Van Halen reunion tour show preview

 

If you were anywhere near the Internet in early February, you likely couldn’t miss the hue and cry of a certain cohort of Dudes of a Certain Age crowing about how amazingly incredibly awesomely surprisingly kickass the new Van Halen album was. Comments like “picked up where they left off” and “it’s so great to hear these guys playing together again” and “reunion albums are never this great” were definitely in the mix, and, most amazingly, they were issued without the many caveats and qualifiers that typically accompany such declarations.

As one of those Dudes of a Certain Age, I confess that I was certainly a vocal contributor to said hue and cry, as I was completely flabbergasted at the strength of the album as a whole, at how well the mid-’70s demos were converted into brand-new rockers, and, of course, at the fact that I was sitting here – a grown-ass man with generally respectable (and occasionally respected) taste in music – in 2012, giddy with joy over a new Van Halen album.

I also confess that I haven’t listened to A Different Kind of Truth since the week after its release. In fact, when it came time to buckle down and write a preview of the band’s reunion tour stop at the Amway Center, all I wanted to do wasnot listen to Truth, and instead luxuriate in the eternal excellence of Fair Warning or side two of 1984. This is not a comment on the quality of A Different Kind of Truth – the album is the best ever put out by a reconstituted legacy act 30 years after their prime.

But it doesn’t matter. Van Halen in 2012 simply can’t be anything more than a band and a sound that trades completely on nostalgia, evoking the decadent possibilities of the era in which they did matter. The hedonism, debauchery and Jack-from-the-bottle days of the late-’70s and early-’80s have come and gone, and even though Eddie, Alex and Diamond Dave are gelling fantastically, and even though they’ve made an album that eclipses everything Van Halen has done post-1984, it just doesn’t matter. They may as well have released a crap album – or no album at all – and just gone on tour. It’s great that they didn’t, and diehard Van Halen fans have every reason to be pleased with how good A Different Kind of Truth is. But pretending that it’s anything other than a respectable reminder of how powerful the band – and hard rock in general – was in the group’s early days is a fool’s errand.

And, in exactly the same way that Truth acted as that reminder, so too will the reunion shows. There will be moments of ecstatic rock & roll happiness, but the fact remains that as a culture, we’re well into the post-Van Halen era. They served up a solid reminder of past glories, but that’s really all they can do anymore.

First appeared April 12, 2012 in Orlando Weekly.

Floor concert preview

Around this time last year, we giddily announced that South Florida metal legends Floor were reuniting to play a few shows and pimp a comprehensive box set of all the material the band had ever recorded. The fleeting and temporary nature of the reunion – “But for us, this is it,” guitarist Steve Brooks told us – made it all the more awesome. Of course, we naïvely believed him, and now, here we are telling you that Floor is playing a gig at Will’s Pub. Still, this is a capital-B Big Deal. While the band that Floor evolved into (Torche) has seen substantial success among alt-metal fans, the relentless, gut-punching intensity of the original band’s material is something else altogether. And hey, if you don’t see ’em now …

First appeared Feb. 25, 2012 in Orlando Weekly.

Tinariwen feature

For a band of nomads – a literal band of nomads – to make a musical impact on Western ears is an unusual achievement. Maybe such a group constitutes a curious aside on your favorite world music show, or garner a tiny blog mention as the preferred obscure listening habit of your favorite indie musician, but to be signed to the same label as Tom Waits and Nick Cave? To embark on a tour that takes them to rock clubs across the U.S.? That’s not just unusual, that’s nearly unprecedented.

But that’s exactly what’s happened with Tinariwen, a group born in the sands of Northern Africa that has exploded beyond the typical constraints of world music festivals and into a legitimate underground rock & roll phenomenon. One could argue that this newfound attention is due to the fact that Tinariwen’s compelling back story – they’re a loose collective of Malian musicians who were forced into Libyan refugee camps while their country was at war in the late ’70s – has helped them garner this newfound attention, but a story only goes so far.

The group’s raw, blues-flecked and dirty guitar sounds instantly resonate with Western audiences raised on rock. The guitarists’ circular, trance-like melodies are as insistent as they are inviting, as foreign as they are familiar. When threaded through the Tuareg rhythms and vocals that define the music of these Saharan nomads, the combination is deeply affecting and resonant, and not a little bit punk rock. Unlike other world musicians who have evolved over time to accommodate the ears of those in Europe and America, Tinariwen has remained true to their original sound, if not their ad-hoc roots.

