In the midst of the cosmic stew that we call the universe, the unexpected occurs all of the time. In the best music, as in life, sometimes forces zig when they are supposed to zag. While the result is sometimes difficult to accept, revealing the big picture makes it all seem inevitable.
Continue reading The Mars Volta Return with a Self-Titled Album, Which Is Good Yet Still DisappointingAll posts by Rob Kimbrough
There Is Nothing “Ancillary” about Anne Leckie’s Imperial Radch Trilogy
While Then Play On is first and foremost a music blog, I’ve spilled plenty of ink on my thoughts on various movies and television shows. In the same spirit, I’ll occasionally write about a book or book series that particularly stands out to me, and tell a little about what makes it so worth checking out.
As I’ve made clear before, I’m a big fan of science-fiction. Not only do the often futuristic and astral settings make for some cool stories, but the genre is particularly adept at investigating nuanced and far-ranging ideas in novel ways. At the same time, so much of popular SF falls into the same cliches that have been explored for decades by more inventive writers. When someone comes along with something truly creative, you can’t help but take notice.
Such is the case with Anne Leckie’s Imperial Radch trilogy. The series has been completed for six years now, but I read through it over the period of the past couple years, with a few other books in between each title. The trilogy is imaginative, challenging, and fun; it examines thought-provoking themes while still telling a gripping space opera.
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In Defense of the Red Hot Chili Peppers: A Ranking
“I am here today to talk about the Uplift Mofo Party Plan. A plan based on a band, a band based on a plan.There shall be no slaves in the land of lands, it’s a Hollywood jam.”
Over the past 35 years a little band out of California has raised hell and spread good vibes around the world: the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Formed by high school friends and nurtured in the fertile alternative music underground of Eighties Los Angeles, the Chili Peppers have gone on to become one of the most prominent rock bands of the modern era. Unlike other bands that blew up in the Nineties, they aren’t associated with grunge, but combined punk, funk, and psychedelia to create a distinctive brew of sound that earned them a spot in the mainstream while still rewarding deeper listening. More personally, they are one of my favorite bands ever; they happened to release the music video for “Dani California” right when I was 15 years old and just starting to get into music. It hooked me and I’ve been a big fan ever since.
My fandom, however, isn’t a given, as it seems that just as there are millions of fans around the world, there are also plenty of detractors. It’s very, very common, especially in hip music circles, to bash on the Chili Peppers. It seems like self-serious hipsters just can’t let themselves enjoy something that is supposed to be unabashedly fun. At some point, the Chili Peppers (along with Rage Against the Machine) got blamed for the rise of the often maligned “rap-rock” and nu-metal of the late Nineties, but are musically much more supple than their angsty imitators. They’re also associated in the public’s mind with the bro reggae of Sublime and 311 types. While RHCP do propagate some form of West Coast sunshine chill that is very stoner friendly, frankly they’ve always been way more than just surfer-bro fare. The best of their music is pure emotional expression; whether that emotion be celebration, melancholy, or lust, it comes across with an appealingly good-natured sincerity. Plus they do all this with an instrumental acumen that is far above many dreadlocked peers.
In fact, bassist/trumpeter/sometimes-vocalist/heart-of-the-band Flea is inarguably one of the best bass players ever, who combines energetic slap technique with deeper melodic grooves to create a supple foundation for everything they do. Vocalist Anthony Keidis originally drew from hip-hop as one of the first vocalists to consistently introduce rapping into a rock context, yet over time he’s become more comfortable with melody. Keidis is another major point of criticism for the band to many people. True, he isn’t a traditionally strong singer, but he is certainly distinct and a great performer. His lyrics often seem unclear or juvenile, but at the same time his abstract associations build upon themselves to conjure unique images that strike to the heart of an emotion. While I agree that Keidis is the weak link of the group, they certainly wouldn’t be the same band without him. I think most fans acknowledge this, and take it with knowingly good humor. The Peps have boasted several guitarists and drummers over the years who have each added their own spice to the proceedings; Chad Smith has been a reliable beatmaster since 1989, while their most frequent and successful six-string man John Frusciante has come to be acknowledged as one of the most brilliant guitarists of his generation.
