The future’s bright

So in celebration of the release of Tyler, The Creator’s delightfully mediocre new album Wolf, I figured  I’d do what I’ve been meaning to do for a few years and compile a little Odd Future playlist.

Here’s ten songs by Odd Future that if you’ve never listened to them before, will tell you very quickly whether or not you’ll get into them in the future.

A word of caution to those of you that are new to Odd Future. These songs are not for the fainthearted.

1. Earl Sweatshirt – epaR feat. Vince Staples (Earl, 2010) - Well, start as you mean to go on. Earl is probably the most naturally gifted rapper I’ve ever heard. He piles rhymes on top of each other with no effort, and this song’s quite scary themes of murder and rape don’t quite distract from that. Much.

2. MellowHype – Chordaroy feat. Earl Sweatshirt and Wolf Haley (BlackenedWhite, 2010) - MellowHype are the union of Odd Future members Hodgy Beats and Left Brain, and their incredibly stoned vibe suits Hodgy to a tee – here Earl and Tyler show up for some extra mischief.

3. Mike G – Moracular World feat. Vince Staples (Ali, 2010) - One of the few songs I genuinely love by the Odd Future also-rans, mostly because Vince Staples’ guest verse is so immature and so hilarious.

4. Tyler, The Creator – Assmilk feat. Earl Sweatshirt (Bastard, 2010) - A technique I rarely see used if ever, a totally different beat for each featured rapper to the extent of alternating them mid verse.

5. Mike G and Earl Sweatshirt – Cool (Radical, 2010) – From one of the more chilled out mixtapes they released, it’s just interesting hearing Earl bounce of someone other than Tyler.

6. Tyler, The Creator – Yonkers (Goblin, 2011) - The song which truly brought them to the dance. A terrifying verse, a fantastic video, everything that makes Tyler great (sometimes).

7. Frank Ocean – American Wedding (Nostalgia/Ultra, 2011) - It takes big brass balls to sample ‘Hotel California,’ but not only does Frank Ocean do it, but I now can’t stand listening to the original – ‘American Wedding’ is the truly classic song here, with this heartbreaking tale of teenage love.

8. Odd Future – Oldie (The Odd Future Tape, Vol. 2, 2012) - Having achieved all the success they never expected, we’re reminded that Odd Future really is just a gang of young MCs who want to enjoy themselves. So they do. For eleven minutes. Props to Frank Ocean for both sipping a Starbucks frapp and checking his watch.

9. Frank Ocean – Pyramids (Channel Orange, 2012) - I have literally never heard anything quite like this song. It is Pink Floyd meets R’n'B. It is stunning.

10. Tyler, The Creator – IFHY feat. Pharrell (Wolf, 2013) - Tyler goes off the rails with his insane desire for this girl over a dreamy beat before Pharrell shows up with the vocal hook that made Wolf worth it on its own.

Who’s afraid of the big bad Wolf?

I’ve been a major backer of Odd Future for a few years and I’ve been waiting with baited breath for Tyler, The Creator’s third album Wolf.

It’s already a year overdue. And is it worth the wait? Nope.

I bought it on the day of release, and listened to it as soon as I got home. The day after, I forgot I’d bought it. Twice.

You might have figured out what the problem was. It is forgettable. Odd Future have released some terrible mixtapes - but they were memorable, and even their worst albums had a redeeming song or two.

For a rap group who are frequently so offensive they have to deny being horrorcore, it’s unacceptable for make a record as bland as Wolf.

There are bright moments. ‘Jamba’ has a fascistic beat, punctuated by the sound of a woman’s orgasmic groan. The low-slung drums of ‘Pigs’ pleasingly recall N.W.A. ‘IFHY’ brings some real emotion out, and ‘Rusty’ features the best couplet on the record – ”Analog’ fans are getting sick of the rape/’Tron Cat’ fans are getting sick of the lakes.’

‘What about me?’ he asks in the very next line. Yes, what about Tyler? Because as good as the above songs are, the best moments belong to other people.

Hodgy Beats is a wallpaper rapper at best, but he almost steals ‘Jamba’ from Tyler. ‘Rusty’ peaks when Earl Sweatshirt makes an overdue guest appearance, but Tyler actually cuts him off, and ‘IFHY’ belongs to Pharrell, who provides a glistening layer of harmonies.

