CD Odyssey Disc 453: Great Big Sea

Happy Hallowe’en!  Hallowe’en is my favourite holiday of the year, bar none.  It is the one time of the year people are inspired to step outside themselves, and in reveal a bit of themselves in the process.

For the first time in over ten years I was able to wear a costume to work (my old job was a poor fit for such activity).  I love dressing up in costume, and it added a little whimsy to my day.  Congratulations to everyone who took the same opportunity and lived a little today.  In particular, a big shout out to my wife and partner-in-fun Sheila, who did a kick-ass homage to Alfred Hitcock's "The Birds" - check it out at her blog.

My next review is not very Hallowe’eny, but I guess for some, Newfoundland folk music can be scary.  Not for me though; I love the stuff.

Disc 453 is… Self-Titled 

Artist: Great Big Sea

Year of Release: 1993

What’s up with the Cover?  It’s a picture of the great big sea.  You can’t get much more literal than this.  Unlike the cover for Audioslave’s “Out of Exile” this actually has an authentic feel to it.

How I Came To Know It:  I had purchased Great Big Sea’s second album, “Up” and loved it.  This was me going backwards to see what I might have missed.

How It Stacks Up:  We have five Great Big Sea albums.  I would put their Self-Titled effort 4^th, slightly edging out “Turn” (Reviewed back at Disc 287).

Rating:  3 stars

Some albums are more enjoyable in the context of the type of music the band would create later in their career.  Great Big Sea have carved a niche for themselves in Canadian musical history – and more than a little fame – playing a pop-infused East Coast folk.  However, their self-titled first album is them still questing for the perfect blend of this sound.

The energy is there, but the music on their opening record is solidly traditional.  Long-time readers of this blog will know that doesn’t bother me in the least; I love traditional no-frills folk music that is well played.

Great Big Sea can certainly play well, so there is no problem there.  They are also gifted with the powerful vocals of Alan Doyle who is a fine gift to the Canadian music scene.  Doyle’s voice is big and friendly, and when he sings he always sounds like he’s smiling.  Of note, he’s also a pretty good actor in recent years, and is one of the bright spots of the otherwise forgettable Russell Crowe “Robin Hood” movie that came out a few years back.  He plays the merry “Alan A’Dale,” the good-natured minstrel, so it wasn’t exactly a stretch, mind you; even his name is the same.

Singing about various Newfoundland topics also comes easily to Doyle, and his love of his homeland is easy to hear.  Traditional fare like “Excursion Around the Bay,” “I’se the B’y” and some traditional reels are all played with warmth and affection.  In the case of “Drunken Sailor” glimpses of what the band will do later shine through, as they light into the song double-time, getting the song’s subject’s belly shaved, arrested and in the drunk-tank all in record time.

The band also delivers some original material on this front, poking gentle fun at a well-known Newfoundland turn of phrase with “What Are Ya’ At?”  This is well executed but after repeat listens it now sounds a bit too trite and manipulative.

The real stand-out on this record is “The Fisherman’s Lament” an original protest song encapsulating all of the frustration of their home province over the collapse of the East Coast cod fishery, and laying the blame squarely at the feet of government mismanagement.  No doubt there are plenty of opinions about how the Newfoundland cod fishery declined – I just review music.  Whatever your conclusion, you can’t deny the genuine anger and betrayal that comes out in this song about fishermen who, having spent their whole life on the sea, are told they can no longer do so:

“I’ve spent my whole life out there on the sea

Some government bastard now takes it from me.

It’s not just the fish – they’ve taken my pride

I feel so ashamed that I just want to die.”

You don’t have to agree, but I’d be surprised if you hadn’t heard someone say some version of this in a café somewhere when times get hard.  If you haven’t, you’re spending too much time in Starbucks and not enough in Tim Hortons.

Less impressive is “Someday Soon” another political song, this one about the promises politicians make that never seem to come through for the working man.  This song comes from an honest place as well, but the lyrics are weak:

“They said they’d stop the fighting

And they said they would bring peace

And they said they’d find a serum

That could cure all our disease.”

These promises are pretty extreme even for a campaigning politician, and yet they’re so generic that there’s nothing specific for the mind to wrap itself around. Not even a fine tin whistle riff can save this one.

“The Fisherman’s Lament” is such a strong song, and Great Big Sea are such natural talents that together they lift this album to three stars.  However, the album gets self-referential in places and the lyrics are uneven even on some of the stronger songs.  It wouldn’t be long before Great Big Sea would fully develop their sound and go on to give me a solid decade of great music.  This album is the beginning of that experience, and so I view it with a lot of fondness, but it is a bit like Alice Cooper’s “Easy Action” – better in context of the great records that were just around the corner.  Great Big Sea eventually came to where they’re at, but on this first record they’d just started the journey.

Best tracks:  Fisherman’s Lament, I’se the B’y, Drunken Sailor, Irish Paddy/Festival Reel/Roger’s Reel.

CD Odyssey Disc 452: Blue Rodeo

After a fun weekend that featured a stirring and successful game of Arkham Horror with our friends Cat and Ross, I am looking forward to a fairly light schedule this week.

But light or heavy, the CD Odyssey will just keep advancing, inexorably toward its eventual conclusion many years hence.

In the meantime, let’s enjoy the journey.

Disc 452 is… The Days In Between

Artist: Blue Rodeo

Year of Release: 2000

What’s up with the Cover?  Nothing says ‘lonely Canadian prairie’ like Blue Rodeo’s music, and this cover captures that vastness very well.  Not sure the Volkswagen beetle is the best car for an icy Canadian road, but if that’s what you’ve got then I say just make sure the heater is working before you head out.

How I Came To Know It:  Sheila is a big Blue Rodeo fan, so she introduced me to their music.  “Days In Between” is just us buying their new albums as they come out.

How It Stacks Up:  We have twelve Blue Rodeo albums, which I think is all of them.  “The Days In Between” is my favourite of their later work, although there are a few good ones.  I’d put it 4^th just behind “Casino” (reviewed back at Disc 368).

Rating:  4 stars

By the year 2000, the idea of an album having two distinct sides was definitely dead, which is too bad, because “The Days In Between” would have been that rarest of gems; the album where side two is better.

