Sex and Jeff Buckley

I went rummaging in my father’s record collection on Sunday evening. And there, nestled erroneously between his records, was my 180g reissue of Jeff Buckley’s Grace. I’m listening to it now and, while thinking of those I know who hate him, his voice, his style, his legacy, I’m thinking about how misinterpreted he is.

He's bound to his reputation as a tragic troubadour, heir to his father's mantle, an angelic-voiced crooner who sang woebegone, sad songs in his unearthly falsetto before departing, via the Mississippi, for indisputable heavenly climes.

It’s bollocks.

How can anyone listen to this record and hear anything less than filth in it? Buckley’s alchemy was in the soiled, sinful humanity of his music, shockingly deployed through that seemingly pure voice. That falsetto isn’t employed to sing virginal songs. Even the song titles he writes or chooses give away his motives - Lover, You Should Have Come Over.... Mojo Pin.... Lilac Wine. From the first song, he sings about sex, cravings, deprivation, revenge, morosity, drunkenness, hallucination, himself as slave and seducer, woman as madonna and dominatrix and witch - "Send whips of opinion down my back, give me more".

If he had lived, he would have had ample time to build a more nuanced and fleshed out reputation as a man and an artist, but as is often the case with the youthfully lost, an ill-fitting martyr's halo has been forced over his head, and as DJs play his songs over the radio, they opine blandly about the beauty of his voice, their insincere devotion to the towering idea of him blinding them to the shit-hot awesomeness of what he actually put on record.

Listen to Last Goodbye. "Kiss me, please kiss me / But kiss me out of desire, babe, and not consolation..." That’s not a song about some well-mannered chinless wonder sadly bidding adieu to his lady as she leaves (probably for altogether more experienced climes). Listen to that bump-ba-dump rhythm, all hips and sideways glances, frustration and slyness and thrust. It translates the ecstasy of urgency, the farewell fuck, physical need even through the blinding fog of impending loss. Even as he expresses heartbreak, he’s still inviting his muse into bed. The melodrama, which would be unbearable if that were all there was, is grounded by earthy sexual desire. We’ve all ached for someone, not just because we loved them or lost them, but because we wanted them, felt an almost enraged need for them to satisfy us. That’s why that song works, not because it’s terribly delicate and sad.

It’s a bitter, if unthwartable, insult to his memory that those who march under his banner are the sexless, acoustic-toting “singer-songwriters” (did ever two words strike more fear into the heart of the discerning listener?) who sit on their stools and make earnest faces over their guitars as they sing serious songs about absolutely fucking nothing at all. This isn’t a sparse, folky record; it’s lush and indulgent, the guitars buried among flickering, suggestive percussion, fat organs and strings that swell and recede like tides. Nor is it a pompous shrine to the singer's own boring observations and experiences; three of the ten songs are still-startling covers, and Buckley's own songs are like weird dreams, by turns arresting and eerie, absurd, immediate and then suddenly intangible. They are, primarily, about desire and sensation.

The construction, the production and the intent owe as much to Prince as to any white singer-songwriter (check out that impish Prince “waah!” towards the end of Lover, You Should Have Come Over). The guitars don't thrum respectfully, they swerve and growl and wail. The eponymous track is rumbling and rhythmic from the start, his voice swinging back and forth, first inviting, then terrible and uncontrollable. And it means that when he does stray into terribly Catholic territory, there's something subversive and almost obscene about it; the professed innocence overlaying something tainted and experienced. It's no coincidence that his take on the Corpus Christi Carol is succeeded by the iconoclastic Eternal Life, smashing a contemptuous path through religion in all its organised guises - and again, a syncopated rhythm snaking through it, weaving left and right as if to corrupt all it can reach.

It maddens me that many who now come to Jeff Buckley will come via his inadequate acolytes, expecting to encounter the godhead of passionless, strumming earnestness. Grace gets held up as a sophisticated rock record, a benchmark for a certain kind of indie, and it's so misleading, because through and through, it's a soul record, a rhythm 'n' blues record in the original sense - and, as it happens, a magnificent one.

Fidlar

Ah, now this is fucking immense.

LA troupe Fidlar make really wickedly scuzzy, oldskool, surfy garage rock and roll. This has been done many a time, in disappointingly neutered fashion, by a veritable parade of would-be no-goods. This here, this is better. Much better. You do not get the impression these miscreants would fill onstage bottles of Jack with iced tea. They're self-denigrating and cut-throat, obnoxious but legitimately fucking fun. At their least interesting they sound like the Death Set, but elsewhere it's harder and faster and uglier.

