April '12 reviews

The following reviews ran in the K-W Record and Guelph Mercury this month.

Willis Earl Beal - Acousmatic Sorcery (XL) 

Two years ago, Willis Earl Beal was spending lonely nights in Alberquerque, New Mexico, riding his bicycle around town with a CD Walkman, listening to Bob Dylan, Tom Waits, Jandek and Cat Power, falling in love with the nuances of their music. Though he had no musical training, he started recording his own songs on primitive home equipment—often employing pots and pans as percussion—and postered the town, advertising his wares. One thing led to another, and now the formerly homeless musician is releasing his debut album—a compilation of tracks he recorded between 2007 and 2010—on the same label as Radiohead and Adele.

Beal’s music is, predictably, primitive. It’s also charming. He has a rich, powerful, soulful voice—unlike most lo-fi bedroom geeks—that powers songs like the plaintive ballad “Monotony” or the bluesy, fierce field holler “Take Me Away.” His guitar playing is negligible; it’s simply another sound source—along with what sounds like a distorted kalimba, various toys and unidentifiable stringed instruments—over which his compelling vocals, which are alternately fragile and confident, can soar. Attempts at rapping don’t always work; Beal is less interested in flow than in getting a lot of random phrases off his chest, but he gives it his all.

There’s definitely an element of outsider art: anyone captivated by Moondog, the street musician and serious composer who dressed like a Viking on New York City streets in the ’50s, or by Daniel Johnston, the diagnosed schizophrenic songwriter who writes heartbreaking pop songs, will find plenty to love here.

The appeal of Acousmatic Sorcery isn’t just Beal’s particular back story, no matter how interesting that may be. It’s the incongruous sound of someone who seems like an old soul who is only beginning to discover his own talents, of someone with rich life experience learning how to channel that artistically using whatever means necessary, of a lonesome heart searching for connection through creativity. He found it. (April 19)

Willis Earl Beal plays the Drake in Toronto on Monday, April 30.

Download: “Take Me Away,” “Evening’s Kiss,” “Ghost Robot”

Measha Brueggergosman – I’ve Got a Crush on You (Kelp)

Canada’s only opera celebrity (sorry, Ben Heppner) can be seen on weekly television judging Canada’s Got Talent; she’s also a go-to person for CBC panels, gala shows and as a Juno Award presenter. But if Canada knows her face (and her amazing hair), they’re not likely to have actually heard her voice—Canucks aren’t known for flocking to the opera. And so here is Measha Brueggergosman’s debut pop album, recorded live in front of audiences in Halifax and her hometown of Fredericton, with a band led by Aaron Davis (Holly Cole Trio) and a repertoire spanning spirituals, Cole Porter classics, Maritime country ballads and a song as recent as Feist’s “Cicadas and Gulls” (from her album Metals, which was released mere months ago).

Predictably, the results are a mixed bag—and sometimes downright bizarre. An opera singer doing a reggae version of Gershwin’s “Embraceable You”? It’s as bad an idea as it seems, which even Brueggergosman jokes about while ad libbing in the middle of it: “You know I wouldn’t be doing this if I was white!” On the other hand, she brings both operatic skill and earthy soul to P.E.I. songwriter Lennie Gallant’s “Tonight I Drive You Home,” an uncomfortable song in which the narrator stalks the drunk driver who killed her child, and gives him a lift home from the bar. She also duets with Gallant on the traditional Acadian song “Partons La Mer Est Belle,” putting her operatic rolled R’s to full effect on the rollicking tune.

Another duet, with fellow Fredericton native David Myles, is also the album’s only original song—and it’s one of the few tracks here where Brueggergosman doesn’t sound like she’s a circle in a square peg. The less said about the minor-key interpolation of Ron Sexsmith’s “Secret Heart” or the over-the-top version of Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now,” the better.

Genre leaps aren’t easy to pull off—especially so many at once on your first time out, no matter who you are. (April 19)

Download: “Tonight I Drive You Home,” “Whole to My Half,” “Partons La Mer Est Belle”

Dr. John – Locked Down (Nonesuch)

Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys was born in 1979, just more than a decade after Dr. John’s debut album, Gris Gris, a classic slice of psychedelic New Orleans voodoo weirdness. It’s safe to say that most people who weren’t around in 1968 only know Dr. John as a New Orleans institution who shows up in The Band’s Last Waltz movie and at any event celebrating his hometown’s musical heritage.

Which is why Locked Down, produced by Auerbach, is being hailed as a return to the psychedelic quartet of albums that kicked off Dr. John’s career before he dropped “the Night Tripper” part of his name and started scoring sunny AM radio hits like “Such a Night.” It’s not, if only because it’s hard to top the trippy outré meanderings of those albums. It does retain that sense of mystery and atmosphere, anchoring it to steady funk rhythms. But more importantly, Locked Down is an astounding record that is miles ahead of anything Dr. John—or for that matter, today’s stadium rock star Auerbach—has been involved with in a very long time.

Locked Down is, as can be expected, rooted in syncopated, stuttering New Orleans funk rhythms; drummer Max Weissenfeldt (Heliocentrics) almost steals this entire show. What is not expected is that Dr. John avoids his trademark piano stylings entirely; instead, Auerbach puts him in front of various organs and vintage electric pianos, which immediately alters the sonic atmosphere. Behind him are bold, bottom-heavy horn sections, jazzy bass, gospel backing vocals and African percussion—and of course, Auerbach’s own guitar. He stays largely in the background, but when he does clear space for a guitar solo, he channels everything he has into concise, lyrical passages that speak volumes with few notes. With every production choice Auerbach makes here, the man is nothing if not tasteful.

As for Dr. John himself? He sounds as sly as he ever has. If he’s either bemused or invigorated by the youngsters willing to indulge his weird side, he’s not letting on—he’s the same character he’s been since day one. He’s certainly not phoning it in, and with all songs credited to the entire studio band, he’s happy to be a team player: both sides bring out the best in each other.

Every year some geezer teams up with a young hotshot and attempts to make a comeback record. Few succeed. This one soars. (April 26)

Download: “Locked Down,” “Getaway,” “Big Shot”

Druckfarben – s/t (independent)

Prog rock may well be the last uncool genre of music. Sure, acts like Battles, Dungen and Deerhoof have given virtuosity and technical triumphs a new, cool, edge, but barely anyone dares to dip back into the ’70s back catalogue of Gentle Giant or Emerson, Lake and Palmer. (Outside of people who know who Porcupine Tree is, the only popular example that comes to mind is the Decemberists’ Hazards of Love, easily the least loved album by that beloved band.)

