Ayreon: Ayreon Universe

AYREON: AYREON UNIVERSE (2018)

1) Prologue; 2) Dreamtime; 3) Abbey Of Synn; 4) River Of Time; 5) The Blackboard; 6) The Theory Of Everything; 7) Merlinʼs Will; 8) Waking Dreams; 9) Dawn Of A Million Souls; 10) Valley Of The Queens; 11) Ride The Comet; 12) Star Of Sirrah; 13) Comatose; 14) Day Sixteen: Loser; 15) And The Druids Turned To Stone; 16) The Two Gates; 17) Into The Black Hole; 18) Actual Fantasy; 19) Computer Eyes; 20) Magnetism; 21) Age Of Shadows; 22) Intergalactic Space Crusaders; 23) Collision; 24) Everybody Dies; 25) The Castle Hall; 26) Amazing Flight In Space; 27) Day Eleven: Love; 28) The Eye Of Ra.

General verdict: Listening to this condensed history of Ayreon in two hoursʼ time will probably not make you a fan. Watching it with your own eyes might do the trick... but perhaps not in the way Arjen himself would want it.

As we all know, Ayreon does not perform live all too frequently... in fact, Ayreon almost never performs live, because he does not have a sufficient budget to feed all the guest singers and to replace himself with a set of live musicians and the fireworks and the dry ice and the big screen with psychedelic visuals and the buckets of chicken blood... okay, could do without the buckets of chicken blood, perhaps, but not without the big shiny robot costumes and all the Star Trek hairdressers. And yet, on the other hand, somehow we saw it coming: all that immense legacy of fantasy had to come out onstage sooner or later.

A first taste had already been presented a couple years earlier, with the audio and video release of The Theater Equation, which, as you can guess, was a theatrical staging of The Human Equation in its entirety. But surely just one measly rock opera cannot cover the breadth and scope of Ayreonʼs vision that encompasses everything that the corny sci-fi genre is capable of. And so, two years later, welcome to Ayreon Universe: a gala-level grand presentation of the entire legacy of Arjen Anthony Lucassen, recorded over two days in September 2017 with the aid of ten musicians and sixteen guest vocalists — including such luminaries as Blind Guardianʼs Hansi Kürsch, The Gatheringʼs Anneke van Giersbergen, Nightwishʼs Floor Jansen, and Katatoniaʼs Jonas Renkse. (Unfortunately, Paul McCartney of The Beatles couldnʼt make it. He was supposed to appear, but they asked him to sing ʽDay Sixteen: Loserʼ, and he took offense at this veiled hint at the artistic failure of Press To Play on the sixteenth year of his solo career).

The setlist, as you can see, tries to justify the album title as much as possible: it puts together highlights from every single Ayreon record, and not one of them seems to be preferred over the others — although, by some strange coincidence, Universal Migrator, which I usually select for my top Ayreon pick, somehow gets the short end of the stick, each of its parts being represented by only one song (and the one song from the first part is not ʽThe Shooting Company Of Captain Frans B. Cocqʼ, which is still probably my single favorite Ayreon track of all time). More than that, it seems to me that they have tried to forge an entirely new, somewhat cohesive, story out of these highlights — at least such is the implication of having a booming-voice narrator intrude from time to time and explain what might be going on. But this, of course, is of more importance to the true fans of Ayreon (all nine thousand of them that were in the audience on those nights) than to somebody like me, who is always more amused by this music than impressed by it.

Many of the songs still have to be significantly truncated — selecting two hoursʼ worth of content from Ayreonʼs 12-hour legacy is a delicate matter — but it is more interesting that at least when it comes to the early material, some of these live renditions sound much better, bypassing some of Ayreonʼs past problems with glossy and stuffy productions, featuring more intricate vocal harmonies, less cheesy synthesizer tones, and livelier drumming. This is, however, the absolute maximum of what I can say about the music — commenting on individual tracks might make it seem like I actually care, which I absolutely do not.

I did watch a couple of video previews that Arjen himself posted on YouTube, and if you are a fan, by all means get this in video rather than audio form, because this is, like, the ultimate in clichéd nerdy fantasy: waves upon waves of guys and girls in black leather and ridiculous sci-fi cosplay gear, miles and miles of long hair waving in the winds of time, and gallons upon gallons of futuristic pomp. Sure, itʼs been that way ever since the invention of progressive and power metal, but if you need an overdose rather than just a simple fix of that, Ayreon Universe is a great bet. Besides, for some reason it makes me happy that a thing like this is at all possible in the modern world — I mean, geeky nerds worldwide deserve their own brand of buffoonery, donʼt they? Truly, this is some Superbowl level shit, I could totally get into Ayreon going out there and having a blast with ʽAmazing Flight In Spaceʼ instead of Beyoncé or Katy Perry. 

Talking Heads: Naked

TALKING HEADS: NAKED (1988)

1) Blind; 2) Mr. Jones; 3) Totally Nude; 4) Ruby Dear; 5) (Nothing But) Flowers; 6) The Democratic Circus; 7) The Facts Of Life; 8) Mommy, Daddy, You And I; 9) Big Daddy; 10) Bill; 11) Cool Water.

General verdict: Nice, diverse, and toothless grooves, more fit for a carefree holiday session than a solid farewell statement. And totally abusive of the chimpanzee stereotype.

Talking Headsʼ last album is often viewed as a compromise of sorts between their classic funky style and the pop-oriented twist of the previous two albums — a compromise that can often be seen within a single track; already at the very beginning, the tribal rhythms of ʽBlindʼ and its avantgarde electric guitar bring back memories of ʽBorn Under Punchesʼ, but the merry merry brass section could not exist without the prehistory of Little Creatures and True Stories. The problem with this interpretation is that, most likely, there was never any conscious decision to reach a compromise. The only decision that there seems to have been was as follows: go to Paris, have yourself a good time, invite lots of friends into the studio, and let fate take its course and guide us into the world of spontaneous bliss.

It is interesting to hear at least one Talking Heads album like this — without the kind of grueling self-discipline and meticulous calculation that their music usually suggests. But interesting does not necessarily equal successful. By letting their hair down and loosening up, the band seemingly lost its focus; and by compromising between the two successful modes of operation they had previously known, they made sure that the funky parts are no longer all that tense and terrifying, while the pop parts are no longer so openly endearing. Of all Talking Heads albums, this is the only one that has no easily discernible face — other than the monkey on the front cover, whose facial expression is a suitable illustration to the point made in ʽThe Facts Of Lifeʼ: «I dare you to think that you are really superior to me, motherfucker!» But if, as that song states, "Iʼm afraid that God has no master plan", then neither does David Byrne on this album; and without a master plan, Naked looks kind of... naked.

