Butthole Surfers: Piouhgd

BUTTHOLE SURFERS: PIOUHGD (1990)

1) Revolution Part 1; 2) Revolution Part 2; 3) Lonesome Bulldog; 4) Lonesome Bulldog II; 5) The Hurdy Gurdy Man; 6) Golden Showers; 7) Lonesome Bulldog III; 8) Blindman; 9) No, I'm Iron Man; 10) Something; 11) P.S.Y.; 12) Lonesome Bulldog IV; 13*) Barking Dogs.

Although a lot of critics seem to think that Piouhgd (on some releases, the title is spelt Pioughd, but I seriously doubt there is a «correct» way of spelling this) shows the beginning of the decline for the Surfers, I would disagree — in fact, I'd say that, in terms of being true to the spirit of the band, this is a major imporvement over Hairway To Steven. Where the latter was almost way too normal — and, consequently, boring — here they return to all sorts of banshee excesses that may be silly, meaningless, irritating, but give this band an actual reason to exist.

The opening bluesy jam of ʽRevolutionʼ may seem to start this off on the same note as ʽJimiʼ, but where ʽJimiʼ was meandering and murky and eventually just dissolved in an interminable yawn-inducing acoustic coda, this stuff is faster, punchier, and has a bite. The first part is all about Leary's fuzzy riff, a distant descendant of ʽFoxy Ladyʼ, losing some of that ancestral crunch but retaining all of its mind-melting psyche-delish-ness; and during the second part, it is slightly pushed aside to make way for a simpler, folksier rhythmic pattern and some arrogant vocals, as if they were switching from Hendrix mood into Jefferson Airplane mood — then the overdubs begin to pile up, and we get synthesizers, radio static, twenty layers of screaming, moaning, and blabbering, ringing telephones, wailing sirens, and all sorts of things to suggest a ʽRevolution 9ʼ type of chaos, only everything remains steadily underpinned with a rhythmic melody. In short, seems to be much more crazy stuff going on here than there ever was on ʽJimiʼ.

Other highlights here include ʽGolden Showersʼ, whose cheerful Farfisa organ and distorted sax, combined with the somewhat uncomfortable lyrical topic, would probably make this track eli­gible for a Bonzo Dog Band cover; ʽNo, I'm Iron Manʼ — another in a never-ending line of Black Sabbath deconstruc­tions, although this one, I think, only borrows the opening chord of the riff (it is the cavernously distorted vocals that actually make you think of ʽIron Manʼ, rather than the melody); and the hilarious remake of their old chestnut ʽSomethingʼ in the style of Jesus And Mary Chain, for no other reason, I guess, than to show how versatile the band's powers are.

There are relative lowlights, too — nobody seems to think much of their country send-up ʽLone­some Bulldogʼ, but I actually think that the silly song itself is merely a pretext for three more «variations», where they play the waltz theme with three different guitar tones/styles (my guess is inspired by Brian May first time around, by Lou Reed second time around, and... uh... is that Sabbath once again they are imitating in Part IV? Downtuning the guitar and bass at the same time? Could be, couldn' it?); which counts as funny in my book. The only real lowlight is pro­bably the «cover» of Donovan's ʽHurdy Gurdy Manʼ, where the main gimmick is a wobbly tre­molo effect on the vocals that will probably make you puke if your head is not too well balanced. But that's okay, we can take it.

I am not a major fan of the lengthy jam ʽP.S.Y.ʼ, because, once again, too much of it sounds like an homage to the psychedelic jam bands of old, from the Grateful Dead to Can: ass-kicking, yes, jaw-dropping — no. What is totally jaw-dropping, though, is the last track, which was only made available on the 1992 reissue of the album by Capitol Records: ʽBarking Dogsʼ is one of the greatest sonic nightmares that this, or, for that matter, any band has ever produced. Pinned against an unnerving pseudo-cello electronic pattern, you get banshee-howling guitars, blasts of white noise, agitated and/or screaming vocals, occasional bursts of gunfire, and, yes, barking dogs that crop up with the frightening regularity of enemies in some particularly creepy and bloody arcade game. This is actually their answer to ʽRevolution 9ʼ, and, frankly speaking, it's better, because the various samples and overdubs are much more thoughtfully put together — so that you get a very realistic picture of making a crazy nighttime run through the streets of a city gone mad with ravaging, burning, and killing. Technically, it should probably be called an «industrial» compo­sition, but emotionally, it goes way beyond «industrial» and into the realm of «apocalyptic».

If the album only had ʽBarking Dogsʼ on it, it would still be worth a thumbs up; fortunately, uneven as it is, and not breaking any radically new ground, its share of minor crazy-awesome ideas is still higher than its share of silly misfires and its share of "this-is-kinda-boring-when-will-this-ever-end" moments. A pretty damn good, unjustly overlooked album in their wobbly, perverted catalog.

Built To Spill: The Normal Years

BUILT TO SPILL: THE NORMAL YEARS (1993-1995; 1996)

1) So & So So & So From Wherever Wherever; 2) Shortcut; 3) Car; 4) Some Things Last A Long Time; 5) Girl; 6) Joyride; 7) Some; 8) Sick & Wrong; 9) Still Flat; 10) Terrible/Perfect.

I will keep this very brief. Most likely, had this compilation not appeared way back in 1996, when the band was still young and fresh and a few steps away from Big Critical Recognition, it would not have appeared today — too slight, way too slight. This one really just mops up some singles, outtakes, and alternate versions of tracks from the first couple of albums, most of them being merely of historical interest. The only general argument in favor of the album might be that the sound is more «raw» and lo-fi on the whole, which is hardly surprising but also hardly intentional: these are, indeed, unpolished versions, but mainly because the band did not yet have the time or the skills to polish them.

Actually, I guess the only two songs worth specific mention are the two non-LP A-sides. ʽJoy­rideʼ is an unusually speedy folk-rocker in the vein of Tom Petty's ʽAmerican Girlʼ, with some nicely crunchy distorted guitar howling high above the folksy rhythm strum, a few cute stop-and-start moments, and a hilarious buzz of overdubbed lead parts in the outro — probably the closest they came in those early years (or ever, for that matter) to simplistic innocent rock'n'roll. And the oddly titled ʽSo & So So...ʼ is a good example of Martsch's experimental spirit ("so, instead of just taking this two-chord riff and recording a punk song, we will add a droning serpentine me­lody on top of it and record an art rock song"), although the gray, drab chorus with the usual "vocals coming out of the guitar's ass" principle is still a disappointment.

As a curio, there is a cover of a tune by madman extraordinaire Daniel Jonston (ʽSome Things Last A Long Timeʼ), where the key point is that midway through, this slow, leisurely, contempla­tive ballad is ripped apart by a tornado-like lead guitar part, yet the tempo, the general arrange­ment, and the vocals do not shift one bit, and eventually the «tornado» just whooshes away and disappears — you may take this as a symbolic reminder that "some things last a long time" in­deed, but a tornado is not one of them. There's also a track called ʽShortcutʼ that runs for just a minute and a half (which probably earned it its name) — a most unusual thing for Martsch, who was always brevity's worst enemy.

Overall, this one's truly only for big fans and completists. It does wrap all the odds and ends up nicely, reflecting Built To Spill's passion for meticulousness — so many indie bands are so careless, after all, about leaving their singles and EPs out of print — but accuracy per se is not enough for me to hand out a certified thumbs up here.

Bruford: Feels Good To Me

BRUFORD: FEELS GOOD TO ME (1977)

1) Beelzebub; 2) Back To The Beginning; 3) Seems Like A Lifetime Ago (part 1); 4) Seems Like A Lifetime Ago (part 2); 5) Sample And Hold; 6) Feels Good To Me; 7) Either End Of August; 8) If You Can't Stand The Heat; 9) Springtime In Siberia; 10) Adios A La Pasada.