Sure the record opens with “Cinema Song,” which is a perfect blend of Jim Cuddy’s high, powerful voice and a weirdly atmospheric guitar from Greg Keelor’s (like McCartney and Lennon these guys are best when they work off each other’s strengths).  Cuddy’s voice is as brilliant as any time in his earlier career, floating gracefully in and out of falsetto with a casual ease that almost makes you forget just how vocally challenging the song is.

I like the rest of what I’m going to refer nostalgically to as ‘Side One’ well enough, but the songs that really appeal don’t appear again until the start of ‘Side Two” at track six’s “Andrea.”

When I first heard this album I was on my previous stint working as a clerk for the provincial government in 2000/01.  There was a woman in our office named Andrea and I used to occasionally sing the part of the song mentioning her name to her when I was feeling like spreading some cheer.

Apart from the name it wasn’t relevant mind you, since the song is one of Keelor’s many drug-inspired ditties; this time about a friend (Andrea) calling him and helping him out of a ‘long dark spiral’ (bad trip) until he sobers up.  Musically, it is a much better song than “Cynthia” which is a similar song off of the more famous “Five Days in July” album.  In “Cynthia” Keelor thinks space ships are flying around up at some back country lake, and imagines being abducted by them.  It sounds like he could’ve used a phone call from Andrea on that night as well.

“Sad Nights” often makes me think of what long distance relationships are like as Cuddy bids a tearful goodbye to his lover at the bus station.  This song takes me all the way back to the late eighties, when I had the same experience every couple of weeks when my girlfriend at the time lived across the water in Vancouver.  I’m immeasurably happier now, but I can’t deny the sadness of those nights, or how this song brings them back.

This is Blue Rodeo at their best, evoking strong emotion in their listeners through their willingness to evoke it in themselves.   It’s how art works, when it is working properly.

It helps that the album has a strong rise and fall, slower bluesy country like “Sad Nights” mixed in with up-tempo rockabilly on the title track that showcase both Keelor and Cuddy’s brilliance on the guitar (these guys are two very under-rated guitar players).  “Sad Nights” has a sort of depressing romanticism about it.  “The Days In Between” is a love song far more fundamentally dysfunctional, yet the band plays it with that desperate energy that comes after a break-up, making it even more awkward.

When that leads into “Always Getting Better,” it seems a natural progression from loss to acceptance to triumph.  Each song stands on its own as a fine piece of songwriting, but strung together it is like a journey through a dark night of the soul that every one of us has taken at some point in our lives.

The album then takes a left turn on the final two tracks with “Rage,” a song dedicated to Canadian punk vocalist Keith Whittaker who had died of cancer a few years before “The Days In Between “was released and “Truscott” named after Stephen Truscott, a man at the centre of a famous case of wrongful conviction in Canadian law which at the time of the album’s release had still not been resolved.  I noted with interest how this is the second album in a row that features a famous murder case being overturned.

While these last two songs might not seem to fit thematically I don’t mind at all.  They’re both great songs, particularly “Rage” where Keelor is at his natural best singing the part of an angry drunk, only to have Cuddy join in at the chorus, picking the song up and making it soar above what could have been self-indulgent.

“The Days in Between” has its lesser songs (mostly on ‘Side One’) but even these aren’t so bad as to call for individual censure.  This is a solid album musically and lyrically, and if anything I just wish they’d play more songs from it when I seem them in concert.

Best tracks:  Cinema Song, Andrea, Sad Nights, The Days In Between, Always Getting Better, Rage.

CD Odyssey Disc 451: The Pogues

I really wanted to get this next review written Thursday, but after work, a workout and then some volunteer activity I was knackered, and opted instead for sharing a bottle of wine with Sheila. 

Then I was going to write it Friday night, but got dragged out (willingly) with some coworkers to the pub and once again was in no condition to write creatively.  Contrary to popular depictions of writers scripting their masterpieces while hammered, the truth is you will generally write very poorly if you’ve been drinking.

Now it is Saturday morning and fresh from a shower I think I’m finally ready to put fingers to keyboards before life comes along and tempts me to join in again.

Disc 451 is… If I Should Fall From Grace With God

Artist: The Pogues

Year of Release: 1988

What’s up with the Cover?  The band’s faces pasted into a repeating photo of…some forties guy?  I don’t get this photo.  Whatever is going on it is amazing this is not a ska band.  After all, there are nine of them, which I believe is the average for ska.

How I Came To Know It:  I think like most people who bought this record it was because I heard “Fairytale of New York.”  Great as that song is, I’m even happier that it helped introduce me to the Pogues as a band.

How It Stacks Up:  I have five Pogues albums, which is all of the ones that feature Shane McGowan on vocals.  All are excellent in their own way, but since this section is how it stacks up, let’s not equivocate – I’ll put “If I Should Fall…” second.

Rating:  4 stars

I’ve owned “If I Should Fall From Grace With God” for about as long as I’ve owned a CD player, and it has been played again and again over the past twenty five years.  When you’ve had an album a long time it is hard to separate it from your life to the point where you can just discuss the music.

The record was in heavy rotation in the early nineties, when it was one of the few records that my roommate Greg and I both liked.  We are both music lovers, but in the day he liked alternative rock, and I liked folk.  The Pogues sufficiently bridged that gap that it was acceptable to both of us.  Any album that made it into the thin overlap in our Venn diagram of music we both liked was in elite company, and got heavy play around the house.

This is also the album that introduced the Pogues to a larger audience after they had two albums that most people (including me) missed.  I have since come to love those first two albums as much or more as this one, but more on that when I randomly roll them.

“If I Should Fall…” is the most up-tempo of the five Pogues albums I own, with may a rollicking song featuring drinking, carousing and all manner of low-brow entertainment.  Horsetracks are attended, pints are quaffed and quarrelling couples are thrown in the hoosegow to sober up.  It is devilish good fun.

The song about the aforementioned couple, “Fairytale of New York” has gone on to be far and away the Pogues most recognizable song, and a huge hit.  I love it in the same heart-warming but disturbed way I like to watch “Bad Santa” every Christmas.  Of course I like an idyllic stress free Christmas as much as the next guy but artistic depictions of that kind of thing are painfully boring.  “Fairytale of New York” is a duet between Shane MacGowan and guest vocalist Kristy MacColl.  While the words are cause for humour they are also deeply tragic, as they hurl not only all manner of generic insults at one another, but also all the hurtful truths only a long-term partner can draw on.

