Reviewing every David Bowie live album

Two years ago, I paid tribute to Lou Reed by reviewing all of his live albums in the wake of his death.  Needless to say, David Bowie is more than deserving of a similar honour.

But whereas with Reed I was already familiar with parts of his live catalogue, heading into this project I have not, to the best of my knowledge, heard a note of music from any of these albums.  In fact, I've neither seen nor heard hardly any live Bowie -- besides the famous Live Aid performance and a bootleg from Glastonbury 2000 (which is fantastic) I can't recall a single thing off the top of my head (does the Bing Crosby TV appearance count?)*.  I'll be listening in chronological order of each album's first release (not the very different order in which they were recorded), although in some cases I'll be substituting the expanded re-release for the original.

* Oh, there is a 45-minute documentary of Bowie and Massive Attack in Israel in 1996 -- how about that for a double bill? -- that includes a few live songs.  I discovered it on Youtube the day after Bowie's death, but since then, it seems as though Israel Channel 2 have forced it off the internet.  Here's a short clip.  


David Live (1974) (2005 re-release)

This album has plenty of obstacles to overcome.  It was during one of Bowie's "drugged out of his mind" phases, so even though he a gives perfectly serviceable performance, it's almost totally lacking in passion and conviction.  That's a serious problem for an artist trying to transition away from glam rock and into what he claimed was soul music.  The same can be said of his backing band.  In place of a kindred soul like Mick Ronson who intuitively understood the Bowie aesthetic, here he brings a slick, professional outfit that is there to provide steady backup to Bowie but nothing more.  If the singer could carry the show on the strength of his charisma then that might be sufficient, but unfortunately that is far from the case here.

Songs like "Changes" and especially "Suffragette City" should be ramshackle and slightly unhinged, instead they become "Bowie: the Musical"-style supper club entertainment with ample layers of squawking (overdubbed) sax.  But as the album goes on, oddly enough, the style starts to work in a number of places, for example, with "All the Young Dudes" which for me has always been a Broadway-ready piece thanks to its dramatic and endlessly croonable chorus.  "Rock and Roll With Me" has a raw, freestyling feel with a pronounced gospel streak that anticipates what Spiritualized would do nearly thirty years later beginning with "Amazing Grace".  And of course, there's "Diamond Dogs", which was supposed to be a half glam, half Philly soul track in the first place.

Unfortunately, the album peaks around "Diamond Dogs"/"Panic In Detroit", before he digs into the meat of the "Diamond Dogs" album.  That middle forty or so minutes out of the 100-minute slog is wonderful, and there's just enough good to outweigh the bad overall, but I wouldn't call this an essential live document or anything.  5.5/10


Stage (1978) (2005 re-release)

Even two songs in, this album blows away nearly everything on "David Live".   "Stage" was heavily criticized at the time for being too "clean" (i.e. a soundboard recording with very little crowd noise) and sticking too close to the album arrangements.  I didn't know that excess crowd noise was considered a must in 70's live recordings, so let's just dismiss that line of criticism.  As for the arrangements, I think people weren't used to hearing seven minute instrumental pieces on recordings, so we can chalk it up to Bowie being so far ahead of the curve in his Berlin period.  There are plenty of fascinating arrangements here besides the general increase in tempos.  The squalls of guitar noise in the final minute and coda of "Beauty and the Beast" is just one example.  The entire "Ziggy Stardust" section that begins disc 2 is another.  Those songs lose much of their glam hedonism and take on a more sinister tone with Bowie's new band.  "Ziggy Stardust" is a song (and album) about the dangers of rock and roll excess and the "Stage" recordings are played with a subtle restraint that communicates that message perfectly, whereas the original studio recordings glorified that excess.

This performance of "Heroes" may be the best live version I've heard because it truly "gets" what made the studio recording so magical.  Subsequent versions tended to change it into a driving rock and roll anthem, but the studio version specifically tried to be less rock and roll despite its steady beat and soaring guitar solos.

In contrast to "David Live", Bowie is energized and focused throughout the album, finally content to play something closer to his real life self (the underground artist from Berlin) rather than yet another character he had to convince himself he wanted to be.  The entire album sounds frighteningly contemporary too, I have little doubt, in a parallel universe where Bowie was still with us, that this performance with a few songs from "Blackstar" thrown in could have gone over huge at any festival this year.  What kind of mutant genius is this?  9.5/10 


Ziggy Stardust: The Motion Picture (1983 original release)(recorded 1973)

"Hang On To Yourself" explodes out of the gate, fueled by an intensity that is almost punk, a remarkably aggressive sound for 1973.  The slightly murky recording quality sets the scene beautifully, I can picture myself in the packed club, with raunchy smells in the air, watching a fierce and gloriously colourful rock and roll band.  The Spiders From Mars sound spectacular even at the end of what was surely an exhausting tour.  It is every bit the legendary gig that lives up to its reputation.

The guitar solo on "Moonage Daydream" is just ... wow.  "Space Oddity" provides the necessary comedown after that, and it was at this point that I finally understood exactly what Suede were aiming for in 1993 when they followed up "The Drowners" with "Sleeping Pills" on their first album.  Yes, of course they were glam-loving Bowie worshippers, I'm not talking about copying Bowie in the general sense.  I'm talking about trying to duplicate this exact moment, about three minutes into "Space Oddity", when you try to take in its soaring guitar lines when the exhiliration of "Moonage Daydream" is still wedged in your brain. 

