Brand X: Is There Anything About?

BRAND X: IS THERE ANYTHING ABOUT? (1982)

1) Ipanaemia; 2) A Longer April; 3) Modern, Noisy And Effective; 4) Swan Song; 5) Is There Anything About?; 6) Tmiu-Atga.

Yes indeed, the title is a not-so-subtle reference to the process of «scraping the barrel». Despite the 1982 date (by which time Brand X no longer even existed as a functioning outfit), most of these tracks were recorded in 1979, hailing from the same sessions that already yielded the pre­vious two albums — all but the title track, which dates from an even earlier period. As if that weren't enough, ʽA Longer Aprilʼ is indeed a much extended version of ʽAprilʼ from Product, and ʽModern, Noisy And Effectiveʼ is based on the backing track from the pop song ʽSohoʼ, also from Product. That should give you some ideas.

To be fair, seeing as how the band had effectively run its course, and how that particular brand of fusion had pretty much worn itself out by the end of the Seventies, it may be a good thing that they did not stick around to reinvent themselves as an electrofunk party or a synth-pop outfit. At the very least, Is There Anything About? does not irritate — nothing on it is really seductive or mind-blowing or of much use to anybody, but it has the same predictable Brand X style as any­thing else the band did, and you do get to hear more Collins percussion (he is credited for all the drumwork, since the outtakes here do not seem to include any of the Clark/Pert sessions).

The title track may have originally been rejected because it does not have a particularly distinct theme, but it does remind one of the jerky suspense of Unorthodox Behaviour, before the band settled on an overall smoother style — Goodsall's sizzling-bubbling wah-wah lines and Jones' «nervous-breakdown-style» bass rip at each other like crazy, and Phil wacks them both on the back relentlessly to keep things permanently hot. The difference between this track and some­thing like ʽIpanaemiaʼ is clearly visible — the latter is a smooth, easy-going, soft-funk mood piece with soothing Spanish guitar passages and ambient synthesizer background, high quality elevator muzak with little artistic pretense. But that's okay. If more elevators played muzak like this, humanity would only benefit.

On the down side, ʽModern, Noisy And Effectiveʼ sounds much more silly than ʽSohoʼ, now that the vocals have been wiped out and replaced by simplistic «happy» keyboards of the «your local TV sitcom» variety, where you are expected to jump up and down in a fit of artificially induced happiness as the credits roll on. Unless the effect here is intended to be parodic, this is really stu­pid, but, unfortunately, there are no straightforward hints at irony or sarcasm. And some of the titles continue to be misleading — ʽSwan Songʼ neither literally nor figuratively sounds like a swan song, unless Lumley's squeaky synth parts are supposed to remind you of swans, which they do not (more like pigs than swans, if you ask me). Some nice harmonies, though.

Still, as a bunch of outtakes to wrap up the original story of Brand X, this could have been much worse. The band's biggest mistake, I believe, was when they began to hunt for «beauty» in their music rather than «mystery» — even if this does not qualify by itself as a sell-out, it sold short their actual talents and blended them in the already hard-to-tell-apart mass of instrumental pedd­lers of the late Seventies. Had they pursued a somewhat more, let's say, «aggressive» path of action, history would have been kinder to them. But even so, for four years they did not make one single move that would definitively place them into the «easy listening» category, and that's gotta count for something — especially if your band has Phil Collins in it.

Brian Eno: Discreet Music

BRIAN ENO: DISCREET MUSIC (1975)

1) Discreet Music; 2) Fullness Of Wind; 3) French Catalogues; 4) Brutal Ardour.

First things first: in general, I «like» and «accept» Eno's ambient albums, or, rather, the philo­sophy behind these albums. They are not supposed to be listened to — they are supposed to be heard when you're busy doing other tasks, and not only is that something right up every re­viewer's alley, it is an understandable and perhaps even necessary niche, that «furniture music» conception of Satie's. Of course, any piece of music could become furniture music if you so de­sired, but the mistake of so many mediocre artists is that they aim for loftier goals while never rising above furniture music level — not to mention that, like furniture itself, furniture music can wide­ly vary in quality.

Do not, therefore, make the mistake of listening to Discreet Music intently, in order to achieve some transcendental illumination or advance to Arhat level with a super cheat code. Legend says that the idea to make this kind of music came to Brian when he was lying in a hospital bed, lis­tening to an album of 18th century harp music with the volume turned all the way down, unable to get out of bed and turn it up — «feeling» the sounds rather than «hearing» them directly. Per­haps if this accident had not happened, he would have gone on making pop records, all the way into 1986 and beyond. But it did, and although Discreet Music is not tied into it directly (not featuring any harp music at all), it marks the start of the gradual, and utterly painless, transmu­tation of Brian Eno into furniture.

As a first try, though, the album is distinctly different from the «typical» Eno ambient album. The first side (30 minutes of the title track) is all electronic, but the second side is not — it consists of three minimalist chamber pieces, performed by the so-called «Cockpit Ensemble», conducted by Gavin Bryars who also co-arranged the pieces with Eno, all three being «deconstructed» varia­tions on Pachelbel's Canon In D Major. In the future, Eno would largely refrain from twiddling around with classical motives (at least those not transposed to the electronic format), but this re­mains a curious and somewhat unique experiment, though, obviously, not to everybody's liking.

The algorithmic nature of ʽDiscreet Musicʼ has been described in many sources, and I would probably mess something up trying to retell the process — all that interests us, really, is that there are only two simple superimposed musical phrases here, produced by an EMS Synthi AKS machine and then subtly played around with for half an hour. The «melody» has a becalming, somewhat pastoral feel (you could imagine it as a call-and-response session between several shepherds, piping each other in some high mountainous area), and for about three or four minutes, you could even give it your attention — then go on about your business if you have any business. If you don't... well... try to get some. It'll save you the trouble of hating the track's last twenty minutes, and pointless hatred tends to shorten people's life spans.

The three «Pachelbel variations», all based on cutting out small pieces of the original and stret­ching, twisting, and looping them until they begin to look like polyethylene pieces under a micro­scope, all have the same mood and feel — a seemingly endless sea of extended violin tones. For­tunately, the violins are well tuned and there is no musical hooliganry involved, so the sound never becomes irritating, which is an essential quality for furniture music.

The simple reason why this experiment, to me, looks like a successful one, is because it lacks ideological pretense. «Minimalism» as such tends to take itself seriously, even when the mini­malist is clearly endowed with a sense of humor — think Steve Reich, for instance — and this results in experiments that are ugly and crazy when you «listen» and annoying and off-putting when you restrict yourself to «hearing». Eno's understanding of ambient, however, has not the slightest intention of messing up our layman conventions of «musical beauty» — such as were, among other people, set up by the likes of Pachelbel himself.

The idea is simple: you just cut yourself out a small piece of that beauty, then magnify it tenfold, fiftyfold, hundredfold, and set it out as a desktop background, and see (hear) what happens. It is even reflected, I believe, to some degree in the punny album title: this is «discreet» music, as in, «music to be played privately and quietly», and it is also «discrete» music, consisting of these separate chopped-up and meticulously scrutinized pieces, each of which is taxed to the max for every ounce of «beauty» it can yield. I am totally at home with this ideology, as long as I am not forced to play this stuff at top volume with my ears glued to the speakers. I will not, however, give it — or any of Eno's «good» ambient albums, for that matter — an individual «thumbs up», since it kind of goes against my principles to describe furniture music in terms of blue, red, or gray. And in any case, discreet music should be rated discreetly. No need to shout about it.

Bruce Springsteen: Born To Run

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN: BORN TO RUN (1975)

1) Thunder Road; 2) 10th Avenue Freeze Out; 3) Night; 4) Backstreets; 5) Born To Run; 6) She's The One; 7) Meeting Across The River; 8) Jungleland.

