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Steven Page (with the Art of Time Ensemble)’s “A Singer Must Die” – The Weekend Review

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By Chris Moore:

RATING:  3.5 / 5  stars

According to Wikipedia, A Singer Must Die falls under the “orchestrated pop” genre.  If that is accurate, then this is my first orchestrated pop purchase.

And it’s a good one.

Along with the Art of Time Ensemble, Steven Page arranged and performed ten covers — if you include the Barenaked Ladies’ “Running Out of Ink” — that run the emotional gamut and mark a departure from the instrumental sound we’ve come to associate with Steven Page, both as a member of BnL and as the main force behind the Vanity Project.  Here and there throughout his recorded career, there have been strings or horns, but this is the first major release on which he is backed almost entirely by the orchestration of an ensemble.

And yet, the overall tones, themes, and vocal textures are still very much the Steven Page we’ve come to know, particularly in the music he has written and performed this decade.  Page always seemed to be the more serious one in his often comedic BnL partnership with Ed Robertson — the “It’s All Been Done” to Robertson’s “One Week,” if you will.  Throughout this decade, though, Page’s preferences have swung even more to the extreme, considering the beautiful, heartbreaking ballads of Maroon (2000), the topical tracks like “Celebrity” and “War on Drugs” on Everything to Everyone (2003), and the sober “Bad Day” on the otherwise upbeat Snacktime! (2008).

In a sense, the conception of this project could be traced as far back as the 2007 Barenaked Ladies Are Men track “Running Out of Ink,” on which Page voiced the narrator’s social and personal downward spiral made all the more distressing by a loss of creative energy, the bag of of all he’s ever written being tossed off a bridge, bleeding ink, and sinking out of sight by the close of the song.

Now that Page has struck out on his own, the pressures described in that song must be an even more real force for him.  As a solo artist, he will either sink or swim as a result of his efforts alone, and that must be a frightening, if thrilling, experience after two decades in a five-piece band.

A Singer Must Die carries all the maturity and experience you would expect from an artist who has spent more time in the headlines than on record the past few years. The drug-related arrest.  The breakup.

Enough.

At last, Page is back on the top of his game, having released a record that relaxes and frets, breathes and pants for breath, escapes and runs head on into pain and sorrow — an excellent record.

Steven Page (with the Art of Time Ensemble)'s "A Singer Must Die" (2010)

Steven Page's "A Singer Must Die" (2010)

The piano and string-heavy “Lion’s Teeth” kicks off the album on a suspenseful note, tension building with every second that passes.  Page builds up to a near-scream as he sings, “And my arms get sore, and my palms start to sweat; and the tears roll down my face ’til my cheeks are hot and red and soaking wet…”

He goes on to sing, “There’s no good way to end this — anyone can see there’s just great big you and little old me.”

What a way to kick off his first individual effort following the break with BnL!

The greatest strength of A Singer Must Die is the arrangement of tracks.  The opener is followed by the initially calm and beautiful opening verses of Elvis Costello’s “I Want You.”  Fiona Apple set the bar high for cover versions of this track, and Page was up to the task, even if the middle to end of the song suffers from some self-indulgent orchestration.

Next comes a track that surprised me — I never knew I could enjoy a Rufus Wainright song.  Sounding like it came from an early twentieth century crooner’s repertoire, “Foolish Love” further advances the feeling expressed on “I Want You,” if from a different angle.

Thanks to the Art of Time Ensemble, “Running Out of Ink” is even more manic and frantic here than the original Barenaked Ladies version was, and this is saying something.  For me, this is the thematic centerpiece of the album, a song originally co-written by Page himself.  Throughout rock music history, the greatest songwriters have turned to covers when they were themselves “running out of ink.”

Thankfully, Page is not, as he has set the release date for his first solo album proper for later this year.

“A Singer Must Die” and “Taxi Ride” are excellent companion pieces, the former expressing the dangers of self-expression with fitting sarcasm and the latter expressing a bittersweet departure that includes near-hallucinations and the sad, pleading, distressed vocals that few can pull off so convincingly and expressively as Page can.

If “Taxi Ride” is the low point, emotionally speaking, of this record, then “Tonight We Fly” is just the pick-me-up that it needs.  This is a case of perfect lyrics, perfect performance, and perfect timing.

“Virtute the Cat Explains Her Departure” is easily the most heartrending track on A Singer Must Die, and is an exemplary case of Page’s ability to translate a fairly straightforward indie rock track by the Weakerthans into an emotive, beautiful masterpiece.  If there is one track that makes me think of the sad (if not so shocking) news of Page’s departure from BnL last year, this is it.

