M Is For...

An artists' A to Z, according to the whim of the day. 

The Monkees / "I Know What I Know"

The Monkees? Yes, the Monkees.  And not just a blast from the past, but a new track from a new album.

Wait -- the Monkees are still recording?  Didn't Davy Jones die last year? (Well, he actually died in February 2012, but I get your point.)

This new 2016 album, Good Times, honors the past, with tracks that recycle not only hitherto-released Davy vocals from 1967 but also a 1968 track with the late great Harry Nilsson (more on him to come soon).  However, it's also got a bunch of new material, produced by Fountains of Wayne's Adam Schlesinger and featuring such songwriters as Ben Gibbard (Death Cab for Cutie), Rivers Cuomo (Weezer), Andy Partridge (XTC), and Noel Gallagher (Oasis) and Paul Weller (the Jam). If that's not a sign that the Monkees are now officially cool, I don't know what is.

 All of which would mean nothing if the album wasn't good. But -- it IS good. And here's the track I keep coming back to.

Now, back in 1967, I was irredeemably a Davy girl. My sister was a Micky Dolenz girl, and we both had a certain fondness for the band goofball, Peter Tork. But I always had a sneaking curiosity about Mike Nesmith, the more so as his country-tinged songs showed up on later albums (once the band had fought to have more of their own stuff on the LPs). As Monkees fan lore would have it, Mike was the one in the band who had the most singer-songwriter chops, as opposed to acting chops (a version of the story that shortchanges former folkie Peter Tork, but whatever).

So in this 2016 incarnation, where Micky, Peter, and Mike all contribute their own distinctive tracks, I'd have expected Mike's songs to be twangy as all get-out.

Instead, we get this poignant love song.  It's a perfect example of Music for Grown-Ups, with its clear-eyed declaration of symbiotic need. "I know what I know / And what I know / Is I know nothing / Without you." Subsequent verses simply substitute new verbs -- "I see nothing without you," I have nothing without you," I feel nothing without you" -- could he be more humble?

And the melody is perfectly wedded to those lyrics. "I know what I know" modestly steps down the scale, with "And what I know" climbing only halfway back up the scale, so tentatively. The melody peaks upward as he bares his soul on "I know nothing," followed by the wry diminished chords of   "Without you."

It's not a teenage love song, full of inarticulate longing. It's an emptying of ego, a stripped-down statement of need. As the bridge declares, "Alone I am / With waiting heart / Alone I am / A world apart," In a later iteration of the bridge, he goes even more needy: "Someone alone / Always dreams of / The perfect one / Someone in love."

The slightly hoarse edge to Mike's voice, the strained leap to those high notes -- it all works to the song's purpose. It's mostly just a piano and the singer, though in the middle eight, we get the movie-music heartstrings-yank of Adam Schlesinger playing the chamberlin (a pre-Mellotron schmaltz machine).

It's so far from "Hey hey we're the Monkees" -- and I can't think of a better reason to listen to the Monkees in 2016.

"What's Shakin' On The Hill" /
Nick Lowe

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, NICK LOWE!

Ah, Nick Lowe . . . one of the great musical loves of my life.

Much is made of Nick Lowe's comeback "trilogy" (they've actually been repackaged as a box set called The Brentford Trilogy), which includes The Impossible Bird (1994), Dig My Mood (1998), and The Convincer (2004). But in my humble opinion, the comeback really began with 1989's Party of One, where he first began to move into the more subtle, wry, laidback groove that's been his territory ever since.

It's hard for me to believe that "What's Shakin' On the Hill" was written 20 years ago. Nick still sings it in concert (along with the priceless "All Men Are Liars," also from this album), and it doesn't sound one bit dated -- although truth to tell it never sounded like an 80s song to begin with. That simple opening riff -- a series of descending thirds, falling lazily just behind the beat -- eases us into the song like a stroll down a country road.

He invites us into a pastoral scene -- "There's a cool wind blowin' in the sound of happy people" (that internal rhyme of "wind" and "blowin' in" swings us along). Curious, we move toward that sound, already picturing the venue: "At a party given for the gay and debonair." He adds more details, in shorter scraps of lines: "There's an organ blowing in the breeze / For the dancers hid behind the trees" -- just offstage, so tantalizing. But then comes the cruel reality, as the last two lines descend with a sort of sigh, resolving the melody: "And I ain't never gonna see / What's shakin' on the hill."

So why not? I'm dying to know. He's brought us so close, only to snatch it away. In verse two he explains himself, ruefully: "That I someday may be joining in / Is just wishful thinking / Cause admission's only guaranteed / To favored few." And Nick, apparently -- in his classic role as the wistful loser -- isn't on that guest list.

In the bridge, he owns up to the truth: "I'm too blue to be played with / And I get heartaches / So they tell me, 'No dice'." (The casual cruelty of that "no dice" -- what a slap in the face!) If he were younger, he might blame a girl, but he's old enough by now to admit it's his own melancholy temperament at fault. (Music for Grown-Ups alert!) Like Ray Davies in "Waterloo Sunset," he's forever on the outside, a mere observer of life.

With a defensive shrug, he notes, "It isn't allowed / In that carefree crowd / To be seen with tears in your eyes." Well, as soon as Nick tells me that, I realize I don't want to be with that carefree crowd either. Bunch of shallow hedonists. The "gay and debonair" -- HA! No, I want to be outside with Nick, "Kicking cans 'round / While that happy sound / Keeps cracking on." That image of the lonely kid kicking cans around -- how that wrings my heart.

But self-pity's not on the agenda tonight. Stuck outside in the shadows, he confesses, "Though I long so strong to be inside / With the blues is where I do reside," letting the melody crest upwards on "where I do reside." And after the instrumental break and one last go of the chorus, he peters out, muttering "what's shakin'" over and over. He can't quite tear himself away, no matter how resigned he is to his fate.

He doesn't need a lot of details to conjure up the scene -- golden lights gleaming through the trees, shadows pooled around parked cars, an empty roadway gleaming pale in the moonlight. The far-off clink of glasses and ripples of disembodied laughter. And somehow, we know that it's not just a party he's missing -- that hill could represent social acceptance, career success, critical acclaim, domestic happiness, religious faith, whatever.

What kills me is the light touch of this song -- the liting jazzy tempo, the major key, the skipalong melody. (It's really at its best sung solo and acoustic.) He's not slamming against that barred door, nor curdled with bitterness, nor drowning in woe. He's accepted his place on the sidelines of life, though he still feels twinges of envy and regret. It's goddamn Keatsian, that's what it is, delicately maintaining a fragile equipoise between love and loss, between sorrow and acceptance, between now and then and someday.

Or maybe it's just a pop song, you daft fangirl you. Well, that too.