They've been touring with the Hives and Jeff the Brotherhood, if that gives you an inkling to the kind of fun you're about to encounter. But unlike the Hives' cartoon punk or JTB's WOO! RIFFS! outlook, Fidlar's songs come with a bitter, serrated edge. Don't expect Proust - "I - DRINK - CHEAP - BEER - SO - WHAT - FUCK - YOU" is a sample of the wordsmithery employed by these dudes. But "White on White", above, is a compellingly nihilistic middle finger to the joy of being army drafted - the fast-and-fuck-you Stooges yell is the first thing you'll notice, but it gets a lot darker once you take in the words - a succinct account of a society drop-out being shoved overseas and out of the way to 'serve' his country.

Rebekka Karijord

You know the 90s revival is in full swing when singers start sounding like Sarah McLachlan again. Listening to the new Rebekka Karijord record. It's quite pretty, very melancholic, and if she's not wearing a long floaty dress and Doc Martens while singing this, then I've been lied to. This one's off the Norwegian singer's second LP. Maybe I sound a bit dismissive, but it's actually a beautiful record. I don't agree with the 'what a pioneer!' panting I've read about her though; the way she uses her vocals (melodramatic minor chords, great big tragic harmonies, vulnerable high notes and trills emerging from an obviously powerful voice, plenty of studio layering with lots of background aaaahs...) the soft, pensive piano... there's a thick streak of Lilith Fair running through the whole record. Familiar but certainly very listenable. She's got some UK dates in January, if this is your bag.

Sweetheart Contract

I'm floored by “The Lonesome Death of the One-Man Cabaret Act” by Sweetheart Contract.

I can’t write about it for my usual spots, as it’s too close to home for me to feel comfortable writing about with my journo hat on - I’ve always avoided reviewing friends’ bands etc. It’s really, REALLY good though.

Love the clattering, whipsmart psychobilly drums, love that whizzing guitar slide and the jittery riff, and of all their songs, this is the one where I think the vocals work the best - starting out sly and kinda predatory in the verses, before it rips into this wailing chorus howl that clutches at your throat then crumples to the floor.

You can hear country and rock n roll influences in there but at its core seems to be the kind of emotive, literate punk thing that Jimmy Eat World did so brilliantly - melodrama without absurdity, a convincing now-or-never urgency. Just awesome.

Saw them do it live last night at the Windmill supporting country singer Lydia Loveless, and it ripped the heart out of the room. And they were giving out cds with this song on for signing up to their mailing list, so now I have a copy. They’re supporting Lucero at the end of November… I’m there with bells on.

Out on the road today, I saw a Deadhead sticker on a Cadillac

I love the pop culture archetype of the lonely hero on the road, searching for something or someone. I guess it's the soulful flipside of that rebellious American cars 'n' girls aesthetic... the mechanical-age equivalent of the lone rider. American romance at its moodiest. Here are three great examples.



At this point I have to quote Clueless.
"Is it more James Dean or Jason Priestley?"
"Carpe diem, ok? You looked hot in it!"

(I'm with Cher on this one. Jason Priestley is cheesy as hell, but still. Roy. Oh, Roy.) I also really like the Maccabees' cover of this. Orlando Weeks has the kind of crooning vocals that suit this song, and I'd be surprised if he didn't claim Orbison as an influence generally.



God knows where to start with Springsteen, seeing as this archetype fills about a quarter of his songs, from the age-old and magnificent Thunder Road ("my car's out back if you're ready to take that long walk from your front porch to my front seat") to the comparatively recent Radio Nowhere, with its brooding "trying to find my way home" opening. But State Trooper is an understated and amazing example.



I still don't subscribe to the Fuck Yeah Ryan Gosling school of thought, but Drive is a stupendous movie. It's the absolute perfect amalgamation of ruthless, violent action and still, almost unspoken romance. It's noirish without being pastichey, and it's far bigger than the sum of its influences. Gosling is really well chosen as the taciturn, unstoppable driver/hero, a character who'll go to any lengths for either the task at hand or the girl he loves, but thankfully eschews grand gestures or any of the sort of schmaltzy shit that would ruin this kind of movie. He's essentially kind of ordinary looking, not some dark, towering, smouldering screen idol. That works. The Lone Driver aesthetic is a pretty sparse one; pile on too much detail, tell us too much backstory, and you lose its punch. Drive does it tremendously.

And as per the post title, I want to give an honourable mention to Don Henley's Boys of Summer. Partly because if you really don't like that song, you may well be dead inside. And partly because I love the pictures it paints; a guy alone on the road with just his car and his memories... a dead seaside town... a girl in shades, once in the front seat, now just in the recesses of the past... and the line "A little voice inside my head / Said 'don't look back, you can never look back'". The sense of running desperately towards, and away from, something. It's not often a great big power pop song can conjure such feelings of nostalgia, elation and dread all at once.

