The Bangles to The Beach Boys

The Bangles
The Bangles were part of the vanguard of the 'Paisley Underground,' a 1980s Los Angeles music scene spun out of 1960s West Coast pop and rock. A kind of antidote to the Sunset Strip/glam metal era, they paid homage to hippy-dippy trends sonic and sartorial - a little far out, man, but nothing too dangerous.

Because America loves nothing but a good old fashioned dance craze, the band is most commonly associated with the asinine "Walk Like A Egyptian" (which experienced new life through anti-Hosni Mubarak sloganeering). But close behind in the hit parade are soulful ballads "Eternal Flame" and "Manic Monday."

"Eternal Flame" unfurls with a sparse arrangement and the one of greatest triangle accompaniments in rock history, providing a downy-soft canvas for a giant Susanna Hoffs vocal that's powerful but never overpowering.



Zach Galifinakis' interpretation:



Written by Prince, "Manic Monday" brings on a chorus of well-wishers to embellish the comparatively dour routine of the song's working girl protagonist. In terms of workaday cheeriness, it's no "Walkin' on Sunshine"; in fact, it's just a couple clicks north of slightly depressing, which makes its fantastical production sound even more sublime.



Barenaked Ladies
Who is BNL? For many people, the awfully simple answer is "the guys who did the speed-rapping 'Chinese chicken' song."



Having an unavoidable pop smash like "One Week" is fine if you are trying to become an arena-filling sensation, but the Barenaked Ladies' goals have never been that quotidian. Or that cogent. Whereas the world recognizes that BNL is "One Week," the BNL world is like an alternate universe where "One Week" was a tossed-off piece of album filler (there remains a possibility that that's what the song actually was). And thanks to the indefatigable loyalty of Canadians and geeks everywhere, BNL is one of a very small number of artists that can ignore its biggest hit and thrive financially. They'll fill arenas, all right, but only with the people that they want to be there. Anybody who spotted the upright bass and the orange-tinted glasses in the "One Week" video and pegged the Ladies as pure late-90s alt-rock need not apply.

But delving into the sprawling nerdy comic opera and creepily committed partisans of the BNL-verse, well, it can be easy to see why people will stop at "One Week." It's the only thing that saves listening to the Barenaked Ladies from being an all-or-nothing proposition. Accepting them means accepting all their different guises, which can be somewhat frustrating - are they the folkie jesters of "If I Had A Million Dollars"? The sensitive wise guys of "Pinch Me"? The mournful troubadours of "Brian Wilson"?

"Brian Wilson" is my favorite Barenaked Ladies song because it is one that stops winking long enough to suggest why these guys love music and felt compelled to form a band. For once, we get to a hint of the complexity and the pain behind the goofy personas and restrained album-oriented pop. It was unexplored country again until the 2008 cocaine-related arrest and subsequent departure of Steven Page, one half of the band's creative compass along with Ed Roberston. It turns out that BNL was a mess like dozens of other successful bands despite appearing to have the lowest scandalization quotient this side of Coldplay.



Much of BNL's trademark humor involves gentle self-deprecation but there's little in that schtick that might attract serious ridicule in the grown-up world. "Brian Wilson" is an artistic gamble that might have given the band something to really be embarrassed about if it wasn't their greatest triumph.

Barry Manilow
People who were proud to bypass the excesses of 1970s rock - the type of folks who thought (and not entirely without merit) that rock could never nurture a more creative lifeform than the Beatles - are the precisely the reason why an old-school lounge singer could become a global superstar. The irony is that many of Barry Manilow's songs ooze the same sleazy showbiz artifice as the compositions of his roach-smoking, concept-album-creating nemeses. This is an ideal time to make the obiligatory observation that Manilow did not write "I Write the Songs" (regarding the song's claim "I am music," scientists are still working to verify that Manilow is the very manifestation of the perceptual process of and engagement with sound).

I was going to joke that "Copacabana" has just enough detail to form the promising threatening narrative skeleton of an all-Manilow musical revue, until I discovered that this already exists. It's a decent signature tune, a weird hybrid of a disco beat and salsa breakdown (eat your heart out, Miami Sound Machine) that's an actual Manilow song for roughly three of its six minutes.

