Jamwise #28

Featuring: Roxy Music, The Who, Kanye West, Belle and Sebastian

Project BAE - Best Albums Ever

Current Project: Listening to every album on the Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list, in random order.

Progress: 123/500

For Your Pleasure - Roxy Music

I never thought I’d find myself enjoying a song about a blowup sex doll, but hey, music is an ever-surprising art form. 

First impressions: it seems that most of the songs on this album use a similar technique, which I’m sure has a technical term that would go way over my head. I call it stress and release; the song will go into a kind of dissonant or very minor section, with the sole purpose of building stress, and then release into a more rhythmic or major part of the song that gives you a sense of pure relief that the noise is over. It’s not uncommon in music, for sure, but I felt like the first 7 or so songs on this album used it. And then, of course, there’s the last song “For Your Pleasure” which ends on a 5-minute-long dissonant “breakdown” of sorts that never resolves and leaves me with a bitter feeling at the end of the album, like when grandma forces you to eat a 25-year-old licorice candy and you can’t spit it out or rinse out your mouth with soap or you’ll hurt her feelings. 

It wasn’t all gloom for me, as I found “Editions Of You” and “Grey Lagoons” to be pretty awesome, if somewhat bizarre, but overall this wasn’t my favorite album.

And, in what’s become one of the staple running jokes in this newsletter, our old friend Brian Eno makes an appearance with the band, with a strong presence on the very song that flooded my mouth with the taste of old rubber tires. “The Bogus Man”, the first track on side two, is another Eno-heavy jam that gave me the heebie jeebies, which admittedly might have been his intent all along, but it doesn’t do much to improve my disposition towards him. As Eno himself puts it, “All the elements are very strange but they do work together to give this feeling of something very uneasy proceeding in a direction it's not quite sure of.” Whatever direction the song was meant to go, it’s not a direction I’ll be following. 

I’m sorry to say that this is the second straight disappointment from an Eno project, and as a wise man once said, “Fool me once, strike one, fool me twice… Strike three.”

Jams

• “Editions Of You”

• “Grey Lagoons”

The College Dropout - Kanye West

 

In case the title didn’t make it clear, Kanye West doesn’t have a very sunny outlook on the benefits of higher education. Did you know he dropped out of Chicago State University? Well after this album, you certainly will.

Musically, this is typical Kanye to me. He uses two elements constantly: 1) genius beats, which are often so good they elevate the songs and overcome the often weak lyrics. 2) raging against something - systems, institutions, haters, you name it. There are obviously a lot of legitimate subjects that he addresses, but Kanye seems to see enemies everywhere, to the point where I can imagine him seeing ghosts in shadows and shouting at the voices in his head over the rustling of his tin foil hat. 

The skits sprinkled throughout the album seemed to be a nod to those found on classic hip hop albums in the 90’s, but these seemed mostly pointless and rambling. That’s probably just my perception of Kanye as a person, but it was hard to unhear.

I frankly didn’t know how common these little skits were on hip-hop albums in t late 80’s and 90’s. Apparently, it’s a known phenomenon: “The classic rap-album skit. It’s impossible to imagine Doggystyle without those hazy, ’70s-referencing interludes scattered throughout the album. Remember early JAY-Z’s fixation with gangster-film nods? For a long time, skits were as much a part of album-making as the songs themselves.”

The song “The New Workout Plan” is a new contender for the absolute worst song I’ve ever listened to.

And finally, the last track, which features West giving an interview-style account of his upcoming as an artist and his big break with Jay-Z, was actually pretty cool. It seems fitting that a man who just spent 76 minutes railing about the stupidity of college - and performing skits about a 52-year-old man who gets a bunch of degrees and then leaves them to his child, who clings to them as he lives on the streets with no money - would set his own story down to music rather than in writing. Of course, he later wrote a Philosophy book, but I guess that kind of book is acceptable. 

All that said, I found this album absorbing because of the stellar production and creative beats, but I have a feeling that a re-read of the lyrics would probably reduce my enjoyment significantly. 

Jams 

• “All Falls Down”

• “Two Words”

If You’re Feeling Sinister - Belle and Sebastian

First of all, this album DESPERATELY needs a remaster. If anybody at one of them fancy AI companies is reading this, please, PLEASE remix this album to make the volume and mixing consistent enough not to blow out my eardrums when cranking the volume up to hear the words.

I also love the story of how the band formed - the two Stuarts (Murdoch and David) enrolled in a program for unemployed musicians at Glasgow University, which is how they funded their first album. If You’re Feeling Sinister is their second album, and is widely considered their most influential, with comparisons to Jamwise favorite Nick Drake. And just to add another level of awesomeness, the band is named after a book about a boy and his faithful dog. 

The list of accolades for this album seem to be endless. It took some time for me to get into - the music is very dainty and shy, almost like the band is afraid I’m going to hear what they’re saying, or that I’m going to cough and the entire melody will pop like a bubble. I found that trait mostly annoying, although on some songs it was endearing, like “Get Me Away From Here, I’m Dying”. 

I think I’ve cracked open an entirely new genre of alt-pop that I’m admittedly not very familiar with. Every message board rings with the cries of bands in this genre like Belle and Sebastian, The Decembrists, and above all else, Sufjan Stevens - I don’t know why, but I’ve read the name Sufjan Stevens about ten thousand times in the past week, and before that I’d never heard of it in my entire life. The old Dave would be already predisposed to hate old Sufjan based on that fact alone, but I’m a new me and I’ll give them a shot one day.

Jams 

• “Me and The Major”

• “Get Me Away From Here, I’m Dying”

Tommy - The Who

Ahh yes, the Whom. 

I’ll have to admit, this is my first time learning about the life and shenanigans of one Tommy Walker. Although I’m not going to light a candle because I’m driving while listening to Tommy, I do think it’s time to see if the sister from Almost Famous was right and this album will reveal my entire future.

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After the first hour of this, I have to say I’m pretty dadgum bored. Tommy had quite a journey - I’m sure this won’t be accurate since I haven’t seen the movie or done a single bit of research about the plot of this rock opera besides listening to it - from deaf and blind kind to pinball master to (apparently) some kind of mirror-loving cult leader. I’m a little hazy on the details. But the album itself seems to be intended as a massive frame for the central work of Pinball Wizard.

It’s ambitious, that’s for sure, to write a double album rock opera about a deaf and blind guy. And I’m sure it took a MASSIVE effort of creative energy to get this monstrosity across the finish line and into the world. But judging solely by the music on the record, I’m not sure how interesting it will be for current and future generations.

Jams 

• “Pinball Wizard”

• “I’m Free”