After that extended cool down section, featuring epic versions of "Time" and "Width of a Circle", the energy ramps up again with "Changes", keeps increasing with "Let's Spend the Night Together", and hits impossibly high heights on "Suffragette City".  The song sequencing is impeccable here.

As for the "retirement speech", all five seconds of it, it's no wonder why people thought he was really retiring (those few seconds, separate from the rest of this gig, are the total extent of what I've heard previously from this album).  There's no sense of drama, as if he's immersed in the character and adding an extra element of drama to the show.  It really feels like an out of character moment, and of course the final song is "Rock and Roll Suicide", and the symbolism couldn't be clearer -- "we're going out on top and throwing ourselves on our swords as we go".  8.5/10


Live Santa Monica '72 (released 1994/2008)

Recorded nine months before the famous Hammersmith Odeon concert (see above), but released as a semi-legal bootleg in 1994 and then officially in 2008, this album captures a somewhat softer side of the Ziggy-era Bowie.  It's clearly the same band pushing the same buttons, but there are a few key differences.  The proggy middle section of the "Ziggy Stardust" soundtrack is replaced by an all-acoustic run.  "Changes" is closer in tone to the album version, and ballads like "Life on Mars" appear in place of the more aggressive "Aladdin Sane" material.  You can also sum up the differences by the choice of Velvet Underground covers.  On "Ziggy '73" they play "White Light, White Heat" -- raw, visceral, unforgiving.  Here they play a rollicking, almost jaunty version of "I'm Waiting for the Man". These aren't negatives, but there is a lot more risk taking with the "Ziggy" gig and a clearer shift away from rock and roll norms.  7.5/10

Side note: on these live versions of "Hang Onto Yourself", they attack the riffs with more ferocity than the album version, and with a far greater emphasis on the bass.  I wasn't convinced before, but I'm now fully on board with the theory that "Hang Onto Yourself" = sleng teng riddim.


Glass Spider Tour live (2008) (recorded 1987)

This is the one instance where I watched the concert video, for the rest of the albums I am reviewing just the audio recording.

This is the version of Bowie I grew up with -- the clean cut crooner of the post "Let's Dance" period. The clothes, staging, choreography, between song skits (weird half-street, half-surrealist stuff with a tinge of Janet Jackson ... definitely an odd coat for Bowie to try on) have all been impeccably stylized for the commercial 80's rock market.  We're right in the thick of what Bowie derisively called his "Phil Collins" period.  I still enjoy his singles from these years but I've never bothered to dig deeper into the albums or anything.  This version of Bowie is "what you see is what you get" -- still cool and stylish, but for an artist who was constantly evolving, he was never more like everybody else than he was from 1983-1987.

And yet goddamn, this concert is still great.  Sure, Carlos Alomar tries to show off his shredding skills a few too many times, Peter Frampton duets on "Sons of the Silent Age" and nearly ruins the song, and there's way too much Huey Lewis-style sax for my liking.   But check out Bowie's dancing on "Fashion" -- who knew he was so flexible and could dance so well?  Him and his band slay with "Young Americans" and "The Jean Genie", rearranged into bombastic overload for the 80's.  And this concert features "Absolute Beginners" in its impossibly cool prime.  Is it probably or most definitely the most underrated Bowie single?  8/10


VH1 Storytellers (2009) (recorded 1999)

The best part of this brief concert is a second hand story told to Bowie by Iggy Pop.  Iggy went to a club on an anniversary of the building of the Berlin Wall, and at the appropriate moment, the clubgoers gleefully smashed up a model of the Wall.  After it was done, everyone burst into tears.  From the perspective of a frequent visitor to 21st century Berlin, as the city completely reinvents itself for the third time (at least) in the last century, that story got to me.

There are no standout musical performances or unique arrangements (although the semi-acoustic format of Storytellers does limit potential risk taking from the artists) but Bowie does take risks with song selection, digging deep into his catalog to play a number of seldom played album cuts.   Also of interest is "Thursday's Child", the lead single from "Hours", which comes off sounding more lively than any of the older tunes.  Sometimes you need reminding about how great Bowie could still be at his commercial nadir.  "Thursday's Child" is easy on the ears, and is easily his most radio friendly single of the last fifteen or so years (my favourite radio station still plays it from time to time). 6/10


A Reality Tour (2010) (recorded 2003)

Sadly, this turned out to be Bowie's final tour.  If he had announced it as his final tour at the time then you couldn't have asked for much more as a fan.  Over the one hundred plus dates of the tour, he played a total of 67 songs from every phase of his career (the popular and not so popular ones).  The concert was recorded over two nights in Dublin, and on the second night he played 35 songs from 15 different albums, plus a number of covers.  The general theme is that there's something for everyone.  It's a celebration of his career, and a decidedly uncontroversial and non confrontational one from an artist who usually tried hard to be both.  Then again, "Reality" was a fairly straightforward rock album.