“For We Are the King of the Buidoir” is, unsurprisingly, a wonderfully quirky song originally written and performed by the Magnetic Fields.  Again, timing is everything as Page’s spot-on rendition of this little gem is right where it needed to be, as a transition between the solemnity of “Virtute” and the frenzied madness of “Paranoid Android,” in and of itself a perfectly placed cover of the Radiohead classic.  After all, what better way to conclude a post-breakup solo album than with lines like “ambition makes you look pretty ugly, kicking and squealing” and “when I am king, you will be first against the wall with your opinion which is of no consequence at all”?

I will be the first in line for Steven Page’s first solo album of original material when it arrives later this year, but for now, A Singer Must Die has served to at least whet my appetite for new material from a man who is arguably one of the most talented singer/songwriters of the past two decades, alongside others like Ben Folds, Elliott Smith, Jakob Dylan, Eddie Vedder, and Jeff Tweedy who have shaped the sound of modern rock music.

If A Singer Must Die is a necessary transition effort before an entirely original release, then it is a promising one.  The choices here are excellent — both obscure and ambitious — and the performances are first rate.

In the end, though, a singer’s death may be compelling, but his imminent rebirth is all the more exciting…

The TOP TWENTY-FIVE SONGS of 2010

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The TOP TWENTY-FIVE SONGS of 2010

At last, we arrive at what is, for me, the most difficult and perhaps the most controversial list of the year: the best songs.  Without fear of exaggeration, I can honestly tell you that I’ve revised this list a minimum of eight times since I first wrote it.  After all that effort, I’m no closer to feeling like I’ve assembled the perfect list.

Thankfully, that is not — and should never be — the point.

I recently read an anti-top ten list article posted by musician/writer John Roderick, and retweeted by Steven Page.  His essential arguments made sense to me on an intellectual level.  After all, music can’t be quantified.  And it is in our contemporary nature as a society to want all things quantified and commodified.  This is, at best, a misguided — and, at worst, corrupt — frame of mind.  If we are to believe that numbers may be accurately assigned as signifiers for people, even for songs, then something deeper, more intuitive has been lost.  This is not the Age of Reason; we do not function solely on the basis of our minds and logical thought, nor should we desire to.

This being said, I wouldn’t want to live in a world without the top ten list!

The top ten (or twenty, or fifty, or whatever) list is not supposed to be a perfect, accurate interpretation of the worth of the year’s songs.  If that were even possible, that would be boring.

The point of the top ten list is, as writer, to wade waist-deep into the year’s music — that which you love, that which you hated, that which you’d forgotten about, that which you’ve been convinced to give a second chance — and to try to make some sense out of the glorious sonic confusion.   As a reader of the list, the point is to feel your soul confirmed in some choices and to rage on fanatically against the injustices of inferior albums being raised to undeserved heights.

This is the urgent, enjoyable culmination of twelve months of experiencing new music.  While others were mindlessly soaking in sounds through the radio’s narrow blinders, you were out there on the front lines, listening to full albums, making yourself vulnerable to disappointment in the face of new releases by artists you love, and endeavoring to hear bands and artists you never imagined yourself even listening to — never mind liking(!) — in the past.

This is the process we go through, and the top ten list celebrates that process.  I may develop a more effective rating system — a good friend suggested developing a five-prong rating system for next year — but, for this year, I developed my list keeping in mind: how often I listened to the song, how strong the songwriting is (lyrically, composition, etc.), instrumental performance, vocal delivery, innovation, and overall effect.  I could write a 500 word post on why “You Run Away” is my number one song, so I’ll limit my comments to what I’ve already written above.

Go ahead: sift through my flawed list.  Love it, hate it, but for goodness’ sake, don’t agree with it entirely.  And if you must, feel free to comment below.

1)  “You Run Away” – Barenaked Ladies

2)  “Uncharted” – Sara Bareilles

3)  “You Wouldn’t Have to Ask” – Bad Books

4)  “Tighten Up” – The Black Keys

5)  “Four Seconds” – Barenaked Ladies

6)  “Written in Reverse” – Spoon

7)  “The Difference Between Us” – The Dead Weather

8 )  “Hurricane J” – The Hold Steady

9)  “Still Your Song” – Goo Goo Dolls

10)  “Claire’s Ninth” – Ben Folds

11)  “21st Century” – Locksley

12)  “Wasted Hours” – Arcade Fire

13)  “Fire with Fire” – Scissor Sisters

14)  “Little Lion Man” – Mumford & Sons

15)  “Fistful of Mercy” – Fistful of Mercy

16)  “Basket Case” – Sara Bareilles

17)  “Taos” – Menomena

18)  “Gasoline” – The Dead Weather

19)  “Summertime” – Barenaked Ladies

20)  “First Kiss on Mars” – STP

21)  “Champaign, Illinois” – Old 97’s

22)  “Half Crazy” – Jukebox the Ghost

23)  “As I Am” – Goo Goo Dolls

24)  “Thieves” – She & Him

25)  “Out Go the Lights” – Spoon

Honorable Mentions:

“Dark Fantasy” – Kanye West

“I Can Change” – LCD Soundsystem

Danger Mouse & Sparklehorse’s “Dark Night of the Soul” (2010) – The Weekend Review

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By Chris Moore:

RATING:  3.5 / 5 stars

For over a decade, Brian Burton has made it his business to strike up some of the most unique alliances between artists and genres, and the results have, to a surprising degree, been both fascinating and entertaining.

