Alpha) Matthew Good – Hospital Music
Many fans who stuck through the dropping of the Band from Matthew Good’s title also frequent his site enough to know about the personal demons he’s battle for the last two years. For many, it was information that was sometimes uncomfortable to read about. If anything has been obvious about Matt, though, it’s that honesty trumps all with him, whether you want to hear it or not. For those who weren’t able to take his confessionals in stride, consider Hospital Music your chance to hear some of those same threadbare commentaries in a more palatable way – to some of his best post-band work yet. For possibly the first time in his career, this album starts off with one of the album’s strongest songs (“Champions of Nothing”), throwing away his previous habit of having a “warm-up” before the album proper starts. From there, anything goes – his sociopolitical commentary is slightly less sarcastic and more sardonic, with more of an apparent “take this to heart when you turn this album off” elbow in the ribs than he did with White Light. The music of some of his keystone songs almost sound more country-folk playful than in recent memory, but is done with such an incredible sense of the subjective effect that one can almost see him winking at you as he breaks himself and others down (mainly one specific other person, of course). One could mistake the album for almost being lethargic at times, but don’t be fooled; the medicated warmth pervading songs like “99% Of Us Is Failure” is calculated with such precision as to slow your tongue, your brain, your movement until you’re unable to do anything but fill the spaces in the sparseness of the track with only the sounds and images that you ever could (his admissions of “I know it’s real slow” seem, in the moment, to ask you to understand the importance of the composition of the song in every way).
More than ever before, though, it’s an album that has to be taken in as a whole to truly appreciate, and is all the better for it; the lyrics on paper might seem underwhelming, especially compared to the poetic complexity of works such as Avalanche, Beautiful Midnight, and Underdogs The chords are often pared down, the melodies more hummable than bombastic. It’s in this relative simplicity, though, that he allows you to make the album yours as much as his – the lost art of the songwriter.
Beta) Wilco – Sky Blue Sky
Every Wilco album seems to either breed new, or divide past, Wilco fans. For many, like myself, who were attracted to the band with 2002’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, A Ghost Is Born was a good sonic successor, but to others, didn’t have the near prophetic social commentary that YHF did (The fact that Yankee; was written before the 9/11 attacks, and initially supposed to be released on September 11th, 2001, but pushed back due to label issues, made lines such as “Tall buildings shake/Voices escape singing sad sad songs…Voices whine/Skyscrapers are scraping together” all the more prescient); focusing more on an almost disembodied ethereal pop cut with faster, almost throwaway rockers. Fans of their earliest albums sometimes don’t like their eventual drift back into Uncle Tupelo country at all. Keeping consistency for the fans would have been harder than spinning plates while juggling chainsaws. Why is all of this important when the discussion should be about this album? Because for the first time since YHF, Wilco sounds unapologetic about what they do. Many of their songs in the past decade have bordered on the outright sugary poptimism of songs such as “Walken” while often trying to say something relevant or insightful – this time, they don’t. Lyrics take the backseat to music this time around, with less cryptic content than ever, bringing the focus back completely to the tone of the song. Lightly anxious songs like “Either Way” curtail the usual images of racing minds, and replace it with contagious content. Even songs that are apparently lyrically nomadic, like “This Is My Face”, set boundaries with the music so as to not drive you into too much of a pensive state. In every way, the music wants to drown out everything else in your mind and replace it with good things. This is driven home more than ever in “What Light”, where the goal seems to be to cripple your thought process with a chorus that hypnotizes you with nothing other than country soul. The songs that, in my opinion, they do best – ones expressing an almost welcome turmoil between the then and now, or present and future – are placed such that, in the context of the album, are neutralized by the overwhelming positivity of the album as a whole (namely, “Sky Blue Sky” itself). How could someone like myself, who prefers to think of YHF as dead cigarette smoke blown at the hollowness of consumer America, or A Ghost Is Born as peeling off the wet blanket of self-medication, love an album that almost wants to pull you out of the deep thought end of the pool? Because no matter what they do, they do right. They have, for the moment, said all the depressing things they want to say – letting go of the introspection, and helping you think positive (or at least ambivalent) about the now, rather than fearful of our failings, should be taken as a blessing – if only this once.
