R.E.M. – A Personal Reflection

When R.E.M. made the typically dignified announcement that they were disbanding after 31 years, my first reaction was almost a sense of relief that they had managed to complete their career without ever embarrassing themselves, and by extension, without embarrassing me and the other fans that had made the journey with them.

Even allowing for one album that maybe didn’t reach the highest of standards that they had set themselves (Around The Sun, although it still has a couple of golden moments), they never really went through any extended slumps or released a series of albums that had me questioning the validity of my support. That’s a remarkable achievement in three decades of any creative pursuit.

My second reaction was a kind of bemused comprehension that I had been a fan of this band for over 28 of those 31 years. That was kind of scary.

Even as a card-carrying, rock music, fan-boy tragic, and someone for whom the “music industry” (or some version of it) has arguably provided a career for around twenty of the last thirty years, it came as a jolting realization that almost thirty years had passed since I had first become enthralled by the mysterious murmurings of Michael Stipe’s vocals and the irresistible chiming of Peter Buck’s guitar on those formative early records, Chronic Town (EP), Murmur and Reckoning. And it’s even more remarkable that my fascination is no the worse for wear.

My introduction to R.E.M. came at Monash Records, the on-campus record shop at Monash University, Clayton, where I was studying Economics and Law. I spent way too much time in that record store and way too little time in the library, although the subsequent path my life took probably makes a lie of that statement. It was at Monash Records that I bought those first three releases (at the urging of the black haired dude, who wanted so much to look like Robert Smith) and by the time 1985 and Fables of the Reconstruction had ticked around I was taking my first tentative steps into music writing with the Monash student newspaper Lots Wife.

In response to Fables of the Reconstruction, this is what I breathlessly came up with: “It is an album of magic and enchantment. Michael Stipe’s lyrics are spawned from the tales and fables of the mystical deep south and follow a thread that winds through America’s proudest and most honest history leading through times of betrayal and off into the unknown. Fables is overwhelming: from the disturbing melancholia of the haunting Rickenbacker guitars, from the intrinsic acknowledgement of the power inherent in the lyrics mythological roots.”

I ‘ve got absolutely no idea what that last line means but it was clear that I had found what might have been the love of my musical life! In that year I named Fables as one of my five best albums of the year. To carbon date that time emphatically, you’ll be interested to know that Paul Kelly’s Post was another of that select group. I still find myself talking about Fables of the Reconstruction. I recently interviewed the albums producer Joe Boyd who is about to curate a couple of shows celebrating the music of Nick Drake in Australia, and I couldn’t help but devote part of that interview to his work on that album.

The fact that I discovered R.E.M. when I was at university mirrored the experience of thousands of college kids all around the world. In America R.E.M. was the quintessential college band and in fact have been credited with stimulating the rise in significance of college radio, and with it, the rise of independent labels and the whole indie rock scene. “But for R.E.M. …”, has been the opening line of many an obituary and tribute in the last couple of weeks.

Parallel to the emergence of the indie scene, both in America and here in Australia came whole cottage industries of street press, community radio and other self-starting mediums that realized that you didn’t have to wait for the permission of corporate giants in order to dare to exist. Sound familiar?

There may not even have been InPress magazine if it weren’t for R.E.M. When I was writing for Lots Wife, I realized that I wanted to write about music on an on-going basis. I wasn’t going to let a pesky thing like such as a career as a lawyer stop me. My all-time favorite artist was Bruce Springsteen, but, by 1985, people like Dave Marsh and Griel Marcus and Robert Christgau had pretty much mined that territory, and really anything that came after them was simply piggy-backing on their words, and offering re-assessment. But R.E.M. came along and provided the perfect music for the nascent street press. They were the perfect soundtrack to the generational change that was sweeping across music and the media that rode that wave. This was music that was “mine” and I felt like it was my time to set the agenda and that my efforts as a tastemaker were grounded in a notion of how a new band stood up when compared to R.E.M. Starting InPress was my expression of my own little indie revolution and it’s no accident that the news pages of InPress eventually came to be titled “What’s The Frequency?”

R.E.M. also managed to soundtrack elements of my personal life as well. I vividly remember being on the wrong end of a painful (well, as a 20 something year old, it felt painful) relationship break-up and responding by changing my answering machine message to the chorus of The One I Love – to the extent that the song actually had a chorus. I felt like I was the only one in the world who realized that the first R.E.M. song to actually use the word “love” was in fact a bitter, anti-love song – and that they key line in the lyric was the brutally dismissive “another prop has occupied my time”. Of course I wasn’t the only one who realized that and all across the globe there were inner city romances disintegrating to the sound of Stipe anguished “Fire” refrain. I’m not sure whether the object of my angst ever realized that she had been smote with such a cruel sword. In all probability she never even called and even heard the message, let alone divined its hidden meaning! It wouldn’t have been near as effective by SMS!

