After 17 years of professional music-reviewing, Noel Murray is taking time off from all new music, and is revisiting his record collection in alphabetical order, to take stock of what he's amassed, and consider what he still needs.
"Why Independent Record Stores Fail" by Marah
Here's a big question that most writers (myself included) really don't want to know the answer to: Do people read us because they're interested in what we have to say, or because they're interested in the subjects we're writing about? Speaking as someone who's every bit as much of a consumer of the media soup as I am a contributor to it, I find that I lean both ways on the matter. If I opened up a magazine and discovered that one of my favorite contemporary critics or essayists had devoted a couple of thousands words to a subject I'd ordinarily find dull or even repellent—tax law say, or the love life of Denise Richards—I'd assume they'd found a way to make it interesting, and I'd dig in eagerly. But when faced with an entire collection by that writer, well, I might be tempted to skim a chapter that didn't immediately grab me. I've got multiple volumes of Pauline Kael's criticism, for example, but I don't think I've ever read her review of the 1976 Sarah Bernhardt biopic The Incredible Sarah.
I've been thinking about this lately because I've noticed a tendency in readers to react with hostility when one of their favorite publications interviews someone or reviews something that they think is unworthy. I mentioned this last week in my "Stray Tracks" entry on Linkin Park (an entry which, somewhat ironically, a few readers took issue with my writing at all, given that I ignored or under-covered some acts last week that probably deserved a little more space). There was also some grumbling in The TV Club last week when Donna reviewed—and panned—the latest Disney Channel movie Camp Rock. The argument against the review seemed to be, "We already knew this thing was going to suck, so why waste our time and yours writing something that says it sucks?" My response? There was always a chance that Camp Rock might not have sucked—after all, Donna is a fan of High School Musical—and anyway, we're talking about a TV movie that scored high ratings, and is on its way to becoming another pre-teen cultural phenomenon, a la HSM. If critics completely ignore such things, then we're in danger of becoming just what some of the critics-of-critics accuse us of being: out-of-touch hipster snobs who've spent so long in our little bubbles that we think the world at large really cares what Joanna Newsom is up to.
The trick for any publication is to find a good balance between what we're interested in and what our core readership expects. But that's tough when it comes to music. There are always going to be readers—regardless of the publication—who feel like their music review needs aren't being met. It's reasonable to expect a weekly paper to keep up with all the movies that come out, but it's almost impossible to keep pace with all the records, which means that some genres that appeal to a more select base—like country, jazz, metal or classical—typically only get ink in general interest pop culture pubs when an undeniable buzz builds around a given record.
Thus you end up with are a hundred different media outlets all weighing in on the same piece of music in the same week, and to some extent being afraid not to cover it. And when a publication zags where everyone else zigs, their peers can get antsy. I recall a mild outcry when Nick Hornby dedicated a lengthy New Yorker column to praising Philly roots-rockers Marah, with some rival columnists noting how out of touch Hornby's Marah fandom made him look. After all, who cares about Marah? (Well, I do, for one—but that's a subject for later.)
Yet if criticism and coverage were all a matter of totaling up who has the "right" opinions and the "right" people on their front pages, then there wouldn't be much need to read more than one publication, since they'd all be pretty much the same. There has to be space for writers with a distinct take to review something obscure or disreputable, or to interview someone they think has something to say, no matter how un-hip they may be.
(And I think it's up to readers to understand that while publications can have tendencies and leanings, they're made up of individual writers with individual opinions. I've noticed that when it comes to reviews, readers tend not to notice bylines, so they don't understand how a website can give a "B" to My Morning Jacket and a "B+" to Coldplay—ignoring that the reviews were written by two different people, who might have entirely different takes on those respective bands.)
But at the same time, I think it would be a mistake for any general interest pop culture publication to cockily avoid the subjects that everyone else is writing about, in the name of being different. There's almost nothing in popular culture that I don't think is worthy fodder for a writer with something to say, and that includes the subjects that everybody else is writing about that week. I had an editor once who tried so hard to think outside the box that he'd demand his writers justify their request to cover whatever the hot album of the week happened to be. "What's your angle?" he'd ask, before we'd even had a chance to hear the record in question. "What more is there to say about The Flaming Lips?" I never said what I wanted to say—what nearly every writer thinks when an editor asks a question like that. "My angle?" I'd think. "My angle is that I'll be writing about it."
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Pieces Of The Puzzle
Love
Years Of Operations 1966-73
Fits Between The Strawberry Alarm Clock and Syd Barrett
"Softly To Me" by Love
Personal Correspondence Because Arthur Lee and Love were considered a footnote to the '60s rock canon when I was growing up—sort of "for aficionados only"—I didn't catch up to them until I was well into my 30s, at which point Lee and Bryan MacLean's peculiar, existential take on being young and idle in Los Angeles struck me as more poignant than it might've when I was young and idle myself. Even after listening to Forever Changes a few dozen times, I still find that record almost shocking in its modernity, from strange little lines like "the snot is caked against my pants" to the little flourishes of brass and strings that sound like a little kid's idea of what the grown-ups are listening to. It's just an astonishingly lively and lovely album—and it hardly stands alone in the Love catalog. The band was aspiring to a certain twilight atmosphere as early as its more garage-oriented debut album, on songs like tense, yearning, MacLean-penned semi-ballad "Softly To Me." Then Da Capo set the stage for Forever Changes, which flopped so resoundingly that Love retreated into a more popular style of acid rock—and not without some artistic success. But it's that progression to Forever Changes—and the way that album hovers above the fray of late '60s psychedelia—that's the important Love story, and the one that should be told even to novice rock historians.
