The Rolling Stone 500

 It's a big improvement on their 2003 list (which was slightly updated in 2012), but won't provoke any fewer arguments.  Lists like these mainly exist as content providers for barroom and chatroom arguments for obsessive music fans.  

The 2003/2012 list was hopelessly stuck in an outdated mindset from two generations previous.  23 out of the top 50 were released between 1965-1971.  Nearly all of them were by white male dominated rock bands.  Such a homogeneous canon isn't defensible in 2020 by any means.  The new list has 15 albums from those years, not all of which were in the previous group of 23, and it's a much more diverse group of artists.  

As for the top ten: 

"The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill".  This makes absolutely no sense.  We know that both artists/industry types as well as critics voted in this poll, but the scoring and weighting of votes was not revealed, nor were the individual ballots.  And you can't rule out any "editorial decisions" that would favour the optics of certain albums appearing in certain spots in the list, for example, the optics of having a female POC in the top ten of the poll. Would any serious fan or critic claim this as the greatest hip-hop album of all time?

"Blood on the Tracks".  This has emerged as the definitive Dylan album over the past twenty or so years of polls from any number of outlets.  Albums from the sixties were consistently overrated for decades.  Similarly, the seventies were underrated and the pendulum has now fully swung back the other way.  People prefer the more confessional, softer and personal albums of the seventies to their more bombastic counterparts from the sixties.  

"Purple Rain".  This was probably boosted by Prince's passing a few years ago, but who cares?  He was a genius, and how many eighties albums can claim to be more iconic than this? 

"Rumours".  My favourite album in this top ten.  Definitely deserving of its spot.  It jumped from #26 in the 2003 poll.

"Nevermind".  If any decade is underrated now, it's the nineties.  Hip hop is now well represented, but rock, electronic, and a myriad of other genres have been shunted to the far reaches of the list, if they even appear at all.  Nirvana at #6 is a safe and boring pick to represent this part of the decade, as nonchalant a pick as "Exile on Main Street" used to be on similar lists 25 years ago (or even eight years ago -- it was #7 on the last RS poll).  Of note from the nineties: "Loveless" at #73, "Parklife" and "Screamadelica" going back to back at #438 and #437 has got to be a rib on somebody, and stone cold classics from The Magnetic Fields and Yo La Tengo somehow fail to crack the top 400.   

"Abbey Road".  Everyone knows that "Sgt. Pepper's" isn't the best Beatles album in any conversation taking place after 1973 (although RS somehow still thought so in 2012).  So at least that's been fixed.  But who declared "Abbey Road" the best one?  Its reputation has been on the rise, sure enough.  In 2003/2012, it was at #14 -- behind FOUR other Beatles albums.  For me it's still "Revolver" or the White Album.  

"Songs in the Key of Life".  Incredibly, this wasn't even in top 50 in the previous poll (although "Innervisions" was #24.  I think Stevie's AOR run in the eighties undermined his work and made people forget just how edgy and ahead of the times (while being simultaneously of his time) he was in the seventies. It probably goes without saying that race had something to do with that.  White guitarists had their fine reputations frozen from the sixties onwards.  Notbody ever forgot what Eric Clapton or the Rolling Stones meant regardless of how much crap they released from 1975-1989.  

"Blue".  This pick might have surprised a lot of people, but in the past decade, it was #2 in RS' 50 greatest albums of all time by women, and #1 in a similar top 150 list by NPR.  I have no issues with this pick.  It's one of the most elegant albums ever made and I find new wondrous things to ponder in its lyrics with every listen.  

"Pet Sounds".  Better than the Beatles -- it's official!  Brian Wilson can finally die happy.  It's now "Pet Sounds" turn to be the sixties album that Everybody Can Agree On.  

"What's Going On".  In much the same way that Springsteen drifts in and out of critical consciousness depending on the politics of the time, we need Marvin Gaye's guidance right now. 

Meat Loaf, "Bat Out of Hell II"

The fifth in a series of albums that I haven't heard in over twenty years ... 

The 90's were unique in that their mythology was often well out of step with the reality, more so I think than any other decade.  Everyone "knows" that the 60's were about Motown, soul, the Beatles and Stones.  And indeed, the charts reflected it.  Prevailing rock mythology hands the end of the decade over to the hippies and psychedelic bands, but the Billboard #1 hits of the time show that novelty songs and one hit wonder bands ("Sugar, Sugar", "In the Year 2525"), as well as jazz and easy listening acts (Hugh Masekela, Herb Alpert, Henry Mancini) were the real winners in those years.  But for the most part, the prevailing rock mythology of the 60's is correct.  

