1995: Morphine - Yes
In the ’90s, it wasn’t the strangest thing for a hip band to have horns. It was the heyday of the ska revival, after all, and Cake -- an artsy rock band with trumpet in nearly every song -- was on the charts. But Morphine was different. They had two saxophones, drums, and slide bass guitar. While most bands would have treated this setup as a gimmick, Morphine used their unique instrumentation to make gloomy, dangerous pop music.
Yes was the band's third album, after ’91's Good and ’93's Cure For Pain. By the time of its release, they were poised for a break; college radio and international touring had given them substantial exposure and a strong fan base. But Yes, with its dark corners and ominous imagery, probably wasn’t the mainstream bid their fans had in mind. The album was foreboding, but also offset by fast tempos and catchy melodies.
Lead-off track “Honey White” is as poppy as Morphine gets and became one of the band’s signature songs. It's also quintessential Morphine: singer Mark Sandman’s low voice is layered on top of the even lower bass and saxophones, pounding away furiously. The melody is only a few notes, but paired with Sandman’s lyrics about a deal with the devil, it serves its purpose beautifully.
The rest of the record unfolds more quietly. Second track “Scratch” is as subtle as “Honey White” is abrasive, and a fair representative of Yes as a whole. Sandman’s voice is typically resigned, and his lyrics -- “I lost everything I had/ I’m starting over from scratch” -- are both bleak and funny. This darkness shows up elsewhere on Yes, from the repeated warning “sharks patrol these waters” in “Sharks” to the heartbreaking closer “Gone For Good,” a breakup song that features only Sandman’s hushed vocals and acoustic guitar.
“All Your Way” finds middle ground between the band’s sweet and bitter extremes, resulting in one of their best songs. The lyrics are about love gone wrong -- “I found a woman who's soft but she's also hard/ While I slept she nailed down my heart” -- yet the pretty melody slinks around major chords, and the song’s saxophones sound almost happy. It may be the closest Morphine gets to serenity.
The record’s other highlights -- the punchy “Super Sex,” the madly romantic “Radar” -- don't shake things up too much, but they fill out the album nicely. The only missteps are ones of excess. “The Jury,” with its beat-poetry delivery and dull atmospherics, is a glaring weak spot and, being the ninth track out of twelve, slows the record’s momentum.
But as a whole, Yes perfectly represents what made Morphine great. Underneath the murkiness, the roaring saxophones, and the sinister vocals are songs full of pathos, wit, and perfect melodies. It’s easy to see why Cambridge, Massachusetts named a city square after Mark Sandman. Why the rest of the country didn’t follow suit is anybodies guess.
Curtis Mayfield - Curtis
Curtis Mayfield kicked off his debut album, Curtis, with a string of racial epithets aimed dead-on at no one in particular. He had America in his crosshairs. From the crumbling inner-cities to the finely manicured suburbs -- black and white, those both privileged and down on their luck – Mayfield wanted to garner the attention of the masses. And over the 40-odd minutes that followed, he would dissect and explore the deep-seated sentiments of injustice, poverty, and revolution that were afflicting this country in 1970.
The opening track is "(Don't Worry) If There's a Hell Below, We're All Going to Go." It's eight minutes of fire and brimstone -- a pessimistic caveat to a generation left jaded by the failures that followed the promise and ultimate decline of the ’60s, a rallying cry to the ignorant. Mayfield comes out swinging right from the start, bolstered by the absolute might of his backing band. A chugging funk guitar dances with a percussion setup bent on polyrhythm, consistent only in its sporadic deviations. But Curtis ends up digging us out of the dark, psychedelic "Hell" and greets us, rather abruptly, with a swell of heavenly harps on "Other Side of Town," a lonely ballad about the hopelessness that comes with being penniless. Without rushing, he relays the despair of what the poorly informed might refer to as "the underprivileged."
But he reassures us that there's still beauty worth fighting for on tracks like "Makings of You" and "Miss Black America." They soar due to the work of Riley Hampton and Gary Slabo, who share production credits with Mayfield, and can be thanked for the album's abundance of string arrangements. They took Henry Mancini to the streets, mixed in Mayfield's Chicago soul and shook well. Those strings manage to evoke a grab-bag of emotions, from skittering paranoia to absolute bliss, not to mention the eerie calm that can envelop a city in the dead of night. The expert horn section is nothing short of inspired as well, and they're used to their full potential on cuts such as "Wild and Free." Though the harp may seem like Mayfield's ace-in-the-hole, the horns keep the songs on their toes: that brass force continually provides balance to the vocal's slight falsetto, which might come off as wispy if Mayfield weren't so confident.