Toronto’s Druckfarben couldn’t care less. Their timewarp of a debut album sounds like it was made before Trevor Horn produced a Yes album, before the death of the bass solo, before Rush started writing pop songs. For that alone, this is one ballsy band. Druckfarben’s members have day jobs as part of Classic Albums Live, where they tour theatres across North America playing complete albums by Led Zeppelin, the Beatles, Pink Floyd, etc. They met while performing two Yes albums (Close to the Edge and The Yes Album)—not one of Classic Albums Live’s more commercially successful performances, but their chemistry inspired them to strike out with original material. This is first and foremost a labour of love.

The players are exceptional: the shredding guitars, the jazzy drums, the stabbing Hammond organ, the operatic vocal chops, the unexpected acoustic ballad “Nonchalant.” And yet despite that proliferation of talent, Druckfarben are shockingly tasteful: even the noodly guitar parts are inserted as intrinsic parts of the arrangement, not just an excuse to wank. If this is your thing, it’s really your thing. Druckfarben is the brave band that redefines retro for a grossly underserved niche audience. (April 12)

Download: “Dead Play Awake,” “Nonchalant,” “Influenza”

Melanie Fiona - The MF Life (Universal)

Most Canadians hadn’t heard of Melanie Fiona before she won a Grammy last month; indeed, many Canadians still haven’t heard of this Toronto singer. But in her not-so-secret life, she’s been signed to a record deal by the man who discovered the Wu-Tang Clan, was once in a band with Drake, is signed to Jay-Z’s management company, opened for Kanye West in Europe, wrote songs for Rihanna, and duetted with Cee-Lo Green, John Legend and the Roots. Now her second album is packed with future hits ready to introduce her to the rest of the world.

Most new artists stumble on one sound and are told to stick with it; Fiona clearly didn’t get that memo from her label execs. The MF Life is the sound of an artist who obviously shares a deep love for both her parents’ R&B record collection as well as her own contemporaries; for every bluesy vamp like “Bones” (the kind Amy Winehouse would have loved to have sunk her teeth into) or Stevie Wonder homage like “Watch Me Work,” there’s a sombre, sci-fi groove ala The Weeknd (“4 a.m.”) or a bombastic, ballsy pop song like “Change the Record,” which pits Fiona’s powerhouse vocals against the piano chords from Heart’s “Alone” and thunderous drums worthy of John Bonham. And then there are the big rock guitar solos on “Break Down These Walls” balanced by the ukulele reggae—don’t laugh, it works—of “Can’t Say I Never Loved You.”

Is there anything Melanie Fiona can’t do? Not with a voice like that—one listen to the breathtaking ballad “Wrong Side of a Love Song,” and you’ll think Whitney Houston was an amateur.

Ironically, the natural splendour of her voice might work against her. As she admitted to the Globe and Mail recently, she’s had music biz people tell her that she should use Auto-Tune because radio won’t play her if she sounds too, ahem, soulful. That’s why her duet with Auto-Tune king T-Pain, “6 a.m.,” is almost comical, hearing her scold and sing circles around a guy who sounds like a philandering robot.

The highs of The MF Life last for at least half the record; the other half doesn’t meet such high standards, but it’s a safe bet that Melanie Fiona has enough singles here to dominate radio and awards shows for the next 12 months. The secret’s out. (April 5)

Download: "Change the Record" (feat. B.o.B.), "Wrong Side of a Love Song," "Watch Me Work"

The Hunger Games OST – Various Artists (Universal)

The Hunger Games is the darkest teen movie to ever become a massive success, so it’s only natural that the soundtrack is equally ominous. Opening track (and closing credit number) “Abraham’s Daughter,” by Arcade Fire, sets the tone: minor key, martial drums, harpsichord, Regine Chassagne’s childish voice cooing a haunting melody, guitar feedback and no sign of a happy ending. Better yet, instead of cannon drums and piercing synths, the arrangement here is heavy without being bombastic—it doesn’t need to beat you over the head to hammer home its point.

The soundtrack was produced by T-Bone Burnett, the man behind the Robert Plant and Alison Krauss album and the O Brother Where Art Thou soundtrack; his rootsy pedigree means that Arcade Fire are one of the only rock acts here. (The less said about whatever it is Kid Cudi is up to here, the better.) Most of these artists are definitely from the rural backyard of Hunger Games protagonist Katniss Everdeen, and not the posh, urbane Capitol. The Secret Sisters’ dustbowl harmonies appear on the second track, and set the tone for much of the lineup to follow: Neko Case, Carolina Chocolate Drops, Punch Brothers, the Decemberists, and the Civil Wars. They all contribute songs consistent with the theme and mood of the film—this is the rare soundtrack that sounds like it was assembled with creative care, rather than arranged by competing business interests. (Strange, then, that other than the Arcade Fire track, none of it appears in the movie.)

Even superstars like Miranda Lambert and Maroon 5 step out of their comfort zone and into the disquieting paranoia of the script—and they do it more successfully than Glen Hansard (of the Frames and Swell Season), who offers a lame punk song where he comes off like a righteous emo teenager, singing lines like, “Should I kill you with my soul?” The biggest star here is Taylor Swift, who bats .500: “Safe and Sound” is a note-perfect song for the project, and segues perfectly out of the Neko Case track; “Eyes Open,” on the other hand, is overtly literal and sounds like dialogue from the film set directly—and unsuccessfully—to music. (April 5)

Download: Arcade Fire – “Abraham’s Daughter”; Taylor Swift – “Safe and Sound”; Maroon 5 – “Come Away to the Water”

Radio Radio - Havre de Grace (Bonsound)

This Acadian hip-hop trio came out of nowhere—I mean, really, Acadian rap? Who saw that coming?—to land their album Belmundo Regal on the shortlist of the 2010 Polaris Prize alongside Broken Social Scene, the Sadies and Shad. The music was playful and intriguing, but the lyrical flow, delivered in highly regionalized Franglais, was obviously goofy, whether you understood what they were saying or not.

Radio Radio still sound like their biggest hip-hop influence is Beck. But if that’s true, then this is their Odelay, a scattershot pop pastiche that pulls in smooth saxophone, distorted accordions, AutoTune vocals, Krautrock, electro reggae, even blues. There’s precious little that most hip-hop fans would recognize—but that works in Radio Radio’s favour, as they’re clearly not trying to play anyone’s game but their own. But is that game any fun? For every wildly inventive juxtaposition, there are two more WTFs waiting around the corner.

Radio Radio get full points for originality, and Havre de Grace is exponentially more interesting than its predecessor, but they’re still a hard band to love. A bit of a blunderbuss, Jack White might say. (April 26)

Download: “Gong Hotel,” “Y’en a qui connais,” “Galope”

Sagot – Piano Mal (Simone)

Montreal is home to the apocalyptic, brooding instrumental rock band Godspeed You Black Emperor. It’s also a town that, like any francophone metropolis, loves Serge Gainsbourg. Julien Sagot thinks those two musical personalities should get together more often.

