Category: Albums

One good thing about getting older as a music fan is that you forget about a lot of songs. This might not seem like an obvious benefit, but there are a couple reasons why it’s great. First, hearing a favorite song after a long break is like how I imagine it would be if your present-day spouse could time travel and kiss you again for the first time — intoxicatingly novel, yet comfortingly familiar. Second, and less fancifully, it gives you some perspective on how well a song or album has held up, especially if it was brand new at the time you first liked it.

I had a particularly intense version of this experience last weekend when I listened to fun.’s album Some Nights for the first time since, oh, probably 2013. When the album came out in 2012, I was at peak infatuation with the band and more excited for their new album than I had been about any legitimately contemporary release in longer than I care to admit. I listened to Some Nights so many times that I kind of stopped enjoying it, the way you do when an album become so familiar that it fades to sonic wallpaper. And despite how much I loved it, I always wondered how all that Auto-Tune was going to sound years later.

And now — just like that — it’s years later, and I have the distance to hear Some Nights with fresh ears and evaluate its staying power. I found that it naturally divided itself up into a few groups of songs that illustrate its different elements and their varying degrees of success.

The two big hits exemplify what the band did well and are the reason they ascended, briefly, to superstar status. “We Are Young” and “Some Nights” combine the best of Queen-like classic rock bombast with signature sounds of the 2010s — big drums, shouty choruses, and a relatively restrained dash of Auto-Tune. Again, it’s that mix of the familiar and the new that people tend to like.

But I don’t think fun. would have gotten as far as they did if their music hadn’t been underpinned by some serious quality. Nate Ruess is a terrific singer. His voice is big and theatrical, with a nasal yelp that’s pleasant rather than annoying. You can especially hear this on some of the best lines from “We Are Young”: “I guess that I/I just thought/Maybe we can find new ways to fall apart.” fun. are also capable of quite good lyrics, although Some Nights — perhaps in its bid for mainstream success — tends more toward the generically relatable than the idiosyncratic. Still, “Some Nights” in particular still has a few that stand out. “Who the fuck wants to die alone/All dried out in the desert sun” has a real urgency to it, and I love the little throwaway at the end: “You wouldn’t believe/This dream I just had about you and me./I called you up and we both agreed/It’s for the best you didn’t listen.” There’s something there that alludes to a lived, ambiguous experience, rather than just an attempt at something anthemic and likable.

Another group of songs carries the vestiges of fun.’s previous incarnation: a quirky, hipsterish take on pop’s legacy, full of big hooks, creative arrangements, and classic melodies. “Why Am I the One?” is fun.’s best overall song, and I’ve written about it before. I’ve heard it plenty of times since 2013, and I’m fully convinced that it’s one for the ages. “Carry On,” also a more traditional ballad, is filled with cliches, but you can’t argue with the fact that it’s a really good singer singing a really nice tune — something I tend not to get tired of.

And then there’s “All Alone.” Hearing this was the undisputed delight of of the album for me. When it first started, I was like “Wait, what is this?” And then it all came rushing back: an uptempo-music-box-hip-hop nursery rhyme with jaunty horn bursts. Not to be too on the nose, but this is the most fun(.) song on the album. It’s also probably the best lyrical conceit, albeit in a bit of a mannered way. The song uses the metaphor of a wind-up doll to talk about a girlfriend who’s mechanical nature is off-putting to someone else in the singer’s life. It’s colorful but vague enough that I think it can be interpreted in multiple ways. If fun. ever makes another album, it should be full of songs just like this.

Like all expect the greatest masterpieces, Some Nights has a few songs that are pretty mediocre. “Some Nights – Intro” is not that memorable, especially in comparison to the similar “Some Nights.” “One Foot” has a few good lines — “I’ll die for my own sins/Thanks a lot/We’ll rise up ourselves/Thanks for nothing at all” — but the production is simply too much. And “All Alright” and “It Gets Better” are both overdone and forgettable.

“Stars” wraps up the album, and it also feel like the appropriate place to wrap up this essay. Like Some Nights itself, it shows a band straddling the gulf between classic if unfashionable pop and hit-making trendiness. I think “Stars” starts out absolutely great, picking up where “Why Am I the One?” leaves off with a snatch of the “Oh, come on” coda. The first two minutes are mid-tempo, highly melodic, and full of the kind of unrockstar-like outpouring that only Nate Ruess would attempt. Who else is going to write, let along sing, the line “But most nights I stay straight and think about my mom”? It’s temping to laugh, but next words — “Oh God, I miss her so much” — add a heart-rending element with real power to move.

