Two Great Debut Albums
By Mark Thompson
Posted in CD Reviews, Sound & Vision | No Comments
The Stooges - The Stooges
The first song on The Stooges is called “1969,” and its abrasive, confrontational punk spirit and sound immediately makes it clear that The Stooges are not mourning the end of the 60s. One pictures singer Iggy Pop stumbling through hippie havens, scowling and swearing, subconsciously building the momentum that would explode onto his band’s first record. This was a new kind of rebellion.
Drawing from The Troggs and The Rolling Stones, The Stooges presented a concise, brawny strain of rock that bands have been attempting to imitate ever since. Ron Asheton’s guitar switches from crisp, simple riffs to squealing, screeching, brilliantly discordant solos. Not to be outdone, Iggy Pop announces his arrival by the end of the contemptuous, swaggering first verse of “1969” and needs only the …
The newly-formed supergroup Them Crooked Vultures carries a unique burden of high expectations. The band is composed of Josh Homme (Queens of the Stone Age), Dave Grohl (Foo Fighters, Nirvana), and John Paul Jones (Led Zeppelin; his first earnest foray into music since the band’s breakup nearly 30 years ago). Each member has his own pedigree and interests, but they seem to be united by a nonchalance and aversion to pretense that bleeds into the music they have produced. Their eponymous debut sounds less like an album and more like a series of catchy, impromptu jams cobbled together in five minutes and existing as an excuse for three high-profile musicians to get together on weekends. If that sounds like a knock against the group, it certainly is not. Them Crooked Vultures is …
The new release by Atlas Sound, nee Bradford Cox, has one song that’s going to garner a lot of attention. “Walkabout,” a collaboration with Noah Lennox of Animal Collective fame, is a big-beat summer anthem that goes past feel-good and into brain candy. The real story here, though, is neither catchy singles nor star power; it’s the way Cox’s songwriting and arranging abilities have improved since his last record. The songs all sport beautiful, full-sounding arrangements that skillfully incorporate acoustic instruments, a far cry from the ultra-compressed, digital soundscapes of his debut. The music is still firmly entrenched in the ambient-pop genre so reliably promoted by Kranky records, but now it’s grown into something completely different; a mixture of swirling ambience, quality pop songs, and a willingness to throw acoustic and electric …
Built to Spill has always been political, but never like this. There Is No Enemy’s opener, “Aisle 13,” uses the phrase “Cleanup in aisle 13” as a loose conceit for America. It’s a song about passing the buck which is sort of what Mr. Martsch does in writing a song about it. Most of There Is No Enemy is entrenched in this brand of whiny finger pointing that I’ve never heard from this band. “Hindsight” is a song about universal healthcare with front man and perpetual fifteen-year-old Martsch at the megaphone for the coda “What about Canada?” It’s an album that means well, but even the title forces a sense of guilt on the audience for their part in creating the current state of American life. I liked it better when the …