After all these years, my favorite song on this album is still ʽ10th Avenue Freeze Outʼ. You know why? Because it is the only song on this album that inherits and develops the style of its prede­cessor — with that tight, cocky, vivacious, and not in the least simplistic jazz-pop sound. The guitar is sly and boppy rather than bombastic, Roy Bittan's honky-tonk piano and Clemmons' saxophone parts are deliciously New Orleanian, and as the verses merrily lead to the "10th ave­nue freeze out, 10th avenue freeze out!" chorus, defiantly shot out word by word, the track, to me, offers more sincere «rebellion» than a thousand ʽThunder Roadsʼ could ever hope to.

But the song is an anomaly here, on an album that is not about having defiant fun on the street corner. Born To Run is all about size — everything bigger than everything else, including life itself. Now that Jon Landau had seen rock'n'roll's future, and now that the man had properly cut his teeth with two uneven, but ultimately successful records, in Bruce's own words, he wanted to make «Roy Orbison singing Bob Dylan and produced by Phil Spector», yes indeed.

We could just leave it at that, stating the obvious fact that Bruce Springsteen does not possess the voice of a Roy Orbison, the verbal talents of Bob Dylan, and the studio experience of Phil Spec­tor. But that would not be honest, because in reality, he never tries to sing like Roy Orbison, write lyrics like Bob Dylan, or rip off Spector's wall-of-sound techniques. The statement has to be understood allegorically — all of these guys were the smashing-est in their class, and Born To Run tries to be smashing in all these respects, too: big tales of passion, hope, and despair sung with a big voice and played in a big sort of way. Melody? Groove? Yeah it's nice if we can have some of that, too, but it ain't what matters here.

I mean, ʽThunder Roadʼ has a riff alright (the piano-sax duo), but it only really appears in the coda section, once the tale is over — before that, all that matters is the crescendo, as the Boss gradually revs himself into action. The intrigue is — where does it all lead? Instruments enter one after the other, the voice rises higher and higher, and once it becomes clear that the protagonist is gonna grab his guitar, get Mary (another appearance by the Queen of Arkansas?), hop in the car, and skedaddle out of here, there's just no way we wouldn't be having that mighty coda. Melody-wise, I still have no idea what goes on there: I only know it started out small and inconspicuous and ended up bigger than a brontosaur's ass, and that's probably the only thing that matters in the grand scheme of things. Very grand scheme of things.

The question is — are you ready to get caught up in these windy blasts that the Boss is huffin' and puffin' at you, or have you got second thoughts about it? All of these «classics» — ʽThunder Roadʼ, ʽBackstreetsʼ, ʽBorn To Runʼ, ʽJunglelandʼ — all of them have always left me with mixed feelings. The skill, the craft, the energy are undeniable, and there has hardly been any «working class poet» in the pop music business (certainly not in 1975) who could beat the man in this de­partment. The sincerity of it could be doubted, of course, but why? It's not as if Bruce wrote and recorded ʽBorn To Runʼ out of some cynical «yeah, the boys back home will really dig this one and finally make me a superstar» motive — and it wouldn't really be until the Eighties, anyway, that «commercially oriented music-making» would become a big part of the man's life.

The key to this dissatisfaction is, I believe, in the songs' combination of simplicity, monotonous­ness, and predictability. The «Springsteen formula» gets established here as a viable critical and commercial proposition, but hardly as a gift for those who do not cherish pathos and bombast on their own, even if they are done really convincingly. The six-note riff of ʽBorn To Runʼ (which, if you pin it down, sounds like somebody trying to master the style of Duane Eddy) is okay, but it just serves as the backbone for a lot of instrumental bombast, and come on now, you're not here for the guitar or even for the crazy sax break, you're really supposed to be here to sing along with Bruce, also wanting to know if love is wild, or if love is real. "Tramps like us, baby, we were born to run" — that "us" does not mean me and my lady friend, it really means me and you, my devoted soon-to-be-stadium-rock-fan. But this sort of emotionalism is just too crude and too stereotypical. And, yes, too populist, of course — even if no cynical intention is suspected.

Other than that, few people talk about the non-classics, and for good reason — ʽNightʼ is really like a lesser quality preview of ʽBorn To Runʼ, rather pleonastic in light of the latter; ʽShe's The Oneʼ wastes a good Bo Diddley beat on an unsuitably pompous arrangement; and ʽMeeting Across The Riverʼ, dominated by Randy Brecker's midnight trumpet, meanders and sinatras its way across the brief filler space that leads us to the much more prominent ʽJunglelandʼ. A skeptic like me could have tried to build up a stronger case for these lesser known songs, but no, they have every reason to be lesser known — two out of three at least following the album's general logic, but failing to deliver quite as well in the energy and bombast department.

If there is one indisputable hero on Born To Run, it is The Big Man — sax guy Clarence Clemons. I am pretty sure that without his contributions the album might have flopped as badly as its predecessors, because nothing here hits as hard as his blasts: not even Bruce at his brawni­est, when he is roaring out "hiding on the backstreets, hiding on the backstreets!", can really com­pare with the totally focused, totally magnetic short solo on the title track — and the best instru­mental passage by far on the entire album is the famous sax solo on ʽJunglelandʼ, well worth waiting for even if you happen to find the rest of the urban tale somewhat of a drag. Unfortunate­ly, there's only so much you can do with a saxophone, and all of Clarence's breaks set the same mood — perfectly compatible with Bruce's lonesome-heroic approach and more nimble and awe-inspiring than any other voice or instrument here, but the guy is really used as much as he should be used, no more, no less.

I think he's also pretty much absent on ʽBackstreetsʼ, where Roy Bittan is instead the hero — and he plays it loyal and regal, but six minutes of his keyboards are boring, because... well, could he play something else for just a moment? Oh no, he could not, because the Boss really just needs him to accompany his power Lied about Terry (and, by the way, we still do not know if Terry was a man, a woman, a dog, or Ziggy in disguise). Do not get me wrong — the basic punch of ʽBackstreetsʼ punches heavy and hard, but when the major hook in your song is the sound of your own voice screaming, it's... well, imagine ʽWon't Get Fooled Againʼ getting along solely on the strength of Daltrey's final roar. Would we want to spend those nine minutes so we could all just live up to it? And in ʽBackstreetsʼ, there's just too much pathos and not enough resolution.

Ultimately, Born To Run sealed the man's fate. Before that one, his creative trajectory was still somewhat unpredictable — but the success of this «future of rock'n'roll» project established him as Working Class Rock Hero №1, and since a working class hero is something to be, this leaves less space to experiment with music and piles up many more obligations to conform to the image. But that would be later: on Born To Run, he still has that image to construct, before he can begin to con­form to much of anything, and so the album is not so much «calculated» and «manipu­lative» as it is simply «mono-focused». We just want everything to be big, huge, voluminous beyond measure. Whoever said it was in bad taste to be young, wild, and ambitious circa 1975? Even Billy Joel was young, wild, and ambitious circa 1975.

So there's really no reason to insist upon «hating» the record or viciously thumbing it down. It was unquestionably an event, it went on to become a classic that still attracts young listeners even today, it's got its share of unforgettable songs and its undeniably brilliant musical moments. It is probably responsible, at least in part, for the subsequent careers of Bob Seger, John Mellencamp, Bryan Adams, and God knows who else, but we are not going to hold that against it, either. It in­troduced the «big bearded muscular man with Telecaster» image, too, which is not accidental because of all guitars in the world, nothing resembles a mighty sledgehammer as much as a good old Fender Telecaster — cue Working Class Rock Hero №1 image yet again — but why should we suppose anything other than just a personal preference for this particular model? Let's just say this: Born To Run is sort of a fascinating record, torn between genius and mediocrity, richness and cheapness, rampant imagination and clichéd formula. A formula which, by the way, Bruce would go on to easily tear down on his next album — only to have it rebuilt from scratch for the next one — and tear it down again — and build it up — and tear it down — and then we lost count, and it wasn't so fun anymore anyway.

