MY 2013 YEAR END LIST

AROUND THE TRENDS

Ten things in music I liked about 2013

by Matt Ashare |  
Published December 31, 2013 http://www.newsadvance.com/the_burg/music/pop_rocks/

THE HOT SEAT: Lady Gaga delivered spectacle in 2013

Another year, another amorphous chorus of mixed messages about the so-called “state” of music, as if were actually possible to capture something so elusive in anything resembling its natural state. Back in March, David Lowery turned up on NPR’s “On the Media” to discuss some of the issues he addresses as part of “The Trichordist,” a website dedicated to “Artists for An Ethical and Sustainable Internet.” The erstwhile Virginia-based producer, longtime frontman of the bands Camper Van Beethoven and Cracker, and current a lecturer at the University of Georgia, suggested that the old business paradigm, dominated by monolithic major labels, really wasn’t all that bad, which is interesting coming from a guy who had his share of dust ups with the powers- that-be back in the day.

More recently, David Byrne, whose Luaka Bop label was once a part of Warner Bros., published “How Music Works,” a collection of essays in which he waxes somewhat nostalgic for the days when a corporate entity like Sire Records (which was also part of the Warner Group) would invest its resources in a left-of-center CBGB’s band like his own Talking Heads. In other words, now that these once-insurgent artists have gotten a look at the future of music, the past doesn’t look half bad.

         On the other hand, 2013 was also the year that Amanda Palmer celebrated her crowdfunding coup by delivering a TED Talk on the many virtues of tweeting, blogging, and otherwise interfacing directly with fans on the Internet. In 2012, she’d set a new record by raising over a million dollars in individual contributions on Kickstarter to record her second album, “Theatre Is Evil.” So, she’s understandably less concerned about the state of music than some of her peers.

Of course, when conversation turns to the state of music, what’s usually at issue is the state of the music industry, which has always been governed by rather arbitrary rules — copyright law, for example — that benefit some at the expense of others. There’s no doubt that technology — particularly in the digital realm — has been a game changer for the entertainment industry over the past decade, not to mention the last year. Whether or not it’s been a force for good or for evil remains up for debate. But, while the medium can be the message, more often than not technology, even in the face of cultural skirmishes, is essentially neutral: it’s really more a matter of how we choose to make use of evolving modes of consumption and communication that makes the biggest difference. By that measure, 2013 belongs to the comic Norwegian brother act Ylvis, whose surreal “The Fox (What Does the Fox Say?)” went mega-viral on YouTube and turned out to be this year’s “Gangnum Style.” I guess that means we should be on the lookout for a big ad featuring Vergard and Bård Ylvisåker shilling pistachios when Superbowl XVLIII takes to the air on February 2.

In the meantime, the proverbial beat goes on as artists continue to make music that weaves itself into the fabric of daily life in a manner that can be at once surprising and familiar; comforting and disruptive; ridiculous and sublime. It’s all good, even if not really all good. And, since there were far too many albums than I could justify paring down to a simple top ten, I’ve opted this year for a list of ten categories that feel like they capture something essential about the state of music in 2013. 

POP ART OR ARTPOP?: Arcade Fire can do both.  

1) ARTPOPPERY:  Arcade Fire “Reflektor” + Atoms for Peace “AMOK” —Lady Gaga, in her infinite ambition, may have twisted the Warholian idea of “Pop Art” into a multi-media marketing campaign that fuses the virtues of art with the baser nature of accessibility, but she’s not the first to play at that game (see David Bowie, below). And, while it may be more apt to place Arcade Fire’s expansive, retro-futuristic double concept album “Reflektor,” as well as Radiohead head Thom Yorke’s new Atoms for Peace missive “AMOK” in the category of what older folks once called prog- or art-rock, artpop seems a fair enough designation. Both bands flexed their considerable creative muscle and challenged loyal fans to accept a modicum of experimentation, while offering just enough in the way of infectious grooves and melodies to make the trip worth the effort. 

