Pazz and Jop 2013

So it was yet another dominating win for Kanye West, tying him with Bob Dylan for the most number one albums in the history of the poll.  What's even more amazing is that he's done this over the space of just six albums and less than ten years, and the two albums that didn't top the poll still finished at #6 (Graduation) and #10 (808's and Heartbreak).  Six album, six top ten finishes.  Yet another reason why the monoculture's death has been somewhat exaggerated ...

This was the first year I voted using the (admittedly lazy) 15-14-13-12-11-9-8-7-6-5 points scheme.  My enthusiasm for my top albums was muted this year compared to most previous years, so I couldn't, in good conscience, give anything the 20+ points that a truly great album deserves.  I've always tried to quantify my attitude toward my favourite albums as accurately as possible, i.e. if two or three albums stood head and shoulders above everything else I heard that year (which is the case in most years) then the points totals should reflect that.

This year's top ten featured an album released by surprise over the internet only four days before the deadline for submitting ballots, a mixtape that wasn't released on an official label, and a self-released album by a band that had been in hibernation for nearly 20 years (and hadn't received much mainstream rockcrit love when they were in their prime).  Plenty of people claimed that the indie-heavy 2009 poll meant that a sea change was underway, where Pitchfork-approved rock and pop of the younger generation of critics would dominate from then on, and that never came to pass.  But I think the surprises at the top of this year's ballot do represent something meaningful about the changing perception of what makes for a critical smash.

David Bowie, Arcade Fire, and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds all finished in the top thirty, in part due to merit, but mostly due to their reputations.  The albums didn't blow many people away but they will always draw reflexive support from the many people who simply enjoy voting for them.  If you think I'm exaggerating, consider that "The Next Day", at #15, finished higher this year than "Let's Dance" (#19), "Scary Monsters" (#19), "Lodger" (#31), and even "Heroes" (#21) in their respective years.  That's partly because American critics weren't as into Bowie compared to European critics, but otherwise there's no way to say with a straight face that "The Next Day" is better than all those albums.  People were glad to see his return to music (as was I), there were some solid tracks on the album, it sounded very much like classic Bowie with none of the odd experiments he busied himself with from 1995-2005, but otherwise this was people voting for Bowie the event, not Bowie the artist making some of his best work.

In a way you could say the same about MIA's "Matangi" (#28), Yo La Tengo's "Fade" (#48), and Low's "The Invisible Way" (#71).  None of them were close to representing their respective best work, but they'll always draw a base level of critical support whenever they release something new.  In fact, I think you could say the same about another 15-20 albums in the top 100 of the poll. Voters didn't pick them because they're great albums, they picked them because they've always voted for them in the past, their new album wasn't all that bad, so why not?  (says the guy who voted for Depeche Mode this year ... game and match?  Perhaps.)

As always, Glenn McDonald's P&J stats are the best thing about the poll, bar none, so you may want to stop reading this and go directly to his site.  I could get lost scrolling through numbers on his site for hours.  Now that he's been tabulating the poll for a few years, he's begun building a database of historical metrics on top of the ones specific to this year.  In 2013 I was ranked #277 out of 453 in centricity (39th percentile), almost exactly in line with my accumulated centricity from 2008-13 (40th percentile).  In 2009, I was strictly hit-or-miss as far as the mainstream of the poll was concerned -- I voted for two albums that received a huge number of other votes, a bunch of other stuff that got almost no mentions, and finished with my highest ever centricity score:

Other votes for Animal Collective + YYY's: 266
Other votes for the other eight albums in my top ten: 23

This year the distribution between the have and have-nots was even more extreme:

Other votes for MBV, Daft Punk, and The National: 164
Other votes for the other seven albums in my top ten: 4 (includes four albums with zero other votes)

And that's how end up with a centricity score in the middle of the pack: two top ten albums, another that almost cracked the top twenty, and a whole bunch of nothing.  The commonalities between me and the people in my list of similar voters are mainly from my songs list.

Finally, I have to say that I'm proud of finishing near the top of the breadth list (#79 out of 1120 critics), which means I tend to vote for completely different artists every year.  I really try to keep challenging myself with new music and now I have the stats to "prove" it!

X-Factor Israel is fixed

I suppose it's obvious that I enjoy watching music-themed reality TV shows.  I play armchair judge, criticize song choices, and theorize about who is marketable and who isn't.  I like having music on my TV in general.  And I know that no reality show is 100% unscripted.  There are always producers trying to manipulate people behind the scenes, or inventing rules and tasks that are intended to favour certain competitors or create controversy all in the name of ratings.  But there's a "realness" to the outcomes of these shows that is almost never crossed.  If someone on American idol has a bad week, the producers might schedule him or her to close the show the following week and stick out more strongly in the eyes (and ears) of the voters, rather than getting lost in the shuffle of a 1-2 hour show.  They might even instruct the judges to go a little easy on them, to ensure they won't be in danger of getting voted off the show.  In other words, the voters at home decide what happens, while the judges and producers are complicit in manipulating the voters to give them the outcomes they want.  It's straight up politics -- the methods are sometimes dirty, but the outcome is "fair".

X-Factor Israel right now is a promotional vehicle to push the judges' pet projects.  Its connection to "reality" gets more and more tenuous with each episode.  It's a shame because it has all the elements to be a long term hit show -- compelling storylines, a wide variety of different performers, smart and insightful judges, the most elaborate staging and musical arrangements I've seen on a music reality show, and Bar Rafaeli. 