Brian Wilson: Imagination

BRIAN WILSON: IMAGINATION (1998)

1) Your Imagination; 2) She Says She Needs Me; 3) South American; 4) Where Has Love Been; 5) Keep An Eye On Summer; 6) Dream Angel; 7) Cry; 8) Lay Down Burden; 9) Let Him Run Wild; 10) Sunshine; 11) Happy Days.

It looks like there is yet another manipulation story going on here, this time involving producer Joe Thomas, who teamed up with Brian under an obligation to «modernize» his sound — only to have Brian later come back at him with a lawsuit, seeking damage compensation and creative freedom. I know what you're about to ask: «Geez, with so many schmucks and leeches sucking up to the man over the years, couldn't he finally have learned a thing or two about making friends? Or could it be so that the blame actually lies — at least partly — on Brian himself, rather than on those who may have actually helped him get along all this time?..»

To answer these, though, you'd at least have to be a criminal inspector, or a judge, or a psycho­analysis freak. One thing is certain: Imagination, Brian's first truly new musical project in a decade, would have unquestionably sounded different with a different producer. We are not even talking here of «modernistic» production, the way Simon Climie produced Clapton's Pilgrim around the same time — Joe Thomas cut his producer's teeth in the late Eighties, and that is what much of Imagination sounds like, with dated synthesizer tones that are largely drawn from that period's adult contemporary data bank. He may be a Beach Boys fan, but he does not show much understanding of what it takes to make a Beach Boys album.

That said, harsh criticism of Imagination, which seems to be the default mode in review circles, is exaggerated. In reality, there are some very nice, and quite obviously inspired, Wilson compo­sitions here: the mere fact that many of them are credited to Wilson and Thomas should not be taken as an obligatory turn-off before you give them a proper chance. The record is noticeably short, and I guess that in some way, Brian was still suffering from writer's block, because no other reason exists for our having to listen to re-recordings of ʽKeep An Eye On Summerʼ and ʽLet Him Run Wildʼ: both songs fit in with the album's general mood, but so do at least several dozen other Beach Boys tunes, and it never helps when you juxtapose classics from your peak period with non-classics from your struggling old age period, even if you sing them in a strugg­ling old age voice and bring them down to mediocre level with poor production values.

Maybe they thought of remaking ʽLet Him Run Wildʼ by way of association, since the chorus of the title track goes "you know it's just your imagination running wild". The comparison would certainly not be in favor of ʽYour Imaginationʼ, which has a rather cloying verse melody and a much more simplistic and repetitive hook in the chorus — but it is still a good song, innocent and charming in a typically Brian sort of way, and with some space left for angelic harmonies (that's the second time in his life that he made the idea of «running wild» reflect heavenly beauty rather than the roar of a Harley Davidson). Not even the dinky keyboards can take its quality away, though one can only wonder how much better it would have sounded with, say, an authentic harpsichord. Or a grand piano.

Other highlights include ʽShe Says She Needs Meʼ, a re-write of the old Beach Boys outtake ʽSandy She Needs Meʼ from 1965 for which Thomas at least had the good sense to include an easily noticeable clarinet part, giving it a bit more of a «classical» feel than anything else on here; ʽLay Down Burdenʼ, which begins as a Spanish guitar-embellished adult contemporary bore, but redeems itself when it comes to the pacifying chorus (mellow out a bit and the summon to "lay down burden" might just make you do that); and ʽHappy Daysʼ, which also hearkens back to the old days (part of it being based on the «goofy-scary» outtake ʽMy Solutionʼ from 1970) and does a terrific job of contrasting the «doom» verses with the happy boppy chorus of "happy days are here again" (provided they really are, but whatever).

Other songs are more questionable — like, I am not sure what to think or feel about ʽCryʼ, a pop ballad with weepy Claptonesque blues guitar all over it (generic on the whole, but not without brief moments of unusually pointed emotionality), and I am even less sure if I like Brian's musi­cal advertisements for tropical resorts (the Jimmy Buffett collaboration ʽSouth Americanʼ, which goes as far as to feature the line "I'm hungry and I'm doing lunch with Cameron Diaz"; the all-too-happy cod reggae piece ʽSunshineʼ), but I am not altogether put off by them, either, because they still show the man in a creative phase, no matter how skewed or twisted.

In the end, a thumbs up here. Yes, plenty of technical handicaps and strange decisions, but really, bottomline is: either Brian Wilson creates or he coasts, and whenever he creates, nothing can stop him from channelling some of the pop fairy's most heartwarming vibes, even if the ability to attract them inescapably wanes over time and can be further harmed by (figuratively) tonedeaf collaborators. But at least he does not rap here, or perform duets with Missy Elliott or Jon Bon Jovi, or engage the Backstreet Boys to do the harmonies for him, so it could have been much, much worse. As it is, Imagination largely shows that some is still left, and that at least Brian's veteran fans have themselves a nice new musical companion to get old to.

Blood Ceremony: The Eldritch Dark

BLOOD CEREMONY: THE ELDRITCH DARK (2013)

1) Witchwood; 2) Goodbye Gemini; 3) Lord Summerisle; 4) Ballad Of The Weird Sisters; 5) Eldritch Dark; 6) Drawing Down The Moon; 7) Faunus; 8) The Magician.

Well, I was wondering when they would finally begin to exploit the folk side of their schtick, and here it comes: Blood Ceremony's third album, The Eldritch Dark, has them expanding into the realm of dark acoustic tales (ʽLord Summerisleʼ, a Wicker Man tribute sung as a duet by Alia with bassist Lucas Gadke), ʽMatty Grovesʼ-style murder ballads (ʽBallad Of The Weird Sistersʼ, replete with fiddles and long-winded rhyming sequences), and merry flute jigs (ʽFaunusʼ, an in­strumental that brings up the theme of horned deities yet once more).

Predictably, none of this is great — all the melodic structures are completely traditional, and if you are well familiar with the music of at least a few bands like Fairport Convention and Steeleye Span... then again, it should be mentioned that Blood Ceremony have no desire to go completely «authentic»: ʽLord Summerisleʼ, for instance, in addition to the acoustic guitar and flute parts, is eventually joined by a Mellotron backing part. Maybe it's just a cheap trick to procure additional «depth» for this simplistic piece, but somehow I do not quite remember that many folk bands singing medieval ballads with Mellotrons, or prog bands with Mellotrons singing medieval bal­lads with flutes. Well, I guess there must have been (Amazing Blondel?), but it's hardly the most natural combination in the world. Likewise, ʽWeird Sistersʼ actually combines flutes, fiddles, and heavy rock riffage in a rather fun way.

Still, the best songs on the album are those that go on worshipping the heavy riff as the founda­tion of everything. ʽWitchwoodʼ has one of these in the verses, and the title track has another, although it borrows much of its chord structure from Sabbath's ʽThe Wizardʼ (oh what an obvious choice to rip off). And then, as if they just didn't have enough, they throw on another epic dedi­cated to Oliver Haddo: the eight-minute ʽMagicianʼ which closes the album may be their most successfully realised number so far, with a complex intro, catchy verses and choruses, a nice little guitar and flute storm in the solo section, and a solemn organ melody that serves as the base of the slow, doom-laden crescendo in the coda. I wouldn't say there's a lot of «magic» as such in the track, but it's definitely enjoyable all the way through.