My Favorite Albums of 2014

Lights Out / Bishop Allen

Just when I was starting to feel sad that there hasn't been a new Bishop Allen album since 2009's Grrr -- lo and behold, the guys have come out with a new one, Lights Out.  Memo to self:  Do everything you can do to help promote under-the-radar bands like these, the antidote to the Justin-Bieberized mass-market conglomerate that is slowly strangling modern music.

But I digress.

Besides my well-documented penchant for pop singers with glasses, there's a lot to love here. Bishop Allen may have started out documenting the neuroses of first-date jitters, but on this album they've moved into fruitful new territory:  the neuroses of keeping a long-term relationship going. If it's not quite yet #Music for Grown-ups, it's getting close.

Justin Rice's flat-tish vocals convey such a weariness with modern life, played against the uptempo jangle of the background.  (Dig how back in the mix they keep those baffled vocals.)  Those repeated "if's" tell us what a crossroads he's reached.  She's misunderstood, he's sorry, but at some point he has to stop apologizing.  "If I could give you the keys to the kingdom, I would," he offers, but she seems to have moved past that. "Start again" doesn't mean a fresh start for these two, it means her veering off to begin a new life -- and at some point, that begins to sound like a relief for him.

Smart as they are, these guys don't go overboard with the poetic lyrics, but there's still some deft songcraft, as in the sustained film imagery of "Play the song, roll the credits / Let it fade to black / Out of script, out of time, / And the scene is done." Sometimes all it takes is a repeated word:  "Call a car, call a friend / If you can, call anyone." (Reminds me of John Hiatt's wrenching "What Do We Do Now?" -- "should we call the kids or call the cops?")

Subtlety like this is in short supply these days, and yet these guys produce it track after track. Nuanced songs like "Black Hole" ("all those years collapse in the tiniest of shrugs"), "Skeleton Key" ("Let the gates from their hinges swing with your skeleton key"), and the deceptively simple "Breadcrumbs" ("The only thing you ever leave me is breadcrumbs / The only place they never lead me is home") -- the finely calibrated wit goes on and on.

Musically, it's agreeably straightforward, which I also dig -- who says you have to wow everybody with your multi-world-hyper-sophisticated musicality?  (Vampire Weekend, I'm watching you.)  Sometimes all you need is a cool smart friend to lament your life woes with. Bishop Allen provides that service. I'm so happy they're still here.

My Favorite Albums of 2014

Vanishing Act /
Edward O'Connell

I've been a fan of this guy's work ever since I happened across his 2010 album Our Little Secret. What a pleasure to find this new installment of his trademark wordsmithery and power-pop songcraft. Here's a taste:

I've always been a sucker for laid-back rock waltzes, a particularly apt choice for this regret-soaked song about a relationship that can't live up to its promise. O'Connell can work a metaphor like nobody's business, and he masterfully threads imagery of a magician act throughout -- the blindfold, the smoke and mirrors, a "trick to amaze and astound."  He wraps it all up in the chorus:

The years disappear
But is love hiding near
In a heart where it needs to be found
Let nobody see that we're bound
To burn the ropes, 
Break the chains and then kill the magician 
There's no point in wishing 
For a curtain to pull back 
If our love's a vanishing act.

Let's call the whole thing off, in other words, but he uses his own verbal prestidigitation to soften the blow. 

The thing is, it isn't just clever word play, it's intimately tied to hard-won wisdom about how love can slowly veer off the rails, racking up disappointment after disappointment, souring and curdling until there's nothing left. Yes, O'Connell's voice and singing style bear an eerie resemblance to Elvis Costello, and you know in my book that's a huge plus.  But whereas Costello's early deft word play was sometimes empty cleverness, O'Connell's always reflect some psychological acuity.  Music for Grown-Ups, to the nth degree.

Early Elvis was bitter and sometimes downright mean;  O'Connell instead has a gently weary persona of the sympathetic loser, the good guy who's been unlucky at love.  It's a bit of a magic trick to combine that wittiness with true-hearted yearning, but he masterfully pulls it off, track after track -- and it's immensely satisfying.  Engaging head and heart -- that's not so easy to do.  Kudos, Mr. O'C.

"Save Me" / Aimee Mann

"Pretending" / Michael Penn

And here's the scary thing: These people are married to each other.

Rabbit hole exegesis:  I just wrote about Aimee's version of Harry Nilsson's heartbreaker "One" and somehow that led me to binge-listen to her soul-shivering "Save Me" from the 1999 Paul Thomas Anderson film Magnolia.  Not exactly an upbeat tune, this; in fact, I have it on my iPod in a playlist called "Moody," which is a euphemism for "totally depressive: handle with care."

The title reminds me of Fontella Bass's classic "Rescue Me" -- all appetite and sassy demands -- but "Save Me" is an entirely different sort of song. It's not about physical desire so much as the head games we ladies play with ourselves, way too often. Against that loungy-yet-ominous tempo, it starts oh-so innocuously -- "You look like a perfect fit." But against that downward-loping chord sequence, how swiftly she re-adjusts this, typing herself as "The girl in need of a tourniquet." 

 

And then the chorus cycles in, diving to the crux of the matter. "Can you save me / Come on and /  Save me. / If you could save me / From the ranks / Of the freaks / Who suspect /  They could never love anyone." A-HA! There we are. Raise your hand if you have EVER counted yourself in that not-so-exclusive club. Every time that chorus repeats, I feel tagged.

  

Note that she doesn't say the expected "freaks who suspect they will never be loved." Sure, there are legions of those, too. But those "who will never love anyone"? That's an even sadder and lonelier bunch, trapped between their own inadequacy and their crippling consciousness of it.  And in a later verse, as she references sufragettes ("the long farewell of the hunger strike"), we find ourselves clinging to our split desire to be independent and yet beloved.

 

 As the bridge puts it, "You struck me down / Like radium [Marie Curie alert for us smart girls!] / Like Peter Pan / or Superman / You will come...."   We've all been programmed to believe in heroes who will swoop in and save us.  How hard it is to give up that faith. But here we are, still hoping....

 

And what do I follow it up with on that same playlist?  What else but her husband Michael Penn's equally disturbing "Pretending"?  Hello! We don't even need to change keys between these songs. (What is it that made me re-visit Wikipedia to make sure that these two are still married?  Note that I do not use the phrase "happily married....")

 



From Penn's 2005 album Mr. Hollywood Jr., this winsome track puts the hunt for love into a different context: It's a quest for affirmation that never stops. In halting rhythms he announces: "Let's say that was then / Here we go again /  All our friends are filling the room, / It's like a play / And the words that I'll say are not for you." Even after these two misfits have found each other, the wearying need to affirm each other never stops.

And does it work?  Penn's chorus is sadly pessimistic: "It's on a happy ending / But baby, I'm pretending." He HAS to be honest with her; he's a decent guy, after all. And I sense that he does love here, as much as he is capable of loving anyone. But there's the rub: the only kind of guy she could be happy is also exactly the kind of guy who can't make anyone really happy. He thinks too much, he feels too much, he's unable to live in the moment. And he is brutally honest -- an absolute prerequisite from her standpoint, and yet the fatal flaw in the whole set-up.

