By Ben Neal:

(Written 9/30/2011)

When R.E.M. announced that they would be calling it a day as a band last Wednesday, it produced a plethora of reactions from hard-core fans of the band, from casual, now-disaffected fans, and really anyone with a pulse who lived in the 80s or 90s. For many it was a visceral reaction to a band they have cared about forever was disbanding, but for many the reaction has been less about the band itself, but for what they represented to so many people: an undying institution that defined so much of the last three decades and brought music to a brave new world.

R.E.M. was an odd success story. Most legendary rock bands have a sex symbol lead singer, a generous amount of tabloid fodder, accessible power ballads, and embrace the height of their success; R.E.M. had very little of any of that. During their early 1990s vast popular successes of Out of Time and Automatic for the People, they weren’t interested in touring, their music was always obscure and abstract, and discounting the time Peter Buck mixed sleeping pills and wine aboard a trans-Atlantic flight, R.E.M. never really made headlines for the typical rock-band reasons.

Starting in the early 1980s, the band became a mainstay of college radio and hipsters around the world with singles like “Radio Free Europe” and “Gardening at Night” which ultimately culminated in the band’s first two albums Murmur and Reckoning. The albums initially garnered better reviews than commercial success, but the band quickly developed a cult following in college towns and on the East Coast. The music, already quite abstract, was made the moreso by lead singer Michael Stipe’s trademark mumbling (in the pre-internet era, fans of the band were fond of debating with one another what the lyrics to early songs actually were). A mere two years after Murmur, the band released the surreal, gothic Fables of the Reconstruction, which thematically was an exploration of the mythology of the American South and mostly featured songs on local eccentric figures of Athens, GA.

By this time, Stipe had thankfully been convinced to sing more clearly, but the band was by this point unable to break out of their college radio niche. With Life’s Rich Pageant the band really found its footing, with clearer lyrics, a decidedly and increasingly political agenda, and a sound like we hadn’t really heard before. A continuation of the post-punk movement that combines strong elements of the New York-based New Wave with a healthy dose of Americiana, they were The Byrds crossed with The Velvet Underground crossed with Springsteen.

A couple more indie records (and finally, some mainstream radio play with the often misinterpreted songs “Fall on Me” and “The One I Love”), and noticeably less mumbling from Stipe provided the band a launching point and after 1987’s Document, R.E.M. left their indie roots for a lucrative contract with Warner Bros.

By the time their WB debut, Green, was released in 1989; it marked their sixth album in a mere seven years and being an album that was heavily hyped, and initially was underwhelming to some listeners, but still packs quite the punch. “Orange Crush,” in particular, with Bill Berry’s recognizable drums at the on-set was an innovative song and still holds up well today. This record, also known for the impressive “World Leader Pretend” and R.E.M.’s first foray in touching GLBT issues with “The Wrong Child” in some ways represents, along with their final album Collapse Into Now, the best “sampling” of the variety of music R.E.M. produced. However, their next album really sent them into a stratosphere by themselves: Out of Time a fairly non-commercial folk-country album that produced two of their biggest hits, the disowned by the band “Shiny Happy People” and the surreal “Losing My Religion,” but the real heart of the record were songs like “Near Wild Heaven” and “Texarkana.” To date, this record represents their largest commercial success, and is, the two hits aside, one of their most non-commercial records.

Their next album Automatic for the People is generally considered their best album and continued their popular and critical successes. While some would have expected the band to follow up Out of Time with a faster, more upbeat album; R.E.M. went the other direction with a slow, somber album that largely dealt with issues of death, mortality, and tackled the AIDS crisis head-on. The album produced “Everyone Hurts,” an anthem for the chronically depressed, and glorified long forgotten and tragic entertainers like Andy Kaufman (“Man on the Moon”) and Montgomery Clift (“Monty Got a Raw Deal”). To date, no album makes me feel more at home on a rainy day.

