Archives for : Music Reviews
Posted by :Jon On : November 4, 2016
Category: Music Reviews
It's about a month old at this point, and therefore ancient internet history, so this post will have limited appeal. But as the resident stalwart Green Day fan around these parts I really feel the need to get some words published about this album. I'll be honest, it's more of a catharsis/venting thing for me than a straightforward music review. That's because it's this album – the twelfth1This could actually be considered the sixteenth album if you include B-sides collection Shenanigans, side project albums by The Network and Foxboro Hot Tubs, and two live albums. full length studio album – that marks the point Green Day started sucking in earnest.
Allow me to explain that, before we get to the review. So, maybe it goes without saying that among punk rock fans, Green Day has always kind of been a pariah. It's a tension that I've dealt with for over 15 years. And even to those who once considered themselves fans, there have been a few points at which people have declared that they "lost it". Maybe it was the commercially disappointing Warning, or the quasi-American Idiot sequel 21st Century Breakdown, or the overstuffed, underwhelming Uno, Dos, Tré triple album. But to me, Warning is their greatest album ever, 21st Century Breakdown is a worthy follow up to American Idiot (which is undeniably a masterpiece), and the trilogy, well… The trilogy was indeed overstuffed with mediocre tracks, but also dotted with a few great ones. It was a failure of ambition and overconfidence, which is at least admirable if not especially rewarding.
But Revolution Radio is another story… The failure of this album is a new kind of failure for Green Day: failure to be true to themselves.
Christmas Music Factoids
Posted by :Jon On : December 13, 2014
I felt a little bad about my only Christmas music post being a negative one, even though complaining is more or less the purpose of this site. I considered countering Top Five Worst Christmas Songs with Top Five Best Christmas Songs, but the more I thought about it the more I felt that such a post wouldn't be remotely interesting. Favorite songs are so subjective, and there's only so many ways of saying "I like this song – it reminds me of Christmas."
In the course of researching the last article I found myself wondering about the origins of a lot of the famous Christmas standards that play on continuous repeat every December. The religious songs, of course, all developed from hymns, but what about the secular ones? Many of them are so old and have been recorded by so many artists few people know where they originated.
Since it's become such a go-to conversation starter for me this month, I thought I'd share some random facts about famous Christmas songs that came up in my Wikipedia perusing:
The Five Worst Christmas Songs
Posted by :Jon On : December 6, 2014
Category: Lists, Music Reviews
I know… this seems like yet another excessively negative article, but sincerely, I love Christmas music! I was going to actually first write a Top Five Christmas Songs list, but it would be too hard to limit it to only 5 – and, I wouldn't have anything terribly interesting to say about them.
But most people out there have some level of a love-hate relationship with Christmas music. It's a guilty pleasure, one that has so many ways of being off-putting, and invokes a lot of conflicting emotions. I find that despite its excessively saccharine, commercial nature, I'm all about Christmas music during the month of December (and ONLY the month of December). The problem is there are only so many mainstream songs about Christmas, and terrestrial radio only puts a relatively small number of those on constant rotation. And some of them are just terrible…
Five Moving Punk Songs
Posted by :Jon On : July 10, 2012
Punk rock isn't really known to be a genre of music that trades in "moving" songs. But a big part of what I love about the genre is the tendency to subvert expectations. The single biggest aspect that draws me to any type of music (or any form of art for that matter) is honesty, or at the very least, perceived honesty. I feel like there's a lot of honesty in punk music, and it's that honesty that makes the songs on this list what they are.
If there's one major thing all these songs have in common, it's that they were all written by bands that weren't known for (and maybe still aren't known for) writing songs you'd describe as "moving". It's not that they lacked honesty or passion, far from it, but they were all bands that traded more in traditional, raw punk rock sounds. By recording these songs they subverted my expectations in a meaningful way, and I think that nearly any listener can hear these songs and feel what the band was trying to get across. Indeed, "feeling" is what makes these songs stand out so much.
…And Out Come the Wolves – Review
Posted by :Jon On : November 26, 2011
Epitaph Records, 1995
Rancid is not my favorite band. They're up there, probably in the top 5, but not number one. However, I do think that their 1995 album …And Out Come the Wolves is the best punk album ever recorded. And as the best example of my favorite genre, it gets the title of "Best Album" from me without question.