The delicate acoustic setting of this song underlies how fragile this state of mind is, a structure of diminished and suspended chords, sung in Penn's sweet yet underemotive tenor. "Baby, I'm pretending / Even though I know better / But I can't refuse 'cause, / Although on a ruse / You've come to me depending,  / Baby, I'm pretending..."  He genuinely wants to be there for her, he knows how much she needs him, but he's hyper-aware of his own weakness.

This song is such a gut punch. He knows she needs him to provide "anything sure that's attached and secure," "a lifeline," "something to show / That I really do know." And -- Lord, he wishes it weren't so -- that's exactly what he cannot provide.

Music for Grown-Ups, indeed. And sometimes I wish I weren't a grown-up.  

Losing You / Randy Newman

"Losing You" / Randy Newman

Flipping around the channels the other night, I chanced upon Austin City Limits. Now, I like this show in theory, but I hardly ever watch it. Still, when I saw Randy Newman's shaggy gray head bent over the keyboard, I stopped flipping.

I've been a Newman fan since 1974 (Northampton, Mass., double bill with Ry Cooder), though not the sort of fan that travels the country and hangs around by the backstage door. (Does Randy Newman even have that kind of fan?) I do love his satiric songs like "Political Science" or "So Long Dad" or "Short People".  (Not so sure that "I Love L.A." was meant as satire, but I love that too.) On vacation in Charleston this year, I kept catching myself singing "Sail Away" -- not just the wistful African slaves' refrain "we will cross the mighty ocean into Charleston Bay," but ironical lines like "Won't have to run through the jungle and scuff up your feet." Embarrassed my family no end.

I also love his songs from the Toy Story movies, 1, 2 and 3 -- "When He Loved Me" gets me every time.  Because alongside the satirist Randy Newman there's the sentimentalist Randy Newman, the yang that keeps the yin in place.

Harps and Angels (2008) is a great album; if you don't know it, you should. Randy doesn't put them out so often anymore -- the one before that, Bad Love, was 1999 -- but when he does, they're pretty near perfect. You laugh, you cry. "A Few Words in Defense of Our Country" is like the companion piece to "Political Science"; "Feels Like Home" is about as sweet a middle-aged love song as you'll ever hear. But the real gem on this album is "Losing You," and watching Randy Newman sing that on ACL the other night, I have to say, I was moved to tears.

 

 

Okay, so the lush string intro sounds like movie theme music. Get over it. Randy Newman had three uncles who wrote music for the movies, including the great Alfred Newman (How to Marry a Millionaire, How the West Was Won, The Greatest Story Ever Told); it comes in the DNA to love a good lush string intro. And that gorgeously poignant musical hook -- well, why not tee it up with a full orchestra?

 

But after that, it's mostly just Randy and the piano. And that's right too, because this is a song about a person struggling to come to grips with his emotions, and naked honesty is what makes it work.

 

Again, we're in middle-aged territory. (Music for Grown-Ups alert!) In verse one he ruminates philosophically about long-ago financial setbacks ("Was a fool with my money / And I lost every dime"); in verse two, it's clear how far behind him those worries are: "I've been cold / I've been hungry / But not for awhile / I guess most of my dreams have come true."

 

He's not a whiner, in other words. He's been through stuff; he's a survivor. But that's what gives extra punch to that stubborn refrain: "But I'll never get over losing you." It's clear that the person he loved was too unique to be replaced, and that  his love was too strong to simply fade away. Notice that he never describes the person one bit; all we know about him/her is how much he/she was loved. But that's all we need to know.

 

And there's a time factor, too, as he develops in the bridge: "When you're young / And there's time / To forget the past / You don't think that you will / But you do." Now, however? "But I know that I don't have time enough / And I'll never get over losing you." That just breaks my heart.

 

The lyrics are a little ambiguous; it's easy to hear this song as a lament for a old girlfriend. When I first heard it, I thought it was like his earlier "I Miss You," a regretful message to an ex-wife. But Randy himself has explained that "Losing You" was inspired by a story he heard from his brother, an oncologist, about a family losing their 20-something son to brain cancer -- that sense that they were too old, too far down life's highway to recover from such a major loss. Not enough time left.

 

Wow. I know how that feels.

 

So even if Randy did jigger the lyrics to make it more widely applicable -- cueing our knee-jerk assumptions that pop songs are about romantic relationships -- the melancholy that animates this song springs from a deeper well.

 

The yearning sweetness of the melody tells us that love is still there; it hasn't curdled to bitterness or ebbed into acceptance. Yet there's a telling numbness to that repeated phrase "I'll never get over losing you." Sure, I know the formula, it's a refrain; got it. But in this particular case, the dogged repetition of this inalienable fact is one of the greatest things about this song. He doesn't embroider it; he can't embroider it. It just is. It just sits there, a dull lump of pain in his heart that's not going anywhere.

 

But he'll be okay. He's not jumping off a building, not screaming into the wind. He's just hurting -- and that's life.

 

Randy Newman? A national treasure, I tell you. A national treasure.

  

My 2013 Top Ten Albums

Greg Trooper -- Incident on Willow Street

"Everything's a Miracle"

Chalk up another winner for Troop.

At first I didn't like the pulp fiction-y cover art (see video below), but the more I listened to this album, the more I realized why it fits: because Greg Trooper is himself a storyteller par excellence.  I mean way more than the hackneyed "country music is all about telling stories" cliché. (And don't let the pedal steel and mandolin and fiddle fool you -- Greg Trooper is more of a folk singer or an indie singer-songwriter than he is your typical country artist.). Most every song on this album could be expanded into a novel.

Trooper is such a perceptive reader of the twists and turns of the human heart, he explores a spectrum of romantic relationships on this album -- but let's put "romantic" in quotes, because these are thorny relationships, lovelorn relationships, mismatched relationships, out-of-sync relationships. In other words, real-world relationships. (Definitely Music for Grown-Ups.)

In the old men-are-from-Mars-women-are-from-Venus battle of the sexes, I'm warning you guys -- Greg Trooper is a double agent. He actually seems to understand how women think; not only that, he likes the way women think. Exhibit A:

"Here I am, here I am alone again" he starts out -- an opener we've certainly heard before, but usually in a tone of woe. Not this guy; he tells us "and that's precisely how I want it to be." Our hero (and I use the term loosely) thinks he's got life all figured out. "Up at the crack of dawn, / Yeah I got so much going on / There's no room for anyone but me." (That's our first clue.) "I'm never late, / I make no one wait / Got a job / I'll do it the best that I can." The short phrases, the strolling tempo, everything tells us he's a satisfied customer.

