Arthur Brown: Galactic Zoo Dossier

ARTHUR BROWN: GALACTIC ZOO DOSSIER (1971)

1) Internal Messenger; 2) Space Plucks; 3) Galactic Zoo; 4) Metal Monster; 5) Simple Man; 6) Night Of The Pigs; 7) Sunrise; 8) Trouble; 9) Brains; 10) Medley: Galactic Zoo / Space Plucks / Galactic Zoo; 11) Creep; 12) Creation; 13) Gypsy Escape; 14) No Time.

As Vincent Crane broke up with Brown to pursue his own preferred trail of madness that would lead him to Atomic Rooster, a variety of mental institutions and, finally, an overdose of pain­killers, Arthur was left without an anchor, and, for a while, floated here and there without much success or purpose. The next anchor ultimately arrived in the guise of one Andy Dalby, a wander­ing guitarist with impressive chops and (presumably) some songwriting abilities. In between the two, Brown and Dalby formed Kingdom Come, later to be known as «Arthur Brown's Kingdom Come», to distinguish it from still another Kingdom Come — which is why their records will be covered here in the Arthur Brown section and not under K. In any case, Kingdom Come was even more of a Brown-controlled vision than Crazy World, where artistic duties were distributed more or less equally between Brown and Crane.

By the time the band, consisting of Brown, Dalby, and a «revolving door»-type variety of rhythm sections, keyboardists, and what-not, had taken its first shape, prog and glam were the hottest new thangs around, and Brown was perfectly willing to cash in on the fad, not the least because, after all, he was the godfather of both, to some extent. But where some people went for «prog», con­centrating on the complexity of the music and somewhat downplaying the stage image, and others went for «glam», dazzling audiences with super-eccentric rock theater tricks, Brown decided to go for both at the same time. His would be a «rock theater extraordinaire for the advanced music lover» — something that is already reflected a bit in the first album title of Kingdom Come: Galactic Zoo Dossier is a title way too posh even for Yes or Genesis, and way too tongue-twis­ted even for David Bowie.

Conceptually, there is one big problem with Kingdom Come: for this project, Brown attempted to take himself and his fantasies more seriously than he used to in 1968, when he was just a delici­ous madman in a burning helmet, using fire as a simple allegory for you-know-what. The three albums of Kingdom Come, on the other hand, have been said to constitute a conceptual triptich of sorts, where Brown is supposed to deal with Humanity, Mortality, Animality, Spirituality, Mora­li­ty, and Paranormality. Problem is — when you have a guy who, just three years ago, declared himself to be the god of hellfire, it is highly unlikely that people will want to take any of his sub­sequent messages with the same degree of seriousness as he might claim to have invested in them. Certainly not if he continues to deliver them in the same overwrought, over-the-top, bombastic manner with schizophrenic overtones. In short, there is a good reason why people chose to have Roger Waters and David Gilmour as their mentors, and mostly ignore Arthur Brown.

Galactic Zoo Dossier, therefore, was doomed from the start — «serious» music listeners passed it by due to too much eccentricity and whimsy, while the less patient listeners, naturally, found nothing that could qualify as an instantaneously memorable hit. The one track here that comes pretty close to the demands of 1970's rock radio is ʽSunriseʼ — a slow, stately, epic that democra­tically alternates between Brown's prophetic hair-in-the-wind wailings and a series of melodic guitar solos that eventually shoot up to glam-rock heaven. But even ʽSunriseʼ has little to remem­ber it by other than Brown's singing (which everyone is already familiar with) and Dalby's solo­ing (which is climactic / cathartic / etc., but in a rather textbook-ish blues-rock manner).

Everything else is just weird, sometimes for the sake of weirdness, sometimes for the more noble sake of breaking boundaries, but rarely staying in place long enough to «rock» the senses or «pu­rify» the soul. Riffs, jams, solos are constantly interrupted by insane (or inane) dialogs, screaming, electronic effects, phasing, speeding up, moving from channel to channel, disappearing in one place and reappearing in another — like on a particularly crazy Mothers of Invention record, but with less inherent humor, more forced psychedelia.

Your overall reaction to the album will probably coincide with the reaction to the first track, which encompasses everything about it — good and bad. Starting off with a minute of stoned dialogs about the Lord and immortality, ʽInternal Messengerʼ sets up what looks like a terrific groove — a big lumbering riffwave crashing on a bedrock of tortured, choking organ chords — only to go on and waste it on one of Brown's pompous «sermons», after which the song turns into a relatively wimpy blues-rock jam, heavy on guitars and organ, but never advancing beyond what many, many other people were capable at the time (remember Steamhammer? well, even if you don't, the second half of this song here still sounds like them).

