Pearl Jam, Backspacer

What a curious study Pearl Jam make for. Once the biggest band in the world, with a front man who epitomized the reluctant rock star of the '90s; a group that after three era-defining albums spent the next decade lowering its profile as much as possible, yet still could fill huge outdoor venues with rabid fans. They're arguably one of the least progressive bands of the last twenty years, having changed little about their musical approach over their past half-dozen albums. For thirteen years they've been solid, reliable as a Volvo station wagon, but also as unspectacular. Their gradual morph into a niche band illustrates the fragmented nature of today's audience: that red-meat, riff-driven hard rock has wound up with about as big an audience as, say, French techno.

And yet for most of that time, one got the sense that Pearl Jam were exactly where they wanted to be. Writing their songs, making their records. They played huge shows filled with people who loved every song. Their stop at Wisconsin's Alpine Valley Music Theater during the 2003 Riot Act tour was one of the most incredible concerts I've ever seen--the pure enjoyment among the band members, the rapport with the crowd, who sang along just as loudly to the new songs as to the classics. Playing to the people who get them, ignored by the ones who don't--the peaceful dream of any middle-aged rock band? Probably.

The buzz about their ninth studio album, Backspacer, is that this is their shot back at the mainstream. It is true that the songs are tighter and punchier, that there are fewer of them, that the band have somewhat tweaked the balance of rockers to ballads to anthems, and that they're promoting the album with uncharacteristic enthusiasm. But at the end of the day, Backspacer is still a Pearl Jam album much like any other Pearl Jam album. If you like Pearl Jam albums--and I do--then you may like this one more than some others; if you don't like or care about Pearl Jam albums, then it's hard to imagine this one changing your mind.

None of this is meant as a knock. The band's ascetic embrace of guitar-rock basics can be seen as a refusal to let style distract from substance. Their songs have always sunk or swum entirely on the strength of their songwriting and playing. They're not going to gussy up their music with techno beats or psychedelic flourishes; it took them twelve years to even put organ on a record. Such a classical, workmanlike approach is admirable, if not exciting.

And the songs on Backspacer are very good. Most notably, first single "The Fixer" is the most melodic, openly pop-oriented thing the band have done in years, possibly ever. It serves as the high point of the album's first section, a rapid-fire string of similarly terse bruisers. Midway through they break for an acoustic ballad, "Just Breathe"--a meditation on mortality and love that would have fit right in on Eddie Vedder's Into the Wild soundtrack from a couple years ago. From there the pace gets a bit more fluid, the music more dynamic. We get a couple of the band's most effective anthems in a while, particularly "Amongst the Waves," along with another rocker or two and a couple more ballads. Clocking in well under 40 minutes, it's a pretty nice survey of what this band does best.

One thing that I've found particularly compelling about Pearl Jam's post-Vitalogy output is its increasing sense of positivity. Certainly they haven't lacked for righteous anger and emotional desperation, but as opposed to the angst-ridden days of the early '90s the latter-day Pearl Jam almost always carries a sense of optimism and determination, a refusal to accept defeat. A song like "The Fixer," in which Vedder chants, "If something's cold, lemme put a little fire on it... If something's lost, I wanna fight to get it back again," shows Backspacer to be one of their brightest albums. That's not surprising for the first Obama-era record from a band that famously raged against George W. Bush's idea of America. It's also a sign of artists who've grown up and accepted their responsibility to do what they can in an imperfect world. As someone who went through high school and college with this band in my headphones, I find that both energizing and oddly moving.

Pearl Jam have been more active in promoting Backspacer, mainly because it's self-released: 90% of their money isn't going to the Sony Corp., and at the same time they can't count on the muscle of a huge corporation to push the album. So they've made a deal with Target (carving out some big protection for independent record stores), and they're doing Conan and Spin. I'm sure they'd like to win some new fans, but I don't think they've suddenly started courting a fad-driven mass audience. This is a band that once teetered on the brink of self-destruction under that kind of pressure. Since then, they've built one of the healthiest and most enduring careers in music by keeping their aims modest: to play good songs for people who want to hear them.