But Troop is using a technique that we in lit crit call "the unreliable narrator"; don't take what he says at face value. An impatient smug jerk who can't make room in his life for other people is not to be trusted. And sooner or later -- cherchez la femme -- we get to what's really still bugging him. "She was different from me, / A different philosophy / Now I'm free to be the man I'm so sure I am." I love that "I'm so sure" line -- how deftly Trooper sketches this guy's self-centeredness.

I detect an unexamined undertow of yearning, upward chord modulation and all, as he recalls: "We once walked in thunder and lightning / And we once sang a simple harmony / And I said, "Babe oh my child, those are not miracles' / But she said, 'Everything's a miracle to me.'" All of his self-justifying blather simply dissolves with her one gorgeously joy-affirming remark. (Note how the chords resolve, too, when we hit this payoff line.) Given these two opposing outlooks on life, which would you choose?

Verse two, and it's all about him again, the well-oiled machines of his car and his body. He reminds me of Joseph Gordon-Leavitt's character in Don John, reciting like a mantra the things he loves (my body, my ride, my boys, my girls, my porn). "I've got a point of view,," he declares, only grudgingly adding, "Yeah I know she does too." But he's not interested in other people's points of view, is he? And when he says, "We couldn't be more out of sync," that just doesn't fit his well-oiled machine.

Another memory, of a hot summer day in the city, "Till the sun finally set and let us be" (there's that impatience again) -- and once more, he's not buying her delight in this miracle. By this point, forget being annoyed with him, I'm mainly feeling sad for her, to have such a negative boyfriend always bringing her down.

By verse three, this girl blossoms into a vibrant character through his scraps of memory: "She loved holding hands, / She loved certain hard rock bands / She loved that mean old man who lived just across the street." It's a common song device, cataloging random loving details about a lover, but here's the catch -- though we may love these details about her, Trooper's narrator doesn't. (Holding hands? Too much PDA, too much human contact. Incorrect musical taste, kindness to a rude neighbor -- how dare she?) I can't think of many songwriters who can juggle two points of view this skillfully throughout a song.

"I had to cut her loose," he says carelessly, a man who always has to be in the driver's seat (but I have to wonder -- who cut whom loose?) And his reason? "Cause I was feeling seduced / Into thinking this world is full of magic and mystery." Oh, poor baby. What a terrible thing that would be, to think that way.

One last memory, in the plangent second half of verse three: "She once caught the eyes of a stranger / And they smiled as they passed in the street. / I said, 'Babe oh my child, that's not a miracle / But she said, 'Everything's a miracle to me.'" Am I wrong for hoping that that smiling stranger in the street is the man she's with now?  Because in the course of this song, I've become very invested in this woman's happiness -- she deserves so much better than our "hero."  And Greg Trooper knows that; he is so on her side. (And I suspect he's also in the everything's-a-miracle camp.) 

Twelve tracks of storytelling this good?  I'd say that's worth buying...

My Top Ten Albums of 2012
Is this the year of reunions or what?

The dBs: Falling Off the Sky
"The Wonder of Love"

I am frankly amazed that there hasn't been more buzz about this album. Oh, I'm sure there are internet message boards crackling with arguments about it -- after all, it's the dBs' first in 25 years (30 years if you want the original line-up, which of course you do). In the interim the dBs took on a sort of iconic status, much like their power pop progenitors Big Star, as runners-up for the Most Woefully Underappreciated In Their Time award. And die-hard fans who've been waiting for a reunion for 30 years tend to have very strong preconceived notions about what a reunion would sound like. I speak from experience, as a Kinks fan.

But hey, like a lot of Americans I never listened to the dBs before. Don't ask me why -- in 1978-1982 they played the same gritty New York City clubs I was frequenting. (Hell, for all I know I did see them back then, but they never pierced the haze of my brain.) And despite the hectoring of certain regular readers of this blog, I never listened to Peter Holsapple's and Chris Stamey's solo work, either. Mea culpa.

If nothing else, this gives me a unique advantage. I come to this album with fresh, unbiased ears, and I must say, I like what I hear. I love the crunchy guitars, the infectious pop melodies, the psychedelic pulses of organ, the jangly drumming, the rough-cast wall of sound. It sounds more Southern than I expected -- I didn't realize that the dBs all knew each other pre-NYC, down in Winston-Salem NC -- but you know me, I love that bit of twang.

Naturally the album had to lead off with "That Time Is Gone," which kisses off any notion that this reunion will be a mere rehash. But I'm listening more and more to this surprisingly jazzy Holsapple-penned track:

Instead of young-man angst, here's a loose-limbed anthem to relationships that work. Not that it's all smooth going -- "I didn't have to be the one to explain, but time and again I do," he points out, and later he puzzles, "It isn't rocket surgery, it's not as hard as you make it sound." (Love that rocket surgery line, conflating the two cliches, rocket science and brain surgery.)

But the loping rhythms of this song suggest that he's rolling with the punches, willing to accommodate when necessary. The line he keeps returning to is the heart of it all: "I only try to show the wonder of love, oooh, the wonder of love." Even that refrain is mutable, varying, willing to syncopate and change lyrics from verse to verse. Whatever fits.

He's like a preacher without a pulpit, standing on a street corner, cheerfully promoting his gospel. Organ and horns conspire to add some jazzier elements, but at heart it's just a good-old-boy ramble. You can almost see him scratch his head, puzzling, "Sometimes I wonder if the wonder of love is ever enough, is always too much / And then I figure that it all levels out, / Homeostasis, soft to the touch." (Enter this song in the dictionary of Odd Words to Use In a Rock Song.) You'd never get that sort of philosophical shrug from a band of youngsters.  It's Music for Grown-Ups, which doesn't mean it still doesn't rock.

Think about the bloated latter-day R.E.M. -- another Southern band born of this same era -- trying to keep it going past their sell-by date, finally calling it quits. Maybe it was a good thing that the dBs broke up so early, before they could be trapped in their own fame. Getting back together so many years down the road  seems like a joyful and natural thing, judging from the copasetic energy of Falling Off the Sky.

I love reunions that work.

THURSDAY REDUX

There are two artists in my archives who regularly reduce me to tears:  Joe Jackson and Ben Folds. I don't know why that is, although the fact that both are stellar pianists may have something to do with it.   I've had Ben mightily on my mind recently, having just received his new retrospective box set, The Best Imitation of Myself (Jesus, this guy is good.)  But for some reason it was this already-covered Joe Jackson song that dominated my brain today.  Who knows why -- like the Wizard of Oz, I don't know how it works.

Friday, August 10, 2007

Blue Flame / Joe Jackson

Volume 4 is such a superb album. I’m not just talking musically, though it's an exquisite fusion of rock and jazz and Latin music and cabaret and everything else. But what really takes my breath away is how Joe Jackson's songwriting has matured – those melancholy melodies, the poetic imagery of the lyrics, the psychological depth of the storytelling. Music for grown-ups, again -- and you know how I love that.

