Month: March 2020

#38: Elvis Costello and the Attractions, ‘Imperial Bedroom’ (1982) vs. Soundgarden, ‘Superunknown’ (1994)

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Oh Elvis, you poor little fellow – you drew a short straw with this one. You’re like the head of the chess club being sent out to grapple with the captain of the wrestling team. Don’t get me wrong, you’re a clever musical craftsman, but there is a rock n’ roll juggernaut thundering across the mat towards you. You might just want to run.

Full disclosure – your judge and juror is a slobbering fan of your opponent. As far as I’m concerned, Superunknown is the pinnacle of grunge achievement. There is no album from that legendary early 90s scene that captivated me more than this one. Because what’s better than grunge than grunge with Beatlesque ambition pumped through a psychedelic filter? Soundgarden had me at Badmotorfinger but they scooped me up and carried me away with this 1994 masterpiece.  Chris Cornell’s voice is a force of nature; the music is dark, heavy, melodic, creative, experimental. And BIG. They even make a pair of spoons sound epic.

The darkness is all the more potent since Chris Cornell’s suicide in May 2017. Suddenly songs like “Fell on Black Days”, “Black Hole Sun” and “The Day I Tried to Live” are all the more intense. I hadn’t listened to Superunknown in years. Listening to it now, I am struck by how great it still sounds.

But let’s give Imperial Bedroom its due, Elvis. On this, your seventh album, you expanded your sound and played with different genres. It’s been a genuine pleasure to discover it, and it’s prettier and more interesting than I expected. No doubt about it, you are a meticulous craftsman with a gifted band. I absolutely love the soaring “Man out of Time”, as well as “…And in Every Home”, which makes me think of Randy Newman, and “Pidgin English”, which starts out sounding like the Kinks and then…

…oh, why I am bothering with this analysis? This one is no contest and never was. Your shoulders have been on the mat from word one. Sorry, Elvis.

JG

WINNER: Soundgarden, Superunknown (2 points)

BATTLE TALLY

80s: 6

90s: 7

EARNED POINTS
80s: 7
90s: 9

Next week’s battle – #37: Marvin Gaye, Midnight Love (1982) vs. Johnny Cash, American Recordings (1994)

#39: ZZ Top, ‘Eliminator’ (1983) vs. My Bloody Valentine, ‘Loveless’ (1991)

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To some listeners, Loveless might sound like a thrown together mess, but it was actually crafted over a two year period completely out of the mind of front man Kevin Shields.  Perhaps overthought in its desire to sound completely different, it reshaped the role of guitars in the 90s rock cannon. Listening to Loveless is like being engulfed by the violent beauty of the sun.  It’s a barrage of nuclear reactions and solar emissions surrounding my ears and giving me warmth.  The bending chords and tremolo transitions are like atonal solar flares shooting out, surrounding my mind and overloading my senses.  The swirling sonic radiation creates auroras in my earholes that leave me in awe.  So as not to be burned, its stellar size sound is tempered by the crystalline voice of Bilinda Butcher.  Like coming out of a sleep on a beach with the blinding bright heat pouring down, her voice comes through as formless shapes passing in the distance.  I just can’t say enough solar hyperbole to demonstrate how much I love this album.  It is just so overwhelmingly pretty.

Enter the contender (good luck)…

On Eliminator, ZZ Top are architects. Drafting the blueprints for a perfect blues-rock album. It’s got tight lines and clean edges (unlike the weightlessness of Loveless). A perfectly engineered piece of material. As a kid growing up in the golden age of music videos, Eliminator ingrained formative memories for me.  That car.  Those legs coming out of that car.  Those women roughhousing that messy boy and making him over into that sharp dressed man.  Those two beards and that one guy who didn’t have a beard.  Those three fingers circling and pointing at that car as those women with those legs and that boy in that suit drive away.  In grade school I had a buddy named Denny.  He was a thickly built tall fella that seemed more mature than any of my other friends (now that I think about it, he probably failed a grade). He was the first to grow a mustache. He had a mullet hair cut that was tight and curly.  He had a boom box at school which he played constantly (I never understood why we got away with blaring it in the hallways).  The only thing I remember him playing was Eliminator.  Everything about ZZ Top and Eliminator seemed like it was for an older crowd. Hell, I was only eight years old when it came out.  Nowadays, the album just feels immature (maybe at the 10 year old level). Ultimately, Eliminator, just leaves me empty.

