LIST: Guilty Pleasures
So here they are, my Top 22 Guilty Pleasures. For a reminder of what makes these selections oh so guilty go to Guilty as Charged. And remember, be careful with your pointing and laughing Mr. & Ms. Secretly-listens-to-Chaka Khan.
1. Styx “Paradise Theater” The band was barely fit to lift a Mars bar from the corner store let alone a heavy concept album, thus the spectacular death of "Kilroy Was Here," my first Styx lp. “Paradise” is a light-concept album drenched in rainy-day sound effects, staccato keyboards and castrated harmonies – just like everything else they ever recorded. There's not even a hit to hang all the empty grandeur on, no "Come Sail Away" or "Renegade." And yet it's the album that taught me how to pick out the bass line and sing harmony by ear. Once I discovered Queen this record became obsolete, but you never forget your first.
2. Harry Connick, Jr. “We Are In Love” This guy is pure Gouda, but he knows how to sweep a gal off her feet, and isn't that what we all want sometimes? Whether you fancy yourself the sweeper or sweepee this is the disc for it.
3. Yes “90125” If you can listen to "It Can Happen" without adding your own clipped "it-can-hap-pen-to-you; it-can-hap-pen-to-me; it-can-hap-pen-to-eve-ry-one-ev-en-tu-al-ly" then you are a heartless demon. Lay yourself down at the altar of Prog and be saved / ruined. I did, see how much sense I make.
4. The Rentals “Return of the Rentals” Weezer bassist in an orgy of 80s synthesizer worship. "Friends of P" makes even less sense than "Undone (The Sweater Song)" but it isn't nearly as weird. Or good. But ohhh, the warm glow of fuzzy synth strings pulsing behind deadpan lines like "Empty, everything's technical; Sterile, and endless..." it's like an electric blanket, really. You think I'm kidding but I'm not.
5. Drivin’ n’ Cryin’ “Smoke” Unless you spent much time in the southeast between 1985 and 1993 you may not know who these guys are. Think Black Crowes without the R&B / blues background. This is their rockin'est, most darkly stoned album with a few political barbs cast at the first Pres. Bush, who had been out office a full year upon the album's release. Oops. Still, it's freight train fightin' music and I own the boots.
6. Bad Religion “The Gray Race” If it's expeditive, sanctimonious, pedantic and diaphanous it must be post-"Recipe for Hate" Bad Religion. So what if every song sounds alike and Prof. Graffin, PhD. (Paleoanthropology) forces big smart words into unnecessary rhymes. When you're preaching to the choir they already know the tune, so rock on smarty-punks! And make me feel slightly smarter and politically in tune while you're at it.
7. REM "Green" When I was 13 I told a joke with the word "twat" in the punch line at Thanksgiving dinner. It's actually nice to have a singular moment in which to store the sum of my awkward years. Though not as maligned as "Monster," "Green" is a pimply awkward and occasionally perfect Thanksgiving twat joke and I am thusly bound to it forever.
8. Brendan Benson “One Mississippi” Catchy little ditties about drinking tea, holding girlfriends hostage, forced incarceration in mental hospitals, and a grandma who falls victim to a violent and organized insect revolution are the highlights of this album. That should be incriminating enough.
9. Blink-182 “Enema of the State” Because inside every man there is a 12-year-old boy refusing to grow up; because boogers and farting are awesome; and because fake punk is still better than real bubblegum. Craptastic!
10. Motley Crue “Dr. Feelgood” See Blink-182 entry, except substitute "15" for "12," "getting wasted" for "boogers," "sexy nurses" for "farting," and "metal" for "punk." This tape is still in the center console of my truck, right next to Beastie Boys “License to Ill.” But I swear the tape deck doesn't even work, I just listen to NPR.
11. Van Halen “Women and Children First” It’s become so fashionable to hate Sammy Hagar that the band's lesser early albums are given a free pass even when they clearly don't stack up to the band’s earth-moving s/t debut, decade-in-rock defining "1984" or even - gasp - "5150." This one starts out promising more of what you'd expect but it takes a dramatic left turn at the very last minute with the nearly operatic, life-and-love affirming "In a Simple Rhyme," calling the whole "Everybody Wants Some!!" bad-boy whiskey blues thing into question. Hearing the band drop the girlie mags and break into song on some rooftop ala West Side Story is strangely captivating even today.