Be it Ringo Starr, Keith Moon, or even Phil "How The Hell Did I End Up Behind A Drum Kit When I'd Always Wanted To Be The Beatles?" Collins, you do not usually hold high expecta­tions for a drummer's solo career, no matter how many bonus points he gets in the agility depart­ment. Drummers do not tend to make good songwriters, are usually terrible at singing (a few exceptions like Levon Helm just proving the rule), and have an inferiority complex because they never get laid as much as the front man or the lead guitarist. For that reason, the world did not exactly hold its breath when, after the next demise of King Crimson, the newly freed Bill Bruford announced that, after all those years of loyal servitude to Yes and Robert Fripp, he would finally start up a band of his own — simply called «Bruford» for short.

The good news was that he'd managed to assemble a somewhat spectacular lineup: Dave Stewart (of Canterbury's Hatfield and the North and National Health fame) on keyboards, Allan Holds­worth (of Soft Machine fame, although he only played there for a short time) on lead guitar, and former violinist Jeff Berlin on bass; additional guests on the band's first album included Brand X's John Goodsall on rhythm guitar, jazz pro Kenny Wheeler on flugelhorn, and dreamy-eccen­tric-avantgarde artist Annette Peacock on vocals. All the compositions were credited either to Bruford alone or to the Bruford/Stewart team — but it goes without saying that composition is not the most important aspect on most of these tracks.

The best thing that can be said about the record is that, although it is technically a «fusion» al­bum, it is by no means a generic, predictable one. It does share certain similarities with Brand X's Un­orthodox Behaviour, released a year earlier — jazz-fusion at the core, yet with numerous melo­dic overtones that reflect the drummers' earlier symphonic-prog experience. But it goes even fur­ther than Brand X, because the addition of Annette Peacock to this lineup gives the music an ex­tra romantic-philosophical-mystical dimension: the lengthy tracks on which she is given enough freedom (ʽBack To The Beginningʼ and especially the closing ʽAdios A La Pasadaʼ, which she co-wrote) are easily the best on the record. On ʽBack To The Beginningʼ, she is placed unusually high in the mix (so much so that you can easily get a jump when the vocals burst out of the speakers), and her avantgarde jazz singing is actually the least normal thing on the track — the sheer contrast between the free modulation of her voice and the strict fusion groove of the music should count as a psychedelic experience.

On ʽAdios A La Pasadaʼ, most of the time she does not even sing, but just delivers a half-spoken monologue, while Stewart and Holdsworth are trying to give the album a suitably grand-epic conclusion, the former emulating a symphonic orchestra and the latter trying to combine speedy technique with an expression of total joy at the perspective of riding into the unknown, if you know what I mean. However, without those vocals, this would still largely be just a tight fusion jam with symphonic overtones — Peacock's performance gives it more soul than anything else. Likewise, the first (ballad) part of ʽSeems Like A Lifetime Agoʼ, where her singing is reminis­cent of Joni Mitchell, is clearly more memorable and evocative than the second one, where the vocals go away and we are just left with the fusionists having their fusionist fun.

Not that it is impossible to have your fun along with them: after all, these are musicians of the highest caliber, and the rhythm section of Bruford and Berlin alone will occasionally tear you off the ground (check out, for instance, the coda of ʽIf You Can't Stand The Heatʼ, when Stewart and Berlin are playing a complex riff in unison and Bruford is gently, but firmly supporting them with a tricky time signature — it's playful, but dazzling). Also, ʽSpringtime In Siberiaʼ is largely just a melancholic jazz ballad, completely given over to the piano and the flugelhorn, sounding like something off an early Coltrane record (and yes, springtime can be a particularly lovely time in Siberia indeed, although it depends). But it is difficult for me to qualify this as an «average» or an «excellent» fusion record on the whole, as I tend to get lost in this genre a little — it always goes for «technique» and «feel» over «meaningful melody», and my bet is usually on meaningful melodies, which, unsurprisingly, here largely coincide with the presence of the lady singer.

The title track, I must say, feels a wee bit corny rather than good, almost as if they were trying to make a catchy, clap-along «fusion-pop» ditty here, with a silly-cheerful synth tone and with the rhythmic pattern occasionally lapsing into ska. This might irritate veteran fusion fans and prog aficionados alike, or maybe even bring to mind unnecessary associations with early Eighties' Genesis (of the Duke variety). However, the tune is not at all representative of either the real fusion or the real progressive parts of the record, and can be taken or left at will.

The general verdict should be positive — no, the album does not exactly shatter the anti-solo-drummer prejudice, but as a tasteful divertissement with a twist, Feels Good To Me is probably much better than it could have been, had Bruford assembled a less talented team or had he de­cided to completely subjugate himself to the fusion formula. Ironically, though, despite uniting the drummer from two of the decade's most innovative bands and the keyboardist from two of the decade's most crazyass innovative bands, the album feels totally conservative compared to all of those — then again, it was 1977, and most of the people who were on the cutting edge in the early Seventies had already blunted their powers, at the speed they were moving at. Regardless, a well-deserved thumbs up for the effort is perfectly in order.

Brian Eno: Neroli

BRIAN ENO: NEROLI (1993)

1) Neroli.

«Thanks to the calming nature of the piece, Neroli has been implemented in some maternity wards, both to instill a sense of calm as well as enhance the organic nature of childbirth» (Wiki­pedia). I am not quite sure how exactly a series of intricately looped, digitally synthesized notes is supposed to «enhance the organic nature of childbirth», but who am I to question advanced psy­chotheurapetical practices? Let us instead concentrate on the title — most likely an anagram, but what for? "Lorien"? Unless the elves actually spend most of their time frozen in cocoons, not very likely. "Lenoir"? That's a pretty common surname; probably not the inventor of the internal combustion engine, though, as that would be too loud for this album. "Nilore"? What does the man care about nuclear technology research sites in Pakistan? Beats me.

Anyway, this is basically Thursday Afternoon Vol. 2 — only a «darker» counterpart to that record's «lighter» aura, as the played notes are much lower; there is also no humming electronic background whatsoever, so the only thing left between you and the gradually fading soundwaves of the dripping notes is silence. Imagine your roof leaking in a regular pattern, with a set of pots capturing the droplets, as the pattern very slowly shifts due to the droplets dropping at different speeds, yet essentially remains the same, and that is basically Neroli for you, except the dripping process has been given an electronic coating. And, of course, it is almost one hour long.

Perhaps it really does help young mothers, lying in beds resting with nothing much to do. Per­haps it is a cool soundtrack to help you meditate — as an experiment, you could try playing it in its entirety every evening before you go to bed, and it might drain your brain of all the silly, distur­bing, nerve-wrecking events of the day. I am not denying the worth of this as a medical tool (it should definitely have at least some sort of placebo value), and I am not even denying it the status of an artistic statement, one that would prompt people to exclaim: "Ah, that Neroli! Verily, has a more astute metaphor for the entire universe behaving just like circles on the water been thought of by mortal man? That Eno — musical philosophy has never been more profound in its simpli­city and directness! Not even John Cage has got anything on him!"

What I am denying is the capacity of these «circles on the water» to do much of anything for me, or for people who, while not denying the powers of «ambient» as a genre, think that minimalism in composing is long past being valuable per se. Honestly, one Thursday Afternoon per artist is quite enough; so I would prefer to simply label this «Brian Eno's Limited Time Offer For Mater­nity Wards — Not To Be Taken Seriously» and forget that it ever existed.

Bruce Springsteen: Working On A Dream

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN: WORKING ON A DREAM (2009)

1) Outlaw Pete; 2) My Lucky Day; 3) Working On A Dream; 4) Queen Of The Supermarket; 5) What Love Can Do; 6) This Life/Good Eye; 7) Tomorrow Never Knows; 8) Life Itself; 9) Kingdom Of Days; 10) Surprise, Surprise; 11) The Last Carnival; 12*) The Wrestler.