One could make the argument that Curtis hinges on two tracks. One of them is "Move On Up," the 9-minute expedition that doesn't need an introduction (especially since a certain Mr. West slowed it down to right a few wrongs and help him write some song). The other is "We The People Who Are Darker Than Blue." It's a beautifully structured catharsis, plucked from the bowels of Curtis Mayfield's soul. It starts off slow, with intention, but before long the band drives into a fury of drumming and blasting horns, only to ease back out over a sprinkling harp, as if the digression was just a bad dream. It's a perfect display of the album's duality, as gliding soul meets the hard-hitting funk that would later be refined on the ghetto symphony Superfly.
By all counts, Curtis got the ball rolling for a new type of socially conscious R&B and soul. It took black music beyond Hitsville, USA and gave it a set of principles, which Mayfield had already hinted at in his earlier work with The Impressions. The importance of his message sometimes overshadows the density of the actual music. Curtis is a lush, thick record that not only supports a healthy dose of social commentary, but also embraces the listener in a distinctive, velvety swathe that, until then, was foreign to soul records.
Tobin Sprout - Carnival Boy
I’ve only seen Tobin Sprout perform once, opening for his former band Guided by Voices on their 2004 farewell tour. Sprout seemed like the polar opposite of Bob Pollard’s notoriously drunken, boisterous crew as he played through a set of solo material alongside some of his contributions to the GBV canon. It’s not just a coincidence that Voices albums began to decline in quality (if not quantity) soon after Sprout left the group following 1996’s Under the Bushes, Under the Stars; Tobin was responsible for some of the band’s best-loved songs, including “A Good Flying Bird,” “Awful Bliss,” and “To Remake the Young Flyer,” and he collaborated with Pollard on many more.
After Under the Bushes’ release in early ’96, Sprout struck out on his own with Carnival Boy, which dropped just a few months later. Not surprisingly, the two records are quite similar – Carnival Boy even reprises Bushes’ “It’s Like Soul Man.” But while Under the Bushes is a 24-song monster, like most Pollard epics, Sprout’s album is comparatively brief – only 14 songs, with minimal filler and quite a few legitimate sing-a-long jams.
Arguably, Carnival Boy is more consistently good than any GBV or Pollard record outside of the immortal Bee Thousand and Alien Lanes. If anything, the record is back-heavy, with the stellar trio of “Soul Man,” “Hermit Stew,” and Syd Barrett ode “The Last Man Well Known to Kingpin” closing the deal. “Kingpin,” in particular, is the standout, with layers of Sprouts singing a chorus of “Shangri-La wrecker” so earnestly it sounds meaningful.
It’s impossible to say whether Carnival Boy is so good simply because Sprout doesn’t spread himself as thin as Pollard often does. Regardless, it’s a record often unjustly overlooked by fans of the genre -- a near-perfect nugget of charming ’90s pop from a guy so modest he didn’t even bother to put his name on the front cover.
Rodriguez - Cold Fact
Usually, the best a “forgotten” artist can hope for is to be slowly discovered by proceeding generations. With a little luck, the right taste-making crate digger might stumble across a lost treasure and start talking it up. Maybe Hip Band will talk about what an influence said artist is on their new album. The bloggers will blog, the music journalists will shower praise, and the artist and his/her records will achieve a tiny fraction of the success that, for what ever reason, eluded them in the first place.
A less common scenario involves your records achieving cult status in South Africa, New Zealand, and Australia, treasured by a reverent fan-base, while your person is hailed as a revolutionary-slash-messiah. Outrageous rumors circulate: he’s stopped putting out albums ‘cause he killed himself after being jailed for the murder of his wife; he’s died of a heroin overdose; he was electrocuted on stage. Or the best: he committed suicide on stage, either by setting himself on fire or by blowing his brains out.
The latter, slightly rarer situation, is the exact one Detroit folk-rocker Sixto Diaz Rodriguez found himself in in the early ‘90s when, after living a settled life since the early ‘80s, his daughter discovered his legendary status in South Africa through a fan site. His profile was starting to grow in America, and now Light in the Attic (who’ve also delivered stellar reissues from the likes of Noel Ellis, Betty Davis, Karen Dalton, and The Free Design) has re-released his debut, Cold Fact, with expanded liner notes detailing his whole bizarre ascendancy.
