1990: The Simpsons - The Simpsons Sing The Blues
Within its first season in 1989, The Simpsons was a massive hit; America ate it up. So did you, as your parents surely remember -- they’re the ones who threw away your “Don’t have a cow, man” t-shirt in 1996. They also probably tossed The Simpsons Sing The Blues while they were at it, unless you set it aside as a cultural artifact you thought you’d find funny in, say, 2009.
If it was spared from garage sales, the time for re-examination has come. The Simpsons Sing The Blues, as you can probably imagine, has dated about as well as any episode from the show’s crudely drawn, Bart-centric first season. It starts with “Do The Bartman,” the producers' attempt to add “dance hit” to their endless list of merchandising wins. It was a modest success, as was the similar second single, “Deep Deep Trouble.” Both are pure early 90s: awkward rapping, cold stilted beats, and production by DJ Jazzy Jeff. They’re also the weakest links on the album, excluding a few funny spots (not much can top Dan Castellaneta’s delivery of Homer’s line “D’oh! Now you can’t go/ to the boat show.”)
The best (and, not coincidentally, least embarrassing) track on The Simpsons Sing The Blues is “Look At All Those Idiots,” on which Paula Abdul dance beats are contrasted with Mr. Burns’ decidedly unfunky demeanor. It works because the joke is about the characters, from Burns misunderstanding the concept of a “breakdown” (“What if there was an inspector around?!”) to Smithers unexpectedly ripping through a Prince-like guitar solo. It’s exactly what the rest of the record should have been: comedy, plain and simple.
Other ideas fall totally flat, such as Homer’s rendition of “Born Under A Bad Sign” (with the always-game B.B. King on lead guitar) and “Moanin’ Lisa Blues” (which was also featured on the Simpsons episode in which Lisa meets Bleeding Gums Murphy). These songs take the album’s title literally, and it’s here you realize: this is nothing but a cash-in, a waste of talent and time. The cringe-worthy “School Day,” featuring Bart butchering the Chuck Berry classic, is downright awful. “Springfield Soul Stew,” a homage to King Curtis’ “Memphis Soul Stew,” is innocuous enough -- and Marge saying “This is gonna taste alright” in a soulful growl is downright charming -- but you can’t help thinking that the players, and all the rest of us, had somewhere better to be.
The Simpsons Sing The Blues is a perfect musical snapshot of 1990. It’s also an effective encapsulation of The Simpsons in its first couple of years: a project full of potential, experimentation, periodic failure, and attempts to make a buck.
1. Do The Bartman
2. School Day
3. Born Under A Bad Sign
4. Moanin’ Lisa Blues
5. Deep Deep Trouble
6. God Bless The Child
7. I Love To See You Smile
8. Springfield Soul Stew
9. Look At All Those Idiots
10. Sibling Rivalry
2008: A Handful of Dust - Now Gods, Stand Up For Bastards/The Philosophik Mercury
Named after a line in the T.S. Eliot poem “The Wasteland,” free noise duo A Handful of Dust has been one of the most influential and enigmatic projects to spring from the surprisingly fertile New Zealand experimental culture, along with other luminaries such as Birchville Cat Motel and Antony Milton. The duo consists of two heavyweights of that country's scene and of international experimental music in general: Bruce Russell, known for his work with crucial noise rock trio The Dead C, and Alastair Galbraith, an accomplished solo experimental and folk artist. Here we have a welcomed double-disc reissue of two long, long out-of-print albums released originally in the mid ’90s on Russell's own Corpus Hermeticum label. The discs come packaged in a nice fold-out case, sheltered in individual plastic sleeves to prevent scratching, and are accompanied by an illuminating essay by Marc Masters.
A Handful of Dust is a paradoxical group in many ways. For example, they are devoutly improvisational, yet they almost never perform live sets. Perhaps most interestingly, however, are the ways in which they straddle the divide between noisy, abrasive fracas and mainstream artistic credibility that sometimes today seems unbridgeable. Galbraith is the recipient of a major award from the Arts Foundation of New Zealand for his contributions to the music of that country. Imagine for a moment Aaron Dilloway or Richard Ramirez receiving a National Medal of Arts from the NEA, and I think you'll understand what I'm talking about. These two discs are perfect evidence of this point.