And this problem keeps recurring. Instead of going truly symphonic, like Yes, or radically avant­garde, like King Crimson, these guys play a sort of «ambitiously mad R'n'B» where the themes aren't fleshed out well enough to be emotional stunners and the solos / jams aren't kick-ass or «kick-soul» enough to place the band on the level with first-rate competitors. Case in point: the final «sprawler», ʽGypsy Escapeʼ, a seven-minute musical journey through dirty organ pumping, angry blues-rock licks, signature changes, and mood variation... and what? Nothing. There was no anchor, and the gypsy escapes faster than it takes me to remember him (her?).

The album does leave a bizarre aftertaste. Brown's presence, no matter how obnoxious the man can be at times; the desire to try out almost anything that they can lay their hand on in the studio, nostalgically reminiscent of the atmosphere of the early days of the Jimi Hendrix Experience; and the boundless ambition oozing out of every hole — these things command respect. But when it comes to the «meat» department, it turns out that looney madman Vince Crane was a real «meat­man», whereas seemingly sane guitarist Andy Dalby is, on the contrary, just a butcher. As Brown admits himself, "I've had a little intellectual placement in a very near corner of my mind" (ʽSim­ple Manʼ) — well, Galactic Zoo Dossier is right in the middle of that intellectual placement, but transplanting it into intellectual placements for other people turned out to be downright impos­sible, and I think I know why.

On the other hand, if you don't think too much about it, but try and let yourself get carried away by the moment — who knows, there might be a nice, thick apocalyptic aura just waiting out there to engulf you. Few people made mad progressive albums in the early 1970s. Bizarre, twisted, yes; idealistic, ambitious, yes; mathematically calculated to reflect Apollonian beauty, for sure. Ga­lac­tic Zoo Dossier, on the other hand, could have been made by Syd Barrett, had he not been consumed by substances so soon, and gone on to develop and improve as a musical artist, instead of just retreating into the dementia. So, all things considered, this is still a unique experience in its own way, and I grudgingly advance it a thumbs up while waiting for the exploding helmet to ar­rive in the mail.

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The Beatles: Anthology 2

THE BEATLES: ANTHOLOGY 2 (1965-1967; 1995)

CD I: 1) 1) Real Love; 2) Yes It Is; 3) I'm Down; 4) You've Got To Hide Your Love Away; 5) If You've Got Trouble; 6) That Means A Lot; 7) Yesterday; 8) It's Only Love; 9) I Feel Fine; 10) Ticket To Ride; 11) Yesterday; 12) Help!; 13) Everybody's Trying To Be My Baby; 14) Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown); 15) I'm Looking Through You; 16) 12-Bar Original; 17) Tomorrow Never Knows; 18) Got To Get You Into My Life; 19) And Your Bird Can Sing; 20) Taxman; 21) Eleanor Rigby (strings only); 22) I'm Only Sleeping (Rehearsal); 23) I'm Only Sleeping (Take 1); 24) Rock And Roll Music; 25) She's A Woman.

CD II: 1) Strawberry Fields Forever (demo); 2) Strawberry Fields Forever (take 1); 3) Strawberry Fields Forever (take 7 and edit piece); 4) Penny Lane; 5) A Day In The Life; 6) Good Morning Good Morning; 7) Only A Northern Song; 8) Being For The Benefit Of Mr Kite-1; 9) Being For The Benefit Of Mr Kite-2; 10) Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds; 11) Within You Without You (instrumental); 12) Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (reprise); 13) You Know My Name (Look Up The Number); 14) I Am The Walrus; 15) The Fool On The Hill (demo); 16) Your Mother Should Know; 17) The Fool On The Hill (take 4); 18) Hello Goodbye; 19) Lady Madonna; 20) Across The Universe.

I am not much of a bootleg guy, but it did so happen, accidentally, that I heard John's early demo for ʽReal Loveʼ (not for ʽFree As A Birdʼ, though) way before the remaining Beatles started wor­king on it, and I distinctly remember thinking — «that melody is quite gorgeous, really, I wonder how it would sound on a Beatles record». Well, as it turns out, it does not sound way better than the barebones original on a Beatles record — mainly because the Beatles record is really a Jeff Lynne / John Lennon record with accidental Beatles participation (George throws in one of his tasty slide solos).