The best song on the album, however, is ʽDrawing Down The Moonʼ, which may not have a great riff, but probably has the best Alia part of 'em all — she's developing this witchy sneer that tastes delicious when spiced with a little reverb and accompanied with a slightly distorted organ part, and the song itself has a strong «pull», opening with Gadke's bass and largely «hanging» on that bassline as it leads everybody around it up and down. It is certainly one of the most energetic and exhilarating invitations to the Sabbath ever thought of in popular music.

Which brings me to this particular point about Blood Ceremony: although, technically, their music is often assigned to the «goth horror» category or something like that, in reality there is nothing genuinely «horrific» about it. On the contrary, Alia and the gang are being very casual about their black sorcery — as if they were advertising a scuba diving club or something like that. It's serious (no direct humor or irony anywhere in sight), but it's just, you know, routine business, where "we welcome you to the Sabbath with a knowledge of hellfire" is like "we welcome you to the barbecue party with a knowledge of the gas grill". I guess this is the sort of attitude that made me so completely at peace with them from the very start. I mean, yeah, witches and demons have their chores, too, and their paydays and their checkbooks and their social securities. Stop treating them like they were... you know... supernatural. Be realistic.

So, another thumbs up here — third in a row, which should not give the illusion that I really adore this band or anything. All three of these albums just barely rise above mediocrity, but they do rise above mediocrity, and somehow they have so far been even able to create an impression of gradual «progress». The big question is whether that impression can be made to last for their next albums, provided they do not disband soon enough — out of general despair to convince the world that the real Satan stays with them rather than with Nicki Minaj.

The Brian Jonestown Massacre: Methodrone

THE BRIAN JONESTOWN MASSACRE: METHODRONE (1995)

1) Evergreen; 2) Wisdom; 3) Crushed; 4) That Girl Suicide; 5) Wasted; 6) Everyone Says; 7) She Made Me; 8) Hyperventilation; 9) Records; 10) I Love You; 11) End Of The Day; 12) Outback; 13) She's Gone; 14) Methodrone.

«Not to be confused with mephedrone or methedrone», the current edition of the Wikipedia article prudently warns us, and you'd better heed that warning when you walk into any of the music stores that still remain in your neighborhood unless you have nothing against accidentally getting the heat on you. Actually, the album title is very smart — because formally, all you can say is that it is a combination of "method" and "drone", without any direct allusions to any heavy chemical substances. And indeed, there's lots of droning here, and there most certainly is a method: Anton Newcombe is one of those dangerous guys with conceptual ideas in their heads who often force you to «respect» them even if you are emotionally inclined to hate them and everything they stand for.

My major beef with Newcombe's ideology, however, is not the way he conceives or plays his songs, but his insistence on having us endure so many of them. Almost all of these early BJM albums are insufferably long — of course, they were made at the height of the CD era, when many people seriously thought that LPs now should run up to 70 minutes by default just because their main physical medium allows them to, but in Newcombe's case, I believe, we also have to deal with additional egomania. (Oh, technically the songs are credited to the band as a whole, and apparently Matt Hollywood, the bass player and occasional vocalist, was also very much involved in the creative process, but not quite enough to offer a distinct second identity.)

Methodrone, the BJM's proper official debut LP, is a perfect illustration: 71 minutes of music that should have been pared down to at most 40. Newcombe's formula is mostly the same for all these songs — slow, repetitive, melodically minimalistic, trance-oriented guitar grooves — and this makes the better realized ones get dissolved and camouflaged in the context of the inferior material, so much so that even after three or four listens, I still have memories of Methodrone as a «collective substance», a species of musical earpaste, rather than a set of songs where I could value the musical merits of each separate one. Which is not necessarily bad, but I would probably prefer a 40-minute tube of earpaste than this Jumbo package. Not being an elephant and all.

The departure from Spacegirl is felt here largely through improved production (as the band was now affiliated with a real indie record label, Bomp! Records, and had a couple of real producers working with them) and the lack of particularly childish material like that "let me love you" bit from ʽSpacegirlʼ itself. Other than that, the album is still answering the same question: "What would have happened if Brian Jones had lived right into the era of the Stone Roses and the early shoegazers?" Wait, scratch that. Not «Brian Jones», really, who wasn't much of a composer or musical ideologue, but «Roky Erickson» — if we have to choose one single figure that could be defined as the grandaddy of the BJM sound circa 1995, that'd be The 13th Floor Elevators with their garage-drone approach to exploding your subconscious. Take one listen to the ten swirling minutes of ʽHyperventilationʼ and you will find all the ingredients, with the notable exception of the electric jug, perhaps, but that would make it just too obvious.

The best song here is probably still ʽCrushedʼ, re-recorded in a much cleaner version and featu­ring an even more suicidal, Robert Smith-influenced vocal from Newcombe. (ʽThat Girl Suicideʼ  also makes a repeat appearance, but, despite the title, it sounds much less suicidal than ʽCrushedʼ: the rotating-girating Stonesy pop riff and the falsetto ooh-oohs give it the aura of a confused psychedelic carnival). As for the new songs, they should probably be categorized depending on whether they lean more to the funky Madchester side (not often here, but ʽWisdomʼ is probably at least one such song) or to the «folk drone» side (the majority of the tracks) or to the «random noise» side (like ʽRecordsʼ, which just sounds like a lot of different tape shit slowed down and played backwards). The «folk drones», in turn, can be spooky, or romantic, or spooky and roman­tic — Anton Newcombe is probably not a guy you'd want to go out with (at least, not without the cover of an entire drug squad not further than fifty feet away) — but what ties them all together is that each song is basically one idea, exposed to you right away and luring you with the promise of a mighty crescendo that rarely, if ever, comes to pass.

For instance, ʽI Love Youʼ is just about as straightforward as its title — two chords, one vocal line, steady percussion, light magical chimes, four minutes of monotonous serenading. Were this written circa 1966, the basic sequence might have been used by any band as a brief intro to a real song. Thirty years later, we are being implicitly told that the key to real (or, at least, modern) psychedelia is repetition, and that two chords repeated for four minutes have a better chance of putting you into a spiritual trance than five chords repeated for three minutes with a different bridge section. That may be so, but then, of course, it depends very much on which particular two chords you choose and how you present them.

And there you have BJM's main weakness: New­combe is not a melodic genius and he is not a master-commander of all sorts of sounds. Despite all the pretense, the BJM are just a guitar-bass-drums band, and although this rigorous approach gives them a certain sort of integrity (no synthesizers!), the sound may quickly become tedious. And the chances of its becoming tedious actually increase faster than they should, because eventually the songs start becoming larger, and ʽHyperventilationʼ with ʽShe's Goneʼ (10 and 7 minutes res­pectively) are quite likely to try your patience. Think your life moves slowly enough to waste 10 minutes of it on one riff, against which some dickhead keeps informing you that he's "sniffing glue" (as if anybody ever doubted that)? Have so few problems that you can happily drift away to the little brass loop of ʽShe's Goneʼ, losing yourself in the ether until the song abruptly ends with the man telling you that "In my life, I've seen it all"? Take a dose of Methodrone and you get just what you want.

Ultimately, I think it is still reasonable to view Methodrone as sort of a «boot camp» for the band, which would go on to undeniably higher heights — yet it is already an excellent illustration of their synthetic strengths and modernistic weaknesses, and you can draw upon it to both under­stand why certain underground minorities hailed Newcombe as their hero, while others failed to notice him to such an extent that the BJM did not even properly manage to become the torch-bearer for Sixties' revivalism.

Boris: Vein

BORIS: VEIN (2006)

1) Untitled (part 1); 2) Untitled (part 2).

