of remotely approaching producing a less than excellent album.  However, they are approaching middle age and as expected growing mellower - much mellower.  Reconstituted as a four-piece with an anonymous rhythm section, this is the smoothest and most polished Go-Betweens album so far, which as you might have guessed isn't a particularly good thing:  gone forever are any potential rough edges or quirks as Forster/McLennan settle down into their comfy armchairs, kick up their legs on the coffee table, and swap guitars & vocals as they strum away at pleasantly predictable folk-pop tunes -  adult contemporary as a mug of hot cocoa.  Which is to say that this is the kind of album that 30 or 40something aging hipsters shall delight in whistling along to while they brew a hot cup of tea while perusing through the Sunday papers on a warm weekend morning, while youngsters baffled at where the Go-Betweens' vaunted greatness as opposed to mere goodness would be advised to look elsewhere.  All the classic elements are in place, but the combination of professionally lush production and mostly unambitious songwriting equals a surfeit of non-excitement.  It's a comfy album.  If this album were a household object, it would be a goosefeather pillow.  You don't expect wall-shaking excitement from a pillow, do you?  You want to snuggle it close to your bosom while sipping a mug of hot cocoa. 

There are precisely two of these ten tracks that leap out as classics as worthy as any in the Go-Betweens, both from the pen of Forster.  "Caroline and I," opens the album on a glorious note, by far the best song they've released since....ever?  The type of song that after you hear it for the first time you've got to hear it at least once more.....and once more, and then once more again, and again.  It's about Princess Caroline of Monaco, born in the same calendar year as Forster, and how their generationally conjoined lives did and didn't parallel.  The second instance comes later in the middle of the album:  "Too Much of One Thing," a dusty acoustic ballad that's so blatantly Dylanesque that it transcends Dylan - lengthy and repetitively hanging on a handful of chords and lyrically hypnotic.  And then you get several excellent songs, mostly on side one, which would earn four stars on its ownsome, and several rather ordinary songs, for which side two drags down the record's rating as a whole.  Researching the songwriting credits (which I have to do, as I still have trouble distinguishing Bob from Grant), I'm faulting McLennan:  his songs are, with the exception of "Poison in the Walls," much too laidback and self-satisfied.  Forster hits nearly all the highlights this time out, still penning literate story-tales ("In Her Diary") and sometimes even rocking out mildly ("Make Her Day").  Though to be fair, McLennan's "Old Mexico," is the album's sole other attempt at rocking.  Neither are particularly rocking, but in this context a much-needed jolt of electricity. 

The Fall - Shift Work

Shift-Work (1991) **1/2

More like Shit-Work, you ask me.  Not that this is doesn't go down easy:  the opposite the problem is - the once-mighty whirlwind of Fallnoisemakers proffering an entire album of relaxed, danceable soft-disco pop numbers?  Has the world gone mad?  I'm making too much of their change in direction; after all, it's not as if the previous album (excellento, 'twas) didn't possess its share of similar fare, and often to pleasing results.  And it's not as if "The Mixer," the one tune here I'd gladly slip onto a two-disc mix-tape best-of, isn't an unexpected triumph (synths & drum machine join hands with violin in tribute to a Madchester DJ of Jamaican extraction).  So maybe I'll just take the prosaic route and finger the main problem:  the songs just aren't very good.  Aside from "The Mixer," there's a fine if extraneous cover of the country greaser classic, "White Lightning," (must chug along with Robert Mitchum in Thunder Road), and a few other songs are....OK.  Mainly because Mark E. is almost always good for a chorus or five per album, even if he has the tendency (tendency?  A tendency?!) to ram that repetitive catchphrase chorus round and round and round into the goddamned ground ("They talk a lot'a wind, they talka lotta wind-ah, they talka lotta wind-ah, they talka lotta wind-ah").  And there's a genuinely pretty ballad for a change, "Rose".  Not much more to say about her besides she's pretty, though.  More like a pretty little high school girl than a genuine knockout, this "Rose" 'tis.  Pleasant when it passes you by, but....  That last sentence could pass for a description of the entire album, it could.  "The War Against Intelligence," and "Idiot Joy Showland," are pretty good catchphrases to build a song around, but as Elvis Costello once quipped about Morissey, a pity that Mark E. didn't bother to finish writing the rest of the song.  Again, that applies to most of the rest of the album.  It's not as if a change in direction to greet the '90s wasn't warranted, but in this case the results are less than satisfactory.  The band sound distressingly generic - almost any baggy-pants pop group could've recorded this music - and Mark E. seems out of place and adrift:  he's not blastering his usual blistering venom, but talk-singing in a manner that, whether he intended it or not (he probably didn't; flatly talk-singing was likely the best he could do for the vocals) comes across as detached and bored as a news announcer mouthing to cue-cards.  No passion in the vocals = no passion in the Fall.  A mildly danceable dance-pop album with some decent melodies:  the Fall can do (and have done) much better.

The two bonus tracks are worth a giggle:  more dance pop, but in one case ("Blood Outta Stone") more danceably anthemic and rock-driven than anything on the album proper, and in the other case ("Xmas With Simon") uproariously wittier. 

Listen to "The Mixer," though!  It's a good'un.