JS

WINNER: My Bloody Valentine, Loveless (2 points)

BATTLE TALLY

80s: 6

90s: 6

EARNED POINTS
80s: 7
90s: 7

Next week’s battle – #38: Elvis Costello and the Attractions, Imperial Bedroom (1982) vs. Soundgarden, Superunknown (1994)

#40: U2, ‘War’ (1983) vs. Neil Young, ‘Harvest Moon’ (1992)

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War is the third album by a band that was, at the time, young and raw and hungry, and it opens with the words “I can’t believe the news today/I can’t close my eyes and make it go away”. Harvest Moon is the 20th studio album from an established legend with nothing to prove and opens with the words “She used to work in a diner/never saw a woman look finer”. That pretty much tells you everything you need to know about this battle: youthful outrage trying to change the word versus aging comfort contentedly observing it.  

In a post-U2 360 world, it’s hard to believe there was a time when U2 were young and raw and hungry – and Bono had a last name (Vox, in case you’re wondering) – but that’s how it was when the band got down to business in the fall of 1982 to record what was a “do or die” album after the sophomore slump of October.

They went with “do” in a big way. While even better things were still to come, War let the world know this was a serious band with something to say and a desire to say it with stadium-sized anthems. A concept album of sorts, most of the songs are about the horrors of, you guessed it, war, and it’s great. It rocks and it preaches with the spirit of kids who believe that music can change the course of history. Of course we’ve all heard “Sunday Bloody Sunday”, “New Year’s Day”, “Two Hearts Beat as One”, and “40” enough times for them to be seared onto our brains, but every other song is pretty much just as good. I especially like “Seconds” – an oddball track that juxtaposes a playful beat and melody with a dark warning about nuclear war.

The whole band sounds energized but let’s give a special shout-out to the rhythm section, and particularly drummer Larry Mullen Jr. who, from the military march of “Sunday Bloody Sunday” to the rave-up ending of “Like a Song”, sounds like he’s banging his kit to save his life.

Neil Young had no such anxiety or eagerness to please when he called forth his crew of perfect country-rock session players (also known as the Stray Gators) and choir of big-name back-up singers (Linda Ronstadt, James Taylor, Nicolette Larson), and ushered them back into the studio to make a sequel to his biggest-selling album – 1972’s Harvest.

The result, I would argue, is quite possibly better than Harvest. At its best, Harvest Moon is unbeatable. “Harvest Moon”, “From Hank to Hendrix” and “Unknown Legend” are absolutely marvelous (side note: you have to love how director Jonathan Demme used “Unknown Legend” in Rachel Getting Married). Like Tom Petty’s Wildflowers, it’s the kind of album you can put on in any situation and everyone in earshot will be glad you did – though you’d be well advised to skip the nauseating treacle of “Such a Woman”, as well as “Old King”, a goofy tribute to a dog he admits to kicking once. No one needs the line: “But that hound dog is his..tor..eeeeee.”

Overall, this battle is close but since we’re talking about rock n’ roll let’s go with youthful outrage over aging comfort.

JG

WINNER: U2, War (2 points)

BATTLE TALLY

80s: 6

90s: 5

EARNED POINTS
80s: 7
90s: 5

Next week’s battle – #39: ZZ Top, ‘Eliminator’ (1983) vs. My Bloody Valentine, ‘Loveless’

#41: R.E.M., ‘Document’ (1987) vs. Guns n’ Roses, ‘Use Your Illusion I & II’ (1991)

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Music snobs beware: you may be entering hostile territory. Because how could this even be a contest? A politically astute top-shelf album from one of the greatest indie rock bands of all time versus a big bloody mess of bombastic and petulant heavy metal.

R.E.M., hands down – right? And yet it’s not so obvious.

Document, R.E.M.’s fifth album, was the moment they decided to take a crack at stardom, and it worked. The tunes are a little more rockin’ than what came before. Peter Buck, famous for his jangly guitar, tries some new sounds to beautiful effect. And Michael Stipe’s lyrics, so often inscrutable on other albums, are clear and at the forefront, probably to make sure their scathing political commentary against Reagan’s America  came through loud and clear (oh, to imagine what they would say about a Trumpian world!). Almost every song is a gem (except maybe “Lightin’ Hopkins”) and even though I hate to single out the obvious ones…the vocal acrobatics on “It’s the End of the World as We Know It (and I Feel Fine)” are still breathtaking and you gotta love a band that can trick people into thinking something as cold and mean as “The One I Love” is actually a love song.