"Looks Like We Made It" and "Mandy" fit the little man-massive emotions template; I find them enjoyably cheesy rather than simply enjoyable. But I can make an exception for "I Can't Smile Without You" with its rush to a climax that seems to last the entire song. So far it's the only tune from the Hellboy II soundtrack that has inspired impromptu duets with my mom.

(in Italian...the magic starts at 0:36)



Basement Jaxx
Advertising is once again the sad origin of an entire band's contribution to my collection. The fat bassline of "Red Alert" is catchy and lands on the right side of abrasive and is apparently perfect for your Coca-Cola campfire raves. "Do Your Thing" is a tastefully-constructed dance song that earns its euphoria with a piano sample that disappears into wailing synths and an energetic guest vocal from the elusive Elliot May; I think it was in some sort of computer ad.



Unfortunately, the skull-rattling cacophony of "Where's Your Head At" seems too typical of an electronica band that spells part of its name with a double-x. It was only used to sell everything.

The Beach Boys
A nice thing about the Beach Boys is that they aren't interested in wasting your time. I remember being able to flip the Endless Summer (a title chosen to gingerly avoid calling it a "Greatest Hits") cassette three times in little more than an hour. Somewhere along the line I must have decided that even this was too much Beach Boys; of the teenybopper hits I favored as a kid, only the teenage romanticism of "Don't Worry Baby" and the pleasantly shallow "California Girls" remain. The latter still bugs me for giving short shrift to Southwest and Mountain and Pacific Northwest girls, but I guess it has saved us from three more superficial compliments (note that Mike Love doesn't dig Northeast girls for their hardy constitution and affection for participatory politics). I guess there's also "Good Vibrations" which you know as the famous gear-shifting "pocket symphony" that's the best-known example of the genius that the Barenaked Ladies sang about.



"Barbara Ann" is charming in its roughness, a rarity in the Beach Boys' early, regimented teen idol days. I get my perception of this stifling era (which brought us the raucous call to arms "Be True to Your School") from the 2000 TV movie The Beach Boys: An American Family. The film probably deserves its own post devoted to my half-lucid memories of campy moments like a terrifying ad break where Charles Manson stands at a window and screams something like "You can't ever leave the family!" to a fleeing Dennis Wilson. Good times.

Clearly, my knowledge of the Beach Boys is not entirely academic but at least I'm clever enough to recognize the superiority of Pet Sounds and its monolithic influence on the Beatles' late-60s work. "Sloop John B," "Caroline, No," "Wouldn't It Be Nice," "God Only Knows"...for a brief shining moment it seemed like there could be a real transatlantic competition to push the pop envelope with lush, bittersweet songwriting genius.



It's possible that America wasn't ready for its favorite prom kings to leap into adulthood - Pet Sounds was a smash in the U.K. but a comparative flop in the U.S. - and we weren't about to let the Beach Boys stick the landing, even if it would prove to be the beginning of the end for the band. Listening to "Wouldn't It Be Nice" I get a sense that the Beach Boys are pop music's answer to Dorian Gray (or Tuck Everlasting for you fans of children's literature), missing the adult grace that could validate their genius in a way that eternal youth just can't.

The Band to Band of Horses

In which we consider bands so band-like they began their name with the word "band"...

The Band
Coalescing while backing Canadian rock and roll godfather Ronnie Hawkins and the electrified Bob Dylan, an honorific was never necessary for the Band. The name was both humble and arrogant, a nod to the anonymity from which they sprung and a proprietary eponym (like "Kleenex" or "Xerox") for their brand of country rock that, while considerably different from the hits of the late 1960s, formed a template for four decades of edgy would-be folkies. (And, if you want to continue the analogy, probably the first band to popularize anachronistic clothing.)

The Band was comprised of four Canadians and one Yank, but all were masters of Americana, transplanting the mythos and emotional sweep of the rural heartland into the electric age. They were also somewhat unlikely counterculture icons, given their frontier milieu and their associations with "traitor" Dylan (who famously skipped Woodstock; the Band, however, played on). If there's a people's band, pre-E Street division, this is it.