“We always do what we want. In the ’80s, we were not a professional band, we were a collective of musicians who used to perform together for some traditional events,” explains lead guitarist Ibrahim Ag Alhabib, who helped found the group while a refugee in Libya. “There was no planning, no touring. We were recording tapes in some radios and people shared our music with tapes. [But] from the beginning of 2000, we became more professional; we hired a manager, an agent and so on. The music didn’t really change, though. We just needed to adapt it for a record.”

That newfound professionalism yielded results quickly, and in 2001, Tinariwen headlined the Festival in the Desert in Mali, which began that year as a celebration of traditional Tuareg culture, but would quickly grow into a massive annual event thanks to their popularity. (The 2003 edition featured Robert Plant and was documented in the excellentFestival in the Desert film.) This popularity soon spread to European audiences and, over the years, the group has gone on to play festivals like Coachella, All Tomorrow’s Parties, Glastonbury and others. For a group playing semi-traditional music in a language that few Westerners speak, this is a major feat, but it’s also been frustrating for Alhabib and the rest of Tinariwen, since so much of their music is message-based, touching on both broad issues of freedom and more overtly political themes.

“We try to offer translation in the CD’s booklet [and on] our website for people interested,” Alhabib says. “But I think that first, this is our special camel groove and this trance feeling that people love; they can enter in the meanings later.”

Those meanings, though, are still deeply important to Tinariwen, especially in these days of the Arab Spring.

“We are really happy about what [has] happened in the Arabic countries these days,” Alhabib says. “Libya is a more complex situation as [deceased Libyan dictator Moammar] Gadhafi had some relationship with Eastern governments and West African politics. A lot of people died also, and a lot of our people needed to leave Libya and have no lands to leave.” But, he adds, “Freedom is always what we were looking for as nomadic people.”

First appeared Nov. 3, 2011 in Orlando Weekly.

R.E.M. – Life’s Rich Pageant 25th Anniversary Edition CD review

(7 out of 10)

For many people, Life’s Rich Pageant is the last “real” R.E.M. record.

Although it shines a giant and unmistakable signal toward the direct and poppy approach the band would undertake on their next few albums, Pageant still retains the mumbles of Murmur, the jangles ofReckoning, and the rustic tones of Fables of the Reconstruction. But it bundles all those things in a cheerful and expansive sound—courtesy of producer Don Gehman, best known for his work with John Mellencamp—and, at the time, it seemed less like a definitive change in direction than just another example of R.E.M. trying a sound on for size.

Yet, this was the record that saw the band metastasize from the biggest band on the college-rock scene into a band that was on their way to becoming one of the biggest rock bands on the planet. This reissue offers an appropriately beefy remastering job, one that highlights the sinewy strength of tracks like “Hyena” and “Begin the Begin,” but doesn’t quite do justice to the more gentle textures of “Swan Swan H,” a song that shouldn’t give you goosebumps 25 years later, but does. The bonus tracks here, like those on last year’s reissue of Fables of the Reconstruction, are all demo versions, including quite a few (unremarkable) songs that didn’t make the album.

First appeared July 13, 2011 in Paste.

Inside Hard Rock Cafe’s Memorabilia Warehouse

Antiques Roadshow

Inside Hard Rock’s hidden closet

As 1970s yearbooks from private California schools go, this one doesn’t seem that unusual. The students look kind of privileged and kind of stoned; the teachers look like they’re totally cool with the events of the late ’60s. The students aren’t broken down by age, but listed in alphabetical order. The cast of characters is uniformly white … at least until you get to the “J” page, where four black faces stand out: Marlon, Tito, Jermaine and 
Michael Jackson.

It’s a jarring moment. It’s strange enough seeing the world’s biggest pop star in a relatively ordinary context – there are other immortalized schoolboy moments in the book, including one of Michael hanging out in science class in that goofy J5 hat and flares – but it’s downright disorienting when it finally clicks: I’m holding Michael Jackson’s yearbook.

This isn’t an M.J. convention or a memorabilia auction or the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. It’s a modest-sized warehouse room nestled in the back of a completely nondescript building in a MetroWest office park. And this yearbook is just one of the thousands of remarkable items that are stashed here.

Beastie Boys: Hot Sauce Committee, pt. 2

(amazingly, quite a few people thought this was a serious write-up.)

You’ve seen the Beastie Boys’ “Fight For Your Right Revisited” video, haven’t you? If you haven’t, you should. It’s hilarious, right? All those cameos? And it’s a pretty good conceit, poking around with the whole notion of “what would have happened if the B-Boys would have remained complete goofballs for the past quarter-century?”