I realize I’ve already worked over “Awkward Age” and “Love At First Light”; now add “Blue Flame” to the list of songs from this 2003 album that completely wrench my heart.

He wastes no time, but plunges right in, mid-conversation: “I’ve got some walls around me too / But they’re not much, compared to your house / Fifty feet high, with barbed wire / Guards on the top, aiming rifles at your lovers one by one / And friends too.” Don’t you just know people like that? And the way that melody meanders in and out of minor keys, piano chords hanging unresolved, the drumbeat clicking along – it’s so wistful, so sorrowful, you have to take it seriously.  Maybe this is the secret of Joe Jackson's emotional power: those risk-taking melodies, leaping all over the keyboard.  Who can resist?

“I’ve come with hands above my head,” he declares, carrying on the metaphor, but he’s honest about his own hang-ups: “But I’m damned if I’ll try to break your door down / If you ever come out, just call me / I’ll still be armed with the memory of one evening when you smiled / At something.” It’s so little to go on, but at a certain point in our lives we realize that may be all there is. Taking a risk gets so damn hard – but NOT taking the risk, that’s death.

Yes, this hoped-for lover is a hard case – “You tell me women get you down / And as for men, well they’re all bastards / I wonder what world you call home,” he mutters, shaking his head. Later, he can’t resist an edgy snipe: “Yes, it was nice to see you too / Although I’m never sure you mean it.” Yes, he can see  his would-be lover’s faults, perfectly clearly. Leading into the second chorus, he’s talking as much to himself as to his lover when he remarks, “Bitterness is a black hole.” But somebody has to bend.

So why is this lover worth pursuing? In the chorus, he shifts gears to confess that there is another side: “There’s a blue flame inside of you, so beautiful and rare / Love’s not something we decide to do / You’d be so hard to love / If love was not just . . . there.” There's the heartbreaking nub of it.  Of course; they're already entangled, more than either of them can afford to admit. Who ever said love was easy?

And we have NO idea how this affair will turn out. If a happy ending is what you’re hanging around for, prepare to be disappointed. The romantic and the realist in Joe Jackson are always locked in their hopeless dance; neither one will ever win. That’s the world according to Joe Jackson . . . and it pierces my heart, every time.

"Someone Told Me" / Marshall Crenshaw

Three reasons to do a Marshall Crenshaw post:

1.  I saw him perform last Friday night at the City Winery.

2.  Earlier in the afternoon, I had an interview with him at a record store in Greenwich Village.  (Here's the link to the Blogcritics article.)

3.  It's his birthday next Friday!  (Happy birthday, Marshall!!!) 

Of course, I don't really need a reason to write about Marshall Crenshaw.  He's right up there in my Gang of Guys, the half-dozen musicians whose records mean the most to me. Like all my guys, he's had a few hits over the years, but the deeper you go into the catalog, the freaking better his stuff gets.  While most listeners identify Marshall with infectious jukebox tunes like "Some Day, Some Way" and "Something's Gonna Happen," the songs I love the most are the darker, more complex, jazzier numbers from his more recent albums.  If you haven't heard these, then you owe it to yourself (being the sort of discriminating listener I know you are) to hustle right over to wherever you buy your music and start sampling his wares. 

"Someone Told Me" is as good an example as any. On my very first listen to MC's astonishingly wonderful 2009 album Jaggedland, this track -- the third on the album -- immediately sent a shiver up my spine; when he sang this last Friday, chills went up my spine all over again. Forget the knee-jerk classification of Crenshaw as "power pop" -- here's a song with edgy syncopation, downward plunging chord progressions, and premonitory key shifts, way too moody and complex for simple pop.  And the lyrics build on that haunting melody, offering almost existential musings on the unbridgeable distance between human beings. "Musings" is too mild a word for it, though -- there's an undercurrent of frustration, impatience, and rage running through it, intensified by the eccentric melodic intervals and restless, jumpy rhythms.

This song simply smolders with suppressed anger, a thinking person's reaction to a world that is still baffling, still unfair, still wrong.  With age comes some wisdom -- you don't just flip out anymore when you encounter opposition. Could be a Tea Party loudmouth, could be your stubbornly independent spouse, could be some random driver who cut you off in traffic; could even be (ahem) a dumb-ass heckler at a concert -- alas, the world is full of people who can make you blow your top. The point is, you don't stop getting incensed by things like that, even though you're supposed to be all mature and reasonable. So you go off pondering the imponderables, about gaps in human connections -- "Will we ever meet on common ground?" -- but the rage still boils beneath the surface.  You just know it does, right?  Yet I don't think I've ever heard it expressed before in a rock song.

This is Music For Grown-Ups, folks; even better, it's Music For Thinking Grown-Ups.  And I'm here to tell you that there's just not a whole lot of that kind of stuff around -- better grab it whenever you can find it.

  

Though this is not usually something I get hung up on, perhaps I ought to add how amazing Marshall's guitar playing has become over the years -- I was completely mesmerized, watching him play the other night, even on songs I've known for nigh-on thirty years.  Okay, okay, 29 years.  But that 30th anniversary is coming up next spring, folks, and -- here's a scoop -- City Winery is planning to celebrate by giving Marshall a well-deserved couple nights' stand.  I am so there.

"Love At First Sight" / John Mellencamp

I had a Sirius Senior Moment today -- when this song came on, I was so riveted, so lost in the music, I had no idea where I was or what I was doing. (Lucky I didn't crash the car.) It's been a while since I've heard any new John Mellencamp material, and the rootsy simplicity of this one took me by surprise.

It reminded me of an argument I'd been having with a fellow music fan, who insisted that Bruce Springsteen deserved my attention because he sometimes performs folky acoustic numbers. No, I insisted, it's not the arena rock anthems I object to with Springsteen -- it's his lack of wit or irony. (And you can have wit in an arena rock anthem -- look at Queen.) And now comes John Mellencamp to show up the Boss, with a song that's both stripped-down AND funny.

It's time to forgive Mellencamp the Chevy ads, forgive him for Farm Aid (why shouldn't a small-town Hoosier support American farmers?), and yes, even forgive him for letting his early managers convince him to perform as Johnny Cougar. (The same managers did have the sense to book him as an opening act for the Kinks.) With a refreshing lack of pretension or hype, Mellencamp has gone on making solid mid-American rock for many years now, music that plays to the heart of the country. And I'm just enough of an expatriate Hoosier to dig it.

I've just ordered his new album, No Better Than This, and from the preview samples I suspect I'm going to love it. Sounds like it's pretty much all acoustic, and recorded (in mono, no less!) at iconic places like Sun Studios in Memphis -- how's that for going back to basics? If the songwriting is as good as this throughout, then I think Johnny M's got hisself a career-capping masterpiece.



How many rock songs have gushed about "love at first sight"? It's a universal teenage emotion, and therefore practically the founding conceit of all pop music. But now listen to how Johnny turns it on its head.

