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Depeche Mode: Tour of the Universe 20/21.11.09

December 7, 2010 /

RIYL: motherfucking Depeche Mode
3/5 Stars

On Pack Up the Plantation, the 1985 live album by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, the band slowly eases its way into “Breakdown.” Petty sings the first line “It’s all right if you love me” just above a whisper, at which point the crowd takes over, singing all the way through the first chorus and even splitting vocal duties between the lead vocal and the “Breakdoooooooown!” backing vocals. It’s exhilarating to listen to, because you can feel the rush the audience felt by getting the chance to be the star. After a few beats, Petty humbly tells the crowd, “You’re gonna put me out of a job.”

Which brings us to today’s lesson. Letting the audience sing part of one song is one thing; forcing them to sing multiple songs is another.

It made sense that Depeche Mode would want to document their 2009 world tour. They were playing to gigantic crowds, and they hadn’t released a live album since 1993’s Songs of Faith and Devotion Live. With four albums of new material to showcase – though they chose to only play songs from three, skipping 2001’s Exciter entirely – it was time to run the tape recorders once again. Tour of the Universe 20/21.11.09 documents two shows the band played before what looks like the entire population of Barcelona, and you can see why the crowds were so excited. Despite front-loading the set with what feels like half of the band’s most recent album, Sounds of the Universe, Depeche pulled out some gems for this tour, including a whopping four songs from fan favorite Black Celebration. They also had a live drummer and principal songwriter Martin Gore playing guitar almost exclusively during the shows. What’s not to love?

Dave Gahan, that’s what. He’s too busy playing rock star to actually sing the damn songs. Gahan leaves it to the audience to sing far too much – and sometimes makes them sing the chorus twice in the same song – and low-range vocal melodies, even when sung by tens of thousands, cannot stand up to the sound the band is putting out. When the band launches into “A Question of Time,” the crowd is reaching a fever pitch, so when Gahan has them sing the chorus the first time, they’re only happy to oblige. When he forces them to do it a second time, the response is nowhere near as enthusiastic, and you can actually hear the crowd deflating. If you have cameras rolling, and they just captured you killing the crowd’s buzz while you fed your ego, would you really test the crowd’s patience again?

Sadly, the answer is yes…twice. Gahan does it again on “Policy of Truth” and – this is the unforgivable one – “Enjoy the Silence,” the band’s biggest hit. The arrangement of the song is spectacular, with the band launching into a fantastic breakdown, but Gahan will not sing the chorus. Now, this is one thing to watch in person – which we did, because he did the exact same thing when the band played Lollapalooza last year – but it’s another altogether to watch on a DVD, where you’ll be reaching for the Fast Forward button even on your favorite songs. It’s even worse onthe CD, where it just sounds like a karaoke track and the singer is too drunk to read the lyrics on the Teleprompter. If there is one show where Dave should have sucked it up and sung the damn songs, this is the one.

Then there is the matter of their drummer Christian Eigner. His playing is fine, but his snare drum is positively flat, as if the band is too afraid to sound like the rock band they’re pretending to be. They would have been better off giving the bottom end the thump that a live setting demands. As it is, the drum tracks from Music for the Masses – a 23-year-old album – sound harder than what Eigner plays here. The direction of the show is spotty, too, spending far too much time out of focus or, worse, focused on the fans recording the show on their phones (worst, trend, ever).

This was a golden opportunity to showcase Depeche Mode’s staying power and their status as godfathers of electronic music, but Tour of the Universe, despite a great set list and solid performances (when Gahan deigns to sing, anyway), does not cut it. It’s one of those things where you simply had to be there to get the full effect of the experience. If Dave had sung all of the damn songs, this set would be essential. As it is, it’s diehards-only material.(Capitol 2010)

Depeche Mode MySpace page
Click to buy Tour of the Universe from Amazon

Alternative, Artists, CD Reviews, Concert CDs, Concert DVDs, Dance, Electronica, Pop

Girl Talk: All Day

December 6, 2010 /


RIYL: Popular music

Girl Talk’s albums have always been a Top 40 of sorts for the ADD set, but with All Day he takes it to new heights. His breakthrough album Night Ripper featured samples from approximately 150 songs. His follow-up, 2008’s Feed the Animals, had about 300. All Day‘s massive menagerie of liberated cut-ups and clips tops out at close to 400. At 71 minutes in length, that averages out to about 5.6 songs a minute.