At the end of the day, a little band that started as a side project between friends has built up into an alt-rock institution. The musical chemistry and genuine personal love between the Red Hot Chili Peppers, forged through both immense success and unfathomable tragedy, has spawned great, versatile music over the course of their career. We’re due for another release to come out on April 1st called Unlimited Love. With Frusciante back in the fold for the first time in a decade, expectations are high. No matter what we get, I’m confident that it will enhance the ongoing saga of one of the best bands of our time.
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I Digress: An Unvarnished Take on the Taylor Swift v. Damon Albarn Songwriting Controversy
The floodgates are opened, and there is no turning back. The social media mob is out in full force. Someone wrongly criticized Taylor Swift. On Tuesday, it was revealed that as part of an interview with The LA Times, British musician Damon Albarn stated that he doesn’t believe that Taylor Swift writes her own songs.
Some background. Damon Albarn was the lead singer for Nineties alt-rock band Blur, and since the new millennium is primarily known for being the lead creative force in the virtual hip-hop band Gorillaz. He’s also been part of supergroup The Good, The Bad & the Queen with The Clash’s Paul Simonon, The Verve’s Simon Tong, and Tony Allen, who played with Fela Kuti. He also put out The Rocket Juice & The Moon, a collaboration with Flea and Tony Allen, as well as a string of collaborations with various African musicians. On top of all that, Albarn sporadically releases music under his own name. Needless to say, he has had a varied, influential, and in all regards successful career in the music industry for about 30 years.
Taylor Swift needs no introduction. If you have followed anything about music or popular culture at all over the past 15 years, you know who she is. The country-turned-all-around-pop star has amassed an amazing amount of commercial and critical success on the back of her personal songwriting and stylistic evolution. She’s also just as notable for the control she exerts over her image and career compared to many other female stars, as well as several high-profile relationships and celebrity feuds. I can confidently say, with no reservation, that Swift is one of the biggest celebrities in the world, by any measure.
If there is one thing Swift’s massive army of fans, dubbed “Swifties,” will tell you, it’s that she writes her own songs. This has been foundational to her narrative and persona from the beginning, and a big reason why her success is so lauded in the mainstream. It’s truly perplexing, then, why Albarn would so confidently state otherwise.
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Five Best Albums of 2021
This entry comes a little late into the new year. I tried to tally up a bit year-in-review like I did for 2020, but I couldn’t. I’m not sure what it was, but I didn’t listen to nearly as much music in 2021 as I did in 2020. If I had to guess, it probably has something to do with the fact that I wasn’t sitting at home for the entire year. During lockdown, there wasn’t much to do but listen to new releases. Now that life has moved closer to normal (although we are by no means out of the woods) my time was filled with other things. Visiting with friends, heading out of a bar, and, egads, actually going into work monopolized more of my time this year.
So I don’t have 20 albums that I recommend from this past year. Sorry. I published more individual reviews this year as music was released, so look back at my recent few posts to see a few albums that certainly would have ended up on such a list. I do, however, have my best 5 albums of 2021, listed by order of release. I’ve included a playlist at a bottom that contains a couple choice selections from each. Even though I didn’t sample as much, I stand by these picks as much as anything. If you missed them, do yourself a favor and check them out. Or, use this as a reminder to revisit them, as I surely will be doing in between whatever 2022 throws our way.
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My 10 Favorite Things about the Explosive “Spider-Man: No Way Home” [Spoilers]
After the world-breaking success of Avengers: Infinity Wars and Avengers: Endgame, I felt like the Marvel Cinematic Universe should wrap it up. They already brought together most of their iconic heroes, intertwined over a decade of movies into a cohesive whole, and managed to tell an epic storyline that actually delivered on all of its promise. The climax has been reached; what’s the point of doing more? Surely, I thought, everything else will seem underwhelming in comparison.