This one was released seven days after Obama's inauguration — coincidence? Perhaps, but the fact that the mood here is way more sunny and optimistic than it was on Magic is not a coinci­dence at all, especially keeping in mind that the title track was first played live at the November 2, 2008 concert in support of Obama, two days before the general elections. And now comes the blatant question: do you prefer your Springsteen morose and grumpy, or do you prefer him humo­rous, lightweight, and idealistically optimistic?

Of course, it really depends on a lot of other factors. ʽWorking On A Dreamʼ (the song), for in­stance, is a sunny power pop anthem that feels more like Christine McVie than Springsteen, pos­sibly because the "aa-ooh la-la-la, aa-ooh la-la-la" backing vocals had been borrowed directly from ʽSay You Love Meʼ (it's true, I swear!) and possibly because Bruce was all set to beat Bill Clinton's success with ʽDon't Stopʼ. Like, Americans all over the States heard the song on Novem­ber 2 and the fate of the elections was sealed, you know. But that doesn't prevent the tune from sounding a wee bit silly and manipulative in retrospect.

Not as silly, granted, as ʽQueen Of The Supermarketʼ, which arguably features the worst exten­ded lyrical meta­phor of the man's career — okay, there's nothing wrong about writing yet another story of sexual attraction between two simple people, but "take my place in the check-out line"? "I'm in love with the Queen of the Supermarket, though her company cap covers her hair"? Worst of all, "beneath her white apron her secret remains hers"? Boy, we've come a really long way since ʽIncident On 57th Streetʼ and the like. At least if there were some indication that this is an intentional tongue-in-cheek self-parody or something... apparently, though, this is an UN-in­tentional self-parody, ohmygosh.

The embarrassment does not stop there, because the real burning question that has gone unan­swered since 2009 is this: Does the sprawling quasi-Western epic ʽOutlaw Peteʼ consciously nick the primary melody of KISS' ʽI Was Made For Loving Youʼ, or is this just a really unfortunate coincidence? Never mind that the lyrics of the song are once again triter than tripe (just put the words next to, say, ʽJunglelandʼ, and see for yourself how fickle that poetic gift is) — why does this have to sound like a cross between Tommy ("can you hear me? can you hear me?") and a three-decade old corny disco song? Was that a serious attempt at breaking away from the formula? Well, ʽOutlaw Peteʼ is a strong breakaway from the formula, but the price is just too high.

And even that is not all: why does the song ʽTomorrow Never Knowsʼ borrow its title from the Beatles and its scratch-guitar opening from CCR's ʽLooking Out My Back Doorʼ, yet ends up sounding like neither, but instead turns out to be a simple, fast-paced country tune with steel gui­tar and female backing vocals a-plenty? Why do I actually have this strange uncomfortable fee­ling that Bruce's desire to make a cheerful «roots-pop» album has lessened the gap between him­self and his compatriots, Bon Jovi, in their «country» phase?..

Yes, about half of these songs have sunny pop hooks that might even get entangled in some of your nerve nodes (ʽSurprise, Surpriseʼ is a good example: you might reasonably complain about the word "surprise" being repeated way too many times, but it'll still get you), but this is still Bruce Springsteen, you know — all these slight, simple pop hooks are imbued with his sweaty earthiness, and thus, it is a simplistic, lightweight record that demands to be taken as seriously as ever. Which is where we have a communicative failure. How can you take Bruce Springsteen seriously when he's (sub)consciously stealing melodies from KISS, for Christ's sake? Oh well, at least that is a bizarre oddity that does go against formula. But most of the songs here do not go against formula, and stuff like ʽQueen Of The Supermarketʼ just parodies the formula (honestly, it's the kind of tune I'd expect to see featured in some SNL broadcast).

On the positive side, this is really the Boss at his happiest since... Lucky Town, I guess, which probably makes Working On A Dream the relative equivalent of that album for the next decade. Not exactly a compliment, I know, but we should be glad to see other people in happy moods, shouldn't we? After all, it's not as if he'd give us another Darkness On The Edge Of Town now even if America invaded half of the world's countries at once, so we might as well relax and give the man a break. If he wants to flirt around with supermarket clerks, that's none of our business, it's all between the man and Patti anyway.

Buddy Guy: The Complete Chess Studio Recordings

BUDDY GUY: THE COMPLETE CHESS STUDIO RECORDINGS (1960-1967; 1992)

CD I: 1) First Time I Met The Blues; 2) Slop Around; 3) I Got My Eyes On You; 4) Broken Hearted Blues; 5) Let Me Love You Baby; 6) I Got A Strange Feeling; 7) Gully Hully; 8) Ten Years Ago; 9) Watch Yourself; 10) Stone Crazy; 11) Skippin'; 12) I Found True Love; 13) Hard But It's Fair; 14) Baby (Baby, Baby, Baby); 15) When My Left Eye Jumps; 16) That's It; 17) The Treasure Untold; 18) American Bandstand; 19)    No Lie; 20) $100 Bill; 21) My Love Is Real; 22) Buddy's Boogie.

CD II: 1) Worried Mind (aka Stick Around); 2) Untitled Instrumental; 3) Moanin'; 4) I Dig Your Wig; 5) My Time After Awhile; 6) Night Flight; 7) Crazy Love (Crazy Music); 8) Every Girl I See; 9) Too Many Ways; 10) Leave My Girl Alone; 11) Got To Use Your Head; 12) Keep It To Myself (aka Keep It To Yourself); 13) My Mother; 14) She Suits Me To A Tee; 15) Mother-In-Law Blues; 16) Buddy's Groove; 17) Going To School; 18) I Cry And Sing The Blues; 19) Goin' Home; 20) I Suffer With The Blues; 21) Lip Lap Louie; 22) My Time After Awhile (alternate vocals and mix); 23) Too Many Ways (alternate take); 24) Keep It To Myself (alternate take); 25) I Didn't Know My Mother Had A Son Like Me.

Like most of his colleagues at Chess, Buddy Guy had his output measured in singles, not LPs; unlike some of his luckier colleagues, though, he was not even allowed the privilege of putting together an LP from some of these singles until his very last year on Chess (where, according to most accounts, he was treated as sort of an underdog) — which made his early discography seri­ously confusing until MCA finally got around to putting it all together on this double disc package, as part of their general program to systematize and preserve their legacy. Even so, compared to so many other Complete Chess Studio Recordings series, two CDs seem fairly pitiful — indeed, the label saw little sense in maintaining Buddy Guy as an independent artist, preferring to use him for session work rather than individual stardom.

And indeed, discrimination accusations aside, those early «formative» years do not really give us the Buddy Guy that most of us are accustomed to — the consummate showman and guitar wizard with his own unmistakable, and highly eccentric, dialect of the blues language. His very first singles were actually released in 1958 for the smaller Cobra Records (and are pretty hard to lo­cate, as you'd have to go for an obstinately chronologically representative collection), where he worked close to Otis Rush and seems to have been highly influenced by that style — deep-echo, ominous soul-blues with vocal wailings and screechy guitar. A year later, he switched to Chess, where he continued to explore that Otis Rush vibe, but also put out «blues de-luxe» tracks in the glitzy style of B. B. King, dabbled in danceable R&B (in fact, danceable anything — one of the tracks here is not called ʽGully Hullyʼ for nothing), and basically was willing to try out any idea as long as it had some probability of selling.

The problem is, the one thing the world is most grateful to Buddy for is his guitar playing, and these early Chess singles do not paint a very good picture of it. First, although Buddy's playing was a big influence on everybody from British bluesmen to Hendrix even in the first half of the Sixties, his «classic» style of playing did not truly emerge until after he himself was «re-influen­ced» by the blues-rock explosion of the second half of the Sixties. And second, according to most accounts, Buddy was at his most influential when playing live — not an option here, with just one track (ʽStone Crazyʼ) giving him enough space to stretch out with some serious soloing, and most of the others molding him more as a singer and entertainer than a blues player. And he is a good singer, wailing and crooning along with the best of 'em, yet hardly doing anything here that would put him over the level of the aforementioned Otis Rush — or B. B. King and Bobby Bland, for that matter.