Based on the voting results thus far (what little we know anyway) and the well established opinions of the judges, there is no conceivable way that Fusion should still be on the show.  Last week, where Moshe Peretz inexplicably declared Avishachar Jackson (who he adored) "ready to perform on stage outside of the show" and chose to save Fusion (who he never liked from the beginning), was a travesty the likes of which I've never seen on so-called "reality" TV.  The conveniently timed commercial break right before his final decision -- to give the producers and judges time to scramble around, put together a solution, and coach the judges on what they should say -- was so transparent in its intent that they should have just hung a billboard over the stage.  After the Karakukli Sisters' unexpected dismissal by the home viewers the previous week, they were not about to allow another group to leave the show and didn't care to what lengths they had to break the rules in order to achieve that result. 

In this week's show, Fusion were handed every possible bell and whistle to get over with the audience -- the opening slot of the show, the most elaborately staged performance of the season with personalized concert videos, professional actresses, specially designed props -- and it still didn't take.   The judges gushed over their performance, doing a complete about face from the harsh criticism of the previous week, and did everything short of rushing the stage to carry them off on their shoulder and yet Fusion STILL had to be rescued from going home thanks to a last minute judges' decision.  Sure, it's technically within the rules of the show and is supposed to be a lifeboat to prevent deserving contestants from going home (like the judges' save on "American Idol", but used every episode).  But the obvious horsetrading that is going on, with judges repeatedly acting out of character whenever there's an important decision to be made, is ruining any sense that we're watching an actual talent competition.  The results of the vote are supposed to decide the plot of the show, but the producers of X-Factor are treating them as a nuisance and hurriedly rescripting their show to deal with the nuisance during the commercial breaks.

That said, Fusion are awesome and for the life of me I can't figure out why they're not connecting with Israeli voters.  They have a unique backstory, they can sing their asses off, their performances are on a different level than the rest when it comes to professionalism, and they absolutely have what it takes to make waves on the international scene.  Instead, we've had to suffer the bland and colourless performances of Eden Ben Zaken and Tamar Friedman (who probably would have lasted at least another episode if the judges hadn't sacrificed her to save Fusion this week), and the Taylor Hicks of the competition, Rose Fostantes, who is a hell of a singer and a great story who makes for great TV but doesn't have a hope in hell of having a successful career (certainly not in Israel) with her poor woman's Shirley Bassey act.  Inbal Bibi has a unique look, at least in the sense that nobody has ripped off Tiffany quite to this extent in a long time, but isn't much of a singer.  Ori Shakiv is incredible and would be a deserving winner.  But still ... LAHAKAT FUSION, PEOPLE!  They're great.  Listen to Ivri Lieder when he speaks to you.

FUSION!!

Diary of Musical Thoughts Podcast Episode 16

"The irony-emphasizing quotation marks underline the mix's futility" - 107 minutes.

For my last post of the year, here is my latest mix. I was originally looking to put together something stylistically similar to Podcast Ep. 6, i.e. a mix of short, semi-radio friendly songs for a lazy afternoon with a dash of weirdness thrown in.  I started gathering tracks from rarely listened to CD's in my collection and ... realized that the mix was shaping up to be something completely different from that.  I ended up with a long list of songs that I wanted to revisit in some fashion, and invested quite a bit of time trying to come up with a track order and ideas for forcing them all together into the same mix.

The mix was recorded in one take and besides some simple mastering, it's completely unaltered from the original take.  Despite a few mistakes and imperfections, I decided to leave it alone and enjoy it as is.  I hope you do too, and bye until 2014.

The irony-emphasizing quotation marks underline the mix's futility by Bruiserfs on Mixcloud

Top ten mixes/podcasts of 2013

I think I crossed a threshold this year where I now enjoy listening to podcasts more than going out to dance in the actual clubs.  Maybe it's a passing phase, or a part of the aging process, or simply an indication of how many great podcasts are downloadable on a regular basis.  Perhaps the biggest factor is the time restrictions on the average podcast.  Technically there are no time restrictions (e.g. Autechre laugh in the face of fatigue and short attention spans once in a while) but practically, podcasts are often confined to 60-90 minute run time.  Of course this is not all that new -- mix CD's have been around for twenty years and counting.  But the mix CD is usually a condensed version of what that DJ would tend to play in the clubs, whereas a podcast can take a number of different forms.  Want to show a different side of yourself and record a mix of classic soul instead of the techno that your fans are accustomed too?   Psychedelic rock might not play in the club but nobody's stopping you from tacking on a few of those tracks to the end of a podcast.  In the battle between a four hour marathon set in the wee hours of the morning and a bite sized 80 minute mix tape I can hear in the afternoon at work, I've been siding with the latter.  It's like the clock has been turned back twenty years and I'm taping songs off the radio again, wondering what it'll be like if I could get into the big, famous dance clubs.

I was surprised to see so many FACT mixes on this list.  It's not that I followed their weekly mixes all that closely, but it seems like every mix I heard from them this year was stellar (honourable mention to Floorplan's FACT 400 mix).

Selvagem, Beats in Space # 672 (Discoteca Hallucinante mix) (April 10)

Definitely the year's most unique, infectious, and baffling mix.  Eighty minutes of Brazilian funk, disco, house, and lounge rock from who knows which year, and who knows which artists.  Apparently they organize these kinds of parties once a month in Sao Paulo, but the mix could have conceivably been recorded at any time between 1985 and today.