Music From Big Pink introduced the quintet with a bit of songwriting assistance from Dylan. His three co-credits are unsurprisingly some of the best tracks on the record: the opening "Tears of Rage" is actually a slow, melancholy shuffle and a warning that we're going to be dealing with some very raw emotions. In "The Weight," guitarist Robbie Robertson picks up on these cues in a heartsick classic that announces his presence as the group's creative 500-pound gorilla. Robertson certainly didn't have a monopoly on talent in the Band, but "The Weight" is their quintessential song, something so pure and sweet and clear of conviction that you almost forget how achingly sad it is. A sob story about a transient who tries hard to be good, I also dig that it name-checks Nazareth, Pennsylvania, home of the Blue Eagles and C.F. Martin & Company--a.k.a. Martin Guitar, the manufacturer of the popular hollow-body guitars favored by many musicians of the era.



Big Pink has some nice symmetry in its closing number, "I Shall Be Released," another showcase of Dylan's lyrics that cauterizes the wound opened on "Tears of Rage" and offers some hope, however distant.



The rustic feeling is enhanced and the training wheels are removed on The Band, and the result is the group's creative masterwork. A deeper commitment to roots music is obvious through the record from "Across the Great Divide" to "Rag Mama Rag" to the pretty awesome Grateful Dead impression on "Jemima Surrender." Most are probably familiar with "Up On Cripple Creek," an early ode to the quirky dream girls that so captivated the secretly-grounded men of the beat, hippie, punk, New Wave, 'alternative,' and hipster generations. It's easy to get swept up with the narrator of "Creek" as he describes his staunchly loyal, doughnut-in-tea-dipping paramour who, perhaps coincidentally, is not his wife.



The Band balances the jug band work-outs with countrified arias with a tenuous foundation in historical fact - the slinky "King Harvest (Has Surely Come)" and the epic "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down." What these songs may lack in verisimilitude (or, um, claims on a higher morality in the case of "Dixie") they make up in verve and tears and gut feeling. There's an urgency I detect on this album, something about many of the tracks that perfectly captures an immediacy that's like sitting in on their original recording sessions. They have a life about them, and "Dixie" is the nerve center.

Two specific things impress me about "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down":

1. It turns me, a dyed-in-the-wool Yankee and detractor of revisionist Southern claims about Civil War history, into putty in old Confederate hands.

2. It was recorded, like the rest of The Band, in Los Angeles. This is kind of like if Jimi Hendrix recorded his version of "The Star-Spangled Banner" in Brussels.



The years after The Band marked an inevitable decline in the face of corporate rock's ascendancy, and the Band had the good sense to bow out after their 1976 swan song, The Last Waltz. The fissures were already showing by 1970, though, with "Stage Fright" capturing a new era of uneasy feelings about the group's sudden fame and fortune.



Robertson had one last epic in him, "Acadian Driftwood," the centerpiece of the mostly-average Northern Lights-Southern Cross. Swapping famous American guilt (devastation of the American South, 1864-1865) for famous Canadian guilt (18th century deportation of Francophone Acadians from Nova Scotia to Louisiana), "Driftwood" takes even more poetic license than "Dixie," but is no less resonant in its lamentation of defeat. On a record that includes interminable synthesizer-driven jams and inexplicable Steely Dan pastiches ("Jupiter Hollow"), "Driftwood" is a jewel.



The extended edition of Northern Lights-Southern Cross also has the unrepentantly religious "Christmas Must Be Tonight," a glorious slice of holiday cheese. And now that we've mentioned treacly, misguided Xmas songs...

Band Aid - "Do They Know It's Christmas"
Band Aid 20 - "Do They Know It's Christmas 2004"
Many things have been said about "Do They Know It's Christmas" - it's pandering and trite, it's problematic, it's self-satisfied, it probably perpetuates the annoying/horrid cultural stereotype of the "starving African," and considering the checkered track history of European Christians intervening in African affairs, do they even care that it's Christmas?

Ultimately, I give Band Aid mastermind (and onscreen Roger Waters surrogate) Bob Geldof the benefit of the doubt. The Boomtown Rats frontman raged for several years against the myopia of the Me Decade and eventually won over many of his peers. It led to the creation of the modern benefit concert template (Live Aid) and was taken as a charitable challenge by musicians across the pond ("We Are the World"). Even naming the project "Band Aid" was an act of self-awareness that demonstrated Geldof's understanding of his very small role in addressing a very complex problem. It's the type of project that will always attract opportunists but as long as they're reciprocating some of that benefit, I don't see any major harm.