But that ushered in a period where my romantic world was divided into two distinct camps – girls who liked R.E.M. and those who didn’t. For a period of time, only the former would have any hope of achieving a relationship of substance with this little black duck. I’ve seen other writers reflect on similar positions since the news of the bands break-up broke, and I have to wonder if the band themselves realised that they were responsible for drawing the emotional battlelines for a generation of young men trying to find a roadmap through the rocky paths of their indie-rock eighties relationships. It sounds like the kind of thing that Craig Finn, of The Hold Steady would write a song about – if he hasn’t already!

When R.E.M. signed that monstrous deal with Warner, that made them at least notionally the “biggest band in the world” there was a pervading sense of validation amongst the ‘street press’ generation – their heroes had come in from the cold, they had won and they had done it on their terms with their precious and hard-earned credibility intact. When R.E.M. won, we all had won. See, there was a way to beat the system by working within it. I don’t think its any accident that the bands last album Collapse Into Now was the final album of that deal. By choosing to disband after delivering that album, albeit to a much smaller buying public than that which had voraciously consumed Automatic For The People, Green or Out of Time, the band have again showed their sense of honor. They signed on, they delivered what they agreed to and they duly completed what was expected of them. I’m sure with the seismic shifts that have occurred within the industry in the last decade it would have been easy to try and remove themselves from a system that they could have declared to be broken and ‘go underground’ like Radiohead did, but it seems there was a morality about seeing that deal to its conclusion that informed their process.

R.E.M. have become synonymous with doing things correctly, tastefully and respectfully. In a business littered with glorious flame-outs they have become a beacon for longevity and respectability – not terribly rock n’ roll to be sure, but many young bands and their managers could still do worse than asking themselves “What would R.E.M. do?” when faced with difficult career decisions.

I met Peter Buck a couple of times. The first time was when the band toured Australia for the second time. In Melbourne they played at the Myer Music Bowl. I had interviewed Peter on the phone prior to the tour for InPress and in the course of that conversation he had expressed his love of Brisbane band the Go-Betweens and his interest in acquiring their early singles on vinyl. I had befriended Peter  Leak,the manager of R.E.M.’s touring support band Grant Lee Buffalo, and I’d given him my copies of the Go Between’s releases to pass onto Peter. Backstage with Peter after the show I was introduced to the R.E.M. guitarist, who politely thanked me for my gift and we chatted about music for a few minutes. Buck would always be comfortable chatting about music. Many years later I met him again as he leaned on the bar at the Central Club in Richmond waiting to play with Robyn Hitchcock, one of the many artists that he consistently plays with. He still had the Go-Betweens singles (amongst his collection of 10000). Nice bloke. Music Fan.

I’ve never met Michael Stipe or Mike Mills. Particularly in the case of the former I feel like I’ve known him for a long time from his songs….and not known him at the same time. Such was the intrigue of their music that there was always another nuance to be found, even on songs you’d listened to a hundred times. One frequently overlooked element was the humor of Stipe’s lyrics. Some of his asides and references were incredibly funny to me and the fact that he was able to come up with these gems and on the same album tear your heart out with a song of alienation or activate you with a statement of social or political discontent was a huge part of their appeal. Their evolution from the awkward but endearing guitar-pop shimmer of Murmur to a band capable of songs as subtle and majestic as Everybody Hurts, All The Way To Reno, Imitation of Life or Walk It Back is extraordinary.

There was always something completely genuine in the way the band and their support organization conducted themselves. From the mature way they dealt with the loss of original drummer Bill Berry, to their continued activism in their own local community and on selected global concerns, to Peter Buck’s frequent musical contributions to other favored artists (which showed he was still a record collector and a fan at heart) to Michael Stipe’s championing of independent filmmakers and his passion for the work of his multi-generational peers such as Patti Smith and Kurt Cobain, R.E.M. seemed to grow older with grace, aplomb and without a hint of desperation. They became adults in a youth oriented world but they did so without becoming parodies of themselves. Even when audience numbers dropped away, as was inevitable they would, there didn’t appear to be a need to panic. It was what is was and they would simply get on with it. The civilized way that they dealt with questions about Stipe’s sexuality was a example of their enlightened ways that should be a precedent for those who followed.

