Familiarity breeds boredom, and boredom breeds contempt.  This is a short explanation as to why many acts with career longevity find themselves labeled by audiences and critics as tired or obsolete.  What’s rarely considered is our part in this perception.  An artist’s work is always vital, not only practically, as a living, but also existentially, as a learning experience, a chance to grow.  These insights can be lost on the outsider, the casual listener, or the hardcore fan.  Instances of such mutiny are well documented within the strata of popular music, from folk acolytes denouncing Bob Dylan’s “going electric” in ‘65 to David Bowie’s unfairly panned dance material of the early 80s.  Inevitably, any singer or band that exhibits the audacity to continue to make records and follow their muse will be met with some skepticism or hostility.  Trite as it may be, that’s how it is.

Granted, such charges are not always without merit.  An extended back catalogue certainly encompasses some variation of quality.  Case in point: one James “Iggy Pop” Osterberg.  Depending on where you start counting and what, the Ig has upwards of 20 records under his belt, both solo and with his original cohorts the Stooges.  With a discography that extensive, they can’t all be gold.  Especially spotty are Iggy’s solo albums.  After a strong start with Bowie-helmed masterpieces The Idiot and Lust for Life, Pop briefly courted what was called “new wave” on New Values, which felt more like a bona fide Iggy Pop album than its two predecessors.  The 80s found Pop searching from record to record for a comfortable identity, leading him through a host of collaborators and a series of records that is best described as schizophrenic.  A brush or two with chart success gave Pop some semblance of financial security, but never afforded him the stylistic foundation he needed to thrive.  The 90s saw Pop mostly returning to the Stooges formula – loud, repetitive, instinctive, vulgar – which still didn’t offer an even keel of album-to-album consistency.  Even studio reunions with his old Detroit compatriots Ron and Scott Asheton couldn’t yield Pop anything other than another notch on his belt.  Albums boasted gems in scattered tracks, but nothing ever matched the record spanning cohesion of unabashed masterpieces like Funhouse or Lust for Life.

Strangely, it wasn’t music Pop needed to reinvigorate his artistic qi.  It was literature.  Approached to create music for a film about French novelist Michel Houellebecq, Pop instead opted to make a full album as a companion piece to Houellebecq’s book La Possibilité d'une île (The Possibility of an Island).  Pop had read the novel with great fervor, discovering curious parallels between the book’s protagonist and himself.  It is this understanding that informs Pop’s newest offering, Préliminaires.  Iggy Pop is often regarded as a drug crazed wild man, and in his younger years he consciously fostered this image with outlandish and aberrant behavior, both off and on the stage.  But to anyone who cared to look or listen with a little more attention, or caught an off interview with the guy, it was obvious that beneath all the savagery and bluster there was a keen, restless intellect.  Although applied with caution and subtlety to his work, it was there to be discerned.  Iggy Pop was, and is, and will always remain, a rogue scholar.

Préliminaires is his definitive statement as closet intellectual.  On the surface, the album’s somber, finely nuanced ambience will likely drive away those fans that prefer him bloody and smeared in peanut butter.  But to the rest of the world, the new album is a stunning revelation that Pop’s meditations run far deeper than girls, money and drugs.  Préliminaires is a world-weary study of fame and mortality, the inhumanity of humanity, and life’s oft overlooked simple pleasures.  It opens with a French jazz standard, "Les feuilles mortes" (“Autumn Leaves”), sung in its original language (reportedly because the rights to the English version were too expensive).  Nevertheless, Pop’s sinewy baritone drawls the song out with such effect the language barrier is sidestepped, and the point is made: this is not business as usual.  In one track Pop has proved himself as much more than punk rock’s answer to James Brown.