The record being at least partly folk music, the Pogues include a few traditional numbers, such as the sea shanty “South Australia” and an Irish walking medley, tastefully titled “Medley.”  Also included is a self-indulgent remake of “Worms” – you know, “the worms crawl in, the worms crawl out,” etc.  It is only a minute long but it is an unnecessary minute, and moreover it added a fifteenth song to the record, which is one more than what I consider reasonable.

The best tracks, however, are Pogues originals.  The band composes music that sounds like punkified folk classics, but are actually modern songs that lean heavily on folk traditions and forms.  If the Clash were a punk band that wished they were playing reggae, then the Pogues are the folk equivalent.  The music is fast, furious and filled with a wide array of instrumentation but never sounds busy, just energetic.  Many heavier bands have tried to do less and still ended up with mud.  To play these songs you have to be tight, and know your instruments.

My favourite song from the day I bought this album is “Turkish Song of the Damned” with its eastern rhythms mixed in with MacGowan’s trademark tortured bawl.  It is a song of shipwreck, and a terrible haunting that follows.  The lyrics set the tone from the outset:

“I come old friend from hell tonight

Across the rotting sea

Nor the nails of the Cross

Nor the blood of Christ

Can bring you help this eve.”

It reads like a Dore wood carving looks and it sounds like every bit the dread curse that it is.

Other songs feature more political topics, as the Pogues take on tough political topics.  In “Streets of Sorrow/Birmingham Six” MacGowan’s voice contains a passionate fury as he tells the conviction of six Irishmen for the Birmingham pub bombings in 1975, who would later be acquitted and compensated for wrongful imprisonment.  That wouldn’t happen until 1991, so in 1988 this song was both timely and politically charged, not least because of the controversy that has always swirled around the case.

Lest you think of the Pogues as one-dimensional Irish apologists, the very next song is

“Lullaby of London” a slow and forgiving track where MacGowan’s deep love for the city and the Thames flowing through it come to the fore.  This is a song about a drunken walk home from the pub, but it is so much more than that.  It is the heavy thinking that can descend on a man during that long walk, and how the most important of those thoughts will still lay on you the next morning.  It ends with lines that are almost a prayer:

“May the wind that blows from haunted graves

Never bring you misery

May the angels bright

Watch you tonight

And keep you while you sleep.”

And one song later, across the Irish Sea, MacGowan waxes poetic about another river with “The Broad Majestic Shannon” showing that if you’re feeling thoughtful and melancholy there are few better places to let it wash over you than at the edge of a river.  This song ends with a similar expression of goodwill and tearful reminiscing:

“I sat for a while by a gap in the wall

Found a rusty tin can and an old hurley ball

Heard the cards being dealt, and the rosary called

And a fiddle playing Sean Dun na nGall

And the next time I see you we’ll be down at the Greeks

There’ll be whiskey on Sunday and tears on our cheeks

For its stupid to laugh and its useless to blame

About a rusty tin can and an old hurley ball.

“So I walked as day was dawning

Where small birds sang and leaves were falling

Where we once watched the row boats landing

By the broad majestic Shannon.”

MacGowan falls silent and the final bar is just the fiddle track rolling to a beautiful stop, drawing your attention to why you’ve been feeling wistful throughout (a slow fiddle played prettily can do this).  If the record had ended right here, I might have been tempted to give it five stars, but it is just a hair too long, and so it comes close, but falls just short.

Best tracks:  If I Should Fall From Grace With God, Turkish Song of the Damned, Bottle of Smoke, Fairytale of New York, Streets of Sorrow/Birmingham Six, Lullaby of London, The Broad Majestic Shannon.

CD Odyssey Disc 450: Wailin Jennys

I’ve had to run a bunch of errands this week and as a result I took my car to work a couple days in a row.  I’ve really missed getting my walk in, drinking my coffee and letting my mind wander with whatever music I’m listening to.

Instead I’ve reverted back to the ‘in the car’ listening that was more common when I started the CD Odyssey.  The short city drive is a lot more mentally engaging than the long highway drive to Sidney I used to do, and not so musically immersive, but I still got in a couple good listens of this next album, and I know it well in any case.

Disc 450 is… Firecracker

Artist: The Wailin’ Jennys

Year of Release: 2006

What’s up with the Cover?  The cover is designed to look like some vintage box of firecrackers or something like that.  It is OK, but nothing to write home about.  All three little girl heads are crying, making me wonder if there was a fireworks accident.  A timely reminder of safety first this Halloween, you crazy kids.

How I Came To Know It:  I am a huge fan of the Jennys’ earlier album, “Forty Days” (reviewed way back at Disc 92), so when this one came out I bought it without hesitation.  I also saw them touring in support of this album, and so had heard a number of songs from it in advance.

How It Stacks Up:  I have all three Wailin’ Jennys albums.  Of the three, “Firecracker” is excellent, but still second to “Forty Days”

Rating:  4 stars.

Two years after their first album, the Jennys returned in 2006 with a new lineup (Annabelle Chvostek replacing Cara Luft) and a new record, “Firecracker.”  Against the odds, the Jennys had replaced one third of their lineup and still managed to capture lightning in a bottle for a second time.

This time the slightly bluesier and more contemporary sounding Annabelle Chvostek had joined the lineup.  I had just seen the tour for the new songs, so I wasn’t concerned how she would fit into the harmonies, although I am a bit amazed the Jennys were able to so seamlessly blend Chvostek’s voice in and carry on at such a high level.

In many respects, “Firecracker” is a superior album musically to “Forty Days” even if the latter speaks more to my soul.  “Firecracker” has a modern edge to it that really helps its artistic range.  In listening to it, I was reminded of how important Jimmy Rankin was to the Rankin Family, providing an update to the music, while still staying firmly within Canadian folk traditions.

As with the previous album, all three Jennys contribute songs to the record.  Newcomer Chvostek leads the record off with the fast-paced “Devil’s Paintbrush Road” which is a song that evokes images of a double-time knee slap around a campfire, if only to drive the dark spirits a little further off, for just a little longer.

Chvostek also contributes “Swallow” which has a bit of a strained chorus (“oh swallow/ what did you swallow?”) but apart from that has a strong and sweet melody, and features a Chvostek playing a sweet mandolin as well.