The songwriting structure couldn't be simpler -- the first three lines of every verse start with "let's suppose," working through a relationship from that very first besotted glance. In the course of it, they kiss, make love in the back of a car, get engaged, get married -- "like two turtledoves," he casually describes them. They're adorable, like Mellencamp's hometown Romeo and Juliet from his early classic, "Jack and Diane." But hold on, he's just getting started.

In the second section, his raspy voice and laidback strumming don't change, but nagging doubts begin to surface about that iffy "suppose." "Let's suppose our dreams came true, just like they're 'sposed to do" -- well, as we all know, there's no ironclad guarantee. (I think of Nick Lowe's woefully funny "Where's My Everything?" demanding the standard wife, house, and kids that society has promised him.)

And in the third section things fall apart, as things often do. They have kids, they fight, they get bored, they have money troubles, they cheat, they storm out of the house. "Let's suppose you found another man / And hit me in the head with a frying pan" -- I love that absurd cartoon image, like Olive Oyl beaning Popeye. (See him swaying on his feet, eyes crossed; hear the tweeting bird sound effects.) It's true comic relief, allowing us to laugh instead of crying at the everyday domestic tragedy.

I can just picture John's wicked grin, rocking back on his stool, as he wraps up the fourth section, deciding that they should just shake hands and be friends -- save themselves all those years of grief and turmoil. He's no teenager, that's for sure; he's a guy who's been around the block a time or two, and he knows whereof he speaks. The dogged repetition of phrases and melody hammers home life's weary lessons. It only takes less than five minutes to click through all the possible heartbreaks, like changing channels with his remote control. He plays them all out in his imagination, and then decides it's not worth the effort. For once, wisdom triumphs over hormones.

Like the worn denim of broken-in work jeans, the solo acoustic arrangement is just right for this song. It's no teenage pop confection, no angry young man's howl of protest -- this is music for grown-ups. So let's get real -- life sucks, and love dies. You can cry about it, or you can laugh. Me, I'm going with the laughter.

THE FIRST ANNUAL GRAHAM PARKER MARATHON

"You Can't Take Love for Granted" / Graham Parker

Okay, so maybe I won't have a Graham Parker marathon every year. But judging from how hard it's been to pick one song to write about today, this blog could do with a great deal more Graham Parker. So let's get started!

Only a couple of weeks ago, I was as guilty as anybody of thinking that Squeezing Out Sparks was Graham Parker's best album. Now I know better: it wasn't his best album, it was just his best-seller. And as a card-carrying Kinkster, I understand completely the frustration of hardcore fans who know that their favorite artist's best work is virtually unknown by the mass music-listening public. So I'm determined to save you good readers from this same mistake -- I'm focusing only on the post-Squeezing Out Sparks catalog, which is where Graham Parker really gets good.



So let's touch down in 1983, with The Real Macaw, Graham's second Rumour-less album, though his old guitarist Brinsley Schwarz was already back on board. If you can overlook a few 80s touches in the arrangement -- the echoey lead vocals, little spangly accents of synths -- this minor-key samba is simply stunning.

I'm beginning to discover that Graham Parker is so much better on relationships than most of his New Wave peers, with the possible exception of Joe Jackson. As he reels off example after example of bad date moves, it's an uncanny description of every subpar romance I've ever tried to nurse into life. Ladies, raise your hands if any of these scenarios are familiar:

Took her to a party and danced with the host
Took her to a restaurant and treated her like a ghost
Took her to a movie and looked at another screen
Paid for entertainment she'd already seen

I love how he repeats the melodic phrase over and over, each line picking its doomed way downward. The lyrics are so sharp, so articulate, they'd be worthy of Bob Dylan, except that here they're paired with a hauntingly beautiful melody and sung with soulful grace. (Did I mention how beautiful Parker's voice is on this record?) And the next verse leads us into even more painful territory:

Demonstrated passion in a grip hard to shake
Took up every fashion till everything went fake
Pulled a coat over her shoulder, cracked a joke over and over
Watch the rain turn the night colder, stared into the headlight beam

There's something flawed about this affair -- and the amazing thing is, he knows it too. This song dances on the edge between your old-fashioned advice song (like the Beatles' "She Loves You") and the sort of rock confessional that Chris Difford and Glenn Tillbrook had been honing in their band Squeeze (whose drummer Gilson Lavis plays on this LP). The two halves of each line work almost like a soul song's call-and-response -- as if Parker takes a good hard look at his own behavior, then gives himself advice.

In the refrain, he ruefully scolds himself, "But you can't take love for granted, underneath another skin / Can't take love for granted, up behind another grin." That old split personality -- how well we know it. Not coincidentally, this album came out around the time of Parker's marriage; it's no surprise that fine-tuning relationships would have been on his mind. What a novel concept for rock 'n' roll, this idea that you have to work at a relationship to try to make it last. Music for grown-ups!

It's a pity that the "angry young man" tag was stuck onto Graham Parker -- "passionate young man" would be more like it. Yes, there's feistiness and frustration there, and an occasional howl of rage, but the yearning romantic is never far from the surface. He's a lover AND a fighter - what a knockout combination.

"Over My Head" / Ray Davies

Kinks Month isn't over -- not quite yet. I know that Phobia was the last album by the Kinks, but Ray Davies is still working. And if you don't know Ray's solo output, oh, man, you should.

Back in the summer of 2005, I was cleaning up the kitchen after dinner one night, half-watching the little black-and-white TV on a shelf over the kitchen table. I wasn't even looking at the screen -- scrubbing a saucepan, maybe, or sweeping the floor -- but when the first strains of this song came on, I whirled around. My heart leapt. I knew it was Ray, of course -- who else sings like that? -- but I didn't know the song. Could that mean that the Kinks were still around?

Sadly, no, I soon learned as this documentary, The World Through My Window, continued. This program (or "programme," made for British TV) shows Ray recording his new solo album, Other People's Lives -- amazingly, his first solo studio album since the Kinks had dissolved in 1995. Several Kinks classics were played, naturally -- "Days," "See My Friends," "Waterloo Sunset," "Dead End Street" -- but it was the new songs that dazzled me. The minute the show finished, I ran to my computer and used my then-rudimentary Google skills to find out what Ray Davies was up to. Which led me to the Ray Davies Official Forum, and jimmied open the lock that had kept this fangirl too quiet for too long.

For many reasons, Other People's Lives was a Major Life Album for me. I've never felt so transported at any concert as when I stood pressed against a stage watching Ray and guitarist Mark Johns perform The Getaway (Lonesome Train) -- on numerous occasions, I'm glad to say. But listening to this album again today, I realized that it was "Over My Head" that first grabbed me, that first listen on that fateful TV show.



Listen to Ray's vocals, so ragged and world-weary -- as befits an album that's mostly about staring down mortality and his own human frailty. But oh, Mr. Davies has no intention of going gentle into that good night; he kicks back with crunchy guitars, whomping drums, and a hip-shifting funk-infused rhythm that needs no Viagra.