Then right at the two-minute mark, it all changes. We go from something that wouldn’t be out of place on Goodbye Yellow Brick Road to a full five minutes of weird Auto-Tuned vocal riffing. I’m not sure if I like this, but from the perspective of 2018, I don’t think it’s as bad as it could have been. Auto-Tune has held up better than most traditional pop fans would have expected, so it doesn’t date the album the way it might have if no one was using it anymore. And I suppose it has the benefit of at least being weird. I mean, it’s clearly not intended to make Nate Ruess sound better, just different and experimental, so I appreciate the risk-taking aspect.

Still, I have to accept that given my age and tastes, my favorite parts of Some Nights are going to be to the more classic songs. And in the end, I don’t think it was a mistake for fun. to take a more contemporary approach, and it’s certainly an element in their chart success. Some Nights is not the consistent pop masterpiece of their previous effort, Aim + Ignite, but it’s a solid album with a few truly wonderful songs. On top of that, it’s a reminder to me that even an album that has become played out won’t stay that way forever. Life is long, and you never known when some forgotten old favorite will crop up, and you will hear it again with a mix of its old freshness, layered underneath the complexities of hindsight. You can’t force these moments, but they’re a real treat when they come.

A few days ago, a song called “Ariel” popped up on for me some randomized Spotify playlist. It was by an artist I wasn’t familiar with, Dean Friedman. Knowing nothing about this song, my initial assumption was that it was from the ’90s. It had a slightly camp vocal and the kind of specific, narrative humor that I’d associate with groups like Fountains of Wayne or even Nerf Herder. The album cover was no help either. Sure, this guy looks a bit like my dad in certain pictures from the ’70s, but he could just as easily be a hipster parody from anytime in the last 20 or so years. If there was one clue that this song was older, it was the lyrical reference to Channel 2 signing off the air.

It turns out that “Ariel” is from Friedman’s 1977 self-titled debut album. Having continued to enjoy the song after a few more listens, I decided to spin the whole thing. This is something I do a lot: hear a random good song, wonder if it’s just the tip of some amazing pop iceberg, listen to the full album, become very disappointed. But in this case, I wasn’t disappointed! I turns out that Dean Friedman is actually a really good album. Friedman is able to make the kind of direct, memorable connection with the listener that is the mark the of successful singer-songwriter. Even after one listen, musical and lyrical ideas from these songs stuck in my head and made me want to listen again.

“Ariel” is in fact the standout track. It was a minor hit, peaking at #26 on the Billboard Hot 100 in June 1977. It’s got a fantastic pop chorus comprised entirely of the name “Ariel” sung repeatedly with layers of soaring harmonies. The verses are where you get the humor, as Friedman tells how he falls in love with a beautiful stoner girl who he meets at the mall in Paramus, New Jersey. The joke that begins “I said hi” is an exemplar of comic delivery in song; he absolutely nails the punchline. There’s also a nice rock’n’ roll-style saxophone solo, not terribly different from something you might hear on a Springsteen record from the same era, but enjoyable and not too dated. All in all, a true lost classic of the type I always hope to discover.

The rest of Dean Friedman is not as overtly funny as “Ariel,” but there’s definitely a sardonic wit that underlies the whole thing. On “Company,” Friedman wonders if “maybe one day I’ll be a famous man with an L.A. tan/A million fans, and a catamaran floating movie stars.” The story of a mother’s suicide on “Song For My Mother” is really sad, but the last line has a dark and surprising humor to it. And “Solitaire” has some great lines too, particularly “If the lies don’t do it, then the honesty will.” The melodic fall of this phrase is great, and the combination of big piano, smart-aleck vocal style, and clever songwriting remind me strongly of Ben Folds.

Another theme running through the album is Friedman’s New Jersey upbringing. But unlike working-class hero Springsteen, Friedman gives us a much more suburban take, prefiguring Fountains of Wayne. There are the references to Paramus in “Ariel,” (the only time the word “Paramus” has occurred in a Top 40 hit, per Wikipedia), as well as callouts to apple cider and donuts, New York radio station WBAI, taking the train into the city, and more. While Friedman’s album predates my teenage years by more than two decades, there’s still a lot about its setting that feels familiar to me as a native of the New York City exurbs.