The true irony is that Iggy’s softest album is also his most defiant.  While press for the album pegged it as an exercise in New Orleans jazz ala Louis Armstrong and Jelly Roll Morton, this is an impetus, not a result.  This is fusion at its best, incorporating jazz (“King of the Dogs”), rock (“Nice to Be Dead), spoken word (“A Machine for Loving”) and electronica (“Party Time”) seamlessly, usually mixing touches of each into an exotic sonic blend.  The music comprises every mood from whimsical to bleak, dropping them gently like fresh linen, rendering the transitions imperceptible.  Sequencing is paramount, opening with "Les feuilles mortes" and reprising it at the end, and repeating "Je sais que tu sais" later on as “She’s a Business”, minus the French monologue.    The circular nature of the listening experience, whether intentional or not, is an appropriate metaphor for the themes addressed.

For all its musical adventurousness, the lyrics are what truly set Préliminaires apart, both as another Iggy Pop album and an album in general.  While there are flashes of Iggy’s trademark vulgarity, in the same breath he will turn from such pedestrian concerns to bare profundity.  His work as a lyricist hasn’t been this consistent or brilliant since his early solo work.  Delivered in a well aged, robust croon over the international miasma of the accompaniment, the closest analogue Pop’s ever crafted to this is The Idiot (Avenue B, Pop’s other “jazz album” from 1999, is basically Préliminaires retarded cousin, and is to be avoided).

This is heady stuff, likely to draw cries of lame or sell out from certain contingents of the fan community.  Those craving the thrash and bash of the Stooges should just spin Raw Power again.  But for those of us interested in something new and just as essential, who long for a relevant peek into the psyche of one of rock’s true legends, we need look no further than Préliminaires.

Charlotte is notorious for cannibalization.  Not in the literal, humans-eating-humans, Alive sense of the word; figuratively speaking.  Architecturally, politically, culturally, this town has a strange appetite for the past, gobbling it up and shitting it out in forms unrecognizable.  It’s this cannibal factor that makes our local music scene seem bland and atrophied when graded against the national curve.  It’s what allows the button downs to function so comfortably, offering them the pastel tones and the hard lines and the granite countertops they find ever so welcoming.

Certainly this isn’t absolute.  There are pockets of resistance to be found, usually in the late hours of the evening, in a smoky bar or on an intimate patio or in some fanatic’s living room.  Just beneath the surface of all this city’s blasé window dressing, there is a glorious DIY veneer, dirty, vital and beautiful.

This aspect of the Queen City is typified in the music of Andy The Doorbum Fenstermaker.  Familiar as the guy who takes our money at the World Famous Milestone Club, Fenstermaker performs skewed and hilarious dirges of brazen lyrical fortitude.  With the aid of friends, The Doorbum cut a record throughout ’05 and 6, titled The Mt. Holly Sessions - a remarkable achievement in its own right - and embarked on tours both local and global.

Now Andy’s back, offering an unabashed masterpiece in his latest recording, Art is Shit.  By any estimation this is an epic, comprising 25 tracks in just over an hour.  The songs range from fractions of a minute (“Burn Barrel”, “Dutch Response 1568”) cycling through tunes of a minute or three (“Join the Great Majority”, “Love Song for Cigarettes”, “Albert”) upwards to arrangements of four and five (“Catching the Moon in a Mason Jar”, “Faith Heal’t”).  Across this spectrum Andy cuts a wide stylistic swath, armed with his trusty acoustic guitar and his busker gruff voice, supplemented with drums, keys, samples and even a xylophone, melding elements into a cohesive whole most musicians ruin entire careers in pursuit of.

It’s definitely acquired taste, and sure to offend the delicate sensibilities of most radio listeners, but to the punks and hipsters and rock n’ roll niggers of this banker burg, Andy could qualify as our very own leper messiah.  Although his language is at times coarse and his voice abrasive, that’s all part of the fun, and if you pay close enough attention there is no shortage to the nuggets of wisdom contained herein.  “Passion’s not enough to save the world,” Andy declares on his opener, “so fuck it, do you wanna buy some drugs instead?”  This is an affirmation.  This is a mission statement.  Andy’s strength lays in exposing not only the hypocrisy of a society that rejects his ilk, but the contradictions that litter his own life as well.  This is paramount to the joke Fenstermaker plays on his listeners: he makes punchlines of us all, but by including himself he becomes the most relatable, approachable, likeable freak at the ball.