Despite actually being shorter than Goblin, Wolf is lacking in many ways. It lacks the ferocity of beats like ‘Yonkers.’ It lacks the emotional extremities of ‘She’ and ‘Radicals.’ It lacks real guest appearances to spur Tyler to greater heights.

Apart from those highlights, Wolf is so anonymous that Frank Ocean appears three or four times and I didn’t realise before reading the liner notes. There are more memorable tracks, but for the wrong reasons – the petulant ‘Colossus’ finds Tyler ungratefully impersonating one of his obsessed fans.

‘Trashwang’ is this album’s ‘Bitch Suck Dick’ – a waste of time and a vivid reminder that Tyler is barely into his 20s. Then there is ‘Tamale,’ a terrible riff on M.I.A.’s sound. It’s unlistenable.

Wolf is a lot of Tyler, the guy, and not nearly enough of Tyler, The Creator. There’s less innovation, less offense, less extremity, less dynamics and more of everything we tolerated from Tyler while trying to find that stuff before. In its place we have blandness, grey, more of the same.

Even at his worst, Tyler was usually at least interesting. Here he’s barely a blip on the radar.

There is no dark side of the moon.

Sigh.

Happy fortieth birthday to Pink Floyd’s Dark Side Of The Moon! Let’s bombard you with some statistics, which I may be misremembering.

Upon its release four merry decades ago, Dark Side didn’t drop off the Billboard charts in America for fourteen years.

Also it’s estimated by scholars (no I don’t know who, or why) that one house in ever three in the world has a copy of this record.

It will surprise no-one who’s read or heard my opinion on anything musical that I can’t stand it.

Okay, that may be overstating a little bit. I’ve actually warmed up to Dark Side in recent years, but it is the Floydian gateway drug.

Once Syd Barrett was fired in 1968, Floyd gave up on releasing singles or making ‘pop music’ per se. Somehow in 1973 a random splurge of great songwriting by the three members that aren’t Nick Mason created the prog equivalent of a pop record – songs stripped back in length, continent-sized choruses and universal lyrical themes like time, money, death and madness.

This album is catchier than herpes. ‘Money’ features one of the few legitimate Floyd swears and a 7/8 timing, but somehow it’s danceable as all get out.

‘Breathe’ may be the ultimate Floyd song – weeping lap steel, a chilled out rhythm and a distant, British melancholy lurking in the background.

‘Time’ was one of their harder rocking tunes, a barrel-chested vocal from David Gilmour dovetailing with Rick Wright’s single greatest vocal in Floyd history – ‘hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way.’

Dark Side‘s influence is ridiculous. It’s still a contender in the ‘greatest album ever’ lists. If people only own one Pink Floyd album, it’s usually this one.

It also had a huge impact on Floyd’s work; achieving the success they’d always pursued led to a lack of drive, and directly fed into the themes of the ensuing albums.

So how does it hold up in hindsight?

Taking my jaded, reactionary persona aside for a moment, the only song on it that I legitimately don’t like is ‘On The Run.’ I see its place in the album’s narrative and I’m sure it sounded suitably space age to a stoner in 1973, but it has dated appallingly.

That aside, these are killer songs, but being as objective as I can be, is it their best work?

Trying to think as critically as I can, I legitimately believe that Wish You Were Here is a better album and it has aged more gracefully. It is admittedly more of an acquired taste.

I also think there’s a legitimate case to be made in favour of Animals both for song quality and a more unified concept (even Roger Waters has suggested his lyrics on Dark Side were quite ‘Lower Sixth’). The Wall is just something else entirely and on a creative level I think it’s streets ahead of Dark Side.

But none of that detracts from the achievements of Dark Side. Floyd may have made a pop record, but it’s one hell of a good one.

Dame’s the breaks

Despite not being a huge fan of Bowie I was excited about his new record, and that artwork right there is the reason why.

It suggested sacred cows being slaughtered, suggested a total lack of regard for his own legacy, suggested not caring what people think (check out the hilariously lazy white-space-with-black-text format) and almost a satirical slight at his own perceived laziness for not releasing an album in ten years.

It genuinely might be my favourite album cover of all time. My dad hates it, but it got me really excited for how the album would sound. And how does it sound?

Pretty much exactly like an album released by Bowie would’ve sounded had it come out in 2005.

Yes, just as Reality was a watered-down Heathen, The Next Day is a watered down Reality. The albums form a kind of trilogy of records on which Bowie surveys his career, distills its very essence to otherworldly melodies with some guitars on ‘em, and writes some pretty good songs in that vein.