But because there is no McCartney bridge; because John's vocals and, most im­portantly, John's words come through more clearly than on ʽFree As A Birdʼ; finally, because the song was not quite as heavily advertised as «New Beatles material in twenty-five years!» — be­cause of all these things, ʽReal Loveʼ comes through as just a caring tribute to John's memory, and, unlike ʽFree As A Birdʼ, it never fails to bring a sentimental tear to my eye while playing. And, in fact, as a final post-scriptum to the Beatles' legacy, it works better than ʽFree As A Birdʼ — where they turned ʽFree As A Birdʼ into a sort of metaphorical meditation on the band's fate and legacy itself, ʽReal Loveʼ, on the contrary, is not self-centered, but is instead a message to the world, the simple, but effective kind, the Beatles kind — "no need to be afraid, it's just real love" hits with the same intonations as "don't carry the world upon your shoulders", despite coming from John rather than Paul. Well, after all, the love for Love was one thing that united both.

It's all too bad that ʽReal Loveʼ has to introduce what I still view as the weakest, «sagging-est» of the three Anthology packages. Spanning the «magical metamorphosis» years of 1965-67, these 2 CDs neither give the listener an impressive number of previously unheard titles (no matter whe­ther good or bad), nor reward him with enough fleshed-out alternate takes to start thinking about «an alternate White Album» or something. Instead, in order to fill out space, we have to sit thro­ugh some really superfluous tracks, such as the Stack-o-Tracks-influenced strings-only arran­gement of ʽEleanor Rigbyʼ or, even worse, the voiceless arrangement of ʽWithin You Without Youʼ (why? why? all of these sitars and sarods were quite perfectly audible with George's voice, thank you very much).

These are just the extremes; more often are the situations where you just end up with «non-final mixes», genuinely painful to listen to «for pleasure». It gets particularly unbearable on Disc 2, where, for instance, we are offered to sit through an ʽI Am The Walrusʼ without the strings and the noise overdubs — had Roy Wood and Jeff Lynne heard that mix, there would have been no Electric Light Orchestra for sure. Or a ʽLucy In The Sky With Diamondsʼ without the keyboards. Or an ʽA Day In The Lifeʼ without the orchestral crescendos. Uh... yeah, there was a time — a short time — when these songs really were that naked. Are we supposed to understand that the general public should think of these early takes and demos as «alternate approaches»? They just sound like naked demos, nothing more. They're still great, but who would be interested in tasting a chocolate cake without the chocolate? Only the baker, perhaps.

Altogether, we get three songs that we never knew before from the Beatles (not counting ʽReal Loveʼ), and one of them isn't even a song: "12-Bar Original", recorded in late 1965, is the Beatles trying to be Booker T & The MGs for a few minutes (the unedited take on bootleg records actual­ly goes over six of them) — long enough for us to understand why the Beatles so quickly decided to leave the 12-bar blues business to the Rolling Stones. (Not that there weren't a lot of 12-bar blues bands back then who were quite happy with this kind of technical and imaginative levels, but that's why the Beatles are number one and most of those bands are forgotten). ʽIf You've Got Troubleʼ is a Lennon/McCartney composition that they gave to Ringo, but were so horrified with the results that they quickly retired the silly number and replaced it with ʽAct Naturallyʼ. Only ʽThat Means A Lotʼ, later donated to P. J. Proby, has a fine, Beatles-worthy middle eight, but otherwise, as Ian McDonald rightly pointed out, is (possibly a subconscious) melodic re-write of ʽTicket To Rideʼ — and whoever heard of the Beatles humiliating themselves with remaking ear­lier material?

The live performances on the first disc continue Anthology 1's trend of convincing the listener that the Beatles were, in fact, a very good live band when they could hear themselves — tracks 9-12, recorded at the relatively small ABC Theatre in Blackpool, are excellent, including a histori­cal moment: the introduction of ʽYesterdayʼ to the general public. (In the movie, the look upon Paul's face as John presents him with a large bouquet of flowers during the applause is absolutely priceless, as is George's sneery introductory remark of "...and so, for Paul McCartney of Liver­pool, opportunity knocks!"). But, of course, the perfunctory performances of ʽRock And Roll Musicʼ and ʽShe's A Womanʼ from the June 30, 1966 Tokyo concert, coming straight off the Revolver sessions, clearly show how far ahead the band was in its studio flight — and why they decided to cancel further live appearances.