R.E.M. simply never let us down, and there’s not many band’s that can claim that over an extended period. And thankfully it didn’t take somebody dying to make us realize the significance of their body or work and the spirit in which it was made. That’s why their break up leaves me with only slightly mixed feelings. Their final album, Collapse Into Now was one of their best and it showed that they had plenty left in the tank; it wasn’t the album of a band staggering towards the finish line like a marathon runner with the jelly leg wobbles. The album left me wanting more, but isn’t that the most legitimate and best founded showbiz tradition? It was a clever album too- when I first heard it I thought it sounded like a self-tribute – there were songs on it that seemed to draw inspiration from just about every previous album in their catalogue. Whether this was intentional or not, it now works supremely well as a parting gesture. On All The Best, Stipe sings, “Let’s sing and rhyme/Let’s give it one more time/Let’s show the kids how to do it/ Fine, fine, fine/Fine. When the final song, Blue, draws to a close the guitar motif from the album’s opening track Discoverer returns closing the full circle on the album, in the way that the album perhaps closes the full circle on their career. A Perfect Circle indeed.

So now there is a full stop on this long, rambling, beautifully constructed and always meaningful sentence. They’ve chosen to stop at a time when stopping made perfect sense. There’s a Greatest Hits package due to arrive in November, and I’d imagine that for the record collector in Peter Buck there will be a temptation to mark the anniversary of certain albums with re-releases and the uncovering of lost recordings, demos and alternative versions.  There’s some wonderful live recordings available as audio and visual releases and I’m sure all three active members will remain active in other configurations. And if they don’t, that’s OK too.

I still want to name a racehorse Cuyuhoga, because I like the sound of the word and I still want It’s the End of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine) played at my funeral, whenever that might be. Those friends that show up to hear it will look kinda silly bouncing around on their walking frames. But that’ll be their problem.

 

John Wesley Harding New Album Coming

Now 19 albums and three novels into a compelling career, John Wesley Harding is about to release The Sound of His Own Voice. Recorded at the Type Foundry in Portland, Oregon, the album was produced by Harding and Scott McCaughey (The Minus Five, The Baseball Project, R.E.M.) and mixed by Tucker Martine (My Morning Jacket, The Decemberists, Spoon).

It features the all-star King Charles Trio (John Moen, Chris Funk, Jenny Conlee and Nate Query), all members of The Decemberists, Peter Buck of R.E.M. and McCaughey.

Rosanne Cash, Laura Veirs and John Roderick (The Long Winters) also lend their vocal talents to the record.

John Wesley Harding is an inveterate and ingenious multitasker, combining twin careers as an acerbic and articulate “gangsta folk” (his term) singer-songwriter and an acclaimed novelist. On his CDs, he juggles musical styles that include sharp, witty originals, traditional folk songs, even his own convincing imitations of old ballads. Acoustic, electric, a cappella, solo or with full band, the man known as “Wes” has covered a lot of territory with no signs of slowing.

He started out as Wesley Stace (and remains so for his writing duties), born in Hastings, England, in 1965 to a mother who taught singing and a father who was a classics scholar. Then there was pop music – the Beach Boys, David Bowie – for him to listen to. And then there was Bob Dylan, whose songs changed 14-year-old Wes’s life (and future performing name).

After completing his degree in English Literature at Cambridge University, Wes yielded to the call of songwriting and performance, crafting his own music and pomposity-puncturing stage presence. A subsequent move to London thrust him before larger audiences as the opening act for such diverse artists as John Hiatt, Hothouse Flowers and Ted Hawkins.

Signed by the UK’s Demon Records, ironically the home of Elvis Costello, to whom Harding was initially compared, Wes and his manager made the strategic “mistake” of his recording his first album, It Happened One Night, at a live show: “I’d done a total of about thirty gigs before I recorded my debut album; the songs were live, so no one wanted to play them on the radio; I was writing a lot at the time, so I was bored of these songs by the time it came to record Here Comes the Groom (his first US release and second CD overall, described in the L.A. Times as “the first great rock album on the ’90s”).

It Happened One Night did serve to establish Harding as a worthy link in the chain of personally aware, politically conscious, and painfully observant modern songwriters that connects Dylan, Springsteen, Costello, Bragg and a shortlist of others. Critics were quick to notice: “His eloquence can be gut-wrenching. [The album] captures something you won’t find . . . almost anywhere else: the sheer joy of performing” (Creem)

 

Robyn Hitchcock Interview

Robyn Hitchcock is one of the perennially interesting figures in contemporary music. A masterful artist in his own right Hitchcock is one of the many great performers taking part in Way Too Blue – The Songs of Nick Drake this November. We spoke to him about this and other matters.