On Piano Mal, Sagot alternates between hushed crooning, sinister intonation (in French), and sitting back to let his cinematic instrumental tendencies take over, while his music draws on the darker side of French chanson, spaghetti westerns, art rock, and even white noise soundscapes—"S.O.S. Panda" is a mix of early Pink Floyd and Montreal sound artist Tim Hecker. Sometimes Sagot slides into a jaunty pop song, albeit in a minor key; sometimes he surrenders to stunningly beautiful abstraction, content to just bathe in sound. On “Un Vielle Taupe,” he strikes up a piano polka with what sounds like the Seven Dwarfs on backing vocals.

Sagot’s day job is as the percussionist in the Polaris Prize-winning group Karkwa, and this album was made with essential help from Patrick Watson’s guitarist Simon Angell. The creativity heard here, however, dwarfs both men’s other projects.

Piano Mal is consistently surprising, stunning and captivating—not just for its daring, but because Sagot makes it all work as a natural whole. It’s easily one of the best Canadian albums of the year; let’s hope Canadians outside of Quebec get to hear it.  (April 19)

Download: “Piano Mal,” “Un Vielle Taupe,” “Fevrier”

John Southworth and Andrew Downing – Easterween (Sud de Valeur)

Some projects defy description by anyone who was not intimately involved in the project. That’s why it’s best to just quote from the official bio when discussing this bizarre yet beautiful cabaret pop project from Toronto songwriter John Southworth and arranger Andrew Downing.

In their words, this is about “A 500-year-old magician. A ruthless, multinational egg corporation. A love story between a Hasidic girl and an Amish boy. A band of sauciers and dumpling bakers. An egg-hunt of cosmic proportions to save us all from eternal winter. A 21^st-century metaphysical fertility tale set to 19^th-century surreal street-cabaret songs accompanied by a seven-piece orchestra of brass, wood and strings.”

You follow? No, I don’t blame you. But the hallucinatory brainstorming that went into what is supposedly some kind of narrative extends to the music as well, which swings and soars and should appeal to anyone with a soft spot for oddball show tunes. Southworth has always been a fine pop writer, but this is a major compositional leap for him: these are not just pop or folk songs set to small orchestral arrangements. He toys with tempo, writes broad melodic themes, and taps into Old World influences of every stripe. His voice shepherds the potentially ungainly plot with the animated warmth of a classic Disney narrator.

This is undoubtedly the most ambitious thing Southworth—or, for that matter, any other Toronto singer/songwriter in recent memory—has done. It would be underselling his talents to say it’s a minor miracle, but, really, who saw this coming? (April 5)

Download: “Morbid Fecundity,” “Robert Kirk is in his Lighthouse,” “Queen Lear”

M. Ward - A Wasteland's Companion (Merge)

The retail sales sticker on this album boasts that it features “members of She & Him.” Well, duh. M. Ward’s role as one half of that commercially successful—Zooey Deschanel being the other—kept him busy, with no less than three albums in three years, including a Christmas album, which you could buy with or without an accompanying toque, mits and wrapping paper. Thankfully, it didn’t distract him from his prime directive. The increased activity obviously rejuvenated him, and A Wasteland’s Companion is one of the most compelling collections in his discography.

Recorded in eight studios and featuring members of Sonic Youth, Devotchka, Dr. Dog, and PJ Harvey's band, the album is remarkably cohesive, touching on ’50s rock’n’roll, ’60s psychedelic folk, and ’70s singer/songwriters. On the surface, Ward is another in a long line of sad sack guys with acoustic guitars—but Ward is far ahead of his peers, as a guitarist, as an intimate vocalist just on the right side of raspy, as a stunning producer, and for speaking volumes with few words. He has the good humour here to mock his crowded milieu with the song “Me and My Shadow,” about a singer jealous of a more successful doppelganger thwarting the narrator’s ambitions.

Until now, Ward’s strengths have sometimes suffered from being too subtle. Not anymore: A Wasteland’s Companion is full of vivid sound, a diverse collection that finds him at his most fuzzed-out and rollicking, as well as burying himself in angelic harmonies and wistful string arrangements. “The First Time I Ran Away” marks Ward as one of the few musicians able to successfully conjure the legacy of Nick Drake; “Watch the Show” sounds like Sonic Youth reinvented as a rockabilly band. “Primitive Girl” is more anthemic than Ward has ever been, with a cascading piano countermelody and Deschanel providing perfect wordless backing vocals. (She also appears as a duet partner on “Sweetheart.”) And it’s unlikely you will hear a more beautiful set of music this year than the last four songs on this album, concluding with the heavenly “Pure Joy.” (April 12)

Download: “Me and My Shadow,” “Watch the Show,” “Crawl After You”

Jack White - Blunderbuss (Third Man)

Jack White has never lacked a creative outlet. When he gets bored, he just starts another band. He left a country band to start the minimalist garage rock duo the White Stripes; when that seemed limiting, he formed a songwriting partnership with an old friend in the Raconeteurs, and then jumped behind the drums and enlisted a fiery young female singer for the psychedelic stadium rock band The Dead Weather. So what does he do on a record under his own name?

Not surprisingly, much of the same. There’s not much new territory here for White, and without the creative tension of his other projects, it’s missing many of the sparks that ignite his other albums. That’s no slight to his new crew of musicians. For all the hullaballoo about his recent Saturday Night Live appearance with two bands—one all-female, one all-male—it’s the women who get the vast majority of the work here, including ace drummer Carla Azar and piano player Brooke Waggoner. White’s talented enough to play every part on this album himself, but he needs players of his own calibre to capture the sound of sweat in the studio.

Blunderbuss—a title that the dictionary defines as “ostensibly wide-ranging but poorly focused and ineffective”—may be slightly disappointing, but Jack White on an off day can still school thousands of other rockers on how to write a song, how to play guitar, how to pace an album and how to channel the history of rock’n’roll in the breadth of any given song. It’s frankly impossible for a man like that to make a bad record. (April 26)

Download: “Sixteen Saltines,” “Love Interruption,” “On and On and On”

Levon Helm R.I.P.

Levon Helm passed away this week at the age of 71. He was the lone American in The Band, perhaps the most influential Canadian rock band of all time. He was an innately soulful drummer who eschewed the flash and crash of so many of his peers in the late ’60s and ’70s, earning the eternal respect, if not awe, of every drummer I’ve ever known.