Green Velvet Electric Playground 008 (April 12)

Green Velvet's weekly 30-minute podcast is always good, but I'm going with the first one I heard this year.  Could anyone else in the world have pulled off "Bigger Than Prince"?


Silent Servant, HNY 181 (May 29)

I'm sure that Silent Servant can pull off these 80's techno pop sets in his sleep, but they're always killer.  Is there anyone better in electronic music at combining nostalgia and contemporary sounds?


Prins Thomas, 66 min shoehorning (June 14)

Space-y lounge disco, or IOW, what you'd expect from Prins Thomas after he rolls out of bed, sips a coffee, and starts up a mixtape to wake himself up.  It's more laid back and restrained than his usual stuff, and that's what I love about it.


DJ Koze, FACT mix 387 (June 17)
Jon Hopkins, FACT 388 (June 24)

I listened to both of these mixes a lot more than the highly acclaimed albums from these two artists.   They're the "influences" mixes that provide the background for the albums, and featuring some of their new tracks to really drive home the comparison.


Material Object, CLR 234 (August 19)

A devastatingly heavy mix of cavernous techno, this is the one podcast on this list that demands a club listening experience (this is true for all CLR mixes in general).


Vatican Shadow, Fabric promo mix (September 5)

A 45-minute advertisement for his then-upcoming live set at Fabric, i.e. "this is who I am and what kind of music I like, come and see me play".  The mix takes you through noise, minimal techno, industrial, synth pop, and tribal ambient ... all in the first 20 minutes!


Mark Pritchard, FACT mix 406 Parts 1 and 2 (October 28 + 29)

Each year brings at least one great throwback mix to the early days of rave, but whereas most of those mixes highlight the sirens and breakbeats side of the genre, Mark Pritchard chose to focus more on the hip-hop and R&B elements that are almost always overlooked.  So massive (56 tracks, 90 minutes) that they had to split it into two.


Tiga, FACT mix 411 (November 18)

Fun, smooth, and eclectic, Tiga always makes mixing sound so much easier than it actually is.  Props for the timely Lou Reed tribute at the end.

Top Ten Albums of 2013

For me, there weren't many great albums released in 2013.  There were a lot of good albums that I've enjoyed in the here and now, but I have serious doubts about whether I'll still be listening to many of the albums in this top ten in five years time.  Which is not to say we shouldn't enjoy them now while we still can ...

10.  Issakidis, "Karezza" (Kill the DJ Records)

The criminally underrated George Issakidis made the year's best leftfield experimental techno album and hardly anybody noticed.  Jumping from smooth, Luciano/Villalobos style minimal  to James Murphy's disco rock to oddball kitchen sink unclassifiable weirdness with ease, there's something for everyone here.

9.  Depeche Mode, "Delta Machine" (Columbia/Mute)

It's not the best Depeche Mode album, but it might be their best sounding album.  Deep, resonant, cavernous, electronic blues for packing stadiums and festivals.  

8.  Sannhet, Known Flood (Sacrament)

When people talk about the death of the album format, they're ignoring metal.  I relearn this lesson every time I discover metal albums I really like and remind myself that they demand that you immerse yourself in them for a full, uninterrupted 45 minutes.  In bite size chunks, "Known Flood" is nothing, as a cohesive unit, it's a blizzard of guitar noise that doesn't let up, like Branca gone metal.    

7.   My Bloody Valentine, "m b v" (MBV Records)

Bold prediction: in three years time, nobody who puts this album on their year-end list will stand behind their ranking.  Sure, we know it's not another "Loveless" and that's OK (although "She Found Now" could easily slot in there and even raise the average song quality).  Fans are just glad they've rejoined the land of living, breathing bands who record new music.  But how good is "m b v" really?  A million other bands could have made this album in the past twenty years.  Does that matter?  Would we tolerate weirdness like "Nothing Is" if MBV weren't the band behind it?  This album is something of a time capsule, the realization of the 1991-1996 rumours come to life (e.g. "they're recording a DnB album!?!" c-1995-6), maybe it'll be easier to process the legacy of MBV vers. 2 when we start hearing the stuff that represent where their heads are at in the 21st century.

6.  Traversable Wormhole, "Traversable Wormhole Volume 6-10" (CLR)

As the title indicates, this is not precisely a new album, but a mixed compilation of tracks from the latest five EP's from TW.  What you get is roughly the techno equivalent of the cover art -- an immeasurably dark, mind-warping descent into a black hole of industrial techno hell (you know, in a good way).  

5.  Sigur Rós, "Kveikur" (XL Recordings)

I say it all the time, but it bears repeating: Sigur Ros are one of the most inventive bands of this generation.  People think they've got them figured out, but they really don't have any idea of what they're going to do next.  I mean, who had "Sigur Ros goes metal" in the office pool??

4.  Daft Punk, Random Access Memories (Columbia)

I really can't figure out why Daft Punk superfans don't think this is their best ever album.  A disco album recorded and produced in the classic 70's/80's style (complete with real life classic disco musicians and producers), an instantly iconic cover, and a world conquering single to boot.  Why, because it should have happened already with "Digital Love"?