HHMM: You keep finding excuses to come down here.

RH: Well the excuses find me, which is very nice. It’s not a short journey as you know, but there seems to be reasons for people to invite us over which is nice.

HHMM: This time it is to be a part of the Nick Drake shows. How did you come to be involved in those – having already done this show in the UK and Europe?

RH: It’s really Joe Boyd. Joe produced the first two Nick Drake albums which he talks about in his book White Bicycles. Joe and I actually have a show called Chinese White Bicycles where Joe reads from his book I sing the shows I grew up listening to that he was involved with, be it by Nick Drake or the Dylan or the Incredible String Band or Pink Floyd. So Joe and I have known each other for a long while and I’m one of his trusties and one of his regulars. There was a prototype for this about ten years ago and it was one of the first sort of ‘collective’ shows that was done. Kate St John was involved in that and she is the musical director in this. I sang a couple of songs in that one. But this started to take off again about two years.

HHMM: And of course Kate St John (she of Dream Academy fame) as part of the spiderweb that surrounds you also appears on your last album Propeller Time.

RH: Yes, she does, well observed. And we got in touch again because of the Nick Drake stuff. She and Neil MacColl, who is also on the Way Too Blue shows are on that album. Neil plays guitar and sings a great version of Northern Sky and he and I play guitar on a song called Free Ride which Green and I duet on.

HHMM: Nick’s songs have typically been described as ‘despairing’ and ‘depressing’ and I did read a quote from you that said that despair was  your default setting. Is that how you are able to relate to Nick’s songs?

RH: Partly, I suppose. I don’t know how desperate they are. They were written by a man who felt like he didn’t belong in the world and he left it very early so I guess the answer is ‘pretty desperate’ , but at the same time it is the despair of the English middle-class living room, where nothing is really spoken out. It’s not the sort of despair of John Lennon, or even of Roger Waters, it’s a very passive kind of doom. But its also beautiful, what is produced out of that is beautiful. It’s a translation of that discomfort into something more positive. You speak of spiders making webs or oysters making pearls and there has to be some disturbance to create something beautiful and maybe that’s so. You need something to motivate you and what motivates you may not be pleasant, but he translated his despair into things of beauty. That’s one of the great things about being able to carry this show around really, it’s something that came out of somebody a long time ago who never thought anything was going to come of it. He didn’t ever have a girlfriend, he probably never had sex or not as we know it. There’s no footage of Nick Drake, he probably only did seven gigs or something. He could almost have been something that was dreamed up by Joe Boyd. All the evidence of Nick Drakes life is three records, a few outtakes and a few reminiscences of people for whom its increasingly in the past. Yet here we are, 21 of us in Australia, re-inflating the sails on this old craft and making it go places that you never thought it would have gone.

HHMM: When you say that – are you finding things in the songs and learnt more about Nick’s music by getting inside it and playing it and performing it?

RH: It’s a good point. I’m playing three songs and I’m doing my own song I Saw Nick Drake, at the end. The chords are easy on the songs I play. But I listen to a lot and I watch the show every night and I find I’ve got inside them in that way. His music is quite sophisticated and I think it was too sophisticated for me as a teenager and I think it was too sophisticated for a lot of the hippie Brits that were listening to music then, because its got these jazz inflections. I was unfortunate that some things don’t immediately unpack yourself, stand up and salute you and punch you in the nose or kiss you on the lips – they take a bit more time. Listening to Bob Dylan or The Beatles or the Velvet Underground for the first time I was immediately hooked, but Nick Drake was so much more a subtle companion. He’s almost like a house that doesn’t have a front door. It’s not something that you can directly approach, but once you get in there it’s hard to get out of.

HHMM: Does it say something about our generational appreciation of contemporary music that we are now able to look at the music of someone like Nick Drake and that we are ready to celebrate it, and analyze it and revise it?

RH: It says that we overlooked him first time and he was good. I can’t think of too many other artists who were completely overlooked in their own time. Since the CD came out people have started to look back either because they are nostalgically going back to the music that turned them on when they were younger, or they are younger people who are enquiring about what went before. Apart from punk there hasn’t really been a generational fault line since the 50’s or 60’s. Rock is one continuous tapestry stretching from Elvis and Bo Diddley up to what is happening now. There are some things that you might not have known about but its all ‘sort of’ current and nothing is really out of date anymore.  In some ways it’s the older the better really and stuff doesn’t really get discarded like it used to. It seems like about 15 years after something has occurred it becomes an icon in the discos or something!