This does not mean that the songs are not likable. ʽBlindʼ is driven by a cool, tight groove — it is simply that there is no menace, no bite, no shivery epicness to that groove. It simply rolls along and invites you to dance. Byrne sings something that could be interpreted as a rant against police violence (though the lyrics have absolutely no matching points with the surrealistic video), a Cameroonian guitarist plays a Belew-style outro solo, but... letʼs face it, anybody could have recorded this track — at least, any respectable R&B combo with a good sense of groove. It does not help matters that instead of bringing back Eno, they put Steve Lillywhite in the producerʼs seat — the man partially responsible for the success of Peter Gabriel III and U2ʼs early albums, but also the man behind the disaster of The Rolling Stonesʼ Dirty Work; in any case, for these sessions he decided to keep a low profile, since there are almost no signs of the classic electronic coating that he used to smear on everything he came in contact with. Nothing spoiled — and nothing gained. On the other hand, nobody really knows if Eno could have done anything with this kind of material, either. If there is no cosmic mystique in the embryo, what can you expect from even the most talented of all midwives?

By the time ʽMr. Jonesʼ comes around, it becomes a little more clear what is going on: Naked is not an album of dark frenzy or domestic bliss, but rather one of «cozy sarcasm». Its grooves are nominally sunny and friendly, but offset somewhat by Davidʼs incessant rambling jabs against no one in particular and everyone you can think of. ʽMr. Jonesʼ here might very well be related to Dylanʼs Mr. Jones from ʽBallad Of A Thin Manʼ, except that the something that was happening here long ago is definitely over, and now "itʼs a big day for Mr. Jones, he is not so square". In the meantime, the music has surreptitiously mutated from familiar funk into all-out Latin territory, with no fewer than seven brass players supplying the rucus — all nice and well, but where are actual Talking Heads behind all this?

The nail-that-genre game continues with boppy ska on ʽTotally Nudeʼ, whose message mimicks the Kinksʼ ʽApemanʼ; the Bo Diddley beat on ʽRuby Dearʼ, a song that could have very easily been written by Bo himself (so, again, what is it doing on a Talking Heads album?); and, later on, with more excursions into country and blues territory, revealing that the «return to funkiness», heralded with ʽBlindʼ, was essentially a decoy, and that Naked is a return to nothing in particular. In a way, it represents progress, but blind progress — groping at anything that comes along, as long as the groove can be made playful, sarcastic, and accessible.

The horrible thing is that I like all these songs while they are playing — I just can never shake up any memories of them once they are gone. Nice and tasteful grooves; clever lyrics that poke fun at everything from family values to rich socialites to politicians to Homo sapiens as a whole; clean, but raw production that completely ignores 1988 outside the window and makes the album sound like it could have been made in 2018 — whatʼs not to like? But liking is one thing, and feeling profound, game-changing impact is another. By Talking Heads standards, all of these songs are trifles. ʽThe Facts Of Lifeʼ, which runs longer than everything else, might claim to be an exception — a slow, solemn, epic condemnation of the human race — but the music has such a comic sheen, instead of sending even the slightest hint of doom, that you kind of expect Byrne to slip into Bee Gees-ish falsetto at one point, and that he does. ʽ(Nothing But) Flowersʼ, the second single off the album and probably the most often played one, is another bit of shallow Latin dance that is quite enjoyable (and also continues the «naturalistic» message of ʽTotally Nudeʼ) and just as quickly forgettable.

The biggest disappointment is probably the grand finale: ʽCool Waterʼ is a surprisingly serious, humorless lament about the fate of the underprivileged — arguably the most straightforward social statement on a Talking Heads album ever — and it totally misses the mark. The music is some kind of barely registering indie-folk shuffle that is more Smiths than Talking Heads (not surprisingly since Johnny Marr is in guitar control on this one) and much more monotonous than the average Smiths song; and, as you can probably tell, Byrneʼs vocal style is really no good for direct social indictments in the plaintive genre. As not only the last song on a Talking Heads album, but the last song on the last Talking Heads album, ʽCool Waterʼ is a pretty pathetic way to fizzle out a great career (though arguably not much worse than ʽCity Of Dreamsʼ).

One idea that struck me while contemplating the monkey cover is that less than a year from then, another album with a monkey cover and a monkey theme would begin making the rounds — Pixiesʼ Doolittle — and that, for all it is worth, this was officially the time when Talking Heads would pass the crown of the worldʼs zaniest pop band to Black Francis and his own bass-wielding lady. Once formed, the analogy becomes so strong that it is almost impossible not to compare the pleasant, but tired and unfocused jamming of Naked to the freshness, rawness, and new brand of wit and humor offered by Pixies. And if Talking Heads could indeed be dubbed «the Beatles of New Wave», then this is where they inevitably lose out — even if they may have very well suspected that Naked could become their last album, they did not find it in them to make it their Abbey Road (at best, it became a self-completed Let It Be... a Let It Be... Naked!! har har har). Admittedly, it could have been much worse — they could have been lured away into generic synth-pop, for instance — but still, this is no way for a great band to end its career.

Paul McCartney: London Town

PAUL McCARTNEY: LONDON TOWN (1978)

1) London Town; 2) Café On The Left Bank; 3) Iʼm Carrying; 4) Backwards Traveller; 5) Cuff Link; 6) Children Children; 7) Girlfriend; 8) Iʼve Had Enough; 9) With A Little Luck; 10) Famous Groupies; 11) Deliver Your Children; 12) Name And Address; 13) Donʼt Let It Bring You Down; 14) Morse Moose And The Grey Goose.

General verdict: Subtly creative and uncharacteristically bleak — always fun to catch Paul McCartney in one of his less-than-happy moods.

This record opens a brief and somewhat underrated mini-stage in McCartneyʼs musical biography: The Autumnal Season of Wings. It is not just about the album cover, featuring gray skies over London, Paul visibly shivering in his overcoat, and a somewhat battered line-up of Wings, once again reduced to the «core trio» with Denny and Linda after everybody else had split. It is also about the music, which has once again performed an about face and left all of its glam-rock aspirations stranded in the dirt, many miles behind.

London Townʼs generally poor critical reputation is primarily due to the chronological context: 1977–78, with their revolutionary developments everywhere, were not particularly favorable to «dinosaur rockers» (only the Stones somehow managed to make the grade with Some Girls), and a record that did not rock out, stayed away from social issues, and made whatever points it had to make in cute, subtle, inobtrusive ways could hardly make it in the same month that also saw the releases of Patti Smithʼs Easter and Elvis Costelloʼs This Yearʼs Model, among others. As in so many other cases, time has been kind to the album — but not enough for Paul himself, who has pretty much shut it out of his own memory.