Friedman is also capable of real feeling, and the album’s other standout track, “The Letter,” shows off his philosophical side. It’s the story of a friend or lover who’s gone off to find herself, leaving those close to her to wonder about this journey of self-discovery. The song has a great arrangement, building from simple piano on the verse to swelling strings and a multi-tracked vocal on the chorus. It’s got a yearning feeling, heightened by lyrics like “Freckles still misses you/She always sleeps on the floor in your room” and a mournful trumpet solo. There’s also narrative complexity, as Friedman both romanticizes the journey and wonders if it’s all it’s cracked up to be.

If you need any further convincing to listen to this album, let me just tell you that I wrote this review after hearing most of these songs only two or three times. There are albums that I like well enough, but that I’ve heard a dozen times without being able to single out some of the tracks. Dean Friedman’s immediacy and originality of voice makes it compelling from the first listen, and at 35 minutes it’s tight and filler-free. The possibility of digging up gems like this is why I stay obsessed with pop.

A few months ago, I was listening to Fountains of Wayne’s Welcome Interstate Managers — a favorite album since its release nearly 15 years ago — and for the first time I realized that it’s hugely influenced by Oasis’s (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?. Since then, I can’t stop making this connection. It’s not exactly a revelation, as cursory Googling reveals that many initial reviews of Interstate Managers remarked on the similarity, and various Oasis fan forums have some chatter about the topic as well. Still there’s no definitive analysis of the phenomenon, so I figured why not provide one?

The most obvious example of the FoW-Oasis connection is “Supercollider.” This song is such a clear Oasis homage that I can’t believe I listened to it for over a decade without realizing it. (I suppose my excuse is that I wasn’t thinking much about Oasis from about 2003-2013.) The title references “Champagne Supernova” and “Supersonic,” the opening acoustic guitar sounds a lot like the opening to “Wonderwall,” and Chris Collingwood’s vocals are amazingly similar to Liam Gallagher’s when he wants them to be. But what really makes this homage pop is the way that “Supercollider” captures the feel of an Oasis song. It evokes a kind of grand emotional landscape, despite being mostly nonsense.

Most of Interstate Managers’ more rockin’ tracks repeat this trick to varying extents. “Bought for a Song,” “Elevator Up,” and “Little Red Light” all borrow a bit of Noel’s guitar tone and Liam’s snarl — just listen to the line “It may be time to pay up and gee-ohh,” on “Elevator Up.”

Of course the two bands are very different in a lot of ways. Oasis is brasher and more straightforward in their rock sound, and they’re also known for being obnoxious louts. Fountains of Wayne favor a suburban naturalism defined by ironic story-songs and polished arrangements. Still, even in a song like “Fire Island,” which is classic FoW in every respect, a little bit of Oasis influence sneaks in. The middle eight features a guitar solo that owes much to Noel’s playing on “Champagne Supernova” or “Don’t Look Back in Anger.” It has that burbling quality, like beads of oil rising up through a jar of water.

And maybe the connection isn’t that surprising after all. The gorgeous muted trumpet that starts out the middle eight on “Fire Island”’ is certainly influenced by some mid-century, easy-listening Bacharach — a sound that Noel Gallagher has unsubtly embraced on Oasis’s b-sides. And really, Fountains of Wayne and Oasis are both bands whose raison d’être is creating songs that sound good and that people will like. Morning Glory and Interstate Managers are like pop twin stars — one British, opaque, and defiant; the other American, witty, and glossy — united  by a devotion to great melodies above all else. Fountains of Wayne may have been emulating Oasis on Interstate Managers, but both bands likely share many of the same influences and have worn different paths from the same pop truth.

I am an album person. I don’t consider myself to be a fan of a band unless they they have at least one LP that I know start to finish. When I hear a song I like, my most cherished dream is that I will listen to the full album and find it to be 45 minutes of similarly great songs. (I’m disappointed a lot.) I don’t have to love every song on an album to love the album. There are plenty of albums that have tracks that leave me cold, but I still listen to them because they’re an integral part of the whole. An album is not about individual songs, but about how they fit together and their overall effect.

I’ve listened to a lot of great songs released in 2017. In nearly every case I’ve pulled up their parent albums on Spotify, hoping to hit the jackpot, and wound up disappointed instead. Usually the biggest problem is not that the other songs on the album are bad — it’s that the album is just a string of slightly less good versions of the hit. There’s no sense of movement or wholeness.