Why? The only example you’ll ever need is his groove on “Up on Cripple Creek”—not only is that song incredibly funky, but the reason it’s so beautiful and perfect is that he doesn’t hit his cymbals once. He doesn’t need to. Most drummers employ cymbals as punctuation marks; everything Levon played was so inherently eloquent that there was no need to dress it up.

The Band is an enormous part of rock music history (they made the Beatles jealous); specifically of American music history (they invented the genre now known as Americana); even more specifically, of Southern Ontario and Toronto music history. Levon was the link that his Canuck pals had to the musical traditions of the deep American south that they were so fascinated with. Levon grew up watching carnival shows, gospel music, blues, R&B, backwoods country music, Elvis Presley’s first tour—anything and everything. He came from a world that seemed a century away in 1968, the year Music From Big Pink came out, a year full of modernist flurry, psychedelia and political assassinations.

The rest of The Band were also gentlemen out of time, but none of them grew up amidst the cultural riches that Levon did. Together they made music at once rooted in tradition—which, really, is not hard for anyone of any time to do, regardless of trends—but that also sounded like nothing else, past, present or future. It was, and is, weird music, made by a group who had played every dive along the eastern seaboard backing up a B-list rockabilly star, and then large theatres with a beloved artist considered The Voice of a Generation. Left to their own devices, they got up to entirely different mischief.

It’s hard to separate the music of The Band from the legend that comes with it. Like their peers the Grateful Dead, however, if you don’t get The Band, you really don’t get The Band. (And I, for one, have never got the Grateful Dead.) If you don’t, you stand in opposition to the orthodoxy of critical verbiage about their legacy, including dubious claims about Robbie Robertson’s “surreal” lyrics (really?) or about how Richard Manuel is every bit as soulful a singer as Ray Charles (again, really? I’ve always wondered if any African American writer would dare to agree).

Most Band newbies start with The Last Waltz, which is inspiring and often exhilarating—and yet just as often bloated and self-important. Martin Scorsese’s film is revered, and yet Levon thought it betrayed almost everything The Band was built on. It was Levon who fought to get Muddy Waters in and Neil Diamond out, and it was Levon who left the experience angrier than ever at Robbie Robertson, for whom Levon thought the whole project was a giant ego trip. It didn’t help that, as Levon points out, Scorsese portrays the rest of The Band as mumbling, dazed bumpkins, and Robertson the sole genius.

Levon spouted off about this and much more in his 1992 autobiography This Wheel’s On Fire. There are very few rock autobiographies worth reading, but Levon’s is near the top. Not because of the dirt he dishes, including plenty of venom directed at Robertson. Instead, it’s because even at his most bitter, Levon is still a perfect Southern gentleman, unfailingly polite even as he’s tearing strips off people (mostly Robertson) he feels hindered The Band from fulfilling their potential. I haven’t read the book in over 10 years, yet I remember it vividly, especially his portraits of growing up in Turkey Scratch, Alabama, of meeting and touring with Ronnie Hawkins, and of life at the height of The Band’s fame, watching the group fall apart in a series of bad deals and addictions. If you want to understand why Levon is revered, you need to not only hear him play, you must read his book; it’s as much a part of his appeal as anything he ever put to tape. You don’t even have to like The Band to love it.

Likewise, there are some pure objective truths about The Band’s music. On “Up on Cripple Creek,” the alchemy they weave together is incredible—especially Levon and keyboardist Garth Hudson, as we see on this clip.

Now strip away the rest of The Band, and just look at Levon. He broke the mould for rock drumming, introducing jazz and funk into roots rock and soul in ways that none of the other drum-hero showboaters (Moon, Bonham, Peart, etc.) would ever dare; even jazz lover Charlie Watts never dared get too complicated for the Rolling Stones. Levon took what the Motown drummers began and twisted it inside out until it was syncopated bliss, until it sounded like life was, indeed, a carnival. Look and learn.

In one of the most fascinating stories to emerge the week of Levon’s death, Robbie Robertson told the press that he visited Levon in the hospital, days before his death. There’s no sign the two had talked since they were inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame at the 1988 Juno Awards; Levon sat out the 1994 induction of The Band to the Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame, specifically citing old wounds with Robertson as the reason. Levon’s book suggests that there was little, if any, contact between the two since the release of The Last Waltz 10 years prior to the Juno ceremony. And yet even Robertson’s statement seems carefully worded: “I sat with Levon for a good while, and thought of the incredible and beautiful times we had together.” He doesn’t actually say they spoke; he says that he sat with him. Was Levon conscious at the time? Did he carry his grudges to his death? Was this some way of Robertson making peace with himself more than it was about Levon?

No matter, that’s the business of two men and no one else’s. The only other surviving member of The Band now is Garth Hudson, a man whose musical brilliance is matched only by his eccentricity, and who continues to make music regularly with anyone who asks, high profile or otherwise, including Neko Case, the Sadies and Doug Paisley. Robertson rarely makes music anymore.

In the end, it was Levon that people would flock to see, travelling from far and wide to attend his Midnight Rambles in Woodstock, N.Y. It was Levon that fans wanted to know, wanted to witness. And it is Levon, the American, the catalyst to creating one of Canada’s greatest musical entities ever, that we will all miss the most.

For the finest obituary of the man I’ve seen this week, I refer you to Jason Schneider’s piece for Exclaim. I co-wrote Have Not Been the Same with him; I strongly recommend you read his other music book about The Band and that generation of Canadian groundbreakers, Whispering Pines.

Nick Lowe

There’s a certain kind of music geek who is perpetually in love with British punk and post-punk pop, the days of Stiff Records, Elvis Costello in his prime, early Pretenders and weirdos like Ian Dury. Not surprisingly, then, this kind of Mojo magazine fetishist is also in love with Nick Lowe, who had a direct hand in all of those elements: as a label owner, as a producer, and as an artist.

I’ve never been one of those geeks; though I appreciate that scene, I’m maybe five years too young for it for that stuff to have any particularly nostalgic pull. And if I’m going to listen to an Elvis Costello record, even though I love the early singles I usually reach for King of America or Blood and Chocolate. I like Lowe’s one big hit, “Cruel to Be Kind,” as much as anyone, but I never dove in much deeper than that. My loss.

His second wind, starting with 1994’s The Impossible Bird, had made him a whole new wave of fervent fans. I didn’t catch up until I heard 2002’s aptly titled The Convincer. That album opens with the song "Homewrecker," where Lowe’s chocolate-covered croon savours every word of the opening a cappella line: You look like butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth—there is then a long pregnant pause over a single sustained organ chord—but I know it would. It’s incredibly sexy. Staring at Lowe’s handsome visage on the album cover, butter isn’t the only thing melting in that song—so is my heterosexuality.