Will you stop pretending I've never been born, now I look a little more like that guy from Korn?

Bruce isn't my only New Jersey hero. I loved Fountains of Wayne, the garden state's finest power pop quartet, the moment I heard this song on the radio, maybe 14 years ago. I waited years to see them, and the show I saw them do at the Academy in Islington was perfect.

This song is from Utopia Parkway; it's their second album and, I think, their best - a near faultless twist of dreamy, sundazed Beach Boys slacker nostalgia and vibrant power pop. I love Chris Collingwood and Adam Schesinger's clever, warm, smart-arse lyrics - the characters they portray between them are like the Chandler Bing of indiepop, the heartfelt kid who quickly learned that his wit would get him further than his looks ever would. I also love their sense of place. I once pledged to make a Fountains of Wayne monopoly board, populated by all the New York, Joisey and New England spots mentioned in their songs. I didn't do it, but there's still time.

Album review: Paul Simon - Graceland (25th anniversary edition)

Originally published at The Line of Best Fit.

“Ugh. I hate Paul Simon.”

Those were a friend’s words last weekend. An argument followed in which I indignantly defended the great (little) man; a timely debate, given the re-release of this seminal record.

It would seem that whatever will be will be reissued, and few records are so deserving of a reappraisal as Graceland. Formed in the shadow of South African apartheid, and crossing cultural picket lines by being recorded there with a host of native musicians, Paul Simon’s seventh studio album drew political revulsion from its critics and support from the UN Anti Apartheid Committee, delighted Paul Simon fans old and new, described a generation, won a Grammy, set up home in critics’ “Top 100″ lists and soundtracked innumerable childhoods. My earliest solid musical memories are a Buddy Holly cassette played endlessly on my first Walkman, and my father’s Saturday morning couch commando tendencies, regularly taking pole position on the sofa to re-watch Paul Simon’s gargantuan Central Park show. I loved Buddy, but Paul Simon’s music was something alive and real, clever and grown-up and mystifying. The seven year old me burbled the chorus to ‘I Know What I Know’ relentlessly, with little clue what the words meant. Small and naïve, I had no sense of Graceland’s cultural importance and the protests it provoked. It infiltrated my childhood so simply and solidly that I thought of Paul Simon like I thought of Paul McCartney; a fixture, a dependable presence, an uncle I surely just hadn’t met yet.

Arguably one of the most trailblazing, loved world music records ever – yet primarily, a pop record – Graceland doesn’t patronise its audience or its influences. Simon’s fascination with and respect for the rhythms and infectious sounds that drew him to Johannesburg is evident and the result is a heady, complex collection of songs. The anniversary edition includes Under African Skies, Joe Berlinger’s documentary about the recording and touring of Graceland in the dark days of South Africa’s war on its own people, with Simon returning to visit the friends he made all those years ago. As it shows, the melodic structure of this groundbreaking record was built by many hands, assembled from collaborative jam sessions and the South African musicians’ ideas and natural styles, as well as the shades of Americana that Simon was also exploring at the time, with the remarkable lyrics sewn into this tapestry after all else was done.

“Every generation throws a hero up the pop charts.”

There’s no sense of the diverse components, from mbaqanga and Ladysmith Black Mambazo‘s remarkable a cappella performances, to Creole zydeco, being watered down for easy consumption; they’re already accessible, a cascade of gorgeous melodies, irresistible rhythms, voices that dance and lock together to become a complicated percussive instrument in their own right. “Our music is always regarded as third world music”, opined producer Koloi Lebona in Under African Skies, applauding Simon’s stance; his decision to bypass the concerns of the anti-apartheid movement and ignore the boycott still divides opinion, but it’s beyond doubt that Graceland did much to transport a fresh array of music styles to the mainstream and dispel tired clichés about African culture, and its influence is still keenly felt today. Ladysmith Black Mambazo became a household name after Graceland was completed, and many of the artists involved toured the record together globally.

The political story of Simon’s best-loved record provides the narrative thread to the film, but most striking is the burgeoning friendships between Simon and the musicians he approached to help him write and record the record. From initial meetings, strangers fundamentally separated by colour, language and a sediment of mistrust, to a studio full of new friends, dancing and grinning and creating something wonderful, it’s an infectious and engaging story – particularly considering the widespread misery and fear that threatened the African musicians outside the studio.

As for the record itself, it was a potent return to form for the songwriter after the disappointing flop of Hearts & Bones – the remnants of his abortive reunion project with Art Garfunkel. Graceland combined bewitching, surprising music with his trademark lyrical dexterity; he was once more at the top of his game.

“She comes back to tell me she’s gone…as if I didn’t know my own bed. As if I’d never noticed the way she brushed her hair from her forehead.”

