Archive for the ‘Singles and EPs’ Category

Best Coast, When I’m With You [Single]

Tuesday, March 9th, 2010

Last semester I read Kirse Granat May’s Golden State, Golden Youth as part of a larger project about social and cultural change on ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s. The main thrust of her cultural history is that during the ’50s and ’60s California became *the* place for images of and ideas about youth culture. May spends a good deal of time examining Gidget and Disney to demonstrate how Baby-Boomer-era youth culture was affluent, white, and squeaky clean before giving way to scruffy beatniks and political dissidents in the late ’60s. An interesting angle in May’s argument is that Ronald Regan, as both candidate and governor in California, used the manufactured, clean-cut suburban teenagers of movies and television as the youthful ideal he would reinstate as soon as he cracked down on all those pesky mouthy unwashed Berkeley-ites, uppity colored folk, lazy poor people, etc.

Reagan’s legacy of culture-flavored smack talk aside, these shining, sunny California ’60s are still with us. These images provide access to ’60s style without the political baggage and obligations of LSD-derived “creativity.” Moreover, nostalgia for ’60s California can be used to highlight nostalgia for other kinds fleeting innocence. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that the Beach Boys’ lyrical concerns and candied vocal harmonies do a fine job of providing convenient shorthand for both California and not-quite-pin-downable longing and nostalgia.

Bethany Cosentino’s Best Coast suggests cheery California imagery by employing pop songforms of yesteryear. And the band’s lo-fi fizzy pop is filtered through a haze of reverb and distortion, heightening the feeling that it’s just out of reach. This fleeting vibe is mirrored by the evocative yet unspecific lyrics. Is “When I’m with you, I have fun” slight praise? An embrace of momentary pleasure? What do we make of the “I hate sleeping alone” that follows? One might argue that Cosentino channeling teen wariness and diffidence and employing them in blurry versions of teenage-type love songs to suggest the tensions between our memories of youthful love and the realities of less-than-permanent adolescent relationships. That could be a reach, though.

I had a hard time writing about this single. I got stuck on it and it derailed the blog for two months. I couldn’t quite sum up my feelings for Best Coast, nor could I move on and drop some cleaner commentary on a record I had a better handle on. I think I really love Best Coast’s stuff, but it seems dumb to really love a band, you know? Who has time for the same handful of songs when you’re supposed to be scouring the internet for the next next thing? And frankly, I like this stuff so much that *gasp* I almost don’t want to talk about it for fear of screwing it up. Anyway, seems kind of stupid and kinda fitting.

Posted in Best Coast, Singles and EPs | No Comments »

The Breeders, Fate to Fatal

Tuesday, April 28th, 2009

Kim: No, we were off 4AD after Title TK. And then we had Mountain Battles, and it’s like, well, we’ll do it on 4AD. But that was a one-off. [4AD has not yet confirmed that the Breeders are no longer signed to the label. -- Ed.] And for this one, it’s an EP. What am I going to do, take a meeting for an EP? Then we’re like, maybe we should just give it away anyway. It’s on sale on iTunes, but I don’t know if anybody buys digital music. Maybe they will, and maybe we’ll actually be able to sell something, but that’s not the point. Music is free.

I don’t know if anybody’s going to buy it. I assume one person will download it, and everybody else will steal it. I have no idea what people do nowadays. People might actually buy digital music. Do you know if they do?

Pitchfork: I buy off iTunes sometimes.

Kim: [To Kelley] He says he buys digital music off iTunes. [To Pitchfork] Kelley says you’re lying.

…

Kim: I don’t see the drawback yet. Like I said, music is free, so who cares? It’s not like we’re in a rap band and I really need someone to sponsor my hundred-thousand-dollar wardrobe and car. I don’t know. Maybe it’s a really stupid way. Maybe by doing this now we have just leveled ourselves, like [whispering] we’re a band who lost their label contract. Or maybe people actually think that if a band doesn’t want to use a label, they just don’t want to use a label anymore. Because labels don’t exist anymore. Do you think they do? I don’t.