        

REBEL BELLE: Kacey Musgraves 

2) AMERICANA WITH ATTITUDE: Kacey Musgraves “Same Trailer, Different Park” + Natalie Maines “Mother” — Nashville’s Music Row has long been one of the most conservative corners of the mainstream music industry, which has admittedly bred quite a bit of vapid, predictable, middle-of-the-road product over the years. But it’s also fostered plenty of rebels and outlaws because, well, you gotta have rules before you can break them. Kacey Musgraves, a 25-year-old Texas-bred singer-songwriter who self-released three albums and appeared on the USA Network’s “Nashville Star” competition before signing to Mercury Records, may have rewritten the script for what’s acceptable on Music Row with “Same Trailer, Different Park,” a homespun yet crisply produced album of rather-trad tunes with more than a touch of twangy bluegrass that, among other transgressions, exclaims, “Make lots of noise/Kiss lots of boys/Or kiss lots of girls if that’s something you’re into,” and offers this vision of small-town life: “Mama’s hooked on Mary Kay/Brother’s hooked on Mary Jane/And Daddy’s hooked on Mary two doors down.” And Dixie Chick Natalie Maines moved away from straight country toward something more along the lines of Sheryl Crow’s rootsier side on “Mother,” an album of covers that delivers a devastating version of its Pink Floyd title cut that was originally recorded to raise money for the falsely imprisoned West Memphis Three.

RELATIVE COOL: The formidable sisters of Haim

3) GRRRL GROUPINGS: Haim “Days Are Gone” + Savages “Silence Yourself” — Trending retro in ways that were fashionably unfashionable in 2013, the California sister act Haim and the London-based grrrl group Savages drew on very different aspects of the ’80s on two of the year’s more promising debuts. With formidable musical chops, Haim fashioned their sly hooks around the funked-up rock of Prince’s Revolution and the kind smooth r&b grooves that Quincy Jones used to catapult Michael Jackson into the stratosphere, all without a trace of tongue-in-cheek irony. The aptly named Savages zeroed in on the post-punk nihilism of John Lydon’s Public Image Limited, the raw scrape of Joy Division, and the primal wail of Siouxsie and the Banshee, with a surplus of attitude and stark androgynous look to complete the package.

POP ART: David Bowie appropriates himself on The Next Day

4) HAPPY RETURNS: David Bowie “The Next Day” + Elvis Costello and the Roots “Wise Up Ghost” — One of the original purveyors of “artpop” and a major influence on Lady Gaga’s latest vocal affectations, David Bowie was apparently in a self-reflective state of mind when he set out to record his first solo album in a decade, and his 24^th overall. With cover art copped from his own art-rock classic, 1977’s “Heroes,” and a single (“Where Are We Now?”) that sifts through images from his years in Berlin, “The Next Day” goes a long way toward recapturing past glories without necessarily repeating them. Bowie’s almost always interesting, but it’s been quite some time since he’s sounded this immersed in a musical project. And, what frankly seemed like something of a novelty collaboration between Elvis Costello and the Roots turned out to be a surprisingly solid collection of songs that deploy the hip-hop science of loops and sampling in a way that’s oddly reminiscent of Costello’s ambitiously orchestrated 1982 masterpiece “Imperial Bedroom.”

OLD SCHOOL RULES: Pearl Jam kicked out the analog jams

5) GUARDIANS OF GRUNGE: Dave Grohl’s “Sound City” + Pearl Jam “Lightning Bolt” —  An homage to the famed and now defunct studio where Nirvana recorded “Nevermind,” “Sound City” was both a loving documentary directed by Foo Fighter frontman/former Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl and a soundtrack featuring the Sound City Players, a remarkably diverse group of artists with various connections to the Northridge, CA studio. You get everyone from Stevie Nicks and Rick Springfield, to Queens of the Stone Age’s Josh Homme and Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor, to Sir Paul McCartney backed by the three surviving members of Nirvana, all on an album of new material that serves as a visceral reminder that, on some level, they all share a certain common creative ground. As for Pearl Jam’s “Lightning Bolt” — their tenth studio album since 1991’s chartbusting “Ten” — it’s simply a straightforwardly stripped-down reminder that there’s still plenty of room for an unabashedly analog band in our brave new digital world.  

MOODY BLUES: The National embrace the darkness

6) INDIE ROCKS: The National “Trouble Will Find Me” + Superchunk “I Hate Music” — Nobody does nonchalantly dark, world-wearily romantic, or elegantly debauched quite as well as the Cincinnati-by-way-of-Brooklyn band the National. “Trouble Will Find Me,” an apt description of the persona Matt Berninger projects as the deep-voiced singer of the National, isn’t so much a departure for the band as it is a further distillation of the moody blues they revel in. There’s also some wistful romanticism on “I Hate Music,” the searingly melodic tenth album from North Carolina indie stalwarts Superchunk. You can’t blame singer/guitarist Mac McCaughan for screaming “I hate music” on the album’s title cut — as the founder of the longstanding indie label Merge Records, with bandmate and bassist Laura Balance, he’s probably been subjected to more than his fair share of noise. But, “I Hate Music” is, in its own peculiar way, a love letter to a DIY ethos that Superchunk helped create in the early ’90s.  