Oddly enough, things had started out quite auspiciously: ʽMull Of Kintyreʼ, released as a single in late ʼ77, became one of the biggest songs of its time, as its Scottish overtones and anthemic nature were too overwhelmingly impressive to dismiss — not to mention the Christmas season release, which effectively turned it into a modern substitute for ʽAuld Lang Syneʼ and boosted both sales and confidence. You would really be hard pressed to find a better compromise between Celtic folk and British pop — or a better example of Paul and Dennyʼs collaboration, with Paul providing the pop hook and Denny indulging his folk appetite. Even the bagpipes manage to sound glorious here, rather than traditionally irritating for the non-Scottish ear.

But the triumphant beginning had a less-than-perfect ending, as this particular Tale Of Two Singles ends up ʽWith A Little Luckʼ — or, more likely, without a little luck, since that particular song, in many peopleʼs minds, remains typical of everything that was worst about Wings: cuddly softness, inoffensiveness, sentimentality, and technological dependency — what with its use of synthesizers so reminiscent of all the generic trends of the time. Indeed, this was like a minor inept brother of ʽSilly Love Songsʼ — without that songʼs unbeatable hooks, impressive musical ideas (the bass is nowhere near as melodic and expressive), or endearing arrogance. Perhaps the songʼs biggest fault, in addition to all that, is that it tries to pass itself for an anthem of love and hope, but these anthemic aspirations clash way too harshly with the clinically sterilized production and the central role of generic Seventiesʼ synthesizers. I still think itʼs a good song after all, with a nicely unique central melody line that is pure McCartney — but it definitely could have used a livelier arrangement.

What is really sad is that the (in)famous popularity of ʽWith A Little Luckʼ has pretty much eclipsed everything else you can find on the album — and not only does it feature a wealth of interesting, less-than-trivial ideas, but it has a general vibe of its own: the slightly cold, damp, quiet, foggy vibe of an autumnal morning after a solid night of steady rain ("silver rain was falling down upon the dirty ground of London Town"). Calm sadness, light melancholia, friendly introspection, shy reclusiveness — with the occasional exception of a more straightforward rocker or too, London Town clads you in rags, puts you under an umbrella and puts you out in the street to observe frequently less-than-happy pictures of everyday life. It is as much anti-glam as Venus And Mars was pro-glam: the perfect hangover antidote to a few years of drunken glitz. And it has a kind of depth to it that was really lacking in the previous two records.

I like to think of ʽLondon Townʼ as a sort of subconscious remake of ʽPenny Laneʼ — another gentle piece of solitary life inspection with equal parts love and pity for all of its characters. I am not even sure that its base melody is objectively worse than ʽPenny Laneʼ: it simply has a slower, lazier, less emotionally pinching vibe, which kind of makes sense if we are talking ten years later. It is also being more realistic about its dreams of escapism: the bittersweet "Oh, where are there places to go? / Someone somewhere has to know" conclusion to each verse stresses just how impossible imaginative escapism has become. Listen closely to the song, and in time you will discern a disturbing streak of gloom under its superficially soothing keyboard coating — a streak of gloom that sets the defining tone for the entire album.

Take the very next song, the slightly funkified dance-rocker ʽCafé On The Left Bankʼ — which, admittedly, takes us from London to Paris, but the general autumnal vibe does not change much. Right-wingers might want to interpret it as a rant against the emerging globalization ("English-speaking people drinking German beer, talking far too loud for their ears"), but it really sounds more like one desperate manʼs commentary on the pointless fuss of socializing, and everything about the song, from the minor chords to Paulʼs wailing vocals to the frantic solo (still played by Jimmy McCulloch), screams «panic!», which is not what you usually expect at all from a song centered around Parisian nightlife.

Another piece of weirdness is the ʽBackwards Traveller / Cuff Linkʼ medley — one short mid-tempo pop rocker about an "ancient wool unraveller" busy "sailing songs, wailing on the moon", one slightly longer gruff funk instrumental with a nagging, but memorable sinister Moog riff pushing it forward. Why are they together? What is their significance? What does he mean when he says that "Iʼm always going back in time"? Whatever it be, I really like how the two pieces complement each other: I would guess that ʽCuff Linkʼ probably began life as a random experi­mental jam (like ʽZoo Gangʼ or one of those other classic era Wings instrumentals), but then, in an Abbey Road-esque move, they associated it with this little snippet about time travel so that the mystery quotient could go up a notch, and it does.

Then thereʼs the oddness of ʽGirlfriendʼ. Allegedly, Paul wrote it specially for Michael Jackson, but ended up recording it first, one year prior to Off The Wall. If you only heard the Jackson version, you will think of the song as a feather-light sentimental ditty — and that is precisely the way it begins in Paulʼs version as well. But Paul adds an extra middle eight section, after which comes a guitar solo that begins by imitating the vocal melody — then, all of a sudden, takes a 180-degree turn into dark, bleak, mope-rockish territory for a few bars, before trotting back to safe, fluffy territory. If there is a better comparative example of why Paul McCartney is a great songwriter, while Michaelʼs primary talents are in other departments... well, there is no better comparative example. It is precisely this ability to surprise and stump the listener, even in small details like these, that elevates Paulʼs Wings-era stuff above most of his «soft rock» competition.

Foggy doom-and-gloom stuff accumulates even denser as the album reaches the midway point. ʽWith A Little Luckʼ notwithstanding, the two best tunes on the second side are ʽDeliver Your Childrenʼ and ʽDonʼt Let It Bring You Downʼ — both co-written with Denny (who also gets lead vocals on the former), both featuring titles that seemingly advocate for hope even as the music throughout remains painfully depressing. ʽDeliver Your Childrenʼ, not coincidentally bearing an uncanny melodic similarity to ʽRichard Coryʼ (which Denny, as you remember, sang on the Wings Over America tour), is a speedy acoustic folk-rocker with some of the most cynical confessional lyrics you can ever find on anything McCartney-related — fast, tight, tense, bitter, with a vocal arch on each verse that begins on a note of hysterical desperation and ends on one of gloomy disillusionment. Special praise goes to the bass-heavy acoustic solo that takes all the points stated by the vocal melody and emphasizes them fifty-fold. Arguably, this is the very best song Denny Laine ever wrote — and I never really know if it is a good thing or a bad thing that it is so deeply concealed in the cracks of a not-too-popular McCartney record. Probably good, since it still has a bigger chance of discovery than Dennyʼs solo version.

ʽDonʼt Let It Bring You Downʼ, another highlight, is a slow, stubborn, frigid waltz whose lyrics propagate hope in the face of seemingly unsolvable problems, but whose music is one of the most vivid portrayals of a broken-hearted person wallowing in his own pain. The quietly nagging, monotonous electric guitar part that accompanies the main acoustic riff throughout the song (and is only allowed to break into a real solo in the coda) hangs in there like some dull toothache that refuses to let go; the counterpoint flute riff breaks in from time to time like some ancient Greek funeral march; the quietly mournful tone of Paulʼs falsetto is the epitome of bleakness. If I knew nothing whatsoever about chronology, I would have easily made a blind guess that the song was recorded for Driving Rain, Paulʼs answer to Lindaʼs death — as it is, he happened to write the most convenient song about the harshest event in his life twenty years before the fact.