Gamma) Nick Drake – Family Tree
This is easily the most “anti-album” record of my list, and probably not where you should start with this fantastic artist. A collection of songs divergent in sound quality and tone, this collection of demos more often feels like I’m in Nick’s living room listening to him work out ideas than the stale, timid, and lifeless performances many other b-sides and rarities albums provide. Every scrap and interlude, regardless how short or simple, says more about the intent of the performance than the overproduced arrangements and over thought lyrics on most current albums ever could. There are also songs that point more to his, and his family’s, love for music than any sort of singer-songwriter trailblazing, Mozart’s Kegelstatt Trio and the duet with his sister, All My Trials, give a more relaxed tone in performing well-known music with his family. This is before one even the autumnal tint in songs such as Winter Is Gone; the contrasting hopeful burst of energy and subsequent destruction with the opening lyrics, “Winter is gone, and the leaves turn green/Your innocent face, I wish I never had seen” is not only an excellent predictor of the earth-toned despair he’d soon create himself on his studio albums, but makes you wonder how he survived so long with such critically excellent albums ignored by most. His version of “Been Smokin’ Too Long”, while being the original composition of a friend, is, I believe, the first distributed recording of the tune. Silently covered by artists over the years using Nick’s version, the one line he changed from Robin Frederick’s original version has to be the smallest change to a song’s lyrics that’s had an inversely enormous impact on the tone of the song; “Got the marijuana blues” was twisted into “Got no other life to choose”; Nick’s ability to completely reframe a songs into a truer tone was something that simply became more refined during his all-too-short career.
While the time with Nick feels like you’ve snuck a tape recorder over to his house while he sung to himself in his most comfortable, and vulnerable, surroundings, some of the most poignant parts of the album are the songs performed and recorded by his mother. While for his fans, his death was an unfortunate event, it’s something that’s in the past for most of us. Tracks like “Poor Mum” and “Do You Ever Remember” are reminders that this was an end of a career, this was a tragedy that they’ve had to survive with every day since.
If this is the first you’ve ever heard of Nick, this would be the last place to start. His studio material, although usually just as sparse as these tracks, are the most forceful musical statements he made in his lifetime. Once you’ve seen him through the eyes he wanted you to, though, this is an incredibly intimate view of not only him, but the world around him and the lasting effects he’s had on both music and his fans.
Delta) Elliott Smith – New Moon
When Elliott said that he wasn’t being especially revealing in his songs, it was hard to believe him, if only so that we wouldn’t have to redefine our personal definition of vulnerability. Everything that came out of his mouth, both in content and musicality, had a thin, cutting fragility to it. This should never be confused with weakness – in fact, quite the opposite. It always felt to me that he was almost singing against his will, as if what he had to say was so important, that it defeated any sort of anxiety or compulsions to stay silent that would keep the songs floating exclusively in his head. In the end, it felt like his rising popularity was what killed him. If I never knew his name, would he still be around? If that was the case, I wish he was Elliott Who? to you and I. At the very least, we get an excellent double-album of mostly inter-album recordings. Whereas Nick Drake’s previously mentioned Family Tree was excellent because it captured who he was and how he grew, this is excellent because Elliott already was in his emotional (much to the shock of those who find his songs on the depressing side) and songwriting prime. The importance here is more that Smith clearly had a driving vision, a compulsion to fine-tune his breathtaking narratives to the simplest note; more than that, there’s not a single note out of place. Nothing ever sounds complementary or delegated to the back row, nor could anything be removed or altered without hurting the song; at the same time, the most basic passage by any instrument a capella could still convey the tone of the song to anyone with at least one functioning ear and a heart. Even if you have never listened to him before, this could hardly be called the worst place to start; for those of us who miss him, it’s a list of reasons why we wish he was still around.
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Curty B gives his lowdown on all things 2007, Nick's financially draining end of the year, and our fearless leader's special five.
