RIYL: Public Image Ltd., Primal Scream, The Clash

Big Audio Dynamite are kind of a “lost” bands of the ’80s. Sure, you may still hear “The Globe” a cut from the band’s second incarnation Big Audio Dynamite II, on retro playlists, but aside from that they’ve all but vanished from the pop culture lexicon, not that they were that big a presence on it to begin with. The band’s measured success remains befuddling when you consider it was Mick Jones’ baby, the group he put together after getting fired from the Clash in 1983.

Hopefully this new Legacy Edition re-issue of the group’s 1985 debut will open the band up for re-evaluation. The importance of This Is Big Audio Dynamite has faded over time, but when it came out it was a technological wonder, the first rock record to embrace the sampling movement of rap music and take it to a direction never heard before. While singles like “E=MC²” and “The Bottom Line” may seem a little quaint now, they were revolutionary at the time in how the took samples from movies and other sources and seamlessly incorporated them into the music. It’s a style you saw resurface just a few years later in bands like Massive Attack and Portishead. Ahead of their time back then, it now sounds dated in the most charming of ways.

The bonus disc is what makes this re-issue really worthwhile though, because while the album versions of their singles were always good, the 12” remixes was where the band really shined. Making the package an even sweeter deal are excellent b-sides such as “Electric Vandal” and the forgotten title track, which is a condensed amalgamation of nearly every sample that appeared on the album. Even the goofier bonuses, such as the vocoder version of “BAD” and the beyond-silly “Albert Einstein Meets the Human Beatbox” are welcome time capsules of a bygone era where stuff like this was groundbreaking and cutting-edge. A must-buy for fans of the band as well as fans of dance-punk who want to see where it all started. (Columbia 2010)

RIYL: Green Day, “Rent,” “Glee”

Here’s the God’s honest truth about the Broadway cast recording of “American Idiot” – it’s neither as good nor as bad as you’ve heard it is. These kinds of projects serve as a knives-out snarkfest for the more weak-willed music critics, who are then assaulted by the band’s faithful followers in the comment sections. Don’t take sides; they’re both right, and they’re both wrong.

The album features Green Day’s landmark 2004 album American Idiot in its entirety – they even included some B-sides from the Idiot sessions – along with a few tracks from the band’s 2009 album 21st Century Breakdown. The backing tracks are by and large Green Day’s original recordings, though “Last of the American Girls” starts off with a knowing wink to “Eleanor Rigby.” This makes for some smooth transitions from CD to the stage, though “Jesus of Suburbia” sports one of the most jarriing key changes you’ll ever hear when it’s the female lead’s turn to sing.

Perhaps the most shocking thing about American Idiot is the fact that Green Day’s original recordings of these songs are in many ways more musical than the musical versions. Stacked vocals are stripped away for the purpose of building to the big choral effect, though they don’t do that big choral effect nearly enough. Indeed, many songs are frankly undersung. The songs are already larger than life; the Broadway versions of them should be massive, like Godzilla-destroying-Manhattan big. The title track pulls a nifty layered vocal build-up during the break, and “Whatsername” capitalizes on the song’s soft-LOUD arrangement to make for a triumphant finale. “21 Guns” is the album’s showstopping moment, with the most theatrical arrangement and a vocal to match. The album could use more moments like them. “Wake Me Up When September Ends” has the pretty string touches, but for a musical about a post-9/11 landscape, that song of all songs should have been sung to the heavens.

The band were unquestionably treading a slippery slope in adapting their music for the stage, and they must have felt pressure to keep the spirit of the originals intact. Ironically, American Idiot could have benefited from a little more tinkering. It’s great to hear a Broadway score rock like this, but it would have been better to see them fully embrace what people love about Broadway in the first place. (Reprise 2010)

Click to buy American Idiot from Amazon

RIYL: Handsome Furs, New Order, The Rapture

On their third release, Montreal trio We Are Wolves polish and refine their unique brand of indie, post-punk and electro to such a shine it’s hard to find another band to compare them to. They’re most reminiscent of It’s Blitz!-era Yeah Yeah Yeahs but they are still strikingly different in the way they combine punk and electronic music. While the YYYs practically abandoned their punk influences to create their dance-happy indie rock, We Are Wolves still embrace it, combining scuzzy garage rock riffs with Moroder-influenced synths in a way that shouldn’t work as well as it does. Invisible Violence is a pendulum of a record, swinging back and forth between rock songs with an electronic edge like the opening track “Paloma” or electronic numbers with a slight rock edge, such as the epic “Reaching for the Sky.” It’s cold and detached while being energetic and in-your-face, like someone gave Gary Numan and fuzzbox and had him go to town. The term “dance-punk” doesn’t fit these guys, they could probably best be described as garage-electro; everything about them is lo-fi, with their wonderfully retro-sounding synths melding perfectly with their scuzzy guitars and howling vocals. This has to be the most hard-rocking, punk-friendly album ever to be obviously influenced by late-’70s disco. (Dare To Care Records 2010)

We Are Wolves MySpace Page

RIYL: Going to White Stripes concerts

Recorded throughout their 2007 Canadian tour, Under The Great White Northern Lights doubles as the White Stripes’ first live album and as the soundtrack to the tour documentary of the same name. A Canadian tour may be an unlikely source from which to cull live material, but it’s clear that Jack and Meg have enthusiasm for their neighbors to the north, since they absolutely shredded it for them.