– Kim Deal in a 2009 Pitchfork interview

I absolutely love the Breeders. They were the band that gave me that last final shove outta my identity as a mostly a classic and/or hard rock listening guy who dabbled in alternarock, into being a guy who was mostly interested in alternarock and later punk and glam and what many people would now call “elitist” smartipance music. Don’t get me wrong. I listened to R.E.M. and a little Pearl Jam or Smashing Pumpkins, but the summer of ’93 is when I fell hard for what then seemed like “weird” bands to a Midwestern kid who listened to Aerosmith, Van Halen, and the Beatles.

It’s easy now to think that a committed music fan would seek out the willful, the quirky, and the odd. But when you’re 15 years old and every single bit of music you hear must be filtered through commercial radio, MTV, or word-of-mouth recommendation, your tastes move slower. There were no college radio stations in the far southeastern suburbs of Chicago. Heck, my college didn’t really have a radio station that played what is generally thought of as college rock. This totally wired infotainment age of ours has certainly made the word smaller. Folks making their homes in pop cultural dead zones like the not-urban Midwest are no longer doomed to hearing about things way after the fact. Heck, if anything, the internet gives anyone anywhere the opportunity to be the first person to backlash and pooh-pooh a brand new song/meme/band/idea. Something better be polished or professional, or blindingly innovative if you expect the internet to get on board.

The inversion of standards brought on by internet culture (and a savvier pop fandom in general) doesn’t feel entirely comfortable to me. I suppose that the extreme-ing of everything in the 1990s helped create our appetite for endless edginess and pop culture products that “cross the line” more often than not. Perhaps this extreme-ing influence has split into several strains. One strain being the obvious crassness that fuels the popularity of shows like Family Guy and mainstream pornification and a lot of other cultural ephemera that I can’t help but associate with those serious-looking energy drinks at the convenience store. Another variant of extreme-ness is indie snobbery – the need to hear of and discard first minor cultural happenings that almost no one will ever like in the first place. A lot of the energy drink people would consider indie snobbery to be elitist, and the snobs would likely consider the energy-drinks-and-tribal-tattoos people militantly populist and vulgar (in several senses of the word). I reckon it’s kind of a counter/pop-culture “red state v. blue state” thing.

I certainly don’t exist outside of these debates. I once conducted an animated (and, no doubt, slurred) argument in defense of the Shangri-Las’ “Leader of the Pack” in the general direction of my aggro-metal loving brother-in-law. He totally didn’t get it. “Leader of the Pack” is old-fashioned sissy music. How could I like that? In his defense, I didn’t get it either. I was trying to argue taste. I was trying to “improve” his understanding of pop music. It was a dumb argument – and I’m guessing a pretty common one.

This argument happened about 10 years ago. However, it sticks with me because I learned an important lesson – nobody wants to have their taste “fixed” for them. I didn’t experience an immediate epiphany, but I learned to roll back on the intensity knob when it came to arguing about taste.

Over the last year or so, I’ve been contemplating entering graduate school. As part of this process, I’ve had to take stock of what it is that actually interests me, what topics I’m passionate enough about to invest time and money into studying seriously. As an added bonus, I’ve spent some of this time thinking about what really flips my switch – what the core things are that I really love and that really got me into music and history and culture and books.

The Breeders are one of those things.

I’ve been on a bit of a Breeders and Pixies binge lately. When I found out that the Breeders were releasing a new EP I was psyched. Few things are better than learning that a band that you’re reconnecting with is releasing a new record. Fate to Fatal is an unassuming, homemade kind of record. As on the underrated Title TK and the most recent long-player Mountain Battles, this EP finds the sisters Deal sounding mainly like you expect them to. Rhythms chug beneath cooed, slurred vocals. Guitars sputter and pop. Strummed electric guitars shift in and out of time, eking out a delicate melody. Even the Bob Marley cover “Chances Are” sounds unmistakably like the Breeders. The only potential surprise is “The Last Time.” Instrumentally, the hushed, chimey pulse occasionally interrupted by a sloppy, trebley sheet of guitar noise wouldn’t be out of place on any previous Breeders album. It’s Mark Lanegan’s diva turn that stands out. The Breeders sound is built upon the interweaving Kim and Kelley vocals, so the vocal switch is unexpected.

