They are a trio of records- and count in the Black Panther soundtrack and Joyner Lucas' mix tapes and singles- challenging me to think of music, to creatively conceive of music, in new ways.
It was high time I got current, so I have put on a lot more top 40 stuff than I did in '17. I made about 18 keeper songs over that year, but it was time to revisit the well. After all, now I had home internet again.
This one's odyssey peeps back to my childhood again- who didn't once live in a Yellow Submarine?
You know me and music and libraries. I can't think of another subject I've used them for, more!
I found a book by Steven Turner, Revolution '66 middle of Christmas holidays, 2017. I devoured it. I finished it- reading all out of order, as is my want- during the first day of my sister's visit from Arizona, as I recuperated. I'd made copious notes- basically outlining key places in the evolution of the BEatles themselves, their culture, their press interactions (yep, this is the year of "bigger than the Beatles").
Two key things here: this is the last year the Beatles toured as a band. It was rough.
There's no link, btw, here.And what they began to synthesize, from home demos brought along more thoughtfully in the studio by George Martin, would get them much more interested in the music they could create, than dragging the tunes out on the road. Giving up the road led to liberation. Pop music, already transmuting into folk rock on the heels of Dylan, was now open to a surprising diversity of topics and aspirations.
Think of how few of the 14 tracks on the full UK version are love songs, and if so, how unconventional now is the conversation. In fact, now children's music and Indian-flavored songs were in the audial mix, so the lyrics could flow any direction. It was cool because now, the Beatles could be oblique like Dylan, while maintaining their quartet chemistry. They probably never worked better together, nor were they ever closer, than in this year of '66, when they began achieving separate identities as young men on a new level of independence. The world, ridiculously, was watching.
The journalist who declared Lennon "the laziest man in England" must've enjoyed "I'm Only Sleeping." That's one of my favorites.
"Tax Man"- protest rock! With cheeky sarcasm! "Eleanor Rigby"- maybe the most famous, evocative tune on the record, and so strange a dancer in the world of 1966 Rock. A story now about someone old, not young, cold, not hot, and surrounded by other lonely people? Wow.
"She Said, She Said" and "Got To Get You Into My LIfe" might be said to be about a first acid trip or a new-found devotion to pot, but a lot of people who never touched these things ended up enjoying and interpreting the songs fine. Those two also have stories to be found in Revolution '66, but if you are a person who doesn't want the inside story so you can have your songs, your way- hey! I get that. We wanted to cover a Rhianna song once until we started questioning singing about 'Molly.' Too bad, that might've gotten some good traffic, "Diamond."
But you know, "I'm ONly Sleeping" is interesting to me as a budding audio engineer, too! George Martin recorded John Lenon for playback, up half a pitch without changing speed. The backwards guitar is, also, I think, a new studio trick, at least for a Top 10-assured album. Then, here comes the sitar! And backing vocals unlike last year's Top 10, to say the least. Somehow, they are innovating ways of recordings, bringing goals to George Martin and experimenting. Same time, they are creating songs that capture- or predict- the new blossoming of adulthood in 1966.
It's those philosophy books Paul's been hitting and bookish John's steps outside pop formula- George, writing more songs than on any album before. I actually think Ringo sometimes helped them be a bit grounded! Like a good drummer.
If you read the book, if you browse it:
The Phillipines Tour tells you all you need to know about how they decided 'f--- touring'
and
"Tomorrow Never Knows" has the best 'recording of'- story. It was the primary track. That and "She Said, She Said" are my favorites. But, an example of what it meant to hear this now that I could do home recording- I picked off my 3rd favorite and spent four hours recording "Yellow Submarine," including the forty five minutes we spent rehearsing it. I was so inspired by the original's improvised sound effects. I didn't set out to copy their methods- I took the idea and put together our version from things around the house, like the dinner bell. Then, I was a bird. I missed the "full speed ahead" part.
9. St. Vincent, Masseduction
I'd been looking for a challenging artist who did more than a pet trend. Who was avant garde, but performed brilliant songs in some fresh way? Where will we go, lyrically? Can you catch me off guard?
Then, I saw St. Vincent on SNL. Yes.
This is her newest, completed in late 2017.