Secretly Great: George Michael's "Fastlove"

Have you ever listened to a George Michael album? I have. One day I was stunned to discover that I owned not one, not two, but in fact the first three George Michael solo albums, encompassing roughly a decade of the former Wham! man's career. How did this happen? I honestly have no idea. But I did buy them all before the dawn of MP3s--those old, crusty days when if you wanted one good song you had to buy a whole album of dreck. And truly, there is no better exemplar of the worst excesses of the CD era than George Michael, who made you buy and possibly even listen to an hour or more of plodding, turgid, ponderous attempts at "serious" songcraft in order to get the one snappy dance tune that's on the radio. On his 1996 comeback disc, the fun-lovingly titled Older, that one song is "Fastlove."

(I'm not sure if people still remember this song. In the summer of '96, it sure seemed to be all over the radio--enough so that it got into my head and wouldn't leave, forcing me to buy the CD. If you haven't heard or don't remember it, I strongly urge you to spend the 99 cents to get it from iTunes.)

"Fastlove" begins firmly in clubland, with a whistling synthesizer, smooth disco beat, and R&B bassline. Michael delivers the first verse in a husky croon: "Looking for some education / Made my way into the night." The chorus promises that "I ain't Mr. Right," but that he can offer plenty of "fastlove," which is, in fact, "all that I've got on my mind." Some sax in the background, the beat, the bass--a solid dance cut.

What makes this song secretly brilliant is the polyphony of the background vocals. Michael (with co-producer Jon Douglas) plays them like keys on another instrument. Techno DJs of the day were looping and layering sampled vocals from different songs (one famous example being Orbital's live performances of "Halcyon," which united bits of Bon Jovi's "You Give Love a Bad Name" with Belinda Carlisle's "Heaven Is a Place on Earth"). Michael swipes the technique by looping original recordings. Just building up to the first verse, we've got the bass, the synth, a sing-songy chant of "Gotta get up to get down," and a falsetto "Ooh ooh baby baby" all running parallel. Michael cuts one or two elements out to make room for his lead vox, then brings everything back for a flourish at the chorus.

Midway through, the song takes a turn: we cut momentarily to just the beat, the instruments rearrange themselves, and we break out into a new, more confessional phase. Michael laments a lost romance, but turns his back on "stupid Cupid" to "make my way into the night." To casual lovers, he offers the come-on, "I do believe that we are practicing the same religion." And in the background loops a re-recording of Patrice Rushen's 1982 hit, "Forget Me Nots," joined shortly by the familiar "Gotta get up," which in the new context takes on an almost desperate tone--the singer begging a stranger to help him drown out his pain on the dancefloor and, one assumes, in the bedroom. Finally the beat drops out and Michael intones, "Looking for some affirmation?" with the "Gotta get up to get down" taking on the weight of a mantra, fading eventually into the dark.

After the fourth or fifth drug or men's room bust, it's easy to forget that George Michael can be, when he wants to, a tremendously compelling singer. He builds such drama and emotion into what is, broken down to its constituent parts, just a silly pop song. He weaves this array of melodies and rhythm into a genuine work of art--a song that begins as a disco toss-off but unfolds into a work of genuine musical beauty. The immaculate mixing job leaves room for every element to be heard clearly and occupy its own distinct space. There are any number of different lines you can follow, varying paths through the song. You keep hearing new things in it, new surprises in the combination of repeating elements.

If you're not, you know, proud, you can admit that George Michael is responsible for a handful of the best, catchiest pop songs of the past half-century--"Faith," "Father Figure," "Freedom '90," etc. For my money, though, "Fastlove" eclipses them all. It's a record that breathed in the fleeting sound of the clubs of its day, and breathed out something transcendent.

Maxwell, BLACKsummers'night

It's not like I think I can fool anyone. I'm basically a rock guy. I try to keep abreast of what's happening across genres, and sample as I can. But my iPod gives me away: The Roots, yes; T.I., no. Whiskeytown, yes; Toby Keith, no. Madonna, yes; Lady Gaga, no. Even if it's not rock, it tends to be the stuff that the rock fans listen to. Enter neo-soul. In the late nineties and early 2000s, this was an R&B movement I could get behind: real instruments, serious songwriting, and impressive, grown-up singers.