Everything on here is immediately and unapologetically harsh, yet at the same time, there isn't the type of wild excess and spastic aggression offered up by many of their peers. You get the sense that, though improvised, these pieces are progressing — or at least processing. There is work being done somewhere within each track, work with some type of goal in mind, even if that goal is only to meet itself at its own tail. It's often difficult or impossible to follow the directions of the pieces while in their midst. The sounds are constantly mutating, splintering off the main body, disappearing into expanding puddles of drone that underly the tracks, and ultimately reappearing to zip past our heads. Massive prominences of butchered violin and guitar feedback burst inward with varying degrees of recognizability, sometimes allowing us moments of orchestral reverie, and other times eliciting shouted maledictions on the names of Andrea Amati and Antonio Stradivari.
However, at the end of it all, if we take a look back over our shoulders, we can see that the mire has coalesced into a discernible and often gripping pattern. It's a phenomenon analogous to the idea that from inside our galaxy (or any, for that matter) we see essentially chaos -- meaningless bodies positioned meaninglessly in space. Once we turn our eyes back on the same cluster of bodies from the outside, we are confronted with some of the most unquestionably beautiful schemes in the entirety of nature. I don't mean to call these pieces unquestionably beautiful, but there is an awareness of self in them that illuminates this phenomenon of perspective. It's this type of maturity that serves as the link between AHoD's abrasive tendencies and their artistic legitimacy. It's a feature that, for better or worse, you simply are not likely to find in the latest Lambsbread cassette. What A Handful of Dust does is to take the term "accessibility" (often a pejorative one in the experimental world) and, rather than shun the idea, absorb the possibility of thoughtful, open dialogue between the music and even the paradigmatic "average listener." It's a process that has been a constant in their art and is illustrated strongly on these well chosen re-releases.
Disc 1:
1. The Book Nature: Chapter The First
2. Oration On The Dignity Of Man
3. The Expulsion Of The Triumphant Beast
4. The Lullian Art
5. The Book Nature: Chapter The Second
6. The Dark Lantern Of Reason
Disc 2:
1. Fama Fraternitatis
2. God's Love To His People Israel
2009: Comet Gain - Broken Record Prayers
Cobbled together in 1992 and sustained in shifting incarnations since, Comet Gain have always evinced a confident timelessness. David Charlie Christian Feck presses on, and for Broken Record Prayers he’s united, with no immediate warrant, sundry singles recorded between 1997 and 2007. The outcome is a 70-minute behemoth, a sprawling, desultory, but variously touching apparatus of melancholy and empowerment that, on the level of thematics, enshrines an indie-pop umbrella logic — daydreams, desperation, defeat — and articulates it in a wide range of idioms.
In other words, Comet Gain trades in universals and mounts a compelling archaeological case for pop’s debt to (or at least kinship with) an entire lineage of lovers’ rock departing from Northern soul and the numinous American garage. Variety abounds. Surprises don’t, but that’s fine; the flourishes of omnivory are more subdued this time than in the crew’s mid-period output — such as Réalistes, which can easily secrete the odor of affectation — and Feck occasionally strikes gold. His programmatic nostalgia is spread thick, to be sure; the liner notes read, “We believe in obsolete things and passionate hearts and still do and made these records from our hearts to yours for whatever it was and still is and could be.” More to the point, though, is the extent to which Broken Record Prayers, for all its aggressive sincerity, seizes on the collective aspect of cultural production, cataloging those commonalities and shared repertoires on which the scene effect fundamentally rests. More than ever, Comet Gain addresses interpersonal, transactional experience in a decidedly unstylized way.
Feck’s and Rachel Evans’ vocals deftly oscillate between abjection and triumph, two faces of the same cosmopolitanizing, impersonal British milieu. The spectral despair of “If I Had a Soul” stings, but the Gain gang saves face imagining “Love Without Lies,” one of six previously unheard tracks included here. “Jack Nance Hair” mourns the 1996 suicide of Heavenly’s Mat Fletcher, their drummer and Amelia’s little brother, while the spiky “Orwell Liberty Dance” spins a more ambiguous yarn over Kay Ishikawa’s heroically meaty bassline. There’s sadness aplenty, but it’s quickly transmuted into a point of pride, spouted all conviction-like atop crashing beats, jangling strings, and shape-shifting organ bits that portend sheepish spells of goosebumps. And anyhow, everybody hurts; between the defeatist Deena Barnes cover “If You Ever Walk Out of My Life” (“There’ll be sorrow and heartbreak/ Teardrops and heartache”) and their own “Look at You Now (You’re Crying),” no one loses because no one wins.