What about the early 90's?  It's true that Nirvana and Pearl Jam sold millions, but Whitney Houston's "The Bodyguard" and Garth Brooks sold millions more.  In 1993, Pearl Jam set a record for first week sales with "Vs", but the biggest rock star in the world was arguably a pudgy forty-something whose hadn't had a hit album since the 70's.  This made no sense even while it was happening, but it did happen.  "Vs" moved more units in the US, but "Bat Out of Hell II" made more of an impact worldwide.  Pearl Jam by that time were refusing to release videos, whereas Meat Loaf had the globe conquering smash hit song and video.  Game, set, and match.   

In a down period for Bruce Springsteen, Meatloaf and Jim Steinman strove to out-Boss the Boss and showed there was plenty of life in kitchen sink drama rock even in the cynical, slacker heavy 90's.  "It Just Won't Quit" borrows generously from Bruce's "Atlantic City", a fact that was lost on when this album was released. 

Any discussion of the album's flaws has to start with two things: it's length, and the character of its protagonist.  The original "Bat Out of Hell", released at the peak of the vinyl, FM-rock heavy era, clocks in a standard (for the time) 46 minutes.  "Bat Out of Hell II", released when vinyl was near its lowest ebb and cassettes were rapidly phasing out, took advantage of the added running time of CD and runs for a bloated 76 minutes.  Six of its eleven tracks run for seven minutes or longer.  Listening to it from start to finish is an endurance test, and unlike the original BOOH, these songs aren't multi-part mini-operas like "Paradise By the Dashboard Light" that are constantly shifting and refocusing the listener's attention.  Songs are stretched out via long intros and outros, through multiple repetitions of chantable choruses and inessential fourth and fifth verses.  There are a notable lack of ballads to mix up the tempos, and the rock numbers mostly churn along at the same mid-tempo pace.  It's never boring, it's just overly long and badly in need of a good editor.  

As for the character of Meat Loaf himself, on the first BOOH he was part naive horny teenager, and part motorcycle junkie in a fur lined apartment undergoing sensitivity training.  Who is he supposed to be on BOOH II?  Is "Life Is a Lemon and I Want My Money Back" an attempt to piggyback on 90's slacker culture, or is he an aging rebel revisiting poses from his youth?    Is "Everything Louder Than Everything Else" a rage against the dying embers of rock and roll hedonism, or an anti-war anthem?  Is it trying to be both?  Unfortunately, in trying to modernize the message, many songs come off as cloying and phony.

These are major flaws, and yet in many instances they scarcely matter because of one major ace in the hole:  Meatloaf's impeccable delivery and 100% commitment to his performance.  The full twelve minute version of "I'd Do Anything for Love" might have extraneous bridges and a million forgettable guitar solos, but the intro and outro still give me chills and the quiver in Meatloaf's voice absolutely sells me on the emotion every time.  "Objects in the Rear View Mirror ..." comes closest to the spirit of the original BOOH, a mini-symphony of loss, love, and escape. Next time you're confused about how this stuff managed to co-exist with most of 90's rock, just watch this video back to back with Guns 'N Roses' "November Rain" and you'll understand.    

Peter Green's Tel Aviv Christmas, 1980

Writing in the Times of Israel, Amir Ben-David uncovers the mysterious details of Peter Green's visit to Israel in 1980.  If there has been a better English language long form music article published in Israel over the past decade, I have yet to see it.

There are plenty of flaws in the piece.  It characterizes Green's version of FM as "non-commercial" (in comparison to the breezier sounding outfit that made "Rumours" and took over the world) even though Green wrote several hits, including a #1.  It misses basic details of his personal life -- Green divorced shortly before his visit to Israel, not after.  More concerning is that it's rockist to the extreme, mythologizing its subject to absurd, unreachable heights.  By 1980, Peter Green was nearly a decade removed from leading Fleetwood Mac and was clearly spent as a commercial force.  And yet, for him to randomly turn up in Israel at that time bordered on the unthinkable.  Most of the Western world had already forgotten about Green, but Israelis hadn't had their turn yet.  Much in the same way that American blues guitarists were fawned over legends to the Rolling Stones in the early 60's, Green was a deity in the Israeli blues scene to those who hadn't the chance to see him in person.  So the OTT mythologizing in the article has its purpose.  It effectively communicates, with the help of many of the principles involved in the recording session with Green at the time, the breathless excitement surrounding his visit.