Fate to Fatal is a slight release. Yet its very inessentialness makes it appealing. The whole self-released, homemade (even down to the hand-screened record sleeves) approach to record making touches on what makes a band like the Breeders special – they’re unpolished, they’re not untouchable rock celebrities. If Kim and Kelley deal can forge an identity in sound, then why can’t any committed, inventive person?

I suppose it’s the implicit democracy of the form that lead me to believe deeply in “alternative” or punk or whatever it was that turned me on when I was 15. It certainly wasn’t an elitist thing, an “I know about XYZ and you don’t” thing. It was about connecting with sounds that reflected how I felt – weird, shambly, wimpy, awkward, clattery, sarcastic. Last Splash didn’t make cool into something that required macho, phony cool. Unkempt Midwesternism could be just as compelling – just as charming – as high kicks and leering rock guy posturing.

It’s tempting to dismiss Fate to Fatal as an unimportant vinyl trifle, to give it a numerical score and cast it aside as not hotshit enough for these picky times. But the Breeders aren’t built for that kind of listening. Even at their loudest, they’re a quiet sort of band. I think you’re supposed to listen to this record and let it seep in.

Not that I’m telling you how to listen.

Posted in Singles and EPs, The Breeders | 3 Comments »

Smashing Pumpkins, American Gothic (EP)

Thursday, December 18th, 2008

Billy Corgan reminds me a bit of Pete Townshend. He just can’t seem to escape his own preoccupation with the band he built. Moreover, he seems torn between smart, sensitive expressiveness and the abandon of all-out sonic assaults. And nevermind that he’s a pretentious “art-teest” whose conceptualism seems to blow up in his face about as often as it pays off. That he does his screwing up very much in public only makes the comparison easier.

The reanimated semi-Pumpkins 20th Anniversary jaunt has been memorably declared “a shitshow” by Pitchforkmedia. And truth be told, Zeitgeist — a few cool tracks aside — is a sludgy, samey bummer. These missteps have been amplified by Corgan’s famous inability to shut his trap. Rather than biting down hard and carrying on, he’s taken every possible opportunity to make bold, ridiculous proclamations — from his full-page ad in the Sun Times announcing his intention to reform the Pumpkins to his recent “no more albums” promise to NME —

There is no point. People don’t even listen to it all. They put it on their iPod, they drag over the two singles, and skip over the rest…

Our primary function now is to be a singles band, that drives Pumpkins Inc through singles. We’ll still be creative, but in a different form.

Corgan does seem to be grinding some kind of axe w/r/t his once-and-future band not being taken seriously as a long-playing threat. The “shitshow” designation was largely a reaction to this hometown “meltdown” at the Chicago Theater.

Chicago Sun Times critic and frequent Corgan nemesis Jim DeRogatis supposes that the Corganmonster’s current public bad behavior is a conceptual stunt —

It’s only guessing, once again, but I’d say it’s all part of a statement
he’s trying to make about the reconstituted Pumpkins NOT being an oldies
act, alternative nostalgia or otherwise, and it is in fact on some
dramatic, horribly painful but ultimately brilliantly worthwhile odyssey
of its own, just like the old band. Remember, in his world, Smashing
Pumpkins tours are ordeals far more trying than any military campaign,
outdoing the misery even of Napoleon’s infamous retreat from Moscow. And
if they aren’t, they’re not worth doing. (See: Zwan.)

Read DeRo’s whole bloggy thing…

By my estimation, Corgan is just being a bit petulant and passing it off as a “concept” to dodge criticism. I remember seeing Townshend on some rockumentary bitching about how “all his friends are dead.” He had a point, but he was also being a whiny crank. Corgan seems to be doing the same thing here. Remember this is the guy who blamed Britney Spears for the Pumpkins break-up and whose recent critiques of American in the end times run about this deep…

That's hot...

