Listening

Listening — Comments
24
Jan 10

The New Spoon Album

I’ve been listening to Spoon’s Transference for the past couple weeks. They’re on of my favorite bands. Britt Daniel has become a great lyricist and the songs have gotten catchier with every album. That is, until now.

I heard an interview with the band last night that made Transference more appealing than it is. Daniel and Jim Eno made the album’s weaknesses sound like strengths. There’s no hiding the fact that their efforts to make an “uglier” record succeeded, so why not embrace it?

They knew what sound they wanted and produced the record themselves, but that’s not the issue. Transference is immediately recognizeable as a Spoon record; the problem is that it’s not a very good one. You’d have to go back to the daring, equally uneven Kill the Moonlight to hear something as infuriating as this. Sequencing, not production, stops Transference in its tracks.

Spoon buried the best songs in the middle third of the album, starting with “Written in Reverse” and ending with the plaintive strains of “Goodnight Laura,” a song that veers dangerously close to maudlin which wouldn’t be so bad if this weren’t a Spoon album.

We’ve come to expect great things. Their sound might be best described as Billy Joel songs as reimagined by Wire. Songs like “Sister Jack” and “The Underdog” burnished their reputation as a band on the cusp of greatness. There’s nothing of that caliber here.

Transference should’ve been Spoon’s magnum opus, the product of two decades worth of hard work from a band at the height of its power. Instead it’s the album you can tell the uninitiated they can safely ignore.

Listening — Comments
14
Jan 10

My Jay Reatard Interview

I got the chance to talk to punk phenomenon Jay Reatard after his SXSW ‘08 set. He had a tremendous vitality and frenetic energy that was contagious. His reckless abandon and go-for-broke spirit will be sorely missed.

Listening — Comments
9
Jan 10

A New Year in Music

2009 was a disastrous year for me and music. I was really turned off to the possibility that I might like anything. I reverted to old habits, listening to a disproportionate amount of metal, without really exploring further. For someone who in the past prided himself on catholic taste, it was something of a disappointment. Worse, I’ve not felt a part of the music scene for a while now and that really troubles me. I mean, my title is music editor, right?

Without getting bogged down in all the hows and whys, I’m really excited for 2010 already. Two of my favorite bands, Spoon and Liars, have albums out this January and it’s the time of year where I obsess over these releases, often at the expense of ignoring worthy albums that come along later in the year’s promotional cycle.

I used to think it was stupid for bands to release albums this time of year. Boy, was I wrong! When LCD Soundsystem releases albums in the dead of winter, they capture more attention than they would if they tried to shoehorn their stuff into the March and October gluts. It’s the perfect time of year to really get familiar with a record. You’re trapped in the house or car anyway, so you might as well crank up the stereo.

I celebrate the new year in music by deleting everything in iTunes and starting over fresh. Right now I’m listening to Spoon, but I’ll be checking out new music from Yeasayer, Ted Leo, Liars, Blood Feathers, Vampire Weekend and Gil-Scott Heron (!) soon enough. What a great way to start 2010!

Listening — Comments
26
May 09

Jay Bennett: 1963 – 2009

I heard the news early Monday morning, but it didn’t sink in until I read Aquarium Drunkard’s post this morning: Jay Bennett has died. There are times that I’m embarrassed to admit it now, but once upon a time I was a pretty rabid Wilco fan, and I always had a fondness for Bennett’s contributions to the band’s sound. The leap they made between the time he arrived and Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is a considerable one, and it’s hard to imagine Wilco ever amounting to anything without his influence, especially on their breakthrough album Summerteeth.

Wilco played the soundtrack to a number of significant moments in my life. I was floored when I saw them with Helen at Cooper River Park in September 2000 (setlist here). As the sun set behind the stage, I knew I’d seen a band on the cusp of bigger things. Little did I know that he’d be out of the band within a year. I continued to love the band, and saw Sonic Youth open for them in 2003, but it just wasn’t the same. I stopped listening to their music shortly thereafter. The cult of Tweedy proved too much to take.

I winced when I first saw Sam Jones’ I Am Trying to Break My Heart. Now I just feel betrayed by it. Is it possible that both Bennett and Tweedy were megalomaniacal jerks hell-bent on their personal vision for YHF, neither better than the other? Jay Bennett’s character assassination in that film will forever preserve the notion that he played Hedwig forever after to Tweedy’s Tommy Gnosis, Bennett often playing — coincidentally? — the same town on the same night as Wilco, albeit at a much tinier venue.

Bennett’s fall was the only truth Jones captured. Watching him reinvent himself in tiny clubs after contributing to a band on the verge of their greatest success still feels like a punch in the gut.

Now I’m listening to his last album, Whatever Happened I Apologize, which you can download free from Rock Proper here. Like his other solo efforts, it’s a stripped-down affair that isn’t exactly my cup of tea, but one can’t help but listen to the song “Talk and Talk and Talk” and think that he’s addressing Tweedy, though that may be overreaching a bit. If he is, it only points up how profoundly hurt he was by their split. Now they’ll never be able to reconcile whatever differences they may have still had.

I may be interviewing Wilco as they do press for their forthcoming record, Wilco the Album. I’m hopeful that they’ll be able to talk about Jay and help us better understand who he was.

Jay Bennett died Sunday. He was 45.