3.  Moderat, "II" (Monkeytown Records)

A more than worthy follow-up to their classic first album, this one feels more suited for clubs and lounges than its genre-hopping, all things to all people predecessor.  Get well soon, Sascha, and get back to blowing minds again when you tour this thing.

2.  The National, "Trouble Will Find Me" (4AD)

   

Well, it happened again, I fell for an indie rock album (as in, exactly one album) by a band I hadn't previously paid much attention to.  While not obvious on the surface, the National are the closest thing I've found to 90's Tindersticks in contemporary music.  They can be sour or mopey or aggressive or funny, they know exactly when to dial up or down each of those components, and they can even pull them all off within the same song.  Whenever I hear "Graceless" or "I Should Live in Salt" or "Pink Rabbits", the world around me simply stops moving.  

1.  Eluvium, "Nightmare Ending" (Temporary Residence Limited)  

Recently I was starting to feel that ranking "Copia" as one of the top ten albums of the 00's was a mistake. Eluvium was following a clear formula -- warm, lush ambient mood pieces alternating with serene piano ballads -- that was wearing down after so many listens.  Even the previously unstoppable "Repose In Blue" was starting to lose its mesmerizing power.  Then he released "Nightmare Ending", which follows mostly the same formula ... and guess what, it still works.  The ambient songs have gotten longer and noisier, the piano ballads have become more intricate, and he could have split this 80-minute plus album into two and ended up with two best albums of the year.  

Perhaps the strangest year-end list from a notable publication I have ever seen

Popmatters Best Electronic Music of 2013:

20.  Akkord, Akkord
19.  Congo Natty, Jungle Revolution
18.  Mum, Smilewound
17.  The Black Dog, Tranklements
16.  House of Black Lanterns, Kill the Lights
15.  Front Line Assembly, Echogenetic
14.  Matmos, The Marriage of True Minds
13.  Morris Cowan, Six Degrees
12.  Skinny Puppy, Weapon
11.  mu-ziq, Chewed Corners
10.  Manix, Living in the Past
9.  Letherette, Letherette
8.  Autechre, Exai
7.  Ben Lukas Boysen, Gravity
6.  Comaduster, Hollow Worlds
5.  Machinedrum, Vapour City
4.  The Field, Cupid's Head
3.  Boards of Canada, Tomorrow's Harvest
2.  Jon Hopkins, Immunity
1.  Tim Hecker, Virgins

In decreasing order of strangeness:

-- Seemingly every 80's and 90's electronic music legend that released an album this year got a spot on this list.  Many of these acts hadn't been heard from in ages (e.g. raise your hand if you knew Front Line Assembly were still making new music) and hadn't seen many "best of the year" lists even in their primes.

-- Following up on the first point, was the BoC album really all that good?  All the reviews I saw can be summarized as "yep, this sounds like Boards of Canada".  Ditto for Autechre, which I have heard and sometimes enjoyed, but have we really reached the point where these acts get a free pass into the Best of the Year lists based on name value alone?  They make an album that sounds exactly like themselves and this is enough to clear some sort of critical bar.  I don't see how this is any different from Robert Plant and Eric Clapton getting Grammy nominations (and getting ridiculed) every time they release a new album.

-- Mum are still around?  Is Ninja Tune really still a thing?  Their roster is all over this list.

-- What's with Machinedrum getting mentioned in every blurb?  And then a Machinedrum album showing up at #5?

-- Albums that I was encouraged to check out based on their reviews (and the sample tracks included): Ben Lukas Boysen, Morris Cowan.

-- Jon Hopkins is showing up on every list imaginable. I still can't believe that "Immunity" was nominated for the Mercury Music Prize.  I don't quite understand how Hopkins and Tim Hecker became the go-to icons for leftfield electronica, but it's a definite improvement over the days when Daft Punk and Chemical Brothers would reflexively fill those spots.

End of the Loudness War

I've read this article a few times and there's a lot to process, after each reading I come away with a slightly different appreciation for the details. 

It is generally agreed that overuse of compression is a problem in music.  Compression, even if used a bit excessively, can occasionally lead to stellar results.  The music packs an aggressive punch (i.e. sounds good when played very loud) at the expense of almost all dynamics and the unpleasant, hard to define feeling of ear fatigue.  For years (before I I knew there was something unique but also exhausting about listening to albums like Oasis' "What's the Story Morning Glory?" and Verve's "A Northern Soul".  They convey feelings of excitement and invincibility that comes across completely differently than music that is mastered with lesser amounts of compression.  The evolution of music production has taken it to places it never intended to go, and now it's like an arms race, where the problem keeps compounding and a wannabe hit song must be mastered loudly if it has any hope of competing with everything else on the radio.

Apple might be the only company big enough and ubiquitous enough to force this kind of change.  At this point, it has to be an industry driven (and enforced) change.  Most consumers aren't even aware of the issue.  The average listener won't be turned off of buying music because the amount of compression isn't to their liking.  I doubt they'd even notice the changes if iTunes Radio standards become widespread.

They mention "Wrecking Ball" as an example of a horrifically overcompressed song -- if you haven't listened to it closely, pay attention to the change in the volume of her voice during the verses and then during the intro to the chorus (before the full force of the backing music comes crashing in).  She's screaming the chorus but on the recording, her voice sounds much quieter than in the verses!  It's an unavoidable consequence of having to squash everything in the chorus to make it sound as loud as possible.