To dissect the record track-by-track is a futile disservice to its brilliance.  While no pretentious “concept album” any further than it is a really fucking good record, the thing functions best as an inseparable whole.  In this attention deficit world, filled with IPods set to random and glib quotes substituting for insight, it’s too easy to fall into that trap of capsulation.  No, The Doorbum is something of a gold standard in his timelessness.  This could easily be music made by a 19th century coal miner or something.  It truly is a relic of a time unknown, possibly nonexistent.  It is a bizarre curiosity from a junk shop, an odd relic in the attic of a dead relative, something to be treasured and absorbed on a front porch or a dark bedroom or that aforementioned smoky bar.  Passion might not be enough to save the world, but music like this is enough to save your life.

Antony Hegarty has a gorgeous voice.  It’s hard to dispute.  While songs on his Mercury Prize winning album I Am a Bird Now were well crafted and deftly performed, its many guest stars lent an air of indie superstardom that slightly overpowered Antony’s exquisite vibrato and affecting poetry.  Not so on Antony and the Johnsons’ new EP Another World, a teaser for album proper The Crying Light, to be released in January.  If Another World is a proper indicator, The Crying Light should certainly be received as a timeless, essential record.

It opens with the title track, likened by some to John Lennon’s “Imagine”.  That’s a bit of a stretch.  Hegarty laments the things he’ll miss once he journeys to “another world”.  Where “Imagine” was a plea to the world, “Another World” is a hymn of individual passage.  Whether this signifies literal death or simply a change of environment is irrelevant.  The song’s melancholic melody delivers over a plaintive piano line and ambient recorder wisps, intimate and lonely, yet the simple, direct language builds a sense of raw hope that betrays the inherent sadness.  By end the listener feels a relief much like that which follows the funeral of a hated enemy, or the move away from a stifling hometown.

The EP’s centerpiece is “Shake That Devil”, a bit of sinister, inexorable empowerment.  Once again built on crucial dynamics, Antony insists “That Dog had his way with me, shake that Dog out of the tree” veritably a cappella against bare ambience, until a low voice intones the song’s title and the track takes off on a minimal, jazzy drumbeat.  Antony goes on to indict further characters in Bird and Pig, all three complete with their respective sins.  The verses repeat with slight variations and call-and-response background vocals, punctuated by avant garde saxophone fills.  It all builds to an abrupt climax, Anthony demanding, “Shake that Dog right out of me, that Dog.  That Dog”.  One is left pondering if these wicked animals are simply assorted demons Antony contains, or actual persons who have wronged him.  Or both.

The remaining three tracks, “Crackagen”, “Sing for Me” and “Hope Mountain” are all much alike aesthetically: pretty, soothing lullabies accompanied by circular arrangements.  That is not to suggest unimportance.  The sequence of the entire recording is masterful pacing, the songs informing one another with their sparsity, length.  While not as orchestral overall as the Johnsons’ debut or the more theatrical moments of I Am a Bird Now the tasteful flourishes render the whole thing a rewarding listening experience to return to again and again.  Let’s hope the subsequent LP is more of the same.

Patti Smith
Gung Ho
2000

When Patti Smith redefined rock with her seminal debut Horses it wasn’t by any means a political statement.  Personally political maybe, but her unbridled passion was more about art than revolution.  That was just a happy accident.  Smith was branded a feminist in some quarters when really all she wanted was to channel Rimbaud through Jagger.  It wasn’t social commentary; it was exploration.  She explored all through the seventies, but the welcome of her act wore itself out quick.  The increasing perception of commerciality in her work dulled its edge in the critical opinion.  Nevermind the songs, Patti Smith had been heralded – probably against her own intentions – as some sort of cultural vanguard.

And what was her reaction?  Retire to a life of domesticity.  Marrying the MC5’s Fred “Sonic” Smith, Patti retreated to the suburbs of Detroit and did probably the most punk rock thing she could have done under the circumstances: raised a family.  She made a one-off album in 1988, the polemic Dream of Life, which found her flirting with that old public perception as some sort of leader or role model, but then she once more disappeared into her private life, working quietly alongside motherhood.