The collection does feature some of the songs that formed the foundation of the Buddy Guy legend. There's ʽLet Me Love You Babyʼ, his firmest affirmation of aggressive masculinity that would later be covered by Jeff Beck and Rod Stewart, among others, as an early anthem of blues-based hard rock. And there's his blues-rock transformation of ʽMary Had A Little Lambʼ from 1967 (here entitled ʽGoing To Schoolʼ — copyright reasons?), which many people know from the Stevie Ray Vaughan version — although, to be fair, the importance of the recording is more in its general idea that «anything you want can be converted to kick-ass scorching blues» than anything else, because it is not outstanding in any other respect. And those early singles, ʽFirst Time I Met The Bluesʼ and ʽI Got My Eyes On Youʼ, they would also become regular live staples — and both introduce those signature «quivering» guitar licks that sound as if he were pulling on those strings like they were bowstrings, loosing an arrow at the listener (I think Keith Richards and/or Brian Jones did a good job copying these licks on the Stones' early records).

So yeah, there's plenty of fun and importance here, but, unfortunately, the completeness of the package also means that there will be a lot of crap — I mean, most of these upbeat R&B numbers that he did in the early Sixties, with female backing voices and cheery brass sections etc., are completely skippable (ʽBaby Baby Babyʼ, etc.): for better guitar work, you do not have to travel a long way from there, and for better entertainment value, you'd rather want to cross over to Smo­key Robinson or Wilson Pickett. Even as the Sixties were advancing, he was still saddled with novelty material like ʽLip Lap Louieʼ and ʽI Dig Your Wigʼ — compensating for this with occa­si­onal stabs at serious jazz (a cover of Art Blakey's ʽMoanin'ʼ is here, too) which show respectable technique, yet it was never highly likely that Buddy Guy would ever be respected as a jazz guitarist. Additionally, four tracks here actually feature guitarist Lacy Gibson instead of Buddy, and on one of them (ʽMy Love Is Realʼ) Lacy even takes lead vocals, leaving it unclear what Buddy's contribution to the track was in the first place.

Some of his better material from those years eventually made it to his first and last LP for Chess, Left My Blues In San Francisco (which we will tackle separately), but on the whole, these 47 tracks could easily be reduced to about 10-12, if you want to properly understand what all the hoopla about Buddy was in the pre-Hendrix era. To the ones already mentioned add some­thing like the scorching confessionalism of ʽMy Time After Awhileʼ... the weeping licks on ʽI Cry And Sing The Bluesʼ... the fast, fluent, fun playing on ʽBuddy's Boogieʼ... and yeah, that's about it for this one. Still, I guess the same criticisms apply to B. B. King as well, who spent the first two decades of his career stifled by the confines of his studio, his image, his technology, and his time, before really exploding in the mid-Sixties, so let us not hold his buddy Buddy to impossibly higher standards and still acknowledge these «beginning-of-the-legend» years with a modest thumbs up (especially since there is, at the very least, nothing openly bad here: even the novelty numbers and the hip-shaking dance fluff are really very innocent.)

Beirut: No No No

BEIRUT: NO NO NO (2015)

1) Gibraltar; 2) No No No; 3) At Once; 4) August Holland; 5) As Needed; 6) Perth; 7) Pacheco; 8) Fener; 9) So Allowed.

Well now, look at this. Four more years, and only nine more songs — No No No is even shorter than The Rip Tide, meaning that either Condon is at the end of his rope, or he is deliberately trying to convince us that less is more, and that any songwriter entrapped in a formula should at least try and cut down his production to a bare minimum (hear that, Mr. Springsteen?). Keeping in mind that this approach did not help The Rip Tide from being the same old cud, we should not set our expectations too high here — but, curiously, at least in my case these expectations have been pleasantly deceived.

As he himself acknowledged in interviews, Condon began writing this next album in a state of creative crisis — and eventually switched to a mini-format, jettisoning his large backing band in favor of a minimalistic piano trio. It seems that this actually helped him to concentrate more on the «melodic skeletons» of the tunes than on his usual East European atmospherics; and although the band was back for the final recording sessions, trombones and trumpets and accordions all in a row, most of the songs still have a transparently minimalistic sheen to them: the percussion and piano lines that open ʽGibraltarʼ are fairly typical of the entire record. Consequently, No No No sounds unmistakably like Beirut — and at the same time it gives us a fresh approach, «deconst­ructing» the classic Condon sound without spoiling it.

Some of these songs I would even warily define as «catchy», just because the simple, repetitive, distinctive keyboard lines (such as in ʽGibraltarʼ and ʽPerthʼ) stick in the brain faster than... well, anything Condon ever wrote before. But that's fine, it's really more of an attention spam problem than a sign of quality. What really matters is that this approach helps the man get some of that excessive quasi-Balkanian Weltschmerz out of his system, and the songs become cozier, prettier, more intimate, and intelligently optimistic — the lyrics seem like they were nonsensically thrown together out of a bunch of stock phrases from The Great Relationships Quotebook, but with the amount of air coming from Condon's nose, few people will make out the words anyway; more important is the effect of combining his high-pitched nasal singing with those skeletal acoustic and electric piano melodies, which, to me, sounds very pleasant (sort of a sunnier anti-thesis to the Thom Yorke vibe, if you wish).

Even without the vocals, the results can be nice: the instrumental ʽAs Neededʼ is a charming little piece of chamber pop, opened and closed with a gentle folksy acoustic riff and slightly Beach Boy-ish in the middle, with the strings forming a series of soothing musical waves against the relentless, but also soothing, hammering of the piano — a simple, but efficient example of the man's composing skills, so often remaining underappreciated behind the brass wall of sound. If, for some reason, you happen to be irritated by the man's voice (which is a distinct probability for all «crooner»-type singers), this is the only track off the record that you will need; fortunately for me, I can take it all, and twenty-nine minutes is precisely the maximum that can be intaken with­out the gag reflex setting in — because, after all, this is a set formula.

A thumbs up it is, even though it is not at all clear where we go from here. The man shows no signs of going back to the little shop of electronica, which is a good sign (there are some synthe­sizers on these tracks, but they are used sparingly and intelligently, like in the merry-go-round carousel intro to the title track); the man has thought of a good way to brush up on his melodic feel — by clearing away everything that is superfluous — which is an even better sign. But the man still retains his "earthy romantic" persona, which means that, most likely, sooner or later he will still return to the Gulag Orkestar mode of functioning, and whether he will manage to snap out of the predictable formula then remains, of course, an open question. In the meantime, all we can do is wish him some of that New Mexican good luck. 

Butthole Surfers: Double Live

BUTTHOLE SURFERS: DOUBLE LIVE (1989)

1) Too Parter; 2) Psychedelic Jam; 3) Ricky; 4) Rocky; 5) Gary Floyd; 6) Florida; 7) John E. Smoke; 8) Tornadoes; 9) Pittsburg To Lebanon; 10) The One I Love; 11) Hey; 12) Dum Dum; 13) No Rule; 14) U.S.S.A.; 15) Comb; 16) Graveyard; 17) Sweetloaf; 18) Backass; 19) Paranoid; 20) Fast; 21) I Saw An X-Ray Of A Girl Passing Gas; 22) Strawberry; 23) Jimi; 24) Lou Reed; 25) Kuntz; 26) 22 Going On 23; 27) Creep In The Cellar; 28) Suicide; 29) Some­thing.