KANYE'S YEEZUS: No title required

7) DYSTOPIAN HIP-HOP: Kanye West “Yeezus” + Pusha T “My Name Is My Name” — Rappers aren’t just measured by their flow, their beats, or the number of units they’re able to move. It’s also about empire building, creating a brand bigger than one’s self, and moving the form forward in some notable way. Kanye (do we even need the West anymore?) has done all of the above. His “Yeezus” is one of the strangest hip-hop blockbusters in recent memory, with its maximal minimalist soundscapes, its fractured beats, and its often impenetrably dark sensibility. But that wasn’t all Kanye had cooking in 2013: having helped boost former Clipse member Pusha T’s status as a solo rapper through a guest spot on 2010’s “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy,” West stepped in as executive producer for T’s debut, “My Name Is My Name,” which along with “Yeezus” ranks as one of the more compelling and intriguing commercial hip-hop albums of the year.

THE REAL DEAL: 17-year-old Lorde 

8) THE YOUNG AND THE RESTLESS: Lorde “Pure Heroine” + Earl Sweatshirt “Doris” — As difficult as it may or may not be for new artists to find firm footing these days (as opposed to the good old days of major-label hegemony), there’s still plenty of evidence to suggest that just being really really crazy talented, inspired, and/or unique does have its advantages. Lorde is a wickedly precocious 17-year-old singer-songwriter from New Zealand, born Ella Marie Lani Yelich-O’Connor (thus the stage name), who has a remarkable gift for finding rough-hewn beauty in the mundane realities of daily life, and a strikingly confident voice that’s rarely accompanied by more than a sleek beat and a few backing racks on “Pure Heroine.” There are lots of singers sweating it out in an effort to capture the ’tweenage experience — I won’t mention names — but Lorde does it effortlessly, and with quite a bit more depth. An even odder oddball, 18-year-old Earl Sweatshirt emerged as a part of an LA indie hip-hop collective known as Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All, released a mixtape filled with horrorcore fantasies in 2010, and then disappeared for a year, during which “Free Earl” t-shirts starting showing up in LA. His debut is a schizoid affair that, while reminiscent of the fantasy scenarios and just plain out-there soundscapes of the early Wu-Tang Clan, stands on its own as the next strangest thing to “Yeezus.”   

CROTCH SHOT: Miley Cyrus skews sexy

9) POP SPECTACLE: Miley Cyrus “Bangerz” + Lady Gaga “Artpop” — Not going to waste too much time here on the actual music, since both Miley and Gaga are more about making a scene or a splash than crafting a tune. And, Miley may have one-upped Gaga in 2013, with her white-girl twerks and that hilarious VMA stunt making nasty with a big Styrofoam finger (not to mention Robin Thicke). But Haus of Gaga has almost surely been hard at work, dreaming up something even bigger than the ArtRave extravaganza she staged to celebrate the arrival of “Artpop.” So there should be plenty more spectacle to feed on from both Miley and Gaga as we move on in to 2014.

10) BLASTS FROM THE PAST: Bob Dylan “Another Self Portrait” + The Clash “Sound System” — Yet another mysterious period of Dylan’s mysterious career has at least been partially unshrouded with the repackaged, remastered, and almost completely reconfigured “Another Self Portrait,” a two-disc set that draws on a pair of albums from 1970: “Self Portrait” and “New Morning.” If nothing else, it serves as a timely reminder that Dylan has always lived inside the Great American Songbook, that he’s always been an enigma, and that some of us will never tire of probing into the heart of Dylan’s darkness.  And then there are those of us who will forever wish that the Clash had stuck around for more than just the five albums they released from 1977-1982. The late great Joe Strummer’s main partner in crime, guitarist Mick Jones, has remastered all five discs for a ginormous set that also includes three discs of bonus rarities, a DVD or archival footage, reprints of a fanzine the band published, stickers, pins, buttons, and a set of Clash dogtags, all wrapped up in a package that looks like an old-school boombox. It’s one of the year’s best arguments in favor of the CD — streaming the audio just ain’t the same as owning the damn thing.     

JOE STRUMMER

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AFTER CLASH

Joe Strummer’s Resurgent Hellcat Years

By: MATT ASHARE |
Published: October 22, 2012 http://www2.the-burg.com/entertainment

PAN-CULTURAL POPULIST: Strummer style.

