2007/01/20, Portland
Soundcheck
Intro
Baby c'mon
JoJo's jacket
Real emotional trash
We can't help you
Dragonfly pie
Mama
Gardenia
It kills
Baltimore
Walk into the mirror
Pennywhistle thunder
Hopscotch Willie
Band intros song
Water and a seat
Pencil rot
Freeze the saints
Wicked Wanda
Post-paint boy
The kick-ass recording of a kick-ass show I mentioned above. All of what I wrote in the previous note about the performance applies here, but even more so.
Three months before the recording sessions started, about a year before the record's release, the Jicks tear through a new repertoire that they're clearly thrilled with. They've even got a 50 second introduction instrumental practised – heavy prog/underground rock – to let the audience know they mean business with this new direction. No worries, the audience loves it.
New stuff makes up over half of the setlist – far more if you count the songs' running times. 7 of 'Real emotional thrash''s 10 songs. (Not to read too much into a single night's setlist but the three songs that aren't played, 'Cold son', 'Out of reaches', and 'Elmo Delmo' do sound like songs from a slightly later writing period than the others. 'Elmo delmo' the culmination of the 'Real emotional trash'-style multipart jammer. The other 2 pointing forward to the sparser, stoic 'Mirror traffic' songs.) Variations compared to the finished versions abound. That Doors-style piano solo on 'Hopscotch Willie', different chorus on 'Gardenia / Merry-go-round', a long jammed-out ending on 'Baltimore', a different order in the songparts for 'Wicked Wanda', different solos everywhere and especially on 'Real emotional trash'.
Let me glimpse forward – late 2008 and 2009 concerts show a band getting progressively more tired of this stuff. By contrast, here they're clearly still discovering the songs (and this new powerful band sound) and they are fully awake. '2007 – year of the new confidence', says Stephen ('you'll see it at the Oscars'). 'I envy all you guys who are about to hear this song for the first time, 'says Mike before 'Baltimore'.
The show also includes the two essential leftovers from this period 'Walk into the mirror' (call-back to '60s optimism) and 'Pennywhistle thunder' (one jammy multisection song too many for the record maybe, but its paranoia theme is effective). Both songs I frequently wish would've replaced my least faves on the album ('Gardenia' and, say, 'Wicked Wanda').
Now, a note about changing band members: you always lose a part of your song catalogue. You can tell from this setlist. They focussed on new songs and 'Face the truth' during rehearsals. The first and second albums are reduced to one song a piece, 'Face the truth' gets six.
Six great ones, absolutely. 'Pencil rot' is a thundering explosion. 'It kills' is seven minutes of moody magnificence – maybe my all time favorite version (there are clear lines going from 'It kills' to the melodies and arrangement of 'Real emotional trash' songs, btw). A 'Freeze the saints' with a beautifully sparse last 90 seconds or so (nothing like the studio arrangement). ' Mama' is swirly, 'Baby c'mon' is raucous and 'Post-paint boy'...I just don't like that song.
Later shows would see some earlier songs reinstalled, but in general, since 2007 I feel, couple of exceptions excluded, the first two and increasingly 'Face the truth' as well, are reduced to a small pool of usual suspects. I know, Stephen's always looking ahead, not one for nostalgia but there must be opportunities in those older albums, songs to be rediscovered, not just re-created. But I get it, these things aren't priorities when a new band member gets enrolled – you don't want to make 'em feel they've joined a heritage band.
Just a personal note – I told you of my stand-off-ish relationship with the Jicks since august 2001. That finally ended when I heard the recording of this show, so it's special to me for that reason as well. I quickly traced steps back to live recordings from the 2000-2005 era and re-evaluated what I'd missed. When 'Real emotional trash' came out I was ready and I've been following super-closely (it was never less than close) ever since. Just my luck that now it's adult responsibilities keeping me from the shows (I couldn't very well go to the most recent show being in the hospital with my just-born baby) but I did manage to catch Stephen twice since.
One of my favorite Jicks shows ever.
61
April 2007 – Snowghost, Whitefish, Montana
June 2007 – Foxtrot, Chicago, Illinois
Real emotional trash
Over two years and more the germ idea of 'Carl the clod' was developed into a 55-minute album. (Shades of Pete Townshend getting from 'A quick one' to 'Tommy'.) 'Real emotional trash' is a quintessential album to me. More than a collection of songs, it's a carefully plotted hour long sequence of moments and moods that make up an amazing album, even if the songs are a string of minor masterpieces, reaching a consistent level of about 'It kills' goodness (pretty fucking good) without a truly transcendent song in the bunch (the title track comes closest).