The song itself is extremely dated now, with a giggle-inducing spoken word portion stuck in the middle that forever captures some of the flavors-of-the-month (Dad, what's Bananarama?) alongside strange vamping (from Paul McCartney, of all people) and an intensely serious Christmas message from David Bowie that nearly stops the song in its tracks, mostly because he sounds like the only guy on the record besides Geldof who genuinely cares about famine relief. Also, Bono kind of being a dick...feed the world!



Musically, there is no real excuse for "Do They Know It's Christmas 2004" except, perhaps, for Chris Martin to take over the alpha dog vocals from Paul Young and for Dizzee Rascal and the Darkness' Justin Hawkins to do a call-and-response sing-rap. It doesn't even have the spoken word part. The word 'inessential' comes to mind.



Band of Horses
A band at their best when gloomy and anthemic, like the Shins crossed with Explosions in the Sky and scrambled with grits - "The Funeral" (from the debut Everything All the Time) and "Is There A Ghost" (from Cease to Begin) stand out in this regard.






Everything All the Time dances with a peculiar sort of alt-country darkness and as such might be Band of Horses' most interesting record to date, full of "Monsters" come to feed on us and the ministrations of "Wicked Gil" ('helping evil people to say things they show'). But Cease to Begin runs in the opposite direction, flirting with romantic dream pop in the likes of "Detlef Schrempf" (sadly not an ode to the former Mavericks/Pacers/Supersonics/Trailblazers sharpshooter) and "No One's Gonna Love You."



It's worth mentioning that Cease to Begin was recorded after a massive lineup overhaul that left only two original members, Ben Bridwell and Mat Brooke, which may account for the diverse tone of the sophomore record. Also contributing - the money made after "The Funeral" became a hot commodity among music directors for commercials and television shows. Normally I find this annoying, but in this case it couldn't have happened to a better song. And lest we forget their country roots, Band of Horses offers the mid-album stomper "The General Specific."



2010's Infinite Arms continues the slow expansion of the band's music palette but there's something about it that's just too willowy about it for my taste. It's a record tailor-made to grab the attention of the NPR crowd that likes their music alternative but not too abrasive. To oblige, the band tosses in some strings on "Factory" and busts out the Eagles harmonies on "Older" and "Blue Beard." It's still a quality record anchored by Bridwell's wistful vocal, which only helps the group maintain its creative stamp throughout myriad personnel changes and stylistic dalliances.

Andrew W.K. to Animotion

Andrew W.K.
It's been rumored that the mercurial, rabid, piano-pounding Andrew W.K. was conceived as some sort of obtuse music business prank against the public, which is just the type of plausible but unnecessarily elaborate and counter-intuitive idea that breeds conspiracy theories. Others simply hated him on principle. In my opinion he's just a weird, interesting dude who confounds the fame clock. He's the rare non-deluded niche entertainer that understands that his work follows his persona, not the other way around.

But he came to us, as Harry Chapin might say, in the usual way: as a self-flagellating, classically-trained pianist in nut-hugging white slacks and a jones for melodic party metal. I Get Wet is a masterpiece of stupidity and simplicity, as if going beyond the monosyllabic is the ultimate party foul. "Party Hard" is his Model T. The other 11 tracks more or less roll off the same assembly line.



Unfortunately, Andrew stretched this wafer-thin premise across two more plodding, highly forgettable albums, The Wolf and Close Calls with Brick Walls. Tellingly, Close Calls was a Japan-only release - it also proves that axiom that once Japan loves you, it loves you forever as long as you never, ever attempt to change (see: Anvil!: The Story of Anvil).

But what makes Andrew so wonderfully perplexing is that, in everything outside of his music, he seems remarkably malleable. He is whatever he is required to be - self-help guru, talking head, children's television host. Unsurprisingly, he makes a good pitchman. I really dig his "Give Me a Break" jingle for Kit Kat:



Relentlessly energetic and disarming in spite of (or because of) his overbearingly aggressive life coach persona, the world is his personal rager, a bully pulpit for the party animal gospel. The music is the least interesting thing about him. It's is just another method of delivering his propaganda. "You can't stop what you can't end" notes "I Love NYC." I say Armageddon beats Andrew W.K., but not by much.