In between all these subtle emotional peaks, London Town places lighter elements, such as the fairly straightforward pop-rocker ʽIʼve Had Enoughʼ (which could just as well have been written around 1963), the somewhat gross send-up vaudeville number ʽFamous Groupiesʼ (one of those songs that would today earn a death sentence from the cultural police), and the nostalgic Perkins-meets-Vincent rockabilly tribute ʽName And Addressʼ. These are all nice, but something special; the albumʼs true wildcard is ʽMorse Moose And The Grey Gooseʼ, a frantic mix of disco rhythms, prog noodling, folk harmonies, and nonsensic lyrics that ends the whole thing on a note of total confusion and disarray — a far, far cry from the melancholic tranquility of ʽLondon Townʼ. I am not a big fan of this track (it lacks both the apocalyptic overtones of ʽ1985ʼ and the sorrowful absurdism of ʽMonkberry Moon Delightʼ), but it does show Paul trying to apply creativity and imagination to new musical formulae, rather than just doing it the common way on tracks like ʽGoodnight Tonightʼ.

In the end, London Town might take more time to grow on you than is usual with Wings, but its autumnal charms easily make it, perhaps, the second most intelligent Wings album after Band On The Run. If you are not convinced, play it side by side with something like Pipes Of Peace, just to see what it is that separates an inventive McCartney record from a flat and formulaic McCartney album. It may be so that its very «grayishness» and persistent melancholy have blocked Paul from revisiting any of its songs in concert, or maybe he just remembers it as the single most Denny Laine-dependent project of his life; whatever be, London Town deserves to be dusted off and properly enjoyed — particularly on those gray, dull, rainy days on which you are tempted to wonder if itʼs all really worth it.

Cher: Dancing Queen

CHER: DANCING QUEEN (2018)

1) Dancing Queen; 2) Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight); 3) The Name Of The Game; 4) SOS; 5) Waterloo; 6) Mamma Mia; 7) Chiquitita; 8) Fernando; 9) The Winner Takes It All; 10) One Of Us.

General verdict: Yes, it is an album of ABBA covers by Cher. Yes, that which hath been done is that which shall be done, and there is no new thing under the sun.

It is so heartwarming to see ABBA, after all these decades of critical despisal, stand loud and proud on the pop pedestal as icons of melody and emotion to the new generations of the 21st century, and to hear their songs constantly rediscovered and reinvented by fresh, young artists bursting with talent and energy... oh wait a minute.

Yes, just like you, dear reader, I do not have the slightest idea as to why this album came into actual existence in this particular universe — some sort of quantum aberration, no doubt. Cher did appear in the sequel to Mamma Mia!, where she performed a couple of songs, but the distance between a brief role in a musical and a full album of cover tunes is substantial, and the only incentive to cover it that I can think of is financial: since, apparently, these days anything ABBA-related is almost bound to turn to gold, Cher and her producers must have jumped at this oppor­tunity to make a Cher album sell. Not that Closer To The Truth didnʼt sell, but it had been five years since that one made the grade, and in 2018 an old pop diva is not expected to succeed unless she gets a duet with Nicki Minaj, and apparently Cher does not get along with Nicki Minaj, so whatʼs the alternative? Get along with Benny and Björn.

The recipé for the record is fairly simple and consistent. First, assemble a good bunch of solid ABBA hits — God forbid you grab a song that is somehow not on ABBA Gold, each tune must be a single with a solidly established commercial reputation. Second, re-record them as close as possible to the original versions, but modernize the production a bit: replace some of the guitars with keyboards, put more emphasis on the harsh bass for extra danceability, replace the old-fashioned drums with electronic percussion... strangely enough, though, this «modernization» does not give the impression of being particularly «modern», but rather reflects the sophisti-level of Cherʼs own work around the age of Believe. I mean, do modern kids really continue to dig the umts-umts techno beats that were all the rage twenty years ago? Somebody got stuck in a time loop, and it ainʼt the ABBA time loop.

Anyway, third and last and rather predictable part of the recipé is that it all gets to be sung by Cher — who herself is following the rules of the game and trying to very faithfully reproduce all of Agnethaʼs and Anni-Fridʼs lines and intonations, sometimes with a little help from the trusty old Autotune, but more often not. With powerhouse anthems like ʽDancing Queenʼ it kind of works; with stuff that requires more subtlety, like ʽS.O.S.ʼ and ʽThe Winner Takes It Allʼ, it most definitely does not. It hardly matters, though: successful or not, this is all about reproduction rather than reinterpretation. And why anybody in this whole wide world should care about a 70-year old Cher reproducing a bunch of hits from the 1970s is beyond my understanding. (Minor correction: ʽOne Of Usʼ at the very end is reinterpreted as a piano and orchestral synth ballad, subtracting the rhythm section of the original — not a suitable change, in my opinion, since the rhythm was one of the songʼs strongest attractions).

Surprisingly, the album not only sold really well, but also found favor from the critics, a fact that I can blame neither on political correctness nor on the old Cher voodoo. More likely the people just do not give a damn any more — like, hey, this is a new record, and it has some great songs on it, and the singer isnʼt too bad. Who cares if there are all those old originals still lying around? Who cares about comparing? Who gives a damn about anything when you can just dance, you can jive, having the time of your life?

It makes me a little sad that, apparently, Benny and Björn themselves were involved in the project and are listed as co-producers. But they are the same age as Cher, and it is likely that they, too, do not give much of a damn anymore. It is much more instructive, however, to realize that, as of 2018, we live in a world where a random record of ABBA covers, as long as it is carefully marketed as «brand new», can make it all the way to #3 on the Billboard charts. From now on, I shall be impatiently waiting for The Osmonds to release Strange Magic, an album of cover versions of ELO hit singles; and for Sha Na Na to produce Weʼve Only Just Begun, finally giving The Carpenters their long-awaited dues. But in reality, the possibilities are endless here.

Neutral Milk Hotel: On Avery Island

NEUTRAL MILK HOTEL: ON AVERY ISLAND (1996)

1) Song Against Sex; 2) Youʼve Passed; 3) Someone Is Waiting; 4) A Baby For Pree; 5) Marching Theme; 6) Where Youʼll Find Me Now; 7) Avery Island / April 1st; 8) Gardenhead / Leave Me Alone; 9) Three Peaches; 10) Naomi; 11) April 8th; 12) Pree-Sisters Swallowing A Donkeyʼs Eye.

General verdict: Lo-fi singer-songwriter stuff with psychedelic overtones — the doctor may have ordered this back in 1996, but it is unclear just how long it is going to last.