HHMM: I’m finding that people in their twenties are much more receptive to listening to music from the 60’s and 70’s than the people in their twenties say, 10 or 15 years ago.

RH: Oh yes, the graves are open. Arguably the further back you go the fresher pop, rock, folk whatever it was, sounds. Joe Boyd isn’t impressed by modern pop or indie rock music. He feels like it’s not part of the volcanic eruption that it always was when he was working in that world. He saw some particularly exciting fireworks go off. He was there was Bob Dylan went electric and he was there for the early Pink Floyd, so he saw some incredibly exciting stuff. He witnessed the transformation of Fairport Convention from people who wanted to sound like the Paul Butterfield Blues Band to people who wanted to be the British equivalent of The Band and discover their own native music. Those sort of musical upheavals just aren’t happening now. There is a steady flow of lava and the talent strands are meshing. You hear music now that sounds like it could be twenty or thirty years old except its got one or two subtle differences. A lot of new music is stuff that older people can catch on to really easily. You can listen to Midlake and the Fleet Foxes and you could be back in 1973 really.

HHMM: With your own work you tend to be a serial collaborator and you tend to collaborate with other serial collaborators like Peter Buck, Scott McCaughey, Jon Brion, Grant Lee Phillips and Nick Lowe. Why is that?

RH: I think the big serialist is Johnny Marr actually! I think its just that after a while you get to know people and if you enjoy playing with them you just say, ‘lets do a session’ or ‘lets form a band’.  I’ve known Peter for a long time and in fact he introduced me to Joe Boyd back in 1985, so there’s always been an excuse for Peter and I to work together. We are not joined at the ankles or anything, but we like to do things when we can. You just sort of run across more people and I finally drifted away from the safe cocoon of my old Cambridge outfit the Soft Boys. I like to try playing with different people and sitting in and discovering a new musical relationship. But having said that I don’t want to discard the old ones. You can’t unfortunately play with everybody all the time.

HHMM: Does it surprise you in a way that you’ve been able to exist so successfully on the fringe of the mainstream as long as you have and that there always is something fresh and new that is there to interest you?

RH: Yeah, I’m surprised I’m still here! I suppose it has become a lot more about other people in the last fifteen years – meeting other people to play with and then performing other people’s songs. Originally I wanted to be a songwriter, That was my mission. And I still do that. I still churn records out and I still stockpile songs. I’m prolific, more than the market needs. If you bring out too many records its hard for people to follow. The last one I put out only in Norway and the one before that was only put out in Britain so I try to make them more market specific. I never thought I was an interpreter and that people would pay money to hear me sing other peoples songs, so in a way that’s quite flattering. I’ve become more of an all-rounder as I’ve got older and I just know more people.  The thing is that musicians just like playing with each other. There might be a really obvious thing that we are overlooking. If you introduce them to each other they will sit down and play.  If they are in a dressing room or in a hotel room they will pull out their instruments and play. If you bring them around to the house for a party they will play. I’ve had more parties in recent years and when you get musicians in they will play. You don’t have to do your own song, or theirs, you can do any song and they will want to play it.  I’d like to take that idea on the road one day.

HHMM: I can see the tour poster now. “Come and see people who enjoy playing music, play music”. Simple!

RH: That’s exactly it. More and more that’s what it’s become more and more for me, bringing people together, bing a sort of ringmaster or just someone who introduces people at parties.  I haven’t courted that role for myself at all, but I think it’s a part of lasting over fifty and rock music itself lasting over fifty.  Rock N’ Roll is an old mans game. You should have a license to be in a band over the age of fifty really.

HHMM: Just as a final thing, can you let me on to what is next for you?

RH: There’s a digital greatest hits coming out. There will be some more Venus 3 but I don’t know when. I’ve got shows in Israel, Norway and Australia. It’s the 21st anniversary of an acoustic album I did called Eye and I’m doing a few versions of that in a couple of places. There’s not the demand for records that there was and although I write songs all the time I’m thinking carefully about when I would record them again. That side of things is less optimistic but the live side of things is looking great really. I’m also definitely plotting some musical things and I hope by the end of next years something will have begun to take root. I’ll say no more.

HHMM: I’m sufficiently intrigued.