The investigative journalism is top notch.  Through a serious of enchanting interviews, Ben-David pieces together the details of a recording session lost to history.  The cast of Israeli characters is nearly as colourful as Green himself.  The fate of the recording is not entirely understood, although some of those who were present attempt to explain it. Only two songs from the session are linked in the article.  Some believe they were the only songs recorded, others believe there were hours more that have since been lost or destroyed.  Like any great mystery, one is left with more questions than answers.  To this day, nobody even knows exactly how or why Green made his way to Israel. 

In general I just love stories about famous musicians who disappear for a while and turn up in an exotic locale with little to no explanation.        

Binging on classical music

In years time, when mountains of books have been written about the COVID-19 pandemic and our grandkids ask about how we handled ourselves when the virus hit, I can talk about how my musical tastes took a sudden and unexpected shift toward classical music.

Black swan events matter -- we saw it in the 2008 crash, and we're seeing it now.  Human reactions to these unlikely but inherently predictable events are themselves unpredictable.  Nobody knows how they will react if and when they occur, because nobody has any past experience to draw upon.  Would I have taken this deeper dive into classical music if I had read Alex Ross' "The Rest Is Noise" not during the pandemic?  It's hard to say.  If the natural reaction to the pandemic is fear -- fear about one's continued good health, or fear of our everyday way of life being overturned -- then it makes sense to take comfort in music from the more distant past.  We long to turn back the clock to a more comfortable era, to a life with fewer unknowns.  The further back you go, the more you can overcompensate for the uncertainties of today.  Using completely illogical math, transporting back one hundred years produces five times more certainty in understanding the then contemporary world than transporting back only twenty years.  Do I consciously feel any of this?  Of course not, but this is the sort of stuff we all muse about these days ...

I have liked classical music since I was a teenager.  In those days it was a lot of Beethoven and Mozart on cassette, later on it was the odd CD (Stravinsky, Gavin Bryars) and works by some of the key minimalists (Steve Reich, Terry Riley).  Electro-acoustic and other modern experimental works fit into a different category.  Still, as I sit here writing this, I am trying to remember the last time, pre-pandemic, that I bought a true classical CD.  I am quite sure it didn't happen in the 2010's.  My guess would be 2003-4-ish, since those were the last years before filesharing and streaming took over my listening habits, and based on the contents of my music catalogs before and after leaving Canada.  

Then, a few weeks ago, I bought a recording of Sibelius' Second Symphony featuring the Vienna Philharmonic conducted by Leonard Bernstein.  It scratched the Sibelius itch I was feeling at the time and was a performance I was familiar with through Youtube.  

Yesterday, I bought another seven classical CD's.  There was no precedent for this type of purchase in my decades as a music buyer.  I have gone CD shopping hundreds or maybe thousands of times, but this was the first time I went specifically to search for classical music. Third Ear and  Black Hole have exemplary classical sections -- the first based around newer recordings, while the strength of the second is their extensive bargain selection.  The damage included works by Sibelius, Bryars, Shoskatovich, Satie, Mahler, and John Adams.  "The Rest Is Noise" introduced me to many contemporary composers, and I took most strongly to Adams.  

Have I mentioned how pleasant music shopping has become?  This is not a pandemic-related thing, it's a situation that has evolved over the past several years in particular thanks to vinyl's huge comeback and music buying (as opposed to streaming) becoming an ever more specialized pursuit by a small number of hardcore fans.  In the supposed golden years of music stores, the clerks were assholes.  That's just a fact, we all remember Jack Black in High Fidelity and know that his character was anything but a parody.  Working in a music store gave you the social cred to claim that your taste in music was better than anyone's other than your fellow clerks, scoffing at the inferior tastes of your customers was part and parcel of achieving the status of music store clerk.  They were conceited and proud of it, and even the most dedicated customers wouldn't have expected anything less.  

These days, there are no more casual music buyers.  Big box stores are gone, and just about all that's left are tiny shops run by exceedingly nice people that cater to exceedingly loyal customers.  The owners offer you water or coffee, everyone is in each other's face because of the cramped surroundings (ratio of music bin space to floor space: typically > 2:1), and the stores are true social spaces more than they ever were in the so-called glorious past.  

Front 242, "Front By Front"

The fourth in a series of albums I haven't heard in over twenty years ...