After all, it’s been pretty impressive to see how much the Beastie Boys have grown and matured since Licensed to Ill. Sure, they raised the bar on hip-hop production techniques and all that with Paul’s Boutique, but what’s been truly amazing is how these three have just kept stepping up their game. I mean, To the Five Boroughs? That was some crazy, hardcore-intellectual shit, right? And the way Hello Nasty busted out that retro Poor Righteous Teachers vibe?

Can you argue with the diversity in the Beastie Boys’ post-Licensed catalog? At times, the way these guys have whiplashed between styles and attitudes has been dizzying, almost like Prince and Bowie decided to explode Nietzsche’s philosophies into a working musical model. There are the cuts with the beer-soaked laughs, the tracks with the brick-heavy party beats, the songs that show off how the Beasties actually play their own instruments and used to be in a punk band … yeah, there’s all of that shit. They’re All Over The Map.

So it’s a good thing that, after being on the vanguard of hip hop’s innovation and expansion over the past 25 years, the Beastie Boys are finally giving us fans a break and getting back to their roots with Hot Sauce Committee, Pt. 2. The loose sense of fun that permeated the “Fight for Your Right Revisited” short film gave us some sense of how goofy and retro-minded Hot Sauce would be, but the album itself really goes all out. Just like Will Ferrell popping out of a time machine as the Ghost of Ad-Rock Future in that short, the tunes on Hot Sauce boom out of your speakers to remind listeners that, although the Beastie Boys have been on the edge of hip hop’s avant-garde for years now, these Boys still know how to party.

Who would expect a line like “Party on the left, party on the right/Make some noise if you’re livin’” from these guys after all these years of experimentation? And it’s right there on the first track! Like some sort of statement of intent, “Make Some Noise” opens the album as if to say “Hello world. This Beastie Boys album is going to sound like exactly what you think of in your head when you think ‘Beastie Boys album.’” Which is a good thing, because, again: Beastie Boys are always so full of surprises.

Back in 2008, when promoting The Mix-Up, Mike D said: “Hip hop is what we grew up on, and it continues to be one of the only forms of music left that strives on evolution and innovation.” But there is very little on Hot Sauce that points toward any evolution or innovation on behalf of the Beasties. Sure, asking Santigold and Nas to make guest appearances is revolutionary and completely bizarre, and “Ok” dabbles in some DEVO-esque nerditry, but everything else on this album finds the the Beasties turning their back on their experimental side in favor of straightforward party-time jams, bro.

Like they promise on “Long Burn the Fire,” the Beasties are back to “make you sick like a Kenny Rogers’ Roaster,” which is an amazing line, because it makes it clear that these guys are spitting out incredible rhymes like so many pieces of food from a chain that’s been bankrupt for the past decade. DON’T DRAW ANY PARALLELS though. Just because the Beasties are dipping into their own bag of sonic tricks – referencing “Hey Ladies” on “Too Many Rappers” is some super-meta shit, y’all – doesn’t mean they’re out of ideas. It just means their ideas are so dope (kids still say “dope,” right?) that they can do whatever they want with old-ass ideas and still make ‘em sound new.

You may think that it’s old and sad for these dudes in their mid-40s to be rapping like they’re 18-year-old hooligans, but that’s your problem if you can’t see how clever and classic and COMPLETELY NON-REDUNDANT Hot Sauce Committee, pt. 2 is. I mean, they’re still working with Mixmaster Mike and Money Mark. And they’re still reminding us that they live in New York City. And they really did release a track called “Funky Donkey” in 2011. It all comes together to make this new Beastie Boys album a work that’s so self-referential, so mindful of its past, and so steeped in pop-culture history that it’s very nearly postmodern. Or, there’s the slight possibility that, rather than being a postmodern piece of art, it’s just a tired, unnecessary, and slightly unseemly piece of uninspired crap. JUST MAYBE.

First appeared May 6, 2011 at Something Awful.