Lowe’s 2011 album The Old Magic comes on the heels of a comprehensive career compilation (Quiet Please: The New Best of Nick Lowe), a reissue of 1979’s beloved Labour of Lust, and vinyl reissues of recent work. And up against that legacy, it still holds up as one of the strongest collection of songs he’s ever written and performed.

I had the privilege of talking to Lowe for Maclean’s magazine: the full Q&A is here. Read that first before you continue here.

Below are some deleted scenes from the conversation. Nick Lowe and his band play the Phoenix club in Toronto on Monday, April 23.

On age:

When I was 18 and left home to join a band, it was out of the question that you would be doing this into your 30s. It was a ridiculous concept. But when I was a youngster, I always wanted to be old. I always liked older people’s music. When I was a kid I could never make myself sound old. I felt I had to wait around until I was able to sing something that had a bit of weight to it.

You also turned grey quite early, didn’t you? It looks like it in the video for "Cruel to Be Kind."

I did. I got a streak in the front and I thought, man, that looks good. Happy day! Unfortunately, it got more and more white until finally the whole lot went. It didn’t fall out, though.

Did any manager or record label try to convince you to dye it, and squeeze yourself into tight jeans?

No. They wouldn’t have got very far if they did.

I knew that you were at one point Johnny Cash’s son-in-law and that you remained close after your divorce and that you wrote "The Beast in Me" for his first ’90s comeback album. But I only realized recently that he covered your songs as early as 1980.

Yes, he did a song of mine called "Without Love." He made it his own, and now I do it like him. The old songs you do, it’s funny how they change without you realizing that you’re changing the way you perform them. You only realize it when you encounter the original again.

What, if any, kind of stock-taking did you do when the recent reissues came out? Do you ever listen to your records? Were you forced to?

I was forced to. When I listen to the old records, I could hear really good ideas, but I’d think, ‘Why did you do that bit?’ And especially, ‘Why did you do it again, later in the song?!’ I could tell I was young and in a hurry and got the thing finished. Whereas now, I’m much more intent on stripping it down.

I’ve heard you say that you purposely underproduce your recent albums so that the songs stand on their own and some brilliant ear will recognize their inherent genius and cover the song. How often has that actually happened? I know that Rod Stewart did “Shelly My Love.”

I’ve had some good covers over the years.

Off the recent records, though?

No, unfortunately. Englebert Humperdinck did “You Inspire Me”—though it was a particularly unfortunate version. (Laughs) But, you know, thanks, Englebert! A lot of younger people do my more recent stuff, but they’re not big hits. And then of course, songs like “Peace, Love and Understanding” have been covered—well, not hundreds of times, but…

Hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of times, you mean.

Well, yes, in one particular case!

I’ve heard you say that you don’t write in character or do personal songs. But come on, surely you must.

I don’t. I will stick in something somebody said, but I never really go out to explain, “Then she did this, and can you believe it.” I can tell when people are doing that and it goes in one ear and out the other. The minutiae of people’s situations doesn’t interest me. I like hearing a familiar object viewed from an unusual angle—that’s more my approach. But I do know what I’m singing about: I don’t put my diary to music, but I know what it feels like to be mistreated or to feel blue or to feel extremely happy.

So nobody listens to a song like “Lately I’ve Let Things Slide” and thinks, maybe he is letting things slide?

I suppose that one I certainly dug into some personal experience. But there again, it’s viewed from a distance. I am a hack, a Tin Pan Alley hack.

Your last album, from five years ago, is called At My Age and has several songs about being surprised to fall in love again: "Hope for Us All," "Better Man." You had just recently remarried, and surely people are going to look at that and read a lot into your personal life?

I suppose so. If they do, they do behind my back. I don’t encounter much speculation. I don’t think people who like what I do are looking for insights into my personal situation. I think it’s just good tunes—if they think they’re good, which I hope they do.

You’ve been close to big things since the beginning: your first band, Brinsley Schwarz opened for arena rockers in the '70s, and obviously you produced Elvis Costello, and you are old friends with Huey Lewis, who had the biggest band in the U.S. in 1985, when he did a song with you. What did you learn about what you didn’t want from their experiences?

I never really wanted fame, other than when I was a kid starting out. I thought I wanted that. We had an experience with my band—which is quite well documented—when our management got us a gig at the Fillmore East and they chartered a plane of journalists and flew them to see this show, where we were on a bill with Van Morrison, who was on fire—he had just released Moondance. And everything that could go wrong, did go wrong. It was awful and incredibly embarrassing. I’ve had occasion to fall to my knees and give thanks for that experience, because it gave me an early lesson in the vagaries of chasing fame, and how it’s much better to try and tread the fine path between keeping your head down, keeping your head just below the parapet enough that you can pop up every so often when you want to tell people something, and people won’t forget who you are, but they also won’t be nudging you in the supermarket and peering in your basket to see what you’re eating. I never wanted any of that. Huey and Elvis absolutely love it, they thrive on it. I never wanted to be public property. I was more of a snob. I thought I was a bit better than that!

Mar '12 reviews

These reviews ran in the Kitchener-Waterloo Record and Guelph Mercury this month.

The Decemberists – We All Raise Our Voices to the Air: Live Songs 04.11-08.11 (EMI)

What do the Decemberists and Duran Duran have in common? Nothing, until now that they both have live albums that betray every vocal shortcoming of their lead singers. Hearing Simon LeBon whimpering and straining to sing his biggest hits on 1984’s Arena album sealed that band’s fate and marked the end of an era. The Decemberists’ Colin Meloy, although known for having a nasal and somewhat affected delivery, has never come off as a terrible singer on studio recordings. Here, one this pre-hiatus release, his tenuous relationship to pitch is more than distracting, even if the band behind him sounds on top of their game running through their entire discography in front of an adoring crowd.

Meloy’s voice here may be one that only a fan could love—but then again, this entire package (released as the band begins a hiatus) is aimed at fans only. That explains the inclusion of stage banter, in-jokes, and instructions for audience participation. You kind of had to be there. If you weren’t, you’ll wonder why this high-end bootleg is commercially available. (Mar. 22)

Download: “We Both Go Down Together,” “The Crane Wife 1, 2 and 3,” “I Was Meant For the Stage”

Del Bel – Oneiric (Out of Sound)

Picture yourself travelling across the country, from west to east, stunned by the natural beauty during endless daytime drives, and haunted by the neverending sky and all-consuming darkness at night. Del Bel is the the ideal soundtrack for such a journey, a balance of beauty and optimism with eerie, uncertain undertones.