12. Sheryl Crow “Tuesday Night Music Club” Remember when she was kinda hot, Carly Simon teeth and all. All I wanted to do was have some fun too, and she seemed like a chic who could hang. And sell out... cross over... become a VH1 diva... date Lance Armstrong...
13. Phish “Junta” I'll admit it, there is a little neo-hippie in me - more along the lines of wavy-gravy politics than shrooming barefooted in a man-skirt, but granola all the same. This 2-disc sprawl has the endless Grateful-jazz noodling you get at a live show without the pitfalls of live recordings. It's Phish at it's most serious and therefore most ridiculous - a good way to get lost. I sometimes listen to it while cooking.
14. The Donnas “Spend the Night” Rowdy girls are hard to resist, even if they're only kidding. It comes from years of thinking such people weren't real (I had a very dull social life in high school.) "Take if Off"? Okay, if you say so.
15. Dixie Chicks “Fly” It is sooo uncool to like them, or at least it was until they got all uppity about the war. Now that they're rabidly liberal country music martyrs it's okay to like them, right? No?
16. Toad the Wet Sprocket “Dulcinea” "Fear" is forgivable, what with "All I Want" and "Walk on the Ocean" being bone fide hits and all. This follow-up pushes the sensitive, eyebrow knitting white kid emo schtick too far. And yet I must address that eyebrow knitting emo kid in me from time to time in order to keep him from bringing the rest of us down.
17. Erasure “Pop! The Hits” How can you ever be sad in a world where there are whole albums of swooning electronic dance covers of ABBA songs by effete Englishmen? How?
18. Spice Girls “Spice” I swear it's not some perverted schoolgirl fantasy thing. The Baby one gives me the creeps and the Ginger-y one comes on too strong. Posh is too bony and Scary is clearly trying to compensate for something. So it's the Sporty one I guess. Really? I would have pegged me for a Ginger man. The fact that I am able to remember their names without having to Google them is sad sad sad. Sadder than talking to myself mid-blog? Absolutely.
19. Madonna “Ray of Light” I know what you're thinking and, yes you can totally see her nipples through that white tank top in the video, but at this point who hasn't seen Madonna's nipples. This can be an intoxicating listen forcing you to gyrate unconsciously in your chair, if you can manage to stay seated at all. Thank goodness she made "Music" to snap us out of our love affair with her digitally remastered earth mother / dancing diva persona.
20. Joan Osborne “Relish” Millions of people bought this thinking she was all Christian because of that "...what if God was one of us..." bullshit. They quickly dumped them in a used record bin after realizing that the song was a freak accident on an otherwise solid, blues-infused disc. She's got that cracked smoker's voice that's so sexy until you hit 40 and start to sound like a bullfrog.
21. Refreshments "Fizzy Fuzzy Big & Buzzy" I used to drive a sporty little coup around Boston shouting along to "Banditos" and "Down Together." Ah yes, nothing says summer of '96 like an open sunroof and escapist guitar-pop. Or being an idiot.
22. Seal s/t (#2) Not since Meatloaf has there been such a consistently self-serious pop grandstander as Seal, who tugs on every heart string as if he were single handedly raising the Lucitania's anchor. This could have been a guilt-free, adult contemporary winner if it hadn't been for stupid "Batman Forever" which used "Kiss from a Rose" for its love theme. Also wins an award for most harmonic overdubs - there is a choir of Seals singing on most songs.
Ordinarily these albums might appear on my Buyer Beware! list, yet I just can't imagine some days without them.
REVIEW: Sufjan Stevens "A Sun Came"
This is that, except a whole album of it and better than what you're imagining right now. Sun is a 2nd edition of Stevens' Asthmatic Kitty debut and may serve best to document where he started rather than as a tethering point for his current, more evolved and focused sound. I'm grading on a curve so this doesn't stand up well to "Seven Swans" or "Michigan" each of which benefits from a parsing of instruments and trimming of sets. But it's interesting to hear the eclectic mix of influences Stevens wears on his sleeve - Asian strings and rhythms, found-sound samples, bluegrass banjo, and medieval vocal harmonies. Disappointing work from an "A" student, but still more interesting than fifth period physics.