Still, if you don't get goosebumps hearing "Life on Mars" and "Ziggy Stardust" for the 10 000th time and at least five or six other songs of your choice (including at least one or two from his later albums), then I have no idea why you've made it to the end of this post.  7/10

Pazz and Jop 2015

Every social media platform and online media outlet has been re-branded as a David Bowie tribute/fan site this past week, and rightly so.  As such, this year's Pazz and Jop rollout was mostly an afterthought next to the far bigger news story of the week.  The VV is already disadvantaged by being the last major publication to release a year-end list, and barring mid-December surprises like last year's winner, Maxwell's "Black Messiah", that's not going to change anytime soon.  The poll still performs an important function by being the largest of its kind and by far the most well-archived.  Long after the shrugging has stopped in reaction to yet another website ranking Kendrick Lamar at #1, the wealth of information contained in each yearly P&J list will make it (in my view) an invaluable reference source for a long time to come.  Speaking of which, there was even a David Bowie/P&J article published this week too -- specifically, in reference to Bowie's historically poor showing in the poll, even in his 70's heyday.  

  

Some randomly organized thoughts:

-- The mid-January publication date (which is in itself relatively new, a few years ago they moved up the date by a couple of weeks to bring it closer to the publication of every other major media outlet's year-end list) doesn't lend itself to surprise results, save for the rare mid-to-late December bombshell (Beyonce and Maxwell in recent years).  But I can't recall seeing Carly Rae Jepsen ranked so high on other year-end lists, so I must ask ... what the hell?  I invested way too much time with that album this year, subjecting myself to multiple spins in an attempt to understand even 1% of the hype that had deemed it the smartest and most underrated pop release in forever.  I never heard anything other than your basic bubblegum pop dance album, which is a perfectly fine thing to be, and does not the least bit resemble something that deserves to be ranked as the #3 album of the year.  Maybe 2015 was a worse year for music than I thought ...

-- There's an interesting run from #43 to #49 which includes Low, Deerhunter, and Wilco, three indie darlings who didn't get much publicity this year presumably because of their familiarity after 15-20 year careers.  Nonetheless, there always seems to be a bedrock of critics who pay close attention to what they do because they never fall below a certain level in a large multi-generational poll like P&J.  That also applies all-time rock heavyweights like Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen ... and how about that, there's Bob Dylan at #49!

-- Kendrick Lamar's "To Pimp a Butterfly" was the most dominant #1 album in the history of P&J, seeing as it was named on over 40% of the ballots -- the highest percentage ever.  The real #2 album should have been Maxwell's "Black Messiah".  Why, you ask?  Since I've been voting (not sure about before that), the singles lists has always used carryover votes from previous years, against all discernible logic.  The poll is trying to recognize music in the year it made the most "impact", which is defined by the poll editors, not the voters.  So if I vote for "Habib Galbi" this year (which I did, and I was the only one) and it somehow breaks through and becomes a worldwide hit in 2016, then my vote will be counted toward the 2016 poll as well.  Thus, a song's standing is routinely boosted by double counting the votes of the first adopters.  This is usually the pattern, where a song takes a long time to catch on, a very small number of people vote for it in the year of its release, followed by a deluge of votes in the next year (the "impact year").  

Of course there's no reason to assume that the song had an "impact" on the first adopters in the year after they voted for it.  It's more likely that they've moved onto newer, and for them, more current songs.  Why assume (in this hypothetical example) that I liked "Habib Galbi" as much in 2016 as I did in 2015?  Because a bunch of other people decided to start liking it too?  Wouldn't I vote for it again if that were the case?  And assuming that I vote for ten different songs in 2016, doesn't that give me an unfairly expanded ballot with eleven songs instead of ten?

Oh but what's the harm with adding in a few extra votes as long as the poll gets the big picture right?  If five people vote for a song in 2014, and another fifty discover it in 2015, then let's forget about the calendar quirks and give the song its fifty five total votes for 2015, i.e., the year that it'll forever be associated with.  The bulk of the votes came in 2015, and the carryover votes are a small correction that don't impact the main results of the poll.  Well, except this year, when "Uptown Funk" got 44 votes, a majority of which (24) were carryover votes from last year.  Most of those voters were probably sick of it by mid-February and wouldn't even dream of voting for it again.  Or maybe they did and their votes were double counted!

And Maxwell?  I have no idea why that carryover rule should apply to songs and not albums, whose "impact" can equally well be spread over multiple years.  So Maxwell's 2008 points from last year should add with his 190 points from this year (18 mentions), boosting him from 42nd to 2nd place.  Anyone out there remember when CFNY named Smashing Pumpkins' "Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness" their #1 album in both 1995 and 1996?  I still enjoy laughing about that one.  

I'm just looking for some consistency in these polls, that's all.  

-- There was no token top forty techno-related album this year, presumably because Philip Sherburne had better things to do than rally the troops.  The highest was Arca's "Mutant", which is a great record that I may have unfairly passed on for too much of the year, especially judging by the list of like-minded voters who did.  Other electronic-ish albums turn up in the 70's, including those by New Order, Holly Herndon, and Floating Points.  

-- The Christgau, Tate, Powers, and Levy end of year verbal jam session didn't live up to my high expectations, unfortunately.  Possibly because I don't know a thing about country and didn't learn anything new about Kendrick Lamar that I haven't read in a hundred other places.  Yes, it's an album dealing with black issues and primarily intended for a black audience.  At least they do acknowledge -- the white critics anyway -- that the debate leaves them on the outside looking in to some extent. 

