More on Sonic : his contributions to the S3 swansong, "Recurring", are leaps and bounds better than those of Jason His Nemesis. The "minimalism is maximalism" mantle is picked up from "Playing With Fire", incorporating dance rhythms on the way. Plus some mighty fine lyrics on self-doubt and love's neccessary second-guessing ("Why Couldn't I See?", and even though it was only on the US release, it gets mentioned because it was the best thing on it), urban disillusionment ("Big City"), and plain old love ("I Love You"). After listening to "Recurring", it's Sonic's work that you're humming afterward.
Jason's songs barely have tunes, they're meandering, sloppy, mumbling blues-y, and dirge-like (not in a good way). I always forget how the songs go and have to listen to the album to remind myself, but sure enough, a couple of weeks later I can't remember them again. Save "Feel So Sad", none of these songs have any place on a Spiritualized record lest they be drawn and quartered by the infinitely better songs that Jason went on to write. They were fixtures in the sets at early Spiritualized gigs before they were all banished by the "Lazer Guided Melodies" gems, never to return again.
Based on "Recurring", Sonic is the ex-S3 member slated to have the far brighter future.
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Sonic has always been a A-list manufacturer of Proper Drug Music. This goes beyond the "Taking Drugs to Make Music to Take Drugs To" catchphrase, although I'm certainly not questioning the truth of that phrase as it relates to Sonic's music. S3 in particular, do indeed deliver on that promise with nearly every recording. I'm making a point about the *kinds* of drugs involved. You see, any moron can smoke, sniff, or inject something and then go make music. Countless morons do it every day. My central thesis is that the best drug music is based on the hardest drugs. As it pertains to the artist in question, heroin music is almost always better than pot music.
Pot music is wimpy. It's a wimpy drug. It's so popular because it's so wimpy. It's a cheap, friendly, harmless drug, and thus, it churns out cheap, friendly, harmless music (with the occasional artist such as Tricky being the exception to this and all that follows). It takes no resolve or dedication to get involved with it, which is why it's so dead easy for so many people to use it liberally or occasionally.
Pot music is about jamming and chilling out. These are both fun and enjoyable activities. Thus, the drugs reflect positively on the music and vice versa. That is, jamming and chilling out are fun things, smoking pot while listening to them is a fun thing, ergo, smoking pot is a fun thing. In this way, pot music communicates the message that pot is a cheerful and desirable drug.
Heroin music is not for the weak of heart. It is a drug of steely-eyed determination. It's not a massively popular drug because it is viciously addictive and it tends to ruin lives. It churns out paranoid, hardened (and hardcore, in whatever sense of the word), uncomfortable and uninviting music. There is nothing fun about heroin music. The drugs do NOT reflect positively on the music, that is, heroin music does not implant you with the idea that drugs are fun. There is nothing enticing about S3's "OD Catastrophe", it is a vicious and scary song, with it's one chord being strummed literally thousands of times within its nine minutes, delivering it's sobering message with harrowing repetition. The obvious irony is how the music says "drugs are bad" while Sonic himself was saying "drugs are good". It's as if there's an advertised advance warning behind the task of responsible drug use, such as "drugs can be good, but this is the kind of stuff you're in for if you choose to take the plunge. It may eventually be rewarding, but we'll have to give you a trial by fire first, to prove that you really want it. We have to intimidate people this way because otherwise there'd be a lot of idiots jumping into this stuff without having thought it through".
Post Spacemen 3, Sonic gave up heroin and chilled out with his music (I'm not sure in what order), but this was no floaty fluffy cloud chillout music a la The Orb. His was drone music, and drone music is hardly joyous. The drug lifestyle of early droners such as Conrad, Cale, and the others in La Monte Young's stable is well documented. Drone music doesn't conjure images of relaxing on a porch, getting stoned while a gentle breeze ruffles your hair. A more likely image is passed out on a bed, limbs outstretched at awkward angles, spit dribbling from a chin into a pool on the pillow, and the poor victim too messed up to do anything about it (or anything at all, for that matter). That's the precise effect of the first EAR album, most appropriately titled "Mesmerised".
Hard drug music is riveting stuff. There are many prominent examples. Nirvana made a whole generation of kids and musicians get serious (the Kurt + heroin tales have been often told). On "This is Hardcore", Pulp got super serious and introspective, shirked fame and retreated from the spotlight, threw irony out the window, darkened up their videos, and made arguably their best album (they were heavily rumoured to have been into heroin at the time). The late Elliot Smith's finest work was his stripped down self-titled album, unadorned except for mainly guitar and voice, and some of the finest songs ("The White Lady Loves You", "Needle in the Hay") were about drugs -- most likely his heroin addiction. I hope I'm not trivializing his death my painting him as yet another drug casualty of our times, but it *was* his best work and I've felt that way for years. I didn't come to that conclusion just in the last few days as a way to make sense of his tragic death.
It's not always about heroin. You could also add the Feelies (the sound of speed), The Stooges (the sound of being fucked up all the time), Joy Division (the sound of sensitive souls not taking their epilepsy meds), and a whole lot more.
One last point: it doesn't have to be about heroin, but it should NOT be about cocaine. Cocaine + arrogance + music is a bad combination. The artist gets an inflated opinion of themselves, tries to put it on the record, and it comes across as conceited and indulgent. It's the musical equivalent of fawning over Bennifer's "we don't want the press at our wedding but we want it to be all over the press anyway just to rub it in their faces" wedding. Oasis' "Be Here Now" is the most notable recent example of this. Note that the entire trifecta is a neccessary condition for the crappy music. Cocaine + music is not a recipe for disaster by itself, which has been shown through brilliant records like "Rumours". A great record can be made with cocaine, as long as it doesn't *sound like* cocaine.