Double Live? What is this — the Butthole Surfers tribute to the Golden Age of Progressive Rock? By all means, the length of this monster (130 minutes, give or take a few), which has since 1990 been available as a double live CD, not LP set, actually gives ELP and Yes with their triple albums a good run for their money. And in a better world, this record might be all the Butthole Surfers your record col­lection needs — a massive run through most of their highlights, a few of their lowlights, some on-the-spot stage craziness and stage sickness, and even an R.E.M. cover and a Grand Funk Railroad cover totally out of the blue (okay, so we already new Gibby was a Mark Farner «fan», but Gibby playing Michael Stipe is something else altogether). Unfortunately, the harsh reality is so harsh that I have a hard time not letting my tongue slip about how this album totally s... okay, we are not being objective here, so stop it, tongue.

Fact of the matter is, what they say is that Double Live was released primarily as an anti-boot­legging measure: since the Surfers weren't making a whole lot of cash from their studio albums (gee, I wonder why?), yet somehow the tapes of their crazyass live performances were in regular demand, they decided they would finally take advantage of that — by going all the way and re­leasing what really seems like their complete repertoire on this double CD monster. The only problem was, there was not a single tape in sight on which the Surfers would be professionally recorded: most of the tracks here are only very slightly above bootleg quality, and a few are quite solidly below bootleg quality. Not to mention that this is arguably the most awfully sequenced live record I've ever heard (granted, I'm not a big expert on underground live releases) — fade outs, fade ins, ugly sonic seams from track to track as if they were just cutting and splicing the tapes with glue and scissors. But the sequencing is really just a minor nuisance next to the con­sistently awful sound to which you are going to be subjected for over two hours.

Of course, seasoned fans of the lo-fi sonic crimes of the 1980's underground scene will not bother about such minor nuisances as the drums sounding like tin cans and the guitars sounding as if from under a thick slab of concrete — who knows, maybe some of them might actually feel that it adds to the experience, although I am not sure that Paul Leary himself, with his good ear for crazy guitar sounds, would agree. Too bad, because a track like ʽPsychedelic Jamʼ, which used to be a staple of the band's live show, features some awesome «guitar weaving» between Haynes and Leary, with the two occasionally flying off into space with more flash than the Grateful Dead and more fun than Cream, yet the recording does not properly capture the overtones to turn this into a truly blissful headphone experience.

Even worse, the mind-blowing sonic textures of the last two studio records, already seriously weakened due to the band's inability to reproduce them onstage (as far as I understand, they rely on backing tapes, particularly for all the distorted sound effects on the vocals), are further dama­ged by the sound quality, making this version of ʽJimiʼ nigh near unlistenable (in the bad sense of the word; not to mention that ʽLou Reedʼ, into which it promptly segues, seems to be a messy tribute to Metal Machine Music, nine minutes of dirty, crunchy, abrasive chaos that might have sounded cool back in 1975, or even way back in 1970 when the Stooges did it on ʽLA Bluesʼ, but hardly by the standards of 1989). ʽSweatloafʼ gains nothing by having its «regret» spoken bit replaced by a creative dirty rewriting of Morrison's soliloquy in ʽThe Endʼ, and loses almost everything by not even having the riff played distinctly, let alone everything else.

To cut a long story short — inevitably so, because I've only managed to sit through this once and have no wish to repeat the experience — if you want a shadow of some proper appreciation of the Surfers as a live band, please refer to Live PCPPEP, which was much shorter, much better recorded, gave a more distinct portrait of Gibby Haynes as frontman, and is available as a freebie with their first EP anyway. Double Live, on the other hand, has them dealing with the problem of reproducing all that crazyass studio experimentation on the stage, and bad sound quality does not alleviate that problem. As much as I like about half of these songs (and have little against most of the other half), the record gets a thumbs down — I am certainly not spending the next several years trying to get myself to like this attempt to convert carefully crafted studio surrealism into thin, muffled, wobbly psychedelic spontaneity.

Built To Spill: Untethered Moon

BUILT TO SPILL: UNTETHERED MOON (2015)

1) All Our Songs; 2) Living Zoo; 3) On The Way; 4) Some Other Song; 5) Never Be The Same; 6) C.R.E.B.; 7) Another Day; 8) Horizon To Cliff; 9) So; 10) When I'm Blind.

Six years is a long time for youngsters, but not so much for aging rockers — and anyway, the world's demand for new Built To Spill albums had been fairly low even when they were in their prime, so we can certainly excuse Doug Martsch for taking six years off to think whether he still has anything worth saying. We can also excuse him for «spilling» all of the band members and finally recording this new album with an entirely new team — because, let's face it, who but the most dedicated veterans even remember the names of the guys in the rhythm section? (Okay, I remember Scott Plouf, because «Plouf» is hilariously phonosymbolic).

Anyway, if you hoped that a six year break would transform Doug Martsch into some completely different musical entity — that he would take that time to learn to rap or to play in Miley Cyrus' backing band or, at least, to enroll in a Juilliard cello class — Untethered Moon will very quick­ly quash those hopes. The good news is that it is at least a major improvement on There Is No Enemy, with most of the songs showing an energy level that is quite close to You In Reverse, and a few of them even being memorable, or genuinely epic, or epic and memorable. Most im­portantly, Martsch is starting to remember how to combine intellectualism with ass-kicking, and even with hook-making every once in a while.

Take a song like ʽC.R.E.B.ʼ — whose title, I suppose, is short for ʽcAMP Response Element-Building Proteinʼ, and shows that Doug Martsch has a molecular biology textbook at his dis­posal and is not afraid to use it. The lyrics are about long term memory and our dependence on it, but there is a memorable (at least in the short term) riff attached to the song as well, and a strange one at that — a sort of reggae-jazz-pop mix, echoey and sharp, laying the foundation for a pretty hard-hitting track on the whole; and it's a good thing when you cannot bring yourself to decide what is more impressive — that the song is a massive ode to "your hippocampus" or that it fea­tures plenty of moody, captivating guitar tricks.

The fast tempos are also back, starting right off the bat with ʽAll Our Songsʼ, an explosive six-minute romp with Martsch not afraid to let his hair down and let loose with a generic, but trans­fixing rock'n'roll solo towards the end (a bit too short, unfortunately; however, the middle set of overdubs, where several guitars or guitar tones engage in a mutually offensive dia- or quadrilog, is equally impressive in its own way). Eventually, the record comes full circle when ʽWhen I'm Blindʼ brings the fast tempo back for the closing explosion — and this time, with a very lengthy and very drone-influenced lead guitar passage, almost as if in tribute to ʽSister Rayʼ, except this one is probably not all that improvised. But no matter, it's still one of the best series of passionate guitar trills I've heard in a long, long time.

Ultimately, the best thing about Untethered Moon is not the melodies and not the invitation to decode more of Doug Martsch's philosophical messages — it is the understanding that the man is back in his experimental mood, on the search for all sorts of new sounds that he can extract from the six-string. Or, rather, contextually bound sounds — there is a lot of that here, as, for instance, in the last two lines of ʽLiving Zooʼ, where he sings "cause we're lions in our cages / And tigers in tiny spaces" and the guitar gives out a ferociously distorted wah-wah growl right after the word "tigers" — notice that? It's hard not to notice. It's all about these minor touches of creativity these days, rather than grand breakthroughs — but God bless him for these, really.

Some of the songs are still fillerish, for sure, but even those that do not properly register can still be saved by one touch or other — ʽSoʼ, for instance, seems to be fairly uninspired, but the Neil Young-like hyper-distorted guitar tone makes it bone-crunching at top volume; and ʽOn The Wayʼ, a song about overpopulation as a reason for space colonization, has this odd music-hall mid-section, where Doug and his backup echoes chant "Maltesian riot, Maltesian riot" as if they were the Kinks in the middle of a devastating sociological discovery; it's a bit hilarious, but it redeems the tune which is rather lackluster otherwise.