Noise.

More noise.

A Russian quote from Stalker.

Even more noise.

Drums and noise.

Sixty-three minutes.

Sucks.

Thumbs down.

Blessed silence.

Brand X: Do They Hurt?

BRAND X: DO THEY HURT? (1980)

1) Noddy Goes To Sweden; 2) Voidarama; 3) Act Of Will; 4) Fragile; 5) Cambodia; 6) Triumphant Limp; 7) D.M.Z.

I think it is technically enough just to state that all the tracks here are outtakes from the Product sessions, and that if the band did not think them good enough for Product, then we are complete­ly free from any respectable obligations. Arguably the best thing about the record is its cover, and even that one is fairly tacky in a New Wave-era fashion. The second best thing are probably the liner notes, just because they were written by Michael Palin (and the album title itself is an elu­sive reference to witches from The Holy Grail).

The third best thing would have to be at least one stand-out track, but everything that stands out here is actually not good: most notably, ʽAct Of Willʼ, which sounds like a hookless Alan Parsons Project-style adult pop song, with meaningless verses sung by Goodsall through a vocoder for «mystical» effect. I suppose the guys had a lot of fun with this in the studio, but Brand X as an adult pop band is a suicidal proposition by definition. Goodsall's other attempt to write a «dark and serious» composition is ʽCambodiaʼ, slow, dense, arpeggiated, gradually layering on heavy riffs and shrill solos, but never truly realizing its potential — somehow, it seems to promise an apocalyptic crescendo, yet all it eventually squeezes out of itself is a simple ceremonial blues theme that is neither too threatening nor too awe-inspiring.

Most of the rest consists of Jones-dominated numbers that just give us more fusion clichés and no truly memorable themes. Fans of Percy's fretboard-walking will certainly enjoy them, but ʽNoddy Goes To Swedenʼ, ʽFragileʼ, ʽD. M. Z.ʼ — they all sound like technically flawless, spiritually pedestrian fusion jamming to me. Robinson's piano work on ʽD. M. Z.ʼ is funny in places, as if he is trying to deconstruct some pre-war pop melody with his odd tempos and dissonances, but that is just the main theme, and the rest is guitar and bass noodling, mainly, and this time, it really begins to look as if the alleged «freedom of self-expression» has become an invisible cage for these guys. ʽTriumphant Limpʼ, the title of a half-hearted and ultimately forgettable attempt to bring a more hard-rocking sound into their lives, would have been a much more telling title for the entire album — «triumphant», because you have to admire both their tenacity (clinging to the tried-and-true in spite of changing musical fashions) and their nimbness, agility, and professio­nalism, but «limp» because, well, this music has long since ceased to be «progressive» in any reasonable meaning of this word. Thumbs down.

Brian Eno: Another Green World

BRIAN ENO: ANOTHER GREEN WORLD (1975)

1) Sky Saw; 2) Over Fire Island; 3) St. Elmo's Fire; 4) In Dark Trees; 5) The Big Ship; 6) I'll Come Running; 7) Another Green World; 8) Sombre Reptiles; 9) Little Fishes; 10) Golden Hours; 11) Becalmed; 12) Zawinul/Lava; 13) Everything Merges With The Night; 14) Spirits Drifting.

Attention all instrumental album composers! Remember this — if you're going have minimal vocals on your record, or no vocals at all, the only thing that's going to explicitly speak up for you is SONG TITLES. So if you have this really frenetic, delirious, free-form mess instrumental going on, well, I know you like being cool and all, but come on now, it does not make rational or irrational sense if you call it ʽAunt Jemima Goes Shopping For Proustʼ. And if you have this slow, soothing, transcendental electronic hum thing, with minimalist overdubs, you are not going to convert any extra fans by calling it ʽMore Salami, Pleaseʼ. You might claim that by forcing the listener's brain to search for available connections between the words and the music, you are unblocking previously unknown neural pathways — but you wouldn't exactly have scientific proof for that, and without scientific proof you'd just be a pretentious dick here.

What I really love about Another Green World, which one could alternately call «the most ambient of Eno's pop albums» or «the most pop of Eno's ambient albums», is how it all makes sense largely because of perfect matches between song titles and the music. He has created an alternate universe here — a very natural, organic world completely represented by sound — whose elements, while not being perfectly unambiguous, still take on far more concrete shapes than almost anything you previously heard on «otherworldly» psychedelic records. It is probably the closest equivalent, in art-pop music, of Mussorgsky's Pictures At An Exhibition — a series of vignettes that transmit particular impressions and situations, except that the whole thing takes place in a parallel world rather than our mundane reality (then again, ʽBaba Yaga's Hutʼ was not exactly a local landmark, either).

First, the very title of the record. It is «another world», yes, but it is also a «green» world, which is an important connecting link — so it's got chlorophyll, and oxygen, and we can all breathe in it and relate to it, and the music reflects that: as many odd types of sound as Eno manages to get out of his electronics and effects this time, they all have an emotional stratum in them. You can go ahead and call these tunes «gorgeous», «romantic», «playful», «somber», «threatening», etc., as much as you like — this is a very deeply human approach to electronic equipment, unlike the contemporary robot-like approach of Kraftwerk (which was still very much understandable) or completely abstractionist electronica à la Autechre, which is all about «what the heck is this and how am I supposed to wire my brains to ʽlikeʼ it?»

The song sequencing is probably the only thing about which I'd like to voice a second opinion. For instance, ʽSky Sawʼ is a brilliant composition, but I am not sure that our introduction to this «green world 2.0» should be dominated by a lead guitar that does sound like a «sky saw», threa­tening to saw the sky in half in manual regime first, and then (in the «solo» section) in chainsaw mode. Phil Collins and Percy Jones, soon to become partners in the fusion band Brand X, pro­vide the rhythm section; John Cale plays the whirling (dervish) viola part; but it is Eno's own «snake guitar» that provides the tune's major unforgettable hook, and if you play it loud enough, the effect can be really terrifying. Whatever is happening out there sure ain't pretty, and should have at least occurred after the title track. Then again, maybe it's just like one of those modern novels that have to immediately plunge you into the action on the very first page, even if they have to start the story from the middle that way — because otherwise they run the risk of losing your attention and failing to make the New York Times bestseller list in time for Christmas.

In any case, now that the playlist era is upon us, you can divert yourself by making these tracks segue into each other any way possible — and since there are 14 of them, this means you can have any of your own 14! (where are you, calculator?) journeys to make. For instance, in order to arrive at your destination you could first take ʽThe Big Shipʼ — a steamer, judging by the puff-puffing percussion, whose mighty engines not only work perfectly, without any glitching, but also instill a regal-heroic feel in the listener. At a certain point in time, the ship becomes a flying ship and takes you ʽOver Fire Islandʼ — this is not at the center of our green world, but a separate location where you can look but you'd better not touch: dominated by Jones' bass work, the track only gives you a very faint glimpse of what is happening down below, and it ain't pretty.

Once you're finally there and your new habitat welcomes you to the threshold with Eno's «desert guitars» fanfare, you are free to roam in the green world's enchanting spaces (the transcendental meditation piece ʽBecalmedʼ), its playful areas (ʽLittle Fishesʼ use a number of prepared pianos to produce a very vivid impression of said fishes jumping in the air), or its dark and creepy con­fines (ʽSombre Reptilesʼ — I bet they eat little fishes for breakfast; ʽIn Dark Treesʼ — dare to enter that and you are bound to get confused and disoriented by the echoes, oscillating howls, and rhythm generators that sound like wild pigs foraging in the bushes). And, of course, ghostly presences are a must — a parallel world without dematerialized entities would be of no use, so ʽSpirits Driftingʼ give you exactly that, with synth tones that are neither friendly nor hostile, just... substanceless. Either it is the spirits drifting through you, or you are drifting through them.