RH: Well thank you!

AUSTRALIAN DATES NOVEMBER 2011

SYDNEY OPERA HOUSE Friday 11 November 2011

MELBOURNE RECITAL CENTRE Monday 14 & Tuesday 15 November 2011

 

Collapse Into Now – R.E.M. (Warner)

Much will be written about how this is “the best R.E.M. album since (insert reviewers favorite R.E.M. album here)”, and that’s fine. But in the end that’s going to be more about the reviewer’s view of the back catalogue and their personal point of entry into it, rather than this actual album.

This actual album is a cracker – and it would be a cracker whether the band had a hallowed history or not. It was probably made possible by its predecessor Accelerate, an urgent, punk rock type album of spitfire vocals and discordant guitars – and album that served the purpose of reminding the band that they were still a “rock n’ roll band” rather than an aural art project. (of course, there’s a strong argument that suggests every album is an ‘aural art project’, but I think you know what I mean).  That point defiantly (and definitely) re-established they were able to take a breath and flex their hard earned musical and emotivational muscles on this more broadly landscaped collection. But if you are falling in love with this band all over again via Collapse Into Now, I suggest you go back and re-visit Accelerate and thank it for services rendered.

There’s a lot to love about this album. Yes, there are songs that fans will joyously note remind them of glorious moments from previous moments on previous albums – and indeed that exactly what I thought on having a ‘one listen’ preview several weeks ago – but the longer I live with this album, the more I realize that its more than a collection of (albeit, brilliant) self tributes. Collapse Into Now is cogent and coherent, it takes you on a ‘journey’ more detailed and exhilarating than that completed by a network full of reality contestants (who seem to have stolen that word!).

The members of the band seem to be entirely focused in the making of this album. Peter Buck seems to be re-invigorated in his playing, summoning the best, more tasteful parts he can find whether they are gentle arpeggios or frantic power chords. He even brings out the mandolin both for effect and affect. Any thought that he was saving some of his most inspired parts for his plethora of side-projects is washed away by his work here. Mike Mills provides the vocal parts that feature on many of the best R.E. M. songs his contributions making a song like Mine Smell Like Honey and That Someone Is You, vintage R.E.M. songs.  That former song is almost a perfect encapsulation of the sum of the parts that make this band so beloved, while the latter reminds us that even the most revered of bands shouldn’t be taken too seriously all of the time. That latter quality is something often overlooked when measuring R.E.M.’s appeal. As is Mills. He’s a very white bass player but on songs like All The Best his relentless groove is intoxicating and he provides the platform for Scott McCaughay’s, small but important, keyboard spiral.

Michael Stipe provides us with lyrics (in print!) and a performance that brims with confidence and zest. Even on Walk It Back, an emotive ballad, and one that could have been maudlin, he sounds like it matters more to him than it has in several albums.  Yet on Alligator_Aviator_Autopilot_Antimatter he channels his inner punk and matches it with the chaotic guest vocal of Peaches in a wonderful slice of controlled mayhem. Stipe revisits a couple of his favorite lyrical constructs on Uberlin – namely flying and nocturnalism – and he seems to be relishing the melody of this song that recalls Drive from Automatic For The People, a melody which itself had been partially borrowed from David Essex (or Pylon, or both)

The only song on the album, not having is lyrics printed is Blue, a spoken word beat poet piece that Stipe clearly requires us to listen to, not read. Here he weaves his words around an ethereal Patti Smith vocal contribution that eventually segues back into Discoverer. In a way, it’s the title track, and Stipe’s benediction for this album and the bands place in the world. “I want Whitman proud/Patti Lee proud/My brothers proud/My sisters proud/I want me/ I want it all/ I want sensational/ Irresistible/This is my time and I am thrilled to be alive/Living/Blessed/I understand.”

He couldn’t have summed up the impact of Collapse Into Now better, even if that had been his intent.

The King Is Dead – The Decemberists (Capital)

The latest offering from The Decemberists is less conceptual, but no less satisfying, than previous releases. It’s a collection of songs that individually stand the test of independence and yet still constitute an album of integrity. The reference points are obvious and not even slightly disguised – early REM, Wilco, Neil Young (circa say After the Goldrush) and 10000 Maniacs.

What’s not to like?

It’s an album that rewards a variety of uses. It fits nicely into a comfortable armchair, with the lyric sheet being perused, but is just as useful in the car stereo on a trip down the coast.  I guess that implies that the lyrics, often regarded as somewhat scholarly, still reward close inspection, but if that isn’t your inclination you can use this music as a more instinctive type of companion.