In a way, Marvel Studios and MCU head honcho Kevin Feige felt the same. For the next phase of their MCU, instead of trying to build up for another decades long epic story line, they looked around at the myriad colorful characters and outlandish possibilities of the comic book world and said, “Let’s have some fun.”
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Peter Jackson’s “Get Back” Documentary Is More than Beatles Fans Could Have Ever Hoped For
[This contains spoilers, in the sense that I talk about stuff that happens in the Get Back documentary. I don’t think this takes away from the fun of actually watching it as there is no “story” to spoil. Yet if you want to freshly encounter everything on your viewing, be warned.]
Everything about the story of The Beatles is legendary. Their early days playing dive bars in Liverpool and Hamburg, their meteoric rise to fame and frenzied arrival in America. Their record breaking concerts, their extraordinary studio creativity. Even the members themselves stand like caricatures in our cultural imagination: John Lennon, the peace loving hippie with a piercing wit who also battled personal demons that haunt him and his public perception. Paul McCartney, the eternal optimist, the people pleaser, the only one who wanted to be a star, and probably one of the greatest musicians of the 20th Century. George Harrison, the sensitive one, drawn to spirituality and displaying a wry aloofness. Ringo Starr, the goofy everyman, along for the ride and loving every minute of it. Oftentimes these personas obscure the fact that The Beatles were actually people, living their lives one day at a time, with all the tedious minutiae that entails. We fans have read about events and moments in their career again and again, always yearning to be a fly on the wall, or to just be able to hang out with the band for one day in the studio.
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“Henki” Presents an Oddball Fantasy from Richard Dawson & Circle
It’s very uncommon nowadays to find a music release that is genuinely different from anything that has come before. Or at least, find music that is different enough from what’s around that it feels fresh. Henki, by a collaboration between English folk singer Richard Dawson and Finnish rock band Circle, is just such a release.
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Mastodon Consolidate Their Powers on the Expansive “Hushed and Grim”
No one doubts that Atlanta’s Mastodon is one of the best and biggest metal bands on the current scene. They have consistently put out engaging and complex music for their entire career, music that manages to be at once brutal, melodic, and thematically cohesive. However their past few studio releases have slowly shifted away from the bludgeoning aggression that made their initial run so gripping, towards a more mainstream sound that can fit (maybe, slightly) on the radio. Don’t get me wrong – it’s not bad stuff. Like I said, Mastodon is one of the best metal bands going, and their recent stuff is no exception. It just hasn’t been as heavy as the first half of their career.
Last year, the band released the compilation Medium Rarities, which rounded up unreleased tracks and stray live cuts from throughout their career. The included material is much more of a piece with their early stuff than the polished constructions of late. In a word, it’s raw. This made me wonder if the band was turning back to their roots, getting in touch with the aggression that made them belles of the headbanger’s ball.
This brings us to Hushed and Grim, their newest LP – a double album, no less. Inspired by the death of their longtime manager from cancer, it is a rumination on death and remembrance. Mastodon is no stranger to concept albums; in fact, almost every record they’ve ever put out has a unifying theme. They’ve never done one that’s so long, however, but all in all the double album format gives them time to stretch out, incorporate almost every facet of themselves, and put together a fantastic return to form.
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Courtney Barnett Winds Her Way to Acceptance On “Things Take Time, Take Time”
Since her stellar 2015 debut, Aussie indie rocker Courtney Barnett has staked out her territory in a very specific sound. Her lyrics are rambling observations about the minutiae of everyday life and her delivery is conversational; yet the songs are greater than the sum of their parts. Over alternatingly ragged and lackadaisical guitar, she perfectly encapsulates the feeling of aimlessness and self-doubt, zooming in on the very real emotions that can be found within the minutiae. Her first album, Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit caught fire in the indie rock world. Its lead singles “Pedestrian at Best” and “Elevator Operator” are the best encapsulations of what makes her approach so fresh. There really isn’t any posing or pretensions – it’s just her, and she’s welcome.
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Then Play On 