This Toronto band revolves around two Western musicians, Calgary’s Tyler Belluz (Kite Hill, Bry Webb’s band), who wrote and arranged all the music, and Lisa Conway (Mandibles, Owle Bird) from remote northwestern B.C. The music they make together is either a jaunty though somewhat unsettling country shuffle, or full of ominous dread, scraping violins and twangy guitars, all of which could out-spook their friends in Timber Timbre. “How does one fight the dark alone, with no guns and no will to go on?” asks Conway, in a way that suggests she may know the answer, but certainly isn’t going to give anything away to you.

Though Del Bel tap into a Canadian gothic tradition of everyone from Cowboy Junkies to the Silver Hearts and the Sadies, they’re a step above many of their influences and their contemporaries with incredibly delicate and deliberate arrangements: this sounds less like a rock group of friends than a hired orchestra of players, with Conway singing out front and Belluz conducting everyone else behind her. The result is magical, unique, and easily one of the strongest Canadian albums of the last 12 months. (Mar. 22)

Download: “Dusk Light,” “This Unknown,” “Beltone”

Bill Fox – One Thought Revealed (Jar Note Records)

Until last year, Bill Fox was one of those reclusive geniuses with a limited discography and mysterious whereabouts—the kind of geek obsession that inspires Nick Hornby novels (see his latest, and finest, Juliet Naked). Fox was in fact the subject of a much-loved article in The Believer magazine in 2007, where the author tried in vain to find the man who made one of his favourite albums of the ’90s, Shelter From the Smoke. In 2009, that album was reissued and Fox started playing sporadic live shows (in part at the urging of Ottawa’s Jon Bartlett, of Kelp Records).

So now the mystery is just a man, just another guy with a guitar who happens to be releasing his first album in 14 years. Will anyone still care? They should. One Thought Revealed is not just an acoustic singer/songwriter record made by a guy who grew up listening to Bob Dylan and came of age with Robert Pollard of Guided by Voices. Fox makes the most of his limited recording means: the acoustic guitars sound crisp, the organs and keyboards are ghostly and psychedelic, and his own coarse howl is impassioned and intriguing—in part because of his unusual imagery and wordplay. And Fox is nothing if not economical: the 27-minute album has eight songs without a wasted moment between them, rich in both melody and atmosphere.

Welcome back, Bill Fox. Don’t hold out another 14 years. (Mar. 22)

Download: “Whithering Soul,” “Babylonia,” “Moonlight Stragglers on a Lonesome Toe”

A. David MacKinnon – The Past is a Foreign Country (independent)

MacKinnon spent most of the last 12 years co-fronting the Fembots, one of the perennially underrated bands during that transformative time in Canadian music. With that band now on hiatus, MacKinnon’s solo debut isn’t about to change his underdog status: albums full of cinematic instrumentals rarely vault anyone into the limelight. Yet it’s easily one of the best records in his discography. His melodies sing out stronger without his vocals; they’re illustrated fully and effectively in his piano playing and his horn arrangements. Those two elements are at the core of almost every song here, whether the music is a wistful romantic number, a harpsichord-driven tango, or, as in the title track, a 7/4 swing showing traces of Ethiopian jazz scoring a ’70s New York City action flick. Not only is the music evocative; MacKinnon scores some great titles as well. Thanks to him, I googled “Ambrose Small” and “the Sylvan Apartments” and found some fascinating ancient Toronto history. Lots of rock musicians turn to soundtracks after they’re done with pop music, but with an album as good as this one on his resumé, MacKinnon should be accepting Oscars in no time. (Mar. 29)

Download: “The Past is a Foreign Country,” “Clocks Against Typewriters,” “March of the Hydro Towers”

Magnetic Fields – Love at the Bottom of the Sea (Merge)

Blouse – s/t (Captured Tracks)

Songwriter Stephin Merritt has never met an artifice he doesn’t like. His biggest success was a 3CD conceptual project exploring the love song in every possible incarnation, and he’s recently been collaborating on new versions of Chinese operas. The through line in all his work has been a wicked wit and a keen insight that spoke emotional truths underneath the wordplay and winks. For a man committed to arch genre exercises, Merritt could still make grown men cry—as really, any great popsmith should.

Love at the Bottom of the Sea marks the first time in over a decade that the Magnetic Fields has returned to a synth-based approach, much to the delight of his oldest fans. And while there’s no faulting the instrumentation, Merritt’s melodic sense has faded somewhat—even though it was still in full force on the last two Magnetic Fields albums, which were less than well received by the ardent fanbase (and both of which are better than this album).

It’s the lyrics here that really sink Merritt’s ship. With one or two exceptions (including the superb single “Andrew in Drag”), Merritt’s reliance on his rhyming dictionary is no longer clever, it’s juvenile. He’s more concerned with finding out how many words rhyme with mariachi than he is in writing a lyric with any weight—or, for that matter, wit. For one of this generation’s most outstanding songwriters, one whose lesser works have been at least interesting, it’s shocking to see him stumble like this.

Unlike Magnetic Fields, the Portland, Oregon band synth pop band Blouse arrives with zero expectations—and therefore have plenty of room to surprise. They draw heavily from early New Order, mid-period Cure and other staples of John Hughes soundtracks, with nods to more modern incarnations of the same sound, like The XX or their chillwave Portland neighbours Washed Out. While the synths and the icy cooing of singer Charlie Hilton are the focus, the arrangements are far from bloodless, showing off more muscle than you’d expect from this genre of music, even when the synth sounds are bent to sound like broken cassette players. The songwriting is not yet fully realized, and though there are some awkward lyrical moments (“Time machines can be unfortunate when they’re in your hand”), these are growing pains rather than fatal flaws. (Mar. 15)

Download: “Into Black,” “They Always Fly Away,” “Firestarter”

Mike O’Neill – Wild Lines (Zunior)

Since the demise of the beloved ’90s bass-and-drums indie rock duo the Inbreds, Mike O’Neill has kept a very low profile, releasing two solo albums but mostly working in the Halifax film industry—including a recurring role on Trailer Park Boys.

Wild Lines, his first album in eight years, marks a fine return to form: O’Neill always wrote clever, catchy songs, and this is easily his finest collection since the end of the Inbreds. O’Neill is an economical writer; any time he pushes much further past the three-minute mark (which is not often—twice, in fact) he sounds like he’s treading water. He’s nowhere near as quirky a lyricist as he was in the Inbreds, for better and worse. But nor should he be—he’s an older man now, and more likely to write a song about flipping through old family photo albums or teaching children to tidy up than he is to sing about eating a bicycle. The recording is homespun but fully fleshed out, somewhere between the slick 2000 album What Happens Now? and 2004’s lo-fi The Owl; O’Neill’s tender and affecting vocals are at the forefront, layered with Beatlesque harmonies. Well worth an eight-year wait. (Mar. 15)

Download: “Henry,” “Calgary,” “She’s Good”

Joel Plaskett - Scrappy Happiness (Maple)

“A real rock record is like a wrecking ball,” sings Joel Plaskett on this, his seventh solo album. He’s not talking about the new Springsteen album (or an old Emmylou Harris one), but about the galvanizing power of a great rock record, one that changes your life, makes you reimagine your world and the possibilities within.