REVIEW: The Faint "Wet From Birth"
First thing you need is some cool new luggage - I've selected a vintage 1982 Depeche Mode hard sided suitcase and whatever was left in it when it was chucked out the window of a moving train right after "Songs of Faith and Devotion" came out. Keep the shoes and accessories but toss the rest - it won't fit you anyway. The luggage is most important. If you forget to pack anything else make sure you bring the DM luggage. Next we'll want to neatly fold and pack Mike Doughty and his drum machine. He's the guy from Soul Coughing, but don't let him get started on the whole "Is Chicogo, Is Not Chicago" thing. It's circular logic so you'll never hear the end of it. Now you'll need to track down all the guitars ever played on any Blur album. Take them apart and reassemble one working guitar using at least one part from each, then paint the new franken-axe pink. Take it apart, wrap the pieces in Franz Ferdinand concert flyers and tuck them into the suitcase where Doughty can't get to them. I think some sunglasses and birth control should about do it. Yup, now you're ready to go to Germany!
Why Germany? Because that's the home of dance music for people who think dancing is a chore - necessary but joyless labor under swirling colored lights. Or you could just listen to "Wet From Birth." Which ever's easier.
REVIEW: Bright Eyes "I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning"
Special dual album review of Bright Eyes “I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning” and “Digital Ash In a Digital Urn”
PART ONE
One of the things I enjoy most about fiction - in writing or movies and television - is the opportunity to witness a moment of revelation in which a character is somehow changed. We are able to see in the course of just a few sentences, lines or gestures how someone comes to grasp the fact that his or her life is now different than it was five pages / minutes ago.
The simultaneous release of two new albums “I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning” and “Digital Ash In a Digital Urn” may be such a moment in the ongoing story of Conor Oberst (Bright Eyes).
My own brief work of fiction on the subject goes something like this: Conor was born in semi-rural Nebraska in 1981, the only child of a successful merchant and a grade school music teacher, both very thin, both devoutly Christian. By adolescence he rebelled against his parents’ zealous beliefs and constant spoiling by adopting a goth-lite wardrobe and buying several Nitzer Ebb albums. Maybe Conor reluctantly continued attending church with his parents so he could sing in the choir. Maybe not.
By early teens his inherited musical talent became apparent and, with the benefit of seven years of forced piano lessons at home and now weekly guitar lessons at the mall’s music store, he gained confidence as a musician. His outward appearance and lack of interest in football isolated him from his classmates. At some point he embraced the idea that other people may or may not think he is gay. In high school everyone considered him thoroughly weird except his sophomore English Teacher, Mrs. Schibley. She took an interest in his sprawling observational poetry and he in turn took an interest in Steinbeck, Kerouac, and Thoreau. She was of the generation that referred to John Lennon, Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell as “the modern poets,” so Conor added them to his CD collection.
At age 16 he inserted himself into a coffee shop open mic night where he sang his poems while breaking guitar strings and trying desperately to implode eyes first. Earlier in the week he had invited Mrs. Schibley to attend the performance and she did. She was stunned by his intensity and flare for the dramatic. “I had no idea you were into politics,” she said in praise of his lyrics. “I’m not. I’m into change,” he answered.
He was invited back to play a regular set. Through the coffee shop he developed as a performer, met girls who would talk to him, and read day old copies of the New York Times. One evening a sound engineer caught his show and offered him free studio sessions between 2 and 5 AM on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. A demo was made and shopped around. A song was played on college radio. Shortly after high school graduation, Bright Eyes was born of necessity – Conor needed a backing band. Deals were inked and the words “wunderkind” and “boy genius” tossed about. Surely great things awaited. *
Fast-forward through four albums, rotating band members and an election-eve tour through the yellow states with REM and Springsteen to present day and the release of “Wide Awake” and “Digital Ash.” Conor, now 24, has come into his own. Sometimes awkwardly, sometimes beautifully, we have heard him grow from sputtering, precocious boy to soulfully earnest man. How do we know? Because in any good story there is a moment – a scene, a look, a sound – that lets us know our hero has undergone a change and, more importantly, that he knows it. These two albums, taken together, are the sound of Conor Oberst coming of age.