Neo-soul's brightest stars--Erykah Badu, D'Angelo, Lauryn Hill--disappeared en masse from the face of the earth after about 2001, and the movement seemed to lose steam. Its fans gravitated towards a new generation of soul-inspired, socially conscious rappers like Talib Kweli, Rhymefest, and that Kanye guy. After building up a lot of excitement, at least among music critics, the whole thing seemed to have just fizzled out. The past year or so, though, has seen some promising signs of life, as the luminaries begin slowly to return. Erykah Badu put out an excellent, highly progressive album last year; and this summer, another long-missing voice, Maxwell, pops in with BLACKsummers'night.

I have not visited Maxwell's Urban Hang Suite before. I heard a lot about him back in the heyday, but at the time to a rock guy he seemed unnecessary alongside some of the others. In 2009, on the other hand, we're a little more parched for old-school jams. Where Badu is an impressionistic folk singer and D'Angelo a studio mad scientist, Maxwell focuses on that oldest of virtues, great singing. His slightly nasal, husky voice is flexible and expressive, and he uses it to drive the primary colors of BLACK's songs into a broader and more exciting spectrum.

The songwriting here is somewhere north of competent, but limited mainly to well-worn archetypes; witness titles like "Love You," "Stop the World," and "Cold." Only at the end, on the understated "Playing Possum," does the album offer something memorable enough for Maxwell to strip back much of the impresario performance and let the words stand on their own.

But R&B isn't necessarily about dazzling wordplay; more often it's about the emotion and sensuality that the singer can wring from classic tropes, and this is where Maxwell soars. Backed by a lean and muscular band, his touch is delicate and ethereal on the tender "Pretty Wings," intense and frustrated on the simmering "Bad Habits." Most impressively, he and the horn section turn "Help Somebody"--the album's hokiest, most hamfisted lyric--into a near triumph, pushing the song away from "Man in the Mirror" and towards "What's Goin' On."

Surprisingly, the commanding singer chooses to conclude the album with "Phoenix Rise," a funky instrumental workout. It might be meant as a cliffhanger, as BLACKsummers'night is supposedly the first in a trilogy of equally typographically and punctuationally challenged records: the follow-ups will be titled blackSUMMERS'night and blacksummers'NIGHT, in a clear sell-out to the caps-lock key industry. If those albums materialize; if Erykah Badu's promised New Amerykah Part Two materializes; and if someone can pull D'Angelo back out of the ether, then maybe we'll find that neo-soul was never dead; it was just playing possum.

The Dead Weather, Horehound

Jack White is a peculiar breed of innovator. He's not a Bowie-like chameleon; his signature sounds more or less the same on most of his assorted projects. What he is, really, is the most accomplished pastiche artist of his era. His work is most revelatory when he takes familiar, even cliche'd musical ideas, combines, and recontextualizes them. This is the man who made blues-rock stomp sound fresh, exciting, and arty in the year 2001.

His latest supergroup side project, the Dead Weather, is another trip through the blues, this time by way of Deep Purple and Black Sabbath. White tosses into the mixing bowl some heavy QOTSA guitars, the apocalyptic vocals of the Kills' Alison Mosshart, and--possibly for the joke value alone--his own steady drumming. Mosshart is at least notionally at the center of the band's debut, Horehound, but inevitably White's personality makes itself felt even on the songs he didn't write.

Not that Mosshart can't hold her own. On the bottom-heavy first single, "Hang You From the Heavens," she takes ferocious command of the mic, snarling, "I'd like to grab you by the hair and drag you to the devil." It's an early Oh hell yeah moment on a record that delivers pretty regular ass-kickings to the listener. The Dead Weather bring a lot of heavy metal thunder to their devil's-music version of the blues.

And give Mosshart points for this, too: rather than simply turn over a couple songs to her bandmate who happens to be one of the most distinct and commanding singers in rock, she actually takes him head-on. The two fuse their voices into one deadly blade on the organ-fueled "I Cut Like a Buffalo." Later, on the disturbingly lascivious "Treat Me Like Your Mother," they trade lines in a vocal battle royale, providing one of the album's most electrifying high points. Mosshart's best moment, though, may be the Bob Dylan cover "New Pony," which she spits out with unbridled fury against White's chanted backing vox.

