Jamwise #34

Featuring: Metallica, Nine Inch Nails, Wilco, GZA, Aerosmith

Project BAE - Best Albums Ever

Currently listening my way through the Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list. Progress: 175/500

Master of Puppets - Metallica

What do you get when a set of musicians as talented, caffeinated, and full of rage as Metallica set out to make an album to show the world what they’re musically capable of? In this case, a masterpiece. 

There’s a perception (among the uninitiated) that metal is just brainless rage, an angry noise played at high speed. Metallica is the classic example why that line of thinking is lazy and wrong. 

“Battery” begins the album with a bang, acclimating us (as much as possible) to the level of charged energy we’re about to witness. “Master of Puppets”, another highlight, is a high-octane ode to the control drugs can have over one’s life, which leads to the ever-creepy “The Thing That Should Not Be,” which amounts to a a sea-dwelling demon threatening to consume everything. The themes continue to build in one another - we move from (presumable) drug-induced manic energy to demon-paranoia to a mental prison by the end of side one. Side two takes us from the horrors of war to the potential horrors of subversive religion, set to a heart-quickening double-bass-pedaled roller coaster ride of a track. 

If that sounded like a lot, that’s because (whew) it was. 

This is as cohesive of an album concept as I’ve heard yet. The songs are extended but not bloated, perfectly filling the two sides of the album, tracing the ups and down of drug use and demons both mental and physical. Today’s afternoon coffee is now totally unnecessary. 

Jams

• “Battery”

• “Master Of Puppets”

• “Welcome Home (Sanitarium)”

• “Orion”

Pretty Hate Machine - Nine Inch Nails

This was the first independent album to reach platinum certification, a badass accomplishment if I’ve ever heard one. It’s industrial rock, sound like a futuristic dystopia with robots banging and clanging down the sidewalk among the downtrodden, trench coated people. 

I get this excited feeling in my chest when I hear something I truly enjoy, a unique sound or a super creative one, or both in this case. It’s kind of giddy - even if the music is angry and metallic, it’s like something is scratching an itch in my head, and I recognize that this is a special creation that resonates with me on some deep level. “Head Like A Hole” is such a great opener, getting us into the world from second one. And then “Terrible Lie” takes us from the industrial streets into a back alley, where we get to know the locals a little too well as we watch a streetside anti-evangelist pacing in the muck, shouting at the sky for answers.

I love the term industrial rock. As someone who’s spent a good portion of my career in and around factories, the scuzzy, greasy sounds of this album couldn’t be more perfectly matched to the feeling you get walking through an operating industrial factory, especially an old one from the 90’s. The smell of welding and burned metal and grease, the screech of machinery, the crash of forklifts moving stuff around or, more often than not, smashing into and destroying things thanks to an impatient driver. The clang of products moving through the line, the trudging monotony of repetitive work. Country music is about a mythical heartland, while Industrial is about the actual reality of that very same heartland - country sings about rural weekends and nights and fun times, but industrial is about the day jobs prevalent in the very same areas. And the feeling industrial generates is like the opposite of country’s simple fantasies; it’s the drudgery you just have to get through before you can crack that first cold one on Friday night.

Jams

• “Head Like A Hole”

• “Terrible Lie”

• “Down In It”

Liquid Swords - GZA

Grimy beats and challenging lyrics from Wu-Tang member GZA. This one took a couple of reads along with repeated listens; the beats are almost static, straightforward, endlessly looping as the lyrics pour over them like sewer water flooding a city street. Critics seem to love the word “haunting” to describe this one - I can’t disagree, but I’d modify it a little; haunting sounds like a ghost, but at times this album is more like the creep of a zombie shuffling down the street, dodging steam from the sewers and honking, greasy taxis. He’s shuffling, but not erratically. There’s a plan, like the zombies in a horror movie always seem to have. Plus the lyrics clearly required a lot of brains to fuel them. 

Jams

• “4th Chamber”

• “Shadowboxin’”

Yankee Hotel Foxtrot - Wilco

I initially wrote this review with a wild scattering of different thoughts, and the line REWRITE THIS REVIEW. THEY’RE GROWING ON ME. The first edition of this review won’t be seen anywhere, but let’s just say it wasn’t love at first sight.

So as part of my journey to become something other than a judgy child when I encounter music I don’t love right away, I put YHF away and came back to it a week later, and I think I’ve now got some clarity about Wilco’s album. 

There are plenty little surface-level things that don’t fit my taste, and they got to me at first. These are by and large acoustic guitar songs with sounds tossed into the mix under the guise of “experimentation”. Lo-fi crackle and out of tune piano, other noises I can’t identify, discordant interludes - these things all, fairly or not, annoy the shit out of me - even more so because I think the underlying songs are pretty solid and don’t need the lo-fi ornamentation at all. 

It’s kind of like the concept of chocolate with chili powder mixed in. Yes, the chili powder fills a space in the palate that was previously not tickled by the chocolate alone. But is it an enhancement, or just a tacked-on addition just there because it’s not in anybody’s way? That’s how all the little add-on noises on this album feel to me. Mostly harmless, but also mostly ineffective. Just give me the chocolate, man.

I can give Wilco the benefit of the doubt here because of the band’s indie credentials and obvious songwriting talent. Jeff Tweedy’s downcast, almost petulant whine on some songs isn’t my cup of tea, but it feels genuine and unforced, and it makes me believe we’re getting what’s truly in his head and not some masklike imitation of indie sadness. This album feels like the band’s true nature. They still sound like major downers at a party, but somebody’s gotta keep us grounded.

Jams

• “Kamera”

• “Jesus, Etc.”

• “I’m the Man Who Loves You”

Rocks - Aerosmith

This album, and Aerosmith’s lifestyle, feel like the epitome of rock n roll’s debauchery era. It’s packed with grimy guitar riffs, Steven Tyler’s hedonistic shrieks, and the energy of a live show that sounds (perhaps accurately) fueled by vast quantities of uppers. “Back In the Saddle” finds the band celebrating their return from an unknown place, and it sounds like the triumphant return of narcotics to the singer’s bloodstream. “Last Child”’s sentence-fragment lyrics sound like the personification of the grimiest parts of Tallahassee, a place the singer seems to pine for. It’s an album of pure rock, the forward-driving drumbeats and guitar riffs and half-lyrics groping for some sort of meaning, and even if none is ever found, the main objective of rock is still achieved - have feelings, and shout about them. 

Guilty pleasure is an exaggeration, but the enjoyment I get from this album still has an element of looking over my shoulder, like a professional highbrow critic is going to come up and arrest me for enjoying this. But the fact is that I did. I’m only a midbrow Millennial music fan, after all. That might have to become my slogan.

Jams

• “Back In The Saddle”

• “Last Child”