So, overall, this should probably be considered an upward turn of the curve — again, with the usual disclaimer that «all Built To Spill albums sound the same» taken into account, but proving that it is too early to write Doug Martsch off as yet another spent/useless residue of the Nineties alt-rock era; at the very least, Untethered Moon is no less generally enjoyable than any «hot» new release by any aspiring young whippersnapper. Not that anybody should hold out much hope: based on the pattern established by Doug in the past 15 years, his next record should be about as exciting as contemporary Smashing Pumpkins. But that might take another decade or so to pro­duce, and in the meantime, here's a thumbs up for this particular presentation of one man's musi­cally enhanced views on the sorry state and uncertain perspectives of humanity.

Billy Bragg: Tooth & Nail

BILLY BRAGG: TOOTH & NAIL (2013)

1) January Song; 2) No One Knows Nothing Anymore; 3) Handyman Blues; 4) I Ain't Got No Home; 5) Swallow My Pride; 6) Do Unto Others; 7) Over You; 8) Goodbye, Goodbye; 9) There Will Be A Reckoning; 10) Chasing Rainbows; 11) Your Name On My Tongue; 12) Tomorrow's Going To Be A Better Day.

Billy's latest release so far has been, if possible, even more humble and low-key than Mr. Love & Justice. This time, he is largely acoustic, with a minimal backing band, and all the songs are shushy — quiet, reserved, introspective, even introvert. Yet it all sounds so completely natural that you almost begin to wonder if this is not the real Billy Bragg, and all these years of electrobusking and political activism were merely an attempt to cure himself of a natural shyness; and now it's all coming back to him.

Or maybe it is simply that Woody Guthrie experience — you begin as an idealistic activist, but eventually you just get tired, say «fuck it», and become a whisperer rather than a shouter. Not that Tooth & Nail is, by any means, a cynical or a mean record: Billy is still willing to spread the good vibe, not the bitter vibe, as the song titles clearly show (ʽDo Unto Othersʼ, ʽTomorrow's Going To Be A Better Dayʼ). It is just... quiet. No grand rallying statements, just good old timey music from the living room, where you use the medium for a quickie cheer-up. Or cheer-down, because the songs here aren't exactly «cheerful». But they're not all that sad, either.

It is all about the vibe, and the vibe is very cool. Billy's voice has finally matured to the point of providing us with a real personality — this homey, cozy Brit guy who's worried about all the problems in the world, yet is really just a quiet family man in the depths of his heart. A song like ʽHandyman Bluesʼ, where he admits that "the screwdriver business just gets me confused / It takes me half an hour to change a fuse / I'm not your handyman!", goes all the way straight to my own heart, and so do most of the others as well. The melodies are nothing to remember — your regular old folk and country chord changes, with simple, tasteful, unadorned acoustic guitars, pedal steel, and piano to carry them out — but when taken together with the personality, they become charming and endearing.

Sometimes he seems to be pushing it: ʽGoodbye, Goodbyeʼ could easily be taken for a song of resignation, of closing the door on his rowdy past — which is probably not quite what is meant, seeing as how Billy did not exactly become a recluse in 2013 or anything. On the other hand, ʽTomorrow's Going To Be A Better Dayʼ concludes the album with a generally optimistic state­ment, telling you not to "become demoralized by this chorus of complaint" — even if the song it­self is so quiet and shaky that it seems as if the man himself were having trouble believing in his own words. Oh well, I guess that if a musically generic, but atmospherically charismatic record presents itself as a bundle of contradictions, it's all for the better.

The album's «biggest» song is arguably ʽNo One Knows Anything Anymoreʼ, played out a bit louder than everything else (at least, the drums are loud enough) and laying out Billy's general perception of things: "No one knows anything anymore / Nobody really knows the score / Since nobody knows anything / Let's break it down and start again", he suggests to a leisurely tempo and lazy country-rock backing. If this is a denial of progress, you know, he just might have some­thing there — at least, this is consistent with the album's general message: stop the crazy rush, relax, take the time to take it slow and easy (and who knows, maybe you'll also kill a little less people that way). I'm all for progress, but I'm also partial to this vibe, and so, even if the songs here are musically generic, I'm giving the record a thumbs up for all it's worth.

Brian Eno: The Shutov Assembly

BRIAN ENO: THE SHUTOV ASSEMBLY (1992)

1) Triennale; 2) Alhondiga; 3) Markgraph; 4) Lanzarote; 5) Francisco; 6) Riverside; 7) Innocenti; 8) Stedelijk; 9) Ikebukuro; 10) Cavallino.

And now, back to magic ambient territory. This is actually a collection of various tracks, most of them recorded by Eno in the second half of the 1980s for assorted installations around the world (hence all the titles where you can distinguish Italian, German, Dutch, and Japanese words that relate to installation geography) — and then put together as a mix tape for the Russian artist Sergei Shutov. The latter, as it happens, contacted Eno saying that he loved to work to the sound of his records, but that he also had limited access to these records (I guess the contact either took place before 1991, or else Sergei was too poor at the time to buy imported CDs and too honest to stock up on bootlegs), so Eno took pity on the music-hungry artist and put together all these tracks as a present (I guess Sergei didn't mean to say that he was actually shaking his ass off to Here Come The Warm Jets while working — now that would have been one funny case of artistic miscommunication).

Eventually, Eno liked his own mix tape so much that he proclaimed there was a common theme to all these tracks (mere mortal men will not be able to see it, though, so it is a good test on whether you are predisposed to immortality), and put it out commercially. Normally, I tend to avoid commenting on his «installation albums», because there's so many of them and they are so interchangeable, but The Shutov Assembly does not formally count as one, and at the same time it does give you a very representative peek into Eno's music-as-painting approach. Unlike Thurs­day Afternoon, this one can be rather easily sat through: all the tracks but one are relatively short, there is some diversity involved, and the minimalism is rarely jarring, because, for the most part, this is not Eno trying to see how much he can squeeze out of one note — this is Eno producing soundscapes to match visual settings, and the degree of minimalism here most likely depends on the type of visual setting.

Nothing here counts as a breakthrough idea or anything like that, but it might be the best kind of «guess your environment!» game album by the man since Another Green World (stuff like Apollo was all just one environment, and the Music For Films series were quite scattered and sketchy). Here is a quick runthrough, made up on the spot.

ʽTriennaleʼ is clearly a quiet, beautiful, and slightly dangerous underwater environment, small currents and aquatic organisms gliding past you without paying much attention. ʽAlhondigaʼ is a cavernous setting, with various minerals glistening off the walls and cool, fidgety breezes running through the tunnels in the form of white-noise swooshes or violin-like tremolos. ʽMarkgraphʼ is a dusty old dungeon, inhabited by loyal spirits of the former occupants quietly hooting around. ʽLanzaroteʼ probably takes place on a moonless night somewhere in a large clearing, surrounded by deep forest on all sides — you're placed in the middle and you have to sniff out which side does the danger come from. (Hint: it never ever comes). ʽFranciscoʼ takes you to a cave once again, but this time it is a magical one, maybe Ali Baba's or something, with gold glistening all around that you find yourself afraid to touch.

ʽRiversideʼ, despite the title (which really just refers to Riverside Studios in London), could have fit in well on Apollo — it's full of little space bleeps that convey the serene beauty of nothing out there. ʽInnocentiʼ is actually similar in mood to ʽRiversideʼ, but has a larger amount of robotic electronic noises, so maybe it has you inside the spaceship rather than on the ʽRiversideʼ outside. ʽStedelijkʼ has lots of church organ-like tones, so you could try and imagine yourself inside some sort of futuristic temple where you float through the air when communicating with God, because gravity prevents you from successful communication. ʽIkebukuroʼ, the longest track on the album, is also the weirdest one — a 16-minute pattern of deep faraway chimes that echo off each other, overdubbed with what sounds like furiously, frantically, and pointlessly flapping wings... umm... Pegasus caught up in a musical spider web? Whatever. Finally, ʽCavallinoʼ is a quiet, but stately sunset that also takes place on a distant planet with its own Sun.