One wishes that this was just such a record—it’s not. Instead, it’s a record about how much Joel Plaskett loves listening to and making records. Dropping a lyrical reference to Husker Du is one thing; dropping a reference to ’80s prog band Marillion or the ’70s rock band Cactus (which featured Jeff Beck and members of Vanilla Fudge) is a whole other geekfest. At least this time out Plaskett avoids some of the dorky rhymes that threaten to derail some otherwise great songs on his last couple of albums.

Plaskett’s reverence is more than just pastiche; this could be a genuine lost ’70s rock record, recorded live in the studio with an equal mix of warm mandolins and blistering loud electric guitars. Or, for diehard Plaskett fans, it sounds like the finest moments from his two best records: Down at the Khyber and La De Da.

Plaskett is enough of a Canadian institution now that no one expects a sharp left turn, and so if Scrappy Happiness can be faulted for being entirely predictable, it also shows off a master craftsman at work: as a songwriter, as a bandleader, and even as a guitarist (he and sideman Peter Elkas trade hot licks in the closing “Lightning Bolt”).

It’s no wrecking ball, but it’s another solid storey in Plaskett’s tower of song. (Mar. 29)

Download: “Harbour Boys,” “I’m Yours,” “Somewhere Else”

Johnny Reid - Fire It Up (EMI)

Johnny Reid doesn’t sing the blues. Johnny Reid probably wonders why anyone would sing sad songs in the first place. Isn’t music supposed uplift the listener? Shouldn’t you come away from a performance—or even just a song on the radio—feeling reassured, loved, and inspired? Reid may be the last earnest man left in the music business, the kind of guy whose song titles ask rhetorical questions like “What Makes the World Go Around?” (I’ll give you one guess what the answer is. Hint: it’s love.)

Reid continues his move away from country music and into gospel-inflected inspirational rock balladry. It’s inherently cheesy territory, but don’t tell Reid that: he throws his considerable talents as a vocalist behind every line, and you better believe that he’s feeling it. As a songwriter, however, he doesn’t always hit that mark: “Let’s Have a Party” sounds suspiciously close to Bruce Springsteen’s “Mary Place” (from The Rising, an album from which Fire It Up draws obvious inspiration—no Darkness on the Edge of Town here). “Walking On Water” is a duet with Serena Ryder that should be a match made in heaven—their voices are perfectly complementary, both being natural born bluesy belters. It’s a crying shame, then, that the song itself is dismal and riddled with clichés.

Reid is a powerful presence who can milk genuine emotion from the thinnest source material; too bad he’s all too often called on to do just that. (Mar. 29)

Download: “Fire It Up,” “Till We Meet Again,” “Right Where I Belong”

Tindersticks – The Something Rain (Constellation)

Tindersticks are well-dressed men in black who make noir-ish lounge music rich in narrative and ominous atmosphere. (Which explains their appeal to Sopranos’ creator David Chase, who used their music in two key episodes.) They’re good at what they do, and they’ve been doing it fairly consistently for 20 years now—to a fault. If you’ve ever owned one Tindersticks album, you own them all. Until this one.

After a series of lineup changes that stripped the band down to its core, Tindersticks now sound like an almost entirely new outfit, even though all their signature sounds are still there. Singer Stuart Staples is a seductive, compelling crooner, who doesn’t seem bothered by the fact that The National’s Matt Berninger has sold out small stadiums with the same schtick. The soul influence Tindersticks took on in the late ’90s has simmered to a fine essence, giving the rhythm section an extra punch and making the presence of sax solos and bongos less incongruous. Every sonic texture appears to be wrapped in red velvet; every song is set after sundown. No matter the tempo, every track on The Something Rain is sensual and luxurious, lulling the listener into an opiate daze.

Come Inside sounds like Bryan Ferry fronting Pink Floyd circa Dark Side of the Moon (specifically “Us and Them”). “Show Me Everything” could be Nick Cave fronting Air. And yet The Something Rain is such a world unto itself that such comparisons—to other or the band’s own discography—only surface when trying to explain why a new Tindersticks album is worth your time. It’s the most intoxicating album you’ll hear this winter—isn’t that reason enough? (Mar. 15)

Download: “Show Me Everything,” “This Fire of Autumn,” “Medicine”

Caetano Veloso and David Byrne – Live at Carnegie Hall (Nonesuch)

The Talking Heads frontman played a large role in introducing the Brazilian tropicalia legend to North American audiences in the late ’80s. Why this 2004 recording is only coming out now is a mystery, but for fans of either artist it’s a welcome chance to hear them in an acoustic setting. Veloso’s six solo songs are dreamlike and languid; Byrne’s eight-song set is more direct, and obviously the few Talking Heads songs jump out, even if he reinvents them effectively for the setting. But Byrne also doesn’t get enough credit for his songwriting of the last 15 years, which is the real focus of his set here (“She Only Sleeps,” “Everyone’s In Love With You”). The two duet on Byrne’s “Dreamworld” and Veloso’s “Ile Aiye,” which both help make up for the atrocious version of Byrne’s “Nothing But Flowers,” where Veloso camps it up to the point of mocking Byrne’s vocal tics—it might have been funny at the time, but it’s downright painful here. Appropriately enough, the set ends with Veloso’s song “Terra”—written in 1968, about viewing photos of Earth from space—and Byrne’s “Heaven.” (Mar. 29)

Download: “Terra,” “Ile Aiye,” “Everyone’s in Love With You”

Yukon Blonde – Tiger Talk (Dine Alone)

The Shins – Port of Morrow (Sony)

It was over 20 degrees in Ontario on the day in March this album was released. In fact, everything about Yukon Blonde’s second album sounds like summer all year round. Huge four-part harmonies and songs meant to be sung at full volume barrelling down the 101: that’s what this Kamloops, B.C., band excel at, along with a strange affinity for 1982, a time when new wave power pop (think: the Go-Go’s) competed with Southern rock holdovers (think: 38 Special) on the Top 40 charts. Producer Colin Stewart (Black Mountain, Kathryn Calder) gives everything a streamlined radio sheen that sounds huge while never sacrificing warmth and still placing the acoustic guitar front and centre when necessary. The tunes are sharp and sassy, and the occasional dorky lyric is easily forgiven. What would it sound like if Fleet Foxes fronted Sloan? Yukon Blonde are taking that answer all the way to the bank.