President Cheney?

What’s frustrating about watching Corgan struggle with his conceptual nonsense and big time rock ambitions is that his work is always best when he’s not trying so hard. Case in point, the relaxed, bootleg-only Machina II record has proven a much more enduring rock record than the forced, over-produced Machina.

In the early days of Zwan, Corgan and company played a number of small gigs showcasing a surprising number of sunny, ringing rocksongs. On top of these songs, the band’s second incarnation as the Djali Zwan was an outlet for acoustic material often rooted in American roots styles. Bootlegs of these Zwan performances reveal a band having fun playing to appreciative audiences in close quarters. I saw Zwan twice, once at Double Door before the release of Mary Star of the Sea and once at Metro in support of the album release. The Double Door show was a loose, engaging performance. The Metro show was a bit more “showbiz.” It’s a shame that Zwan fell apart before they could release the acoustic Djali Zwan material. From what I’ve heard, it’s some of the best and easiest-to-take Corgan material.

From Live at The Intersection 12-13-2001

MP3: Zwan, “Candy Came Calling”

MP3: Zwan, “For Your Love”

I’m not saying that Corgan’s been completely wasting his talents of since chucking Zwan. I do wish he’d released the rumored acoustic concept record about Illinois rather than the labored retro mope rock of The Future Embrace. Even now with the Pumpkins, Corgan does manage to ease off the throttle and simply record a pleasant song once in a while. The best song on my copy of Zeitgeist (I have the Target version) is the tacked-on bonus track “Zeitgeist,” a simple acoustic number that cuts deeper that the previous hour of blazing guitar nonsense. And having been mostly disappointed by Zeitgeist, I was again pleasantly surprised when I heard this new acoustic number he’s done with the New Pumpkins.

VIDEO: “99 Floors”

I can understand why Corgan — who basically made his career on a really big guitar noise — might be unwilling to pack in the sturm und drang in favor of plain the old strum and clang as a singer/songwriter type. Nevertheless, his best stuff seems to come when he sticks with the dreamy stuff that has always been part of his formula.

For your consideration — American Gothic, a four-song stopgap released via iTunes in the States and on disc in Europe, is understandably a bit slight. It’s not a “major” statement like Zeitgeist was intended to be, and it’s all the better for it.

“The Rose March” is a comfortable listen, finding Corgan embracing the drowsy psychedelic feel of vintage Pumpkins a la the soft stuff on Siamese Dream or Mellon Collie. The lyrics are mostly mush, like much of Corgan’s writing. Still, this seeming problem doesn’t really detract because the words are mostly there to provide sound and the occasional romantic image. “Again, Again, Again (The Crux)” is a “Tonight, Tonight” type declaration of longing. Gish-era light grunge rears its head on “Pox.” And “Sunkissed” returns to the dreamland of tracks like “Thirty-Three” or even “Galapagos.” In short, this little collection is nothing new from Billy Corgan and Jimmy Chamberlin, which is precisely why it isn’t a shrieking horror. It’s natural. It’s Billy Corgan music that sounds like Billy Corgan.

What is irritating about trying to follow Billy Corgan’s career is how frequently he defeats himself, how often he ignores what he does well to do something shallowly “Artistic.” He and Chamberlin could easily record album-after-inviting-album of expertly-recorded folky psychedelia. They could build themselves a nice catalogue of well-respected songs. Instead, Corgan persists in the self-serious boy-in-a-dress adolescent shenanigans that had grown tiresome back in 1995. Almost as irritating is that Corgan cannot be entirely written off because he is occasionally releases quite beautiful and/or exciting. If only he’d ditch the games and just be himself — even if that self is a 40-something bald, religiously-minded Midwestern singer/songwriter who used to be a rockstar.

I hope I die before I become Pete Townshend, indeed.

Posted in Live, Local (Chicago), Singles and EPs, Smashing Pumpkins | 1 Comment »

Smashing Pumpkins, 1979 (Single)

Thursday, October 16th, 2008

N.B. — This disc is part of the Aeroplane Flies High… boxed set.