Then a series of personal tragedies upset Patti’s idyllic world.  First two friends and collaborators – photographer Robert Mapplethorpe and pianist Richard Sohl – passed away of AIDS-related complications in 1989 and 1990, respectively.  In 1994 tragedy struck closer to home in an excruciatingly short time: Patti lost both her husband and her brother exactly one month apart.  Faced with unimaginable turmoil, Smith did the admirable, and remarkable: she returned to the stage and sought solace in her work.  She toured with one of her idols, Mr. Bob Dylan, and then reconvened with her band to make a proper comeback album.  That album, Gone Again, is an elegant rumination on death and loss, and a masterpiece unto itself.  Both it and its follow-up Peace and Noise are rich and varied records in their own right, and also worthy of praise.  But it’s her turn-of-the-millennium outing Gung Ho I’m concerned with here.

Both Gone Again and Peace and Noise saw Smith further explore the political consciousness she first exhibited on Dream of Life, but with Gung Ho that blossom fully flowers.  She tackles such weighty topics as consumerism, slavery and communism with grace, assurance and most importantly of all rock.  The album opens with the declamatory “One Voice”, a heavy beat and ascending riff underscoring Smith’s urging for a widespread social union.  There is power in numbers, and she challenges the listener “Give of your mind/one mind/Give of your heart/one heart”.  The conviction in Smith’s voice has deepened with age, lending it a gruff yet maternal credence.

Elsewhere on the album she uses her incantational powers to impressive results.  She bridges the gap between youth and elder on the shimmering “Persuasion” (featuring a hot solo from her son Jackson), and rails successfully against crass consumerism on the Grammy-nominated “Glitter in Their Eyes” (closing with a guest vocal by one Michael Stipe).  “New Party” is an incisive rebuke of America’s two party political system, a rally so effective Ralph Nader saw fit to make it his campaign theme in 2000.  Smith calls out politicians with scathing wit, “You say the state of the union/is fine fine fine/say it’s fine fine fine/I think you’re lying lying lying/I think you’re lying lying lying/I think we need a new party”.

Smith and her long time band – guitarist Lenny Kaye and drummer Jay Dee Daugherty, along with newer additions Tony Shanahan and Oliver Ray – share an obvious rapport that lends them incredible improvisational ability.  Evident on the smoky, sultry title track, the band rounds out the album at a steady boil while Smith biographies Ho Chi Minh.  Perhaps the most chilling height of the album, however, is the devastating recount of America’s slave trade “Strange Messengers”.  Smith channels the dead in her shamanistic tradition, giving voice to the anger of the ages, and modern misappropriation of it.  “You stand there in your promising city/in your promising city,” she scolds the youth of today, “smoking crack/CRACK/That’s how you/that’s how you repay your ancestors/Their dreams go up in your pipe/up in smoke/Well WE WILL BE HEARD.”  Lenny Kaye commented on this particular performance in an interview, remarking on its ethereal authenticity.      

The album isn’t all bluster and indignation.  There are languid ballads to cut the attitude, and reassure the listener all isn’t lost.  “Grateful” attempts to reconcile what conservatives might call ‘necessary evil’ with breathtaking gentility, and “China Bird” is a motherly paean to inspiration.  The slower tunes on the album are pretty but sometimes ponderous, yet serve as much-needed buffer between the harder garage numbers.  While not every song is amazing or remarkable, the way they fit together into a vague narrative is near perfect, and crafts an overall listening experience that is difficult to imagine out of order.  The songs feed and inform each other, flowing effortlessly together, making Gung Ho Smith’s most consistent whole to date.

It’s not all about Patti, and never has been, although she is certainly the figurehead.  Smith has had the uncanny ability to draw loyal and immensely talented conspirators over the years.  Lenny Kaye, on his own a treasure trove of obscure rock history, is an extremely underrated guitarist, versatile and solid without the pretense of virtuosity.  Much the same is Jay Dee Daugherty, one of rock’s tragically unsung drummers.  While the flash and bash of guys like Keith Moon or Neil Peart will always have their ardent defenders, it’s guys like Daugherty who really make rock n’ roll tick, underpinning it all, never seeking to bring glory to themselves, but instead the group.  Another of Smith’s knacks is enlisting fantastic guest stars, not only famous types like the aforementioned Stipe or Television’s Tom Verlaine, but she even puts her kids to work.  That communal approach enriches her records to an incalculable degree.