Very little has been written about industrial music.  Google for "industrial music criticism" or something similar and you'll find multiple links to S. Alexander Reed's "Assimilate: A Critical History of Industrial Music" (which I haven't read) and various odds and sods.  The biographies and oral histories never coalesced.  Good luck even finding a few industrial albums on the plethora of 80's or 90's "best of" lists that have appeared in recent years.

I hate to fall back on cliche's like "style over substance", but I think that many of the key bands were genuinely uninterested in making "classic albums" or achieving similar rock-crit benchmarks.  They were radicals in their politics, performances, and sought to provoke visceral reactions to their music.  Not for nothing that Front 242 popularized the term "electronic body music" to describe themselves.  I always found that term to be deceptively simple and rather underappreciated.  "Body music" doesn't refer to music that gets in your feels and touches your soul -- a description that apply to many other genres.  It's a physical feeling, an abuse of one's body while the crushing beats, clangs, and snarls collectively tear away at your chest cavity when listening or dancing at high volume.  Plenty of bands start out as political agitators and rebels and most eventually refocus themselves towards the task of appealing to a wider audience and making great albums that will stand the test of time (e.g. U2) .  Industrial acts were particularly fixated on radical aesthetics that would challenge contemporary audiences and couldn't care less about showing up on a listicle three decades later.  Nine Inch Nails and Ministry proved there was a path into the mainstream via this music (taking completely different routes -- NIN appealed to teen angst while Ministry courted the metalheads) but so many of the initial late 70's and 80's wave of industrial bands are missing from the commonly accepted musical canon. 

Despite not having heard "Front By Front" in over twenty years, I found myself humming the basic melodies and recalling basic lyrics just from reading the song titles.  I can't say that about the first three albums I revisited in this series.  The first four songs are impeccable. "Until Death (Us Do Part)" is a perfect overture to the album. This is about as pop as Front 242 would get, the synth hooks are Depeche Mode-like in their catchiness.  "Circling Overland" ramps up the brutality with a primitive, bludgeoning backbeat.  The album's darker turn is rounded out by ominous faux-strings and paranoid lyrics about an omnipresent air force surveying all of Western Europe.  "Im Rhythmus Bleiben", as the title suggests, is a series of pulverizing rhythms punctuated by repetitions of the title with increasing urgency.  "Felines" shows a more sensual side to the band, with a slower tempo and a spidery, curdling bassline.  None of this music seems to have aged much, possibly because there haven't been enough copycats mining it for inspiration.  The lack of overexposure has kept this stuff relatively fresh. 

The second half of the album is more mundane and repetitive, but like I said, these bands weren't necessarily about trying to craft classic albums.  The exception, of course, is "Headhunter", arguably the finest single this genre has ever produced.  Much like the title character stalking his prey, stealth rhythms and vocal samples pop up everywhere, whirs, clicks, and muffled shouts are constantly lurking but can do nothing to derail the galloping backbeat.  It's a complex song with a shoutable, club-ready chorus.

My cassette version contained not only "Welcome to Paradise" (a cut and paste club smash in and of itself) and the entire "Never Stop" EP, but seventy consecutive minutes of Front 242 was too exhausting then, and still is now.  You absorb most of their best tricks about about thirty minutes and then it gets repetitive with diminishing returns.  But at its best, "Front By Front" still sounds fresh and confrontational, with lyrical themes that still resonate today.   

Alphaville, "The Singles Collection"

This is the third album in a series of albums that I haven't heard in over twenty years ...

While it's technically true that I haven't listened to this exact album in decades (having bought it on cassette for peanuts), I haven heard the singles numerous times over the years, because Alphaville continue to receive steady airplay even today.  Or rather, Alphaville's two best known singles have never really gone away, save for a short time during the 90's.  Like many bands of their era, Alphaville were completely out of place during the early 90's but revived their career once non-ironic 80's nostalgia kicked in.   Jay-Z's sample/cover of "Forever Young" brought them full circle, rescuing them from being an 80's trivia question in the US and introducing them to a completely new generation of fans.  Jay and Mr. Hudson's "Young Forever" was a top ten Billboard hit, far and away bigger than anything they achieved in the 80's.  

