Spoon Wants My Soul

Spoon's back! I could speak of their history, but I'm among those who already know it and just wanna discuss their new album, They Want My Soul.

The thing that I've loved about Spoon is their brilliant singable melodies and that are draped over surprisingly simple and energetic chord progressions, all with the sandpapery snap of Britt Daniel's voice (see "Small Stakes", or like, any other Spoon song). "Snap" is a good descriptor for Spoon--they're sharp and crack like a Beatlesy whip. The album opener "Rent I Pay" loudly follows this recognizable Spoon formula, and it's awesome--Britt barks and fizzles, his mouth cupping the vowels and cracking the consonants.

"Formula" is also a good descriptor for the band. When I was a younger music critic I thought "formulaic" meant "generic" and that generic was bad. Now I see that all bands are formulaic  in ways unique to themselves. A band's way of doing things is composed of noticeable mainstays. It's what gives bands their "signature sound"--how you know it's them. Spoon's pop formula is totally evident in all of their albums, including this one: hardline beats outlining a simple and clear structure, which is usually contrasted in a song by a noisy instrumental section that sound less composed than everything else. Say the title of Spoon's fifth album "Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga" aloud, and that sound mirrors that of the band: They move expertly fast with extreme precision--ga ga ga ga gah! These songs are pulled off like expertly planned heists. This album's title track, "They Want My Soul," epitomizes this: verse, another half-verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge and outro. Ga ga ga ga GAH! While formulaic, this song still shakes up pop's typical verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-verse-chorus-chorus structure by only hitting the chorus a total of twice and then immediately winding down. Spoon often does do traditional things with small twists like this, which makes their version of traditional surprising. It's one of their great strengths.

But they've mixed up their formula with electronic sounds. The meat-n-potatoes rock of "Rent I Pay" gives way to synthesizers on "Outliers" and "New York Kiss". I struggle with this. Electronic music is something I have yet to connect with, and because electronica is so hot with youngsters now, I associate Spoon's use of electronic elements as an uncharacteristically intentional knock on popularity's door. I have struggled to know what to make of these songs, and with a couple others that strike me as so self-aware that they seem intended to be perceived as Classic Spoon Hits--"Knock Knock Knock" has a chord change that reminded me of alternative rock the first I heard it, and "Let Me Be Mine" just sounded like Spoon on autopilot, nothing but formula without the knick-knacks that spice things up.

But these are struggles I'm coming to terms with. They're consistent with Spoon's tendency to make the traditional surprising. It's a solid album, hard hitting and beautiful, especially beautiful in the singles "Do You" and "Inside Out". These songs are the kind that made me love Spoon to begin with--shining melodies scratched from sandpaper. I don't find this Spoon's "comeback" album as many music rags have opined, but that's not a bad thing: they continue a strong streak of albums here, and make some respectable attempts to shake things up. It's not their best album, but a "not the best" Spoon album is more than good enough, and I'm glad to have it.

"Live to Rise": How Cornell Could Sink Soundgarden

Soundgarden is one of my favorite bands. This is not the late 90's boy band duo who want to bathe with you in a sea--that's Savage Garden. Soundgarden is the Thor of the early-to-mid nineties, falling like a thousand hammers from the sky, plunging into fiery oceans of testosterone, eating raw meat with bare hands. Their 1991 release Badmotorfinger is still (maybe) my favorite album of all time. So when Soundgarden reunited last year after a 1997 breakup and began assembling a new album, I was thrilled into hyperventillation. But. Now that I've heard their first new song in 13-15 years, "Live to Rise," I am sunken with sadness. It was available for about a week on the web, but now I can't find it anywhere. I'll link it when it's around again. In any case, here's why it sucks.

Chris Cornell had (and still sort of has) a lovely, gritty, thick and wailing voice that deserves reverence. Just as significant was his killer vocal lines that wrapped themselves around Soundgarden's chaotic instrumental bombasm and zapped it into another dimension. Cornell's ability to marry melody and powerhouse vocalwork with bizzare musicianship was sublime, and songs like "Superunknown", "Outshined" and "Burden In My Hand" testify to it. Soundgarden was amazing not just because they were musically challenging, but because they found vocal melodic gold in earthquaking songs. Softer tracks too, such as "Mind Riot", "Blind Dogs" and "Zero Chance", exhibit this dance of melodic powers, as does Cornell's work outside of Soundgarden in the 90s and early 2000s. Soundgarden without Cornell would certainly have been a troupe of astoundingly creative musicians that I would surely enjoy, but it is Cornell's presence that sets them apart. Soundgarden was divinely unique and exciting, and compared to most rock acts since, they still are.

