I’m closing things up here for a while, maybe forever, and merging everything back on one site at Known Johnson. This split-personality thing made sense for a while but it’s too hard to keep track of what to post where now. It’ll all be over there from now on, for better or for worse.

Robert Pollard - Superman Was A Rocker

Since Guided By Voices split on New Year’s Eve, 2004 (and even long before that) some fans have pined for the old days - back when Robert Pollard and company crudely recorded in a basement on cassettes into a boombox, throwing caution to the wind and making lo-fi masterpiecesthat confounded standard song-writing practices. Pollard’s become something of an off-kilter, oddball-pop genius over the years, but he hasn’t forgotten those days, and with his latest album, as always just the first of several this year, he returns to those old techniques to see what turns up. 20 years of old tapes+new vocals and other goodies=a good time for willing ears.

Read more new releases here.

Well, that was, as usual, mostly disappointing, and, unsually, weird. Obviously, Herbie Hancock taking Best Album was a surprise but it’s probably more due to Kanye West and Amy Winehouse splitting votes than a nod to quality - not to dismiss Winehouse (and, indeed, the fine Mr. Hancock,) whose album I think was one of the year’s brighter spots. Not on my very top favorites list but definitely on my runners-up list.

While we’re on the topic of Ms. Winehouse, I was glad to see her actually perform. As the curious choice of Cuba Gooding Jr. put it (and I paraphrase,) “We were unsure if the next artist would be able to appear on the show tonight” and I filled in after him “because she might otherwise be incapacitated, incarcerated, or just plain dead.” Or maybe just visa problems. Regardless, she performed and it was . . . okay. She’s done better than this - she’s really worth the hype, vocally. It’s pretty obvious that she’s put her body through hell. The drugs have ravaged her vocals but she actually looked healthier than in a long time. Let’s hope the rehab sticks and she gets back to what she used to be: worthy of awards.

I just wish her backup singers could have sounded a little better. I’m not sure if that was the Dap-Kings as her backing band or not, but if so, that was not a great performance by them. Those dudes sounded like they were an old, slowed-down tape - “nooooo, nooooo, nooooo.”

And Natalie Cole, you should be ashamed of yourself putting down Amy Winehouse simply because of her drug problems. Should she win for the music or her lifestyle?

But . . . Foo Fighters. Foo Fighters, Foo Fighters, Foo Fighters. Listen, guys, we have to talk. I really love your music, really I do. Except for Echoes, etc.. It’s just not a great album, guys. In fact, it’s easily your worst. I don’t want you thinking this win is some kind of validation for this album rather than you, which is what it really should be. Because aside from “The Pretender” I can’t remember a thing off of - because I haven’t had the desire to listen to it in months. Let’s go away and try again with the next album, shall we?

I gotta say it. Alicia Keys: hot. Really, really hot.

But happily this time. As expected, The Joshua Tree was just the beginning - next up are Boy, October, and War. Who knows what the extra content is at this point, but it would be wise to hit the Buy Now button at Amazon on these in case they spontaneously dip in price over the next three months. This may explain why U2 fans have noticed that the Complete U2 virtual box on Itunes suddenly disappeared a few months ago.

And the even more enticing rumor that I’ve seen is that September will see the release of a special expanded edition of Under A Blood Red Sky complete with the long-awaited full-length video of the concert on DVD.

I really wonder about myself sometimes. Right now I’m wondering why the hell I haven’t been buying every damned Mobile Fidelity disc that’s been released for bands that I love over the years. After being astounded by the sheer awesomeness of MoFi’s treatment of Rush’s Permanent Waves (seriously, if you’ve heard the other three Rush titles, this one completely blows them away,) today I’ve been enjoying the hell out of their take on XTC’s Skylarking and, seriously, it destroys the remaster from 6 or so years ago. There’s not only a really fun, much wider soundstage, there’s also a beautiful sparkle to the top end and, what’s best, there’s depth and texture on the low end of the sound spectrum that is completely absent in the remaster, stuff that I have never heard in the original version (but I admit that I last heard that back in 2001.) It is pure audio joy.

I’ve seen that MoFi has released Aimee Mann’s Lost In Space, an album I bought once, then bought again when it was re-released by her (as opposed to her label) with a second disc of extra songs, and that experience really pissed me off - I really feel she took advantage of her fans there. So when I saw this MoFi hybrid SACD version was coming out, I really had no interest in purchasing a third version, and had serious doubts that it could sound that improved being such a new album. Now, however, I’ve read a bunch of reviews from what appear to be “regular Joes” on Amazon, people who don’t appear to be audiophiles in any sense of the word, and also seen qualified audiophile comments about it, and they all agree that it is a tremendous improvement on the original. So, fine, I’ll buy another version of this luckily great album.