-- As I expected, I was further from the consensus this year than ever before.  By far.  Glenn McDonald, as always, has the numbers to prove it.  

In Centricity, I was #432 out of 480, or bottom ten percentile.  My score was 0.058 (the higher the score, with one being the absolute maximum, the closer you are to the critical consensus).  My average over the previous seven years was 0.273.  The albums in my top 10 earned only 47 other votes in total.  In most previous years I listed at least one album with more than one hundred other votes. 

Going back to 2008, only in 2012 did I submit a ballot where no album earned more than 50 other votes.  That year, 50 other critics voted for Swans' "The Seer", and 39 voted for Beach House's "Bloom".  This year, my most popular albums, Beach House's "Depression Cherry" and New Order's "Music Complete", earned just 19 and 11 votes respectively.  Five of my albums were voted on by nobody else but me, a personal record.  One of those was Howling's "Sacred Ground", which is not a shock because nobody else (literally, besides one other critic who liked the 2009 Moderat album) ever votes for Modeselector, Moderat, or anything on their label(s).    

David Bowie RIP

So many thoughts about David Bowie.  

In retrospect, of course the song and video for "Lazarus" are about his death.  I mean, the song is called "Lazarus".  Listen again to the opening lines: "look up here I'm in heaven/I've got scars that can't be seen".  And we didn't know?  In the video his body is covered by a sheet, his eyes are wrapped up like a mummy, and as he struggles to sing, he takes on a half sitting/half levitating pose.  Wow.  

I remember the lead up to Freddie Mercury's death, rumours had been swirling for months when Queen hadn't announced a tour in conjunction with their upcoming new album.  Something wasn't right.  Queen always toured, and even though they were past their peak as a recording act, as a live act they were still legendary.  This was shortly after the Who and the Rolling Stones had made their comebacks and went on record breaking tours.  Being relevant on the radio was no longer important for bands at this stage of their careers, the new album was a conveniently timed signal for beginning a new tour.  So there were plenty of rumours.  Freddie was sick.  It made sense given the lack of a tour announcement and the non-denials from the Queen camp, but nobody knew anything for sure.  News travelled slowly, there was no internet, no social media.  

I don't remember how those rumours started, but they were there, and everything was trading endlessly in the same tiny pieces of information.  Finally came the confirmation that everyone had feared: Freddie was sick with AIDS.  And the next day he died.  His inner circle had obviously known what he was dealing with for some time, but it was kept quiet.  For the public, who knew nothing officially but deep down knew something was terribly wrong, it was two shocks one after the other -- before anyone had properly processed the AIDS announcement, came the announcement that he was dead.  

Information travels so much quicker these days, and yet with Bowie, we see there has been little change in the speed of understanding.  He was looking more frail in recent photos and videos than he was for his last album three years ago.  He was not granting interviews (although the same was true with "The Next Day").  Nobody seriously raised the idea that "Blackstar" was an album of hidden messages.  On one hand, the art should be all that matters and not everything has to be a reflection of the artist's personal life, which is nobody's business anyway.  On the other hand, 85% of the internet is morons spewing hateful accusations and stupid conspiracy theories, and nobody thought to mention that maybe David Bowie was dying.  

In 1990, I bought the "Changesbowie" cassette, which I believe was the first "classic rock" greatest hits collection I ever bought, and listened to it endlessly. At a time when I was obsessed with finding really long songs, I was very much into this 14-minute remix of "Fame '90" (a version long since forgotten, even by me).  

In 2000, his set at Glastonbury wowed even the most jaded critics who felt he'd lost his way in the 90's trying to stay contemporary with his odd forays into electronic music.  I heard the set for the first time in 2004, and was blown away with how pure and powerful his voice still was.  I realized I'd be making a mistake if I didn't see Bowie play live at least once in my life.  Little did I (or anyone else) know at the time that he was almost done as a performing artist.

Two Bowie-related memories from TV have always stood out for me.  The first was NBC using the full album version of "Heroes" in the closing montage of the 1997 World Series.  The slow build of the song perfectly matched the drama and heartbreak of sport, at least on that day.  I think it was at that moment that I realized that "Heroes" was his best ever song, only ten years after everyone else realized it at "Live Aid".  

The second was his amazing one-off appearance with Arcade Fire at Fashion Rocks 2005.  Bowie was forever cool for a reason -- he never stopped being a fan of contemporary music and trends, and was constantly on the lookout for new ideas and fresh acts to inspire him.  The best artists make everyone around them better.  Queen's best song by miles is "Under Pressure", whereas for Bowie it was just one all-time highlight in a career filled with them.  The Arcade Fire performance is one of the best examples I've ever seen of an act slowly winning over a disinterested audience.  Even the director has no idea who they are.   At the beginning of the song he's fast cutting all over the stage, most likely because he had no idea who the lead singer was.  By the end of the song, an entire hall of non music fans are on their feet.  Bowie may have been the hook to get them to pay attention, but it was the joint effort of band and guest artist that eventually won them over.  For Arcade Fire, it was a great moment on their rise to superstardom.  For Bowie, it was yet another cool career highlight that he seemed to churn out effortlessly, and one of his final live appearances.

Top ten mixes/podcasts of 2015

A typically great year for mixes ... mixes never go into a slump!  As in past years, the list is unranked and presented in chronological order of release.