Nicky Mehta’s contributions are more traditional in flavor, but they are also the glue that holds Chvostek’s contemporary flair with Moody’s soft spoken spiritualism.  I don’t favour her four songs as much but without them the album would lose its subtle centre, and sometimes that’s the hardest part of a record to get right.  Songs like “Starlight” are an artful combination of harmony constructions, violin pieces and drum beats that demonstrate what the Jennys do best, which is make each other better.

When Mehta leads her two fellow Jennys into the opening of “Avila” singing:

“O sweet peace, never have you fallen

Never have you fallen upon this town.”

She does so quietly, leaving plenty of room for the harmonies to swell together.  The Jennys have the most beautiful harmonies I’ve ever heard, and “Avila” has this talent on full display.  It isn’t my favourite song on the record, but it is worth a pause to admire it in all its selfless simplicity.

That said, once again I find myself drawn mostly to Ruth Moody’s songs.  Although all three Jennys get a hold of my heart, Moody’s voice always seems to wrap its embrace a little bit tighter.

“Glory Bound” is a devotional that sounds like it has existed for one hundred and sixty years, but has only been around for six.  I’m not a religious man, but this song reminds me that there is a depth to the human spirit that transcends any institutional expression.  Moody’s solo vocals lift me out of myself, and then perfectly timed harmonies give it wings.

My other Moody favourite is “Prairie Town” which speaks to me about the experience of leaving a small town for something (hopefully) bigger.  However Moody’s leaving is bitter-sweet, and the going is fraught with inner conflict.  Parting with her home town is like breaking up with a first love – or maybe it’s the other way around.  Whatever the case the tone is mournful, emotionally conflicted and yet wholly necessary.  Out here on the west coast, we like to say “when it rains it pours” but Moody reminds us:

“When it rains it snows in this prairie town

There’s a good three inches on the ground.

It seems I’ll be losing any peace I’ve found.”

The song is as cold and open as I imagine the prairies would be to the lonely.  It makes me grateful for the rain.

Moody has a great solo album as well called “The Garden” which I heartily recommend, but more on that when I roll it.  For now I’ll just say she’s my favourite Jenny and leave it at that.

The album ends with a return to Chvostek and the title track, “Firecracker” which rather than providing a quiet fade to the record, has a feeling like things are just getting started.  My favourite verse is:

“You can get used to almost anything

Deep sea eyes and porcelain skin

Love sweet nests and their boxing rings

It’s late night heading into morning.”

There’s a tempest to the relationship in this song that is palpable, charged with the energy and abandon of an all-nighter.  Lyrically and musically “Firecracker” and fittingly ends the album with a bang.

The Wailin’ Jennys are one of Canada’s great folk bands, and their rendition of “The Parting Glass” was recently featured on an episode of the hit show “The Walking Dead.”  I hope that exposure gives them the fame they richly deserve, whatever their lineup, because they deserve it.

Best tracks:  Glory Bound, This Heart of Mine, Long Time Traveller, Avila, Prairie Town, Firecracker.

CD Odyssey Disc 449: Alice Cooper

This is a random system I use for picking albums, but sometimes the coincidences can get a little weird.  This is my 5^th Alice Cooper review in the last twenty albums and my 3^rd in the last ten.  Given I have around 1,000 albums, that is a very unlikely situation.

Nevertheless, here we are.  And after a wild and crazy Halloween party last night, this next record shows up at a perfect time.

Disc 449 is… Welcome to My Nightmare

Artist: Alice Cooper

Year of Release: 1975

What’s up with the Cover?  Alice Cooper’s first solo album has him formally introducing himself to us on the cover.  How do you do, Mr. Cooper – I wear a top hat myself from time to time.

How I Came To Know It:  I’ve known this album almost from when it first came out and definitely well into my childhood.  When CDs first came out it was one of my first purchases, and I quickly replaced it with the re-mastered version when that became available.  I also own it on vinyl.

How It Stacks Up:  I have all twenty-six of Alice Cooper’s studio albums, and this is one of his best.  I’m going to put it 4^th, narrowly beating out "Killer".

Rating:  5 stars.

Many people say that Alice Cooper never matched his excellence once he struck out on his solo career.  While it is true that on balance, the early ‘with the band’ work is more consistently strong, albums like “Welcome to My Nightmare” are a nice reminder that he did some fine work on his own as well.

This album is his first solo album, but the influences of the Alice Cooper band are still very strong.  The guitar has the same grotesque sound that Michael Bruce played on earlier records, and the production is still driven by master producer Bob Ezrin.  This means the songs are rife with horn sections, classical piano and various other weird and odd sounds mixed into a sub-humanary stew.

On “Devil’s Food” there is even a lengthy speech by Vincent Price playing the role of local bug expert with great enthusiasm, slowly transitioning from bookish entomologist into fiendish spider worshipper as he ends with the triumphant declaration:  “I feel that man has ruled this world as a stumbling demented child-king long enough!”

Of course this is only after Cooper introduces the album’s theme with the opening title track; a slow-builder that starts out sounding strung out and detached and grows into a full-fledged anthem.  It warns us that we are about to be treated to an Alice Cooper journey into the subconscious, and that it isn’t going to be all roses and wet dreams (although with Alice, both of those are likely to be in the mix).

Once again, Cooper’s incredible range is on display, with musical numbers like “Some Folks” that peel back the darker layers about how some people get their kicks, bringing it close to home with the refrain of ‘some folks’ that implies we’re unknowingly brushing shoulders with them every day.

For all its delightfully sick revelry the album’s centre piece is the anthem (and minor hit in its day) “Only Women Bleed.” This song would be either silly or insulting in the hands of anyone other than Cooper, who instead delivers a touching anthem about spousal abuse, both physical and emotional, in a way that is earnest and heartfelt, and a perfect interlude amidst all the more fantastical horrors featured in the songs that surround it.

The album flashes moments of humour in “Department of Youth.”  As the song fades out Alice yells out “Who’s got the power?” and a chorus of children respond “We do!” but if you listen carefully right before the fade ends, he asks “Who gave it to you?” and the children gleefully reply “Donny Osmond!” Cooper is never above sending himself up if it means entertainment for the audience.

“Cold Ethyl” doubles as a song about necrophilia as well as drinking hard liquor (the ethyl in this case, possibly referencing ethyl alcohol).  Cooper had his serious problems with alcohol, and yet once again he demonstrates a full appreciation of his condition, even at this early stage of collapse.