Andy Gibb - "I Just Want to Be Your Everything"
The "Bonus Jonas" of the Gibb family, and the best-looking by a wide margin. The way I see it, there are four tiers of celebrity siblings:

• The Billy Carter Tier: for siblings who seek fame solely by embarrassing their more famous kin, either purposefully or inadvertently
• The Jim Belushi Tier: for siblings who aspire to the success of their brother or sister, but are quite obviously the one that Mom praised for having a "big heart" when asked if he/she was loved as much as the more talented sibling
• The Casey Affleck Tier: for siblings who seem to be piggybacking until, slowly but surely, they prove themselves just as worthy and perhaps even more talented

And of course....

• The Andy Gibb Tier: for siblings who build promisingly on the established template of their brethren and are kept from the Casey Affleck Tier through any combination of bad luck, personal issues, fickle audience tastes, etc.

Andy Gibb's trajectory was quite similar to his older brothers' in the Bee Gees. It didn't hurt that he sounded exactly like them, which in the 1970s meant three straight #1 singles including "I Just Want to Be Your Everything," a typical disco ballad.



I'm sure he entered my consciousness via Behind the Music - his struggles with drug addiction and death at age 30 were better television fodder than the creative impetus behind "Shadow Dancing." He's the quintessential what-might-have-been story of the disco era (which explains why people forget him) and a gentle reminder of what it was like when a family of castrato pop vocalists from Australia was on the cusp of ruling the world.


Animal Collective
Animal Collective is the type of band that makes people hate music critics, which is all the more frustrating because you don't have to be "in the know" to appreciate their music. Tolerating their music is the bigger obstacle. I know because I have been there; it still annoys me that they gnaw on most of their lyrics and then refuse to print them in liner notes. I'm also of the very recent era when you couldn't read a music blog without an AC hagiography. It's good to have encouragement.

So toss me on the pile of sweaty hipster douchebags who thinks AC hides a broad appeal underneath the avant-garde trappings. Their best material bears similarity to the Beatles' psychedelia crossed with the soul-seeking, life-affirming sloganeering of Sesame Street and Josh Groban. On drugs. Feels is my best evidence for this theory - "The Purple Bottle" is a next-gen magical mystery tour, "Banshee Beat" captures something both tender and wry in its movie-flashback do-do-dos, and "Loch Raven" is a gentle, bells-laden lullaby.



"Peacebone," the leading track from Strawberry Jam, also sounds like AC trying to corner the kiddie-uplift market with the prominent refrain "It's not my words that you should follow, it's your [extreme falsetto] INSIGHT!"



But then again, maybe they're not. The screaming is really amped up on this record, and "Fireworks," though great, will frighten babies. Strawberry Jam is perpetually in attack mode. AC's frontman, Noah Lennox (aka Panda Bear), has noted that the album's title came from a condiment he consumed with an airline meal. He was inspired to create music just as synthetic and shiny, and also as tangy and aggressive, as the taste of his Smucker's.

"Winter Wonderland" is another favorite of mine from Jam. It was perfect for squeezing into radio playlists for a little bite of avant-garde weirdness threatening to become accessible pop.



Cue Merriweather Post Pavilion, which indeed contains the band's most accessible songs to date, a significant step for them in both commercial and artistic terms...but not as significant that it's been made out to be. There's been no rush to Saturday Night Live appearances or Grammy awards.

Merriweather is too grown-up for such things. The whole thing is an ode to maturity. The album's Mount Rushmore consists of songs about adult romance ("Summertime Clothes"), fatherhood ("My Girls"), and friendship ("Brother Sport"). It also has a fourth, "Lion in a Coma," which feels like the psychotropic experience AC felt obligated to provide a break from talking about all this heavy stuff, man.



Fall Be Kind is an EP and a step back towards the cryptic. I like "Graze," a cool gearshift song that rescues the pan flute from the New Age ghetto.



"What Would I Want? Sky" is a cloud-gazing pick-me-up song that earns it, cheering up good money thrown after bad. Back to basics percussion is the hallmark of the EP and a welcome change after two records that were trending too much towards, as a friend of mine so eloquently put it, "swirl farts."