In 1994, they released their follow-up, Monster and the critical and commercial success that had come so easy to them their entire career was suddenly hard to come by. Maybe it’s because they had reached such high peaks that they were doomed to be “repeating themselves” or being “not as good as they once were” in many people’s eyes. Monster was a significant success, but left many people disappointed and cold, and in some ways that was the band’s fault. The album was a glammed up mock-rock record (many people didn’t get the joke) with singles like “What’s the Frequency, Kenneth?” and “Crush with Eyeliner” that lampooned celebrity, sex, and love. During the Monster tour, drummer Bill Berry suffered an aneurysm on-stage in Europe and later left the band in 1996 for a simple life on a farm near Athens. For many casual fans, it gave them permission to move on from the band; for critics it gave them an easy narrative to dismiss the band and say they should have followed Berry’s lead. Indeed, had they called it a day in 1996, their legacy would be something of mythological proportions (like The Clash), but they did the right thing and kept on making high quality music.

Berry’s final album is the woefully under-rated New Adventures in Hi-Fi, an album composed of songs recorded on the ill-fated Monster tour. The album also proved to be quite controversial and alienated some of their middle America following with songs like “New Test Leper” where Michael Stipe declared that he couldn’t say that “I love Jesus” and begged those who judged his lifestyle to “call me a leper.” Still, it’s a fascinating album that produced a great number of back catalog tracks like the aforementioned “Leper,” “The Wake-Up Bomb,” and “Bittersweet Me.”

After Berry left, the band, innovators always, increasingly gravitated towards technology. With 1998’s Up, the band relied on a synthesizer that made the album sound more like Radiohead than R.E.M., but still produced extraordinary songs such as “At My Most Beautiful” and “Hope.” The somber Up, gave way to the sunny Beach Boys-esque Reveal, which features “Imitation of Life” (stealing the title from the long-forgotten Douglas Sirk 1950s film), perhaps the band’s best single and the optimistic tracks “I’ll Take the Rain” and “I’ve Been High.” Their contemporary [U2’s] Bono declared the album to be some of their best work and to this date I’ve yet to find a better album to listen to on a sunny July day by the pool.

Next came their much maligned 2004 effort Around the Sun—an album that certainly has its flaws, but from the haunting lead single “Leaving New York” to the Carvaggio-inspired “Boy in the Well,” I’ve always found the album to be a perceptive, yet somber assessment of the immediate post 9/11 period. Where Around the Sun tried to find hope in dark times, their 2008 effort Accelerate was an angry indictment of the Bush administration with biting songs like Mr. Richards and Houston, but also beautiful tracks like “Hollow Man” and “Supernatural Superserious”, which 15 years earlier would have surely ruled the top of the charts. Accelerate was a true return to form for the band, with an aggressive sound not heard from the band for nearly 20 years and generated solid reviews.

This spring their final album, Collapse Into Now was a mix of the slow, somber songs that populated Around the Sun and the hard-rockers of Accelerate and generated the band’s best reviews since Berry left the band in ’96. Highlights included the beautiful New Orleans-ode “Oh My Heart” and “Discoverer.” As I re-listened to Collapse a few days ago, it’s truly a very poignant and very R.E.M. record. The closing track “Blue”, a stream-of-consciousness track with a cameo by Patti Smith, makes a perfect end to a great career. Stipe sings (or speaks) “This is my time and I am thrilled to be alive….20^th Century collapse into now.”

R.E.M. had contemporaries to be sure—U2 chief among them – but few other bands were as successful for as long, nor did many bands have the impact that four—and later, just three guys who call Athens, GA home – did on our musical world. But R.E.M. was just different from any other rock band. The guys were, well, weird; Stipe increasingly embraced his role as a prominent “queer artist,” and they did things on their own terms. Unlike other rock bands of similar stature, R.E.M. never really strived to be the biggest band in the world; they became so successful oftentimes in spite of themselves. They wanted to be successful, sure, but where U2 or the Stones might take pride in playing the biggest venues—R.E.M. didn’t. Similarly, many bands (oftentimes sincerely) think of themselves as bands with a global conscience, but so many of these bands’ (many of which I love) songs with a global consciousness are songs like “Peace on Earth” or other vague songs with obvious themes. R.E.M. always went a step farther. There were no songs with a generalized “war is bad” message, but rather a litany of songs about Latin American politics, acid rain, pollution, AIDS, corporate downsizing, and so on; and they did so in non-obvious and abstract ways that treated their audience like adults who could read between the lines. Whereas many bands’ bread-and-butter songs were about love and relationships, not many R.E.M. songs were—rather they made songs about a town on the Arkansas-Texas border, on forgotten tragic entertainers, and eccentric senior citizens.