I wouldn't have guessed that the loudness range of hit songs hasn't changed in the past fifty years, according to the study cited in the article.  This means, if I understand it correctly, that even the more "properly" compressed songs that are dynamic in *parts*, are on average getting louder and more squashed.  So rather than Nirvana going quiet/loud/quiet/loud, there would have been a few seconds of quiet, followed by a uniformly loud/semiloud verse/chorus/verse sequence with Kurt Cobain's voice getting lost in the muddle somewhere.

Disappointing albums of 2013

Mediocre albums are the worst, especially when it comes to writing about them.  A great album makes you want to tell other people how great it is, and a bad album leaves you reaching for a thesaurus to explain its awfulness.  Either way, these albums inspire you, and emotions run high when writing about them.  People remember those 9/10 and 10/10 reviews, and they remember the 2/10's, which usually makes people more curious to hear them because they have to check for themselves if it really is as bad as claimed.  It's that endless supply of 6/10's that are read and instantly forgotten.  If you really want to damn an album to the wastebin of history upon arrival, the 5/10 is probably the kiss of death.

For me, 2013 has been a year of disappointments.  There were a bunch of albums that I was looking forward to hearing, by artists that I really like, who have made some of my favourite albums of the past few years.  Their new records turned out to be OK, but disappointing.  I'm not talking about disappointing yet bad albums, like the Arcade Fire's head scratcher that I could forget about and move on from almost right away.  There's nothing actively bad about any of these albums, they're not experiments gone wrong or preposterously bad ideas poorly executed.  Fans of these acts would immediately recognize it as their work.  They're just OK, nothing more, and despite their pedigree, I rarely find myself wanting to listen to them.

Donato Dozzy, "Plays Bee Mask".

The Voices of the Lake album was beautifully stretched out, with each track getting seven or eight minutes to breath before merging seamlessly into the next one.  The pacing was closer to something from Wolfgang Voigt's Gas than any contemporary techno album I'd heard.  But "Plays Bee Mask" feels like a bunch of skits and elements from unfinished songs that never really kick in.

No Age, "An Object".

This album suffers from many of the same problems.  It relies less on conventional rock themes than their last two albums, which on paper would have been an understandable progression from their earlier releases, something I would have looked forward to hearing. But much like their first album "Weirdo Rippers", it's more like a collection of ideas than a cohesive album.  "Weirdo Rippers" was actually a collection of EP's rather than a proper album, so its "odds 'n' sods" style is understandable, but "An Object" is more like a compilation of cool guitar sounds that they wanted to finally release after a frustrating couple of years of writers block.

Yo La Tengo, "Fade".

If YLT wanted to tour and needed a record a new album to justify it, then "Fade" has served its purpose and then some.  It's just too bad that they seem to only take risks on the opening track on their albums now (i.e. "Here To Fall" from "Popular Songs" and "Ohm" from "Fade") but otherwise hardly stray outside of their familiar comfort zones.  Is this really the same band that released "I Can Hear the Heart Beating As One", where every track played with a completely different style of music but still managed to sound like classic YLT throughout?

Tim Hecker, "Virgins".

Tim Hecker has made a career out of treading water, but when the formula is this successful, even treading water can lead to repeatedly great results.  It takes a lot of careful listening to peel back the layers of sound on a Tim Hecker album, so the relistening value has always been high as there are constantly new details to discover.  The recent profile in SPIN made me appreciate the level of care he puts into his records even more.  And so "Virgins" is his usual good effort.  The bells and chimes and other bits of live instrumentation don't add anything notable to the well established template he's used for the past decade.  In the past there'd be a fuzzy sampled guitar and now it's replaced by a chime, and that slight transformation is more than a bit gimmicky.  Maybe it's a rite of passage to help his growth as a composer, and if so, it could be a positive thing in the long term.  The quieter, ambient second half of the album is a confusing experiment in subtlety that doesn't suit Hecker's strengths.  "Virgins" quiets down and then just ... ends. "Ravedeath 1972" and "Haunt Me Do It Again" were outstanding because of their complete lack of subtlety and maximalist approach to nearly every track, and the quieter parts on his other albums were often about navigating between the peaks.

Reviewing every Lou Reed live album

No surprise, but I've been listening to a lot of Lou Reed and Velvet Underground lately.  Reed and David Bowie were probably the most famous musical chameleons of the 70's, changing their music and personal style with nearly every album, and continuing to reinvent themselves in the following decades.  But whereas Bowie seemed to glide effortlessly from strength to strength (even his "sellout" album "Let's Dance" brought him the biggest hits and commercial success of his career, Reed's "Mistrial" and "New Sensations", not so much), Reed was as notorious for his misses as he was for his home runs.  "Metal Machine Music" is the most well known of these, but he certainly didn't get soft in his later years.  His collaboration with Metallica, "LULU" was the last album he worked on and it was almost universally panned (as if Reed could give a fuck ... and you have to admire that).  His failures are actually an integral part of his charm and stature as a person and an artist.

The same holds true for his live albums.  Until his death, I hadn't realised he'd released so many.  These range from good and possibly incendiary ("A Night With Lou Reed") to the polarizing ("Rock and Roll Animal") to the often ridiculed ("Take No Prisoners").  He performed with stripped down, semi-acoustic ensembles and full on RnR revues.  I sometimes wonder how he found the time to overhaul his live show and rehearse all these bands, especially in the 70's when he was a walking talking drug disaster waiting to happen.  But that was Reed -- always reinventing himself and never content to coast on his fame. 