Three songs feature Peter Buck and they are not hard to pick out – Calamity Song sounds like a close descendent of 7 Chinese Brothers while Down By The River borrows liberally from The One I Love.  He also appears on the albums opener Don’t Carry It All and while that doesn’t have such an obvious derivation, it’s just a strong way to open the album. It also features Gillian Welsh and Dave Rawlings, who both appear regularly throughout the album. On All Arise! The pairing of Decemberists’ Colin Meloy and Gillian Welsh almost enters into sublime Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood territory.

In some ways this is a ‘safe’ album in the sense that its doesn’t have a concept that has potential to alienate part of the audience, but that also could be interpreted as simply being an undeniably likeable set of songs. Again, I ask, what could possibly be wrong with that?

There’s a few songs here that are going to create yet more highlights in The Decemberists fantastic live set ( is going to be a live tour de force) and while the success of this album has projected The Decemberists into a higher commercial stratosphere it has done so with their integrity intact.  How many Billboard No. 1 albums can claim that?

It just shows what can be achieved when a band is given a series of albums to actually evolve. The King Is Dead is a satisfying step in that evolution and one that sees The Decemberists confirm their place as a band that matters enough for us to continue to care.

The Baseball Project Hits A Home Run

The Baseball Project is a part-time band consisting of Steve Wynn (Steve Wynn & The Miracle 3, The Dream Syndicate, Gutterball, Danny & Dusty), Scott McCaughey (The Minus 5, Young Fresh Fellows, R.E.M.), Linda Pitmon (Steve Wynn & The Miracle 3, Golden Smog) and Peter Buck (R.E.M.). This stellar group of musicians formed The Baseball Project as a vehicle for songs about…you guessed it… baseball.

Following the success of the outfit’s first album Vol. 1: Frozen Ropes & Dying Quails – the band performed on The Late Show with David Letterman, was featured in the official World Series Program and Sports Illustrated among others – baseball’s sardonic rock chroniclers are back with an even more detailed look at the stories behind the stories of America’s Favorite Pastime. The album Volume 2: High and Inside, its second album of baseball-themed rock n’ roll is released in the US on March 1^st via Yep Roc.

But don’t think you need to be a baseball fan to enjoy this album. The music is some of the best rock n’ roll you’re likely to hear all year – no surprises given the identity of its creators – but even the lyrics will have appeal to any sports fan, or even anyone who likes a good story, well told.

Baseball fans may have already heard select tracks from the album during the 2010 playoffs. “Don’t Call Them Twinkies,” with lyrics & vocals by Craig Finn of The Hold Steady and music by Steve Wynn, made the internet rounds and rocked Target Field during the Twins’ ill-fated run, becoming the unofficial battle cry of the team’s playoff hopes. The McCaughey-penned “Panda & the Freak” accompanied the S.F. Giants’ more successful bid, following the team all the way to its World Series win. But Craig Finn isn’t the only rock royal (and baseball geek) to grace the tapes of Volume 2. The album also features guest appearances by Ben Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie, Steve Berlin of Los Lobos, Yo La Tengo’s Ira Kaplan, Chris Funk and John Moen of The Decemberists as well as longtime friend and musical collaborator Robert Lloyd.

While legends of the game like Pete Rose, Reggie Jackson (“The Straw That Stirs The Drink”) and Roger Clemens (“Twilight of My Career”) certainly get their due,Volume 2 finds band members drilling down even deeper into the Byzantine, lore-laden annals of baseball history. On their sophomore effort the band examines growing older via fallen phenom Mark Fidrych (“1976”), details a tragedy of near-Greek proportion (“Tony”) and exposes the real story behind an infamous play (“Buckner’s Bolero”) – all while laying down riffs that stand alongside anything they’ve done in their myriad other projects.

The Baseball Project will devote much of 2011 to touring in support of this new release, including multiple shows during this year’s SxSW Music Conference in March.

Hitchcock’s Soft Boys Re-Released

After a long hiatus from print and 30 years after its initial appearance on Armageddon Records, The Soft Boys’ Underwater Moonlight is being released in its 10-song original form by the always interesting North Carolina based  Yep Roc label , on CD and 180 gram vinyl. There is a good chance at least the CD will make it too Australia.

This is the first reissue of the album to feature all the bonus tracks (last time taking up 2/3rds of the package) as digital downloads free with purchase. The vinyl release is the first ever reissue of the LP in its original form.

