This Is Your Song For....March 27th, 2013: Full Moon Rising by Neil Halstead

If you're going to go roots....you might as well go all the way.

Today’s song brings up something that intrigues me.  Neil Halstead, who wrote and played this very moody and atmospheric little piece of rootsy, folky tuneage, was one of the founding members of Slowdive.  Slowdive was one of the leading purveyors of showgaze, a musical genre that I talked about somewhat recently.  But once Slowdive broke up as bands that aren't interested in sucking the nostalgic dry of their money inevitably do, Halstead went off to form Mojave 3.  Mojave 3 is a country folk outfit, and Halstead’s solo work has continued on this path.

What is it about alternative rockers that they want to return to roots music once they strike off on their own?  There are far too many who have done this--John Doe did this after he left X, Bob Mould did this after Husker Du crumbled, Kristen Hersh did this when Throwing Muses was in flux...the list goes on and on.  I’m sure you can come up with four or five examples yourself.  Is it because there is this perception of folk, bluegrass, country and other ‘roots’ genres as being ‘purer’ forms?  Is it because writing music in a less tortured form acts as a palette cleanser, preparing these people for whatever their muse has in store for them next?  Is it a desire to cut through the red tape and make it just the singer and the song, stripped of layers of noise and production, so he or she can better communicate with the listener?

Granted, some of this impetuous to go down these country roads may just be a need to liberate oneself.  I talked recently on an episode of Maurice Bursztynski’s excellent Love That Album about how going solo liberated Stan Ridgway to follow his true passion for telling stories with his song, and I suspect something similar motivated Halstead.  There’s no denying that Halstead’s voice is suited to the stripped down arrangements of folk--this song features only him and his guitar, allowing us to soak in this evocative tale of a man and a woman at the exact moment where their relationship disintegrates.  The way Halstead switches from being accusatory to resigned to warning his now former paramour that she might find out what she wants isn't for the best is seamless, all bolstered by the wonderful guitar work.  It’s at turns beautiful and dreadful, as I imagine such a moment would feel to a lover giving up the fight.

There are times I wonder if these sudden changes in direction work (the decision of alt-pop darlings The Popinjays to become roots folkers with their third album confounds me to this very day, but that’s a story for another time)...but when they work, like with Neil Halstead, it’s magic.

Here’s a video.

This Is Your Song For....March 14th, 2013: Welcome To England by Tori Amos

Somehow I don't think she's going to let you in on
the joke....

Ahhh, yes...it’s time to finally address an artist I’ve referenced many times in the course of this blog (like here and here), an artist I’ve had a rather odd relationship with.

There was a time--namely, in the early years of her solo career--where I had an intense crush on Ms. Amos.  In a way, I guess it’s understandable, as Amos was something of a stand-in for every alterna-geek chick of that period.  And those early albums--Little Earthquakes, Under the Pink, Songs From The Choirgirl Hotel, etc--were very nuanced and had a lot of that sweet-melody-with-dark-center stuff that I loved, plus many of the songs had a storytelling element that appealed to me.

(Okay, it also didn’t hurt that she was a redhead with off-kilter looks who played a piano like she was fucking it, either.  Or that she had this kinda purry/growly thing she liked to do with her voice.  Or...

Okay, maybe there’s still a lil’ bit of that crush still left alive in me.)

As we moved into a later period of her career where her whimsy seemed to overtake her darkness, I stopped following her career as closely--after all, as I’ve stated elsewhere, if I want my artists to evolve I have to accept that they might evolve into something I won’t like.

Which brings us to Abnormally Attracted To Sin and this, the lead single off of that album.  Supposedly, this was going to be the first single Amos was going to release on her own before backing off and signing with Universal Republic, and it seems to mark a return to that period of hers I enjoyed so much.  Hell, it sounds sonically very, very much like an outtake from the albums cited above.  An ode to her adopted country--she moved to England with her then-boyfriend, now husband to gain a little privacy, believe it or not--it doesn’t quite reach the storytelling heights of the best songs off, let’s say, Choirgirl, but it has its moments.  I particularly like the way there seems to be some ambivalence in Amos’ lyrics about the city, admitting on some level that she still feels an outsider, that she’s stuck dancing a different dance from everyone around her, that she’s still stuck ‘bringing her own sun.’  This sense of otherness is emphasized by the way Amos frequently lapses into a broad version of her own southernness during the song.  And I admit that, after a couple of years of stuff about bees and cars and hardcore whimsy, it’s great to hear her wonder about how cold it’ll be when her heart bursts in the middle of the song.