More than anything, what made R.E.M. tick and what made their fans love them is doing things on their own terms. They, inexplicably, refused to tour the two biggest albums—not because of contract disputes, but because they simply didn’t feel like touring. Immediately after signing the biggest contract in music history, they went out and made an inaccessible album like Up. R.E.M. were trailblazers, and showed the music world, and aspiring musicians throughout the world, that an indie sensation and making music for a major label were not incompatible. Before R.E.M., bands had to choose between the two, but R.E.M.’s breakthrough cleared the way for acts like Nirvana, The Decemberists, and Arcade Fire to reach mainstream success while still making the music they wanted to make—all while inventing the genre of alternative rock as we know it.

Their break-up announcement (the decision was made earlier in the summer, yet their label was not informed until just hours before the announcement) was likewise classic R.E.M. A quiet statement on their webpage that stated it rather matter-of-factly: there would be no farewell tour, or a tearful talk show interview; they were just done as a band. For fans, it came as both a shock and resigned expectation. Their lyrics recently had made it clear they were afraid that they would “overstay my welcome” (“All the Best”) and of always being “on repeat…and incomplete” (“Hollow Man”). Ultimately, the band members lived thousands of miles apart and the band had become a side project for the members who all had their own pet projects. This coupled with label politics (the end of their WB contract and new management at the label they had called home for over 20 years), made it seem like a natural end for the band.

R.E.M. was a truly one of a kind band. Every album was singular: from the 80s jangly rock of Life’s Rich Pageant to the folk-alt-country of Out of Time to the glam mock-rock of Monster to the Radiohead-esque Up; each R.E.M. album was an event and a singular work of art. As a recent tribute said no band was as good for as long as R.E.M., and few made the impact they did, both musically and commercially. Few bands come along that have had their impact and done so many things on their own terms. Yes, their production slowed down (10 albums in their first 13 years, compared to 5 in their last 15) and admittedly the product suffered some in later years, but they remained innovators and perpetually fascinating musicians till the end.  As Stipe sings in the beautiful “Oh My Heart” off their final album: “It’s sweet and it’s sad, and it’s true.” That’s R.E.M. in a nutshell.

By Chris Moore:

R.E.M. is a band that I feel like I have always known about, a group that has somehow worked its way into the cultural fabric of the past several decades.  Watching a post-apocalyptic thriller, the chances are better than not that you’ll hear “It’s the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine).”  The number of classic, epic, and usually beautifully simple ballads that they’ve released is staggering: “Losing My Religion,” “Everybody Hurts,” and “The One I Love” to name only a few.

Now, after over thirty years as a band, they have, according to the official announcement on their website, “decided to call it a day as a band… [and] walk away with a great sense of gratitude, of finality, and of astonishment at all we have accomplished.”

So, before you take the time to scour the internet, looking for articles, yearning for some sign that this might all somehow be a mistake, allow me to save you some time.  First: as of this writing, my best advice would be:

Skip the articles and go directly to the R.E.M. H.Q. official home page.

That’s where you’ll find the band’s official announcement, direct messages from each of the band members, and the Warner Brothers press release.  All the other articles I’ve read have simply copied and pasted from these sources, and added little or nothing to the conversation.  The only other vital piece of information has come from owner of the R.E.M. fan community Murmurs and former Senior Vice President of Emerging Technology at Warner Bros. Records Ethan Kaplan, who has suggested that internal pressures at the label may have been the catalyst for this breakup.  For that, you should cruise on over to Wikipedia and prepare to hate all things corporate even more than you might have before.

I suppose there isn’t much to say right now.  There isn’t much to do, except cue up some R.E.M. on your iPod, reminisce about their hits and misses, and prepare for the slew of retrospective articles and “essential songs” playlists that are certain to saturate the world wide web in the coming weeks.  While I wait, perhaps I’ll add my own brief story to those even now being written around the world:

My knowledge of R.E.M. in a vague sense finally passed away the day I stood, as a college student between classes, in the aisle of Best Buy, interested in their greatest hits.  Of course, there wasn’t one definitive collection, so I stood pondering between the best of the I.R.S. years and the best of the Warner Bros. years.  Eventually, I chose the pricier third option of buying them both!