But does Document contain anything that moves me as much as Slash’s guitar on “November Rain”? Or makes me laugh as much as the vulgar rant on “Get in the Ring”? Or gets me yelling and fist-pumping like “Breakdown”? Or transfixes me like the multi-movement epic that is “Estranged”?

It does not.

Use Your Illusion I and II add up to more than 2.5 hours of music and that is probably too much, but damn, when I listen to them now there is far less filler than I thought. No ideas were off limits when the Gunners hit the studio with this one. They rocked just as hard as ever, but expanded their sound to include other genres, like country, blues and electronica; and they added piano, strings, banjo and even a little sitar. Axl ranted against everythig under the sun. They shot for the moon, then blew it up on the way by. The Illusions were released one week before Nirvana’s Nevermind, so they have come to symbolize 80s metal’s last gasp. But what a gasp. Mammoth and ambitious, these albums sold about a bazillion copies, generated plenty of debate amongst hard rock fans, and still hold up today.

Document is excellent and, let’s face it, smarter; and R.E.M. is the more important band. But these battles are not about the artists, they are about the albums. And Use Your Illusions were a cultural event in a way that Document was not – people lined up outside record stores. That may be the last time that happened, and it will never happen again. Sorry, music snobs, but history decrees it must be so…

JG

WINNER: Guns n’ Roses Use Your Illusion I and II (1 point)

BATTLE TALLY

80s: 5

90s: 5

EARNED POINTS
80s: 5
90s: 5

Next week’s battle  –  #40: U2, War (1983) vs. Neil Young, Harvest Moon (1992)

#42: The Robert Cray Band, ‘Strong Persuader’ (1986) vs. PJ Harvey, ‘Rid of Me’ (1993)

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One thing Robert Cray and PJ Harvey can definitely agree on is that relationships are a bitch. Both albums are full of songs about love gone wrong, and they get sad and they get ugly. Cray sits silently in his room listening to his neighbours break up “because she was just another notch on my guitar” on “Right Next Door (Because of Me)”. And Harvey howls “You salty dog, you filthy liar/My heart it aches, I’m in the fire” on “Snake”, which appears to be a raging tribute to hate fucking.

The similarities pretty much end there. Cray’s album is pretty and too smooth for words, famous at the time for bringing blues to the masses. His voice is sweet and expressive and his guitar is amazing. While I was too busy listening to Springsteen, Paul Simon and Van Halen at the time to even notice it, I now imagine Strong Persuader was the soundtrack to a lot of dinner parties and spousal dates back in 1986.

Harvey’s Rid of Me, on the other hand, refuses to be the soundtrack to anything but her own meltdown. She was going through hell and you are bloody well going to sit there and listen to it. Christ Almighty! I thought Weezer’s Pinkerton was aggressive, but it’s applesauce compared to the hell that P.J. Harvey has wrought. She ties you up and rips your head off on the title track and threatens to kill you at the end of “Legs”. And as for “Rub it till it Bleeds”, well, it’s exactly what it sounds like.

A note on the production of Rid of Me – it’s awesome. Steve Albini was behind it. He’d previously worked with the Pixies and would go on to produce Nirvana’s In Utero after Cobain heard Rid of Me.  According to Harvey, she’s never seen anyone set up a studio the way he did, with mics all over the place, so you could feel the walls shake and the drum kit rattle. The impact is potent – you feel like you’re in the room with the band, probably lying on the floor with a cheap bottle of scotch.

Rid of Me also has a gonzo cover version of Dylan’s “Highway 61 Revisited”; and that awesome cover photo of Harvey, taken in a pitch black bathroom apparently, with the camera flash lighting her up at precisely the right hair-flinging instant. What more do you want really?

JG

WINNER: PJ Harvey, Rid of Me (1 point)

BATTLE TALLY

80s: 5

90s: 4

EARNED POINTS
80s: 5
90s: 4

Next week’s battle  –   #41: R.E.M., Document (1987) vs. Guns n’ Roses, Use Your Illusion I & II (1991)