Recorded in Denver and produced by Robert Schneider of The Apples In Stereo (Schneider is also the second most important musician on this record after Mangum, despite never having been an official member of Neutral Milk Hotel), this is Mangumʼs first and next-to-last fully fledged LP — whose title is a geographical reference to Louisiana, but whose music is anything but, unless one counts the musicʼs overall loudness, bragginess, and occasional use of the trombone as an indirect or subconscious tribute to New Orleans.

On Avery Island never quite reached the level of critical or fan adoration that would be heaped on its follow-up, but truly the only difference between it and Aeroplane is that it is expectedly less ambitious — well, less ambitious on everything but the final track, a 14-minute long drone whose actual musical content could be summed up in twenty seconds: I think that even most of Mangumʼs most devoted admirers would, at best, mutter something about the possible conceptual importance of this piece, and that it takes a very special kind of person to sit through the trackʼs main «ringtone-on-endless-loop» section even once, let alone twice. I have no idea what Mangum had against The Pree Sisters, a short-lived musical outfit that released a few long-forgotten soft pop singles in the early 1970s, but if the composition does really convey the effect of swallowing a donkeyʼs eye, I advise everybody to stick to larksʼ tongues instead.

With that silly piece of «letʼs-find-out-what-that-button-does-while-weʼre-still-young-and-stupid» crap out of the way, what we are left with is about 35 minutes worth of real music that is a very good reflection of the mid-1990s indie spirit: worship of the psychedelic Sixties + in-yer-face lo-fi values + cryptic post-modernized lyrics + non-trivial annoying personality tottering between mental instability and narcissism. One listen to the album is well enough to understand that Jeff Mangum is not your usual average person, and that he is very talented; many more — in my case at least — are needed to get a feeling of what it is that he actually has a talent for.

It would be very difficult to find an argument for melody: pretty much all of these songs seem to be constructed from fairly time-honored chord sequences that Mangum must have lifted from his heroes. Thereʼs a little Dylan here, a little Donovan, some Syd Barrett, a bit of Fairport Convention, perhaps (or any other Celtic folk-influenced band from the past), and quite a bit of The Incredible String Band, though Jeff could only wish for the kind of musicianship that Robin Williamson and Mike Heron demonstrated in their prime. And since most of the arrangements are quite similar — the usual trick is to have a clean acoustic guitar ringing in one channel and a heavily distorted semi-acoustic in the other — it takes quite a while to learn the differences between the songs, other than «fast» and «slow».

A few of the numbers try to incorporate elements of poppiness, like the opening ʽSong Against Sexʼ, but while on Everything Is the future direction was not yet quite clear, On Avery Island makes it perfectly obvious that, despite hiding behind a «band» moniker, Mangum clearly tries to model himself after the singer-songwriter pattern (quite unlike his pal Schneider), and many of the tunes are slow confessional ballads whose effectiveness fully depends on Mangumʼs words and Mangumʼs sonic clothes for said words.

The words, ultimately, are what matters: Mangum comes across here as a skilled and curious lyricist, able to find fresh ways of looking at birth, life, love, death, and whatever shit might lie in between. Letʼs face it, not just anyone is able to express oneʼs feelings with lines like "Someone is waiting to swallow all the halos out of you" or "And I love you and I want to / Shoot all the super heroes from your skies", regardless of whether you find this imagery pretentiously stupid or amazingly witty. It is not as if any such word-weaving has not been tried before, but it seems to me to be a much better reflection of Mangumʼs own individuality than whatever musical back­ground he tries to set these words to. Much of it feels like improvised streams of consciousness, where it is useless to try and decipher every line (unless you have a degree in psychology) but useful to latch on to occasional keywords and key phrases that represent the lyrical heroʼs journey through the ups and downs of life.

Interestingly, at this point the ups still seem to outweigh the downs — quite a few of the songs, like ʽNaomiʼ, are straightforwardly psychedelic love serenades ("Iʼm hoping she will soon explode into one billion tastes and tunes"), though still somewhat offset by the love-and-hate relationship that the lyrical hero has with himself ("my emptiness is swollen shut"). On Avery Island is still quite obviously a record by a person who likes to see the world in colors rather than whine about how nobody else does, which is, by the way, a circumstance that makes me more at peace with Mangumʼs voice on this record than on the follow-up — although he still isnʼt much of a singer (or a player... or a composer... but yep, he is an artist all right). For that reason, the album still has some officially certified ties with the Elephant 6 movement, and I guess it can be legitimately brought out with you to a picnic site or something.

A few of the songs are psychedelic instrumentals, most notably ʽMarching Themeʼ that sort of sounds like a ton of Scotsmen on amphetamines (spoiler: amphetamines win by the end), and ʽAvery Island / April 1stʼ, whose half-pop, half-baroque trombone solo by Rick Benjamin might be the most purely musical moment on the entire album. They do work primarily as interludes, though, just in case you happen to forget that this is a psychedelic experience and not just a set of impressionistic songs about moms, sons, girlfriends, and bathroom reflections. On the other hand, it is hard to take that statement seriously when the very first track on the album is called a ʽSong Against Sexʼ — insert the required joke about how difficult it really must be to get laid when you are making this kind of music in the first place — anyway, whoever in his right mind would make an anti-sexual psychedelic album?..

If you did not get this already, I do not think that On Avery Island is a particularly good album. Mangumʼs poetry deserves attention, but it is hard for me to understand how this manner of presenting it could be endearing to anybody who was not 16–18 years old at the time when it came out. The biggest deficiency, though, is the personality. You could argue, if you really wanted to, that composition-wise, the stuff on Syd Barrettʼs solo albums was nothing to write home about either, but the combination of childlike innocence, deep melancholia, and drugged-out immobility in his voice was haunting even when the material was rotten. Mangum never had the same sad, terrifying magic in his voice, and for the most part, his singing is very neutral: not too pretty, not too awful, nothing in particular (except when he wrings out his higher notes, which can be murder on sensitive ears). In the end, it all comes down to the right attitude in the right chronological context — and geographical, too, so you might really want to read up on your Avery Island history before committing to this experience.

Jerry Harrison: Casual Gods

JERRY HARRISON: CASUAL GODS (1988)

1) Rev It Up; 2) Song Of Angels; 3) Man With A Gun; 4) Let It Come Down; 5) Cherokee Chief; 6) A Perfect Lie; 7) Are You Running?; 8) Breakdown In The Passing Lane; 9) A.K.A. Love; 10) Weʼre Always Talking; 11) Bobby.

General verdict: Nothing outstanding as usual, but quite a few unexpectedly cool grooves — I guess that the word ʽcasualʼ is truly key in this context.