What I heard didn’t thrill me at first.  And, even to this day, I understand the opinion I’ve heard from others that “all their songs sound the same.”  That being said, discovering the music of R.E.M. has been like an adventure for me, one that began not with the greatest hits, but with 2008′s Accelerate.  The grungy, subversive rock and roll vitality of this album turned me on to the band in a way that none of their other music did or has since.  Since then, I have been picking up their back catalog one used CD and one remastered Deluxe Edition at a time.

While it has been a very rewarding experience and I’ve developed a serious appreciation, and even a love, for R.E.M., nothing I’ve heard has equaled the force of Accelerate (and I realize I’m about the only person on the planet who feels this way).  This year’s Collapse Into Now is a marvelous record, if only for the manner in which they merged the energy of Accelerate with the classic sound they created in their youth and developed over a long career.

I will end with a plea to all those paid writers out there now, preparing their pieces for the major magazines and websites they work for:  Please avoid the mundane reductions of this band’s massive career.  And please — pretty please — don’t add to the “R.E.M. had declined recently” rhetoric that is still out there.  The late nineties and early 2000s was a period of decline to be certain, but they had recently undergone an infusion of energy and vitality that I, for one, have been excited about — it has been the one force, of all their various talents expressed throughout the years, that has interested me in their music — and it will be sorely missed.

RATING:  4.5 / 5 stars

By Chris Moore:

Sometimes, the big publications just get it all wrong.

In his Rolling Stone review of R.E.M.’s Live at the Olympia in Dublin, Will Hermes writes, “This two-CD/one-DVD document captures intimate, occasionally great performances.”  He goes on to add, “If Michael Stipe sometimes sounds like he’s reading lyrics off his computer, it’s because, well, he actually was.”

If I have to read one more cleverly phrased review bestowing a mediocre rating upon a release I love, I swear I’ll lose it.

Live at the Olympia in Dublin spills over with positive energy, the kind of energy that leaves fans breathless and voiceless after a night of singing, screaming, and giddily laughing.  Stipe’s voice is hardly robotic, as Hermes might have you understand.  His vocals alternate between smooth and clear deliveries at some points, alternately cracking in all the right places at others.

And the computer is hardly a crutch.  It’s more a means of on-stage schtick for Stipe and the band.  It is apparent that he is getting a kick out of reading others’ interpretations of his eighties-era, admittedly very mumbled lyrics.  (He has since come over to the good side, including lyrics in all R.E.M. booklets since Up.)

And it’s genuinely funny to hear him reading them, reflecting on them, and moving on to the present day, namely his evolved sensibilities and more recent material.

What really gets me is that Hermes refers to the tracks I had most looked forward to — the Accelerate outtakes — as “solid.”  This is an overstatement.  I was far from impressed with the outtakes, and although I had so hoped to tout them as the forgotten gems of their 2008 sessions, I simply had to admit to myself, Well, I suppose these guys knew what they were doing when they assembled Accelerate.

And that is precisely what has renewed my interest in R.E.M.  I’ve always liked Stipe’s attitude, and I’m continually drawn to R.E.M.’s unique, raw-but-refined instrumental sound.  And yet I’ve been hard-pressed to find any albums that stand out to me, certainly not enough to stand up to some of the great albums of all time.

Then, along came Accelerate.

R.E.M.'s "Live at the Olympia in Dublin" (2009)

Their 2008 studio album — their fourteenth at that — is a tremendous record.  There are catchy electric hooks, acoustic underpinnings, great lyrics, and Michael Stipe’s perfectly ragged vocals seasoning and binding it all together.  What truly distinguishes this record is the energy that simply oozes from the seams.  And this doesn’t come across as some aging group of rock and rollers embarking on a pitiful attempt to recapture past heights — after all, R.E.M. never was known for being all that rocking a band.

Watch the music video for “Living Well is the Best Revenge,” and you’ll immediately observe the youthful, creative force of a group of men who love what they do.  The song is performed while driving around in a car, acoustic guitars squeezed into the small vehicle, the steering wheel converted — while driving, mind you — into the percussion instrument of choice.  It looks like they’re having a lot of fun, and that comes through more than anything else on the record.