It’s weird--for someone who was with Amos at the very start of her solo career, this song comes off as comfort food.  It’s a favorite artist doing the sort of music she did when I initially became enamored of her.  I don’t know if that’s necessarily a good thing--while her recent releases included Night of The Hunters, an album of fairy tale songs written in collaboration with her daughter that seems to be a return to her storytelling roots, it also included Gold Dust, her attempt to get in on that ‘artists re-record their greatest hits’ trend I find so loathsome (which I need to get a ‘Cover-versies’ out about soon)--but for what it is, I’m okay with it.  I just wonder if she’s decided to regress rather than continue with the evolution she seemed to be going through in the ‘00s...and I also don’t know which direction I’m rooting for.

Here's the video.  It's got lots of nice places in London in it...

This Is Your Song For....March 7th, 2013: New Deal by Martini Ranch

Yep...the guy from NEAR DARK, the chick from the B-52s...
and that other guy.

Did you know Bill Paxton was in a band?  It’s true...

Of course, I didn’t know that Martini Ranch was a collaboration between everybody’s favorite cowardly Colonial Marine and Andrew Todd Rosenthal--although given how her backing vocals appeared everywhere on their one and only album, Holy Cow!, I think it’s safe to give the B-52's Cindy Wilson a seat at their table as an official member as well--for some time.  At first, I just knew they were responsible for this cool new wave-y song with Devo-ish pretensions called 'How Can The Laboring Man Find Time For Self Culture?’ that was play a lot on U-68, the Jersey-based local music video station that challenged MTV for a brief time.  Their video captivated me, which made their album a must pick-up for me....and then when I learned Paxton was one of the vocalist, I was sold.

‘New Deal’ is the first cut off the album, and it does what a first cut should do--propulse the listener into the band’s style, hook him and get him ready for what he’s about to listen to.  ‘New Deal’ is very much dance pop in a new wave style with serious overtones of the Church of the Sub-Genius philosophy that infused Devo’s canon.  And that Devo sort of double-speak isn’t here just because Bob Casale produced this album and played on it along with Mark Mothersbaugh and Alan Meyers; this is something that infused all of Martini Ranch’s songs, and helps set them apart from similar sounding acts that sprung up in the mid-to-late 80‘s.

There is a very brief spoken word segment that starts the song (unlike, let’s say, the one that precedes the album version of ‘Laboring Man...’, it’s far too brief to call it a skit), and I wonder if that’s the influence of hip-hop.  Many of the other songs on the albums contain what could pretty much be called ‘skits’ at the front of them.  The song itself could be construed as Martini Ranch’s mission statement, exhorting the listener to prepare for change, to save his soul by buying into the band’s ‘new deal,’ where everyone gets to judge themselves by what they feel.  The transformational aspect of this song is a particular obsession of the band--other songs on the album include a paean to the tearing down of the Berlin Wall, a novelty number about a fat-burning formula, and, of all things, a cover of ‘Richard Corey.’

(And this isn’t counting the, to the best of my knowledge,the never-released song ‘Brain Dead’ that the band recorded for the end credits of Bill Paxton’s low-budget film of the same name, a film all about mental transformation.)

To the best of my knowledge, Martini Ranch just...stopped existing in 1991.  Robinson formed a new, jazz-influenced band called Swifty’s Bazaar and is recording a second album.  As for Mr. Paxton, he continues to be a great lil’ actor, expanding into directing with Frailty.

Here is the song....

...and because I like you, and them, so much, here's the video for 'Reach,' which features the hottest director eeeeevah, Kathryn Bigelow getting her Clint Eastwood on....