Whether you're telling a story in 220 pages or 65 minutes change must happen quickly. The impact of events which take place over oceans of time are condensed into a single moment and characters are given the benefit of clarity, understanding, and perspective to make that moment resonate as it happens. These kinds of things tend to be few and far between for the rest of us, and even more difficult to capture. Even during our most memorable experiences - as we say ‘I do,’ feel the wheels skid out from under us at 70 miles per hour, or hold our children for the very first time - we may not always feel the full weight of the changes happening within us. We spend years sorting out the importance of our experiences as their memories stack one on top of the other. I've heard the threat of immanent death can clarify all this and provide that very fiction-like flash in which one can see his entire life and sum it up as one thing, one need, one change to be made. Maybe that’s why people ride bulls.
This is how "I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning" begins. Not on a bull but with the clarity and urgency of a fast approaching end. "At The Bottom of Everything," the album's opening track, is a plane crash over water painted as one grand and beautiful moment of truth. Realizing their fate, the pilot issues a litany of demands to his doomed passengers including starring into the faces of death-row criminals, setting fire to sulfur and brimstone preachers (yikes!) and memorizing "nine numbers" by which he must mean your social security numbers since few people's PIN numbers are longer than four digits and phone numbers (with area codes) are ten.
Of these conjoined albums “Wide Awake” is the "folk" or "country" one. There are some dead giveaways like the acoustic and steel guitars, mandolins and the chugging railroad rhythm of “Another Travelin’ Song.” The real proof is in the lovely and familiar voice of Emmylou Harris who lends her flawless Americana credentials to a number of tracks. The sound, at times rocking but mostly stripped to acoustics, seems to have a sense of consistent identity – everything fits well together and has a purpose within each song, and the songs fit within the album. Oberst’s voice is quaking but resolved and well matched to his emotionally charged lyrics, still achingly well wrought.
“… I know you have a heavy heart, I can feel it when we kiss;
So many men stronger than me have thrown their backs out trying to lift it;
But me I'm not a gamble, you can count on me to split;
The love I sell you in the evening by the morning won't exist” from “Lua.”
His greatest success, though, may be in the music itself. He has managed to write a few instantly familiar, charming and hum-able tunes, the kind you think you already know a few bars in even though you’ve never heard it before. “At The Bottom of Everything,” once it finally gets going, plus “We Are Nowhere And It’s Now” and “Lua” boast simple melodies that sound like they’ve been around forever. Equal parts Christmas carol and Irish drinking song, they are inspired, woozy and hard to forget once you’ve heard them once or twice. The comforting familiarity of Dylan's “Blowin’ in the Wind” or Bob Marley's “Redemption Song” may come with time or be rooted in a rhythm fundamental to our cultural experience and therefore become immediately accessible. In these songs Oberst is earning the favorable comparisons heaped upon him and shedding some skeptical barbs.
Sealing the deal and offering further evidence of his newfound maturity is the album’s eighth track, the moving “Landlocked Blues.” This was first released as “One Foot In Front of the Other” on the 2003 “Saddle Creek 50” sampler. It is a slowly waltzing war protest / love song in which he essentially asks everyone to just take a step back and think. Preaching and judgment are suspended, as are stylish emotive flourishes in order to let the song naturally unfold. His treatment of the overt political content shows a man planting his flag rather than waving it madly or burning someone else’s down.
The decision to record two albums so seemingly separate while marrying them to one another with the timing of their release shows real ambition but also confidence in the material. The predictably crowed-over dual release focused a brighter light on Oberst and his songs, creating that slow-motion moment in which we see our hero change. With “I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning” Bright Eyes delivers an affirming revelation.
* Except for the part about him being from Nebraska I made all of that up.
To continue reading this feature including a review of Bright Eyes "Digital Ash In A Digital Urn" please visit
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