But that’s not enough - MoFi has also, previously unknown to me, given the treatment to my favorite album of hers, Bachelor No. 2, and it is getting equally rave reviews. I don’t feel any qualms about a second version of that - mine is so “well loved” that it might be time for a new one. The package, at least, certainly could use an upgrade, and I’m sure the disc looks pretty beat up after so many visits to various cars’ CD players - those things can be abusive.

So, from now on, I don’t skip MoFi’s releases of titles I care about. But don’t go looking on Ebay for older titles unless you’ve got a strong heart, a strong will, or deep pockets.

Iron Maiden - Live After Death (DVD): FINALLY! The moment Maiden fans have been waiting for - LAD on DVD years (almost “decades” now) after the video tape went out of print. I saw this in high school - nearly 20 years ago - and almost instantly regretted not buying a copy for myself. Held by many as the greatest live rock album of all time - me included - it seems ridiculous that it’s taken this long to officially be released on DVD. The band apparently really wanted to do this one right. Not only do we get the legendary concert full of giant mummified Eddies and such, we also get a second DVD filled with archival footage including the show that is said to rival the Live After Death show, Maiden’s 1985 Rock In Rio appearance (50 minutes), Behind the Iron Curtain (a 57 minute documentary shot in Poland and other eastern bloc countries,) the History of Iron Maiden, pt. 2 (50 minutes,) and a few other smaller things.

Killing Joke - Fire Dances, Night Time, Brighter Than A Thousand Suns, and Outside The Gate: There seems to be some confusion on which of these are coming out today, and which have actually already been released, so I’m throwing them all in at once. The Killing Joke remaster campaign has not been the most organized, but it has been one of the more respectful ones. Not only are they excellent quality remasters, the band has compiled intelligent and rewarding sets of bonus material for each album. In the case of Brighter, the album is almost entirely new - this version features the mixes the public never got to hear, which make it sound more like the traditional, ferocious Killing Joke and less like a synth-pop band. Also be on the lookout for a very limited edition of the band’s Extremities Dirt & Various Repressed Emotions which features a bonus disc of extras, greatly expanded book, and a disc-sized box to house it all in.

What a strange year. Unlike most years, when I find myself all over the place musically, this year found me focused on a small collection of albums that repeatedly drifted into my ears. I’m not like this - I’m not one of those people that sits back and says, “What a crappy year for music this has been,” but when I look back on 2007 for truly notable music, I simply come back to a small handful of my very favorite releases where most years find me struggling to pick which ones were my favorites. Not so this year - it’s pretty cut and dried.

Are they artistically important? In some cases, yes, but does it really matter? What matters most to me, at least, is that the albums are ones that I’m going to be coming back to year after year. If they’re not groundbreaking, earth-shattering redefining examples of music, so be it. This list, in a way, is a prediction of sorts - I am attempting to predict the albums that are going to have staying power with me, at the very least. And, who knows, maybe in a few years we can look back and these albums will have withstood the test of time for many others. I’m pretty confident they will, in fact.

Rock/pop

Wilco - Sky Blue Sky: Opening with the gentle guitar of “Either Way,” a film begins to unreel in my mind. The black screen, the titles, and then Jeff Tweedy’s soft, scratchy voice crackles out “Maybe the sun will shine today” just as a scene of the open road is revealed. That’s what Sky Blue Sky is to me – road music, an escape, transportation away from the everyday nothingness that often drives us insane. And, more than any other piece of music, escape is exactly what I did with this album since it came out earlier this year.

Wilco may have taken a quiet and calming turn here, but there’s so much more going on. The music is subtle, revealing layers of intricate, thoughtful, and sometimes downright weird stuff going on underneath the top coating of amiable, easy-going tunes. Listen close and it’s impossible to ignore jazz guitarist Nels Cline’s contributions, or the unusual drumming that Glenn Kotche lays down behind the band. These elements take Sky Blue Sky from simply being a good album to being something that needs to be listened to again and again. It’s an instant modern classic rock album – a rarity these days.