But ahead or not, Anthology 2 does a good job of showing just how many bad ideas the Beatles could go through before settling on the good ones. Notice how awful the sitar sounds during the bridge sections of ʽNorwegian Woodʼ? Good lads, they took it out. Doesn't the sharp «rocking» guitar sound out of place in the chorus of the otherwise mild-folksy ʽI'm Looking Through Youʼ? You'll find it gone for good in the final version. Doesn't this take on ʽTomorrow Never Knowsʼ, with its straightforward, de-funkified drumming, seem like lazy stoner rock? By the time of the final takes and overdubs, it would turn into a psychedelic ocean. Don't the woodwind / brass solos on ʽPenny Laneʼ sound chaotic and extraneous compared to the rest of the piece? How marvelous it was for them to finally settle on that little sad/triumphant note mix of the piccolo trumpet. Isn't that acoustic guitar rhythm on take 4 of ʽFool On The Hillʼ unable to convey the required atmos­phere of sadness that Paul's original piano melody provides so well? And so on, and on, and on...

One might get a kick, perhaps, from the full (extended) version of ʽYou Know My Nameʼ (I am not sure; six minutes of silliness seem a bit too long), but everything else on the second disc only has this «positive through negative» effect — I definitely urge every aspiring songwriter to study the evolution of these songs, because, really, there is nothing wrong with perfectionism, no mat­ter how much the simplistic perception of «indie culture» tries to convince the aspiring songwriter otherwise. As a historical piece, Anthology 2 is priceless (except that it will only whet any cre­dible historian's appetite for more), but do not make the mistake of trying to «enjoy» it. If the Beatles never released their original songs this way, they obviously never wanted you to «enjoy» them this way. Well, at least, not until three of them got old, mellow, and generously forgiving of their own mistakes and blueprints.

PS. One track I do like a lot is the «Giggle Version» of ʽAnd Your Bird Can Singʼ, if only be­cause it is a mean mean feat to see the band able to carry the tune so well when they are literally falling over their feet with laughter from the very beginning. Be careful, it's infectious.

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Blind Willie McTell: The Complete Library Of Congress Records

THE COMPLETE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS RECORDS (1940)

1) Just As Well Get Ready; 2) Monologue On Accidents; 3) Boll Weevil; 4) Delia; 5) Dying Crapshooters Blues; 6) Will Fox; 7) I Got To Cross The River Jordan; 8) Monologue On Old Songs; 9) Amazing Grace; 10) Monologue On The History Of The Blues; 11) King Edward Blues; 12) Murderer's Home Blues; 13) Kill-It-Kid Rag; 14) I Got To Cross De River O' Jordan.

There is an extremely interesting moment here, at the very beginning of the record, when John Lo­max, armed with vintage recording equipment, is trying to press Blind Willie into remember­ing «complaining songs», specifically, complaining about «colored people mistreated by whites». Then it sort of turns out that Blind Willie doesn’t know any. Lomax, audibly stupefied, keeps on pushing — “you don’t know any complaining songs? Something like ʽAin’t It Hard To Be A Nig­gerʼ?” Nope. The only «complaining» songs, says Willie, “have them all together, they have references to everybody”.

Which is totally true, actually, not just in Willie’s case, but almost everybody’s ­— the racial is­sue on these pre-war records is practically non-existent, and 99% of the “complaining songs” mostly complain about being down on one’s luck — women problems, job problems, sometimes even political problems, but never skin color problems; and this allows people like Blind Willie McTell and, say, Jimmie Rodgers easily develop a certain spiritual unity, the white man’s prob­lems being essentially the same as the black man’s. And it’s not even a question of tabooing the issue for fear of retribution — it’s simply a fact of accepting segregation as an unshakable norm, something that is now hard to imagine even in those «wild» places where Blind Willie spent his childhood, but was fairly common in 1940.

What was still not all that common in 1940 were travelling ethnographers and musicologists, seeking out «local talent» to help them preserve musical folklore; Lomax had already made his own reputation at the time, but few people followed in his footsteps, since few people were aware that, already back then, «folk wisdom» was on its way out — in a matter of two more decades, it would complete its migration from cotton fields and steel mills to college campuses and Village coffeehouses. It does seem like Blind Willie, who hadn’t been able to get a new record deal for five years already, was aware, and eagerly took the chance. On this relatively short collection he winds his way through a rather diverse selection (none of these songs show up on his official re­cords from 1927 to 1935), occasionally going off into monologues or brief interviews on the history of the blues movement in general and his own role in it in particular.