"Wakin' up, / Feeling rough / Totally stressed," he begins, intimately, in a hungover growl. He proceeds with short, unrhymed lines ("Every day is a day at a time / Step by step" -- dig that sly AA allusion), as if he's just setting his feet on the floor, taking stock. His diagnosis? He's definitely battered, shattered, worse for wear: "Hit a wall, took a fall /To a new depth." (An echo of the album's second track, the soul-scouring "After the Fall.") But like a true survivor, he has tools for patching himself up: "Count to ten, / Focus then / Take a deep breath."

The second part of the verse becomes more legato and finally begins to find rhymes, as he steadies his head. He bleakly assesses the world around him -- a world he's learned to cope with, he admits, by merely smiling and pretending. We've seen this Ray Davies before, the guy who just wants to drift away to his island in the sun.

But as he swings into the chorus -- climbing into a higher register and a major key -- for the first time his escapist technique actually seems to work. "I'm a million miles away from it all / And let it go right over my head / Let 'em chase and the winner take all / And let it go right over my head." Can it be? Ray Davies, achieving Zen calm at last?

Well, not entirely. The chorus dissolves back into minor key, sadly repeating the phrase "Over my head," with a tremulous little glissando. He knows he can't check out so completely; it doesn't solve anything. In the ensuing verses, he's still barraged by the people around him, still distressed by the defection of his lover ("Didn't know you were close to breaking / So you thought it should end / Left it all for a new location / So you could start up again"). In the second chorus, he admits that he's only buying time -- "Right now I want some peace of mind / So let it go right over my head." By the final verse, he's crawling back into bed, pulling the sheets over his head.

At six-minutes-plus, I suppose this song goes on too long -- later verses become a mash-up of the earlier ones, as the sonic tangle grows denser and denser. But I dunno, as I get lost in it, I don't recall ever wishing it would end sooner. You know me, I'm a great fan of the underproduced three-minute pop song -- yet I sink wistfully into this build-up of "Over My Head." It's like wading through a beautiful but gloomy swamp (the New Orleans vibe is pervasive on this album, even though most of it was recorded in London). I keep hearing new things, little curls of guitar, splashes of honky-tonk piano, ghostly extra vocals that could be Ray or could be someone else. . .

What a joy is it to have to grapple with a song like this. What a joy it is to hear a middle-aged musician NOT trying to imitate his younger hit-making self, NOT acting like he's still a randy 19-year-old. Discovering Ray Davies after all these years, I was thrilled to discover that he was writing Music For Grown-Ups -- and that's something we grown-up rock fans need desperately.

Thanks again, Ray. And again, and again, and again...

"All Through Throwing Good Love After Bad" / Guy Clark

Apparently Jerry Jeff Walker did the "big" recording of this song, a version that's all twanged up and countrified. I hope it made him a ton of money, I honestly do. But the version I know and love is Guy Clark's (you'll find it on his 1988 album Old Friends) -- he's the one who wrote it, after all -- and I just hope he got a decent chunk of those royalties as well. Clark's the kind of songwriter that Nashville feeds on like a vampire; Jerry Jeff alone got two other hits out of Clark songs, "L.A. Freeway" and "Desperadoes Waiting For A Train," and Johnny Cash, Ricky Skaggs, Vince Gill , and George Strait all did well with Clark songs, while Guy's own albums languished in obscurity. It just doesn't seem fair.

But then, I don't listen to much country music -- what do I know? Guy Clark's albums could just as easily be labeled "folk"; it's no surprise to me that he used to hang out with Townes Van Zandt, another artist whose work got lost between labels. Although Guy Clark's down-to-earth outlook is totally West Texas, the songs themselves are perfectly chiseled gems, every word shrewdly weighed, each verse dovetailed into the next, so that the end effect seems effortlessly simple and honest. That's one of the hardest tricks for a songwriter to pull off -- and yet when you do it, nobody notices.




The light acoustic touch Guy gives this track is so much fitting than Jerry Jeff's. It's about the relief of finally being happy in love; it should simply flow. "There was a time I was feeling so hopeless, " he starts out, reflectively, "it's a wonder I didn't cave in / Kept throwing love at all the wrong people / Never to see it again." We've all been there, haven't we? Or at least it feels like it. But the rhythm taps along happily enough; he's not tangled up in angst anymore -- because things have changed: "Oh, Lord, won't you look what I've found? / Staring me right in the face / Yeah I'm through being lonely, I'm through being sad / I'm all through throwing good love after bad." He's stumbled upon the real thing at last, and he's still amazed at his own good luck.

It's a very specific little slice of emotional reality Clark carves out here; he never even describes the woman he's fallen for, or gushes about his happiness. No, he's just marveling at the difference it makes in his life: "Now I think of all the time I have wasted / Wearing my heart on my sleeve / Trusting my love to the kindness of strangers, / Oh, I was so naive." Those wounds are still too fresh to be forgotten completely.

Sure, cliched phrases dance in and out -- that's inevitable, if you're trying to write in the language real people speak -- but the big cliches, the trite emotions and hoary concepts, are nowhere to be seen. I don't think I've ever heard another song that about this very specific aspect of falling in love -- but now that Guy's sketched it out, I get it completely.

This isn't the way a teenager views love; teenagers think the whole world is new and love is eternal. Most of your classic pop music clings to that adolescent perspective. But here's Guy Clark, singing with his weathered, slightly creaky voice, strumming his guitar and scratching his head at how simple genuine love can be. He's a guy who's been through some stuff; he knows the exquisite value of Not Hurting Anymore. Music for grown-ups. If that's country, then count me in as a country fan.

“Blue Flame” / Joe Jackson

Volume 4 is such a superb album, it justifies all the bends in the road that brought Joe Jackson here. I’m not just talking musically, though it's an exquisite fusion of rock and jazz and Latin music and cabaret and everything else. But what really takes my breath away is how his songwriting has matured – those melancholy melodies, the poetic imagery of the lyrics, the psychological depth of the storytelling. Music for grown-ups, again -- and you know how I love that.

I realize I’ve already worked over “Awkward Age” and “Love At First Light”; now add “Blue Flame” to the list of songs from this 2003 album that completely wrench my heart.

It wastes no time, but plunges right in, mid-conversation: “I’ve got some walls around me too / But they’re not much, compared to your house / Fifty feet high, with barbed wire / Guards on the top, aiming rifles at your lovers one by one / And friends too.” Don’t you just know people like that? And the way that melody meanders in and out of minor keys, piano chords hanging unresolved, the drumbeat clicking along like a ticking clock – it’s so wistful, so sorrowful, you have to take it seriously.