But the soft beginning is disarming. Then, "Pills," we get a frenetic satire, which in closing reveals itself as a hybrid pastiche of Pink Floyd.
Title track? MMmm, it's kinda nasty! Just suggestion. By this point, I'm hooked, because I'm grooving. I'm picking out words and chanting along. More satire, no doubt, but beats taking me back to "Lemon" by U2, guitar gnarl, roboticized vox. Now the beats are off to a house style beyond my knowledge to describe, but she's got so many melodic approaches as a singer, composes in unpredictable textures that fit together surprisingly well. "I am a lot like you," I sang along, won over fully by track 4 the night we bought it.
She starts, with track 6, a quieter tone: the personal letter "Happy Birthday, Johnny" and a soulful sequeway into a song ending as though in a chapel, apropos of 'Savior.' then a ballad with muted city vibe pulses, 'New York.'
Then comes the throbbing walls of sound again: "Fear The Future." Now we've moved back out to the larger existential picture. It's a challenging song. She keeps a very melodic voice throughout the album, while using the music to generate atmosphere, demonstrating the progression to overwhelming forces, but gracefully.
Now she gets back to the beats. "Young Lover." It's in tune with the modern pop song, still braced with passionate guitar riff, ringing. Lyrically, she finds tension in dramas she perceives in unique style. Like most of these tracks, it's not really very abstract subject matter. It's a sort of cerebrally-informed take, but there's a lot of relatable emotion on display. She closes out with two tracks of confessional voice. "Smoking Section" continues this, with dramatic menace poised before Greek choruses...until the coda, St. Vincent assuring the listener (herself, too): "it's not the end." I don't know if this track was written last, but it's positioned last, for a passing irony. But, it's not the end. Hopefully, there's a LOT more St. Vincent to come.
Too bad you need Grandoozy tix to see her in Denver area- if things were going that nicely after a move, I wouldn't recognize Us. You have the dosh, and you see her on the Fear the Future tour, drop us a line. I'd love me some jelly. :-D
St. Vincent's Masseduction provides me a thoughtscape, energetic and provocative. Far be it from me to tell you what the material's about.
But while influences like Carole King, Tapestry, and Joni Mitchell, Blue, did vie for spots, sometimes there are cluster points, like in '94, when music's peaking for me after a few intense years, and I'm back at the origins of what made me embrace making music, so. I wonder what I will think of these song as I get to know them better. I had felt the need to start writing on piano, when writing this year. It's nice to have a trend-setter like St. Vincent assure me it's only too real to unveil one's quieter conversational side over the ivory keys. The virtuoso selection of intstrumentation used to bring the collection together, the producion- there will be a lot of ways to appreciate Masseduction, going forward. That's why it's already one of my Top 10 Influential Albums. Here there be a form of wonderment and mastery.
Starting out as a self-styled songwriter, it took a while for me to keep at the unschooled approach- I didn't want songs made of the same chords as everyone else!
But you need a nearly maniacal level of confidence to keep on that way without an audience's support. I remember being too anxious to even play for fear of my disappointment with mistakes! But you never grow into a musician like Annie Clark without being fearless towards music. This was the vocalist who played guitar for Nirvana's induction into the Rock And Roll Hall of Fame!
And that's an old accomplishment. She's been at this. Look her up and try a few songs.
This LP - I spent March with it, regularly. I look forward to where it's going with me now.
There is one tie besides state-of-the-art production. The "Batman TV Theme" reached the Beatles' hands before the show debuted in spring, 1966. "Taxman" owes its chorus backing vocals to a cheeky homage to catchy Nelson Riddle composition. And if you ask me, the intonation and chorusing on the chorused vocals on St. Vincent's "Masseduction" title track aren't so different an idea than those on "Taxman" or "Batman."
Next: that most recent entry of the ten. I found it about three months after it dropped. With its synthesizer-lit layers, Black Milk's Fever seems already slated for a level of companionship parallel with Kid A by Radiohead, when I wrote the first Kolpar chapters in 2001. That work's concepts and plot still operate in the series I introduce with Chrysalis Of the Butterfly. What's a superheroine mystery set in 2022 got to do with a Detroit rapper's sonic masterpiece? Even I will simply find out, but we'll talk, next.
Stay up, players C Lue
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