Nothing on here is essential, but the whole thing could have been much worse. Lomax doesn’t get into Willie’s way all that much, especially after the «complaining songs» fiasco; the mo­nologues are not particularly informative, certainly not for the modern Wikipedianist, but are fortunately short and few (besides, McTell's vision and arrangement of the chronology of the blues is an in­teres­ting bit to listen to); and the songs, as I already said, are fairly diverse — ʽDying Crapshoo­ters Bluesʼ is a Jimmie Rodgers «jailhouse-blues» type number, ʽWill Foxʼ is old Appalachean folk dance style or something, ʽKill-It-Kidʼ is Willie's trademark reggae style, ʽI Got To Cross The River Jordanʼ is, understandably, in the gospel vein, and there is even a little original number that Willie dedicated to the honorable King Edward after the abdication crisis of 1936 (nice of Lomax to come along just in time to record it). The man even plays a brief slide guitar version of ʽAmazing Graceʼ, sounding not unlike Blind Willie Johnson (just add some deep moaning and it will be almost like ʽDark Was The Nightʼ).

In the end, it might not be quite a «genuine Blind Willie McTell album» — rather, it's McTell giving his own account on the music he grew up with, kinda like Paul McCartney playing Buddy Holly songs on an acoustic guitar before the camera: useful for kids who ain't never heard of Bud­dy Holly, but not all that worthy on its own. But, of course, McTell has the clear advantage, since many of these numbers simply weren't recorded in his childhood — and he works all these styles with soul, competence, and humor. Thumbs up.

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Bright Eyes: Fevers And Mirrors

BRIGHT EYES: FEVERS AND MIRRORS (2000)

1) A Spindle, A Darkness, A Fever And A Necklace; 2) A Scale, A Mirror And Those Indifferent Clocks; 3) The Calendar Hung Itself; 4) Something Vague; 5) The Movement Of A Hand; 6) Arienette; 7) When The Curious Girl Realizes She Is Under Glass; 8) Haligh, Haligh, A Lie, Haligh; 9) The Center Of The World; 10) Sunrise, Sunset; 11) An Attempt To Tip The Scales; 12) A Song To Pass The Time.

Critic alert! For the first time in Bright Eyes history, Conor Oberst is trying to apply his (lack of) musical talent to the craft of writing and recording actual music. What used to be, only recently, just rudimentary acoustic guitar patterns, is getting seriously expanded: no less than ten different musicians are involved in the project now, and the mysterious «Omaha sound» is gradually be­coming decloaked. Now it basically means: «play the same simple shit, but dress it up in as many musical layers as possible to make up for the lack of interesting chord progressions».

For instance, already on the second track we have this little chamber piece where Conor is play­ing an organ, perennial partner Mike Mogis is bowing a pedal steel, Jiha Lee is fiddling with the flute, and A. J. Mogis is punching the piano — all at the same time, imagine that! Almost enough to make you forget that the music is just a simple country waltz, and that all of the parts supplied by the extra musicians are rather predictable flourishes that bake up the mood in strict accordance with traditional old recipés. One impressive musical hook, just one, could have saved the situati­on, but we are not going to get so lucky.

The good news is that, although Oberst still has a long way to go towards mastering the art of songwriting, Fevers And Mirrors is nowhere near as irritating in its misery as Oberst’s early es­capades, mainly because he is trying to find a more accessible voice for himself, without losing the individuality. Now most of the wailings are produced with a «bleating» tone — more quiet, more frail, less intrusive. If there is an infectious patient running around town and scattering his bacteria in everybody’s direction, after all, everybody’s only immediate concern will be to get the sick guy back into bed. On Fevers And Mirrors, the sick guy grudgingly does return to bed, and stays there most of the time, blearily contemplating his fevers in his mirrors.

He does still attempt to make a few escapades — like on ʽThe Calendar Hung Itselfʼ, whose prime point of attraction is a little foam-at-the-mouth hysteria staged around a «mad» chanting of ʽYou Are My Sunshineʼ that is supposed to reflect the protagonist’s suicidal desperation (she’s gone, you know, and this is sufficient ground for behaving like an ugly spoiled teenager, unfor­tunately suffering from a little bit of poetic gift, etc. etc.). As unbearably pretentious as that mo­ment is, it is at least a moment that kind of stays with you, so there must have been something to the idea, if only it were realized better.