The Dead Weather may be the biggest and nastiest sounding thing Jack White has done; sonically, they're not too far from the hard-stomping White Stripes, but without the art-school eccentricity, the vaguely precious element to that band's persona. Not that this project is free of contrivance and self-consciousness--what heavy rock band is?--but the bluster and intensity are more single-minded here. It's a big, dirty, noisy record to be played at high volume; matching outfits are pretty low on this band's priority list.

Phoenix, Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix

Making their bid for indie pop album of the summer are the sunny young Frenchmen of Phoenix. Their latest, Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, embraces new wave minimalism and colors it in with the kinds of keyboard flourishes we've heard from countrymen of theirs like Air and M83. Ten songs long, it's concise and relentlessly upbeat. Much like last summer's debut album by Vampire Weekend, Amadeus is a hit with the Wicker Park crowd because it's a pop record with some brainy aspirations. It all gets a little obtuse at points, but I'll still take this over the vampires any weekend.

With the words "great pop record" being so frequently attached to this album, it's worth briefly considering what such a description is really supposed to mean. Going by the reviews, I take it to refer to the melodies and rhythms--and those are pretty great. For a band without a drummer, they run an impressive rhythm section. Bassist Deck D'Arcy lays down a bouncy bottom end, over which part-time drummer Thomas Hedlund maintains a light, nimble touch. The guitar sounds are thin and clean--one shakes along with the beat and the other keens out hook after hook. There's a lot of low and high tones here, and not a lot of bombastic rock midtones.

It's an appealingly breezy, carefree sound, intensely hummable. These are tunes to get stuck in your head. I do tend to wonder, though, if singer Thomas Mars has been lulled into a daydream by them. His vocals--many of them run through digital processing--take on an almost robotic tone after a while. Early tracks like "Lisztomania" and "1901" come off charmingly, with Mars's unaffected, guilelessly bright delivery complementing the simple melodies and funky grooves. On "Fences," he uses a spooky falsetto to evoke the album's densest and most unique mood. But when on the later tracks it's still the same approach over the same basic song structures, he begins to sound like he's just singing on a heavy dose of Paxil.

I think what's actually happened is that this is the most appropriate way to sing these lyrics, which are filled with sharp wordplay and wonky allusions, light on raw emotion. If you open up the CD booklet and read them, you can appreciate the care that's gone into crafting these terse little poems. Coming out of your stereo, though, it's a little hard to discern what Mars is talking about, or even what words he's singing. For instance, the chorus of "Lisztomania," which the booklet tells me goes: Lisztomania / Think less but see it grow / Like a riot, like a riot, oh! / I'm not easily offended / It's not hard to let it go / From a mess to the masses. Alright, it's good fun and there's a lot you could read into it. But on the record, Mars tends to swallow some words (and yes, I know he's French), leaving me wondering what rhinos have to do with any of this. And even knowing what the words are, I'm not likely to be singing them in the shower. If a great pop album needs to be hummable, it should also be shower-singable.

Which is a long way of saying that I think "great pop album" is a bit of a misnomer in this case. There is a distinct indie preciousness to this album; it's not meant for serious mass appeal. Not that there's anything wrong with that, per se--and if you like clever and literate songs with great melodies, you'll probably find Amadeus to be a great summer soundtrack. You might not think of it much come February, but that's probably alright too.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs, It's Blitz!

In the early part of the decade, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs rode the crest of the Brooklyn dance-punk wave, but have survived in much better shape than most of their contemporaries (hell, for that matter, what ever happened to the Strokes?). They kept a fairly low profile for a while after their debut LP, Fever to Tell (2003). It's Blitz! is only their third album, but it's a pretty big step forward.

Like the Talking Heads before them, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs have opened up their sound way beyond the minimalism of their early days. It's Blitz! is awash in synthesizers, drum machines, disco rhythms, and pop hooks. It's a lot more accessible but also a lot more complex. Of course, in moving toward mainstream, they also team up with producer David Andrew Sitek of TV on the Radio, whose avant garde credentials are impeccable. It's an interesting turn by Sitek too, though, to focus the tracks so clearly on rhythm and melody rather than build them up with layers of noise.