If there really is a «common theme» to it all, I have yet to find it, although one must not forget that the thin line between deep insight and ridiculous bullshit in modern art is dainty thin indeed. Regardless, this is a pretty nifty collection of atmospheres: I certainly wish he'd taken some un­ne­cessary fat off ʽIkebukuroʼ (sixteen minutes of wing-flap brings this way too close to Thurs­day Afternoon for comfort), and the degree of diversity isn't really so high as to make it his latter-day equivalent of Another Green World, but at least this is one fine gift for the likes of Shutov.

Bruce Springsteen: Magic

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN: MAGIC (2007)

1) Radio Nowhere; 2) You'll Be Coming Down; 3) Livin' In The Future; 4) Your Own Worst Enemy; 5) Gypsy Biker; 6) Girls In Their Summer Clothes; 7) I'll Work For Your Love; 8) Magic; 9) Last To Die; 10) Long Walk Home; 11) Devil's Arcade; 12) Terry's Song.

Please take a good, hard look at the grumpy old guy on the front sleeve and tell me if you notice any «magic» there. Come on now, I want you to admit, right here and now, that «magic» is the first word that springs to your mind when you look at that picture. No? Not really? Not even the slightest association? Now listen to the music on this album. More than likely, you will have to admit that the mood of music — autumnal, rough, gritty, grumpy, sulky, etc. — more or less suits the facial expression and even the tint of the front cover. So where's the magic?..

Really, even though after The Rising the Boss was untouchable from the critical angle, it is as if that record just sucked all the spirit of adventure out of the old guy. Magic is totally Springsteen by-numbers, as pattern-dominated and monotonous as The Rising was unpredictable and clearly inspired. All songs are brand new (no outtakes this time), and all songs feature the E Street Band, but essentially this is the E Street Band equivalent of Devils & Dust — the Boss is not really trying on this one. Of course, it gives the songs and the arrangements an air of spontaneity and looseness, and the songs do have their points and all; and yet, there is nothing new.

This isn't quite the equivalent of Human Touch or Lucky Town, though: in his respectable position of elder statesman, the Boss sees it as his duty now to write songs about big issues on a much-more-than-personal level, and there is plenty of comment here on the current state of things in America and the world at large, mostly concentrating, of course, on wartime issues (but some­times also on ʽGirls In Their Summer Clothesʼ, because, well, war is over there and girls in sum­mer clothes are over here, after all). In this way, Magic does look like a sequel to The Rising, and is perhaps best appreciated from this angle — only where The Rising was a strong electric jolt to put the nation back on its feet, Magic is the sound of asthenia setting in, a depiction of the directionless meandering of the nation, unable to find new cures for old problems.

"This is Radio Nowhere / Is there anybody alive out there?" is sort of the leitmotif of the entire album. It's a decent song, for which Bruce has adopted a crunchy, but muted and gray alt-rock guitar tone, and that tone is a frequent guest here, suggesting the usual power and energy of the E Street Band, but with something gone rotten in the process. From there on, it is the usual 4/4 snare beat and the well-worn mid-tempo without end, grooves that have been recycled for the dozenth time and only occasionally salvaged by fresh vocal hooks — faithfully holding up that grim, thoroughly non-magical mood, as if the man were all set on telling us: "Just get out of here, I'm depressed like hell and you want me to wreck my brain trying to come up with inventive song­writing? Why don't you do something inventive for a change — like go out there and vote the Republicans out of office, for instance?"

Which, you know, is a fine enough imaginative stance that I can buy, but uninventive songwriting leads to uninventive reviewing, and therefore I will just say that there are three more songs that stand out in various ways. ʽGirls In Their Summer Clothesʼ is a Springsteen-ized power pop song, with echoes of Phil Spector and Motown, where he actually tries to sing instead of grumble (to the same mid-tempo beats, though). ʽLong Walk Homeʼ has the album's catchiest chorus and may have been seriously influenced by the Seeger sessions with that folksy refrain ("hey pretty darling, don't wait up for me, gonna be a long walk home" sure sounds like it belongs in an Irish barroom song). And ʽDevil's Arcadeʼ is the only tune here that seems like a Rising outtake — with its ominously bombastic guitar, keyboard, and string overlays, it almost matches the epic peaks of that record, though even in this song all that desperation, poured into melancholic melodicity, feels somewhat stiff, numb and frozen. But maybe it's just because the man's voice got lower, and all the instruments have to accommodate.

Anyway, it is possible to look at Magic both ways — as simply another by-the-book uninspired batch of same-sounding, deeply derivative Bruce songs, or as an anti-climactic companion to The Rising, reflecting how the shock, grief, and decisive «start it all over again» attitude got bogged down in stupidity, backwardness, and disillusionment, with the music following suit. In both cases, though, this is an album conceived, arranged, and performed without too much energy or inspiration — either intentionally or unintentionally, I don't really care. It's not bad, but I could definitely stand a bit more diversity in melodies and arrangements. Heck, I could even use ano­ther rewrite of a ʽCadillac Ranchʼ or a ʽRamrodʼ for a change — this monotonousness could be justified if the sonic atmosphere or the melodies were outstanding, but as it is, fourty seven minu­tes of Springsteen being depressed over the Iraq war and God knows what else is real hard to take. I wish I could say "Oh well, at least this ain't another stab at Nebraska", but fact is, not even the E Street Band can help out here. Even The Big Man is playing his sax solos in a completely per­functory manner — like, "oh yeah, here we play like we did in ʽJunglelandʼ". Not good. 

Brinsley Schwarz: Hen's Teeth

BRINSLEY SCHWARZ: HEN'S TEETH (1967-1975; 1998)

1) Shy Boy; 2) Lady On A Bicycle; 3) Rumours; 4) And She Cried; 5) Tell Me A Story; 6) Understand A Woman; 7) Tomorrow, Today; 8) Turn Out The Light; 9) In My Life; 10) I Can See Her Face; 11) Hypocrite; 12) The Version; 13) I've Cried My Last Tear; 14) (It's Gonna Be A) Bring Down; 15) Everybody; 16) I Like You, I Don't Love You; 17) Day Tripper; 18) Slow Down; 19) I Should Have Known Better; 20) Tell Me Why; 21) There's A Cloud In My Heart; 22) I Got The Real Thing.

Somebody's love for Brinsley Schwarz must have been bubbling indeed, if it prompted its victim to assemble such a painstakingly meticulous compilation of just about every studio-based rarity that the band put out during its lifetime and much, much beyond that. Because formally, only a few of these tracks are credited to «Brinsley Schwarz». The first ten tracks represent the small legacy of Kippington Lodge, with Nick Lowe joining in only about midway through and only having enough time to contribute one single song. Tracks 17-20 are Beatles covers that were re­corded by the Brinsleys all right, some time in late 1974, but were anonymously credited to «The Knees» and «Limelight», two different bands with two different styles (!). Tracks 11-12 are yet another stab at anonymity as «The Hitters», from 1973.

Finally, the last two tracks have them as simply «The Brinsleys» — an odd attempt at name shortening right before the break-up: did they think it was the name Schwarz that prevented them from fame and fortune? (Come to think of it, does anybody know of any famous and fortunate Schwarzes from the UK? Maybe there was something to the idea). And thus, only tracks 13-16 are properly billed to «Brinsley Schwarz», with two singles from 1974-75, neither of which is credited to Lowe or Gomm, either (the B-sides are, but one of the B-sides, ʽI Like You I Don't Love Youʼ, was already available on New Favourites anyway).

It isn't much of a pain to sort through this mess, given that all the information is laid out in the track listings and liner notes. It isn't that much of a great pleasure, though, to sit through the music, either: only by some anomalous miracle could an album of Brinsley Schwarz and «para-Brinsley Schwarz» rarities turn out to be as good as, let alone better than their regular output. It ain't much worse, either, but I doubt that, apart from a tiny handful of these tracks, anything here could truly satisfy even the most forgiving fan of the band — heck, even the liner notes, written in an age when raving and ranting liner notes are written about anything, admit that, well, you know, it ain't no great shakes, but, you know, historical importance, charming period pieces, the regular drill. And yeah, they're kinda right about it.

