Tag: Material Issue

Favourite “New” Music – May 2023

Mick Jagger famously said (though the exact wording is contested) that he’d rather be dead than playing “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” in his 40s. Mick turns 80 this year and he’s still at it, but you can’t deny that there is a cult around youth in pop music. The so-called 27 Club of artists who died at that age includes Mick’s band mate Brian Jones, along with lots of people for whom last names are enough of an introduction, like Hendrix, Joplin, Cobain and Winehouse. The attention paid to this odd phenomenon is out of proportion to its reality as a mere cultural footnote, since it ignores the many, many more artists – such as, say, Mick Jagger and the rest of the Rolling Stones – who carried on making music into their 70s and beyond.

Two of those elder statesmen, Paul Simon and Smokey Robinson, released albums in May, and they reflect rather different approaches to life at its outer edge.

Unless you’re listening carefully, Simon’s album, “Seven Psalms”, can come across as ponderous and overly serious, the title pretentious enough before you get to the very pretentious apparent lack of song titles (which exist, he just makes you look for them) and lots of references to “the Lord”. But it’s actually rather fun: shambling and messy. Simon is like that guy in the corner at a party who brought his guitar for no good reason and is just picking away and accidentally stumbles onto a melody that works and just plays it out, coming back to it whenever energy or ambition flag. He even gets the pretty girl who he’s been side-eying all night to jump in a few times. It really is an older person’s record: he’s earned the right to tell the story his way: meandering, languid, taking his time – like your mother taking 20 minutes (including a stop for tea biscuits with jam) to tell you the 2-minute tale of your uncle’s medical concern. (Sorry, mom!)

Meanwhile, Smokey is also at that party, but while Paul is getting spiritual, Mr. Robinson is trying to get some action, if the title of “Gasms” didn’t already make that clear. His voice still sounds great (where Simon is basically talk-singing most of the time now), and the result is a lush, relaxed (he knows he’s going to score), bedroom-eyes-in-musical-form record. It’s like they are playing out the Prince duality – the spirit vs the flesh – and in this case, the flesh wins, at least initially. I liked the Simon record better on the second play (I was bored and barely paying attention the first time out), but Smokey held up nicely on replay, too. I suspect “Seven Psalms” will continue to grow for me, while “Gasms” will remain the lovely gem it is right now.

They don’t all go out this way. Anne Murray gave up singing for pay (I assume she still sings while working on her sourdough, or whatever the hell retired multimillionaires do with their days) at age 63 before she (her words, not mine) stopped being good at it. Tina Turner, having proven for any doubters her greatness, released her last full album of new material just before turning 60. But it’s hard to walk away like that: Frank Sinatra retired at 55, then was back two years later.

The artists below who are still with us are (mostly) much younger, and maybe some of them will still be making albums (or whatever we’re doing with music then) when they hit 80, too. For now, they at least pleased me more this past month than did the above masters, which is no small feat.

  • The Byrds – The Notorious Byrd Brothers (1968)
  • Young Black Teenagers – Young Black Teenagers (1991) (That none of them were Black was permissible only because Public Enemy had their backs.)
  • Gin Blossoms – New Miserable Experience (1992) (Knowing none of their songs, I saw them open for (I think) Elvis Costello while touring for this record. A group of teenage girls in front of us sang along to every tune and danced ecstatically, then left before the headliner came out. I didn’t understand it then. I do now.)
  • Material Issue – Destination Universe (1992)
  • The Muffs – Blonder and Blonder (1995) (I listened to a lot of female-fronted punk and post-punk this month, which is where this and the next three albums fit in.)
  • The Kowalskis – All Hopped up on Goofballs (1999)
  • Tina & the Total Babes – She’s So Tuff (2001)
  • Manda & the Marbles – More Seduction (2003)
  • Tinted Windows – Tinted Windows (2009) (I am unable to explain why it took me this long to listen to an album from members of Cheap Trick, Smashing Pumpkins, Fountains of Wayne and Hansen.)
  • Cossbysweater – Cossbysweater (2013) (Proving that Allie Goertz is much more than an object of nerd desire for Nerf Herder.)
  • Tacocat – This Mess Is A Place (2019)
  • Indigo De Souza – All of This Will End (2023)
  • The National – First Two Pages of Frankenstein (2023)
  • Joseph – The Sun (2023)
  • The Utopiates – The Sun Also Rises (2023)
  • Rae Sremmurd – Sremm 4 Life (2023)
  • Kesha – Gag Order (2023)
  • Alex Lahey – The Answer Is Always Yes (2023)
  • Blues Lawyer – All in Good Time (2023) (I don’t think they actually are blues lawyers, since a newish indie band can’t afford such a lifestyle, but maybe this record starts them on that path.)
  • Sleaford Mods – UK GRIM (2023) (There is something nutbar about these guys that I find irresistible.)