Shapednoise, FACT Mix 482 (February 9)

One hour of caustic, savage noise and garburated beats, it's the perfect introduction to the world of Shapednoise.



Logos, Resident Advisor Podcast RA.456 (February 23)

A captivating twenty minute beatless intro, followed by a noisy load of abstract electro and bass music.  There are countless surprising turns and unexpected transitions here.  On some days, this was my favourite mix of the year, but it was eventually topped by an even more adventurous mix.



JD Twitch, Bigfoot Series 001 (It's a Nuclear War; It's a Motherfucker) (March)

Twitch's "tribute" to the threat of nuclear war, immortalized in song from Sun Ra to Frankie Goes to Hollywood.



Lowlight Mixes, The Ambient Dishwasher (April)

Arguably the finest selector of ambient music on Mixcloud, Lowlight Mixes produced consistently great work this year, but this mix stood out for its unforgettable theme.  For most of us, a malfunctioning dishwasher is just that, but for some, it's the perfect source material for blissfully chopped and stretched new ambient music.


The Cyclist, FACT Mix 498 (June 1)

The year's finest mix clocks in at an economical fifty minutes, but is packed with more preposterously ambitious transitions than most podcast series manage over the course of a year. Anyone who can finding the common thread to seamlessly connect such a wide flung range of tracks is hearing music on a impossibly high level of intuitive understanding.  Flawless, and best of all, it's an easy and fun listen.


Exium, Blocaus Podcast 13 (June 13)

Cavernously heavy and dark, it's the best way to experience the feeling of being in a club at 4 AM without having to leave the house.



Carlos Suffront, Bunker Podcast 98 (June 16)

Perhaps the most surprising thing about the epic Aphex Twin filedump is that more DJ's didn't megamix the whole lot like Carlos Suffront did.  The mix isn't as mindblowing as you'd expect given the source material, but consider the degree of difficulty here.



Fotomachine, Juno Plus Podcast 115 (June 24)

This mix is so bleak it should come with its own Prozac prescription.  Barely functioning on the very fringes of what might get an open minded dancefloor to grudgingly move their feet and dance, many of these tracks are bordering on unclassifiable.  A good number of the transitions are unmixed, but the track selection is so good that it only becomes apparent after multiple listens.



Max_M, Gouru.fr Podcast 77 (July 30)

Another predictably great mix from the minimal techno master, sadly, this may have been his final recorded mix before his sudden death from cancer in May.



Oake, Secret Thirteen Mix 170 (December 15)

After posting one of the finest mixes I've ever heard in February of '14, Secret Thirteen quickly became one of my favourite podcasts and became the favourite of mine in '15.  This collection of gloomy noisescapes and industrial-tinged techno is the kind of sound I've been trying to nail down on some of my own mixes since forever.  

Three albums I didn't "get" in 2015

This year my tastes fell way out of step with the hype surrounding the most talked about electronic music , and I couldn't quite put my finger on the reason why.  Predictably, everything became much clearer after reading Philip Sherburne's excellent essay on The Year in Electronic Music for Pitchfork.  Wild hybridizations were in, and genre purism was out.   Sherburne notes that many of these hybrid styles are made by LGBT artists who are accustomed to being outsiders and never saw themselves bound by the so-called rules of making music in a particular genre. 

A backlash against genre purism comes along every few years in electronic music, so the mashing of otherwise disparate styles hardly represents a revolution.  The problem is that so much of this stuff, to me, sounds like a modern take on Tigerbeat6's adolescent nihilism,  which I didn't enjoy 10-15 years ago either.  One of the few exceptions is Arca, who combines Actress'  unconventional cut-up approach to rhythms with the twisted melodicism of 90's Autechre at their peak.  

Oneohtrix Point Never, "Garden of Delete"

Speaking of Autechre, this one takes the schizophrenia of their 21st century output and adds more humour and pathos.  On paper it sounds great.  On paper "Draft 7:30" was a great idea too.  Praise for that album usually starts with "wow, how did they generate that sound?  This is so much more advanced than 'Tri Repetae'!".  It also ends there, because debates over sound creation are as boring as sin, Autechre's best work never had to be compared to alien creatures coaxing unheard of sounds out of their equipment, no matter what you've heard to the contrary.  "Garden of Delete" is one of those albums where I can't remember a thing about it as soon as it's over, which is a shame because there are a million different things happening here and you'd think that one or two of them would be more memorable.  There's a wacky sense of ADD-style humour at play that feels like a cross between Kid606 and Duck Sauce -- two notorious novelty acts. 


Dawn Richard, "Blackheart"

It's a story that poptimist critics can't help but love.  "Making the Band" alumnus and former P. Diddy lackey breaks the mold with a most un-girl band-like album of dark electronica.  But there's nothing eye opening here, just R&B made by producers who never met a breakbeat or a filter tweak they didn't like and have a hankering for Burial. 


Suzanne Sundfor, "Ten Love Songs" 

I invested a lot of time with this album and wanted to like it so badly.  The pedigree is there -- she's got a great voice, worked with solid producers, and the world definitely needs an OTT orchestral pop album.  Maybe Sundfor is a victim of high expectations, in that nothing here comes close to the grandiosity of "Oblivion" (with M83).  The album is missing that majestic spark that made "Oblivion" so memorable, and not so carefully straddles the "McCarthur Park" line between parody and high drama.   