"The Singles Collection" was timed around the re-release of the "Forever Young" single, and seemed designed to give them one last crack at breaking through in the US market.  Maybe there was a stigma about European bands looking and sounding too European.  The open vowels and strained pronunciation in "Forever Young" are a clear giveaway as the band's non-British origins. You might say that it didn't seem to hurt a-ha, but "Take On Me" a) had the iconic, way ahead of its time video, and b) was the crazy exception that proved the rule.  Between "Dancing Queen" in 1977 and the rise of Milli Vanilli and Roxette in 1989, a span of twelve years, there were only five number one Billboard hits by continental European acts:

Stars on 45, "Stars on 45 Medley"
Vangelis, "Chariots of Fire"
a-ha, "Take On Me"
Jan Hammer, "Miami Vice Theme"
Falco, "Rock Me Amadeus"

By my count, that's three novelty songs, two movie tie-ins ("Rock Me Amadeus" counts as both), and only one proper, non-gimmicky number one hit -- "Take On Me".  Not to mention that Jan Hammer was living in the US and was a US citizen when he topped the charts -- with the theme song to an American TV show -- and probably shouldn't be on this list.  It was simply not a good time for German bands trying to find success in the US.  It seems they could improve their chances by exploiting their front line Cold War cred and singing about nuclear war paranoia (Nena's smash hit "99 Red Balloons" hit #2).  "Forever Young" pushed all the right buttons (fear of the bomb, teenage melodrama, yanking every heartstring in the chorus) but couldn't even scrape the top fifty.  Alphaville's victory was in the long game, their love song spans five different decades and still matters today.   

It also didn't help that they released a compilation called "The Singles Collection" with only four songs.  It suggested that they were a flash in the pan who didn't even have enough songs to pad out the rest of their supposed greatest hits compilation.  The song selection was unusual, considering that they had four other singles from their first two albums that could have been included, all of which had performed well on European charts  Nevertheless, I loved the format, and still do today.  Think of it as a double EP of remixes, and its a brilliant concept.  You get the single version and a DJ-friendly  extended version of each song, perfect for parties or just for those times when four minutes of a great song isn't long enough. 

"Forever Young". Is there another song whose original version and its radically different remix were almost interchangeably successful?  I can think of R. Kelly's "Ignition (Remix)" and the Todd Terry mix of Everything But the Girl's "Missing", I'm sure there are others.

"Big In Japan".  Still a monster song, and I love how the remix breaks down its rich, spidery, multiple bass lines. 

"Red Rose".  This song is the jewel hiding in plain sight on this collection.  Oddly enough, it wasn't a hit anywhere at the time, but it should have been.  Its driving, vaguely Motown-ish beat suggested a shift away from typical synth pop and toward a groovy, almost Robert Palmer-esque rock and roll vibe.  It was an attempt to appeal to American tastes, but nobody was biting. What a shame ...

"Dance With Me".  The clear #4 on this compilation, with a hokey chorus that I've never been able to enjoy, but still a glorious slice of bouncy roller-rink and 80's teen movie ready synth pop.  Far from their finest moment, but still better than most other bands in the genre were managing at the time.   

The Stone Roses, "Garage Flower"

My second post in an ongoing series where I revisit an album that I haven't heard in over twenty years ...

I first bought this on a bootleg cassette around '93-'94, it was likely a copy of a copy (the level of tape hiss was bordering on unlistenable), was titled "Stone Roses: early demos" or something to that effect, and had a completely different running order than the official release in 1996.  Despite all this, I felt like I'd landed on a gold mine.  At a time when Roses fans were starving for new material during the (at the time) interminable wait for their second album, here were a dozen or so honest to goodness "unheard" Roses tracks, recorded years before they were famous. 

It wasn't a great album, but did it matter?  The seeds of greatness were clearly there.  the swagger, self-confidence, and Reni's fierce drumming all shine through.  It was clearly an important chapter in the Roses' story. 

At the time, I didn't realise that Martin Hannett had produced the album.  That was due to me not being completely attuned to his style -- it's quite obviously him once you know what to listen for.  But these were also the pre-internet days where getting information about something like this was nearly impossible.  I knew nothing about this album other than what was written on the cover of the cassette.  There were no details about the recording (date, studio, personnel ...) and even the song titles were all wrong. 

Hearing "Garage Flower" today, it's clear that Hannett was the wrong person to produce the Stone Roses.  The instruments, and John Squire's guitar in particular, form a muddy, echo-filled blur.  Squire's guitar lines, which were such an essential part of the debut album's bluster, are completely buried under multiple layers of studio trickery.  Ian Brown's nasally voice was always cited as the weak point in the band, but Hannett's solution (drench him in reverb) is far inferior to John Leckie's on the eventual debut (add simple harmonies and have him sing in a more airy tone).  That being said, Hannett wasn't a bad choice for producing *this version* of the Roses, because the songs weren't there yet, and at the time, he probably made them sound better than they actually were.  They certainly sound different than other bands of the time, almost proto-shoegaze and with none of the classic rock and jangly guitar pop elements that they'd later be known for. 