Three of the last four songs, “Year’s Ago,” “Steven,” and “The Awakening” form a trilogy that brings the album’s nightmarish theme back.  Audiences are introduced to a recurring character, “Steven” an emotionally stunted man who dreams he is still a child.  When the character awakens, it is only to find blood on his hands, and the proof that while he was in some fugue state he has committed terrible crimes.

With its haunting piano intro (later lifted wholesale by John Carpenter for the “Halloween” theme) “Steven” is a troubling horror tale made so much more troubling with Ezrin’s amazing production decisions.  As Cooper’s Steven character sings “I must be dreaming/please stop screaming” and then as the guitar riff swells in he hears someone shouting “Steven” like they’re speaking down a tunnel, or up through water. Later we can surmise these were the cries of his victims desperately trying to wake him up.  Whatever it is, the way Cooper’s voice matches the swells of the song from confused child to triumphant rock vocal and back again just makes it that much creepier.

The final song, “Escape” seems like a bit of an add-on musically, and sounds more like a single (although never released as such).  With its placement on the album, it could be a song featuring Cooper as a mental patient (I imagine after being arrested for his crimes).  However, the lyrics to me speak to a deeper experience we’ve all had; how we put on our masks to play the roles expected of us, and that corresponding emotional desire to escape that responsibility:

“Paint on my cruel or happy face

Hide me behind it.

It takes me inside another place

Where no one can find it.

Escape – I get out when I can

I escape – anytime I can

Let’s all escape – I’m cryin’ in my beer

Escape – just get me out of here.

Of course, as the song’s bridge reminds us:

“But where am I runnin’ to, there’s no place to go

Just put on my make up and get me to the show.”

Alice’s escape is to flee back to where he is most comfortable – the stage, and in a way we all flee back to our own version of the stage.  Returning to the roles we know best when the nightmares of the unknown become too much for us to bear.  It is why I love Halloween so much; it is our chance to put on a mask and safely be a little bit more ourselves than we might otherwise dare.  For Alice Cooper, every day is Halloween, and great albums like “Welcome to My Nightmare” are the fortunate byproduct of his experience.

Best tracks:  All tracks, although the bonus tracks on the remastered CD are not worth your time.  I tend to skip those when I’m not doing a CD Odyssey and only pay them last minute lip service when I am.

CD Odyssey Disc 448: Mark Knopfler

The CD Odyssey rolls on.  At one time this artist was getting rolled so often I actually had to establish a Reign of Terror in his name.  Now it has been a while and I’m glad to return to him with the best CD he’s made yet in his solo career.

Disc 448 is… Golden Heart

Artist: Mark Knopfler

Year of Release: 1996

What’s up with the Cover?  A golden heart-shaped necklace.  Pretty literal, but I love this cover’s simplicity and soothing colour scheme.  It is understated, classy and artfully arranged, much like Knopfler’s solo career over the years.

How I Came To Know It:  I liked Dire Straits, but I hadn’t given Knopfler much thought since they broke up.  Then I saw a video for “Darling Pretty” on the Canadian video music channel (CMT).  That was back when music video channels actually played music videos.  I probably stopped flipping channels because of the pretty girl in the video, but I stayed because of how beautiful the song was.  Like that Mark had me again, and I’ve followed his whole second career since.

How It Stacks Up:  I just purchased Mark Knopfler’s latest effort “Privateering” and now have nine albums including two collaborative efforts.  When I reviewed “Sailing to Philadelphia” way back at Disc 136 I put it first, but listening to this one again makes me realize they are in a statistical tie for best.  Since I don’t like equivocating if I can avoid it, I’m going to edge “Golden Heart” slightly out in front for #1.  This can only mean its rating is…

Rating:  5 stars.

Eighteen years after Dire Straits first took us down to the water line “Golden Heart” reminds us that there is no expiry date on genius.  Without his band, and well into middle age, Knopfler reinvents his career with this record in stunning fashion. 

Of course, the standard Knopfler fare is here; namely the greatest guitar virtuoso you will ever hear on either side of heaven.  He delivers catchy blues-rock riffs on the opening track, “Darling Pretty,” with the gusto of someone who just got his first recording contract.  The guitar fills the air with a full, round sound that is so complete it is like its chemically bonding to the air itself.  As you breathe in it hits you from the inside out.

He plays straight ahead “Money for Nothing” rock riffs on “Imelda” a song about the excesses of Imelda Marcos of the Philippines.  Making an interesting rock song about Imelda Marcos would stretch anyone, but Knopfler not only makes it catchy, he manages to educate you in the process about the woman who simply couldn’t have enough shoes, even as the people under her went hungry.

On “No Can Do” he weaves jazz guitar interludes throughout a complex song without ever muddying the melody.  The only musician who can equal Knopfler playing around inside a theme so artfully would be Rush drummer Neal Peart.  Both men are so accomplished they likely need to make it harder on themselves just to keep it interesting, but they do it so adroitly that they never disrupt a song’s natural flow.  I don’t even like “No Can Do” that much, but the understated excellence draws me in every time.

When Knopfler just relaxes and plucks out a contemporary folk song like “Golden Heart” he is equally awesome, showing that he can also play it straight and convey just as much emotion in his instrument as when he’s at full noodle.

In fact, one thing I love about “Golden Heart” as an album is how understated it is.  After so long in the business, and all his success as the brain trust and chief talent of Dire Straits, Knopfler has nothing to prove, and that knowledge seems to help him arrange songs that features other instruments as much as his own when the situation warrants.

The opening notes of the first song are not guitar, but violin, and are every bit as important to the sound as Knopfler, and every bit as brilliant.  No surprise that the violin is played by Sean Keane from the Chieftains.  Liam O’Flynn’s Uillean pipes set the mournful, romantic tone for “A Night In Summer Long Ago” without which the song’s story wouldn’t be nearly as compelling.

Did I mention story?  In his later years Knopfler has blended his considerable rock talents with the skills of a master storyteller in the finest folk traditions.  “Golden Heart” is him delivering his fusion of talents at his best.

“A Night in Summer Long Ago” is the romantic tale of a knight pining for a lady that can never truly be his:

“My lady may I have this dance

Forgive a knight who knows no shame

My lady may I have this dance

And lady may I know your name?

You danced upon a soldier’s arm

And I felt the blade of love so keen

And when you smiled you did me harm

And I was drawn to you my queen.”

