You've caught me in the middle of reorganizing and rebuilding this site. I started playing with RSS (the Wilco/Netflix/WOTD/QOTD crap), which really bloated the sidebars. It's time to streamline things a bit. So, for the next couple weeks, things may look a little funny around here.

my (long thoughts) on One Step Closer

 

So, a very nice person (who, at least until Vanity Fair dangles cash, shall remain anonymous) sent me an advance copy of One Step Closer (which releases in late June) two weeks ago. I’ve been through it over and over and, twenty listens later, I’m just where I started: I can’t decide what to make of it. Many will shout “sellout” when they hear this album, and I certainly won’t shout-back that they’re wrong. But I think that obscures the very complicated question of whether music is bad or good — a question that is complicated not just because of it’s utter subjectivity but also because of the many planes upon which music can be analyzed.

Think of it this way: Is an apple like an orange? Well, post-modernism teaches us to respond, “It depends why you’re asking.” Are they both fruit? Yes. Round? Yes. Approximately the same size? Yes. But are both citrus? No. Red? No. Smooth? No? You get the point. Lawyers out there may recall Scalia’s keen observation that such questions amount to asking “whether a particular line is longer than a particular rock is heavy.” Bendix Autolite Corp. v. Midwesco Enterprises, Inc., 486 U.S. 888, 897 (1988).

The more I listen to OSC, the more I feel compelled to analyze it in terms of accessibility versus inaccessibility, about generic mass-appeal versus some truly edgy and complex art. Yes, this is, in some ways, a false dichotomy (notwithstanding Pat Metheny’s now (in)famous rant). Certainly artists have blended the two: The Beatles and Beach Boys, for example, showed us you could mix art and pop (Sgt. Peppers and Pet Sounds); Floyd showed us that 7/4 could produced a tremendous hit (Money); Coltrane lassoed Rodgers and Hammerstein’s melody and showed us that pop tunes can swing, and even feel arabic (My Favorite Things); Radiohead has pulled it off on every album (most conspicuously on The Bends and Kid A); DMB threaded the needle for a scant few years (peaking with multi-time-signatured but still very singable and danceable tunes like BTCS’s Rapunzel, and then flailing thereafter); and even Metallica survived Bob Rock’s neutering, putting out the very decent and accessible Black Album (not the opus that was Justice, but still very solid) before downward spiraling into Generica.

But that’s a fine line to walk. Quickly browsing my shelves, I find several bands that have not so successfully generated solid art while riding waves of mass appeal: Disco Biscuits, Tortoise, MMW. All very, very fine bands (Biscuits still holding the number one spot on my list), but all very inaccessible. Just take a couple friends who have never heard of jambase to a MMW show and see how long it takes them to get ansty. While MMW can rock hard, they also tend to noodle and meander. If people can’t snap their fingers, bob their head, or sing along, you’re just not going to sell a lot of tickets or albums.

Umphrey’s, in my opinion, is still wading its way through this fact. Despite my relentless advertising, some very musical friends still dismiss them as too hard to follow. And some of their catalogue is. But any band that can weave Andy’s Last Beer (with it’s crazy ending (15/16, maybe?), Triple Wide (think Jig, if only Cheese did anything with it, rather than let it petrify as nothing but Red Haired Boy with heavy drums), and 2nd Self (incredible melody, very solid lyrics, very manipulable — and manipulated — live), Hurt Bird Bath (around the world in 20 minutes), Talking Heads, and Roulette (just plain solid) in one set gets an A+ in my book.

The truly successful albums/shows survive just as well as background music in the car as they do under the most meticulous scrutiny and hermeneutics. I return to Dark Side (and even Animals) and The Bends here. Good producers know this. And Malcolm Burn is a very fine producer. That said, I cannot say that he successfully created an album that is both appealing and musically crisp. OSC too consciously tries to be, and ultimately fails at, both. Take the title track, for example. How one moves from Austin’s epic version to this one baffles me. If it’s an effort to produce a stripped-down back-to-the-roots album that flies in the face of UTN, fine. But they’ve tossed the baby with the bathwater. There’s no Billy on electric; but there’s also no real Billy on acoustic; there’s no Kyle swirling in the background, but that’s just because there’s really no Kyle period; there’s no Trav on electronica, but then again there’s really very little Trav/Jason at all. On the other hand, there is Kang on acoustic mando for a change, and a Keith much improved on harmonica (if also weaker vocally).

The first time I listened to the album, I thought, “What band is this”? Sure, Cheese can be eclectic and play lots of sounds, but this is none of them. It feigns artsy folk, but comes across as weak pop. (Blonde on Blonde it is not.) It feigns a very listenable version of a band that sometimes is hard to turn people onto, but emerges a listenable version of some other band. (Workingman’s Dead, this is not.)

Is this to say that there are not some very good parts of the album? No. I think 45th is different but still very solid, Drive/Crazy Angel and Big Compromise very pretty (but still no more developed than they ever were on Billy tour, and, here, are bereft of any of his solos), and Swampy Waters catchy and improved.

To come full circle OSC is an overproduced album that will sell well because it highly accessible. Whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing depends, as I explain in my (probably unnecessary) introduction, on why you’re asking. If sales is the question, then this album may be the answer; if a return to some romanced purity of the grassroots past is the question, then this likely is not the answer; and if evolution is the question, then this certainly is not the answer.

And there's still no excuse for Rainbow Serpent.


One Step Closer
1. Give Me the Love (Kang, Barlow, Burn) 3:33
2. Sometimes a River (Moseley, Sheaffer) 5:20
3. Big Compromise (Nershi, Lauderdale) 4:26
4. Until the Music’s Over(Moseley, Sheaffer, Burn) 4:47
5. Silence in Your Head (Hollingsworth, Burn) 3:40
6. Farther (Nershi, Lauderdale) 4:00
7. Drive (SCI, Barlow) 3:53
8. Betray the Dark (Kang) 2:28
9. 45th of November (Hollingsworth, Hunter) 4:26
10. One Step Closer (Nershi) 3:30
11. Rainbow Serpent (Travis, Grigorova) 3:57
12. Swampy Waters (Travis, Grigorova) 4:58
13. Brand New Start (Moseley, Lauderdale) 4:12