Rest assured, if this was a new artist’s debut album, it wouldn’t be getting any mainstream coverage.

It starts promisingly with the profoundly strange sounding title track, a slightly off kilter guitar ushering in Bowie singing from the end of a corridor. Its chorus adds a dose of sheer insanity – ‘Here I am not quite dying/my body left to rot in a hollow tree.’

‘Dirty Boys’ sets the tone via the filthiest sounding saxophone I’ve ever heard in my life and what sounds like a drummer who doesn’t know what song he’s playing – yet the chorus recalls Bowie’s early-80s art-pop phase.

‘The Stars (Are Out Tonight)’ is straight up fantastic, with a pacey rhythm and moody guitars straight out of Heathen, a flash of real electricity and intrigue.

By the time you reach the spine-tingling first single ‘Where Are We Now?’, a glistening art-pop song that sounds like his entire Berlin trilogy at the same time, you start to wonder just how great this album’s going to be.

And then it falls off a cliff. ‘Valentine’s Day’ sounds like Weezer, and as a huge fan of Weezer I mean that in the most insulting terms possible.

‘I’d Rather Be High’ reclaims some ground with a military snare and space-age lead guitar, but it’s not really enough to redeem an album that’s 66.6% filler.

Both Heathen and Reality ended with showstoppers – the wistful horns of the former’s title track, and the creepy groove of ‘Bring Me The Disco King’ on the latter – but here proceedings come to a close with ‘Heat,’ a watered-down cousin of the instrumentals on Low with added vocals.

Obviously Bowie hasn’t spent the last ten years touring hard, seeking out new music, pushing his muse to its limit. But it’s a little inexcusable, as pretty much the last of his breed that’s remotely relevant, to not make any artistic progression whatsoever in a decade’s layoff.

Saying that, get Paul McCartney in a recording studio these days and we’d all count ourselves lucky if we got a killer six-song EP out of it – and that’s just what we got out of Bowie this time round.

I do wonder though – where does he go from here?

If you keep pushing the sky away…

I am a little bit dumbfounded.

As previous posts may attest, I know a little bit about Nick Cave, given that he is my favourite living musician.

I got Push The Sky Away on the day of release. Not only is it one of the most baffling records I’ve ever heard… I can’t even decide if it’s good or not.

The last Bad Seeds album, Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! was very minimalist, and had a song on it called ‘Night Of The Lotus Eaters’ that is a clear signpost for PTSA.

It’s dark, minimalist and yet incredibly uneasy. Push The Sky Away is a little bit like  an album of that.

After the dark, psychedelic sprawl of Grinderman 2 it’s quite surprising. The album is only nine songs long, and a good half of them sound like they’re about to explode into typical Cave noise and never do – but they’re also totally unlike the stately piano ballads he spent the late-90s/early-00s crafting.

There’s a hint of threat, like a coiled spring, to almost everything hear – a constant darkness. It’s a late-night kind of record, painted in shades of grey on first single ‘We No Who U R,’ washed with watercoloured synths on ‘Mermaids.’

The music is infused with absence and loss – absence of founding guitarist Mick Harvey for the first time since the 70s; absence of acoustic instruments; absence of the Bad Seeds in general, given that Warren Ellis plays almost everything on the record aside from drums and bass.

The album would be worth it if only for a pair of impossibly brilliant songs – ‘Higgs Boson Blues’ questions the very meaning of existence via the titular scientific discovery and Miley Cyrus. It’s a sinuous torrent of imagery in typical Cave style, but without the shrieking horror usually involved. It ebbs and flows in a way his songs never have. It’s damn close to poetic post-rock, and that’s a frightening, brilliant thing.

But everything centres on ‘Jubilee Street.’ Cave has never written anything like it. A stripped-back beat follows Cave through a series of verses about the life of a prostitute, then Ellis’s beautiful multi-tracked violins roll into view.

Those strings are like a moment of clarity at the halfway point of these nine songs, that eerie moment of beautiful calm in the eye of a hurricane.

The song kicks up a notch in speed for more of Cave’s lyrics, ending with him exclaiming ‘I’m glowing,’ as the strings pile on top of each other over and over again, increasing in size until nothing else in the world seems to matter except for that string section.

It’s a pretty good song, is what I’m saying.

As for the rest of it… I really can’t tell if I think it’s any good or not. I guess I’ll have to re-assess it over the year building up to seeing him live in October.