Everything that comes afterwards mostly follows the same formula. Slow, steady, rhythmic backgrounds with a rootsy backbone, «graced» by various instrumentation that is not usually as­so­ciated with «rootsy» — vibraphones, Mellotrons, flutes, various «treated» guitars and key­boards, etc. — in addition to the predictable stuff like pedal steel and accordeons. No matter how intricate the arrangements are, though, nothing sticks around for too long, and everything seems to be merely a comfy setting for Oberst’s lyrical floodwaves.

Realising, perhaps, that the floodwaves might eventually flood the listener’s patience, Oberst takes a little jab at himself with the aptly titled ʽAn Attempt To Tip The Scalesʼ — a song that disappears rather quickly, in order to make way for a staged «interview» between an announcer and a guy impersonating Oberst himself, so thoroughly full of himself (and it) that it is impos­sible to take any of those replicas seriously. The uncomfortable feeling is that the impersonator is not so much trying to impersonate the real Oberst, as he is trying to capture the spirit of vintage Bob Dylan interviews (the ones in which Bob would turn the interviewer’s boring questions back at the interviewer himself), but without a firm hold on Bob’s complexity or humor.

Humor is ac­tually the key element here: if the real Dylan ever tried to befuddle an interviewer by saying “I do have a brother who drowned in a bathtub... actually, I had five brothers who died that way. My mother drowned one every year for five consecutive years. They were all named Padraic, so they all got one song”, it would be in firm keeping with his regular artistic persona, for whom humor, all kinds of it, was an integral part. But nothing about Oberst is ever funny — and so this attempt to have a little «forced laugh» at the expense of his alter ego does not succeed. It certainly breaks up the predictability of the flow, but I wouldn’t put it down as a healthy con­tribution to the «Artistic Reputation Improvement Fund».

If you really, really want to make yourself like Bright Eyes, try ʽMovement Of A Handʼ. Oberst is easier to tolerate when he puts away at least a small part of his self-pitying (although this hap­pens very rarely), and on this particular track, the Rhodes piano / dulcimer / Mellotron arrange­ment plus Jiha Lee’s backing vocals — ever so often, Oberst’s only salvation comes from a nice girl who can sing better than he does — create a mood that is so sympathetic, I could even find it «enchanting» on a particularly auspicious day. Yet this is only an exception; already on ʽArie­netteʼ, the guy is back to his cosmic misery.

Lyrically, I do not see any positive or negative growth. There are so many words here, such an endless sea of metaphors both boring and startling that we could spend years dissecting them, but I am really reluctant to discuss lyrics whose only underlying subject had already long ago been sufficiently well covered by John Lennon in just one phrase: “If I were you, I’d realize that I love you more than any other guy”. If you are eighteen years old, relatively straight (it’s a big question whether Conor Oberst has any appeal for gay audiences), and have psychological troubles adap­ting to the opposite sex, these songs may have a consoling message for you (at least you’ll know that you are not alone). Go one step further and that’s it. This ain’t a case of «Romeo and Juliet», really, it’s a case of masochistically picking at a small paper cut to see if you can get it to inflame — nothing like a nice little gangrene to keep one’s spirit healthy.

The only reason why I don’t give the album an overall negative assessment is because it is really «neutral» rather than overtly «negative». Behind all the nicely planned multi-layered arrange­ments Oberst’s angst and personal apocalypse does not hit as hard on the nerves, so the album just goes by, unfelt, unnoticed, but inspiring a little hope that this could be the beginning of real musi­cal growth. A little, but not too much — Conor Oberst is clearly not going to sacrifice his rich inner universe for the sakes of writing stupid antiquated things like «original melodies».

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Atheist: Piece Of Time

ATHEIST: PIECE OF TIME (1989)

1) Piece Of Time; 2) Unholy War; 3) Room With A View; 4) On They Slay; 5) Beyond; 6) I Deny; 7) Why Bother?; 8) Life; 9) No Truth.

«Technical death metal» is a subgenre forever trapped in its «sub» aspect. What does one really get by combining breakneck speed / ultraheavy riffage / growling vocals / mock-Satanic lyrics with complex time signatures / unpredictable song structures / elements of free-form jazz and ato­nality? Instead of attracting a joint herd of metalheads and prog nuts, bridging the gaps between the two, this kind of music is more likely to alienate both — prog nuts will either be terrified of the death metal clichés or tend to laugh them off, while metalheads will find it a bit difficult to move around the mosh pit when that rhythmic pattern is prone to metamorphosing at unpredic­table intervals. (Not that there are any genuine limits to the power of moshing for the well-sea­so­ned mosher). Which basically explains why Slayer and Rush are superstars while Atheist, whose idea was to combine the virtues of both, are not.