These lines and later references to our narrator’s boots that “will never shine like his” make me feel like Knopfler is drawing heavily from the story of Launcelot and Guinevere, and infusing it with all the tragedy and glorious and wrong-headed love that tale deserves.  I have heard this song hundreds of times and every time I hear it I just want to bust out Le Morte D’Arthur and read the whole damn thing again from cover to cover.

Other songs are less fanciful but equally moving.  The five star epic “Done with Bonaparte” tells the story of the French retreat from Russia in the teeth of a biting winter through the eyes of an ordinary rifleman, who has come to curse his ‘little corporal’:

“We’ve paid in hell since Moscow burned

As Cossacks tear us piece by piece

Our dead are strewn a hundred leagues

Though death would be a sweet release

And our grand armee is dressed in rags

A frozen starving beggar band

Like rats we steal each other’s scraps

Fall to fighting hand to hand.”

Damn if this song doesn’t make me feel sympathy for a single soldier over two hundred years ago that didn’t specifically even exist, and yet is the summation of all the horrors of war individuals suffer when glory and ambition fade in the cruel light of day.

Other songs on “Golden Heart” are more introspective, providing lessons on love from someone who’s obviously given the subject serious thought beyond a pop single.  “I’m the Fool” is a beautiful apology song in the same vein as Steve Earle’s “Valentine’s Day” or the recently reviewed Tom Waits track “Long Way Home.”

“Nobody’s got the Gun” is a constant reminder to me about one of the keys to a lasting relationship; not feeling the need to win at all costs.  Leonard Cohen once sang:

“Maybe there’s a God above

As for me all I seem to learn from love

Is how to shoot at someone who outdrew ya.”

Knopfler reminds us that you don’t have to shoot; in fact you don’t even need a gun.  Knopfler counters:

“Nobody’s got to be number one

Nobody’s got the gun.”

It is a song about de-escalating an argument even when you could just as easily take another shot.  No one does it perfectly, but it is refreshing to hear a song so artfully describe its importance to a healthy relationship.

“Golden Heart’s” brilliant musicianship, artful songwriting, and thoughtful lyrics are equal to anything Dire Straits did a decade prior.  Don’t let its more folky, quieter sound dissuade you – it just means you have to take the time to listen a bit more carefully.  True beauty steals into only the quietest of souls, after all.

Best tracks:  All of them are good, but my absolute favourites are Darling Pretty, Golden Heart, Don’t You Get It, A Night in Summer Long Ago, I’m the Fool, Nobody’s Got the Gun, Done With Bonaparte and Are We in Trouble Now.

So yeah, most of them.  

CD Odyssey Disc 447: Alice Cooper

I’ve had a nice productive day of getting chores done as well as fulfilling my creative needs.  I’ve just finished a good two hour session writing my new book, and now I’m going to come down off of that literary high in the halfway house of the mind that is a blog entry.

This time it is a continuation of the Alice Cooper Reign of Terror.  I've randomly rolled 4 Alice Cooper albums in the last eighteen reviews, three of those in the last eight.  Weird.

Disc 447 is… Alice Cooper Goes to Hell

Artist: Alice Cooper

Year of Release: 1976

What’s up with the Cover?  A relatively boring head and shoulders shot of Alice.  With that tint to his skin he looks less like he’s gone to hell and more like he’s gone to sea and found it disagreed with him.

How I Came To Know It:  I’ve known Alice Cooper all my life, and this particular album since about my late teens.  I bought this originally on tape, partly because I knew I always liked Alice, and partly because I’d never heard of any of the songs on it, and this intrigued me even more.

How It Stacks Up:  I have twenty-six Alice Cooper albums, which I think is all of them.  “Goes to Hell” is one of my all-time favourites, but competition at the top is fierce, and it only manages to work its way up to seventh.

Rating:  4 stars.

I’ve never been a fan of musicals, but if more musicals were like “Alice Cooper Goes to Hell” I’d have to rethink my position.

Make no mistake; this record deserves to be made into a musical.  It already has all the component pieces.  “Goes to Hell” is a concept album that tells the story of a man who is condemned to hell, where he meets the Devil, pleads for his life and then ultimately admits his guilt, only to find it was all a dream – or was it?

Yeah this is a pretty tired plotline, but “Goes to Hell” covers it well and is a hell of a lot more enjoyable than “The Wizard of Oz” and look how famous that was.  Unlike “Wizard of Oz” Cooper covers pretty much every style of popular music along the way, from hard rock to disco to Broadway and even a remake of “I’m Always Chasing Rainbows” which was sung by Judy Garland in 1941.  And so we come full circle and return to our story.

The album begins with “Go To Hell” a song that lays down a funky bass line only to slather a thick coat of rock and roll all over it.  It is vintage shock-rock Alice Cooper, as he decries his alter ego’s many crimes, starting with the real ones:

“For criminal acts and violence on the stage

For being a brat refusing to act your age

For all of the decent citizens you’ve enraged

You can go to Hell”

And moving on to ridiculously malicious sins such as “making your Grandma sick”, “poisoning a blind man’s dog”, and my favourite, gift wrapping a leper and mailing him to your Aunt Jane.  Yet for all its silliness, this is one monster rock song that gets the album off with a bang.

Following up on this song, our unrepentant anti-hero decides to go dancing, in this case to a disco song called “You Gotta Dance” which gets your hips moving, your body swaying and even features the finest of seventies rock instruments; the cowbell, which is played with Will Ferrell-like abandon.

After a brief laid back-funk track introduces Satan (“I’m the Coolest”) the album picks up again beautifully as our narrator tries to figure out where he’s seen the devil before.  This song is Cooper showing his range from the hesitant piano that opens the song with Cooper’s querulous “Pardon me/But you see/I’ve seen that face before” and then launches into yet more rock guitar greatness, mixed with a healthy dose of showmanship.  Cooper is an actor and entertainer at heart, and he plays all the characters in the song to great effect.

For all its silly fun, “Goes to Hell” still manages to deliver some moments of pop music magic that stand perfectly strong on their own outside the album’s concept.  “I Never Cry” is a five star ballad that I can’t go two days without finding myself humming in the shower, even when I haven’t played it in months (which is rare).

“I Never Cry” is a harbinger of Cooper’s full descent into alcohol abuse, and it is written with the painful clarity of someone who sees all his bad habits without filter or misunderstanding, but pursues them anyway.  Cooper describes how it is to be so famous that you can get away with all manner of crimes to yourself, and people will just watch you go down:

“Sometimes I drink more than I need

Until the TV’s dead and gone

I may be lonely

But I’m never alone

And the night may pass me by

But I’ll never cry.”