Diary of Musical Thoughts Podcast Episode 27

"On the second day of the convention the mix announced it was taking a $68 million quarterly loss" - 66 minutes

Inspired by a few mixes heard here and there (particularly from the often excellent Secret Thirteen podcast), I wanted to assemble a blissed out, downtempo mix where the tracks meshed together without necessarily beatmatching every transition. I strove for a consistent sound by repeatedly using two tracks from the same album (call it cheating if you must).  Including proggy tracks was also a must for some reason.  And yet again there is a track from the remix compilation of No Movement No Sound No Memories.  That disc is a goldmine for mixes -- you can find a track that fits perfectly with nearly every mix you want to make.

On the second day of the convention the mix announced it was taking a $68 million quarterly loss by Bruiserfs on Mixcloud

Top ten albums of 2015

I won't remember 2015 as a great year for new music, and in a few years time I doubt I'll rank any albums from this year among my all-time favourites.  However, there was a steady stream of quality music trickling out all year long, and I don't think I fully appreciated that until I started putting together this list and realized how many notable albums there were to choose from.

I wrote the previous paragraph as an intro to last year's top ten list.  Technically, only the first part of it is still true.  I remain conflicted about several of these albums -- will I still be listening to them regularly in one year's time?  From last year's list, only Fennesz and Alcest have remained in heavy rotation throughout 2015.  Are they great albums, or only fleetingly great when you binge listen to them when they're new?  Are they only great when you compare them to lesser albums from the same year?  What happens once the year passes and those albums have to hold their own against other great albums, rather than against the detritus released that same year?

As for the second half of that opening paragraph, I did appreciate the steady stream of quality music throughout the year, and was consistently surprised this year by albums that exceeded my expectations.  That includes most of the albums on this year's top ten.  However, looking back at 2015 as a whole, the sum seems less than the sum of its parts.  Almost nothing disappointed me, and there was a lot of like, but perhaps not enough music to truly love.

I don't want to reprint that opening paragraph every year, but is this the start of a trend?  Hopefully not.  The music on my 2011-2013 lists was strong enough to cast a shadow over the music from the past two years.  Every decade has its uncharacteristically strong years, and its recovery years.

TOP TEN ALBUMS OF 2015

10.  Shapednoise, "Different Selves" (Type)

You don't need descriptors for the music on a Shapednoise album.  Everything you need to know is in the name.  A throwback to the heyday of Ant-zen and the rhythmic noise of more than a decade ago, except in place of danceable rhythms, there's nothing but scraping, earsplitting ... er, shaped noise in place of anything that would be reasonably expected to make you move your body.

9.  Auscultation, "L’etreinte Imaginaire" (100% Silk)

In a year when Aphex Twin confirmed the legends about dozens of albums that had been recorded and hoarded away since the mid 90's by giving away hundreds of tracks for free, the most faithful reproduction of his career best work as Polygon Window was released by a much more obscure talent from the very non alien-like Madison, Wisconsin.

8.  Chelsea Wolfe, "Abyss" (Sargent House)

This fantastic album cover builds a powerful narrative even before you hear a note of the music: infernal, ghostly, reeking of death.  And the music?  Like the more expressive PJ Harvey of the 2010's returning to her more raw, visceral sound of the 1990's.  In a blues metal style.

7.  Nils Frahm, "Solo" (Erased Tapes)

Nils Frahm appeared on a few albums this year, but the best was the free one.  There's nothing particularly fancy going on here, just stark, wordless, stargazing piano ballads that work a special kind of magic.

6.  New Order, "Music Complete" (Mute)

Every generation can't have its own New Order, because the original keeps coming back.  How is it that nobody has bettered their particular style of dance rock in the thirty years that have passed since they first introduced it?  And how does their sound never seem to age?  The only thing that changes over the years is the guest vocalists.

5.  Prurient, "Frozen Niagara Falls" (Profound Lore)

Easily the most well-rounded Prurient album I've heard, this 90-minute double album takes in an epic sweep of noise subgenres.  

4.  Anthony Child, " Electronic Recordings from Maui Jungle Vol. 1" (Editions Mego)

The title is very misleading and nearly turned me away from hearing the album in the first place.  Is it yet another album of pysch-tinged field recordings and ghostly ambience? Actually, far from it -- you can sense the serenity of the jungle in these recordings, but this music isn't meant for quiet meditation.  The key influence of the natural surroundings is one of isolation, where nobody will complain about the droning noises and nobody will randomly come along to interrupt the recording.  So Child lets his compositions slowly envelop the listener, shoving all outside distractions into the deep background, and forcing time to stand still.

3.  Howling, "Sacred Ground" (Monkeytown)

The last two Moderat albums may have failed to set the world on fire like they should have, but Monkeytown Records haven't given up trying to recapture that same aesthetic.  This collaboration between earthy Australian Ry X and Ame's Frank Wiedemann is the latest genre-bending experiment to emerge from the Monkeytown camp, and very likely the best.  Dance remixes of indie acoustic songs have been huge hits in Europe over the past few years, but Howling decided to skip the remix step and make the records themselves.  