Like all Girl Talk (real name Gregg Gillis) albums, it’s one continuous mix, constantly changing and evolving, so its impossible to rate individual tracks. However, some highlight sections include the opening minute, which combines Ludacris’ “Move Bitch” with Black Sabbath’s “War Pigs”; the brilliant combining of Rihanna’s “Rude Boy” with Fugazi’s classic “Waiting Room,” and an awesome combination of Toadies’ “Possum Kingdom” with vocal samples from about half a dozen different rap tracks.

Nearly anyone with good enough sound mixing software and a basic understanding of time signatures can mix songs together, but Gillis doesn’t only top amateur mash-up artists with his quantity of tracks sampled, but with his inspiration in choosing tracks. But only Gillis has the gumption to mix together ODB’s “Shimmy Shimmy Ya” with Radiohead’s “Creep,” to added unexpected meaning to ODB’s ode of dirty sex and some much needed levity to Thom Yorke’s self-loathing warble.

It doesn’t have the novelty of previous Girl Talk releases – we’ve all heard this before by now. But that doesn’t change the fact that this is a truly awesome mix, and one of his most entertaining to date. (Illegal Art 2010)

Girl Talk MySpace Page

CD QuickTakes, CD Reviews, Dance, Electronica, Hipster

Paul McCartney & Wings: Band on the Run – Deluxe Edition

December 2, 2010 /


RIYL: Paul freaking McCartney


It has been said that, once upon a time, Paul McCartney and Wings were so huge that befuddled youngsters would actually ask their parents, “Hey, did you know Paul McCartney used to be in a band before Wings?” Even as a kid, it always struck me as one of those apocryphal tales that sounded great but that you only ever heard from a friend who heard it from another friend who swore it was true, cross his heart. And now…? Geez, do the kids even know that Wings existed? Given that McCartney formally disbanded the group almost 30 years ago, I’d say the odds are pretty slim. If you’re looking to give them an education, though, there’s simply no better place to start…and, some would say, finish…than 1973’s Band on the Run, the reissue of which serves as the kickoff for Concord Music’s grand reintroduction of McCartney’s back catalog to the marketplace.

This is hardly the first time Band on the Run has been reissued, of course, but as much as you may want to blast Macca for offering this material to the masses yet again, you have to give the old man credit: he’s offering it up in enough different formats and with enough hard-to-find or previously-unavailable music and video that just about everyone is going to curse and say, “Dammit, he’s gotten me again.” They’ll be smiling as they do it, though, especially if they’re buying the deluxe edition, which, in addition to being housed in a gorgeous, photograph-filled hardcover coffee table book, contains 3 CDs – a remastered version of the album, a disc of bonus tracks, and an audio documentary – and a DVD which features videos for “Band on the Run,” “Mamunio,” and “Helen Wheels,” album promos, and “One Hand Clapping,” a rarely-seen live performance by the band from Abbey Road Studios.

As for the actual album…well, there’s a reason why it’s taken pole position in the reissue campaign: it’s the jewel in McCartney’s crown that never loses its luster, the one that even John Lennon admitted was great. Few albums of any decade start off with songs as spectacular as “Band on the Run” and “Jet,” but then you’ve got “Bluebird” and “Mrs. Vanderbilt,” followed by “Let Me Roll It” and “Mamunia.” There’s no point in reeling off the rest of the tracks. All you really need to know about Band on the Run is that it’s the only Paul McCartney album that you absolutely, positively must own…which is why you probably already do. Unfortunately, there’s no way the presentation of your copy is as impressive as this new Deluxe Edition. Sorry, fans: you’re just going to have to buy it again. (Concord 2010)

Paul McCartney official website

Artists, CD Reviews, External Music, Pop, Rock

Crowded House: The Very Very Best of Crowded House

November 29, 2010 /


RIYL: The Beatles, The Everly Brothers, Squeeze

Picking songs for a Crowded House compilation is a fool’s errand. The British press was only slightly kidding when they said that Neil Finn pisses genius; the first three albums he made as Crowded House after dissolving his brother Tim’s band Split Enz in 1984 (Tim had left the band earlier that year) are about as perfect as pop records get, and the band’s fourth album, 1994’s Together Alone, is pretty damned good, too. This compilation, the second attempt to condense the band’s best work to a single disc, has an even harder task in that it includes tracks from the band’s fifth album, 2007’s Time on Earth. Five good to great albums, sliced and diced to one disc, and it’s supposed to be the very, very best of the band.