I can say this much though – this is without doubt the strangest album Nick Cave has released in a profoundly strange, fascinating career.

But once I’ve lived with it for a few months, getting to know it, letting it get under my skin – I’d be surprised if I don’t end up loving it more than almost any other album in his lengthy career.

200th Postravaganza!

In the years I’ve done this blog, I have wasted a huge amount of your time, and even more of mine.

One thing I’ve frequently hinted at is what I consider to be the greatest albums ever made. I even said how I felt about Rolling Stone’s top ten, album by agonising album.

But what are my picks for the ten greatest albums of all time?

Spoiler warning. I have eleven. Because Revolver is the greatest album ever made.

Revolver set the template for every album that has come after, in stylistic variation, innovation and song quality.

Despite a dud and a song that sounds like it’s beamed in from another album, the remaining songs are still so perfect that no album can touch it.

So behold, the top ten greatest albums ever made (apart from Revolver) in my opinion!

(By the way, it would be asinine of me to put them in any sort of order, so I’ve done them chronologically).

The Rolling Stones – Let It Bleed (1969)

Of the Stones’ four consecutive classics, this is the best. It’s bookended by the greatest opener and closer of a Stones album ever. ‘Gimme Shelter’ is the howling death of the hippie dream at Altamont, ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want’ its eulogy. In between comes ‘Midnight Rambler,’ which may be the best song to listen to when you’re on a train, for whatever that’s worth.

The Who – Who’s Next (1971)

Sandwiched in between two legendary conceptual doubles, Who’s Next is an astonishing power-pop album. It’s loaded with Pete Townshend’s biting guitar, but this album is a stick of rock with melody running all the way through it. The ageless ‘Baba O’Riley’ has the gall to hold back the guitar for several minutes and ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’ possibly the quintessential 70s Who song. Even John Entwistle gets a great shot in with the wry lyric and stabbing horns of ‘My Wife.’

John Martyn – Solid Air (1973)

John Martyn is someone that typically only musicians are aware of – a legitimate maverick who’d completely change styles between albums. Solid Air the shortest on this list, but it’s airtight – a rare show of restraint given that his live versions of ‘Rather Be The Devil’ frequently tripled the six minutes it runs for here. Everything else has a chilled-out, moonlit atmosphere, particularly the double bass and sparkling keyboards of the title track.

Bob Dylan – Blood On The Tracks (1975)

Every now and then, Dylan will let you see behind the mask and this divorce-themed record has always resonated more with me than any of his speed-fried 60s beat poetry. No more are you digging around for pearls of wisdom amongst lunacy, now it’s blatant on ‘Idiot Wind’ – that’s ‘blowing every time you move your teeth.’ To this day, every time I hear ‘Tangled Up In Blue’ I find another layer to its lyric – just a couple of years ago I realised that the verses are themselves tangled; re-arrange the order and suddenly a coherent story is formed. Mind blown.

Pink Floyd – Wish You Were Here (1975)

This is the only album on this list which could survive on the strength of one piece, the immortal ‘Shine On You Crazy Diamond’ – the mood, the keyboards, that haunting ‘Syd’s theme’ guitar part, the lyrics, the passion. It takes nine whole minutes before the vocals even kick in yet doesn’t drag for a second. It’s testament to the creative peak they were going through that the remaining three tracks – the sardonic ‘Have A Cigar,’ the dusty groan of ‘Welcome To The Machine’ and the heart-rending acoustic title track – are almost as good.

Bruce Springsteen – Born To Run (1975)

It’s easy to write much of this record off as being cheesy, but that’s one of is best qualities – I’ve never heard a record with such honesty and heart, things you can find in every song, from the desperate loser of ‘Meeting Across The River’ to the heartbroken ‘Jungleland,’ from the careening title track to the skyscraping ‘Backstreets.’

Joy Division – Closer (1980)

Admittedly, this is an album that I don’t really have a passion for anymore, unlike the rest of this list. But even from a distance, I can appreciate the art of it, the way the band and Martin Hannett created something truly unique with Closer. Even if it no longer hits home with me any more, there is real emotion here, ‘The Eternal’ taking their music to places it had never been before.

R.E.M. – Automatic For The People (1992)

Much of R.E.M.’s earlier stuff had a soothing quality just from the chordal and melodic structure, but on this mortality-themed album, that’s taken to its logical conclusion. I’m not sure I’ve ever heard so comforting a record – the album’s textured with mandolin, string sections and a general warmth. They never equalled it, but it’s a long way down from greatness.