Crowded House - Time On Earth: Sometimes you just can’t hear things right. Or maybe it’s just me. I don’t know - whatever the case, that happened here. Time On Earth eluded me for months after its release. As expected, given my love for Neil Finn’s songwriting, a few songs grabbed me quickly, and that’s exactly the problem with the album. Some of these songs were so good that they eclipsed all the others. In their brilliant light the album as a whole slipped away from me. I fell into a bad rut. I heard it in chunks - “this” little group of songs was great, “that” little group of songs was good, and others, well, I just didn’t care for. The whole didn’t jell - and this was unusual for me. I usually love an album or I don’t. Something was wrong here, and I began to think it wasn’t the music.

I found myself presented with a few opportunities where I couldn’t focus on the music like I normally do. When I opted to listen to a playlist I’d created that mixed things up just a tiny bit by throwing in two b-sides to mirror the tracklisting of the vinyl version of the album, I realized that all of the songs were powerful and beautiful. That little change created a new terrain out of the familiar, somehow, and I could hear the album anew. The clouds parted, as they say, the light shone down from above, and the haze cleared, illuminating what is a powerful collection of songs dealing with love, death, and the state of the world.

We can argue if we want about whether they’re truly Crowded House songs or “just” more Neil Finn songs. That’s what some are doing. But in the end, does it matter? I’ll take more of either.

Rush - Snakes & Arrows: While it may not quite be the wild and crazy effort that producer Nick Raskulinecz promised, it is a solid, enjoyable effort. If anything, it suffers mainly from the band’s attempts at covering so much ground. Where they had formerly been so focused on a “sound” for each album, this album is all over the place, picking bits and pieces from all over their catalog. It makes for a fun listen, but not an especially focused listen when you’re in a particular mood. What I respond to on this album, more than many other Rush albums, are drummer Neil Peart’s lyrics, which seem to be misunderstood by many as the words of a very bitter man about a very cold world rather than what I believe them to be, which is one man attemping to show that while there are terrible events of every kind taking place, there is beauty and belief and justice to be found if we would just trust in each other. A unified message of hope ties an album of loose ends together in a fantastic way.

Radiohead - In Rainbows: Even after only a few months with this album, it’s hard for me not to look back on their catalog and think of the high points as OK Computer, Kid A, and In Rainbows. Somehow, after years of really doing their own thing, going their own way, which kind of means that they had a bit of a “Spinal Tap Jazz Odyssey for a new generation” thing going on for some, they veered back to territory closer to OK Computer and the prettier parts of Kid A and made a bunch of really beautiful songs. Sure, there are lots of bits of experimentation here and there, but where it used to take the front seat, it’s now more background, with melody upfront. Part of me wants more of the weird, angular, gritty stuff, because I loved that, but when they make music this compellingly lovely, it’s impossible to deny wanting more.

Blackfield - II: Guitarist and vocalist Steven Wilson seems to have split his pop sensibility off from his “other” band, Porcupine Tree, so they could focus more on delving into darker subjects with heavier music, using Blackfield, his project with Israeli singer Aviv Geffen, as an outlet for his more, um . . . “upbeat” material. I say upbeat in quotes because it’s hard to call it that, exactly, since the songs are still filled with tales of heartbreak and personal woe, but in comparison to the pure angst experienced in recent Porcupine Tree material, where societal ills are front and center, it does indeed feel lighter. Here is where Wilson and Geffen allow their catchiest, most beautiful harmonies to emerge, even while turning out some of the year’s best hard rock - if “Epidemic” is not one of the best straight-up rock songs of the year, something is wrong.

The Shins - Wincing the Night Away: Maybe it’s a “sophomore slump” of sorts to some - despite it being their third album - since their big break came with Garden State a few years back when Chutes Too Narrow was all the rage. Will they really change your life? I think a lot of people thought they would and are holding this album to that standard. This is not that album. In fact, it’s an album made for the people who scoff at such notions and wanted something beyond more of the same from the band. It’s mature pop, darker, weirder, a little off-putting - a decided step away from the candy-coated elixir of their first two albums that hooked so many, and it’s exactly the kind of move a band needs to make to stand the test of time. I, at least, hope to see many more Shins albums lining the shelves of my CD rack.

Ryan Adams - Easy Tiger: Adams has regained the focus he had with Heartbreaker and Gold and turned out one of the strongest sets of music in his career here. What came through after a few spins for me, what grabbed me, is that behind the usual country tinges was a little swagger found in soul and r&b that I hadn’t really noticed before. It’s not pronounced, but it’s there nonetheless.