For those curious but unfamiliar with Patti Smith, the obvious starting point is Horses.  Not far behind is her commercial “breakthrough” Easter.  But after these essential records I’d rank Gung Ho a probable third.  Like all of her work it’s purposed, timely but timeless, but Gung Ho remains the most solid offering of Smith’s later output.

When I pose the question, “Who’s your favorite band?” to people, I normally have to establish criteria to get an answer.  Who do you listen to the most?  Who can get you trek to the record store on the day their new record comes out?  Who can be on a magazine you never buy, and suddenly their cover issue is on your coffee table?

What I fail to realize is the daunting singularity of the question.  Most people have many, many favorite bands.  More still just listen to the radio.  Some poor souls could care less.  So, by asking the question “Who’s your favorite band?” I’m really telling more about myself than anything.

I got into R.E.M. through my friend Brian.  Up to that point, I’d largely ignored pop music.  What I associated it with was the unfortunate hair metal cock rock of the late 80s (which I can enjoy now for novelty purposes, but at the time I altogether loathed it).  I shared a room with an obnoxious older half-sister who played Def Leppard and their ilk incessantly, and my fifth grade rival loved crap like that, so conversely I hated, hated, hated it.  When I was played R.E.M.’s Automatic for the People, a whole new world opened up around my ears.

I spent my time after that not only obsessing over the band, but also discovering the rich and varied history of rock n’ roll I was to that point totally unaware of.  Okay, so I knew some oldies from car rides with my parents, but R.E.M. namedropped impeccably in their interviews, and I discovered the real shit the radio was never gonna turn me on to: the Stooges, Patti Smith, Gang of Four, the Velvet Underground.  Not only do I love R.E.M. for their music, but also for single-handedly crafting for me – through the press they did – my own private crash course in punk rock (or what I understand it to be, at least).  For these reasons, I remain compelled to say with resounding certainty, “R.E.M. is my favorite band.”

It hasn’t been an easy decade to admit that, however.  Bill Berry, drummer and one quarter of R.E.M.’s songwriting team, split in 1997.  The guys soldiered on, making three more records with their decimated line-up.  1998’s Up was a shocking about-face, an apparently deliberate refutation of their jangle rock legacy.  For what it was, it was pretty damned compelling, and evinced further the versatility the band had exhibited with each release.  2001’s Reveal was touted as a “classicist” “return to form” in the UK press; the US largely ignored it.  Both sides of the pond were a little off the mark: while not up to vintage R.E.M. snuff, Reveal was chock full of lush and dreamy pop, some of which soared, some of which sunk (side two of that album is a pretty tough listen).

What seemed to characterize these albums more than anything was their deliberacy.  Whereas R.E.M. seemed previously to make their records with mystery and spontaneity, Up and Reveal were more like exercises, math problems, science projects.  R.E.M. were trying to prove their mettle as craftsmen, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it didn’t yield them their best records by any estimation.

Matter of fact, it absolutely ruined their last one.  2004’s Around the Sun was a dour slab of adult contemporary prosaic.  While the songs themselves ranged from pretty good to tolerable on down to lamentable, the studio craft they were mired in obscured the qualities that made them identifiable as such.  The fussy, meticulous haze that hangs over the album muted every nuance, every twist, to the point that none of the songs were memorable, likable.

Live, however, the songs take on power and verve, to the point that some of ‘em are actually rollicking.  Check out live versions of “Boy in the Well” or “The Ascent of Man” and tell me I’m lying.

To the band’s credit, they realized with hindsight that they had created their first certifiable flop.  Coupled with the fact that the material on that flop actually translated well live, well, R.E.M. once more became a band with a mission: make relevant, compelling music again.