I haven't heard most of Lou Reed's live albums, so these reviews are my tribute to the life of one of the greatest rock stars who ever lived. Because this is meant to be something of a career history, I'm limiting this to contemporary releases only, so no "Bataclan '72" for example (widely circulated as a bootleg, but not officially released until 2004).

Rock 'N Roll Animal (1974)

For me, the deal breaker on this album happens about two minutes into "Heroin".  Reed calmly sings the opening lines of the song, backed by sparse and delicate guitar lines, a big change from the bombastic, kaleidescopic opener "Sweet Jane".  And just as you expect the song to pick up speed and build in primal rage ... it breaks into a sunkissed squeal of guitar solos and drum breaks straight out of 70's session band hell. The noise and chaos of the original was trampled on and replaced by the sound of speeding along the highway listening to FM radio.  Sometimes this approach works -- "Rock and Roll" and "Sweet Jane" were written with exactly this sort of radio-friendly sound in mind -- but "White Light/White Heat" and "Heroin" are completely stripped of the desperate energy and frantic noise that made the original versions so iconic.  I can understand why people enjoy hearing these songs so radically transformed, but it's not for me.

Supposedly this was a Saturday night party album for proto-punks in the 70's, and if so, it was the first ironic proto-punk album because I can't imagine those same people celebrating this style of rock and roll excess if the name on the marquee wasn't Lou Reed.  However, there is plenty to admire about the slick, professional facelifts given to "Rock and Roll" and "Sweet Jane" though, so all in all, the good tends to cancel the bad.  6/10.

Lou Reed Live (1975)

This was recorded at the same concert as "Rock 'N Roll Animal", but had more promise based on the tracklist.  With three songs from "Transformer" and two from "Berlin", the song choices appear better suited for the glammy, rock and roll glitter show put on by Reed's then-band. IOW, if you're hiring Steve Hunter to play in your band, let him work with "Sad Song" and "Oh Jim", but by god keep him away from "Heroin". Unfortunately there's a reason that this album always gets overlooked in favour of "Rock 'N Roll Animal", and it begins and ends with Reed's annoying habit of improvising and changing up his vocals.  It's the same habit that nearly ruined the Velvet Underground reunion live album, to name just one future live recording that he dragged down (we'll get there). "Sad Song" and "Satellite of Love" should be lullabies springing to life in technicolour, instead, they're both dragged down by Reed's half whiny, half shouty "singing".  "Walk On the Wild Side" is a nice surprise that tones down the jazz in favour of an extra dose of groove, and "Oh Jim" is appropriately epic and benefits from Reed barely having to sing on it.  And the less said about "I'm Waiting For the Man", the better.  In all, it retains many of the flaws of "Rock 'N Roll Animal" and adds a few more of its own, and without a truly great performance to recommend it, this album seems best suited for hardcore "Rock 'N Roll Animal fans only. 4/10.

Take No Prisoners (1978)

I was looking forward to finally hearing the album that Robert Christgau famously labeled a comedy album. What could Lou Reed possibly have to talk about for 90+ minutes?  Do people get bored with comedy/spoken word albums after they've listened a couple of times and already know all the punchlines?  Maybe, but I've heard this album twice and I feel like I've hardly scratched the surface.  What's below the surface might be nothing but the ramblings of a madman, but there's still a lot to take in.  Or, it might be a unfiltered glimpse into the mind of one of rock's most literary, yet combustible, masterminds.  Which side you choose probably depends on the mood that you, the listener, are in that day, and whether or not you're in the mood for a 98-minute journey through a Lou Reed live set where half the time he barely bothers to get around to singing the words to the song he's supposed to be singing.

So why is "Take No Prisoners" is a big step up from the "Rock 'N Roll Animal"-era albums?  First, he's traded in the Detroit Rock City house band, whose glammy image was never a solid fit for Reed, for a rawer, bluesier outfit complete with backing singers and electric sax. Bruce Springsteen, who was in the audience when this album was recorded, certainly would have approved of Reed's own version of the E-Street band.  Second, whereas "Rock 'N Roll Animal" was too-professional to the point of being soulless, emphasizing image over all else without a single hair out of place, "Take No Prisoners" is sweaty, brutal, and honest to the point of slapping you in the face with its realness.  I used to collect bootleg cassettes, and still do enjoy tracking down live concerts of varying sound quality, because I wanted to capture the feeling of really being there in ways that slickly produced soundboard recordings usually can't do.  That's what "Take No Prisoners" is -- a gig with a beginning, middle, and end.  There's a fast opening section (starting with a blazing "Sweet Jane"), a slow middle section (shambolic but moving versions of "Satellite of Love" and "Coney Island Baby", a bluesy "I"m Waiting For the Man" that morphs into "Temporary Thing" mid-rant and then back again), and a killer closer/encore of balls out rock and roll ("Leave Me Alone") to send the crowd home buzzing.  There's also room for a mesmerizing performance of "Street Hassle" (the street ramblings of the recorded version are completely appropriate for a pissed off Lou Reed live show) and a "performance" of "Walk on the Wild Side" that gets sidetracked completely into takedowns of newspaper critics, stories about the characters in the songs, and a million other things that have nothing to do with the song.  Like many double albums that try to be "epic", it excites you, bores you, demands that you pay attention, and threatens to try your patience all at the same time.  It's how you feel once you've survived all 1.5 hours of it that counts.  8/10.  