It meets all the criteria of a great album. I can listen to it any time, as many times as I feel like and never get tired of it. It gets better the more I listen to it. There are no tracks I feel like skipping. It brings me back to a nostalgic place and several individual tracks conjure specific memories, and all of good times. Most importantly, it captures a band at their perfect creative peak, when their musical talent was mature, the environment was primed, and they struck while the iron was hot. Brilliant music was simply effortless for Rancid in 1995. It was as though people were just waiting for this exact album to drop.
The record kicks off with one of the most famous, blistering opening tracks in punk music history, Maxwell Murder. For all of its one and a half minute runtime it crackles with energy, and halfway through, lets the whole world know exactly how good a bass player Matt Freeman is with perhaps punk's first virtuoso bass solo. I've told people about this bass solo before and had them scoff at the idea, only to be silenced the moment they heard it. I've been playing bass guitar for more than 10 years and I still can't play this solo.
After that, the gears switch to mid-tempo, perfectly catchy punk rock with The 11th Hour, priming you well for Roots Radicals – widely considered one of the best punk songs ever written. Of course, I'd agree. It might be the best. I still remember the first time I heard this song. I'd listened to a little punk rock before, mostly of the Green Day/Offspring/NOFX variety, and while Rancid would find themselves in familiar company with those bands, before hearing Roots Radicals I never considered myself a "punk fan". This one song converted me. The chorus is the definition of the word "hook" – it's irresistible.
I didn't think it would get any better than that, but then I was hit by Time Bomb – Rancid's first recorded foray into ska (on full-length albums at least. I Wanna Riot may have come before, but was a B-side). Coming from Operation Ivy, Tim Armstrong and Matt Freeman were adamant that Rancid would be straight-up punk, not another ska band. Fortunately for me, they couldn't resist the pull for too long. If Roots Radicals is a perfect punk song, Time Bomb is a perfect ska song. Upbeat, extremely energetic, and ridiculously catchy.
I could describe every one of the 19 tracks on this record with the same level of passion, but that would be a little too self-indulgent. Suffice to say, there isn't anything approaching a dud on this entire album. It's got Olympia, WA, a touching but energetic ode to the Pacific Northwest. It's got Ruby Soho, probably Rancid's most famous single, with the unforgettable line "Echoes of reggae coming through my bedroom wall, havin' a party up next door, but I'm sittin' here all alone". Daly City Train and Old Friend are another pair of amazing ska songs, bookending Journey to the End of East Bay (another ode to the Northwest I suppose) with its instantly legendary bass line. Wolves even knows when to slow it down, such as in The War's End, which begins with Lars Fredrickson's solo guitar and voice singing about Sammy, the punk rocker, whose father never understood him: "went into his room and smashed his Billy Ratt record, didn't want him to hear that Communist lecture". They're not particularly subtle or amazing lyrics, but they're real. Misunderstood punk rockers are the type of thing a band like Rancid should be singing about in 1995, and they nailed it effortlessly.
The sequencing of the album is flawless as well. Years ago I used to believe that the one and only flaw of Wolves was that Avenues and Alleyways should have closed the record. I no longer believe that to be true. While it does feel like a great "final track", I've started to perceive it more like the final scene of a film, with the actual last track The Way I Feel being the music that plays through the credits. Going through the album from beginning to end, the energy level ebbs and flows at the right spots, moving faster or slower, going from punk to ska, and switching between personal subject matter and classic punk rock defiance with ease. The two frontmen, Tim and Lars, have never worked together so seamlessly. While later Rancid records tended to alternate between "Tim songs" and "Lars songs" (Tim songs becoming more prominent as the band went on for some reason), on Wolves, they are both heard together on most tracks, either alternating verses or sharing the mic. It makes the album sound so much more powerful and dynamic.
Rancid has never topped this record after 16 years (the very next record, Life Won't Wait, came the closest, but was just a tad too experimental for most). While some fans will certainly refute that, the fact that every Rancid album since has been accompanied with the query "as good as And Out Come the Wolves?" by the press shows that they are still under its shadow. I can imagine this being frustrating for a band, but how many people get the opportunity to create something that earns universal acclaim? I can think of worse fates.
And seriously, that bass solo will melt your face off.