Problems arise in times of self-indulgence, and Feck hasn’t shed his predilection for a sort of orchestral maximalism. Too many songs run five, six, even seven minutes long; indistinct codas cap the big beasts; and the quieter songs can seem directionless. When he submits to squalls of proper nouns, or when his influences crystallize like an awed but still exoticizing literature review, no good can come.
Broken Record Prayers doesn’t suggest obsolescence. Its juxtapositions and scope, rather, illustrate the ease with which nostalgia, for all its tactical purchase, can in fact be overcome. Covering Curtis Mayfield alongside The Clean, waxing reflective and accusatory in the same heave, Comet Gain do appear vulnerable, but their evident strut offsets the echoes of inadequacy, and they have some fun dramatizing this give-and-take. Comet Gain will always be of the ’90s — call it C96 if you absolutely must — but their enduring worth, so fruitfully displayed on at least half of this compilation, outruns the strictures of time or place. In a synoptic but very permanent way, this record is every punk’s sentimental education.
1. Jack Nance Hair
2. You Can Hide Your Love Forever
3. Young Lions
4. If I Had a Soul
5. Brothers Off the Block
6. Beautiful Despair
7. Love Without Lies
8. Hard Times
9. If You Ever Walk Out of My Life
10. Books of California
11. Look at You Now (You’re Crying)
12. Mainlining Mystery
13. Asleep on the Snow
14. Beatnik
15. He Walked by Nite
16. Orwell Liberty Dance
17. Emotion Pictures
18. Tighten Up!
19. Germ of Youth Part II
20. Record Prayer
2009: Kath Bloom - Loving Takes This Course
The cream always rises to the top, even if it takes 30 years. Since the late '70s, Kath Bloom has been releasing lo-fi folk with painfully honest lyrics and equally contemplative, sparse melodies. The classically trained Connecticut singer-songwriter wrote six records with avant-garde guitarist Loren Mazzacane Connors before 1984. All six were pressed in numbers between 50 and 300; all fetch a principal's ransom on the black market.
Then Kath, daughter of renowned oboist Robert Bloom, took the last half of the '80s off on account of maternity leave, family issues, and financial instability. Eventually, cult classic director Richard Linklater caught wind of her and licensed "Come Here" for 1995's Before Sunrise, which rekindled commercial interest in her back catalog as well as her passion for writing songs. By Y2K, she was back releasing albums left and right.
To give her entire career due, Chapter Music commissioned a two-disc tribute album, Loving Takes This Course, which collects a selection of her greatest hits on one disc, and features a range of notable indie artists covering the same songs on another. Naturally, some covers don't quite "get" it, stretching out elegant vocals and smooth production that belies the original songs charm and gritty, off key quirkiness. However, inspired interpretations from Devendra Banhart, Scout Niblett, Amy Rude, and the gorgeous Mia Doi Todd ultimately save the disc.
Of course, the originals are the best reason to invest in this compilation; we get an even mix of Bloom's post-millennium projects and selections from her rare early work. "The Breeze/My Baby Cries" is heartwarming, with Kath's better-than-Joan Baez warble hitting the right kind of mournful over off-key guitar and subtly malfunctioning studio effects. The more lo-fi her surroundings, the more impact her vocals have. "I Wanna Love" has a sweet country-folk vibe going for it, bound to make first time listeners swoon. Every track is moving in its own way.
Considering how half-assed most tribute albums end up being -- bloated with phoned-in covers from the big name slackers -- Loving Takes This Course is a beacon of quality. From the names involved (lest we forget Mark Kozalek and The Dodos) to the choice greatest hits disc, it's the kind of once-in-a-career retrospective that makes an obscurity into a legend. San Francisco filmmaker Caveh Zahedi spent two years putting it together, and the effort shows. Expect to see the name Kath Bloom in the same circles as Vashti Bunyan, Gillian Welch, and Lucinda Williams a lot from now on.