Anyone who knows music knows that one or the other is fairly simple to achieve; any project able to be described by both modifiers is impressive.

You will likely have heard of Burton by his nom de plume Danger Mouse — or perhaps, more anonymously, as one half of Gnarls Barkley, Broken Bells, or Danger Doom.  If you are one of the few who read liner notes, then you would also recognize him as the producer of recent albums by Beck and the Black Keys, among others.

If you are reading about him here for the first time, then you will most certainly recognize him as an artist who revels in the blending of elements that otherwise wouldn’t overlap under normal circumstances.  It is his affinity for such ventures, an attribute that would, in the hands of most artists, result in a disconnected collection of tracks, that drives and distinguishes Dark Night of the Soul.

First, it should be established that this record is defined by the “Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse present” formula (i.e. Danger Mouse on synthesizers and other instruments and Sparklehorse’s multi-instrumentalist Mark Linkous on guitars among other analog instruments).  Each track was co-written with a guest artist or band, who then sang the lead vocals.  Film maker David Lynch, who collaborated on the album as a whole, is the only guest to sing lead on more than one track.

By all rights, this should be an effort incapable of cohesion.

Instead, Dark Night of the Soul hinges not on the strength of individual tracks, but rather on the effect achieved by the whole.

Danger Mouse & Sparklehorse's "Dark Night of the Soul" (2010)

Danger Mouse & Sparklehorse's "Dark Night of the Soul" (2010)

The record is a multi-faceted exploration of the darker sides of humanity and the human psyche.  The first line of the opener, “Revenge,” refers to pain as “a matter of sensation,” the singer directing his lyrics at someone who has “ways of avoiding it all.”  Several tracks later, “Pain” explores the flip side from the perspective of a man — voiced fittingly by Iggy Pop — who “must always feel pain.”

Other songs cover similar ground, notably the latter half’s “Daddy’s Gone” that serves as a thematically relevant flip-side of sorts to “Little Girl,” which came six tracks earlier.  “Insane Lullaby” asserts that “A good life will never be enough,” echoing and extending the sentiment begun earlier in “Angel’s Harp” that “Though you might be walkin’ tall, everybody got a lot to grow.”  Both of these aforementioned track titles draw on the language of soothing religious and children’s music, diction that is belied by the gloomy content of the lyrics.

The final pairing of the album, “Grim Augury” and the title track (tracks 12 and 13), present the final descent into darkness.  Vic Chesnutt’s voicing of the former is additionally haunting following the news of his suicide shortly after recording the song.  His request, then, that his “sweetie” not sing “this sad song, grim augury” seems a moot point, being as it’s an augury after-the-fact for listeners who waited until the recent official release of the album following EMI’s inter-label nonsense.

Still, Chesnutt’s song is perhaps the most dramatic track on the album, lyrically speaking, as he sings: “I was peering in through the picture window.  It was a heart-warming tableau like a Norman Rockwell painting until I zoomed in.”  The haunting scene which he sees is a bloody one and is imbued with portents of violence; up to this point there had only been emotional turmoil and less physical notions of pain.  Even “Just War” could easily be argued in a metaphoric rather than literal sense.

With Chesnutt, there is no question about the “horrible dream” and the true darkness expressed by the track.

In March of this year, four months before the official release of Dark Night of the Soul, Linkous took his own life as well, reportedly by a rifle blast to the chest.  As much as one might accept on an intellectual level that music should be taken for what it is, separate from context, it is difficult to separate the tragic deaths of Linkous and Chesnutt from their performances on this haunting release. (They are, after all, dedicated to the memory of the two artists.)

It is difficult not to listen to these recordings with a renewed sense of their depth.  To be sure, they are not all depressing, but the closest the album comes to upbeat is the reckless tone of “Everytime I’m With You” or the melancholy of “Jaykub.”

So, in the end, you get what you’re promised from the outset, from the title.  It is a bit more serious, a bit more real than most music is able to manage, and it comes at a high price.

Spoon’s “Transference” (2010) – Yes, No, or Maybe So

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Transference (Spoon) – MAYBE SO

Spoon's "Transference" (2010)

Spoon's "Transference" (2010)

(January 19, 2010)

Review:

Calmer and more expansive than what has come before, Transference is Spoon at their best — comfortable, cohesive, and at times, still capable of tight, outstanding alternative rock.

Top Two Tracks:

“Written in Reverse” – “Trouble Comes Running”