Porcupine Tree - Fear of a Blank Planet: It might be easy to go on and on about the themes of isolation that waft through Blank Planet’s lyrics, but for me, it’s all about one thing: the music. Honestly, sometimes the lyrics are a little pedestrian and it’s not like this isn’t a topic that hasn’t been covered a million times before. They’re simply excuses for Steven Wilson to lay down some of those gorgeous harmony choruses. But back to the music - Wilson cranks things up a bit here, and, as I said above, he seemingly has split off the pop-side of the band to Blackfield so Porcupine Tree can focus on the darker, heavier, grittier, weirder stuff. And we get it all - “Anesthetize” expands to nearly 18 minutes in basically two movements and features some of the heaviest, fastest playing the band has ever done, and then is followed by one of the prettiest songs they’ve ever done, “Sentimental” (which features the memorable riff from In Absentia’s “Trains.”) The album is nothing if not an intense song-cycle of despair.

Pat Metheny and Brad Mehldau - Quartet: This is one of those pairings that could have gone either way. Two extremely strong, vibrant leaders in their own right getting together and turning out an album where they simply butt heads for an hour or so and nothing transcendent happens, or, simply put, magic. Luckily, it was the latter, and even more luckily for us, our hunches were true that there was a second offering coming with the full band backing the two.

David Torn - Prezens: I have used the word “alien” to describe David Torn’s guitar work so many times that I’m afraid to say it anymore. And yet I can find no other words that adequately convey the qualities in his sound and style without picking that one. His is an utterly alien sound. No one, I mean no one sounds like him. He manages to take things that sound like an amp dying and turn it into sheer beauty - and he purposely makes these sounds, mind you - and then he twists them just enough so that nothing about it sounds “pretty” but manages to sound right. He is one of few guitarists that I willingly label “genius” and it’s because he focuses so little on being a guitarist and rather intends to simply be a musician. There are no blazing solos or fretboard runs in his music - just searingly weird landscapes of tones and textures.

Mörglbl - Grötesk: Don’t even bother: it doesn’t mean anything. It’s just a weird band name they use because it sounds funny. And that, in itself, should tell you something about this band - they’re French and they have this kind of sense of humor. Add in the fact that guitarist Christophe Godin plays like the lovechild of a bizarre mating of Mike Keneally, Frank Zappa, and John McLaughlin and you’ve got some pretty weird territory. Zappa asked, “Does humor belong in music?” That question could be appended with the phrase “instrumental music.” They don’t descend into Keystone Kops-like moments, but it is clear that the intent of their music is serious fun, and there’s an element of humor. In fact, there are times when I laughed to myself at the often ingenious approaches the trio takes to music. Not necessarily “funny ha-ha” but “funny clever.”

Grant-Lee Phillips - Strangelet: Every time Phillips puts out an album this happens: it comes out, I love it, and then it just falls into my routine. Whatever it is about Grant-Lee Phillips, he somehow has the right gearing to mesh with the gearing of my life with nary a hitch. And therein lies the rub: he gets forgotten. Strangelet popped up earlier this year and slipped right into my listening for a while, becoming a quick fave, and then just became part of the background. When I began thinking about the year’s releases again, suddenly I realized that this album came out this year, not much longer ago even though it feels far more familiar than that. Phillips’ music is that tired cliche of comfortable old shoe - it fits perfectly and feels good, but goes neglected until you really think about it. Don’t neglect this album.

Michael Brook - BellCurve: After the disappointment I felt with 2005’s RockPaperScissors, I would never have expected this “remix” album of that material to not only stand on its own but be as strong as it is - nor be a favorite of the year. And yet . . . BellCurve takes the strongest elements of RockPaperScissors and re-molds them with very different, much more suitable backing music, and, except in the case of one song, does away with all of the vocals that, frankly, cluttered up what most people are tuning into Brooks for in the first place: his beautiful guitar work. The result is a far more pleasing album that ranks with his fantastic Live at the Aquarium and Cobalt Blue releases, rather than down with the confused murk, say, of Albino Alligator. (In an incredibly stupid and frustrating move, the CD is only available for sale at Barnes & Noble. The album may be downloaded from Itunes and Amazon, however, if files are your thing.)

In closing

I’d like to take this opportunity to offer my thanks to readers of Overlooked Alternatives and its offspring piece, The Breakdown. As has a tendency to happen, life has started to impinge upon my time to devote to writing this and keep up with reviewing music and, you know, having a life. While I enjoy getting to explore the new releases every week, I’d really rather put my time into actually reviewing recently released albums rather than simply speculating about them. The opportunity arose recently to join forces with Glen Boyd and Mark Saleski on Blogcritics’ weekly New CDs piece and I jumped at the chance. I won’t be a weekly presence on the list but I will contribute when the beacon of new music that needs a spotlight lights up the sky. Suffice it to say that I will be there more often than not. It’s not “goodbye,” it’s just, you know, “see you in a bit. I have to run out to the store for some bread. Do you need anything?”