"Garage Flower" was shelved in 1985, but we can still compare it to Happy Mondays' debut album released in the same year (because of course we do ...).  In both cases, once you've heard the first three or four songs, you've heard all of their tricks.  The Mondays had zero tunes to speak of, but could work their way round a simple but infectious groove.  John Cale polished what little talent they had into a hypnotic VU-style drum/guitar loop, and all in all, these days, their debut is more fun to listen to than "Garage Flower".  However, the Roses were far closer to the peak version of themselves than the Mondays were.  "I Wanna Be Adored" and "This Is the One", the two "Garage Flower" songs that eventually appeared on their debut, are far from being the standout tracks.  With slower tempos, more dynamic highs and lows, and guitar playing that can actually be heard, both would sound immeasurably better on the debut four years later.  In general, their formula of shouty intro leading to an aggressive drum fill and caterwauling guitars can't be sustained over an entire album.  It must be said, however, that even at this stage, the Roses had a knack for landing the big chorus.  Again, the elements are there, but they hadn't made the Leap. 

   

Jean Sibelius

I am slowly making my way through Alex Ross' exhausting but fascinating "The Rest Is Noise".  I am in the middle of the chapter that covers Berlin in the 1920's, and the sheer volume of music I need to hear is overwhelming -- the audio clips on the book's website are just the tip of the iceberg.  But the biggest revelation for me by far has been the music and the cultural force that was Jean Sibelius. 

Youtube comment boxes are filled with comparisons between Sibelius' music and the climate and nature in Finland.  The wind, frost, snow, and darkness are frequently referenced, "THIS IS FINLAND!" is a common exclamation that shows, even one hundred years later, that the music speaks to the depth of the Finnish soul in ways that outsiders can't entirely appreciate.  The intricate linkage between the innate character of the musicians' home country and their music reminds me of the writing surrounding Sigur Ros, at least for their earlier albums.  Had Sibelius been born 75 years later, he might have become a Steve Roach-type of composer and produced electronic-based freeform ambient and tribal-ambient works.  The way Sibelius draws out the passages in his symphonies, giving the feeling of time slowing to a crawl, makes him the most "ambient" of orchestral composers that I've heard.  His knack of landing, for lack of a better phrase, the "big notes" is truly wondrous, drawing timbres from the massed orchestra that you just don't hear from most composers.  The overall effect is similar to electronic drone music -- unique tonality + time stretching = motion and form within the notes that can't be heard otherwise. 

Arcade Fire: Miroir Noir (dir. Vincent Morisset), Live at Lollapalooza Chicago 2017

Arcade Fire used to be an incendiary band, a once in a decade instance of a band that arrived perfectly formed upon their debut album, without an obvious predecessor, without even a whiff of corporate guidance or a all-seeing mentor lurking behind the scenes.  Like The Smiths and Suede before them, they knew exactly who they were upon arrival, didn't fit into any existing niche in indie rock, and yet managed to find a huge fanbase waiting for them who didn't even know what they were waiting for until they heard it.

Watch their performance from Lollapalooza 2017, and see that on any given night (or even most nights considering how good they are on stage), they can still be that incendiary band.  The talent is clearly there, their intensity and boundless energy on stage remains among the best in the world, and based on recent interviews, they still have the drive to succeed.  But perhaps it's never been easier to fool jaded fans like me into thinking they still have it, based on a nostalgia-heavy live show.  The Killers debuted in the same year as Arcade Fire and are the poster children for releasing three great albums and milking them ad infinitum.  They can headline wherever they want, play sets based around those three albums, and be certain of sending fans home happy, anything they've released in the past decade scarcely seems to matter in the big ticket selling picture. 

I hadn't seen "Miroir Noir" until now, and it's been surprisingly under-publicized over the years.  Admittedly, a documentary without a narrator, obvious story arc, and barely any dialogue can be a very tough sell.  It's shot almost entirely in sepia tones or antique-looking colour, and frequently resorts to odd, intrusive camera angles and the camera shakes or jitters with virtually all performance-based shots.  We get a fly on the wall view of the "Neon Bible" recording sessions, and a few representative on stage performances.  That's what passes for a story arc in "Miroir Noir", and the only commentary or sorts comes from the mostly crackpot calls to the 866 number that fans and interested parties could call to hear previews of the album prior to its release.  Despite all this, it's not a densely abstract art film because it's packed with incredible music that produce a string of memorable moments -- "Wake Up" played acoustically amongst fans on the floor of a concert hall, the elevator versions of "Windowsill" and "Neon Bible", the orchestral recording of "Intervention", and countless more.