Rolling Stone reviewer Hermes apparently longs for the days when “Stipe’s vibrato-seizure vocals and Rorschach-blot ‘lyrics’ clung to songs exploding at the seams.”  He comments that, instead, “The stitching is tighter now, and drummer Bill Rieflin often holds things together too neatly.”

Say what you will about Rieflin’s drumming — and it’s not groundbreaking or award winning, but it gets the job done.  I draw the line at his allusion-dropping, not-so-subtle riff on Stipe’s vocals, as if to imply that something has been lost.

If that’s true, then something has been lost on me.

R.E.M., as Live at the Olympia in Dublin continues to suggest, is more alive and well than they have been in a good long time.  If living well is truly the best revenge, then Stipe, Mills, and Buck are bound to have the last laugh.  Their on-stage personas, musical chemistry, and ability to dig deeply into their catalog to populate their shifting set lists — never mind their willingness to exercise their unfinished work during live, recorded performances — continue to breathe new life and vibrancy into all their work, both past and present.

If you’re ready to live in the moment, then you should really give these guys a listen.

By Chris Moore:

March 2011 was one of those months (at least in new music news) that make other months pale in comparison.  As you flip through the albums highlighted below, I hope you’ll find something to catch your attention.  With a couple notable exceptions, there were more quality releases unveiled in March than probably will be unveiled for the rest of the year.  This is not to suggest that there aren’t more positive reviews coming — because there are a couple of very positive ones — but it should be taken to suggest that there are mediocre reviews coming in more than equal ratio to what you’ll find below.  So, enjoy, and I’ll hope to see you back soon!

The Baseball Project, Vol. 2 The Baseball Project   Producer: -   Released: March 1, 2011 Rating: 3.5/5 stars Top Two Tracks: “Buckner’s Bolero” & “Don’t Call Them Twinkies”

For the follow-up to a low-key, sports-themed side project, High and Inside is an entertaining and educational album that demonstrates an impressive range, musically as well as in terms of baseball trivia.  Thus, the Baseball Project lives up to its name, a largely straight-up rock album heavy on lyrics and smooth, lush harmonies. The bouncy brightness of tracks like “Chin Music” (the song which contains the title in its lyrics, celebrating the use of “chin music” as a strategy) contrasts with the contemplative, sober feel of such songs as “Here Lies Carl Mays” and “Buckner’s Bolero” (a brilliant study in the art of the what-if).  Meanwhile, songs like “1976” sound like they could have been ripped off a jangly sixties LP, while others like “Don’t Call Them Twinkies” provide clear signposts that this is a modern record.  Guest vocalist Craig Finn’s lead performance on the latter track is a highlight of the album.  Bringing every bit of the lyricism and nearly-spat-out vocal delivery of his Hold Steady recordings, Finn unrolls a passionate appeal via an intimately thorough review of Twins’ history.  This is perhaps what works so well on the record, what translates so well: each member is clearly fervently invested in a baseball team. The range of teams, time periods, and perspectives represented across Volume 2: High and Inside is impressive, and along with the range of styles employed, ensures the success of the collection as a complete thought.  All told, the songs cover a broad array while also driving home the suggestion that there is simply too much trivia, too many stories, to ever be told in one or two volumes.  There is something here for everyone, whether you enjoy the subtly tongue-in-cheek romp “Panda and the Freak,” the gorgeous acoustic balladry in “Pete Rose Way,” the intimate sing-along “Fair Weather Fans,” the overly serious tone of “Tony (Boston’s Chosen Son),” the hero celebration of “Ichiro Goes to the Moon,” the cocky strut of “The Straw that Stirs the Drink” (balanced brilliantly with the background singers), or the quasi-humorous warning “Look Out Mom.” All told, High and Inside defies expectations for this sort of side project, and  is in fact one of the strongest efforts of the year.