Disc One: The Covers
1. Come Here (Marble Sounds)
2. The Breeze/My Baby Cries (Bill Callahan)
3. When I See You (Laura Jean)
4. Finally (Mark Kozelek)
5. Window (Mick Turner & Peggy Frew)
6. Forget About Him (Devendra Banhart)
7. I Wanna Love (Scout Niblett)
8. Biggest Light Of All (The Dodos)
9. Look At Me (Josephine Foster)
10. Ready Or Not (Mia Doi Todd)
11. Fall Again (Corrina Repp)
12. It's So Hard To Come Home (Marianne Dissard & Joey Burns)
13. In Your School (Amy Rude)
14. If This Journey (Tom Hanford)
15. There Was A Boy (Meg Baird)
16. Come Here (The Concretes)
Disc Two: The Kath Bloom Originals
1. Come Here
2. The Breeze/My Baby Cries
3. When I See You
4. Finally
5. Window
6. Forget About Him
7. I Wanna Love
8. Biggest Light Of All
9. Look At Me
10. Ready Or Not
11. Fall Again
12. It's So Hard To Come Home
13. In Your School
14. If This Journey
15. There Was A Boy
16. Come Here
2009: Vampire Hands - Me and You Cherry Red/Cuz It's a Beach Funeral
I’ve got to hand it to Vampire Hands; the 14 songs on their Modern Radio reissue straddle a lot of different musical styles -- from space rock to Afrobeat, to noise punk and back -- yet still maintain enough cohesion to keep the listener from getting whiplashed.
The first eight tracks comprise an out-of-print, self-released 2008 LP, You and Me Cherry Red. “Statuette,” with its metallic electro-thump, thick, wobbling bass, and paper-thin guitar noodling, gets the album off on ominous footing. Then, like a shaft of light breaking through a ceiling of black and threatening clouds, the laid back “No Fun” unfurls a waltzing one-two-three melody bathed in sunny guitar and galloping percussion. Such dramatic mood swings are just as likely to occur between tracks as they are within a single one. “Friendship Rd” begins as a Mahjongg-esque African drum circle that morphs ever-so-slowly into a quivering ambient dialog between pulsating guitars. The album detours back to the dark side, as the lonely, psych-tinged “Cathedral Blues One” gives way to the threatening funeral march of “Cathedral Blues Two.” A consistent production value keeps the record from flying apart amid the frequent stylistic shifts; there’s a flatness to it that, combined with the faraway sound of the vocals, beautifully complements what’s going on in the music.
The last six tracks are from a 2007 EP titled Cuz It’s a Beach Funeral, and they're a little monotonous in comparison. It, too, begins with a version of “Statuette,” only this incarnation is more exemplary of the EP as a whole: slower, spacier, and more atonal, yet it does make wonderful use of the band’s most haunting lyric, the obsessively repeated “You were splashed in appropriate black.” This mantra transitions seamlessly into “Paradise Knife Fights,” as worthy a single as I’ve heard all year. A little under two-minutes, the song repurposes a hook from Elvis’ “Latest Flame,” adds some tribal percussion, a dash of slide guitar, and churns out a beach-ready dance juggernaut. There’s nowhere to go from there but down. The remaining tracks revel in the bleaker side of psychedelia, with only the plodding, echo-drenched “Desert Dreams” really standing out.
The two releases compiled here reveal a band that’s big on atmosphere but who, in their best moments, still maintain tight control over each song. There’s a great deal of growth on display in this little disc, as the spaced-out psych-ambiance that dominates the 2007 EP is brought fully to heel on the 2008 full-length. Indeed, Me and You Cherry Red / Cuz It’s a Beach Funeral is a handy snapshot of where Vampire Hands have been and a very promising indicator of where they are heading.