The new HAIM album illustrates this phenomenon. The first three tracks are fantastic, but as it goes on, I’m either zoning out or working too hard to differentiate each song. (This is the one about a break up that’s a little bit dream pop, this is the one about a break up that’s about not trusting the guy.) HAIM are fully capable of writing a great song, and if I hear any one of their songs on its own, I usually like it. But their LP has that “same-y” quality that plagues many a just-OK record.

Successful albums on the other hand have the variety and forward momentum to make you want to keep listening. This is a tall order, and so it’s actually not that surprising that there are only two 2017 albums so far that hit the sweet spot for me. On the surface, you may not think these have much in common. (And I can’t help but wonder how many people actually like both of them.) But they are both by British singer-songwriters who embrace variety in their sound and idiosyncrasy in their storytelling. They’re both albums that make you want to keep listening.

÷

Surprising even to me, my most listened to 2017 LP has been Ed Sheeran’s ÷. This is pure pop, and it’s not burning down the music establishment or anything. But as an album, it’s just so damn listenable. After one spin, I could have easily gone back and told you something about almost every track. (This one’s about his childhood friends, this one sounds like Irish music, this is the sexy one, this is the sad one about his grandmother dying.) There’s a mix of sounds and themes that’s just interesting. For a million-selling pop record to be this good is pretty unusual.

“Castle on the Hill” is the big ballad, kind of like Coldplay or U2. I don’t really love either of those bands, but I think Ed makes the style work because his lyrics are warmer and more personal than U2’s grand political statements or Coldplay’s bland triumph. He opens with “When I was six years old I broke my leg,” and runs through a series of childhood memories, tempering the nostalgia a little with some present day snapshots of his friends: “One friend left to sell clothes/One works down by the coast/One had two kids but lives alone/One’s brother overdosed/One’s already on his second wife/One’s just barely getting by.” There’s no way to know if there are Ed’s real memories and real friends, but they certainly feel real.

I also like “Galway Girl,” because I love songs that pack in a lot of lyrics. “Dive,” “Perfect” and “How Would You Feel (Paean)” are all romantic, acoustic ballads, maybe a little cheesy, but still easy to get swept away in. They’re also spaced out nicely with the other material. “New Man” makes an attempt at humor that’s not always quite on, but manages to get in one really good zinger when Ed notes that your new man “owns every single Ministry CD.” Throughout ÷, Ed raps a little, strums a little, and belts it out a little, and the result, while not life-changing, is undeniably enjoyable.

Wesley Stace’s John Wesley Harding

The other record I’ve liked this year is Wesley Stace’s John Wesley Harding. (That’s actually the full title. I guess he couldn’t just call it John Wesley Harding.) Wesley Stace is usually John Wesley Harding when he’s recording and Wesley Stace when he’s writing novels, but I believe this album is property credited to Stace. It doesn’t really matter though, because his talents as songwriter and storyteller are both on display. Stace is also lucky to be backed by the The Jayhawks, with their jangly guitars and Karen Grotberg’s lovely backing vocals. While there’s less stylistic variety here than on Sheeran’s album (no rapping, I’m afraid), there’s a good mix of tempos and more than enough compelling ways of looking at the world to make you want to stick around until to the end.

I featured “Better Tell No One Your Dreams” on my June mix, and the song has held up with repeated listenings. It captures the experience of dreams really well, and it also makes an interesting assertion: “Tell them your secrets by all means/But better tell no one your dreams.” I’d never thought before that dreams would make you more vulnerable than secrets, but it’s a persuasive argument. If dreams reflect our unconscious to some extent, then they’re actually kind of like secrets that we don’t even know ourselves. They make sense to the dreamer on an emotional level, but become tedious when verbalized — “People get bored/And when they’re bored they get mean.”

A few other unique conceits: “Hastings Pier” is a wistful, piano-based song that recounts the history of an English pleasure pier that seems to have had a tough time of it over the years. Stace entwines the history of the pier with his own memories of it. He then watches it burn down in 2010 on his computer screen. More upbeat and hooky, “The Wilderness Years” uses biblical metaphors to illustrate “castings out” — from a bad relationship, organized religion, a dead-end job — that ultimately turn out to be blessings. I love the contention that “the wilderness years are my best,” suggesting that a little freedom and chaos are good for the soul.