Animotion - "Obsession"
I am always tickled when a cheesy band's Wikipedia entry begins by defensively noting that they are "known for their songs..." (emphasis mine). I have to call bullshit, especially when the band in question performed their hit on the short-lived nostalgia trip show Hit Me Baby One More Time. "Obsession" belongs in the Overly Aggressive '80s Love Song division, a droll little ditty about sexual entrapment. It's kind of a yawner after a couple minutes.

Alphabeat to America

Some Stray Thoughts
For someone who pays a little too much attention to the music in television commercials, it's distressing to see so many self-consciously "indie" ads modeled on the hottest trends of 3 years ago. And unlike the bad old days when a young Daniel Faraday told us that a Subaru was "just like punk rock, except it's a car," it's easier to sell consumer goods with twee posturing and cramming in all the whistling, ukeleles, and handclaps that your 25-49 demo can handle. Gerber: forward-thinking that's pre-approved by the bourgeoisie! (Also: fuck, they market baby food for preschoolers now?)



Advil also has a new ad using the exact same gimmick with fully-grown humans and a simpatico soundtrack (though I couldn't find video of it on the Internet, just the song). Peter Bjorn and John wannabes from the cradle to the grave...such is life in Ad America.


Alphabeat
Of course, there's nothing wrong with cute if you can pull it off like Alphabeat does on their self-titled debut. When you're front-loading a sunny pop album, you can't do much better than the depression-leavening "10,000 Nights of Thunder," four minutes of pure uplift.



Suspiciously cheap-looking videos, classic boy-girl vocals, and a song titled "Fascination" - are we sure this isn't a long lost Human League record? Well, probably not. Alphabeat is more versatile than its first 10 minutes might lead one to believe, notching a Britpop opus about condoms and/or raincoats ("Rubber Boots/Mackintosh") and a Nordic-accented country ballad ("Nothing But My Baby") before playing us out with a "hidden" 10-second piano instrumental. The album is all the exhilarating wonder and vigor of youth, a properly noncommittal debut with a charming let's-try-everything quality.

For The Beat Is..., Alphabeat's second album, the band commits hard. To electronica. Such dedication is admirable in theory but in practice it's like returning from a global culinary tour to nothing but Hot Pockets. The line "I need something I can dance to" repeats throughout "DJ" and is the album's keystone. I'm not sure where the imperative comes from. Alphabeat was plenty danceable, whereas The Beat Is... is like Ace of Base discovering auto-tune. The results are horrible, by the way.

But an acoustic cover of "Digital Love"? That's as unhorrible as you can get.




Alphaville - "Forever Young"
Surprise pop standard, unlikely hip-hop bedrock, and forever a reminder of the school dance thanks to the Saturn Ion and Napoleon Dynamite and the sentiment of the song itself. Do not confuse it with an inferior Rod Stewart song of the same name.




Amanda Blank - I Love You
Amanda Blank is part of the new wave of female rappers that has stormed hip-hop's boys club over the past few years in a movement that is as cyclical as the tides and fickle as pop music success. There are probably a dozen Amanda Blanks for every Queen Latifah or M.I.A.

I Love You boasts a few distinguished party songs such as "Might Like You Better" and "Make It Take It" and energetic production from the likes of Diplo. As a whole, though, it's not built to last. Part of that's to blame on Blank's attempts to show us the softer side of Sears, culminating in a risible "interpolation" (the new synonym for "rip-off") of LL Cool J in "A Love Song." It's schizophrenic at best. I guess I should give her credit for at least attempting to break up the monotony of sex-and-sports braggadocio, but a party rapper's music is only as valuable inasmuch as it instructs us on how to release our inhibitions in relaxed and informal social settings. This record lasts longer than a quickie should.




America
Far too pretentious a name for actual Americans, though they did do us all a service by preventing U2 from claiming it (you know it could happen). "Horse With No Name" is the gateway despite its labored rhymes and even more labored storytelling (crying at a dry riverbed - really?). "Ventura Highway" is just as sweet and mellow with better polish; "Sister Golden Hair" is the group's true opus, a tour de force of romantic détente spoken in layman's terms: "meet me in the middle."