1. Statuette
2. No Fun
3. Heat Fire
4. Safe Word
5. Friendship Rd
6. Cathedral Blues One
7. Cathedral Blues Two
8. Me and You Cherry Red
9. Statuette (Original Version)
10. Paradise Knife Fights
11. Beach Funeral
12. We Widows
13. Christ/Scientist
14. Desert Dream
2009: Dntel - Something Always Goes Wrong/Early Works for Me if it Works for You/Early Works For Me if it
Life is Full of Possibilities, Dntel’s breakthrough work, is also his most fully realized. The album is remembered for its ideal marriage of somber, subdued vocals with Tamborello’s pensive, brooding soundscapes and glitchy programming. Yet it was the Ben Gibbard-featured standout, “This Is the Dream of Evan and Chan,” that drew attention to the producer and would serve as the impetus for The Postal Service. Although the duo’s only album Give Up is polarizing to say the least, I maintain that Gibbard’s effortless, languid melodies perfectly complemented, even tempered, Tamborello’s dense, occasionally frenetic arrangements.
Prior to this, Jimmy Tamborello had released two instrumental (excluding a few vocal samples) records for Phthalo. First to be released, though second to be recorded, Early Works for Me if it Works for You was an album that drew heavily from ’90s IDM giants Aphex Twin and ยต-ziq. Although great aptitude is displayed on these drum-and-bass workouts, nothing really reaches the aforementioned artist's level of rhythmic intricacy. While a few hints of potential are present -- the dark, lonely downtempo of “Curtains” hints at a step away from the Warp Records sound, as does the heavily reverbed, hollow percussion of “Tybalt 60” -- the album mostly contains a lot of good but not exceptional rapid-fire drum tracks set against ambient backgrounds.
Two years later, Phthalo released Dntel’s first submitted work, Something Always Goes Wrong. Interestingly enough, the album sounds less derivative of a single source than its successor (though the Warp influence is still very evident). It does, however, suffer from bloated tracks that lack the development to justify seven-to-nine-minute run times. And I’ll admit, I’m not very captivated by the material, partly because I’m listening 15 years after the fact -- it simply isn’t of the same caliber as Dntel’s contemporaries (Boards of Canada comes to mind). However, like Early Works, it does show promise.
With Early Works for Me if it Works For You II, we get to hear what was left on the hard drive from the Life Is Full of Possibilities sessions. Tamborello began implementing vocals, live instrumentation, dusky textures, and increasingly complex rhythms, resulting in a more enjoyable whole than this collection's first two discs. Given its B-sides nature, a general lack of cohesion is to be expected. Yet, in my opinion, some of these cuts could have supplanted weaker moments on Life Is Full of Possibilities.
Ultimately, the Early Works for Me if It Works For You set serves as an interesting and important document of Tamborello’s career trajectory, a path marked with several aliases and stylistic explorations. A vast amount of growth is seen from disc to disc, and there are definitely some solid tracks along the way. While the first two albums lack a certain vitality and replay value, they’re worth hearing for those interested in Tamborello’s development as a solo artist. Although often overshadowed by his collaborators, the cuts on Life Is Full of Possibilities and its B-sides prove that Dntel's best work can support itself without the help of outside guests.
Something Always Goes Wrong:
1. In Which Our Hero Begins His Long And
Arduous Quest
2. In Which Our Hero Finds A Faithful Sidekick
3. In Which Our Hero Is Put Under A Spell
4. In Which Our Hero Dodges Bullets And Swords
5. In Which Our Hero Frees The Damsel In Distress
6. In Which Our Hero Is Decapitated By The Evil
King
7. In Which Our Hero Begins His Long And
Arduous Quest (Seq Remix)
8. In Which Our Hero Was Taken By Surprise
(Languis Remix)
9. The S.O.S
10. A Machine And A Memory Keep You Alive
Early Works for Me if it Works for You:
1. Loneliness Is Having No One To Miss
2. High Horses Theme
3. Pliesex Sielking
4. Termites In The Bathtub
5. Fort Instructions
6. Curtains
7. Tybalt 60
8. Danny Loves Experimental Electronics
9. Sky Pointing
10. Casuals
11. Winds Let Me Down Again
12. Jewel States, The Door Borders
Early Works for Me if it Works for You II:
1. New Name
2. Incomplete 1
3. Paul Guitar
4. Don't Try
5. Serious
6. Darker Earlier
7. Smile Break
8. Incomplete 4
9. Moody
10. Slowdance
11. Fancy Ian
12. Jittery
13. Incomplete 2
14. Bluegrass (Short)
15. Mini
16. Laughs
17. The First Day After The Worst
18. Ender