There are a few vocal numbers here, too, whose main function seems to be commercial (they relieve the atmosphere for those of us who are too unused to completely instrumental pop albums) but who nevertheless fit in fairly well. ʽSt. Elmo's Fireʼ is a catchy and welcoming little travelog, sort of Brian's answer to ʽYellow Submarineʼ, though decidedly less childish; ʽEverything Merges With The Nightʼ is like a piano pop song to which somebody wrote the introduction but forgot to write everything else, and thank God for that; and ʽI'll Come Runningʼ is probably the only song here that could qualify for hit single status — provided you could get 1975 kids to hum "I'll come running to tie your shoe, I'll come running to tie your shoe" all day long.

The vocal numbers may be a little disrupting, since they are not nearly as otherworldly as every­thing else, but then they give you another dimension — you could, for instance, think of them as reflecting a sort of reality, with everything else being a dream (or vice versa), in and out of which you keep floating throughout the album, like a chronologically more complex variant of Alice In Wonderland. In any case, individually they are as pretty, catchy, and «gallant» as anything Eno ever wrote, so no need to make a big conceptual fuss over that.

The critical status of Another Green World has aggrandized so much over the years that it is now very commonly regarded as the ultimate peak of all things Eno-related, and it is not uncom­mon to hear people complain «ah, if only all his ʽregularʼ ambient albums sounded like this!» There is no question that the album was a milestone in the emergence of what is now sometimes called «post-rock», and you can feel its influence on everyone from the Cocteau Twins to Sigur Rós, but I would never say that it stands head and shoulders above any of the rest of the «classic four», even if it has a very distinct personality. In particular, if we are allowed to use the clichéd term «spirituality», I would say that some of these instrumentals now sound like a grand rehearsal before the genuinely breathtaking minimalist epiphanies of Before And After Science — that the music here strives a little too much to describe the fantastic worlds without us rather than the no less fantastic ones within us. But then again, this just might be the subjective reaction of an intro­verted personality. Maybe some day a team of neuroscientists and anthropologists will discover a connection between fanboyish love for AGW and extreme tourism, and another team will find a similar connection between adoration for BAAS and shutting oneself in dark basements. Until then, we will just tacitly assume that there is no accounting for taste, particularly when it comes to musical masterpieces like these ones, nitpicking over which can be intellectually stimulating, but materially unrewarding. So, just a big thumbs up here.

Bruce Springsteen: The Wild, The Innocent & The E Street Shuffle

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN: THE WILD, THE INNOCENT & THE E STREET SHUFFLE (1974)

1) The E Street Shuffle; 2) 4th Of July, Asbury Park; 3) Kitty's Back; 4) Wild Billy's Circus Story; 5) Incident On 57th Street; 6) Rosalita (Come Out Tonight); 7) New York City Serenade.

Before there was Born To Run, an album that put it all on red and won, there was this thing — and I do wish I had the chance to judge it from the perspective of 1974, when nobody except Jon Landau had the prescience of seeing Bruce Springsteen as the sweaty sacred prophet of blue-collar stadium rock. Lyrically, blue-collar themes are, of course, prevailing on this record as well, but the soundtrack to which they are set is a different thing — for once, it seems as if the Boss took up a more active interest in music than usual, rather than in sheer power. I have seen some people twitch at this record's «jazzy flourishes», justly stating that «jazz» is not something they expect from Springsteen. But they are wrong, because Springsteen is a talented professional who could probably master anything if he wanted to — the «Springsteen formula» is narrow and occa­sionally stultifying because he intentionally made it so, not because he wasn't capable of making the E Street Band into a more aggressive version of Steely Dan.

As opposed to the debut album, there are but seven songs here, and four of them go over seven minutes — partly because the man has some long-winded street life stories to tell, but also partly because he wishes to showcase the instrumental skills of his E Street Band, especially on the energetic numbers ʽKitty's Backʼ and ʽRosalitaʼ. The «innocent» part of the record, allocated for sentimental, heart-wrenching gutter romantics (ʽ4th Of Julyʼ, ʽWild Billyʼ, ʽIncident On 57th Streetʼ, ʽNew York City Serenadeʼ), is primarily for personal fans of the big man, but the «wild» part of it really showcases the E Street Band at their absolute best — a grand-sounding, tightly coordinated, perfectly oiled machine for the production of... of...

...well, Landau and the rest of 'em would certainly say «rock and roll», but, as I already stated in the previous review, the E Street Band never played «rock and roll» in the sense that the Rolling Stones, or the Who, or even the Beatles played «rock and roll». It is hard to define this sound with one term, and it may be wrong to even try. ʽThe E Street Shuffleʼ begins with a brassy jazz intro (Blood, Sweat & Tears, anyone?), continues with a spritely, happy-sounding funk riff (Average White Band?), and finally merges jazz, funk, and folk in a democratic trinity that com­bines the freedom of the first one, the dynamics and vivaciousness of the second one, and the earnestness of the third one in a combination that could have very easily blown people's minds back in those days when you expected Thin Lizzy to be over here and David Bowie over there, rather than meld their minds in a brawny-brainy synthesis like this one.

The only song here that really tries to «rock» for a while is ʽKitty's Backʼ, opening with scorching blues-rock licks from the Boss himself (he is actually credited for all the guitar playing on the album) and later developing into a tight, fast jam with Bruce leading the band to the heights of an almost psychedelic crescendo. But it is merely one of the many different ways in which he ex­presses his feelings — and far from the most preferred one. ʽRosalitaʼ, for instance, is already a song that I would not define as «rock and roll», because behind all the fatness of the sound lies something like your average folk dance, devoid of the sharpness and rebelliousness of true rock and roll. Not that there's anything wrong with that: whoever said that energetic dance music must have the listener clenching his fists to be «great» or «artistically relevant»? But it is also impor­tant that we try to use different words to describe ʽJumping Jack Flashʼ and ʽRosalitaʼ, because the two songs go for completely different purposes and responses.

Now, naturally any long-winded review of any Springsteen album should normally mention the lyrics, or it would look really strange. But see, I don't like these lyrics — none at all. There is something horribly, off-puttingly inadequate about Bruce's «pseudo-working class poetry». In real life, his Little Angels and his Sandies and his Kitties and his Billies and his Spanish Jonnies and whoever the hell is else on here do not talk like this, and do not think like this, and do not get carried away so much by these romantic ideas or impulses. Maybe if the man took a more de­tached, third-person view of his characters (as Dylan does whenever he is telling one of these stories), it would have made more sense — but most of the time, he makes himself one with his characters, and this inevitably results in an atmosphere of fakery. Everything is too complex, too convoluted, too intellectualized, in a way: as a convincing lyricist, I will take the much more straightforward and much more verbally challenged Phil Lynott over Springsteen any time, and heck, I might even take Bon Scott over Springsteen. (And yes, for the record, I've never been a big fan of West Side Story, either).

This is why the best way for me to enjoy an album like this is to simply shut my brain off towards all of its «realistic» pretense, and to imagine that something like ʽNew York City Serenadeʼ takes place in an alternate reality — one where young ruffians walk the midnight streets actually thin­king of how to "shake away your street life, shake away your city life, and hook up to the night train". Then it works — the midnight lounge jazz piano rolls, the low-key strings, the vocals that gradually build up from barely audible sleepy soulful croon to the full-chest screaming when it comes to the "junk man" who is "singin', he's singin', all dressed up in satin, walkin' past the alley" (another detail for the parallel reality, where all junk men are jazz men and they tend to casually dress in satin because they happen to find it mucho poetic).