A Night With Lou Reed (1983)

Technically not a contemporary release or a live album (the first TV broadcast wasn't until years later) but I'm making an exception because I love it.  In a career full of about faces and contradictions, this one might have been his most drastic.  A narrator opens the video with a dramatic description of the streets of New York and pushing it as a triumphant home field comeback for Reed.  They call it a comeback even though the concert was recorded at The Bottom Line -- the same venue as "Take No Prisoners" -- but between Reed's polished appearance and boyish looks (even at 41), cleaned-up attitude, and tight leather jacket, there is definitely an air of "'68 Comeback Special" to all of this.  Everything about his live setup is tidied up and more orderly than before, in short, Lou Reed was ready to take on the 80's.  From glam rock waif to punk godfather/notorious loose cannon to supper club entertainer, all at four year intervals.

Reed looks and sounds good and appears motivated in performing an efficient, but powerful set of hits and new songs, but he's nearly upstaged by his sideman, the incomparable Robert Quine.  Looking the part of the cold blooded killer with his dark sunglasses, white collar protruding from his black jacket intense yet calm expression, he arguably steals the show with one caustic guitar solo after another and just generally looking badass with everything he does.  No wonder a volatile personality like Reed couldn't stand working with him for very long.  8/10.

Live In Italy (1984)

The same band and the same tour as "A Night With Lou Reed", and mostly the same setlist too.  So let's just show some respect to:

1) Quine's solo on "Waves of Fear".  When you only had thirty seconds to spare but needed someone to shred the fuck out of a guitar solo, Quine was the man.

2) The smooth bass and more great guitar solos on "Satellite of Love".

3) "Walk On the Wild Side" going ROCK instead of faux jazz, "Heroin" getting stripped of its inherent minimalism and becoming an actual SONG in the hands of this band.  8/10.

Perfect Night: Live In London (1998)

This was Reed's first live album in fourteen years, not including the Velvet Underground reunion live album.  Although Reed gained a reputation for being unpredictable and not caring about sales or trends, he was in tune with the winds of change and knew how  to market himself.  Chris Molanphy examined this more fully in his recent article about Reed's chart history.  In the late 80's he dabbled in synth-pop and made amusing videos and got exactly what he was aiming for -- his highest charting albums in a decade and increased MTV airplay.  Then, as the early 90's boxed set era started hitting his peak, Reed, along with Neil Young and Bob Dylan, were resurrected and reclaimed almost overnight from relics who'd been left behind in the 80's into respected elder statesmen of rock and roll.  By 1998, Reed had been inducted into the RnR Hall of Fame (with the Velvet Underground) and was firmly entrenched as a rock legend with the multiple boxed sets and reunion tours to prove it.  In keeping with his image as a musical godfather who could keep up with the times, he released a live album that was an MTV Unplugged album in all but its name.

This album appeared when I was getting deeply into the VU (and Reed's solo career to a lesser extent) but despite the impressive, career spanning set list, I didn't pick it up because of the middling reviews it received at the time.  Fifteen years later, I'm finally hearing it and I can understand why it's become a nearly forgotten entry in Reed's live catalogue.  No performances really stand out, at least not in a positive way (the Lou Reed of the 1990's should not have been attempting "I'll Be Your Mirror") and it's a bit embarrassing when the set builds to a funked out version of "The Original Wrapper" that could have been an ironic cover by RHCP or Cake. However, there is plenty of breadth on display here, with tracks from nearly all of his 1980's albums, plus selected hits from the 70's and just one VU song, and that alone makes it an intriguing document in Reed's career. 6/10.

Animal Serenade (2004)

Reed's final decade in music might have been his most unpredictable.  Maybe with rock music hitting its commercial low point on the pop charts, Reed felt he could ignore trends altogether and finally do absolutely anything he wanted without caring one whit about sales figures?  His work in this period tended towards dream projects that had been simmering for years but never realized.  Dramatic readings of Edgar Allan Poe set to music?  Staging "Berlin" in its entirety?  An album with Metallica?  Why not!

"Animal Serenade" is the unplugged album that "Perfect Night" could have been.  It's the difference between trading his electric guitar for an acoustic one and stripping back the songs completely and building then again from scratch with new instrumentation and radically altered arrangements.  "How Do You Think It Feels?" and "Set The Twilight Reeling" start as solemn and delicate and accelerate toward furious, noisy conclusions.  "Venus In Furs" heads in the opposite direction in terms of tempo, stretching out every stanza in a manner that mimics the painful agony expressed in the lyrics, culminating in an insane cello solo that threatens to rip your eardrums apart.  Reed's voice probably never sounded better on this side of age sixty, and when he for once he picks his spots wisely when he wants to project rough and gravely -- "Street Hassle" and "The Raven" practically demand to be shouted rather than sung.

With nearly every track sounding inspired, this was the real perfect night (in LA), and call me crazy, but this is by far the best album of the bunch so far.  But can we do something about the album cover?  What's with the tufts of hair growing out of the words "Lou Reed" and Reed looking like a leathery zombie emerging from the shadows?  9/10.