Refused – The Shape Of Punk To Come (1998)

Taking hardcore punk and adding a widescreen sensibility, with jazz, electro and metal sensibilities for taste, no other punk record can touch this one for ambition, creativity and potency. ‘New Noise’ became an anthem for a generation, the centrepiece on an album of explosive aggression (‘The Refused Party Programme’), barely restrained violence (‘Liberation Frequency’) and cinematic strings (‘Tannhauser/Derive’).

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds – Abattoir Blues/The Lyre Of Orpheus (2004)

After dividing his career between softer albums and darker ones, Cave realised he could have his cake and eat it, packaging a disc’s worth of each in one generous double. That the quality control remains so high is unlikely – that he hit a career peak on his 13th album is miraculous. The albums compliment each other perfectly; the snarling opener ‘Get Ready For Love’ balances with hymnal closer ‘O Children,’ the sardonic ‘Hiding All Away’ ricochets off the pleading ‘Carry Me,’ and ‘There She Goes, My Beautiful World’ is the greatest song he’s ever recorded.

Kraftblerrrrghh

So Kraftwerk are playing a series of sell-out shows at the Tate Modern, playing their various classic albums along with a bunch of their greatest hits.

It’s getting rave reviews. None of this I have a problem with.

But what I have chanced upon is a quote from Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark member Paul Humphreys.

“People say the Beatles were the most important band to change popular music but I think Kraftwerk were.”

Are. You. Serious?

 

Let’s rewind this for a second. I am not, in any way, trying to detract from what Kraftwerk achieved. They are innovators, they are hugely influential, very intelligent people. They changed music. They even influence some of my favourite bands, like Wilco – Kraftwerk’s influence is all over the eleven-minute chug of ‘Spiders (Kidsmoke).’

The only reason I don’t listen to them much (other than The Man-Machine) is because firstly I’m not a huge fan of electronic music in the first place, and I don’t think any other genre dates as badly.

Okay, let’s rewind this even further. Music is subjective. You know that. We all know that..

But the influence of The Beatles on popular music above all others is unquestionable. They have precisely two legitimate contenders in the influence stakes – Elvis, because he influenced the world at large, and Bob Dylan for being an influence on every songwriter ever, regardless of whether they realised it or not. Both of these men can also, of course, lay claim to influencing The Beatles themselves, but then we’re getting into influence inception and that’s a whole other kettle of fish.

I completely understand people thinking their music just sucks.  A good or bad song isn’t what we’re discussing. But there are things that, objectively, you can only credit to The Beatles.

I’m not saying they were necessarily the first ones to do them, but being the first doesn’t necessarily mean you set the template for everybody else.

Take synthesisers, which it’s fair to argue are Kraftwerk’s domain – Simon and Garfunkel had one in prominent use on an album as early as 1968, The Beatles waited a year before using one to make ‘Here Comes The Sun’ sound unlike anything else at the time. Kraftwerk were, in some form, already around by 1969 – but The Beatles had already found a pop application for this new(ish) instrument.

One year earlier, Paul McCartney wrote ‘Helter Skelter,’ an insane track for 1968 – Sabbath and Zeppelin still yet to emerge. Even The Who weren’t particularly heavy by ’68, and while other quite dark acts were around, none had the sales of the Fab Four.

One year earlier, splicing together ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ from multiple takes, George Martin ended up pioneering vocal manipulation and pitchshifting, resulting in the otherworldly tone of John Lennon’s vocals.

One year earlier, ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ is constructed using tape loops, several years before Pink Floyd started using them habitually and predating the use of samples.

One year earlier, George Harrison uses a sitar on ‘Norwegian Wood,’ introducing the instrument to a Western audience and taking the Eastern mysticism that would soon be synonymous with the hippie movement mainstream.

They didn’t do a great deal of note in 1964 – but in 1963, they wrote ‘She Loves You,’ a song which featured the chord progression G to B minor, started with a chorus and ended on a vocal harmony. Martin laughed at them the first time they played it. This is the song which made them the biggest band on the planet.

This is how much The Beatles changed, people – right down to the notes, the very building blocks of music.

In the vast shadow of four blokes from Liverpool, Kraftwerk may as well be nothing more than some guys who doodled on some synths.