A couple weeks ago my wife sent me an article from Columbia College Today titled “Sha Na Na and the Invention of the Fifties” that illustrates how a campy, “retro” version of the 1950s supplanted the dull, grey realities of that decade.

A choice nibblet –

Marcus was coming to the same conclusion: The idea of the Fifties that America still holds — the happy, “greasy” Fifties — was an “invented History.” Up until 1969, quite an opposite cultural memory held sway. When Americans remembered “the Fifties,” they thought of Joe McCarthy witch hunts, of an “age of anxiety,” of the “shook-up generation” diving under their desks during A-Bomb drills, of the Man in the Gray Flannel Suit selling out and Holden Caulfield cracking up, or Allen Ginsberg ’48 and Jack Kerouac ’44 too “beat” to fight back. Nothing to get nostalgic about there. In a section titled “Re-inventing the Day Before Yesterday,” Guffey describes older critics, who remembered the decade only too clearly, “shocked at the happy-go-lucky imagery” of what Horizon Magazine protested as the “newly-minted” Fifties. Cultural critics had already agreed the decade was “a national pre-frontal lobotomy.”

Then, Marcus and Guffey saw, around 1969, “history” had been deliberately rewritten — almost invented.

“The replacement of the Beat with the greaser as the emblematic 1950s rebel” had, Marcus reports, consolidated its hold on American “memory” within a very few years, by the time of Happy Days and Fonzie.

As any regular visitor to the Record Desk might notice, these sorts of concerns are right up my own personal alley. And being the self-involved type that I am, I began wondering if my own glorious work here at the Desk might be contributing to the creation of some kind of invented “Nineties.” It seems that in blog after blog I am extolling the virtues of the years that coincided with my teenhood like the worst kind of aging blowhard. And my own self-mythologizing (not just here, but also in the blood and guts “real world”) about the horrors of competitive marching band and my angsty little crushes on girls named Erin and my preoccupation with my “forgotten” sixteenth birthday which just happened to be the day that everyone found out Kurt Cobain was dead – all of this emotional bric-a-brac could be part of a pattern of justifying my own melodrama by projecting it onto the times.

I could very well be cherry picking the most maudlin, adolescent examples of ‘90s popular culture in order to build my own private “Nineties” wherein my adolescence is enshrined as pure and true. As much as turning 30 has helped me get over myself in some ways, I remain a grown man who identifies intensely with music meant mainly for teenagers. And yet I am now undeniably “old.” Perhaps my little retreat into the “Nineties” is a way to shore up my identity like those Grateful Dead fans who invented a version of the “Sixties” and never left. Maybe my so-called life was never as quintessentially “Nineties” as I like to think. Perhaps I’ve become hopelessly nostalgic in my dotage.

I’ll be your Jordan Catalano

*swoon*

Still, one of my very favorite this-record-saved-my-life albums is Quadrophenia, which after all is the sound of a self-aware thirty-something rocker waxing nostalgic about a youth movement he was never a part of, to which he was connect only by a calculated band-management decision to stake out the Mod audience. But still, this kind of almost-phony backwards-looking pining hits me right *there.* (Imagine that I’m pointing to the spot beneath which my heart ostensibly lurks.) Perhaps I’m the sort whose programmed to like things the most once they’re safely tucked away in the past. Maybe I just labored and self-conscious enough to like the revival of the revival most of all.

Like any crisis of conscience worth its crippling waves of existential dread, my over-concern re: my involvement with the imaginary “Nineties” sent me directly to my record collection in search of something that I could pretend was wisdom. Instead of soul-correcting insight, I found the Smashing Pumpkins.

As anyone knows, Billy Pumpkin is the patron saint of pretentious, inauthentic, careerist rock star narcissism. He also happens to have turned out a number of very fine alternarock records. In many ways – and this could just be me over-remembering the cover of “Join Together” that the band did at the Aragon show I was at – Corgan is a bit like Townshend. They both mix pop with spirituality while making blustery, over-the-top proclamations of their own brilliant intents. Also, neither man can seem to keep his band broken up.