“I’ve come with hands above my head,” he declares, carrying on the metaphor, but he’s brutally honest about his own hang-ups: “But I’m damned if I’ll try to break your door down / If you ever come out, just call me / I’ll still be armed with the memory of one evening when you smiled / At something.” It’s so little to go on, but at a certain point in our lives we realize that may be all there is. Taking a risk gets so damn hard – but NOT taking the risk, that’s death.

Yes, this hoped-for lover is a hard case – “You tell me women get you down / And as for men, well they’re all bastards / I wonder what world you call home,” he mutters, shaking his head. Later, he can’t resist an edgy snipe: “Yes, it was nice to see you too / Although I’m never sure you mean it.” Yes, he can see perfectly clearly his would-be lover’s faults. Leading into the second chorus, he’s talking as much to himself as to his lover when he remarks, “Bitterness is a black hole.” But somebody has to bend.

So why is this lover worth pursuing? He lays it bare in the chorus: “There’s a blue flame inside of you, so beautiful and rare / Love’s not something we decide to do / You’d be so hard to love / If love was not just . . . there.” Of course; they're already entangled, more than either of them can afford to admit. Who ever said love was easy?

Here’s the kicker – we have NO idea how this affair will turn out. If a happy ending is what you’re hanging around for, prepare to be disappointed. The romantic and the realist in Joe Jackson are always locked in their hopeless dance; neither one will ever win. That’s the world according to Joe Jackson . . . and I for one can’t get enough of it.

"Steppin' Out" / Joe Jackson

Night and Day was the first Joe Jackson album I fell in love with, and I mean IN LOVE -- I played it night and day, indeed. The Cole Porter reference in the title always seemed particularly appropriate; there's a certain champagne-cocktail sophistication here that was new for a Joe Jackson album. I had just moved to New York and I loved the downtown elegance of this record, a quirky thing in 1982 when all the other New Wave types were going for downtown grit and squalor. Yes, it does have that techno-synth pulsing like traffic in the rhythm track -- a very 80s touch -- but it feels totally different here; it just makes the tone sparkle even more. And that vibraphone chattering away, like street lights glinting off chrome taxi bumpers -- perfect.

Joe Jackson must have absolutely huge hands; these are big chords he's playing here, pounding out octave spans in rapid-fire succession. All those key shifts make me think of a car shifting gears, or perhaps the way a synchronized series of traffic lights down the avenues change color in tandem (the electric piano makes this even more metallic and glittery). It gives this song a sweep and majesty that's truly thrilling.

Playing against all of this comes the tender poetry of these lyrics: "Now -- the mist across the window hides the lines / But nothing hides the colour of the lights that shine / Electricity so fine / Look and dry your eyes." So there's been a fight, or some sort of upset, and this whole foray is meant to cheer her up -- how sweet. He coaxes her gently, "We, so tired of all the darkness in our lives / With no more angry words to say, can come alive, / Get into a car and drive / To the other side." Will they really get to the other side just by driving? Maybe not, but the way those chords keep fighting upward makes me root for them (for us) with all my heart.

"We are young but getting old before our time," he admits, and I love that rueful line, that world-weary note which makes the retro feel of this album so perfect. "We'll leave the TV and the radio behind / Don't you wonder what we'll find / Steppin' out tonight?" It's an adventure, and old as they feel, they CAN be young again: "You can dress in pink and blue just like a child / And in a yellow taxi turn to me and smile/ We'll be there in just a while / If you follow me." I think of John Hiatt's "Have A Little Faith In Me," which holds out its hand with the same sort of determined we-can-make-it trust. It's a transforming, life-affirming song with no false promises.

The chorus, with its soaring short phrases, says it all: "Me babe / Steppin' out / Into the night / Into the light / You babe / Steppin' out / Into the night / Into the light." Two people, heading into darkness, staking everything on finding something brighter and better.

In 1982 I wasn't much of a grown-up yet myself, but I could tell this was music for grown-ups -- I could tell it was a song I would never outgrow. Twenty-five years later, it sounds as fresh and modern as it did the day it was recorded. I knew then that Joe Jackson was the real deal . . . and that I'd just have to wait and see how he'd surprise me next.

"Property" / The Kinks

Okay, all you Kinkaholics -- and apparently there are several of you out there -- another Ray song's gotten stuck in my head. This one's from State of Confusion again, but it's a whole 'nother thang. In "State of Confusion," the narrator whines that his girlfriend's moved out because the video machine broke, and you've gotta laugh. There is NO LAUGHING in "Property."

Rock music is full of break-up songs, but this is a rarer thing, a break-up song for grown-ups.

 

We get the characters' whole history in one sliver of time, one watershed scene, flavored with a mixed cocktail of emotions -- sorrow, acceptance, regret, and, oh yes, relief. The protagonist stands awkwardly in the vestibule, bags packed, sharply aware of all he's feeling, like an out-of-body experience: "When I think of what I'll be losing / It's hard to move along / But it's harder just to stay here / Knowing that I don't belong." I picture him taking a farewell glance at the mantelpiece, where he spots the framed photographs and a clutter of holiday souvenirs -- and he almost loses it. That's a nice realistic touch; that's the sort of thing that does trip you up, when you least expect it.

But what really gets me here -- the truly brilliant effect -- is how Ray describes those objects, with the lovers' fate foreshadowed in every one: "You take the photographs, the ones of you and me / When we both posed and laughed to please the family. / Nobody noticed then we wanted to be free / And now there's no more love, it's just the property." (Remember the Kinks song "Picture Book"? Ray Davies has always been skeptical of snapshots.) "And all the little gifts we thought we'd throw away / The useless souvenirs bought on a holiday. / We put them on a shelf, now they're collecting dust. / We never needed them, but they outlasted us." That rhyme, "dust" and "us," cuts right to the heart.

Then comes a final flicker of regret, Ray's voice straining anxiously upward: "Started off with nothing, started off just you and me " --but he's knows there's no going back. "Now that it's all over, you can keep the property," he concludes. And he's out the door. Slam. Finis.

Of course, a song isn't just words, but I can't imagine these lyrics set more perfectly. It's a midtempo track, with a simple unwavering drumbeat like a ticking clock (because time's running out). The guitar strums dully, the keyboards add an electronic sigh of regret. Both the verses and the chorus repeat the same melodic line over and over, as if the singer's too numb to come up with anything new. It's bouncy, but it's also a circular sequence of notes that makes him sounds trapped. Sure, in the bridge the melody does arc upward, but at the end of every line it sinks into a minor chord, as if whelmed by despair. At the end, things get synth-y (hey, it was 1983) but it works: dehumanized back-up vocals chant "property" like a cruel taunt, echoed by a creepy talking guitar.

This guy's got to leave; he knows it, she knows it. They've talked it to death. But that doesn't mean it doesn't hurt, and somehow I feel that this is a lot more naked and personal than the usual Ray Davies song. Biographical or not, it aches with real feeling. On a day when you just feel like being sad, I can recommend it highly.