Doing this project has allowed me to rediscover some corners of the Malkmus universe and 'Real emotional trash' is an album I've found again. I overdosed on it at the time, so enthusiastically did I embrace the Jicks in 2008 – though 90% of what I overdosed on were the live takes, not the record, so it kinda build up this unreal idea in my head of what it actually sounds like. So I'm playing it again after a couple of years and its thick warm sound, the multi-layered guitars, the immediate force of the playing envelops me in just the right way. There are far more keyboards than I remembered. It really knocked me out all over again. The first half hour is musically faultless.
I was going to discuss maturity, the start of a new phase in Stephen's career, but with all the hints I've given, you know where I'm heading already, right? I was discussing Stephen with a friend and he was really into the three records since 'Real emotional trash' (over the confusing earlier records), cause he felt Stephen had finally gotten focused. He did. This is a considered artist rather than the sometimes impetuous Stephen Malkmus we knew. Zooming in on a musical idea, he patiently develops it, pieces together songs and arrangements out of a myriad of details, puts the time in to record them properly (well, a lot of his records sound great, but he's following the established music business procedure more for sure). There were some interviews later about the protracted recording hell for this album. I guess there were some unforseen hitches, but this opinion also reflects his attention to getting it right (as opposed to some other records, where the way it turned out is just the way it was put out). And he did get it right for this record.
This new phase is not without drawbacks.
A large part of what made his music pre-2006 special is how they're open to the moment. Stephen's an artist who can think on his feet and often draws his best moments from such inspiration, which is largely absent on the last three albums.
The other drawback on 'Real emotional trash', to me, is that lyrically, he wasn't exactly on fire at this point. The record opens with that conspicuous line 'Of all my stoned digressions, some have mutated into the truth' – and yes, that's how it often works with Malkmus lyrics, but on this record, not much mutated into the truth for me, not many lines revealed themselves to me as gnomically meaningful. In fact, you feel it coming right there, when the line continues 'not a spoof'. Right. 'Not a spoof' – cause the truth is not a spoof, I get it. And it rhymes with 'truth'. Hmm.
Of course there are some stray lines here and there – it's still Stephen Malkmus. 'Don't stay high on abuse' in 'Cold son', or 'Sometimes it feels like the world's stuffed with feathers'. 'I know the tides will turn' in 'Out of reaches'. A couple of great angry ones in 'Baltimore': 'A one minute story is all that you are / A song undeveloped beyond the first bar', 'You criticize life, you criticize pain / You criticize situations you've never been in', 'For all of your hassle what did you win?'. 'Break out of your core categories' in 'Wicked Wanda'.
But in general I just don't feel it. 'Hopscotch Willie' doesn't accomplish much beyond its set-up, to write a coherent storysong, but does it take on any deeper meaning, like a fable or a parable, an analogy... He just seems happy not to have started free associating until he passed the final line. (That is lyrically, musically there is much more to it.) 'Out of reaches' is a nice song about that familiar feeling of having a crush when you're attached (or loving anybody that you shouldn't love). You kind of enjoy the pain of letting this pass by (hey, I'm not immune). But it doesn't seem to go much deeper than to sketch the outline of the theme. The most succesfull song, lyrically, is the title track, to me, with its great 'night out with the wives set-up' spinning out into this picaresk tale of food and carnivalesk excess. This one is really great, but of course a large part of it dates from the 'Face the truth' era.
All through this record there are these moments of forced rhyming attempting surprise, but I'm not into it. In fact this is my main criticism of the record (which is not a big problem all in all to have). I don't find any wit or invention in them. It doesn't spark the imagination of the listener but shortcircuits it. You know those moment I'm talking about:
Who was it that said the world is my oyster
I feel like a nympho stuck in a cloyster
Can you cook a three course meal?
(always makes me think of that enlightened Dylan line 'Can you cook and sew, make flowers grow?')
In the rugsack of an Afrikaner candidate for mild reforms
Wicked Wanda
I'd rather date Rwanda
Well the torture of the Van Wyk Expressway at 5pm on friday gives you some idea of how rejection makes me feel.
Just – no.
But the record's got a lot in place of chaotic invention and lyrical fire. Like I started saying in the first paragraph, a program of moments and moods, so here's a round-up of some of my favorite moments as the record unfolds:
Dragonfly pie –
0'00 -0'28: a heavy introduction, lots of guitar in your face and it's really screaming (Fuzz factory!), it's a statement on intent, this is not us as you thought you knew us
That line 'you are the bold expression of all your parents' flaws' reveals a recurring obsession with genetics (2nd verse of 'Mr Jolly', 2nd verse of 'Hopscotch Willie, 'Share the red' and so on).