One of my favorite Joe Strummer stories – and there are more than just a few – goes all the way back to the formative days of the Clash, when he and guitarist Mick Jones were working on the incendiary material that would become the band's groundbreaking 1977 self-titled debut. According to Jones, who played Paul McCartney to Strummer's John Lennon in their songwriting partnership, he’d come up with the makings of a tune called "I'm So Bored With You," a perfectly solid foundation for angry punk cannon fodder. But Strummer had a more provocative salvo in mind: he changed the title to "I'm So Bored With the U.S.A.," and quickly turned it into a searingly prescient, politically-charged indictment of some of the less savory aspects of the same country that had given the world the r&b music he'd cut his rock-and-roll teeth on.

       Conflict, contradiction, and controversy are just a few of the volatile elements that fueled Strummer, who died of an undiagnosed congenital heart defect at the age of 52 on December 22, 2002, and helped make the Clash the first truly mainstream punk band. It's also equally fair to credit his penchant for provocation with the premature demise of the Clash: After releasing five albums in five years, the band imploded when Strummer famously "fired" Jones in 1983. In a misguided move he'd come to regret, Strummer kept a back-to-basics version of the Clash sputtering along for a few more years. And then he more or less dropped out of the game for nearly a decade and a half, showing up from time to time on film soundtracks, dropping the mediocre solo album Earthquake Weather in 1989, and filling in as the frontman for the Irish band the Pogues on a couple of tours in the early-’90s.

       It took the punk-rock resurgence of the ‘90s, spearheaded by the Clash-revering California bands Green Day and Rancid to lure Strummer back to the fold. Indeed, it was Rancid frontman Tim Armstrong, a singer with a Strummeresque snarl and a very Clash-like affinity for marrying the raw roar of punk guitars with the rock-steady rhythms of reggae and ska, who helped facilitate Strummer's late-career return. In 1999, Armstrong signed Joe Strummer and his newly christened band the Mescaleros to his Epitaph imprint Hellcat Records and released their debut, a remarkably inspired return to form titled Rock Art and the X-Ray Style. Strummer followed up with the equally impressive Global A Go-Go two years later. And, in 2003, Streetcore, a disc Strummer had been recording at the time of his death, came out posthumously on Hellcat. All three discs have been remastered and reissued with bonus tracks by Armstrong's label. And all of that material, along with an additional 16 live tracks recorded at London's Acton Town Hall at a benefit the Mescaleros played in support of striking firemen on November 15, 2002, are part of The Hellcat Years, a downloadable, comprehensive "digital box set." 

       Although he never recaptured the commercial ground he reached with 1982's platinum-selling Clash classic Combat Rock during his Hellcat years, Strummer regained his artistic footing as a scowling yet soulful punk prophet, a pan-cultural populist who expanded the very notion of rebel rock to include everything from growling guitars to supple dub grooves – from simple folk-rock and r&b, to reggae, funk, hip-hop, and beyond. The static that begins the broadcast that is "Tony Adams," the first track from Rock Art and the X-Ray Style, signals that Strummer's plugging right back into the same sonic frequencies he explored back in ‘81 on the "This Is Radio Clash" single, a furious fusion of rap and rock that was rather well ahead of its time. As insistent guitars settle into a syncopated groove, the white noise clears and Strummer begins his broadcast: "Late breaking news, this just in. . . Tonight there was a power cut in the city of madness/And all the conversations died in the burst of a solar flare. . . And all the neon blew down funky Broadway/And shorted out the Eastern shore."

       The reggae-inflected drum fills and saxophone squalls that color the apocalyptic visions of "Tony Adams" may be a long way from the strident simplicity of the early Clash, but they're right in tune with the kind of subtle atmospherics Strummer and Jones were exploring on a deep Combat Rock track like "Straight to Hell." Freed from the basic guitar/bass/drum structure of a trad band, Strummer went further with the Mescaleros, appropriating sounds from Spain, Africa, and the Middle East without losing his rockist center on tracks like the relatively upbeat and laid-back "Sandpaper Blues" and the eerily unsettling reverie "Yalla Yalla," a funky, techno-tinged track that opens with an undeterred Strummer crooning, "Well, so long liberty/Let's forget you didn't show/Not in my time/But in our sons' and daughters' time/When you get the feeling/Call and you've got a room."    

       Not everything here is a multicultural mash-up. The largely acoustic "X-Ray Style" is, at heart, a campfire folk tune that finds Strummer counting stars and giving a sly shout-out to one of his heroes, rockabilly legend Eddie Cochran. And, "The Road to Rock 'n' Roll" is a straightforwardly soulful if somewhat sorrow-filled reflective track Strummer wrote for Johnny Cash. But, over the course of the 33 studio tracks from The Hellcat Years, which include a starkly solemn cover of Bob Marley's "Redemption Song," you get the sense that Strummer, vindicated and revitalized by ‘90s neo-punks like Rancid, was more determined than ever to push the stylistic envelop of a brand of music he helped to conceive. As for the two-dozen live tracks tacked on at the end, three of which feature Mick Jones sitting in on some Clash tunes, they're a somewhat wistful reminder that the fun Strummer had a special way of making songs as disparate as the Ramones' "Blitzkreig Bop," Jimmy Cliff's "The Harder They Come," and the trad blues tune "Junco Partner," feel like they all belonged together in a place I'll call Strummerville.