Being a smartipanced fellow myself, I have a certain affinity for Corgan and Townshend. So it was none-too-surprising when I realized that Billy Pumpkin, too, was in the business of inventing the his own little past just like me.

Take for instance “1979,” a song that by virtue of being a teenager in the Chicago suburbs upon it’s release is pretty much THE SOUND of the “Nineties” in my mind. Still, if you can listen to the song with new ears after umpteen “Twofer Tuesdays,” you’ll realize that the song is actually a great little bit of imagined nostalgia. Young William Corgan was all of twelve in 1979. A little young to be “hanging down with the freaks and ghouls” and shaking his “zipper blues” while contemplating his own ennui and mortality. If anything, the song reads like a dorky kids hyper-romantic vision of what the older, cooler kids were up to. Pair this with the vaguely new wave but-not-in-a-late-1970s-sort-of-way arrangement and what you have is a song that “suggests” the past while not being an actual remembrance. It’s an invented sliver of time – one that was quite appealing to teenagers circa 1995 to whom the kitschy “Seventies” was the very stuff of cool.

Also look at stuff that was packaged along with “1979.” The highly-rotated video was the perfect picture of “Nineties” meets “Seventies” cool – muscle cars, combat boots, Clerks-style shenanigans, and vintagey sweaters commingle.

Couldn’t this pass for a “That ‘70s Show” pilot?

Additionally, the cover art for the “1979” single was riddled with “Seventies” signifiers like shiny outfits and roller skates and neon game room signs. It was proposing a certain then-hip conception of the “Seventies” meant to appeal to kids who in many cases weren’t even born in 1979.

After this wanna go get some Slurpees?

In short, “1979” – a song that I strongly associate with my own made-up version of the “Nineties” – was itself a celebration of some made-up adolescent paradise set in the last days of the Carter administration.

I’m not sure if I’m any closer to having any particular kind of “answer.” I’m pretty damn sure that I’m over doing w/r/t the power of the “Nineties” as a wellspring of pop cultural good. And I know that a lot of what sixteen-year-old me thought was cool was actually a bunch of older folks trying to make peace with their simpler, happier ‘70s childhoods by turning them into myth. Rock and roll is sentimental stuff (at its core) and it allows for this kind of fairy tale creation.

Perhaps the “Nineties” are calling because they’re far away enough to feel different from the drearily grim End Times Tradeshow that threatens to be the calling card of whatever imaginary “Aughts” someone is cruel enough to come up with.

Set the ray to “Jerry,” kids. Watch the horizons.

Posted in Local (Chicago), Singles and EPs, Smashing Pumpkins | 1 Comment »

Babyshambles, Albion (CD Single)

Thursday, July 3rd, 2008

Pete Doherty is one of the only songwriters to emerge during the aughts who regularly writes a song that floors me. (The other is Jack White.) He doesn’t really peddle his own cleverness like some of my other favorite songwriters – E. Costello, B. Dylan, J. White. He can turn a phrase. The “Albion” b-side “Why Did You Break My Heart/Piracy’s” bit about “the jingle-jangle of the jailor’s bangle” is killer. But more than anything, Doherty’s ability to manufacture a world view and sense of (imaginary?) place is what earns him a place at the Record Desk. His sea-going Dickensian drug den England seems like a place one would want to visit and then thoroughly regret visiting.

“Albion” is perhaps Doherty’s clearest vision of his mythical England. Written when he and Carl Barat were still partners in the Libertines, “Albion” was a bit like the Libs’ mission statement. I suppose Doherty’s keeping this song for his own project was a bit of a slight to his former bandmate – a move meant to prove who owned the vision that steered the Libs. All tabloid considerations aside, “Albion” is quite a strong song with a distinct sense of place and history. It feels almost lazy – the simple remembering of long ago idylls: “gin in teacups,” “violence in bus queues,” a “pale, thin girl with eyes forlorn.” It’s all bullshit. It’s an imaginary, romantic England of the never-quite-was. But it works. When Doherty exhorts you to “come away” to every Nowheresford and Crappingham in England, you’re willing to believe him. He’s our disheveled tour guide through a coal dust Victorian dystopia.