Under Great White Northern Lights accurately conveys the manic, almost primal, energy of a White Stripes concert. The way the two tear through “Let’s Shake Hands” and “Blue Orchid” is brutal, Meg pounds every beat like it’s her last and Jack practically tears the guitar to pieces with every riff and yells every line with such sincerity and intensity that they all sounds like personal insults directed the person whom he hates the most. The spiteful “Citizen Kane”-inspired jibes of “The Union Forever” sound just as scornful and hate-filled as they did when they first recorded that song nearly 10 years ago. If Jack and Meg are sick of this material, they sure as hell aren’t showing it.

But when they are sick of a song it sure shows. Rightfully tired of “Fell in Love with a Girl,” they try to turn it into a slow jam to mix things up, but without the manic riff that’s present on the album version, that song just falls apart. They also try to turn it into a sing-along during the chorus but throughout most of the album the Canadians suck at audience participation. Their delays in prompted singing cause more than one stumble in Jack’s pacing and when it comes time for quiet songs like “We Are Going to Be Friends” they just don’t know when the hell to shut up. A gaggle of screamers ruin that recording, drowning out Jack’s heartfelt lyrics with constant high-pitched squealing. It’s unbearably annoying.

But when the audience shuts up and when Jack and Meg don’t radically deviate from the source material in distracting ways, there’s little to complain about on this album. Sure, it’s easy to whine about some notable omissions (no “Hotel Yorba,” “The Hardest Button to Button” or “Dead Leaves On The Dirty Ground,” for instance) but instead focus on the rarities that are included. The Dolly Parton classic “Jolene” has been a live staple for the White Stripes since their inception, and this marks the first time it’s been included on an album proper. Same goes for “Let’s Shake Hands,” which was the band’s first release as a single back in 1998. Hardcore fans will more likely care about that than the bigger well-known tracks that are excluded. In fact, what’s probably most maddening about Under Great White Northern Lights is that it’ll have you jonesing even more for new White Stripes. The Dead Weather and The Raconteurs just aren’t cutting it anymore. (Third Man 2010)

The White Stripes’ MySpace Page

RIYL: Dinosaur Jr., Foo Fighters, The Replacements

In the Dark starts out by rolling over you with a wall of guitars that, far from dissonant and buffeting, instead envelops you like the wind before a promising storm, and like some great thunder, the Whigs continue to prove they are an experience not to be missed.

Coming off their well-received second album, Mission Control, and a series of acclaimed live shows (not the least of which was a standout performance at the 2008 SXSW), it is evident that the hard core touring and energetic playing has only invigorated their songwriting. In the Dark is the Whigs’ best album yet, and one that engages from beginning to end.

The album is power rock, through and through, but it never forgets that melody and rhythm shouldn’t be sacrificed for that power. It is the same for the lyrics, as throughout Parker Gispert is clearly singing from those hidden places where anger and regret fester, but he refuses to either rage or mope. There is as much a sense of resolute energy as anything, even when he sings “Kill Me Carolyn” or questions his lust for “Someone’s Daughter.”

Most of the album openly embraces their primary influence, the more hard-rocking post punk of the Replacements (most evident on “Automatic” and “So Lonely,” with no little bit of the Godfathers thrown in there on the title track and the opening “Hundred/Million.” The production is just tight enough and the arrangements original and lush enough to push it beyond any assumed imitation, and the first five tracks are solid Whigs.

Then, just when it feels like you have a handle on the album, they throw you a hard curve right in the middle. “Dying” comes on and everything shifts into a heavy rhythmic chant full of psychedelic influences. It tosses you into dark places only hinted at up until now. That is the flow of the album. An energetic, but evident descent into the viscera of the music, but then the steady, strong drive that leads us back out; an inverted emotional parabola that never slows, but never lets us off the ride, either. Check out “I Am for Real” as the perfect catharsis moment.

In the Dark ends with a mini-jam session of a song, “Naked,” at times minimalist and echoing, while at others a pulsing rocker. It is one of the more inventive and original works that lets the Whigs flaunt their talent, energy and idiosyncrasies.

Check out In the Dark. It is one of the better albums to come along so far this year, and it should win them new fans while pleasing their faithful. Listen loud! ATO Records 2010

The Whigs MySpace page