Underwater Moonlight has long been considered a classic record, “Big Star and us were the rickety bridge between the Byrds and REM“, says former Soft Boys’ main man Robyn Hitchcock.

Hitchcock should know. Apart from having a stellar solo career post The Soft Boys he currently tours with R.E.M.’s resident music encyclopedia Peter Buck in his band so Hitchcock’s assessment of The Soft Boys influence is straight from the horses mouth.

Additionally, the first, and rarely reissued Soft Boy’s album, A Can of Bees is also being released with similar bonus downloads. “A red-hot poker up the arse of rock music” was how Julian Cope once described this album. The vinyl version of Bees is the first ever reissue of the LP in any form.

The Soft Boys formed in 1976, dissolved in 1981, and reformed for a 21st anniversary tour and reunion album in 2001. Guitarist Kimberley Rew wrote the perennial summer anthem ‘Walking on Sunshine‘ for his post SB’s band Katrina and The Waves and his songs have been covered by Celine Dion and The Bangles, among others.

Robyn Hitchcock continues to perform around the world, and his most recent record Propeller Time (with the Venus 3) is available on Sartorial Records. Goodnight Oslo, also with the Venus 3, is his latest release on Yep Roc Records. He has also appeared in several Jonathan Demme movies, most recently Rachel Getting Married. His recent tours of Australia with the Venus 3 have provided some outstanding shows.

Tired Pony – The Place We Ran From (Fiction/Shock)

This album is the first from a collaboration instigated by the lead singer of Irish band Snow Patrol, a guy named Gary Lightbody. Apparently Snow Patrol are rather big, primarily as a result of a huge hit called Chasing Cars which achieved recognition via being on a television shows named Grey’s Anatomy.

All of this information is stuff that I was vaguely aware of but I have to admit that the music of Snow Patrol is not something that I’ve had much exposure to. I actually became interested in this album due to the identity of some of Lightbody’s collaborators, most notably Peter Buck (of R.E.M.) and fellow R.E.M. alumni, musician Scott McCaughey and recent producer Jacknife Lee. They are also joined by Richard Colburn of lauded Scottish band Belle & Sebastian.

While Buck has a tendency of popping up just about anywhere there is a studio light on he rarely appears on anything less than interesting and so his involvement here certainly made it worth investigating. It seems as though Lee is a common thread being the producer of both R.E.M.’s vastly under-rated Accelerate album and Snow Patrol’s last few releases.

I’ve read a couple of reviews that suggest that this album was intended to be Lightbody’s nod of country but it ended up sounding not that far removed from Snow Patrol, (presumably without the big hit single)

So…that’s the contextual prologue dealt with!

The musical reference points that seem to leap out at me include The Waterboys, The Decemberists and Coldplay, three bands that at first appearance have in common a sweeping approach to their songwriting tempered by an intelligent use of interesting organic instrumentation and impressionistic lyric writing.

Tired Pony cleverly avoid taking most of these songs into the epic realm and keep the grand gestures to a minimum even though a couple of the songs are almost begging for them. Held In The Arms Of Your Words is one example of this. In the less restrained hands this song could have built into a crescendo but instead it burns slowly to better effect.

Dead American Writers is almost a single with it’s buoyant up-tempo swing while the album’s opener NorthWestern Skies manages to capture the spirit of it’s lyrical content superbly – feeling claustrophobic and a threatened. It’s also one of several songs where Buck’s mandolin is a subtle but effective contributor. Iain Archer (a longtime collaborator of Lightbody’s ) takes lead vocals on I Am A Landslide which becomes the album’s ‘folkiest’ tune but one that inherited some Southern Americana flavour from another subtle Buck contribution, this time on banjo.

The Deepest the Ocean Is is a brooding and very gentle song that it one of the best on the album, and is also notable for having instrumental credits for the respective players of “feedback”, “noise”, “rubber duck” and “typewriter”. I can actually imagine this song on an R.E.M. album circa Reveal or Up.

The album closes with Pieces. This song does take the liberty of building to a more panoramic, sweeping climax and it’s final couple of minutes are more cacophonous with a mass of electric guitars creating a harsher and more abrasive sound. But it does this well and as the album’s closer it is well excused the less restrained approach.

This is an album that gets better each time you play it. There is a lot to take in both lyrically and instrumentally and it certainly manages to avoid the feeling of being an indulgent side-project. I’m not sure what the intentions are for the future of Tired Pony, but if it does transpire to be a once-off project it will have been a completely worthwhile one.