The Go-Betweens - The Friends of Rachel Worth

I don't want to change a thing when there's magic in here

The Friends of Rachel Worth (2000) ***1/2

Surprisingly or unsurprisingly depending upon your perspective, Forster and McLennan reunite after a decade's separation and sound exactly the same as when they parted company.  During the intervening '90s they'd both released a succession of solo albums (which I have yet to hear, but I'm presuming sound exactly like the Go-Betweens), so this reunion sounds like the best tracks sifted from a pair of solo albums with an even 5 song/5 song split.  Flows seamlessly, as even after all these years I still can't tell whose songs are whose.  The other stylistic unity comes from their choice of backing band, indie-rock darlings Sleater-Kinney (whose music I've never cared for), which presents something of a problem:  frankly, their dry, ultra-drab perfunctory indie-punk drains the performances of all color - in other words, the music is plain and spare to the point of dullness.  "German Farmhouse," doesn't rock out as it intends to, and so gets by the way that every other song here does - solely upon the strength of Forster/McLennan's lyrics, laconic vocal delivery & attitude, and tunesmelodyship.  On the other hand, it is the songs that matter here, and Sleater-Kinney's faceless backseat musicianship never threatens to interfere with the two frontmen's folk-rock/pop.  So how do these 10 (as usual!) tunes stack up to the duo's classic '80s canon? 

Bad news:  they're not improving. 

Good news:  they're not declining. 

Neutral news:  they're running in place.

Remember how in my introduction I observed that the Go-Betweens' artistic curve resembled a straight line?  This is one of those albums I was thinking of when I came to that conclusion.  There are some obvious highlights, such as the sunny pop of "Going Blind," that hoists its deceptive cheeriness right next to "Streets of Your Town," which is to say it's the greatest Go-Betweens song ever if you're in the mood; the opener, "Magic in Here," which must have reassured Go-Betweens fans immensely back in 2000 with its reassuring quality underscored by the quite, erm, magical chorus refrain; the surging, almost-rockin' power-pop of "The Clock,"; the wistfully nostalgiac "Surfing Magazines,"; and the - heck, this is the Go-Betweens, every song has something to recommend for itself:  paragons of quality control these surf-baked Aussies have effortlessly matured into.  The only reason that this earns a lower than average score than the previous 4 or 5 albums is that, as I said, the band performances are rather lackluster.  Oh, and I find the Patti Smith tribute, "When She Sang About Angels," kind of awkward.  Do like the line about wishing that she'd namedropped Tom Verlaine instead of Kurt Cobain, though - the skinny-necked guitar wizard did have more talent than the scoliosis-infected suicide victim, IMAO.

Gene Clark & Carla Olsen - So Rebellious a Lover

So Rebellious a Lover (1987) ****

A surprising late-period comeback that showed that even a few short years from his premature death in 1991, Clark still possessed a surfeit of talent.  Of course he had more than a little help from his friends, as one tell from the billing and cover featuring the lovely Ms. Olson, a husky-voiced alt.country-punker from the Textones who reminds me a bit of Lucinda Williams in voice, looks, and songwriting style.  This is a duet album in the truest sense of the word, being more or less evenly split between solo Carla showcases, solo Gene showcases, and tunes where they duet and harmonize in tandem.   The music?  As you'd expect from the blue-denimed cover, it's straight-up country rock, with a relaxed and understated band loping along pleasantly and professionally, with the occasional touch of instrumental color (Chris Hillman cameos on gorgeous mandolin on "Gypsy Rider").  Likewise, the songs themselves (in this kind of music, these are the focus, after all) are a well-chosen and pleasing mixture of traditional standards, Olson-penned tunes, and Clark-penned tunes, again roughly split proportionally three-ways.  What it adds up to is a first-rate country-rock album, modest in ambition but effortlessly achieving all it sets out to do.

Of the covers, their poignant duet of Woody Guthrie's eulogiac "Deportees" suits the standard far better than the Byrds' sprightliness did, and a reworking of the traditional Olde English ballad, "Fair and Tender Ladies," is nearly as breathtaking in its sad loveliness as "Scarborough Fair," though not nearly as ethereal.  John Fogerty's "Almost Saturday Night," gets a jaunty bluegrass reading that betters the somewhat abrasive original, and to bring matters full circle, Clark performs a soulful reading of another dead Byrds' song, "Hot Burrito #1" (here wisely renamed "I'm Your Toy").  It doesn't erase the memory of the definitive Gram Parsons original, but it's tastefully excellent.  And then there's Joe South's "Don't It Make You Want To Go Home," which is rather....hicky.  But not in a terribly bad way!  Actually pretty good.

But let's move on to the originals.  Olson's "The Drifter," and "Every Angel in Heaven," are compellingly literate and intelligent examples of Poetry-Major Grad-School Dropout country-rock (see: Williams, Lucinda; Kristofferson, Kris), compelling story-songs; but "Are We Still Making Love," is icky-some Harlequin-Romance-Reading Housewife country.  And so now we move on to the tunes you're really waiting to dig in this album for:  the small handful of Gene Clark originals.  Only "Gyspy Rider," truly earns its place in the canon, honestly, but how it does:  turn the lights down low, close your eyes, and drift away - this song is better than a lonesome midnight ramble.  "Del Gato," tells another fine story-song, though melodically it's a bit too similar to "Give My Love to Marie," from a previous album; and "Why Did You Leave," is sad and lovely, but eh - not much more to say about it.