The Valley Eisley   Producer: Gary Leach, Austin Deptula, Eisley   Released: March 1, 2011 Rating: 4/5 stars Top Two Tracks: “Ambulance” & “I Wish”

Apparently, for both Eisley and Noah and the Whale, the third time around is the charm.  Both bands have delivered strongly defined, carefully developed #3 efforts, Eisley’s being marked for its seamless integration of pensive vocals and foundational piano textures with electric guitar and drums that elevate The Valley to the full status of rock album. There are slower songs to be certain, “Kind” being perhaps the most subdued, but most songs have sort of edge.  There is “Mr. Moon,” a song that starts out quietly but soon builds into a full pace multi-vocal attack, or the gorgeously moody closer “Ambulance,” which builds from solo piano ballad into a full-on arena rock-worthy epic chorus. Overall, The Valley is more than listener-friendly, offering catchy choruses and upbeat verses, yet also very ambitious, particularly on songs like the title track where strings are added and vocals are layered upon vocals.  Sara Barreilles-worthy piano tracks like “Watch It Die” are juxtaposed with riff-ridden songs like “Sad.”  Just when the mood drops, as on “Better Love,” Eisley returns with a beautiful, charged song like “I Wish.” All in all, the attention to production and arrangement makes The Valley one of the year’s strongest releases and yet another reason why March was such an impressive new music month.

Collapse Into Now R.E.M.  Producer: Jacknife Lee & R.E.M. Released: March 7, 2011 Rating: 3.5/5 stars Top Two Tracks: “Uberlin” & “All the Best”

When, prior to March 7, I read several headlines referring to Collapse Into Now as a return to R.E.M.’s “classic” sound, I was less than enthusiastic.  After all, I have yet to find an album from anywhere remotely near to their aforementioned classic period that I would unflinchingly award with five stars.  There can be no denying that they created a sound that one might argue – without exaggeration – created a standard for and perhaps pioneered the alternative rock genre: crunchy guitars, interesting but not overly complicated bass and drums, and stark vocals only ever lightly supported.  In short, they stripped away the frills, riffs, and accents that had edged toward being overvalued in popular music before they entered the scene.  However, 2008’s Accelerate was a return to life from their mid-nineties to early-2000s wasteland of often spineless adult contemporary “rock,” a period that was peppered with some incredible songs and yet few strong albums.  Accelerate truly rocked with raw vocals and riffs and didn’t stop for a breath across eleven tracks. To lose all that sounded less like a slogan in support of the record and more like an ominous warning to lower my expectations. Not so. Collapse Into Now somehow manages to combine the defining features of their earlier sound with the vitality they had regained in 2008.  As is always impressive in a band that has spanned three decades with recognizable music, this latest release offers up songs for the ages, such as “Uberlin,” a track that will surely be included on any decent R.E.M. essential collection going forward from here.  Their sense of rawness and humor is still very much intact, as evidenced on “Mine Smell Like Honey,” while tracks like the adjacent “Walk It Back” recall the most tender moments of their career. What restricts Collapse Into Now, what limits its ultimate appeal, can be heard in the flatness of the repetition in the lead single, “Discoverer.”  Additionally, there are the moments of experimentation, particularly in the latter half, as in “Alligator, Aviator, Autopilot, Antimatter” and the closer “Blue.”  These moments of divergence from the model established earlier on the record waver occasionally in their entertainment value (read: lack of attention to attention spans) and, less often, their intellectual value, and yet this is also one of the more promising aspects of the release.  After all, it would be all too easy to fall into the “classic” groove and churn out a predictable release without much risk involved, without vigor required.  Instead, we have the living, breathing Collapse Into Now.

No Color The Dodos   Producer: John Askew Released: March 15, 2011 Rating: 3.5/5 stars Top Two Tracks: “Companions” & “Don’t Try and Hide It”

The Dodos, on their new disc No Color, cleverly walk the line between instrumental immediacy and more predictable riffing.  The ultimate result is a potentially trance-inducing nine-track sequence of acoustic music that creates mood through a responsive attention to subtleties and an elusive lyrical approach.  As evidenced by tracks like “Good,” the Dodos are comfortable leaping from restrained to frenzied, sometimes without much warning prior to the transition.  This is good, as all but two of the nine tracks on No Color stretch past the four minute mark, the second and third songs clocking in at six minutes each.  This sort of time commitment to songs that lack clear, catchy choruses to act as anchors must needs be balanced by some other factor; in this case, it is a sensitivity to mood that modulates several times per song, adjusted with the introduction of keys and strings, as in tracks like “Sleep.” I’m not certain whether they released a single, but if they did, it should certainly have been “Don’t Try and Hide It,” the closest they come to a song that will get stuck in your head.  Still, it is “Companions” that easily springs to the fore when deciding on the most textured, instrumentally impressive, and, frankly, beautiful track. Overall, No Color is a finely sequenced and intelligently balanced disc that will spin and spin (or digital album that will… play and play?) without triggering a desire for more: my vote for best pleasant-trance-inducing music of the year.