Where did things start to go wrong? Ten years ago, didn't I review "The Suburbs" and praise them for embracing synths, taking cues from dance music, and hope they'd continue on that road in future albums?  I stand by those comments, while noting that there's a world of difference between a rock band recognizing and absorbing disco into their songs (e.g. Blondie) and concocting a fictional band name (The Reflektors) as part of a tongue in cheek promotional campaign while playing dress up on stage and encouraging audience members to do the same.  When you choose to work with trendy producers because you can, while retaining a pseudo-ironic detachment from the scene you're trying to glean inspiration from, then you're making "Emotional Rescue", not "Atomic".

Through their first three albums, nobody could ever accuse Arcade Fire of not being sincere, it was their most endearing quality.  Even their detractors knew that they *meant it* as much as any proverbial punk band ever had.  U2's "Pop" is now considered a mis-step, and three years later they reset themselves with "All That You Can't Leave Behind", signalling to any lapsed fans that the "real" U2 was back.  However, you can't say that they weren't all-in on that sound at the time -- "Zooropa" in 1993 further attests to this.  Arcade Fire feel like they hedged their bets before this phase even began.  If people liked "Reflektor" and "Everything Now" then great, and if not, they can reset and blame their critics for not understanding the subtext and laughing at the jokes.  Oh wait, they've already started doing this!

Most of all, their last two albums annoy me as a long time dance music fan for the same reasons that I used to rip on Radiohead twenty years ago.  Paranoia over a rapidly changing world, fear and distrust of technology, and criticism of consumer culture were already boring when Radiohead did it, and Arcade Fire have sadly taken many cues from them.  Both bands are also trying to tell us that electronic music is vacuous due to its mostly faceless, wordless nature, and only a rock band can enable such music to reach its true potential by adding conscious lyrics and guitars, thereby providing the music with a social context that was sorely missing until they came along.  Fuck all that.  What emotions do these bands always bring to the music?  Do they try to expand the palate of electronic music, and find new ways to express joy, rage, sadness, love, and all the other common themes in rock music?  No, they always loop back the stereotypes, i.e. they use cold, emotionless electronic music as a conduit to criticize cold, emotionless, uncaring, unsympathetic corporations and misusers of technology.

That said, "Everything Now" is an incredible song, and "Afterlife" shows that if you're going to blatantly copy, you might as well copy from the very best (New Order's "Temptation").  So I still have hope.   

The National - A Series of Exciting Communal Events

During the two months at home it was easy to lose track of what day it was.  However, I always knew which day was Monday because that was the day that the National would stream an Exciting Communal Event.  These concerts, mainly drawing from the band's nearly limitless supply of festival appearances, became a highlight of my week and helped keep me grounded to the idea of a normal life that would one day return.  Obviously plenty of other artists are doing similar things and connecting with their fans via their archive of live recordings or by livestreaming songs from their homes.  But the National's Exciting Communal Events were my favourite vice during the shutdown, and as a way to enjoy great music for two hours and reset one's brain for the coming week, I could find nothing better.  It certainly helped that the streams would go live at midnight my time, when the house was dark and quiet.  It was my secret, private portal into a world where real life can be suspended for happier reasons, and festivals can seem like the most important things happening in the world.  

The Exciting Communal Events will seemingly continue into the foreseeable future.  The National have headlined a couple of dozen festivals each year on their past few tours, so they're not going to run out of content.  Most importantly, the band are using these events to publicize a Gofundme to support their tour crew, and have also set up a separate fund to help their crew using profits from online merch sales.  It might be one or two years before concerts and festivals of this size can take place, so out of the millions of workers currently furloughed, they are among the last people who will get their jobs and normal lives back.  It's a great cause and I would encourage any National fan -- or fans of other bands organizing similar funding drives -- to donate and help out people who work so hard behind the scenes to stage these concerts.

So far there have been eight Exciting Communal Events, all of which are streamed at 5 PM EDT and then archived to the band's Youtube channel here.