Sometimes even that doesn't help — like on the album's weakest track, ʽWild Billy's Circus Storyʼ, which fulfills the function of ʽMary Queen Of Arkansasʼ on this album. Not only are these circus metaphors older than the oldest circus performers, but the tuba-accordeon-acoustic arran­gement is cheesy and generic, and it is really no fun listening to The Boss on his own here when this is clearly an album that thrives on full band support.

Still, it has always been my belief that The Wild was one of the most open-minded and promi­sing records of the man's career. It isn't perfect, but it spreads out in many directions, and the only straightforward «populist» song here is ʽRosalitaʼ — no wonder that it became the regular show closer for years to come. It did not sell much, and it did not cement any stereotypical images of Springsteen — had he decided to come out with, say, an instrumental jazz-folk-fusion record after this one, nobody except for Landau would have pinned him down to the ground for such a sacrilege. The problem is, this whole approach was just too convoluted and messy to really click with those «blue collar folks» who were his main lyrical protagonists. An incoherence, yes, both for the critics (who could be pampered in retrospect) and the Billboard charts (who couldn't), that would be rectified with his next release. Unfortunately. Anyway, this is arguably the first and last time you get a chance to observe «Bruce the Musicmaker» — so hurry up and support me on this thumbs up before he turns into «Bruce the Superhero», once and for all.

Brian Wilson: Orange Crate Art

BRIAN WILSON (w. VAN DYKE PARKS): ORANGE CRATE ART (1995)

1) Orange Crate Art; 2) Sail Away; 3) My Hobo Heart; 4) Wings Of A Dove; 5) Palm Tree And Moon; 6) Summer In Monterey; 7) San Francisco; 8) Hold Back Time; 9) My Jeanine; 10) Movies Is Magic; 11) This Town Goes Down At Sunset; 12) Lullaby.

Apparently, this album seems to have gone down in history as a catastrophic failure — critics and fans alike, at least in retrospect, never seem to have any kind words for it, and the only reason I can see is that formally, the record is a bit of a hoax: credited to «Brian Wilson and Van Dyke Parks», it actually consists almost exclusively of compositions by the latter. According to legend, a short while after the pair of old friends found themselves in the studio, Brian said: "Wait a minute, what am I doing here?" and Parks said "you're here because I can't stand the sound of my own voice" and Brian said "oh, okay then", and the tapes were rolling. To Parks' credit, he always insists that he did try to get Brian to collaborate more creatively, but he wouldn't — partly out of humility, partly because he was still recuperating from Landy's «therapy».

Well, color me crazy, but I not only like this record, but also think that it was conceived and exe­cuted strictly in the genuine Beach Boys spirit — maybe Van Dyke Parks is not a great composer, and maybe his lyrical skills leave something to be desired even from a slightly more sophisticated perspective than Mike Love's, but Van Dyke Parks did bring something to the table in 1967 when he worked with Brian on Smile, and, judging by these songs, he took even more off that table, because the themes, the vibes, the melodic moves, the harmonies that we hear on Orange Crate Art, all these things are a clear throwback to the happy innocent days of baroque pop teen sym­phonies and that warm California sun.

Actually, Parks' concept goes even beyond that — thematically, the songs picture an even younger, pre-war era California, idealistically unspoiled by surfers, hippies, drug dealers, racial riots, oil spills, and whatever else you might think of. The music is totally relaxed, happy, dreamy, full of orange crates, palm trees, dove wings, and Monterey summers. It may not be great music, but it is totally adequate to its purpose. According to St. Thomas Erlewine of the All-Music Guide, "instead of making his melodies catchy, Parks makes sure they are complex, which means they are rarely memorable" — but the good sir must have confused Van Dyke Parks with Brian himself, because I could see where such an accusation could be (misguidedly) directed against the author of Smile, but certainly not at the author of the perfectly accessible, never too complex, and frequently quite catchy vaudeville and pop rock numbers on Orange Crate Art.

On the contrary, if there is one serious flaw to this show, it is its lightweightness. The whole thing almost literally floats on air — song after song of giddy romantic innocence, too cute, perhaps, for its own good. When the entire album pulsates with just one emotion, this can easily result in oversaturation, and the music can come across as a bit cartoonish (which, perhaps, suited Brian just fine at the time — it is no coincidence that the man would later do a whole album of Disney covers himself — but may feel alienating for those of us who have always appreciated the emo­tional depth in the best songs he wrote for the Beach Boys).

There are some excellent musical ideas here, though. ʽWings Of A Doveʼ, for instance, is on the whole a bouncy pop rocker, but with a delicious «swooping» hook to resolve the chorus — very simple, Mr. Erlewine, and quite memorable, as we are getting carried away into the sky by an out-of-nowhere keyboard arpeggio. ʽPalm Tree And Moonʼ seems to have both South American and Far Eastern elements in its colorful arrangement — perhaps it is this kind of «complexity» that perplexed the critics, but the melody is perfectly catchy and unpredictable (and I guess Cali­fornia could be described as standing in between the Far East and South America, anyway). And the mix between country-western, cabaret vaudeville, and Smile-style harmonies on ʽSan Fran­ciscoʼ is probably the single weirdest (but still totally accessible) bit on the album to which you might find yourself inclined to return in the most unlikely moment of your life.

I guess there are some duds as well — for instance, the cheesily sentimental, accordeon-driven ʽMy Jeanineʼ (an attempt to crack the French pop market?) is way too silly, and ʽMovies Is Magicʼ lays on the orchestra too thick, threatening to become late Andrew Lloyd Webber at any time. It is also not clear if they really should have devoted six minutes to Gershwin's ʽLullabyʼ which you should probably rather hear somewhere else — even if we accept that conceptually, this little dreamy fantasy of George's does fit in well with Van Dyke Parks' vision. But really, there is no sense in nitpicking: Orange Crate Art is most likely either a record that you will like (or even love) as a whole, or dismiss altogether as corny fluff.

I would go with a thumbs up, though. Even if it is not Brian Wilson's music (but then again, who can really tell now, with no eyewitnesses around, how much he did or did not contribute to these arrangements?), it is the single closest thing to Brian Wilson's music that one could imagine, and it certainly has the Brian Wilson spirit in it a-plenty.

Blood Ceremony: Living With The Ancients

BLOOD CEREMONY: LIVING WITH THE ANCIENTS (2011)

1) The Great God Pan; 2) Coven Tree; 3) The Hermit; 4) My Demon Brother; 5) Morning Of The Magicians; 6) Oliver Haddo; 7) Night Of Augury; 8) The Witch's Dance; 9) Daughter Of The Sun.

Odd enough, they're getting better at this. On Blood Ceremony's second album, the riffs get darker, tighter, and a bit less obviously derivative; the solos get ever so slightly more fluent and complex, implying that they may have spent at least a part of these three years actually shar­pening their skills rather than camping at the crossroads at midnight; and a couple of the songs even manage to build up an impressive atmosphere. Well — I guess if you dabble in the black arts long enough, there's an actual chance that people will gradually shift their reaction from ironic snickering to nervous fidgeting.

One such song is ʽMy Demon Brotherʼ, where, after the obligatory tritone-filled introduction, they offer us a cool key change between verse and chorus — it's the kind of trick that worked really well on Sabbath albums circa 1972-73, and it works fine here, provided you do not actually follow the lyrics too closely (Geezer Butler would have probably blushed at these inane lines, but then Geezer never actually wrote Satanist lyrics — these guys do, and I hope Satan eventually gives Alia a good spanking for tarnishing his reputation with this nonsense). It really only works for a second before the spell is over, but that is already an improvement — from simple mastery of form, they try to grapple some mastery of the spirit, and deserve commendment.