The album catches your attention quickly with a string of danceable singles--most notably the propulsive opener, "Zero." But a few songs in is where it starts to get really interesting. First there's the pretty, beatless haze of "Skeletons," and then the band dust off their guitars for a pair of hard rockers--"Dull Life" and "Shame and Fortune." The former, in particular, is one of the band's best songs, teasing with a slow start before breaking out into fuzzed-out, wailing rock mania. Two more stylistic curveballs follow with the gothic melodrama of "Runaway," and the quirky "Dragon Queen," which channels Siouxsie and the Banshees.

As always, singer Karen O's voice drips with sexuality and charisma. While she does occasionally go over the top--for instance, faking an orgasm in the chorus of "Zero"--this album finds her, overall, exploring the subtleties of her vocal range more than ever. She's come a long way from the snarling Betty Boop impersonation of yesteryear. Particularly intriguing is the almost lilting approach she takes in songs like "Skeletons," "Hysteric," and "Little Shadows." Elsewhere, "Heads Will Roll" offers full-on glam. This band still is not writing songs in the same league as Jack White, but their delivery does a lot for the often vague lyrical imagery.

The most pleasing thing about It's Blitz! is its relentless creative momentum. Where so many albums spend their second half repeating the tricks you've already heard in the first, this one travels without looking back, continuing to open up new corners of its sound all the way through. You don't get sick of it after a month of listening; you're still getting into it.

Playing catch-up: Bob Dylan, Passion Pit

Yes, I've been very bad, letting six or seven weeks go by in between my last two posts. I don't have any one really good reason. Sometimes, man, you just run out of time for stuff.

Anyway, I've missed updating this blog, and I'm hoping to get at least a post a week up for the foreseeable future. In the mean time, a number of albums have come out that I don't know if I'll get around to reviewing in full or not. So before they become completely old news, I thought I'd do quick takes on a couple.

Most egregiously, I've neglected Bob Dylan's new CD, Together Through Life, for months. This in spite of the fact that it's one of the most enjoyable, instantly likable records of the year. Some critics have faulted it for a certain perceived slightness--for Dylan's failure, this time out, to address the topics of death, history, and mankind's struggle toward nobility in sufficient detail. I say balls to that--what, now the guy can't write a song about a girl? These songs are meant to be fun, and they are. It's easy not to notice that they are also, at times, heartbreaking and profound. The album reminds me of some of the material on 1976's Desire--songs like "Mozambique," "Romance in Durango," and "Black Diamond Bay"--in spirit, if not in sound. Like Desire, this record is the product of a songwriting collaboration; in this case, Dylan works with the Grateful Dead's Robert Hunter. I think some see that as another clue that the album is a toss-off. I kind of think it is a toss-off, actually, and I like it all the more for it.

Also delightfully slight is Manners, the debut full-length by Massachusetts synth pop enthusiasts Passion Pit--an album that shares exactly no other characteristics with anything with which Bob Dylan has ever been associated. This record is a contender for '80s dance party of the summer, with keyboards so deep you could swim in them. All the vintage synth tones are here, everything you remember from Top 40 radio circa 1986, augmented by more contemporary, heavier drums and jittery beats. Plus on a couple songs they throw in that public school choir that sang "Viva la Vida" on YouTube. I've listened to the album a bunch of times and still can barely remember any of the lyrics--I think that's my brain protecting itself--but if you're like me and have a weakness for this stuff, it's done very well here, and I can think of nothing better to put in your car stereo on a hot day.

I was going to cover the new(ish) Yeah Yeah Yeahs album here too, but that's a pretty interesting one; I think I'll try and do a full review shortly. Also coming soon: Phoenix; I may have to check out that new Maxwell CD; and then there's the Dead Weather, although I may want to wait a couple weeks to see if Jack White comes out with another two or three new bands, and then just do a round-up. Personally, I'm holding out hope for a Michael Jackson tribute collaboration with Gene Simmons and Enya.