2.  Brandon Flowers, "The Desired Effect" (Island)

Last year, Future Islands' "Seasons" was a phenomenon, an 80's throwback that was so uncool it couldn't help but be cool.  It was the top track on Pitchfork's list.  It won single of the year on Pazz and Jop.  This year, Brandon Flowers released his own version of uncool 80's music, and ... what, was the uncool barrier somehow crossed?  Getting people to hear the album after they'd trained themselves to tune out the Killers years ago was an uphill battle.

1.  Beach House, "Depression Cherry" (Sub Pop)

For the second straight year, my top pick is an album that originally disappointed me greatly.  Both were among my favourite acts in music and carried high expectations.  It doesn't take a genius to believe that these things are related.  Look, I'm not even sure whether "Depression Cherry" is a great album.  But I spent more time dissecting it this year than the rest of the albums on this list combined.  I tried to unwrap its many layers and pinpoint what made these simple, lullaby-like songs sound so rich and textured.  I tried to analyze it track by track versus "Bloom" and understand what it meant for Beach House in the long term (which became even more difficult when they surprised fans with a second and very different album, "Thank Your Lucky Stars", only a couple of months later).  Was it really a search for a more insular existence, a reaction to their growing fame and the pressure to play louder and louder to fill up larger concert halls?  "Days of Candy" says yes, "Sparks" says emphatically no.  Did anything make me feel more at peace this year than "Levitation" and "Space Song" (no).  And so on, until the end of the year, and probably well into future years.  

Fennesz/King Midas Sound, "Edition 1"

I pretty much lost my head when I came across this album in the Berkeley Amoeba, for I had no idea it was in the works and didn't know that it had been released a few weeks earlier.  Kevin Martin and Fennesz ... joining forces??  What could be better?

Unfortunately the album turned out to be a bit of a disappointment, but that's usually the case with Fennesz collaborations.  His interests span genres far beyond his bread and butter formula of 60's melodic charm meets noise and static.  He's never been afraid to experiment in the most literal sense -- he doesn't force his signature stuff onto the record, the way a famous rock guitarist might play a guest solo in a style so familiar sounding, you won't ever mistake it as anybody else.  Fennesz genuinely loves to share ideas with a revolving door of musicians spanning genres and continents, and it certainly helps pay the bills between his own proper albums.  But sometimes it's too bad that he always saves his best stuff for the albums solely under his own name.

The dream Fennesz/KMS would be constructed out of infinitely dense slabs of guitar noise laid over cavernous metallic dub.  Instead of that, both artists decided to show their quieter sides -- atmospheric, dreamscapes dedicated to unknown lost loves, rendered spookier via strange, processed sounds squeezed from a sentient computer.  It's an album that fans of both acts will be proud to own, but won't otherwise grab many people's attention.  The second disc adds nothing to the overall product.  It's identical to the first disc but with the vocals removed -- no extended dubbier edits, alternative version, or unusual sounds you can't hear on the first disc.

UPDATE:  Why couldn't the entire album have sounded more like this transcendent three song live set??

New Order, "Music Complete"

New Order have released three albums in the past twenty years ("Lost Sirens" doesn't count).  Since breaking up for all intents and purposed circa 1994, their second act takes up more than half of their career, time-wise.  That's incredible to think about, especially considering how prolific they were before that.

What if "Get Ready", "Waiting For the Sirens Call", and "Music Complete" had been the first three albums of some other band's career and had been released over the past five or six years?  Their albums would receive good, but not great reviews from the usual indie publications.  The attention of the ex-LCD Soundsystem demographic would ensure they'd sell out 1500-2000 person venues each time they toured through major cities in the northeast and the large southern US college towns.  Critics would note that any song on any of their albums could be swapped with virtually any song on another one of their albums, and you'd scarcely notice the difference.  They'd never be called "daring" or "adventurous" because of their insistence on sticking to the formula, but even casual fans would admit that it was nice to know exactly what they're getting with each new album.  They'd be getting remixed by the likes of Hot Chip (hmmm ... this is one point where the alternate universe band intersects with the real life New Order).  They'd very likely have plateaued in popularity by their third album, but there are plenty of things worse than building a long term career off of modest but profitable world tours every two years.  Their fourth album might even debut in the top 20 of the Billboard 200.

However, tack those three albums onto the career of a band that hasn't had anything to prove since the 80's and everything is different.  Now it's the story of a band improbably adding to an already incomparable legacy, making quality new music long after they by all rights should have been finished as a creative force.  With each successive long hiatus, the idea that they could return and release anything passable became more and more preposterous, if not laughable.  Band members reconvened, quit, and rejoined, collaborators both strange and wonderful came and went, they appeared to be shifting gears and becoming an touring jukebox churning out "Blue Monday" until the end of time, only to split up or find their way into the studio again depending on mysterious circumstances that we will never completely understand.  Let's face it, at any point during the past twenty years, and most certainly since their big comeback gig at Reading '98, they could have begun their semi-retirement and made a healthy living playing only festivals and never playing a single note of new music.

