Sleigh Bells/Cloud Nothings
Sometimes/I Feel I Gotta Get Away/Bells Chime/I Know I Gotta Get Away
I'm happier than I would have figured that they've cut down on their distortion-flaunting pile-of-sound shtick. Several times, in fact, Derek Miller makes me love guitar sounds as bell-like as Alexis Krauss's crystalline soprano, as tapered as her gorgeous gams. Then there's the dying siren that repeats addictively through "You Lost Me"‑-the one that makes me say, So what if the lyric is about singing from the grave, death is real, and anyway, I really want to hear that sound again right about--yeah! After all, "Comeback Kid" does stay positive no matter how brutally Miller pummels his own riffs with that drum sample. That's nice, right? Elsewhere it's just sweet sensation. Succumb‑-succumb. A MINUS
Cloud Nothings: Attack on Memory (Carpark)
Although his voice is lower and his guitar solos are longer, the idea that Dylan Baldi has therefore achieved some sort of maturity is silly. Come on‑-the guy's 20. His attack on memory isn't a young hero jousting with history, it's a callow confusenik trying to forget: that It's all been done before, sure, but that's the least of it. How about: Life is hard and then you die? Or: Old people have all the stuff? Or: I don't have a clue what the world will be like when I'm 40? Or merely: 40‑-that's two times 20, God!? These are all honorable thoughts that have required reiteration and adjustment for as long as I've been alive. Slight individual recalibrations of the noize-toon continuum have oft proved useful in getting them under control. Such recalibrations are harder than they look and much harder than most confuseniks assume. Congrats to Baldi for getting one right. A MINUS
I agree 100%. But Slowing Down Pop Songs To Bring Out Their True Significance is different than mere slowing tempo.
So, no, that's so not what Soft Cell was doing with "Tainted Love," obviously. Their version is still pop as fu(k.
"Guilt-by-association arguments are kinda facile, too."
(scratches head)
I admit, though, that I'm blanking at the moment on great covers that slow down pop songs. Robert Wyatt's "At Last I Am Free" came to mind but Chic's original is pretty slow to begin with. Maybe it's a personal blockage, e.g., I still haven't figured out what Xgau hears in Aztec Camera's "Jump."
Slowing Down Pop Songs To Bring Out Their True Significance
Is that what Soft Cell was doing with "Tainted Love"?Look, slowing tempo and changing arrangements are just techniques. They ether work or they don't. Vanilla Fudge can fergeddit.
And, as far as I could hear, the Dismemberment Plan cover of "Crush" was this thing called a "joke."
Anyhoo Montrose's "Connection" operates in the Slowing Down Pop Songs To Bring Out Their True Significance mode of covering just like The Dismemberment Plan's somnambulant take on Jennifer Paige's "Crush." Nothing disreputable (lovely strings although they come in too late) but a bit facile.
RIP Ronnie Montrose. http://goo.gl/PdQob
Now there's a passing sure to make EWers sad.
Don't rush to certainty. The version of "Connection" on Paper Money may be the finest moment for both Ronnie Montrose and Sammy Hagar, but it truly is an outstanding track. Among the finest Stones covers ever.
second act, Diehard, did a number whose chord progression and bass line resembled Gin Blossoms' "Follow You Down?"
PS: Irene, I brought my camera and pointed it at the band a couple of times, but the lighting was inadequate to take a good picture. Time to buy a flash.
Also, Frap, that bar was stanky indeed.
about the blogger
Starting in 1967, Robert Christgau has covered popular music for The Village Voice, Esquire, Blender, Playboy, Rolling Stone, and many other publications. He teaches in New York University's Clive Davis Department of Recorded Music, maintains a comprehensive website at robertchristgau.com, and has published five books based on his journalism. He has written for MSN Music since 2006.
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