While the whole thing might seem a bit underwhelming considering its godhead status with some, Cold Fact is a pretty killer album, even when you remove its strange story. Opener “Sugar Man” channels the same seedy, narcotic vibe as Curtis Mayfield’s “Pusherman,” and if it weren’t for lyrics like “Silver magic ships you carry/ Jumpers, coke, sweet Mary Jane,” one might mistake it for some misplaced Donovan B-side. “Only Good For Conversation” follows, bearing more than a little similarity to fellow Motor City rockers like The Amboy Dukes, Frijid Pink, Grand Funk Railroad, and the Bob Seger System. The track's stomping, fuzz-laden approach momentarily erases the careening strings and space sounds that proceeded it, but “Crucify Your Mind” returns things to a trippier place, with gutiarist/producer Dennis Coffey and a band of soul legends (including some members of the esteemed Funk Brothers) providing a supple backdrop for Rodriguez’s truly menacing lyrics. The harsh realities of inner city life are contrasted against the glossy but fading dream of the Woodstock era: “Was it huntsman or a player/ That made you pay the cost/ That now assumes relaxed position/ And prositutes your loss.”
“This Is Not A Song It’s An Outburst: Or the Establishment Blues” could be heard as a send-up of Dylan’s stream of consciousness rambles if it didn’t seem so damn earnest. Rodriguez spits lines like “Adultery plays the kitchen, bigot cops non-fiction/ The little man gets shafted, sons and daughters get drafted” with dramatic, street-level conviction. “Hate Street Dialogue” offers the middle finger to the dreamy San Fran scene, while tunes like “Forget It” and “Like Janis” showcase the bitter, near-punk snarl just underneath Rodriguez’s clear, tuneful vocals. “I Wonder” addresses sexual jealousy over a shuffling Motown bass line, its bouncy, sweet melody creating a perfectly uneasy juxtaposition as he sings about war and slut girlfriends. “Gommorah (A Nursery Rhyme)” blends a busted blues rattle with a terrifically creepy children’s choir that backs up the chorus, then we're treated to a bit of just barely out-of- key “America the Beautiful” on the way out.
“Rich Folks Hoax” and “Inner City Blues” (not a Gaye cover) address the social unrest of Detroit, and the bitter, malicious bent of the lyric contrasts nicely with the hopeful stride of civil rights-era soul, which clearly influenced the sound of the album. “Jane S. Piddy” ends things with a casual shrug of the shoulders. “I saw my reflection in my father’s final tears/ The Wind was slowly melting, San Francisco disappears/ Acid heads, unmade beds, and you Woodward world queers,” Rodriguez intones, seeming more content to sound bad-ass than poignant, but then follows with a mournful refrain of “I know you’re lonely.” The struggle between tenderness and machismo, or the attempt to find one in the other, shades the album, and in the end, Rodriguez resorts to a tiny bit of spoken word: “Thanks for your time/ And you can thank me for mine/ And after that’s said/ Forget it,” siding, at least for now, on the role of steal-eyed realist.
It was that last line, South African myths would report, that Rodriguez delivered just before he blew his brains out on stage. And while it’s true that he never did so, it’s not hard to imagine why one might suppose he could. Cold Fact sounds like the work of a guy who might decide it’s all pretty worthless. But it also sounds like a guy who isn’t entirely sold on the idea. “Bag it, man,” the album ends. “Okay.”
Miracle Legion - Me and Mr. Ray
There's an episode of the classic Nickelodeon TV show The Adventures of Pete and Pete, in which the younger brother Pete becomes strangely fascinated with a song he hears being played in a garage by a mysterious band. Following this encounter, the band inexplicably disappears off the face of the earth, leaving Pete to recall the song from memory -- by no means an easy task for the young, red-haired iconoclast. The real tragedy is that if Pete had even a slight acquaintance with 1980s indie pop, he might have recognized Mark Mulcahy, lead singer of the show's house band, Polaris, and former frontman of Miracle Legion. After making the connection, Pete could've drawn from the plethora of sweet, jangly pop tunes from Miracle Legion's discography. Perhaps with a bit of luck, he would've discovered their masterpiece, Me and Mr. Ray. But sadly, Pete knew nothing of the Miracle Legion, and the best he could do was muster up a cover rendition of the song with a little help from the quirky locals of Wellsville.
Starting out in 1984, Miracle Legion released a few EPs with little fanfare before signing to Rough Trade in 1987. During this three-year period, they garnered minor college radio success, but were always dogged by lazy, cursory comparisons to R.E.M. Ostensibly, these comparisons might seem valid, but contrasting Stipe and Mulcahy's approach to songcraft paints a wildly divergent picture. It wasn't until Me and Mr. Ray, their third proper full-length, that Miracle Legion started to chart new directions and shake erroneous associations. From opening track "The Ladies From Town," it's obvious that Mr. Ray is a more idiosyncratic and experimental endeavor, though it doesn't end up straying too far from the pop hooks the band were so good at.