But not for lack of trying, of course. On the technical side, these guys are fairly hard to criticize. Lead vocalist Kelly Shaefer does not so much «growl» as he «snaps» and «barks», bringing the style a bit closer to hardcore punk than to regular death metal. Guitar work, shared between Kelly and Rand Burkey, is up to the highest standards of the genre (not much of a surprise, though: if you’re into death metal, your technique is either superb or you’re not into death metal); bassist Roger Patterson takes his cues from Chris Squire rather than Cliff Burton, and drummer Steve Flynn is a big lover of polyrhythms, hands and feet flying in every direction in a state of brother­ly democracy for each limb.

In addition, Atheist, as prime representatives of the intellectual pride of Florida, are not content with the usual formulaic guts-and-gore lyricism: in interviews, Schaefer remembers the lyrics of early stuff like ʽLifeʼ (“If chainsaws are your fantasy, I’ll cut your body into three”) with horri­fied embarrassment. It’s not as if they are divine masters of the word — they simply come up with a plain agenda of promoting freedom, individualism, «brainism», and, of course, atheism that is no better or worse than anyone else’s, and, again, this brings them closer to the «hardcore» spirit than the cheese-stained Breath Of The Apocalypse. Of course, in this setting, the regular bowel-cleansing «wwweeeeaaaaarrrgggh!» that Shaefer lets out in between all the preaching do come across as somewhat unnecessary. Maybe they are supposed to represent the protagonist re­gurgitating all the religious shit crammed in his bowels by a three-thousand year old tradition.

This is as far as I can go with the appraisal, though. Problems start at the usual point of entry: when you realize that it is all but impossible to tell one song from the other. Not even the slow-to-fast ratio of the tempos is any good indication — Atheist are too smart to let you catch them like that, and almost every tune includes transitions from slow to fast and back again, the «fast» usual­ly in the more faithful speed metal pattern, the «slower» going heavy on the polyrhythms and syn­copation and jazzy jumping (but always with the same metallic guitar tones).

The riffs are way too speedy and too complex anyway to allow individual notes and chords to trace an emotional pattern; the vocals create atmosphere, but not hooks; and the finger-flashing metal solos are the least interesting element of the lot — they sound like any other speed metal solo ever played. The overall sound is highly unusual, for sure, but this unusualness comes at the expense of completely forsaking individuality of the tracks, apart from the fact that one or two of them open with «moody» little bits of doom-laden electronic effects. Not that this is so much dif­ferent for many of the serious jazz albums from which Shaefer and the boys drew parts of their inspiration — but at least the best of those albums always knew how to introduce a memorable theme before veering off into a world of shapeless improvisation. These boys riff and riff like there was no tomorrow on their anti-religious propaganda pieces, yet they might just as well have left out the in-between song breaks. One continuous forty-minute long «progressive death metal symphony» would seem more honest in this context.

As it is, I can only talk about the overall sound of this thing: technically mind-blowing, emotio­nally rousing if you like to headbang to weird time signatures, and, most importantly, hard to laugh off, except over those brief intervals where Shaefer is getting electrocuted by his own vo­mit all over the microphone. But «hard to laugh off» does not automatically mean «spiritually overwhelming». On their next album, the band would move a little further away from the strict regulations of the genre; Piece Of Time is, however, very rigid in its metal guitar-metal bass-monster drums-growler pipes formula. I give it an «intellectual» thumbs up for recognizing the effort to lift the genre into another dimension, but I am not going to jump for joy just because somebody, somehow, out of nowhere, invented «metal-fusion» one day — I’d like to see a good reason for that invention, which Piece Of Time does not really offer.

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Aztec Camera: Frestonia

AZTEC CAMERA: FRESTONIA (1995)

1) Rainy Season; 2) Sun; 3) Crazy; 4) On The Avenue; 5) Imperfectly; 6) Debutante; 7) Beautiful Girl; 8) Phenome­nal World; 9) Method Of Love; 10) Sunset.

The last album to be released under the name of Aztec Camera (although, truth be told, it is not clear what exactly separates an «Aztec Camera» record from a Roddy Frame solo record) con­tains a small batch of terrific songs — which literally begs for the question: why is it so small? The basic impression is that Roddy underwent a momentary fit of inspiration, then, happy as hell, rushed into the studio, put down the moments of inspiration, found out there were still thirty mi­nutes to fill out, and then...