Last Night on Earth Noah & the Whale   Producer: Charlie Fink & Jason Lader Released: March 7, 2011 Rating: 4.5/5 stars Top Two Tracks: “Tonight’s the Kind of Night” & “Give It All Back”

Every so often, an album comes along that I didn’t expect, one like Noah and the Whale’s third album Last Night on Earth, and blows me away.  Before March 7, I didn’t even know they were a band.  Truth be told, I was drawn in by their album cover: retro to be certain, yet just artful enough to be eye-catching. Sonically, listening to Last Night on Earth is like jumping in Doc Brown’s DeLorean and getting off circa the first Back to the Future film when rock still ruled, though it was synthesizer-drenched and put a premium on experimenting with new technologies over the basic set of real instruments.  Vocally, Charlie Fink sounds like the latest “new Dylan,” or perhaps a “new Petty,” and the overall aura of the album might draw “new Springsteen” references, as well. Regardless of these throwback references, Noah and the Whale is a truly authentic force, lyrically a product of no other time but our own.  The figure in “Life is Life” may throw “his back onto the back” of an “eighties car,” but it is “run down,” and ultimately, it is a bus that transports the boy in “Tonight’s the Kind of Night” to a land of opportunity “where everything could change.” As on “Old Joy,” the past is celebrated in some ways, though the point is less nostalgia than a warning to “Forget the things that get away / Don’t dream of yesterday.”  Photos kept in drawers reveal “bad hair cuts” and cigarettes, poor decisions from past lives, along with memories of being “a lustless romantic trying hard to impress.”  In putting this latter sentiment into words and song, as in so many ways, this album is, as Fink would say, a “victory for the kids who believe in rock and roll.” Some might write off the more buoyant tracks like “L.I.F.E.G.O.E.S.O.N.,” but if they do they will miss Joey’s “black and blue body” and brandy-drinking “rock and roll survivor” Lisa going “down on almost anyone.”  In a very dark – and perhaps a very real – way, this track is about cutting ties with regret and being at peace with life as it is.  Fink adeptly slips in a note that “to a writer / the truth is no big deal,” as if inviting us to reimagine our own pasts, or at least to believe in the “the kind of night where everything could change.” If only for the 33 minutes across which this feels possible, Last Night on Earth achieves something special through well-written tracks aptly performed and carefully arranged: all through rock and roll, albeit rock that conjures the tones of a lost time.  It may not be large-scale enough to reach the heights of last year’s eighties homage (Arcade Fire’s The Suburbs), but in my book Noah and the Whale have twice the imact in half the time.

Meyrin Fields Broken Bells   Producer: Danger Mouse Released: March 29, 2011 Rating: 2/5 stars Top Two Tracks: “Windows” & “An Easy Life”

I’ve been interested in the Broken Bells sound ever since a friend played me the lead single to their debut release.  My respect has climbed with every listen to that album, particularly the ones when I was writing my review last year, picking out the nuances and influence-blending that make Broken Bells such a subdued yet brilliant project.  This being said, although I was clearly one of the first to be excited by the prospect of four new songs from Danger Mouse and James Mercer, sometimes it pays to wait until an album’s worth of top-notch tracks are prepared.  And, as much as I detest the perpetuators of this repackaging ploy, the four tracks on the Meyrin Fields EP would have made for very strong bonus tracks attached to Broken Bells. As a work unto themselves, they fall short of highly listenable.  And, clocking in at under twelve minutes, this “EP” plays more like a two-for-one single release.  (Or, to more precisely represent the price point, a two-for-two single release.)  The title track begins with grit and attitude, yet relaxes into essentially the same groove for three minutes.  “Windows,” easily the standout, adds a funky bass line to the usual mix and several segments.  “An Easy Life” is perhaps the most reminiscent of Broken Bells (2010), which is a good thing indeed, while “Heartless Empire” clearly deserves its place, last on this release.