The Kippington Lodge stuff shows what we'd probably expect to see — yet another bunch of nice, clean, well-meaning kids striving to be the Beatles, but falling somewhere in between the Hollies and just about every other band you heard on Nuggets II. Most of the songs are from outside songwriters: for instance, the first song, ʽShy Boyʼ, was donated to them by Tomorrow (the Steve Howe-nurturing band of ʽMy White Bicycleʼ fame), although this excited the band so much that they tried to write the B-side themselves — and, of course, it was named ʽLady On A Bicycleʼ, because, you know, bicycles are so British and so psychedelic ever since Albert Hofmann rode one. To be fair, neither of them sounds like the Beatles: ʽShy Boyʼ is a music hall number much closer to the Kinks, and ʽLadyʼ is more of a swingin' jazz-pop ditty with a sappy chorus that's more Mamas & Papas than Lennon/McCartney.

In fact, when they do tackle Lennon/McCartney directly, it sounds awful: ʽIn My Lifeʼ, released in May 1969, coincided with the era of "let us reimagine early Beatles songs as grandiose art-pop epics!" (remember ʽEvery Little Thingʼ by Yes?) and has wailing distorted guitars, organs, ins­trumental breaks and vocals overdriven into frenzy mode by the end. The B-side to that single was Lowe's first solo original: ʽI Can See Her Faceʼ, a mournful guitar-organ slab of soul-pop that will bring to mind early Deep Purple, but with every aspect of early Deep Purple brought down to amateur level. Endearing, perhaps, but as forgettable as every other song by this early incarnation of the band — real gallant name, though, that Kippington Lodge.

Of the other stuff, «anonymous» or no, only two tracks caught my attention: ʽEverybodyʼ was curious because it probably has the heaviest sound the band was ever allowed in the studio, with such a gruff riff that, for a brief second, it opens them a little bit of that door into the Sweet / T. Rex league (not that this is necessarily a plus — just noting that they so very rarely sounded «glam», every such attempt jumps to attention). And of those Beatles covers from 1974-75, al­though ʽDay Tripperʼ and ʽSlow Downʼ, which «The Knees» play in rock mode, are pitiful, the other two tracks, which «Limelight» play in «artsy» mode, are much less so — especially ʽI Should Have Known Betterʼ, where I really appreciate how they take the song into another di­mension by replacing the harmonica with the organ and the guitar solo with strings,  so it's a «Hard Day's Night meets Procol Harum and The Moody Blues» kind of event that deserves to be heard, maybe even in a higher status than just «historical curio».

Another historical curio is that the Leroy Sibbles ska song, ʽHypocriteʼ, turns out to have been first recorded as a vocal version — with very pretty vocal harmonies at that — and ʽThe Versionʼ was its instrumental track, for some reason released as the B-side; and then, for an even stranger reason, it was the instrumental rather than the vocal version to make it as the coda for Please Don't Ever Change. Accident? Humility? Copyright issues? Anyway, just another example in a series of tiny odd blunders that probably contributed to their career never taking off.

Anyway, it all sounds okay, and in each such retrospective there is at least an instructive value — with the Kippington Lodge tracks, for instance, you can quickly and succinctly track down much of the general evolution of the UK musical scene from 1967 to 1969, starting out as wispy, sensi­tive, music-hall influenced psycho-pop and then gradually getting bleak, thick, and heavy, with layers of vanilla fudge strewn over grand funk railroads — that is, before the roots-rock craze sets in and we become all downhome and earthy and stuff. Not that the Brinsleys always followed this simplistic model, but ultimately, this was a band that could not overcome somebody else's limi­tations and fully come into its own — in the logical end, this is why Hen's Teeth is indeed an appropriate title for this collection.

Bark Psychosis: Independency

BARK PSYCHOSIS: INDEPENDENCY (1989-1992; 1994)

1) I Know; 2) Nothing Feels; 3) All Different Things; 4) By Blow; 5) Manman; 6) Blood Rush; 7) Tooled Up; 8) Scum.

For the serious patient of Bark Psychosis, this is an indispensable addition to the two full LPs. In­dependency is a compilation, released in 1994 (the same year as Hex) and collecting, in roughly chronological order, most of the stuff from their several singles and EPs from 1989 to 1992, altogether more than an hour of post-rock bliss in a state of growth — starting off with the early «naïve» singles (that's what Sutton called them himself) and culminating in the 21-minute ʽScumʼ, the track that literally put Bark Psychosis on the map and paved the ground for the less monu­mental, but even more elaborate compositions of Hex.

Indeed, the band's first single often feels as if they were just so excited with the possibility to lay down some trippy sounds in a professional studio — ʽAll Different Thingsʼ is really all about the miracle of phased guitar effects, looped and echoed off each other during the fussy free-form coda, and ʽBy Blowʼ, true to its name, explores the idea of how cool it can be when a soft, smooth, lulling New Age soundscape is gradually transformed into a messy nightmare "by blow" of the reverberating power chord, gradually gaining in intensity and frequency, until the Talk Talk-ish air is ripped apart by almost John Zorn-ian sound bombers. But it doesn't sound parti­cularly professional or grappling — in fact, Sutton later admitted that they distorted the tapes in the process and didn't even notice it until it was too late. (Not that you'd ever guess that the wobbly sound of the track came by accident, rather than artistic decision).

Pending their second single (ʽNothing Feelsʼ / ʽI Knowʼ, for some reason placed here before the first one), the really interesting stuff starts with the Manman EP — the heavily rhythmic title track shows a clear techno influence, but is still imbued with Sutton's usual melancholy and some astral psychedelics: the guitar-dominated parts are similar to The Cure, but then they get swapped for keyboards, and it sounds like somebody wanted to record a completely digital track, but ended up recording the synthesizer parts manually — in other words, an oddly «homebrewn» version of whatever the real pros in the techno genre were doing, but also somewhat endearing because of that factor. The most curious track of the three, though, is ʽTooled Upʼ — also rhythmic, funky, and it seems as if they sampled the bassline from Talking Heads' ʽCrosseyed And Painlessʼ for this! Hardly a coincidence, even if there is hardly anything else in common between Bark Psy­chosis and Talking Heads.

As for ʽScumʼ, this is indeed like a 20-minute preview of whatever Hex would soon be, and as such, somewhat superfluous — there is no serious reason for it to go over 20 minutes. In fact, there would be no serious reason for any Bark Psychosis track to go over 20 minutes, unless you accept that the nature of their music is totally static (which is not true) and you just have to treat it as background musical incense. But historically, one can easily see how this was a sort of mile­stone for «post-rock»: the freedom of a psychedelic jam combined with the vague influence of the classical symphonic form and, in the case of Sutton, also with a strong jazz vibe. There's a little bit of everything in this track, and they make an adorable job of reducing it all to Nothing (with a capital N, which means respect, if not adulation).

Altogether, this is not a particularly tremendous line of evolution — one would hope for one of those early Napalm Death covers, but no dice! — but it does reveal several somewhat different incarnations of the band before they settle into their classic image, and, most importantly, there is absolutely no telling whether any of these tracks might strike a hidden chord in you: I'd say there's a big chance of a random music lover connecting with at least one, which sort of justifies paying one buck for this compilation if you happen to find it for such a price. But if you're one of those rare Suttonites who think that Bark Psychosis combined breathtaking beauty and deep intel­lectualism like no other Nineties' band, Independency is the required third shard to complete the Holy Grail of Proto-Post-Rock.

PS. And yes, that's not a bootleg cover - apparently, the band's name was in Cyrillic letters on the cover of the original compilation. It does look suspiciously like a Russian bootleg: I wonder if the band members had access to any of those, or were they simply influenced so much by Paul McCartney's so-called Choba B CCCP?