Technically speaking, Jerryʼs second album is actually credited to a band called «Jerry Harrison: Casual Gods», since the exact same moniker would be featured on his next one, Walk On Water. For some strange reason, he refrained from using an apostrophe — perhaps thinking that «Jerry Harrisonʼs Casual Gods» would sound too arrogant (let alone «Jerry Harrisonʼs casual gods walk on water»!!!). But the idea makes sense: with ex-Stop Making Sense pals Alex Weir and Bernie Worrell featured throughout the record, it is as if Casual Gods is supposed to be the true Talking Heads, carrying on the old flame even as Byrne gets more and more buried in his other projects, and usurps the bandʼs name for releasing pop albums with nary a sign of the old funkiness.

It works inasmuch as Casual Gods seems to be, at the very least, an improvement over the second-rate mediocrity of The Red And The Black. That record, coming fresh off the heels of Remain In Light, could not help looking like a ten dollar bottle of cheap wine next to the rarest of vintages. By 1988, however, «Talking Heads» and «groove-based music» were no longer synonymous, and Harrison may have seen that as his chance — from the very first notes, you can sense a touch of inspiration and, most importantly, genuine energy of somebody who has clearly been missing this kind of fun for quite some time now.

On the whole, Casual Gods is a soft electro-pop record: programmed percussion and harsh, robotic interlocking synth and guitar riffs form its backbone, with the differences being largely limited to tempo and mood (rowdy vs. romantic). Parts of it are reminiscent of Bowieʼs output in the Eighties, while other parts more openly follow the guidelines of Funkadelic (with Worrell around, that should come as no surprise); one thing it does not manage to do is establish a distinct identity for Jerry Harrison, but perhaps that was not even the plan. The plan, so it seems, was simply to create a bit of intelligent dance music — actually, at times we might even need to scrap the «intelligent» part, because the opening lines of the opening number ʽRev It Upʼ ("got the heat turned on and the windows down / sheʼs hell on wheels, telling everyone how good it feels") surely bear the stamp of Brian Johnsonʼs and Gene Simmonsʼ approval.

That is a bit of a problem: I really like the old-school-turned-new-school groove of ʽRev It Upʼ, and it gets me blood pumpinʼ and all, but I cannot come to terms with Jerry Harrison, the typical nerdy art-rock guy, suddenly coming out as the big hunky ladiesʼ man. The only thing to do is just ignore the lyrics and give yourself in to the groove: in any case, it is hard to associate this particular line of cold, robotic funkiness with «sexy», so the only thing that falls out of line are the lyrics (not their delivery), and it is easy to ignore them... though this is precisely why, when all is said and done, Casual Gods could never succeed in truly taking over the legacy of the «real Talking Heads».

The good thing is that there are truly quite a few solid dance grooves here. ʽRev It Upʼ is one, but I like the rapid-fire fussiness of ʽSong Of Angelsʼ, the gruff get-out-of-my-way riff of ʽCherokee Chiefʼ, the nonchalant dialog between the disco bass and the alarmed synth blasts of ʽAre You Running?ʼ, and the relentless (though somewhat amorphous) bubbling of ʽBobbyʼ. All of these are perhaps not quite enough to earn Jerry the title of «accomplished groovemaster», but they all have staying power and emotional resonance — ʽAre You Running?ʼ is probably as close as he ever comes to matching Byrneʼs paranoia, and ʽCherokee Chiefʼ is a nice slab of musical satire that, for some reason, David had always avoided, perhaps seeing himself way above cheap potshots at Mr. Big Man. Jerry does get away with it quite fine, though.

Some things do not work that well in the context of the times: thus, ʽBreakdown In The Passing Laneʼ rather blatantly rips off the main groove of ʽFreak Out!ʼ, and a couple other tunes sound too much like second-hand Duran Duran pastiches. Arguably the best known song is ʽMan With A Gunʼ, which somehow made it into a movie by Zalman (Sleazebag) King and into Jonathan Demmeʼs Something Wild — but musically, it is one of the least interesting things here, riding a stiff, unchangeable quasi-romantic riff throughout and largely sounding like a sermon on the overriding powers of love. Perhaps Lou Reed could have made something out of this material, but Jerryʼs delivery is fairly flat, as usual.

It is interesting to note how «early Eighties» the album sounds in general — for a record released in 1988, it is almost outdated, with a «flat» rather than «deep» echo on the drums and quirky, thin, New Wavish guitar tones that were quite out of fashion by the decadeʼs end. It is as if Jerry commandeered a mini-time machine that took him about five years back, so that he could make himself a proper sequel to Speaking In Tongues. Nevertheless, the album still managed to hit the Top 100, and ʽRev It Upʼ even made it as high as #7 on the charts — perhaps the public did hook up to its ironically hedonistic vibe after all. These days, I could only recommend the record to big fans of all sorts of electro-pop: it hardly has any lasting intellectual value or shows big bright flashes of charismatic personality — but you can have honest and genuine fun with about half of it, I think. Then again, what else do you expect of your average casual god?

Ringo Starr: Ringo The 4th

RINGO STARR: RINGO THE 4TH (1977)

1) Drowning In The Sea Of Love; 2) Tango All Night; 3) Wings; 4) Gave It All Up; 5) Out On The Streets; 6) Can She Do It Like She Dances; 7) Sneaking Sally Through The Alley; 8) Itʼs No Secret; 9) Gypsies In Flight; 10) Simple Love Song.

General verdict: If your name is Ringo Starr, please refrain from trying to embrace all the mainstream musical genres of the mid-1970ʼs at once; and certainly try to refrain from embracing them drunk.

It is fairly ironic that the only original album released in the Year of Punk by an ex-Beatle was Ringo The 4th — even more ironic that of all Beatle-related output in the 1970s, this was arguably the single most cringeworthy endeavour (though Ringoʼs own follow-up, Bad Boy, comes close). Almost everything about this record hints at a total lack of taste and complete ineptness, starting with the more-cheesy-than-sleazy sleeve photo (I presume nobody involved in that photoshoot was even remotely sober) and ending with its relative diversity, as the covered styles range from funk and disco to country-western and yacht rock — and feature a thoroughly unprepared and clueless Beatle drummer trying to get on top of them, but having obvious trouble already at the stage of unbuttoning his pants, if you pardon my being blunt.

Unlike Rotogravure, this does sound like it was produced by Arif Mardin: at least half of the songs feature very contemporary dance grooves, even if the proverbial disco bass lines can be found on maybe just one or two. The credits list is endless: you can find a young Luther Vandross and a slightly less young Bette Midler among the back vocalists, Johnʼs and Paulʼs collaborator David Spinozza on guitar, and even the great Tony Levin on bass (though he is co-credited along with three other bass players, so I have no idea where precisely they are hiding him). Needless to say, all the arrangements are immaculately produced and all the basic tracks laid down with professionalism and devotion. Unfortunately, it is all wasted.