High Violet Live from Brooklyn Academy May 15, 2010

This was directed by D.A. Pennebaker (one of his final works) and streamed live back in 2010 on the eve of the release of "High Violet".  At the time it probably blew a few minds and heralded a new era for the band.  Only bands that have "arrived" have their concerts professionally shot by a famous director in a beautiful theatre.  However, as a concert film it's nothing extraordinary, and the backstage stuff isn't particularly revealing, but that's partly because we've been spoiled by the volume of content that came afterward.

Live from Hurricane Festival June 21, 2013

The summer of 2013 was probably the last year you'll find them performing before sunset at a festival.  With only one hour allotted, they aim for highspots only by playing only fast, propulsive songs from their catalogue, with no ballads or slow passages.

  

Live from Primavera Sound, June 1, 2018

Live from Primavera Sound, May 30, 2014

This is clearly one of the band's favourite festivals.  Setlists from the "Sleep Well Beast" tours are always fantastic, and their 2018 appearance is no exception.  However, their 2014 appearance is more unique and fun.  The songs are played at noticeably faster tempos, with an energy and intensity beyond their typical gigs.  Matt Berninger seems tipsier than usual, and a few songs threaten to go careening off the edge into chaos, but the band somehow holds it together.  

Live from Ypsigrock, August 9, 2019

"I Am Easy To Find" drags in parts, weighed down by longer song lengths and experimental passages that don't always slick.  That problem extends to the resultant tour, but fans will still find plenty to like in this 2+ hour show in a beautiful Sicilian square. 

Guilty Party: Basilica Hudson

The band play on a circular stage encircled by a select number of fans.  This was a very special show in an intimate setting, featuring the entire "Sleep Well Beast" album played in order.  They are accompanied by a number of guests (Mouse on Mars, So Percussion, Nadia Sirota, Buke and Gase) who perform on the songs they collaborated on for the album.  There are no video screens or fancy lighting, just simple blue and red lights that dimly illuminate the stage, engulfing the band in an eerie glow as if they're playing under the moonlight.  The camera work is exquisite too, DVD quality work no doubt.  If you only have time to watch one Exciting Communal Event, and it's after midnight where you are, then this is the one to watch.  

Live from Pukkelpop, August 18, 2019

The band grabbed some headlines surrounding this gig by asking fans to choose the setlist.  Natually this meant that the set was skewed toward many older songs.  I wasn't as high on this concert as most people were -- The National don't have an exceptionally deep catalog, and all these older songs make frequent appearances in their sets even today, it's just rare to hear so many of them in the same set in 2019.  

Live from Best Kept Secret, June 9, 2018

The best of the lot in my opinion, and the impetus behind writing this post.  This show was readily available on youtube until about two months ago, leading many fans to speculate that it was intentionally removed so that the band could host it themselves, presumably in perpetuity, on their own channel.  Sure enough, here it is, pretty much the perfect National gig, with exceptional sound, a great crowd, and peak performances of almost every song.  This was my go-to concert for the band, and I know I'm not alone in calling it my favourite.   

If I had to put together a wishlist, I'd start with a full recording of the From the Artists Den show at Park Avenue Armory in May 2013.  Filmed right before the release of "Trouble Will Find Me", the fifty minute video currently available on youtube features a mix of live recordings and interviews, but surely a recording of the complete concert exists somewhere.  Playing in such a cavernous building produces an intimidating, dense wall of sound that I've never seen duplicated from any of their other gigs.  Or how about one of the "I Am Easy To Find" warm up gigs, with a parade of guest performers chosen according to the city they appeared in?  And what about some pre-2010 stuff? 

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Updated (May 31, 2020):

Just a few days after I posted this, they streamed the final Exciting Communal Event, and it was indeed quite the event.  They screened the complete "A Lot Of Sorrow", a collaboration between the National and Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson, in which the band appeared on a stage at the MoMA in New York and played their song "Sorrow" repeatedly for six hours.  This was an exercise/endurance contest that spoke straight to my heart, making me think fondly of the days when I would occasionally experiment with my own sanity such as the time I listened to Rhythm and Sound's "See Mi Yah" continuously for 24 hours.

Unfortunately, the stream was not archived, likely because it's still an active exhibit in many modern art museums around the world.  But I was entranced by the hour or so that I saw.  Sadly, the band decided to put an end to these weekly events.  The pandemic seems to be far from over but many countries are opening up again whether the situation warrants it or not, and thus, perhaps it's best that the ECE's wrap up here, a shared experience confined to a specific time period in all of our lives.