I am a bit offended, though, at their continuous involvement of poor Greek deities into this black magic thing. Come on guys, just because the unfortunate Pan is pictured with horns on his head does not mean that you can freely call him «the horned one» — what next, Moses? He has nothing to do with witches or black magic, and contrary to rumors, his altar does not «burn with pagan fear», and his image should be accompanied with flutes but not Sabbath-style riffs. We admit, yes, that there are some nice sounding Sabbath-style riffs on ʽThe Great God Panʼ (actual­ly, though, the most recognizable riff is a variation on Alice Cooper's ʽIt's Hot Tonightʼ), and that Sean Kennedy's ecstatic solo is better than any guitar solo passage on the debut album (Satan is a good teacher, want it or not), but leave Pan alone, dammit already.

On the other hand, their musical juxtaposition of Tullian flute with Sabbath-y riffs may somewhat justify this mixture — presenting everything as if from the misguided view of an uninformed Christian, for whom «paganism» and «Satanism» are the same thing and who views pagan deities as demons by definition. ʽCoven Treeʼ, where the flute accompanies the dark riffs almost inces­santly, is another good example of this approach — "Saturnalia" = "infernal light" and "roots of witch­ery", and so on.

The best song on the album is arguably ʽOliver Haddoʼ, indicating that 20th century black arts intrigue these guys at least as much as ancient Greek mythology, although it is not until the sixth minute that the track really catches fire as Alia switches to pseudo-church organ and Sean Ken­nedy starts tossing out a series of really passionate riffs, supported by exceptionally heavy drum­ming. That is yet another moment where, for a brief while, I am inclined to take Blood Ceremony seriously: not seriously enough to become a Crowley adept — not even Led Zeppelin could make me do that, and Lord knows they tried real hard — but seriously enough to think that they may ultimately do a good job in reviving old-school doom metal.

Other than that, though, there is little to add: in terms of basic ingredients, the formula remains the same, and you can spot no more formal musical progress here than you can spot any serious deviation from the song title formula. The added emotional nuances suffice to earn them another optimistic thumbs up, but I honestly know not what else to write, so let us stop right here.

The Brian Jonestown Massacre: Spacegirl And Other Favorites

THE BRIAN JONESTOWN MASSACRE: SPACEGIRL AND OTHER FAVORITES (1993)

1) Crushed; 2) That Girl Suicide; 3) Deep In The Devil's Eye & You; 4) Kid's Garden; 5) When I Was Yesterday; 6) Spacegirl; 7) Spacegirl (Revisited); 8) After The Fall; 9) Thoughts Of You; 10) Hide And Seek; 11) Never Ever!; 12) Ashtray; 13) Fire Song.

Was there anything in the early classic period of the Rolling Stones that would make them the logical predecessors of «shoegazing»? Not much, I guess, though perhaps some of their longer, «dronier» tracks like ʽI'm Going Homeʼ and especially ʽSing This All Together (See What Hap­pens)ʼ could be said to be very tangentially related to the genre. However, not even ʽSing This All Togetherʼ thrived on monochrome monotonousness — even at their most daring and far out, the Stones never pretended to «minimalist artsiness». Too highbrow for those consummate hitmakers, who could afford to be weird, but couldn't afford to be «inaccessible».

In the light of this, it is odd to see how The Brian Jonestown Massacre, a band (actually, a band-like vehicle for supporting the songwriting, singing, and playing talents of Anton Newcombe, a deeply troubled geek from sunny California) whose veneration of pre-Beggar's Banquet era Stones is as visible from the title as their predilection for the macabre (Jonestown Massacre), be­gan life as a bona fide shoegazing outfit, albeit with a knack for chord sequences and guitar tones that have a lot to do with the mid-Sixties. Later on, Newcombe would make his Stones fanboyism much more evident, but here, it takes time to realize that, yes indeed, quite a bit of BJM's twangy guitar sound comes from the era of Aftermath. And given the album's overall quality, you might not want to waste all that time on something so inessential.

In fact, Newcombe himself has pretty much disowned this record, dismissing it as a tentative col­lection of early youthful experiments — which, it must be noted, did not prevent him from re-releasing it on CD anyway: the original vinyl-only release had but seven tracks, with six more added as bonuses on the 2003 edition. (No contradiction, though — it's just that this guy takes his own history seriously, as do most of us silly people). The record is sometimes labeled as a «com­pilation», which is not altogether accurate: the recordings do date from several different sessions, but none of them were previously released, and if there is one argument for why this really shouldn't be judged as a proper debut album, it is that, according to some sources, The Brian Jonestown Massacre as a band are not even properly represented here — instead, what you are witnessing is a set of lo-fi demos where Newcombe plays all the instruments himself, including (most of the time) programmed drums.

You can already see the talent behind the shoegazing muck: once the first minute of howling feed­back is over, ʽCrushedʼ becomes a well-coordinated twin current of one crunchy and one melodic guitar, with the melodic guitar playing a rather engaging raga line. Newcombe's vocals, however, should rather be placed somewhere in between Robert Smith and Thom Yorke here than have anything to do with Mick Jagger's sneer — and all the way through to the very end, he is playing this reclusive romantic who prefers to fantasize about transcendental love rather than just go out and get some. Which is perfectly in agreement with the ideology of your average shoegazer, but does not present Newcombe as a particularly interesting personality type in his own rights. In fact, his sticky, droning, pleading invocation of "just let me lo-o-o-o-ve you, just let me lo-o-o-o-ve you" is sort of annoying in an imbecile-teenager sort of way. Would any type of female, spacegirl or not, want to fall for this whiner?

That said, on the whole ʽSpacegirlʼ is an interesting experiment — five minutes into the song, the vocals disappear altogether and become replaced with a solemn, stately, marching drone, full of acoustic guitars and synthesized strings and horns that fills up your living room for eight more minutes, then fades away and then fades back in to give you five minutes more of the same. At­mospherically, it is quite similar to the final «jam» part of George Harrison's ʽIt's All Too Muchʼ: you get the feeling of being caught in the middle of some important religious ritual, an offering to the Great Sun or something like that. My only quibble is that the production is so weak, you do not get to properly savor all the small intricate details — the jam is not as monotonous as it seems, because the «strings» are actually playing a dynamic melody, but they are intentionally shoved behind the unchanging rhythmic growl. Why? Silly shoegazing ideology.

Speaking of the shorter tracks, many, if not most of these, would later be re-recorded in superior versions, so it makes little sense to discuss them here; and those that would not are so badly marred by the low quality of the recording that only a diehard lo-fi lover would want to revisit them on a regular basis — something like ʽWhen I Was Yesterdayʼ, for instance, could be an ex­cellent tribute to mid-Sixties psychedelic garage-rock, but the fuzzy rhythm guitar, the bluesy lead guitar, and the snappy vocals all sound like shit. Somebody be a good sport, please, and cover this one in pristine sound quality. Leave the lo-fi to the lo-fi era, please.

What is important, though, is that Spacegirl's limitations are primarily of a technical nature. Even through the shittiest sound, you can sense that Newcombe has a good ear for melody, a good knack for complex arrangements, and a good sense of taste, allowing him to «update» the Sixties for the Nineties without coming across as just a kitschy nostalgia act — which, in a way, may count as a genuine artistic vision. But yes, the relation of Spacegirl to «proper» BJM albums is much like the relation of the Beatles' Decca audition tape to the first recordings of the George Martin era. At the very least, if you are in a hurry, do not make the mistake of letting this record be your introduction to the band. And you don't even have to take my word for it — take Anton's. Seventy-plus minutes of lo-fi «Brian Jones drowned, forms shoegazing band in Heaven on tight budget» stuff can really turn you off very quickly, with no hopes of redemption.