Paul Simon is the master of the nuanced lyric, the tiny indicator that reveals the heart of the matter. As Quincy Jones notes in the documentary, “He’s got that curious mind”. A writer’s writer, his wordplay is faultless and he deploys flippancy and wit with devastating mildness. The songs skip and trill and shrug; melodies become casual little jams and riffs, phrases rolled around reflectively before revealing unmistakeable purpose. You can never accuse him of bitterness, but his observations are shot through with the loudly unspoken. After the opening four-shot explosion of ‘The Boy in The Bubble’ and Forere Motloheloa’s peerless, famed accordion groove, its expectant pace is given unsettling resonance by lines about “lasers in the jungle” and a “bomb in the baby carriage” – whether Simon is referring to Johannesburg’s troubles, Vietnam or any other upheavals of the last twenty years, the effect is arresting. Even at his most flip, there are little spots of yearning – ‘You don’t feel you could love me, but I feel you could’ – those notes reaching and clutching at human contact and understanding. And ‘Crazy Love Vol II’ is, lyrically, a painful story of a life passed by, a tragic lack of ambition, the weary using-up of time and the realisation of mortality, yet is delivered with the characteristic, smarting joy that radiates from his musical arrangements; from the opening, fluttering fall of guitars that gleam like steel drums, its bright, futile hopefulness cuts deeply.

Is the melody itself, lightfooted and flippant, a wry extension of the double-edged Jewish humour that permeates his lyrics? Or does it just serve to remind us that our problems are just distractions, the sense that even if the little things don’t work out, there are bigger things to spend one’s time on? That if the big things tank too, there’s still hope if nothing else? These are the questions that Simon’s music poses but never answers.

That eponymous, game-changing title song shuffles and chugs into view like a locomotive, before that legendary line disembarks and knocks you flat – “The Mississippi delta was shining like a national guitar/I am following the river down the highway, through the cradle of the Civil War”. Seriously, if you are one of those that really doesn’t see just what a biblical, humbling piece of songwriting this is, go back and listen to it again. Listen to the swoon of the pedal steel, bury your face in those lyrics; spare, unembellished accuracies about fatherhood, the loss of love, the search for something vital to make sense of it, the importance of faith – if not in God, in something, anything else – all mused without pomp, backed up by the Everly Brothers themselves, and carried along by that warm, elastic guitar sound that just IS Paul Simon. Go back and listen to it. Now listen to it again. Get it yet? There you go.

Early demos of some of the record’s defining moments close this edition – a nimble alternative version of ‘Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes’ and raw, revealing demos of ‘Homeless’ and that trumpet-laden triumph, ‘You Can Call Me Al’. If you own Graceland, hand it on someone who hasn’t come to it yet, and get this instead. The pleasure of this edition’s ‘the Making Of…’ themed extras make it a worthy upgrade.

Was Simon wrong to ignore all the advice and go to South Africa? That question still begs an answer which Berlinger’s film never quite provides, though it ably tells both sides of the story. If the resulting record hadn’t been Graceland, an answer might be more glibly reached. The boycott was there to isolate a racist government and show them that the world wouldn’t play ball with a nation that terrorised its black population. There’s no doubt Simon was selfish to plough ahead without seeking the approval of those who organised the cultural boycott, prizing his next record over an international movement. But Graceland is a once in a lifetime achievement, and ultimately, the magnificent end did justify the means. Great art is seldom reasonable; there is often a tyranny at work, an unshakable belief by its creator that what they are doing must take precedence over everything else. Given what was being fought for in South Africa, it was a hell of a risk to take, but Graceland is indeed fine, great art; a rarely-matched coming together of artists, strangers of different backgrounds and languages, and an introduction to strains of music that the ruling government had sought to curb through brutal means. A quarter of a century on, Graceland still dazzles.

Photos: Teeth of the Sea @ The Lexington, 14th March 2012

Since I got my beloved secondhand Canon EOS 350D I've mainly used it for city photography. But I really miss doing live music photography so I'm going to see what sort of results I can get with it over the next few weeks. Aside from an odd bug with shooting at a very open aperture sometimes (which I'm going to investigate and try & find a solution for), it's a lovely and intuitive camera to use so I hope I'll get some decent results soon. I suffer from a lack of flashgun and limited lenses, but money is what it is, so that won't change for a while (and I don't like using much flash anyway); I shall work with what I've got. I hate the 'all the gear and no idea' approach to photography anyway; what counts is a decent eye, understanding your environment & subject, and knowing what your camera can do.

Here's some photos of Teeth of the Sea, who are always fun to photograph. Not great pictures, but this was something of a test run with this camera, so time will bring improvement.