2'25: evil synths lurking under the surface
3'42: that first guitar lunge, stabbing the air, the drums splashing, the cymbals crashing and ringing
4'22 – end: synths again (and wah wah?) – this is going to be a record of serious rocking, it promises!
Hopscotch Willie –
The riff is like a Doors improvisation song.
0'45: 1st chorus, the slide is like honey
2'27: a spitfire of guitar notes, very melodic solos all over this record btw, I can sing along and I know I'm not alone
3'22: that insane twist-around-the-rhythm guitar melody
4'00: I'm not such a fan of the 'Do a little hopscotch' singing. There's a similar section in 'Elmo delmo'. Would've been better just instrumentally.
4'55: when that goofball percussion overdubs drops in, causing the whole thing to fly off the rails
I wish they'd left the keyboard solo in.
Cold son –
A fragmentary arrangement, little fragments of melody circling around each other until it all falls together.
0'20: twisting keyboard notes
2'35 the bridge, optimistic, the band has a spring in their step
2'55: ! of course, that high harmony vocal on the third chorus
3'17:Joanna's bass in the breakdown
Real emotional trash –
A slowly unwinding melody, sort of a sea shanty, in an open folktuning? Sounds like it.
They play it soberly, I like it.
The lyrics are great.
3'40: the exact moment we're in the jam
4'22: the bass comes down
5'02: the new rhythm asserts itself
Those guitar shards! – heavily delayed guitar
In fact, this whole part up to 6'28 may be my favorite moment of the entire record.
7'48 – 8'00: that guitar is back, what a rush
8'13: harmonized solos! This is getting better all the time! Lot of classic rock in here.
Out of reaches –
A very beautiful song. It's just not as deep as it could've been, though that wonderful finale 'the tides will turn' is exquisite.
Just – the piano in general in this song!
2'57: wonderful interplay between piano and a hesitant solo guitar
3'21: that guitar tone buzzing
the solo builds up to 3'40 – those Fuzz Factory tones, slurring notes
3'40 – 4'06: amazing
Baltimore –
an amusing hatchet job on somebody who seems to deserve it
you've got the energy of a classic creep
0'58: the instrumental part, and at 1'15 the high notes hanging suspended
A one minute story is all that you are, a song undeveloped beyond the first bar.
For all of your hassle what did you win?2'40: when the 2nd part of the song starts, that bassline and the drums crashing in
You criticize life, you criticize pain / You criticize situations you've never been in
4'17 – 5'05: drums crash in again, solos!, two guitars harmonizing (an often used trick on this record, pure classic rock).
Gardenia –
The lyrics are cringeworthy stuff, I just don't get it. I mean, I get it, the juxtaposition of images that don't go together (dot your j's vs Afrikaner candidate vs traffic jam vs rejection), but it doesn't work for me. It's like watching one of those hip indie comedies ('Garden state' or 'I heart huckabees') that I don't get. It could be a love song to one of those magic pixie girls you hear about.
That's not a compliment.
But I'm not immune to the way the solo guitar skips between the beats at 2'20.
Elmo Delmo –
this song took me the longest to get, a heavy update of 'Pig lib'.
A mysterious folkmelody that seemingly goes on forever, the song stops and starts, the band falls in and out almost haphazardly – it was totally headed for obscurity
2'17: piano, the jam starts, a psychedelic wander through the mist
2'53: who doesn't like that bleeping synth?
3'40: nice overdriven guitar heroics
4'15: a new riff breaks thorugh the haze
the whole 'Elmo delmo' part would've been better instrumentally
6'40: noise encroaching
We can't help you –
don't know what it means, but it's a beautiful ballad, that Bill Fay-worship pays off
0'40: rolling piano part
1'20: beautiful folky female singing (live this is always off key – right?)
Wicked Wanda –
makes more sense as a coda to the album than as a separate song, with its jumbled structure
Nursery rhyme opening, music box tinkling
1'37 – 1'50: keyboard on breakdown
2'37: Strike – me square – into the arms of the air
Release, we're free (as the Who would say)
---
Anyway, in 2008, this was a real welcome blast of fresh air. We felt the musical climate of polished and polite bands with beards creeping in (it's even worse now), and the pleasures of raucous playing by real musicians (there, I said it) hit me like a real surprise all over again. People still play like that?! I still feel it now.
Geen opmerkingen:
Een reactie posten