Enduring presence? The Love legacy—like that if their east coast contemporaries The Velvet Underground—continues to spread wide. You can hear the Love in scores of L.A. cult acts, from The Gun Club to Eels, and in countless indie-rockers who play with ornate orchestration in the purple shadows of early evening.
Low
Years Of Operation 1993-present
Fits Between Red House Painters and Galaxie 500
"On The Edge Of" by Low
Personal Correspondence Windham Hill titled its 20th anniversary box set A Quiet Revolution, but that slogan could just as easily be applied to Low, a band who emerged in the midst of the grunge era and thus garnered a lot of attention for doing not much. The first time I heard Low's debut album I Could Live In Hope, I froze when I got to "Fear," a syrup-slow song that uses whispery voices, deep echo and empty spaces to express a starkness of feeling that I found both beautiful and painful—like a multi-colored bruise. Back then, a Low show drew crowds that would sit cross-legged and transfixed on some barroom or record store floor, afraid to cough lest they break the spell. The band's on-again/off-again career—which has survived label switches and personnel shuffling and embarrassing public confessions of personal failure—has taken some cues from those early Low fans. More than most bands, Low understands how even a slight disruption can be a major hassle, so they do what they can to prolong and sustain.
Enduring presence? Like Stereolab, Belle & Sebastian, and other bands that have built a fan base by exploring minute variations of a singular sound, Low has persistently had to contemplate what it means to progress. When the band stays the course, it gets knocked for making albums that are essentially indistinguishable. When it attempts significant change, the old guard complains that something vital has been sapped. Low started making some interesting forward strides with 2005's The Great Destroyer, with producer David Fridmann helping to unleash the rock 'n' roll aggression that had always rumbled beneath the surface of the band's hushed, spare presentation. But it's not like Low hasn't thrown a few curves before—most notably with 2001's Things We Lost In The Fire, which also offered up a lusher and more forceful Low. And it's not like they haven't reserved the right to retreat into drone; last year's Drums And Guns (also recorded with Fridmann) relies more on exotic rhythms, but the sound is still essentially slow and soft. Ultimately, Low is all about contrast. In the band's early days, it stood apart from what alt-rock was promoting at the time. Later, on a song like "On The Edge Of," Low would create its own storm of reverb, then scurry back to extreme minimalism, illustrating the value of the still.
Lucero
Years Of Operation 1998-present
Fits Between The Hold Steady and Drive-By Truckers
"Mine Tonight" by Lucero
Personal Correspondence My wife and I moved to Arkansas in 1999, beginning my second stint in the state following a miserable stretch my family served in 1976-'77. This second go-round has been a lot better, as I've gotten a feel for the character of this state: a place of rich culture and deep poverty, with an odd mix of conservative and progressive politics. (We're dubbed a "red state," even though our governor, an overwhelming majority of our state legislature and most of our congressional delegation are Democrats.) Arkansas borders Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Missouri, Tennessee and Mississippi, and seems to draw pieces of identity from each: from the dust and the delta, the west and the east, the heartland and the hinterlands. Lucero comes from Memphis, which straddles the border between Tennessee and Arkansas, and bandleader Ben Nichols has built much of Lucero's personality around the emotional climate of East Arkansas and West Tennessee—the towns that are little more than exits off I-40, and the people who are implanted there, watching the cars go by. I distrusted Nichols' intentions the first time I heard Lucero, because I'd read that he was a Memphis punker who turned to country-rock because he thought it would be easier to play, and because he tends to work in the increasingly fallow, dirge-y side of the genre, where self-absorbed mopes impose unearned misery on overprivileged record buyers. But Nichols' opportunism—if it can be called that, since the band's hardly getting rich—mainly demonstrates an implicit understanding of how roots-rock can express a nuance that hardcore punk has trouble with. Lucero's arrangements are fairly organic, almost as though the band decides to play loud or soft or fast or slow on the spot, cueing off Nichols' Darkness On The Edge Of Town-era Springsteen moods. They're like the roads that crisscross the south: bumpy one moment, smooth the next, and always under construction.
Enduring presence? Thus far, Lucero has yet to top its second album. Tennessee, though every record since has been good. The band's biggest stumbling block is also one of its assets: Nichols' voice, which holds to an exaggerated grunt that's like Bob Seger with a throat full of phlegm. Lucero doesn't range too far beyond the narrow parameters that Nichols' voice has almost forced them to dwell in, but what they've done with that space is often impressive.
Luscious Jackson
Years Of Operation 1992-2000
Fits Between The Beastie Boys and ESG
"Keep On Rockin' It" by Luscious Jackson
Personal Correspondence Even if Luscious Jackson hadn't been as good a band as they turned out to be, they'd still be noteworthy for the way they blended hip-hop and indie-rock so unselfconsciously, with an innate understanding that in the '90s, those kind of genre distinctions were becoming increasingly irrelevant. Luscious Jackson's seminal debut EP In Search Of Manny is lo-fi but assertive, offering catchy, funky songs like "Keep On Rockin' It" that also present a blunt take on femininity. Over the course of three albums—all good-to-great—Luscious Jackson's sound gained a surface polish but remained, at its core, expansive and earthy and personal. I actually had a hard time settling on a sample track to include with this entry. I think the one I chose will let down my wife—a huge Luscious Jackson fan who prefers the later albums—but it's one that speaks to the band's whims and whimsy. It's the seed from which a too-short career bloomed.
Enduring presence? I saw LJ live at Nashville's legendary Exit/In on the Natural Ingredients tour, and they put on a surprisingly tight and fun show for four women who started out as home recording enthusiasts. I once read a quote from one of the Jacksons who said she wanted to make the band's music sound like the War concert her parents took her to in Central Park one summer Sunday afternoon when she was 10. I think she came close fairly often—whenever the band whipped up something simultaneously joyous and moody.
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