Nope.

Still, The Very Very Best of Crowded House is no misfire either, since it would have been filled with beautiful, haunting melodies and Finn’s trademark lyrical paranoia regardless of which songs had made the cut and which ones had been forsaken. But at this stage in the game, this is a two-disc affair no matter how you slice it, and as luck would have it, Capitol has released a two-disc version of this set as well. For newbies, that is the way to go, as the single-disc version of this set is simply missing too many great – and nearly all of the upbeat – moments. The band’s first two albums are reduced to a mere four songs, only one of which came from the criminally underrated Temple of Low Men (1988). Together Alone and 1991’s Woodface, meanwhile, account for over half of the songs here. Perhaps they chose to favor the later material of the Capitol years in order to keep the set more in step with the band’s recent work, but doing so makes for the most dour collection of the Capitol years that one could assemble.

The Very Very Best of Crowded House is a four-star collection of a five-star catalog. Go for the two-disc set instead; it costs more, but with the addition of “Hole in the River,” “World Where You Live,” “Now We’re Getting Somewhere,” “Into Temptation,” “Whispers and Moans” and “I Feel Possessed,” that set opens doors to the band’s work that the single-disc set doesn’t even acknowledge. This is good, but more – and more balance – would have been better. (Capitol 2010)

Crowded House MySpace page
Click to buy The Very Very Best of Crowded House from Amazon
Click to buy The Very Very Best of Crowded House (Two-Disc set) from Amazon

Adult Contemporary, Artists, CD QuickTakes, CD Reviews, Pop, Rock

My Chemical Romance: Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys

November 24, 2010 /


RIYL: Queen, Cheap Trick, Oasis

My Chemical Romance have balls of steel. They shed their pissed-off jilted lover skin in favor of a full-blown rock opera (2006’s The Black Parade), even though they could have made millions mining teen angst for the next ten years. Then, perhaps to diffuse any overblown build-up over their new album, they release a breakneck rave-up as the first single, and gave it the ‘you’ve got to be kidding me’ title of “Na Na Na (Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na).” It’s a genius move, really – sneak in the back door, despite being one of the biggest bands on the planet. It makes them look like they’re still hungry, and God knows the pop world (and the world in general) could use a little humility.

The problem is, it may have worked a little too well. With Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys just now hitting shelves and e-servers, “Na Na Na” has already peaked at a slightly disappointing #10, and the label has moved on to the second single. Flash back to 2006, when “The Black Parade” dominated radio for months. You have to think that the label is a little nervous at this point, though they shouldn’t be: Danger Days is a powerhouse of an album, positively stuffed with potential singles and shows the band once again exploring new territory, both sonically (keyboards!) and musically.

The band has cooked up another gonzo concept for the album – a group of desert renegades fighting a massive company in 2019, accordingly to Wikipedia – but it doesn’t weigh down the individual songs. “Sing” is a reach-for-the-rafters singalong, while “S/C/A/R/E/C/R/O/W” out-Oasis’ Oasis. “Party Poison” is another power pop-ish rocker, and “Summertime” is downright tender, if bleak. The band’s reach had been a bit farther than its grasp in the past, but the songwriting steps up in a big way here.

It would have been easy for My Chemical Romance to shy away from the epic scale of The Black Parade and opt for a minimalist approach to the follow-up, so it is to their credit that they not only went for it on Danger Days, but pulled it off. For all the bashing that the major labels take these days, it’s nice to see one of them take off the reins and let their horses run free. (Reprise 2010)

My Chemical Romance MySpace page
Click to buy Danger Days from Amazon

Alternative, Artists, CD Reviews, Power Pop, Rock

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