...but everything in its due order. ʽRainy Seasonʼ is probably the most cathartic song Roddy ever wrote. Do not dig in too deep in its lyrics, or you might strike disturbing misogyny in there (or maybe not; like every experienced misogynist, Roddy likes to put a heavy mask on that status); just relax in the powerful beauty of its simplistically effective piano line, its invigorating build-up right up to the “well, baby I never said I was gonna be Jesus” climax, or the way it picks itself up once again for an all-out rip-roaring coda. One of the best «singer/songwriter pop music» crea­tions of the decade — right up there with Aimee Mann and whoever else in the same confessional vein you might think of.

Then there is ʽSunʼ — kicking into high gear so quickly that you begin to suspect Frestonia is quickly gearing up to become the pinnacle of Aztec Camera. Everything about the song is beau­tiful: the folk-pop guitar jangle (generic, but pretty, and besides, it only serves as the basic foun­dation), the psychedelic guitar tones, the upbeat tempos, the way Roddy is able to dress a rather simple lyrical metaphor (“I’m just like anyone, I wanna see the sun”) in such additional wordy clothes that it does not come across as too trivial. And the fabulous race to the end — by the time he gets around to “I wanna see the sun, I wanna see the moon, I wanna see the stars, I wanna see them shine” there can be no doubt that this is exactly what he wants to do. Figuratively, of course. Just the kind of intellectual idealism that every good person needs.

And then the album takes a plunge. No, it’s not a «mood piece» like Dreamland, and it cannot be pigeonholed as either a synth-pop or an «adult contemporary» record. It’s all quite consistently guitar-driven (sometimes piano-driven) pop. But where the first two songs hit hard with a careful attitude towards hooks, build-ups, and come-downs, little else stands competition. For instance, there is no reason for ʽDebutanteʼ to run nearly seven minutes when it never creeps above «pret­ty». It is tastefully arranged — everything here is in Roddy’s usually exceptional taste — but it just sort of rolls and rolls and rolls along, slowly and humbly, without any dynamic range (the transition from bridge to chorus, where you could expect something exceptional, is in fact disap­pointing). ʽCrazyʼ and ʽImperfectlyʼ, although shorter, follow more or less the same pattern; ʽBe­autiful Girlʼ is cutely upbeat but oddly unfocused; and ʽPhenomenal Worldʼ never quite lives up to the lively distorted croaking of its opening riff.

In short, with the brief, hard-to-notice exception of ʽOn The Avenueʼ, a beautiful, tears-in-yer-eyes little piano-and-acoustic lament, Frestonia seriously sags in the middle, all the way to ʽSun­setʼ, a reprise of ʽSunʼ in a different arrangement, with more emphasis on acoustic guitar, or­gan and strings — maybe there is a slight structural nod to Harrison’s ʽIsn’t It A Pityʼ here, especially since, just as it used to be with George, it is not immediately clear which of the two arrangements is better. ʽSunsetʼ has no separate coda, though.

Still, even if Frestonia may not have all the best Aztec Camera songs — although ʽRainy Sea­sonʼ, ʽSunʼ, and ʽOn The Avenueʼ are timeless and should be heard by everyone — the entire al­bum gets a surefire thumbs up, if only because it simply sounds so terrific. Every time Roddy put out an album, its sound was either «quirky» (High Land), or a bit alien to his personality (Knife, Love), or a bit too heavy on trendy production, smooth jazz, and electronic stuff. Fresto­nia, on the other hand, is all about cleanly recorded, reasonably mixed basics — acoustic and electric guitars, real, fresh pianos, genuine string arrangements, and vocals that clearly care even if the accompanying melody is a little below par.

The symbolism of the album title — «Frestonia» was the name of a short-lived «independent state» formed by a small London community in 1977 — comes across as a bit too bold: neither Roddy himself nor his music are that special to have a right to claim complete independence from the musical world. On the other hand, it might be just right if we consider the irony — the real «Fres­tonia» only had as much independence as it had imagination and self-illusion, and the overall sad­ness of the LP tone is more like the melancholy of an inmate longing for freedom than an ode to joy from one who has already found it. Fact is, the whole existence of Aztec Camera has not al­lowed Roddy Frame to “see the sun”; and his retirement of the band name after the release of Fre­stonia might just as well imply admittance of defeat over an idealistic struggle. But don’t you worry, Roddy — others will always be there to take your hopeless place.

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