The Shins aren’t as rooted in classic rock as the deliciously derivative Yukon Blonde, but songwriter James Mercer is likewise known for writing killer melodies and setting them to a hazy, luxurious West Coast soundscape to decorate his take on indie rock. The 2007 Shins album Wincing the Night Away was their best—and by that point the band had essentially been stripped to being a Mercer solo project. Port of Morrow similarly finds Mercer working with hired guns, including members of Sleater-Kinney and Modest Mouse. Only this time, Mercer’s surefire pop songs are in much shorter supply. He pulls off a quirky ballad or two, and “Simple Song” packs a punch that the rest of the album seriously lacks. Everything else falls through the cracks; at best, Mercer sounds like a mellower, poor man’s version of the New Pornographers’ A.C. Newman. The dreamy production, by Greg Kurstin (Lily Allen, Kylie Minogue, Foster the People) saves this from being a total snoozer, and diehard fans will at least be placated. (Mar. 22)

Download Yukon Blonde: “My Girl,” “Radio,” “Stairway”

Download the Shins: “Simple Song,” “Fall of ’82,” “It’s Only Life”

Bruce Springsteen's Wrecking Ball

Bruce Springsteen – Wrecking Ball (Sony)

2012 demanded a big-moment, cultural watershed album from one of America’s working-class heroes. The U.S. is in the middle of not only an economic crisis, but an existential one—and it’s an election year partisans paint as a battle between good and evil. What better time for a Bruce Springsteen album? And not just any Springsteen album (the less said about 2009’s Working on a Dream, the better), but one where he’s firing on all cylinders, playing to the back seats, waving the tattered flag and standing up for the common man in one rousing anthem after another.

Ideally, said album will also be at least pretty good—and Wrecking Ball is, more often than not, pretty fantastic.

Springsteen has done this twice before in the last decade: once, on 2007’s knockout Magic, when he saw upstart young disciples like Arcade Fire stealing his mojo, and once in 2002 when he channelled the energy of the reunited E Street Band to help heal America in the wake of 9/11 on (the arguably less successful) The Rising. In 2012, he sees his beloved country dissolving into a bubbling cauldron of bitterness and defeatism: “the road of good intentions has gone dry as a bone.”

Springsteen easily taps into that anger on one banker-bashing number after another. By comfortably numb pop music standards, he comes off like a raving, Fox-baiting Marxist, even though the themes here are perfectly in keeping with the folk classics he reinterpreted on 2006’s We Shall Overcome—an album with which Wrecking Ball not only shares sentiments, but most of its backing band. (Very few E Streeters appear here—oddly enough, no-longer-touring member Max Weinberg is one of them).

Springsteen is not just channelling old protest songs, however. He’s pissed, and so are his protagonists. The angriest song here is “Death to My Hometown,” and it’s far from the lament of a similar name that closed Born in the U.S.A.: it decries the “robber barons” and “greedy thieves” who “ate the flesh of everything they found.” Furthermore, it’s set to a rousing, militaristic Celtic march, like it’s being sung by bloodthirsty barbarians crossing bridges into Manhattan, looking for heads to roll.

Even a seemingly more reassuring song—"Jack of All Trades," in which a handyman narrator assures his family that they’ll be self-sufficient amidst the current storm—concludes with the same narrator expressing a need to “find the bastards and shoot ’em on sight.” This isn’t about fairness or victimhood: it’s about vengeance.

Meanwhile, whereas Springsteen’s narrators on 1975’s “Meeting Across the River” or 1982’s “Atlantic City” have trepidations about doing some shady business to get by, the man in 2012’s “Easy Money” is swinging with a new-country swagger, boasting about strapping a pistol, hitting the town and looking for, yep, easy money. Springsteen doesn’t sing it with any shame or regret; this character sounds joyously entitled. And in the context of this album, why shouldn’t he? The corporate cannibals who profited from the bank bailouts are rolling in it—why should the average schmuck bother working for his windfall?

Lead single “We Take Care of Our Own” sets itself up to be another “Born in the U.S.A.”: a song with a feel-good anthemic chorus that is actually about what a pile of shit America has stepped in. Springsteen mourns the death of empathy, charity and civil society: “From the shotgun shack to the Super Dome / there ain’t no help / the cavalry stayed home.” He sings the titular chorus with a straight face, simultaneously mocking the sentiment while wishing it was still true.

On the title track, Springsteen taunts the forces that are tearing his community apart, inviting them to “bring on your wrecking ball / c’mon and take your best shot.” The bridge of the song urges: “hold tight to you anger / and don’t fall to your fears.” The song is Springsteen at his stadium best, with a wordless chorus, dynamic swells and ebbs, a horn section, Max Weinberg driving the ship, and the lyric’s ability to turn desolation into delirious release.

The rest of the album isn’t always as musically successful. Producer Ron Aniello is an odd choice: his biggest clients to date appear to be Jars of Clay, Barenaked Ladies and late-period Candlebox, and some of the production choices are a bit Pete Seeger-meets-Nickelback. The first rap to ever appear on a Springsteen album is performed by Michelle Moore on an uninspired gospel song, “Rocky Ground.” More than a few tracks sound good only because they’re in Springsteen’s hands; if anyone else—say, uh, Bon Jovi, for example—attempted the exact same material, it would be laughable. And finally, why does Springsteen hire Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello to play bloated and bad guitar solos on the ballads? Ultimately, however, these are all forgivable crimes, and Wrecking Ball is far more consistent than we’ve come to expect from late-period Springsteen.

It’s fitting, then, that Wrecking Ball is also the first Springsteen album since the death of his iconic sidekick, saxophonist Clarence Clemons in 2011; an excerpt from Springsteen’s eulogy for him appears in the liner notes, and Clemons appears on two tracks. (It’s not clear if they were recorded before or after his spot on Lady Gaga’s 2011 album Born This Way. For history’s sake, let’s hope it’s after.) Clemons’s solo on the 12-year-old live staple “Land of Hope and Dreams” (appearing for the first time on a Springsteen studio album only now) is undoubtedly affecting—but only really because it sounds like the last gasp of a once-great powerhouse. As sax solos go, it’s rather innocuous—nothing like the Clemons who would have once stolen the song out from under Springsteen and carried it to a whole other emotional level. It’s sad but beautiful, undeniably poignant, hearing him give all he had left, on a song about travelling to the afterlife.

Maybe more than the state of the nation, more than the election year anxiety, Springsteen knew that the best tribute he could pay his friend was to frame his final recorded moments inside a rousing rock’n’roll record that ranks with Springsteen’s best since he put the E Street band back together.

Download: “We Take Care of Our Own,” “Wrecking Ball,” “Land of Hope and Dreams”