“I Never Cry” is also one of Cooper’s finest vocal performances.  I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating; he’s an underrated singer, likely because his stage shows have always overshadowed his talent.  “I Never Cry” would work regardless on the strength of its got great song construction and production decisions, but the magic happens because Cooper is willing to completely put himself out there, both vocally and lyrically.  Take my advice and YouTube it!

After this song, the album returns to its showtune/musical quality as our hero pleads for freedom (“Give the Kid a Break” and then accepts his fate “Guilty” before eventually waking up with “Going Home.”

“Going Home” has some very schmaltzy lyrics, and out of context it comes off a bit saccharine but the song itself has a strong melody that caries it off, and within the context of the full album, it is exactly what is needed to finish the record off.

“Goes to Hell” is one of those albums that is sadly unappreciated, maybe because it came out so soon after the splashy “Welcome to My Nightmare.” Also, if you only like the hard rock side of Alice Cooper some of these songs are going to be jarring for you, as he experiments with the other sounds of 1976 like disco and soul.  However it is this experimentation that keeps the record so fresh for me many years later.  It would be a mistake to overlook this album simply because you don’t recognize any of the songs.  You may not know them but trust me, you want to.

Best tracks:  Go To Hell, Didn’t We Meet, I Never Cry, Guilty, Wake Me Gently, Wish You Were Here 

CD Odyssey Disc 446: The Cranberries

It’s been a busy few days, between repairs to our condo, squeezing five days of work into a three day work week (I have both Monday and Friday off this week) and various social events.  That said, I’m ready to move on to a new album, and that can’t happen until we get this review written, so here we go.  Yet another record with a ridiculously long title.

Disc 446 is… Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can’t We? 

Artist: The Cranberries

Year of Release: 1992

What’s up with the Cover?  The band reclines on a sofa, early nineties style.  Not much to say here, although I’m still trying to achieve hair as nice as that guy in front.  I can see why he’s on the floor though; the couch looks kind of crowded.  No doubt this was caused by everyone wanting to sit next to Dolores O’Riordan.  I know I wanted to.

How I Came To Know It:  This was a pretty big album in the early nineties.  At least I remember it being a big album.  I saw a couple of the singles on MuchMusic and liked what I heard so I went out and bought it and it has survived with me over the intervening twenty years.

How It Stacks Up:  The Cranberries have six albums, but I only have the first two.  It’s too bad, because the covers on albums three and four are wickedly proggy.  Of the two records that I have, I think I slightly prefer this one to the follow-up effort, “No Need to Argue.”

Rating:  3 stars.

When I sat down to write about this album, I couldn’t think of anything to say (note:  this is not like me).  It felt like I had just written this review for some reason.  Then I remembered that back at Disc 440, I wrote a review for a “Crash Vegas,” record, which I noted as a fine example of early nineties Canadian university music.

“Everybody Else Is Doing It So Why Can’t We” is the Irish equivalent, and got just as much play on this side of the Atlantic in its time.  Apart from the accents when they stop singing, the Cranberries reminded me stylistically a lot of Crash Vegas.  They are another band which features atmospheric pop songs buoyed principally by the very distinctive voice of the female lead singer.

For the Cranberries this is Dolores O’Riordan who somehow translates an Irish lilt into a vocal style that ranges up and down inside a melody, but never quite loses the tune.  It is the kind of singing style that would make a vocal coach cringe and would wreck these pretty little pop ditties in the hands of a lesser artist.  Instead, O’Riordan manages to fill these songs with a quirky importance that far exceeds the relatively simple lyrics involved, mostly about the basics of indie pop music: lost love, early regret and that frail but fierce resilience that comes over all of us in the early expression of our independence.

Like Crash Vegas, musically there is little that stands out from the other players, who are content to accompany their finest asset.  The music is a mood piece of hypnotic guitar plucking, soft drumming and a rolling cadence that made me think more than a little of traditional Irish folk music.  At other times the songs have a bit of a punk vibe, but both the punk and the folk are diluted in enough pop that you only hear it when you listen for it.

It is quality pop though – the kind that sounds like anyone could write it until you realize the band has put together a whole album full of songs that make you think they were radio hits.  A good pop song should always sound this timeless, and the fact that there is genuine emotion behind what the band is putting out helps a lot.

O’Riordan’s voice is masterful in putting the edge to all of this, and keeping the Cranberries fresh to my ears despite my having played this record a great many times (although admittedly not often in recent years).  She’s got some genuine hurt in there, and she delivers it so seductively that you’ll be humming along well before you realize that she’s singing about some not so nice experiences more often than not.

Eventually, O’Riordan cut her music career off for a while – I seem to recall her marrying a Canadian in the mid-nineties and having children.  If she didn’t marry a Canadian, she certainly lived in Canada for a while.  In any event, it wasn’t with me, and so I unsurprisingly paid a lot less attention at the time as a result.

The big hit on the album (at least in my circles) was “Linger” and the record has always lingered in my CD collection when others have fallen away.  I put it on less and less, but I always enjoy hearing it when I do pull it out.  It’s an old friend from my frail and fiery youth, or so I like to remember it.

Best tracks:  Dreams, Sunday, Linger, Wanted, 

CD Odyssey Disc 445: Tom Waits

I apologize for the delay between my last review and this one, but this one was a mammoth album; 56 tracks over three discs.  Given its size, it faired surprisingly well.

Disc 445 is… Orphans:  Brawlers, Bawlers and Bastards

Artist: Tom Waits

Year of Release: 2006

What’s up with the Cover?  Tom Waits, surrounded by his favourite things; old junk and interesting characters. 

How I Came To Know It:  Sheila and I are both big Tom Waits fans, so we bought this when it came out.  I think this might’ve been a present in her stocking, or for her birthday or something.

How It Stacks Up:  We have 19 Tom Waits albums, which is most of them.  It’s hard to rank Tom Waits, since his style changes up so much over the years, but for “Orphans” I’ll go with bottom half of the roster, but still respectable at 13^th best.

Rating:  3 stars.