Doherty’s chemical escapism gets more press in the States than his music. And it’s not like this is some kind of cruel fate. All decent rock stars cultivate a persona that (when done well) embodies the mood and ideas tucked away in the music itself. That Doherty would “groom” himself to be a scuzzy ne’er do well East End urchin is no surprise given his lyrical preoccupations. Doherty’s music is about retreat into the past. It’s sentimental music – shunning a techo-puritanical future in favor of good ol’ fashioned pursuits like debauchery and decadence and slumming. Not unlike the Kinks’ Ray Davies, Doherty posits “England” (or “Albion”) as an alternative to a global modernity that lacks grit and texture.

“Anywhere in Albion” is good enough. He’ll “be waiting in the photo booth at the Underground station.”

Posted in Babyshambles, Singles and EPs | No Comments »

Pearl Jam, Merkinball

Thursday, July 3rd, 2008

I was unpacking my CD collection last week when I ran across this particular “rarity.” I know that rarities and singles don’t exist anymore because I can now, thanks to the internet, buy wholly obscure albums while wearing my underpants. A non-album single by a major band at the peak of their popularity really doesn’t seem “rare” now. I can still remember the day I bought this disc. Tony Real and I went to Record Swap in Homewood, and this disc was right up front in the “recent arrivals” section of the used CDs. I think I paid $3.49, which seems like highway robbery under today’s free-download-or-at-the-very-most-$0.99-per-track ethos. Nevertheless, I think it was a bargain. I know that “I Got Id” is few folks’ favorite Pearl Jam track (though it comes close for me). But if anything this two song alt-era souvenir is a study in rock and roll dynamics – and I don’t just mean the Pixies-style *LOUD-soft-LOUD* thing.

“I Got Id” begins with a ragged confession before building to a defiant, swaggering declaration of “I got memories/I got shit” before the chorus swoops upward into an unintelligible yarl that splatters into a glorious bit of Neil Young guitar – that sputtering, electric, lumbering search for melody soon swallowed by feedback. Soon were back to the confession into declaration and swagger before another thumping, assured chorus that’s more the sound of transcendence than meaningful words. And Neil’s guitar – stumbling around, grasping for a way out. The song doesn’t so much end as it sails away on a wave of lingering guitar noise.

“Long Road” presages Pearl Jam’s dalliance with “eastern” feeling drums and drones on 1996’s No Code. It’s a relaxed bit of drums and pump organ where slashes of guitar clang occasionally interrupt the placid ruminations. At six minutes, the song never really explodes or changes, rather it swells and crests. Waves of pure sound washing over a scant organ melody. Vedder’s voice becomes another sonic element – a counterpart to the growling guitars.

If anything, this disc shows a good ‘90s style band reaching towards becoming simply a good band by embracing sounds and textures beyond what had become recognizable grunge tropes. Of course Neil Young’s influence has a lot to do with this shift in tone and approach. Regardless, “I Got Id” is almost as great a song as Neil’s best from his 1990’s rebirth, “I’m the Ocean” from the Mirrorball record – recorded with Pearl Jam at the same time as the Merkinball* tracks.

I suppose it could be generational bias or rose-colored goggles, but the 1990s bands with their back-to-vinyl posturing and singles-plus-b-sides releases seem to be the last go around for “traditional” rock and roll methods – not to mention the thoroughly retro sounds most “alternative” bands were chasing. Whether it’s a shame to see such pretense fall by the wayside is another, larger discussion.

Still, I can remember, thirteen years later, where I was when I bought Merkinball. I can’t even remember what the last thing I downloaded sounded like.

*Merkinball was the first disc I bought that taught me a useful vocabulary word. A merkin is a pubic wig. Knowing this can slightly enhance viewings of Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove.

Posted in Neil Young, Pearl Jam, Singles and EPs | 1 Comment »