TIGER ARMY'S NICK 13

Tiger Army captain Nick 13 gets comfortable with country music

By The Burg Staff on Jun. 22, 2011
By Matt Ashare

Country Gentleman: Tiger Army's Nick 13

The original class of ’77 punks may have been looking to a new kind of future — or, “no future,” as the case may be — in their efforts to eliminate the excesses of the prog-rock and glam bands that ruled the day. But it’s no secret that groups like the Sex Pistols and the Clash were perfectly comfortable drawing on the past as they stripped rock and roll down to its raw and raucous essence. The Pistols famously amped up not one but two of ’50s rockabilly star Eddie Cochran’s hits, “C’mon Everybody” and “Somethin’ Else.” The Clash went so far as to rework “I Fought the Law,” the 1959 Sonny Curtis tune that the Bobby Fuller Four hit paydirt with six years later, on their second album. And long before he had his first mohawk, Joe Strummer was singing pub-rock r&b tunes with the 101’ers and greasing back his hair in the style of young punks from the ’50s, not the ’70s.
     What began as something of a happy or, perhaps, inevitable accident has, over the past four decades, coalesced into and persevered as a punk/rockabilly hybrid known to most as “punkabilly” (Think Reverend Horton Heat). And in the last 10 years, thanks to a coterie of LA bands centered around Rancid frontman Tim Armstrong’s Hellcat imprint, punkabilly has morphed into the more colorfully outrageous “psychobilly,” although you could make a fairly persuasive argument that the Cramps invented the style out of whole cloth way back in ‘79 with the release of Gravest Hits. But that’s a whole other story.
     Tiger Army, a perennial Warped Tour favorite fronted by the dark, brooding, neck-tattoo’d Nick 13 (nee Kearney Nick Jones), have been one of the more accessible and successful self-proclaimed promulgators of psychobilly. They’ve toured with Social Distortion and Morrissey, and their 2007 album Music From Regions Beyond cracked the top 50 in the Billboard charts, in part because, excepting stand-up bass and just the slightest touch of twang, the single “Forever Fades Away” wouldn’t sound out of place on a Green Day album.
In fact, given Nick 13’s penchant for wearing black eye make-up and writing darkly romantic songs with titles like “Ghosts of Memory,” “Through the Darkness,” and “Incorporeal,” he may want to consider changing the band’s genre designation to “gothabilly” or “horrorcore.”
At least for now, Nick can put that decision on hold because his latest venture, a self-titled solo album on the country/folk label Sugar Hill, is about as far from punk as the Grand Ole Opry is from CBGB’s.
     With Nick playing cowboy chords, Lucinda Williams-sidekick Greg Leisz and multi-instrumentalist James Intveld co-producing and playing alongside legendary Nashville steel guitarist Lloyd Green (of the Byrds’ Sweetheart of the Rodeo fame) and a bunch of other studio pros, “Nick 13” isn’t just country, it’s old-time country or, as Nick himself has been calling it in interviews, “hillbilly music.” The disc, which made a surprise debut at No. 22 on Billboard’s “Top Current Country Albums” chart last week, opens with the walking stand-up bass line, pedal-steel flourishes, and downhome fiddle solo of “All Alone,” as Nick puts a contemporary twist on an old C&W theme with lines like, “A tattoo in pen and ink/Spells her name upon my arm/F-o-r-e-v-e-r/Her love was here but now it’s gone.”
     Singing in a high-and-lonesome voice that bears an eerie resemblance to Chris Isaak’s, Nick throws a bone to Tiger Army diehards by reprising two of the band’s songs here: “Cupid’s Arrow” turns up as a twangy ballad with a touch of Byrdsy jangle, and “In the Orchard” is slowed to a dreamy Roy Orbison slow dance. And his characteristic fascination with the morbid — a Tiger Army staple — rears its head in the plaintive “Carry My Body Down,” where, against weeping pedal steel and cowboy chords, he wonders, “Will they carry my body down?/Will they take it from the river/After I’ve jumped in and drowned?” Indeed, it’s a safe bet that at least a few of the tunes on Nick 13 will find their way into Tiger Army sets when he returns to the band after this successful country sojourn.
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