Favourite “New” Music – April 2023

I would never call myself a fan of Gordon Lightfoot, and I don’t have a story connecting me to one of his songs, because none of them ever played a part in a significant moment in my life. But they were always there, part of the CanCon 30% coming through my radio speaker, and I guess that means I took him for granted. That, of course, was a mistake.

My friend Alan Sutherland did not take him for granted: for our major English paper in Grade 12, he wanted to write about Lightfoot’s “Canadian Railroad Trilogy”. I should have taken that as a cue to listen more carefully, but overall I wasn’t giving Alan’s musical loves enough respect: it took me 40 years after all to clue in to the genius that was Ritchie Blackmore. At least I developed some appreciation for Lightfoot at a less leisurely pace.

I always liked “Sundown” (which my wife intensely dislikes) and “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald”. I hated “If You Could Read My Mind” – my “Sundown” – and that was not helped by the dance version cover. But in recent years, it’s grown on me considerably, and I sort of love its grandiose (“In a castle dark or a fortress strong / With chains upon my feet”) expressions of love and heartbreak. If you just let yourself wallow in it, I’m pretty sure you’d end up babbling in the corner.

Lightfoot never seemed cool, but that was only because he was cool in that understated Canadian way: he was so cool that you never saw it happening. (His former neighbour Aubrey should’ve been paying closer attention.) He was a songwriter’s songwriter, and greats like Dylan and Prine respected his craft. His time at the forefront of pop culture – to the extent he ever was there – was over before 1980, but we never stopped hearing his old hits on the radio. He continued to write and record and perform, invulnerable to trends, still his own unique artist. His importance in Canadian culture never really dimmed even though the hits stopped coming: he remained to the end one of those artists who sort of defined the country. And though the music lives on, it feels wrong that he won’t be here anymore to perform it.

I didn’t listen to any Lightfoot in April, but here are some other records that I did love last month.

  • Tom Verlaine – Tom Verlaine (1979)
  • Wipers – Is This Real? (1980)
  • Slint – Spiderland (1991) (The soundtrack to the gloomiest Thursday afternoon you ever spent, this is bourbon-soaked shoegaze that burrows deep and drags you along in its melancholy wake.)
  • Material Issue – International Pop Overthrow (1991)
  • Tricky – Maxinquaye (1995)
  • The Dollyrots – Eat My Heart Out (2004)
  • Kid Confucius – Kid Confucius (2005)
  • Go Betty Go – Nothing Is More (2005)
  • Nerf Herder – Rockingham (2016) (These guys, like Bowling for Soup below, make me smile, and that’s more than enough – the high energy and bouncy tunes are a bonus.)
  • Pkew Pkew Pkew – Pkew Pkew Pkew (2016) (Canadian punks, including an ode to predrinking.)
  • Bowling for Soup – Drunk Dynasty (2016)
  • The Pretty Flowers – Golden Beat Sessions (2019) (They do such a great job of making these songs personal, it took four tracks before I realized that every cut was a cover.)
  • The Allergies – Say the Word (2020)
  • Mo Troper – Natural Beauty (2020)
  • The 1975 – Being Funny in a Foreign Language (2022)
  • cheerbleederz – even in jest (2022)
  • The Greeting Committee – Dandelion (2022)
  • Dumb – Pray 4 Tomorrow (2022)
  • Andrew McMahon in the Wilderness – Tilt At The Wind No More (2023) (Catchy pop melodies with theatrical flair and emo bent.)
  • 100 gecs – 10,000 gecs (2023) (Delightfully odd and oddly delightful, their sound is messy and overstuffed, but with a keen melodic awareness)