The Raveonettes – Raven in the Grave CD review

(4 out of 5)

There is absolutely no reason to expect the Raveonettes to turn in an album that’s exciting, interesting, or surprising in 2011 — but somehow, RAVEN IN THE GRAVE manages to be all three. The duo has downshifted their tempo and attack markedly, making an unexpected turn towards beautiful, clear-eyed guitar pop; the reverb still echoes, and the girl-group harmonies still pop up here and there, but RAVEN IN THE GRAVE marks a sharp turn away from the vroom-vroom vibe the Raveonettes seem to have been locked into on pretty much every other record they made. While RAVEN doesn’t have any song as superficially shocking as 2009’s “Boys Who Rape (Should All Be Destroyed),” the entirety of the album is, in and of itself, something of a shock. There’s only one moment here – the appropriately titled “Ignite” – that finds the Raveonettes stirring into something resembling their old, uptempo selves; but even that cut, with its stomping beat and “recorded in an airplane hangar” production style, is reserved and a bit muted in its approach. The rest of the set finds the band indulging their dream-pop tendencies, with slow-burn, near-epic stabs at beauty. It’s an absolutely remarkable step for a band to take, and while some may truly miss the red-line fever of their earlier works, it’s encouraging and inspiring to see the duo take a risk by making material as pretty and gently powerful as this.

First appeared April 5, 2011 at Shockhound.com.

The Pains of Being Pure at Heart – Belong CD review

(4 out of 5)

While on past releases, the Pains of Being Pure at Heart merely flirted with a ‘90s shoegaze sound – a little guitar squall here, some mumbled vocals there – for the most part, the band’s previous releases were fairly straightforward noise-pop records. On BELONG, the flirtation is over. From the start of the album’s opening cut (and title track), you get a propulsive, Hacienda-friendly beat, a walloping blast of guitar, and swoony harmonies. It’s an effective statement of intent, and one that is great to see the band so fully embrace. Granted, TPOBPAH errs toward the beefier, less gauzy realm of shoegaze – more Swervedriver than Slowdive – and also seems to have something of a soft spot for lesser-known approaches like the giddy/woozy garage-gaze of a band like the Nightblooms, but it’s actually impressive how the band has stopped tip-toeing around the elephant in the room. There are notes of modern indie-rock that make their way into BELONG – most notably on the rather bland and predictable “Heart in Your Heartbreak” – and, oddly, it’s then that TPOBPAH sounds the most dated and unoriginal. On the rest of BELONG, however, the band is a powerful animal indeed, unleashing their always infectious and occasionally dreamy guitar-pop in a way that may have obvious inspiration, but has few peers.

First appeared March 29, 2011 at Shockhound.com.

The Dodos – No Color CD review

(5 out of 5)

The first four minutes of the Dodos’ latest album manage to simultaneously distill all that is great about the band AND provide a swift kick to the solar plexus. The airy, epic assault of “Black Night” shows just how much this band can do with so very little, as quick-strum open chords, shout-chant choruses, and persuasive and propulsive rhythms combine to make something that’s insistently powerful and intimately human. And then – amazingly – when the pace slows for the relatively restrained and simple “Going Under,” the Dodos wind up proving that, no matter what gear they’re in, their music still bristles with a homespun electricity and individuality that’s refreshing and uplifting. Still based around the core duo of Meric Long and Logan Kroeber, the heart and soul of the Dodos’ sound is that of two acoustic musicians jamming; you could strip away the studio polish and end up with a couple of buskers who demand your attention on the way to catch a train and leave you giddily singing their praises throughout the rest of the day. Then again, those tiny touches of reverb that make give Long’s voice a bit of cavernous volume, those gorgeous and tasteful string swooshes, those perfectly aligned background vocals…they all go a long way to making the heartfelt acoustic indie rock of NO COLOR feel quite special.

First appeared March 15, 2011 at Shockhound.com.

The Radio Dept. – Passive Aggressive: Singles 2002-2010 CD review

(4 out of 5)

There’s an unprepossessing confidence – call it a lazy swagger – to the sound of the Radio Dept., a quality which has helped the Swedish noise-pop group develop a small but enthusiastic gaggle of fans outside of their homeland. PASSIVE AGGRESSIVE: SINGLES 2002-2010 provides a great overview of the band’s approach by compiling a disc’s worth of A-sides and compilation appearances, and another filled with B-sides and other rarities. Arranged chronologically, the two discs move briskly – and in parallel fashion – charting the band’s sonic progress through three LPs, four EPs, and a clutch of singles. TRD’s early, Mary Chain-inspired fuzz-swoon gives way to mellower, drum machine-powered dream pop, and then, eventually, the jaunty, near-danceable newer songs like “Heaven’s on Fire.“ For a group with such a singular sound and seemingly lackadaisical approach to releasing new music, it’s interesting to hear just how much the Radio Dept. has progressed, while the spacious motorik drone of their most recent song – “The New Improved Hypocrisy,” released online just last September – points the way to where they’ll be moving going forward.

First appeared Jan. 25, 2011 at Shockhound.com.