Berlin: Live at St. Ann's Warehouse (2008)

"Berlin" is probably my favourite Lou Reed solo album (either that or "Songs For Drella" with John Cale).  Certainly none of his other albums have affected me as strongly, even after fifteen years, I've still never heard an album that can devastate one's mood more decisively if it catches you on the right (or wrong) day.  Reed hated the "most depressing album ever" comments, but I always saw those descriptions as compliments.  The best music has the power to completely transform the mood of a person or even a whole room of people.  Bringing you up is in no way inherently superior or more artistically meaningful than taking you down.

So you can imagine my disappointment when I heard this album a few years ago and was horrified to hear Reed practically sleepwalking through it.  His spoken word rantings on "The Kids" completely kill the song, to name just one example of Reed singing against, rather than with the instrumentation.  

Then I saw the Julian Schnabel-directed DVD when preparing these reviews, and it got even worse.  Now I could see Reed not trying rather than trying to infer it from the audio.  The only time where he looks like he could give a fuck is at the end of "Candy Says" as he gazes at Antony Hegarty like an adoring father.  And of course "Candy Says" wasn't even on "Berlin", but is easily the highlight here (mainly because of Antony's singing).

The staging and video projections are great, as is every moment featuring the choir.  The ambition and talent was there, but the execution wasn't there for some reason.  3/10

Creation of the Universe (2008).

Reed's final act was more secretly fascinating than a lot of people gave him credit for at the time (including me).  It's almost as if he eschewed conventional rock entirely and switched over to the performance art/improv world, likely in part due to the influence of Laurie Anderson. And then he recorded LULU, but that's another story.  

The "Metal Machine Trio" doesn't sound anything like the track/album implied in its name, but it never claimed to be anything other than "music inspired by MMM".  Fans of that album and grinding, noisy improv music in general will find a lot to like here. Ullrich Krieger's sax is processed and filtered in a million different ways, blending into the sheets of electronic and F/X laden squall churned out by the rest of the trio.  I'd say the first disc comes together more tightly as a piece than the second, but that's really a matter of personal taste.  The trio played a number of gigs over the years, and I have a recording of one from 19/04/2010 that's very similar to the music on this disc.  This kind of music really demands to be heard in a live venue, as loud as possible.  It's the kind of industrial, scraping, volatile noise music that I enjoy seeing live but rarely listen to at home.  7/10.

Reed, Anderson, and John Zorn released a recording that I couldn't track down, although video clips of some of their shows together are widely available on the internet.    

LULU may have been panned, but the fallout as far as Reed's live shows are concerned may have been immense.  In his final shows he was playing some of the most aggressive rock music of his career, witness this seventeen (!!) minute version of "Heroin" from a festival in the summer of 2012, in all its punishing, unhinged glory.  It's an intriguing glimpse into what might have been yet another new direction for the always unpredictable Reed.    

Arcade Fire, "Reflektor"

I go back and forth on this album, or at least the concept of it.  My gut reaction to "The Suburbs" was enough with the teen angst, crank up the Blondie tributes, and that's pretty much the direction they've taken with "Reflektor".  They even "became" a new band called the Reflektors, complete with lily white 70's-style suits, and got a noted dance music producer to work with them on their album.  If any band was due for a change after three albums of the usual, it was Arcade Fire.  You could counter that by asking why they'd mess with a  formula that had brought them nothing but exponentially growing success, culminating in arguably the most surprising Album of the Year Grammy wins ever.  But like U2 in the 80's (a band and a style that Arcade Fire certainly have taken cues from) there's only so far you can push yourselves trying to be the world's most earnest and meaningful band before self-combusting under the weight of your own seriousness.  Most people didn't see it coming with U2 -- they seemed to be in it for the long haul with the polemics they established in the 80's -- but to their infinite credit, they realized they had to become something totally different to get people to keep taking them seriously.  A lot has been written about U2 embracing irony, slumming it in Berlin long before it was the in thing to do, and going OTT with the Mephisto dress up games, etc.  It's been ages since a band at this level had the opportunity to follow in U2's footsteps and make the same kind of 180-degree turn.

Anyway, that's the concept.  I don't go back and forth on the album itself.  It's not good.  Like Steven Hyden pointed out on Grantland, it feels fake, pantomime, and utterly contrived.  What could have been more contrived than early 90's U2, you say?  But "The Fly" and "Mysterious Ways" were very much ahead of their time, there was nothing even remotely like it on the stadium rock scene.  Their image might have been carved out with diamond-like precision, but the shocking thing was that U2 managed to circumvent all their peers and fast forward themselves into the 90's so smoothly.  It was pantomime and contrived to the nth degree, but it was still U2, a drastically updated version of them but still instantly recognizable.  It was never fake, it never felt like they were trying to shed their skins completely.  The same can't be said for "Reflektor".  I have no longer have any sense of the band behind the record.

The lack of editing that nearly killed "The Suburbs" has made "Reflektor" quite the slog.  It's exhausting to listen to track after track of six-to-seven minute disco rock that never seem to hit any true valley or peak.  There are some bright spots, like the title track, but the stabs at reggae and funk couldn't possibly hit any further from their mark -- whatever the opposite of riddim and funky are, they found it.

I also have no idea how any of this will fit with their earlier material when they play live.  Besides the obvious inclusions of "Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)" and "Neighbourhood #3 (Power Out)", I'm not sure how they'll manage to piece together a cogent live set, or how they can pull off the loose and laid back "Reflektor" material night after night when their live shows are famous for being anything but.