Musings, Nits, and Praises

http://www.reuters.com/article/televisionNews/idUSN2439321520070724

Well, at least the investigators aren't contending that he didn't actually drink his own urine on several occasions.

The Minor Canon’s band bio certainly isn’t the first press release to belie a band’s sound, calling their music “gritty.” “Gritty” isn’t the best word to describe a piano/acoustic-based band with a horn section and a singer whose voice is often reminiscent of Matthew Sweet’s. Comparing the band’s sound to “Memphis soul on an indie bender” seems a bit of a stretch as well. But questionable descriptors aside, the Los Angeles-based sextet, led by singer-songwriter/multi-instrumentalist Paul Larson, offer a few twists to indie pop on their debut album, No Good Deed Goes Unpunished.

If every song on the album were as engaging as the opening track, “It Never Was,” then the band could add “one of the finest indie pop albums in years” to its bio and be justified in doing so. A perfect marriage of emotive dynamics and melody, the song is a true pop gem, steadily intensifying through verse/chorus progressions with new instrumentation announcing each shift, whispering through the bridge, and then exploding into a cathartic coda that fades into a somber horn arrangement.

Unfortunately, after the superb opener, Larson and co. quickly steer the album into the mid-tempo doldrums, with a trio of plodding, bass drum-thudding songs. The droning chorus of “A False Start”—“You’re never happy/And you’re never sad” effectively sinks the already monotonous song. On “Bend Like Trees,” the band breaks from conventional verse/chorus structure with a Ben Folds Five-like romp that segues into a horn solo only to return to the song’s lumbering central theme. “The Art of Quick Draw” is livelier than the other two songs, but Larson’s stab at a clever verse falls flat: “I move faster than you can possibly know/And did you want to see it again?”

Just when it seems the album will officially retire into all-out blah, an acoustic ballad of all things energizes the record. Combining a guitar figure Sam Beam would be proud of with Larson’s tender vocals and placid piano backing, “Killing Spiders” is positively beautiful.

With “The Rockets Countdown,” the band resumes the mid-tempo melancholy, but the songs on the second half sound fresher and more focused than those earlier on the album. Moving from shuffle, to waltz, back to shuffle, “Old Long Since” is stronger in its musical detouring than “Bend Like Trees,” but Larson is still a long way from “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant” territory. “The Present Time” coasts atop a gloomy piano arpeggio before ascending into the chorus’s lush texture, while “Cave In,” boasting the album’s brightest melody, is an uplifting, sing-along ode to malaise that would’ve been a fitting closing track. Instead, Larson closes with the seemingly unfinished “Upside Down,” which sounds like he recorded it while trapped in a storm drain.

That the Minor Canon began as Larson’s solo project before it grew into a six-man ensemble may account for some of the album’s unevenness. Still, when the band finds solid footing on No Good Deed, the result is sometimes fantastic and at the very least, as Larson sings on “Cave In,” “quite nice.”

With the start of in-service creeping ineluctably closer, I'm doing what I can to squeeze in as much reading as possible before I head back to work. Right now I'm a little over 1/4 of the way through Ulysses. Although at times Joyce's stream-of-consciousness leaves me dumbfounded, the novel, as the folks at Guinness like to say, is "Brilliant!"

I've made it through five novels this summer so far. I reread Winesburg, Ohio and Light in August (my favorite Faulkner novel) and tackled Darkness at Noon, An Appointment in Samarra, and The Adventures of Augie March. Darkness is fantastic, but 1984 is still my anti-totalitarian novel of choice. Appointment is very strong as well. Dorothy Parker called John O'Hara "the real F. Scott Fitzgerald." While that may be a bit of a stretch, the novel is proof that the guy knew how to write a tragic story. As I expected, Augie March is a wonderful mix of the comedy and profundity. My only real complaint is that Bellow could've pared down the novel. I'm all for an epic scope, but the novel meanders at times.

Sporting Mod culture looks and embracing their garage rock, British invasion, and punk influences, Mando Diao are hardly musical trailblazers. But when they're at their best, the cocksure rockers from Borlange, Sweden, meld gritty exuberance with infectious hooks better than many of their retro-inspired contemporaries. On their latest album, Ode to Ochrasy, Mando Diao temper their rowdy roots a bit in favor of broadening their sound.

Ochrasy (a word coined by co-singer Bjorn Dixgard) is a concept album of sorts. The songs' narratives stem from the band's experiences while touring and the farrago of characters they met, ranging from drug addicts ("Josephine"), to homeless buskers ("Good Morning, Herr Horst"), to would-be bombers ("Killer Kaczynski"). And, as you might expect, there are plenty of songs about girls.

Although the narrative concept creates a loose lyrical cohesion, the band seems undecided where to venture musically. Raucous stomps like "Killer Kaczynski," "Good Morning, Herr Horst," (which sounds like a revved up version of The Libertines' "The Man Who Would Be King") and the album's first single, "Long Before Rock'n'Roll" recall the sound of their previous albums, particularly Bring 'em In, but are a bit stale by comparison. On the smooth "Josephine" and the Lennon-esque "The New Boy," Dixgard and fellow singer Gustaf Noren prove their adept at penning delicate melodies, although placing the songs back-to-back stalls the album. Dixgard's finest moment may be the closing track, "Ochrasy." The acoustic ode to a fantasy world highlights the soulful dimension of Dixgard's voice seldom heard elsewhere on the album.

On the album's best songs the duo crafts engaging, pop-drenched melodies while retaining just the right measure of garage rock roughness. On the relentlessly driving "You Don't Understand Me," Dixgard's lament of lost love, heartbreak sounds downright dance-inducing. Noren's hyperactive "Morning Paper Dirt" provides a punch of power pop, while his verve-filled "Song for Aberdeen" sounds a bit like "Sister Golden Hair" on speed. "The Wildfire (If It Was True)"-the best song on the album and quite possibly Mando Diao's best song period-churns along on a train car-clatter rhythm before bursting into an ebullient, irresistible chorus.

The band isn't lacking for confidence. Noren has said he believes the band's work surpasses anything by the Who, the Small Faces, or the Kinks-even that they're better than the Beatles. Sure, everyone besides the band themselves and some diehard fans would beg to differ, but his confidence seems to stem more from the band's tireless efforts to be something special than from an Oasis-like braggadocio. And, it generates more buzz, of course. But if Mando Diao hopes to find a seat among the rock pantheon, they have to stretch themselves, to test their limits, to discover new musical territory. Ode to Ochrasy marks the band's first--sometimes awkward, sometimes brilliant--steps in that direction.

I'm slowly making my way through Saul Bellow's The Adventures of Augie March--slowly because it's a long novel and the language is dense, not because it's dull. Some critics have asserted it's the greatest post-WWII novel in American literature--some even suggest it's the greatest American novel of all time. Wherever it ranks in the American canon, it's unquestionably a remarkable work. Here's one of my favorite passages I've read to this point (I'm only about 1/4 of the way into the book):

"If you want to pick your own ideal creature in the mirror coastal air and sharp leaves of ancient perfections and be at home where a great mankind was at home, I've never seen any reason why not. Though unable to go along one hundred percent with a man like Reverend Beecher telling his congregation, "Ye are Gods, you are crystalline, your faces are radiant!" I'm not an optimist of that degree, from the actual faces, congregated or separate, that I've seen; always admitting that the true vision of things is a gift, particularly in times of disfigurement and world-wide Babylonishness, when plug-ugly macadam and volcanic peperino look commoner than crystal--to eyes with an ordinary amount of grace, anyhow--and when it appears like a good sensible policy to settle for medium-grade quartz."