In lieu of jangly, electric guitars, the majority of the album favors pristine acoustic arrangements and playfully abstract lyrics, often bolstered with equally youthful and capricious instrumentation. Even more, the rhythm section seems much further subdued ("You're The One Lee"), even disappearing altogether at points ("Old & New"). Through conscious effort, Mulcahy's songwriting is in the forefront, resulting in newfound sense of immediacy. You can't help but give Me and Mr. Ray your full attention as it shifts from fast-paced folk songs like "The Ladies From Town" to dark, slow-burning ballads like "Pull The Wagon," which acts as the album's centerpiece and is arguably the most complex and bleak song Miracle Legion ever penned.
Lyrically, the album is somewhat ambiguous, never making it clear whether Mulcahy is writing about fictional characters or from personal experience. His songs shift perspective in terms of location and time, further confusing anyone attempting to make direct interpretations. What is clear, however, is a common thread of loss and rumination over the nature of human relationships, what comes before and after, and the burden of their having existed in the first place. This is driven home in the beautiful and softened closer, "Gigantic Transatlantic Trunk Call," which stands as an emotive highpoint in Mulcahy's career.
The Miracle Legion seems to be another band lost to time, even to their much more exposed side-project, Polaris. Such oversight is tragic, in the same way it was tragic when little Pete couldn't recall the song that moved him so deeply. Fortunately for those willing to look, Me and Mr. Ray remains a unique, palatable, and affecting experience .
The Replacements - Let It Be
[Note: This review is intended as a friendly rebuttal to [David Brusie’s exaltation of Tim->http://tinymixtapes.com/The-Replacements].]
When discussing The Replacements, I am fond of quoting Robert Christgau, the Dean of American Rock Critics, who, in his original A+ review of Let It Be, wrote: “Bands like this don’t have roots, or principles either, they just have stuff they like.” Now, throughout his long and inspiring career, Christgau has been guilty of portentous idiocy from time to time (Bossanova is the best Pixies album?), but when he’s right, he’s right, and Let It Be is the ‘Mats’ indisputable masterpiece. There are those, however, who call it “scattershot” and dismiss Paul Westerberg’s jumbling of sensitive balladry and sloppy kitsch as bratty self-sabotage. These detractors tend to prefer 1985’s Tim, the band’s Sire debut, which contains 11 competently-played, easily-digestible pop songs that all sound as though they actually belong on the same record. But it was precisely this earlier mess that defined The Replacements; they were just kids in a garage, pinching Ted Nugent riffs and singing about drugs and dicks, occasionally tossing off something beautiful and pretending not to realize it. Their jokes had just as much soul as their art --- when Westerberg sang “Gary’s got a boner/ Gary’s got a soft-on,” he meant it.
Three records in, it took guts for these guys -- who had started off in Minneapolis circa 1979 as slightly-tuneful hardcore punkers -- to betray any hint of sincerity, maturity, or ambition, lest the devoted fan lose his bearings. Of course, they had never let that sort of thing bother them; The Replacements were legendary for antagonizing their audiences with almost Kaufman-esque cruelty. At a gig in, say, Nashville, the band was likely to play fast and loud until only punks remained, at which point they would dust off the country moves. Ho ho. Slashed amps and tipped vans were not uncommon.
It was a given that Let It Be was going to cost The Replacements a fair slice of their original fanbase. If the songs hadn’t been worth a damn, that might’ve been the end right there. Still, I imagine scores of arty-farty R.E.M. disciples buying the record for Peter Buck’s solo on “I Will Dare,” straining to stick it out at least through Side A, then frisbeeing the thing against a wall before collapsing back into the safe, reliable arms of jangle-pop.
Describing this album as scattershot hardly does it justice. Not once does it settle into a certain groove, musically or otherwise, for two songs in a row. The folky shuffle of “I Will Dare” gives way to the sweetly punkish “Favorite Thing,” before “We’re Coming Out” completely eclipses the band’s first four years of hardcore. Only The Replacements would have sandwiched the bleary-eyed jazz-pop of “Androgynous” between “Tommy Gets His Tonsils Out” and a shambolic (and underrated) cover of KISS’s “Black Diamond.” George Martin has been quoted as saying he always wanted to trim The White Album down to one LP. Just think, if The Beatles had taken his advice and had been four boozy Midwesterners born from 1959-66 who shared a penchant for The New York Dolls and The Stones, The White Album would have sounded something like Let It Be. (That made no sense, I know, but it was fun to write.)
As for the copping of the Fab Four’s title, it was the ‘Mats’ canny way of making a brazen grab at classic-rock status and simultaneously admitting they’d never make it. But, true to form, they weren’t giving themselves enough credit. And I think they knew it, even then.