Rolling Papers Wiz Khalifa   Producers: Stargate, Jim Jonsin, Benny Blanco, I.D. Labs, Papa Justifi, Oak, King David, Bei Maejor, Noel “Detail” Fisher, Lex Luger Released: March 29, 2011 Rating: 2/5 stars Top Two Tracks: “Black and Yellow” & “Fly Solo”

Rarely has an album with such a well-attuned balance between inventive sounds and pop mentalities been layered with such regularly insipid lyrics.  While I still tread lightly in my reviews of the hip hop genre – understanding that I, in my suburban white-breadedness, may never truly relate to the timeless themes of “bitches and champagne,” as Khalifa sings – I simply refuse to believe that an album like Rolling Papers, with its beautiful backing vocals, ambitious arrangements, and hints at more insightful commentary, is not shooting for the lowest common denominator with its constant topical return to hos, weed, and partying.  Now, don’t get me wrong: I enjoy a good song about hos, weed, and partying just as much as the next listener, but when nearly every song is layered thickly with misogynistic, drug-soaked lyricism, I begin to feel numbed to the insensitivity.  Clearly, Wiz Khalifa has more potential than he is capitalizing on, evidenced by the big, bad swagger of the gorgeously catchy “Black and Yellow” and the acoustic framework of the surprisingly bright power pop track “Fly Solo.”  Of course, he makes good on the double entendre implicit in the title, played out in “Roll Up,” and more fully explicated in a recent Rolling Stone magazine review. The middle of the album truly dips in quality, though the tracks are musically inventive, including interesting usage of electric guitar and synthesizers on what is perhaps the worst track, “Hopes and Dreams,” second only perhaps to “Star of the Show” and third to “Top Floor.”  “Wake Up” is more likely to induce the opposite reaction, though the middle shows off a vocal sensitivity not present elsewhere.  “The Race” is hardly excellent yet prominently displays Khalifa’s mastery of beats and catchy tunesmithing. It is, however, the penultimate track, “Rooftops,” that perhaps best hints at Khalifa’s potential when he juggles bald-faced materialism and misogyny with social commentary, listing off his conquests, affecting cocky, yet singing, “Used to not be allowed in the building, now we on the rooftops, rooftops.” For all the issue I take with the uneven quality of the album, it is bookended well, “When I’m Gone” serving well as the opener and “Cameras” aptly closing the disc.  All in all, Khalifa has my attention, and I can only hope that his next record contains lyrics that are as thoughtful as his musical arrangements.

All Eternals Deck The Mountain Goats   Producer: Brandon Eggleston, John Congleton, Scott Solter, Erik Rutan Released: March 29, 2011 Rating: 3.5/5 stars Top Two Tracks: “Estate Sale Sign” & “Prowl Great Cain”

This album resets the standard for me when I hear terms like “minimalist” and “lo-fi.”  For a professional full-band recording, it is as stripped down as they come, essentially an acoustic guitar, bass, keyboard, and light drums on most tracks.  Rarely do they play at full speed, and when they do, it is rarely all at once. This understandably “cultivates a space,” opens a gap that, in this case, is filled admirably: lyrically.  In a manner that is rare of modern music, All Eternals Deck places a premium on the words so much as to subjugate the music to them. As a result, the new Mountain Goats disc is not as eminently listenable and reliably re-listenable as, say, the Decemberists, but the words are clear and strong.  From the vampire metaphor in the opener (that is a metaphor, right?…) to the numerous references which range from Biblical to pop-cultural, the tracks are consistently intellectually engaging, though the minimalism does feel… well, a bit minimal at times.  This is frustrating, as the band is clearly very capable of balancing high-octane performance with engaging communication (see: “Estate Sale Sign”). Regardless of its shortcomings, All Eternals Deck is a clever, winning collection of performances, and they continue to assert themselves as a thoughtful band.  Having been first introduced to the Mountain Goats via Steven Page’s cover of “Lion’s Teeth,” these tracks have made me all the more interested to find and hear the MG original sooner rather than later.