It is not even that the songs are all that bad. Vini Poncia, who had been working with Ringo since 1973, is now promoted to chief co-writer, and Ringo has certainly had worse co-writers covering his back. The choice of covers is formally reasonable as well: ʽDrowning In The Sea Of Loveʼ was a solid soul standard by Joe Simon, and Allen Toussaintʼs ʽSneakinʼ Sally Through The Alleyʼ was an early Robert Palmer highlight. It is simply that none of these styles fit Ringoʼs voice or personality. ʽDrowning In The Sea Of Loveʼ is a turbulent tempest of a song, one that requires range and power, two things that were always out of Ringoʼs reach even back when he was not an alcoholic. Ten seconds into the songʼs intro, you know the man is going to flub it as soon as he comes in, and though he fights bravely, this ainʼt Sparta, son.

Basically, most of these tunes fall into two categories: deeply serious numbers for which Ringo lacks the authenticity and power of vocal conviction, or deeply corny numbers of a vaudeville variety that should, theoretically, be played for drunk sailors by guys in top hats and underwear. The fact that the two types are mixed in roughly equal proportions and play off each other like there was nothing to it only adds to the emotional confusion, and I cannot even say which of the two is a bigger turn-off. Probably the serious stuff, though, like ʽGave It All Upʼ — a sort of Willie Nelson-like dark country ballad through which Ringo largely just sleepwalks. You can sense potential here, and even the lyrics arenʼt a total loss (and lines like "as I look back and wonder / have I wasted my time?" definitely ring with a lot of relevance for Ringo in 1977), but one can only guess if the song could have made a bigger time with a better vocalist.

The single was ʽWingsʼ, a song that sounds so much like Foreigner that Ringo would eventually have to completely remake it in a poppier vein thirty-five years later. Here, too, the day could probably be saved with a different vocalist and some funky twists to the arrangement: as for Ringo, he might have felt like shit in 1977, but that did not help him convey it on the record. It is worth listening to Ringo The 4th attentively at least once to understand that not everything about it is just corny dance fluff — but you do have to know the historical context to guide you. Some people make great records about their personal crises and breakdowns... and some people are Ringo Starr, God bless his beautiful soul and limited artistic abilities.

In short, this is where I am driving at: this is a bad album not because it is so lightweight, but rather because it combines an utterly lightweight style with elements of dark, brooding substance. There is a certain perverted charm watching the man walk the line from the bluntly alcoholic pub-rock of ʽCan She Do It Like She Dancesʼ and the equally bluntly alcoholic club-pop of ʽOut On The Streetsʼ to the pain and suffering of ʽWingsʼ and ʽDrowning In The Sea Of Loveʼ, but I would never force anybody to experience it. Trust me, you donʼt really want to be friends with Ringo when he is down in the dumps; you really have to wait for peace and love. 

Brand New: Science Fiction

BRAND NEW: SCIENCE FICTION (2017)

1) Lit Me Up; 2) Canʼt Get It Out; 3) Waste; 4) Could Never Be Heaven; 5) Same Logic / Teeth; 6) 137; 7) Out Of Mana; 8) In The Water; 9) Desert; 10) No Control; 11) 451; 12) Batter Up.

General verdict: Deadly dull third-rate alt-rockisms. If this is the way depression is pictured in rock music nowadays, thereʼs just no fun in depression any more.

The world seems to literally demand a punny joke out of you when you set out to review an album by a 17-year old band that still calls itself Brand New, doesnʼt it? You could probably find a cop out by saying that, since Brand New had not released a record since 2009, this is like a brand new beginning for them... except that the band broke up upon completing the sessions, and has openly stated that Science Fiction was intended to be their farewell gesture.

Perhaps it was this very statement that prompted all the positive reviews — because as far as I am concerned, this is just another Brand New record: not too bad, not too good, nothing particularly memorable or particularly horrendous. It sounds a little slower, a little more quiet, a little more dedicated to «subtle, suspenseful gloom» than «angsty, wailing gloom», which, I guess, is to be expected of a band that got eight more years behind its back and now wants to make an atmo­spheric exit with a wave of smooth chill. Unfortunately, the eight years in question have not made them into better songwriters, players, arrangers, or showmen.

Let me just explain my feelings by concentrating on the first and last tracks on the record — otherwise I feel like I might trip, slip, and do some permanent damage to my brain. ʽLit Me Upʼ begins with soft layers of electronic hum and a tape recording: "This tape recounts a dream which occurred close to the termination of approximately 400 hours of intensive individual therapy...", upon which the lady patient begins telling her dream — which is boring, in case you were hoping for some Vincent Price type of moment. Once the lethargic, emotionless narrative is over and the song itself begins, Science Fiction has lifted its curtain and established its vibe — a slow, gray, limp, atmospheric vibe that might be the right thing for you if you, too, have just terminated approximately 400 hours of intensive individual therapy. (Though Iʼd rather recommend ʽSunny Girlfriendʼ by The Monkees, rather than go on wallowing in your own pain). But the smooth hum of the smooth trip-hoppy bass and the dull-ringing sustained bluesy chords of the heavily treated electric guitars never go one inch beyond simple, monotonous ambience — and I cannot even tell how many times in my life I have already had to endure that crap, Just Because The Sincerely Inspired Artist Has To Convey The Dulling Of His Emotional Receptors By Making Music That Goes Absolutely Nowhere And Makes A Big Fucking Point Out Of It.

At the very least, if you are making a song like that, by all means do not accompany it with lyrics like "It lit me up like a torch on a pitch black night / Lit me up and I burn from the inside out / Yeah I burn like a witch in a Puritan town", because on paper this seems like something off a Def Leppard album — in practice it sounds like Robert Smith on sedatives after liposuction. And since we already know that Jesse Lacey has always had a hard time making his emotional pain believable, it would take a real good jolt to make ʽLit Me Upʼ change oneʼs biases. But there is no jolting here, just 400 hours of intensive individual therapy.

Fast forward many many many endless miles of routine depression — and meet ʽBatter Upʼ, a nine-minute long epic closer. Now you might expect something to happen over nine minutes of music, right? After the first two or three minutes of its endless acoustic loop, sonically pleasant but melodically every bit as original as a James Taylor song from the 1990s, it slowly began to dawn on me that this is going to end exactly the way that it started, and is not going to go any­where different in the middle — and I was almost right, except that the last couple of minutes consisted of yet more quiet humming noises. "Itʼs never going to stop / Batter up / Itʼs never going to stop / Batter up". (Since my baseball vocabulary is horrible, I had to actually look up ʽbatter upʼ in the dictionary. Still not sure that I understand completely what it means, but it did come to my attention that it is an anagram for ʽbutt-rapeʼ, and you know, that feels just about right at the moment).