I stumbled upon a treasure trove of John Bonham studio outtakes from the 1979 In Through The Out Door sessions. Just the man and his monstrous drums. Seriously fascinating for people who dig drums - and not just drum solos but actual drum tracks. It’s also pretty funny listening to him vocalize while playing.

(Found over at Filmoculous. And, yeah, I have to check out that David Lee Roth isolated-vocals thing, but I can’t get to it at the moment.)

I have no idea why, but for some stupid reason a quote from some movie I often have in my head is “It’s good to want things.” It’s a good quote, simple, effective, to the point - sometimes it’s best to just want and finally have it delivered than to just get, if you know what I mean. I just Googled the quote and found out the line came from the 1990 Winona Ryder film, Welcome Home, Roxy Carmichael, a movie I have no recollection of ever having seen. Did anyone? Nevermind - that’s beside the point.

I have irrationally wanted some of these Japanese mini-LP reissues of the Frank Zappa catalog for a several years now. There’s nothing unusual about them - no remixes or remastering, no extra tracks - except that they’re in the nice cardboard miniature replica LP sleeves that the Japanese music industry is so fond of. And they’re expensive. I’m not a huge Zappa fan - I love the man’s guitaring, but lyrically, I just . . . I don’t know . . . I don’t like ‘em. I’ve given him many chances and always come back to simply keeping Lather in the collection for my vocal Zappa needs. But the instrumental Zappa is another thing. If there was a Zappa Itunes where one could purchase, say, lossless audio files from his catalog, I’d own all of his instrumental music. As such, I own a handful of his primarily instrumental albums and simply go without on the more vocal-based albums. You know how it goes . . . it’s good to want things.

One of the sets I’ve eyed for a long time has been the three-disc Shut Up And Play Yer Guitar. Zappa has always had a penchant for assembling songs out of other things and these three albums are no different. He picks bits and pieces of guitar solos from live shows, arranges new backings, and voila, a brand new song. Most of the time, if you suggested a guitarist was taking his solos and created new songs under them, it would be a frighteningly dull prospect, but Zappa is not an everyday guitarist. Every solo was its own composition, different and distinct from every other. I can see why he has such a devoted collection-minded following - they actually have something worth tracking down in the bootlegs, unlike pretty much every other band out there who play only slight variations on their material from night to night.

Well, today, I found a used copy of the Japanese mini-LP set of Play Yer Guitar albums. And it’s neat. I don’t know why. It just is. As my desire was irrational, my enjoyment of them in this form is just as irrational. Let me be, I am a man of simple, if sometimes expensive means.

You know, I like bonus content on deluxe editions when it’s significant - unreleased songs and/or concerts - and with last year’s deluxe edition of Elvis Costello’s debut album, My Aim Is True, we got both, which made it impossible to do without the excellent Rhino deluxe edition which also had a disc full of non-album material. I thought that was a one-off. I didn’t expect to see another following six months later.

Why am I not feeling even a tinge of excitement for this? A full disc dedicated to a live show - I love that shit. I usually eat that up. But here . . . I don’t know. I am decidedly “eh” about it, perhaps because I simply don’t find myself scrolling to the MAIT live disc very often. The price doesn’t help either. Had this been priced like the Rhino 2-CD deluxes, which were basically “two for one,” I might have jumped. But My Aim Is True was the full “Deluxe Edition” price and, frankly, the package wasn’t all that special. The book wasn’t anything new or revealing. What were we paying so much extra for? I know how much CDs cost to produce. That live disc didn’t cost double the amount to make.

Maybe I’m a bit burned out on Costello, I don’t know. The constant reissuing is getting a little old. This makes 4 versions available since 1993’s first Ryko expanded issue - three of which are all from the past 6 years! I know, I know, I don’t have to buy anything and everything that’s put out for sale. But as a fan, I want this stuff. Had I just gotten into him now, the latest ones would be the ones I would buy - I’d much rather have live stuff than demos, frankly. But the bigger problem is simply market burnout - having that name out there, again and again, with the same titles attached to it, it starts to look like desparation and greed to outsiders who happen to notice. I fear Elvis is hitting that terrible spot in his career where he’s treading water and there just happens to be a quick way to keep things going with these reissues. I know there have been multiple times when he’s been accused of treading water and managed to come back with some fantastic music, but there’s just something kind of extra unappetizing going on here.