"Music Complete" shouldn't exist.  And yet here they are, releasing "Restless" as their comeback single.  New Order have perfected the "we're back!" lead-off single during this second phase of their career, gone are the days when they're return with bombshell mindfucks like "Fine Time", now it's all about slipping right back into that old shoe and reminding people in the first thirty seconds that yes, you are listening to a New Order song.  "Regret" is still the gold standard in that regard, and they've tried to rewrite perfection a few times now ("Crystal", "Krafty") but couldn't, and probably never will, but no matter.  "Superheated" has become my favourite New Order album closer since "Leave Me Alone", although non-Killers fans may find it too ... Killers-y.  "Singularity" recalls The Cure circa "Pornography" and might be the most they've sounded like Joy Division since Joy Division, at least for the first minute.  Then it breaks into patented New Order dance rock with a synth hook lifted almost wholesale from "Bizarre Love Triangle".  Somehow it all works.  Based on the title, I expected "Tutti Frutti" to be a charmingly dumb song -- "Rock the Shack II", more or less -- but it turned out to be a dancefloor-ready stomper that ancient bands should have no business dabbling in, but again, New Order have deployed the spirit of "Technique" and it's a formula that still works against all odds and general common sense.  Finally, "Nothing But a Fool" is the album's centrepiece, running nearly eight minutes, featuring the album's best chorus and one of Barney Sumner's few genuinely heartbreaking lyrics in his career.

The narrative is important.  It could have been the steady third album by a band happy to tread water in mid-sized venues, but instead it's the shockingly great tenth album by a band that continues building their remarkable legacy.  

U2 live at Superbowl XXXVI

U2 have become a very small subplot in the follow up to the attacks in Paris.  They are nearing the end of their tour and their Paris concert was set to be broadcast live on HBO.  Now that show has been cancelled (as have all concerts in the city by orders of the French government) and the band chose to honour the victims by laying flowers outside of the Bataclan.

The pictures of the band paying their respects have been widely circulated, and seem to be touching a nerve with people, in part because U2 have a strange knack for getting entangled in hardships and tragedy taking place in the world.  There's little doubt that they see themselves as a band with a calling beyond the music world, with a duty to mankind to publicize injustices and to aid in the healing process during tough times.  There was Live Aid (1985), the Salman Rushdie dial-ins (early 90's), the concert in Madison Square Garden after 9/11, the appearance at Live 8 (2005), and now the Paris concert, which will surely be rescheduled and draw a far larger viewing audience than it would have had it proceeded as planned.  Finally, there was arguably the most famous concert of their career, at the Superbowl halftime show in 2002.

That show has been praised and ridiculed in equal measure -- a microcosm of the polarizing opinions that U2 have generated for virtually their entire career.  It regularly gets ranked among the best Superbowl halftime shows ever, if not the very best ever, because of its importance as a cathartic moment at the most intrinsically American cultural event only a few short months after the 9/11 attacks.  It gets ridiculed for ... well, mainly for Bono's hokey reveal of the American flag inside his jacket at the end of the show.  And for the "America ... fuck yeah!" jingoism of telling the country that everything will be OK in the context of a football game that means nothing in the life or death grand scheme of things.  And for being U2 by the usual people who don't like U2.  

The truth is, I never really understood the hate.  Like it or not, the halftime show of the post 9/11 SB was going to be an event forced upon some band that would be expected to deliver in the moment.  It wasn't the time or place for a solemn ceremony, but getting on with business as usual wasn't what was needed either.  That middle ground is almost impossibly difficult to inhabit -- acknowledging the events without getting preachy, conveying emotions without getting emotional, projecting dynamism from the stage without falling prey to jock rock tropes.  If not U2, then who?  Which band could hit upon precisely the appropriate tone, on that big a stage, with that size of a viewing audience, with songs that most of the country was familiar with, and accomplish it all in twelve minutes or less?  

Today I watched U2's Superbowl halftime show for the first time in nearly fourteen years.

At the time I could barely focus.  I scarcely believe that the Patriots were not only playing in this game, but had taken a big lead into halftime.  I was at a party with people who were not very emotionally invested in the game, and was in general somewhat distracted in all the usual ways that parties can distract you from what's happening on a TV in the corner of a room.  

And yet, even without having seen the concert since it was aired, I felt I could recall its key moments in vivid detail -- the heart shaped stage, the scrolling names, the setlist, the American flag in Bono's jacket.  Of course there were plenty of small details I missed.  The crowd on the field looked at genuine as Superbowl crowds get.  They were energetic and very very loud.  This was not a crowd of people who were there to look happy on TV.  There was not a single American flag on display as part of the show, with the exception of Bono's jacket.  Simple, classy.  The roll call of names only reached the "C"'s, which actually helped to underscore the scale of the tragedy.  There were absolutely no dancers, special guests, projections (other than the names of 9/11 victims at the end), complex light shows, or anything even remotely frilly or garish.  It was just U2 and their perfectly chosen three song set.  The significance of the second song -- an interlude of "MLK" as the intro to "Where the Streets Have No Name" -- certainly eluded me at the time.  

The backstory is also more complicated than I realized at the time.  Apparently Janet Jackson was originally booked, but pulled out.   U2 originally wanted to put on a much more extravagant show, but those plans were nixed.  It's hard to believe they could done better than they did.  They hit upon all of the proper subtleties that turned their set into one extended poignant tribute without smashing you over the head and declaring "this is a tribute!" like many bands would have.

So it shouln't come as much of a surprise that U2 touched so many people in Paris today without playing a note of music or saying a word.