But you wouldn't know any of this from "Live to Rise". If you listen to it, do so after you've listened to any of Soundgarden's earlier songs linked above, because you'll hear a marked difference in presence and form. Not an intriguing difference, but a generic one. I, with all due respect, blame Cornell.

I blame Cornell not because of his weakened voice--while noticeably deteriorated from the old days, his voice still steamrolls hugely and every now and then hits those mile-high-choir-boy-waily notes, God love him--but because of his weakened songwriting. While there are strong moments on Cornell's past four albums--Audioslave's last two records Out of Exile (2004) and Revelations (2006), and his last two solo albums Carry On (2007) and Scream (2009)--at large those albums signal an artistic plunge in Cornell's approach to writing melody and song. I issue this criticism with the caveat that artistic developments and explorations and changes are important, and I generally welcome them as a music fan. I don't see myself as a listener who demands that artists stay the same forever. So I feel that Cornell's writing is worse not because it's different, but just because it's bad.

Let me offer an explanation of what and a hypothesis for why this is. Chris Cornell was a brilliant writer who so naturally approached things from such odd and delightful angles that, in order for him to come at songwriting in a new way, he unknowingly, and with the best of intentions, played on none of his strengths and started writing bad music. I have no other explanation for the shift from the grounded melody of Cornell's 90s solo work (see "Seasons", "Sweet Euphoria", "When I'm Down") to the flighty and tuneless inanity of his modern solo material ("Arms Around Your Love", "Safe And Sound", "Killing Birds", "Part of Me"... basically most tracks from Carry On and Scream, as well as many from the aforementioned Audioslave records).

Soundgarden's "Live to Rise" is of this same latter ilk. It sounds like a rewrite of the terrible album opener "No Such Thing" from Cornell's 2007 record Carry On. Line them back to back and all their features match: a blistering opening riff promises treasures and then betrays us, falling into the most disinterested melody of all time sung over spiritless acoustic guitars, and from there finds its way back to the awesome riff (thank heaven) only to be marred (*arg*) by Cornell's lazy attempt at an anthemic chorus. This song could have been written by anyone. It is the first Soundgarden song to ever share the growing characteristic of Cornell's other late music: it doesn't matter! There is no invigorating interplay between complicated rhythms and vocal delivery, no Thor-like battles in the sky. Just a paint-by-numbers, connect-the-dots bid for rock relevance. I was convinced this this band would and could avoid sounding pointless forever--I never worried that they would fail. So maybe I'm just startled, and this long-winded analysis is just me trying to get my breath back. And maybe, as my sister Camilla reminded me recently, I'll end up loving it, since all my current favorite bands sounded stupid to me on first listen.

And it's possible the band won't fall as far and hard as "Live to Rise" suggests: Cornell basically apologized for the song, saying that the upcoming album will deliver on Soundgarden's past promise the way this song doesn't. I hope he's right. But all the trends point to Cornell sinking this Titanic, and if he does, I'll be sad. I'll move on, I'll still listen to Badmotorfinger, and I'll still wear my Soundgarden shirt. But right now, before I listen to "Live to Rise" again in an effort to like it, I need to mourn.

New CD's

Jacob has re-awakened a love of albums in me. Not like, the concept of them...like, the actual physical CD. (If we were legit music critics, we'd talk about the physical vinyl records. But we played "Stairway to Heaven" on our turntable a year ago or so, and it hasn't worked since.)

Anyway, we've gotten a handful of albums lately that we're pretty excited about.

We recently got a DVD of Nirvana's "Unplugged in New York" concert, and realized we should really own this album. In the world of grunge, Nirvana's actually kind of low on our list of favorites, but this album grows on you.

When we got this album, we laid down in the middle of the living room floor, turned out all the lights, and listened to this album from start to finish. Which is a freaking awesome way to listen to an album for the first time. And this is a good album for that. The scope of "Metals" is huge and theatrical, and much less acoustic than Feist's other albums. We listened, we loved it, and then we bought tickets to see Feist in concert in Portland in three weeks.

We haven't listened to this one yet, but the more exposure I get to Tom Waits, the more I love him. (I've decided I want to sing this song in a jazz combo someday. Now I just gotta find me a jazz combo.) When trying to decide which album to get, Jacob said we had to get this one. Sometime in the next week or so, the Chapmans have got a date with the Waits.

Recent discoveries

Jacob and I have two main sources for discovering new tunes: a local radio station (102.9 Mountain...the only decent station in Rexburg), and "So You Think You Can Dance." Here are some recent gems.

FF

This is our new favorite music video. Or at least our current favorite music video. The Foo Fighters are awesome.

Liz's Kicks

So my taste in music is a little eclectic. But here are a few recent discoveries.

What random New Yorkers are listening to

I've always wanted to do something like this. Maybe I'll do my own version on BYU-Idaho's campus sometime...see how they compare. =)