In between ʽLit Me Upʼ and ʽBatter Upʼ ten more songs are stuck, and after three listens I do not remember a single one of them. I do remember that some sounded like third-rate REM and a few sounded like second-rate Pearl Jam; a couple featured annoying screaming vocals and a couple tried to rock out, but mostly it was just that slow bluesy grayness all over. Oh yeah, ʽ451ʼ sounded like a watered-down Black Keys song. Did I miss anything?

Yes, for the record, Science Fiction got generally positive reviews and is currently featured in RateYourMusicʼs Top 30 albums for 2017. All I can say is that if this kind of music is now held to be symbolic of rock in the late 2010s, then rock is not just dead, it is deeply submerged in embalming fluid, and Science Fiction is that fluid. I swear to God, one of the critics called this «the Abbey Road of emo» or something. I do not know all that much about emo, but if this analogy is even barely hinting at the truth, I shudder to think what the Please Please Me of emo could ever have sounded like.

Neutral Milk Hotel: Everything Is

NEUTRAL MILK HOTEL: EVERYTHING IS (1994)

1) Everything Is; 2) Here We Are (For W Cullen Hart); 3) Unborn; 4) Tuesday Moon; 5) Ruby Bulbs; 6) Snow Song Pt. 1; 7) Aunt Eggma Blowtorch.

General verdict: Derivative, but charming lo-fi psycho-pop — although for it to be interesting in the 2010s, youʼd probably have to understand all the importance of the 1960s for the 1990s.

Since the artistic reputation of Neutral Milk Hotel rests on such a small body of work, I suppose it makes sense to allocate a special review to the very first piece of that work which Jeff Mangum saw fit to submit for official commercial distribution. Originally, it was just one short single with but two songs on it, distributed by Seattleʼs indie label Cher Doll Records — then, in 1995, it fell into the hands of the British label Fire Records, who re-released it with an extra track, and this three-song version could be claimed to be the definitive form of Everything Is, since the three tracks more or less comprehensively cover all the bases that would later go on to form part of the Neutral Milk Hotel legend.

ʽEverything Isʼ is an excellent specimen of early Ninetiesʼ lo-fi, one-man psychedelic revival — distorted blues-pop guitar riffs taken from the good old garage-rock textbook; well-articulated nerdy vocals with an otherworldly touch, probably achieved through double-tracking; and surreal daydreaming lyrics that update ʽLucy In The Sky With Diamondsʼ for the contemporary listener. Additionally, I seem to detect a bit of a Brian Eno touch here — funny enough, the verse melody is very similar to ʽKurtʼs Rejoinderʼ from Before And After Science, and the similarity gets even more in your face because of the tonal resemblance between Jeff Mangum and Eno when they are in calm / quiet mode (it disappears every time Jeff goes up the scale in the chorus). This could be just a total accident, but since there is no denying Enoʼs general influence on the Elephant 6 community and on each of its representatives individually, I thought this worth mentioning.

Anyway, ʽEverything Isʼ already tells you almost more about NMH than you needed to know — how Mangum could craft second-hand, but solid melodic hooks, how his lyrical craft bravely advocated for a return to the ideals of old ("everything is beautiful here / Iʼm finally breaking free from fear" is such a major fuck-you to the angst-ridden alt-rock narrative of the time), and how you were free to take or leave snippets of sound collages and random conversations that he liked to insert in his work. A quarter century later, this revivalist ideology seems a bit fruity, and its impact is probably no longer understood by anybody who was younger than 15 years at the time, but the "and itʼs fading..." hook is still fun, and the song in general benefits from a complete lack of unwarranted pretentiousness that would follow in its wake.

If ʽEverything Isʼ is Eno-ish, then ʽSnow Song Pt. 1ʼ is quite naturally Syd Barrett-ish: its lazy acoustic guitars and even more lazily purred vocals, filling up your room like some subtle wisps of musical shisha, are recorded in the grand tradition of The Madcap, which, unfortunately, also means that the song is not likely to remain in your brain as anything other than an atmospheric cloud. I do find it funny how many different verbal influences are subconsciously affecting Mangumʼs mind here: "Cindy smiles in overcoats" (ʽCindy Tells Meʼ — Eno again), "candy-apples everythings" (ʽCandy And A Currant Bunʼ + ʽApples And Orangesʼ = Syd), "unhappy girl, sheʼs spinning" (ʽUnhappy Girlʼ = Jim Morrison), "rain is a perfectly sculpted garden of wetness" (ʽRainʼ = The Beatles) — I do not know about rain, but the song is most definitely a perfectly sculpted garden of references to cherished customers at the Neutral Milk Hotel.

The third track, ʽAunt Eggma Blowtorchʼ once again recalls Eno (ʽPaw Paw Negro Blowtorchʼ), except that it is largely just a sound collage, allegedly recorded by a 17-year old Mangum in his bedroom. It has nothing to offer other than historical interest and some signs of a curious, hyper-active searching mind looking for blissful revelation in unpredictable combinations of sound: no use looking for true artistic symbolism or suspenseful atmospheric coherence here — ʽRevolution #9ʼ it is not. But if you are 17 and you make up a sonic collage titled ʽAunt Eggma Blowtorchʼ, you may have a very bright, unusual, and painful future before you, which is exactly what happened to Jeff Mangum, so at least things check out.

The convoluted story of Everything Is does not end here, however. The next phase begins in the posthumous era: in 2001, the single was re-released on Orange Twin Records, with the addition of ʽTuesday Moonʼ, another upbeat pop song with a hazy nasal charm, but rather clunky lyrical twists ("I just want to climb your tower / To your dress like apple pie" — is this written from the perspective of a garden ant or a cross-dresser?). Finally, a 10" version of the record appeared in 2011 on the fully autonomous Neutral Milk Hotel Records — adding three more early tracks, of which ʽHere We Areʼ is an unquestionable highlight, if only for its unusually clear production: the acoustic guitars ring out loud and pretty, the slightly out-of-tune electric overdubs are almost nostalgically raga-like, and the vocals are soothing (Mangum does have a very pleasant voice, as long as he does not drive it over into higher range, at which point it becomes annoying).

From a certain point of view, even though the music would go on to become more complex and the lyrics would go on to look less like the naïve scribblings of a high schooler in love with John Lennon and Syd Barrett, all you really needed to know about Jeff Mangum and his one-man band is already encapsulated in this small bunch of tunes. Well, almost all: one thing that is clearly missing is the tragic brokedown-artist approach, which, honestly, could not yet be represented at such an early stage. This is a young and somewhat bizarrely optimistic Jeff Mangum, whose visions and aspirations have not yet had the chance of being ground down by cruel world reality. I mean, how could it be otherwise, with almost every song featuring a reference to candy, ice cream, and teacups? So catch this guy while he is still busy being a butterfly.