In a recent interview Tom Waits gave promoting his 2011 album, “Bad As Me” I recall the interviewer suggesting this was Waits’ first album of new material in seven years.  Tom politely disagreed, and I expect he was referring to “Orphans:  Brawlers, Bawlers & Bastards.” “Orphans” is a three disc set full of songs that over the years Tom has written but for a variety of reasons never made it onto other records.  Not new material to Tom maybe, but new to the world, and very welcome when I first heard it.

Like “Lost Dogs” did for Pearl Jam, “Orphans” reminded me of just how great a singer/songwriter Waits is (although much of the latter praise must go to his wife and long-time collaborator Kathleen Brennan, who is as much responsible for Waits’ enduring brilliance as he is).

First of all, I love the names of these three albums, and Tom has selected where the songs appear with apparent care.  Disc One is “Brawlers” and leans heavily to a collection of lowlifes and their accompanying low lives.

“Low Down” is a rock n’ roll masterpiece about a rough-edged girl told through the eyes of a man who appreciates every sharp edge of her, especially her “red leather skirt way above her knees.”  I’ve appreciate the same girl – or one like her – in my own life.  Tom remains the master of the turn of phrase, edging out even masters like Dylan and Cohen at his ability to spout phrases that sound like they’ve been lifted right out of the twenties and thirties.  My favourite lines from “Low Down”:

“She's a cheap motel with a burned out sign

 She'll take care of you definitely every time

 She got a stolen check book and legs up to there

 Singing into a hairbrush, right in front of the mirror

 Oh yeah, my baby's lowdown.”

Other standouts are “2:19”, a catchy sing-a-long ditty about a man losing his girl, who is leaving on a train with a departure time matching the song’s title.  This song also demonstrates Waits’ brilliance with production decisions.  It is a basic riff, dressed up with a rogue’s gallery of sounds including two complementary funky electric guitar riffs, some kind of bongos in the background and a little jazz trumpet.  It should be a hot mess, but Waits blends it all seamlessly.

I also enjoy “Fish in the Jailhouse” a song about an inmate named, “Peoria Johnson” bragging that he can escape any jail by fashioning a skeleton key out of a fish bone.  His exultant tone that tonight’s dinner will, in fact, feature fish is so full of light-hearted bravado that you find yourself believing it is going to happen just listening.

Not so good on this album is “Road to Peace” a seven minute plus preachy song about the Middle East.  It isn’t a very good song lyrically or musically and it goes on way too long.  Waits doesn’t usually go so directly into political commentary and he doesn’t wear it well.  This song is a good reminder that if you decide to have 56 songs on one release, you are very likely going to get some misses.

Disc Two is “Bawlers,” which is generally more introspective and morose – good songs to have a cry to, while thinking about the hard blows life can deliver.

My favourite off this album is probably “Long Way Home” that strongly reminded me of Johnny Cash, reimagined in Tom Waits’ raspy ne’er-do-well style.  It’s a song about a man who loves his woman hard, but always seems to be threatening the relationship with self-destructive behavior.  As apology songs go, this and Steve Earle’s “Valentine’s Day” are about as good as they get.

By contrast, “Never Let Go” sings of a love that will endure regardless of any external pressure or poverty-stricken situation is thrown at it:

“Our ring’s in the pawnshop

The rains in the hole

Down at the Five Points I stand

I’ll lose everything

But I won’t let go of your hand.”

Never did a wedding ring mean so little and so much at the same time, as I hear Tom sing the hell out of these words.  Also, I love the reference to the Five Points of New York not as they are now – cold concrete, suits and the stink of money – but the Five Points of a hundred years ago, teeming with humanity and the stink of the lack of money.

The last disc is “Bastards,” which seems an unlikely collection of songs that don’t quite fit in either of the first two.  Illegitimate births of songs that cover the obscure and the macabre.

“Army Ants” is a spoken word piece that is Waits reciting a series of disturbing facts about the insect world.  Robber Flies injecting paralyzing fluid into their prey, Praying Mantis sex and its homicidal climax, and my favourite bit: “if you place a minute bit of alcohol on a scorpion it will instantly go mad, and sting itself to death.” In the song’s last moments, Waits ties all of this cold and alien behavior back to the human experience.  Listening to it made me delightfully itchy.

On “First Kiss” Waits paints a spoken word portrait of a woman who gave him his first kiss.  Delightful details throughout, seemingly unrelated to each other, but together painting a fantastic and grotesque character study:

“She drove a big old Lincoln with suicide doors

And a sewing machine in the back

And a light bulb that looked like an alligator egg

Was mounted up from the hood.

She had an easter bonnet that had been signed by

Tennessee Early Ford

And she always had sawdust in her hair.”

If it seems easy to write that kind of stuff, try it.  It rarely comes out sounding as fascinatingly specific as Waits - and his muse Brennan – can manage.

Yet just when you think you’re going to be lulled into the hypnotic recitation of Waits’ poetry, he comes at you hard with a song like “Dog Door” which with its heavy, sampled bass beats and crazy alien arrangements sounds like something that you’d expect to hear on a Beck album.  Waits has incredible musical range, which is why I’ve had to add four tags to this review just to categorize him.

I’m a fan of all three “Orphans” albums, although I think “Brawlers” is the best if I had to choose.  “Bawlers” is the weakest musically (although still good) and “Bastards” is entertaining but many of the tracks (even some of my favourites) have a novelty feel that wears a little thin on repeat listens.

All three albums feature a few remakes here and there.  Some of these are great, like his take on the traditional folk standard “Two Sisters” or the Ramones’ “The Return of Jackie and Judy.”  The Ramones did a fine version of Waits’ “I Don’t Wanna Grow Up” as well, by the way.

Other remakes, like Del Shannon’s “Sea of Love” or the Sinatra standard “Young at Heart” come off forced, as Waits tries a little too hard to make them his own.  Or maybe he naturally makes them his own, but they just don’t suit him.  Either way, I could’ve lived without these.

If I were to cream the top fourteen songs off of “Orphans” I believe the album would approach five star greatness; amazing given these are songs that didn’t make previous cuts.  However, at best this should’ve been a double album, and because of this I’m going to give it only three, but very close to four despite its excesses.

Best tracks (by album): 

From Brawlers:  Low Down, 2:19, Fish in the Jailhouse, Bottom of the World, Rains on Me

From Bawlers: Long Way Home, Tell It to Me, Never Let Go, Fannin Street,

From Bastards:  Army Ants, First Kiss, Dog Door, Altar Boy, Spidey’s Wild Ride, King Kong