Reflecting Pool: Adam Ant - Kings of the Wild Frontier

Reprinted from Allenlulu.com

Unplug the jukebox and do us all a favor. That music's lost it's taste so try another flavor.” - Antmusic




Adam and the Ants – Kings of the Wild Frontier – 1980

I have no idea how this record came into my possession. I know that I listened to it over and over and over. I took it with me places so I could sit and listen to it. I recall going to my cousins' house and holeing up in the basement so I could listen to Kings. I loved it.
And you know why? Cuz it's brilliant, that's why.
The double drums. The clanging semi-power chords. The bombast. The Indian motifs. The multi-layered vocals. The rockabilly chorus. The chukka chukka of an onslaught.
And that was the FIRST SONG! “Dog Eat Dog” is a seminal song in the pantheon of modern rock. It's a meta track. All about how good they look. How great they are. It's fun. It's powerful. And it's a melange of everything I just mentioned.
One more thing:
It never took itself too seriously. The whole record. Even when talking about killers in your home and death and stealing from Indians, there is a sense of everyone having a grand time. Tossing the Kitchen sink into the kitchen sink and then running out to find more sinks to toss in.
It's a crazy record. Adam and Marco (Pirroni, his co-writer now after the McLaren debacle), along with Chris Hughes, drummer and producer have crafted a sound and named it.
“Antmusic”.
The song is a puffed up war cry for something new. Which would just be cute if they really didn't bring it.
But Adam does. He brings it. Hard and big.
One thing, though. Adam and crew run out of song ideas about 2 minutes into each one. So they usually just let the chorus repeat forever. No one was in the studio telling them to stop. This is the biggest detriment to Adam's work and it will annoy me for the next 15 years.
Even this early in Adam's career he was already making waves on the musical circuit.
“Feed Me To The Lions” as well as “Press Darlings” address the press, notoriety and the difficulties of dealing with that kind of low-end media.
This is easily offset by the sheer weirdness of the spaghetti western antics of “Los Rancheros” and the pirate shanty, “Jolly Roger” and the cock of the walk, story of the band tune “The Magnificent Five”.
And then there's the disco song, “Don't Be Square (Be There)”. Which is one of the weirdest tracks I've ever heard and would probably (as many of these songs) have fit well on Dirk but with newer musicians, a musical vision and a guitarist able to pull it off, in Marco Pirroni, it just fucking works.
The paranoia slightly touched on in Dirk is explored further with the somewhat terrifying one-two punch of “Ant Invasion” & the even darker eulogy for the Indian, “Killer in the Home”.
The eponymous track is a testament to the era. That something as baroque and strange could be a hit, let alone a single, is remarkable. It really shows the growth in tastes and how far we had come as listeners, not 25 years after the original Elvis shook his hips.
Alas, 25 years later, we haven't really progressed at all. Instead, we've moved further back to the era of bubblegum and crooners. Too bad, really.

Kings of The Wild Frontier is one of the most important records of the New Wave/New Romantic era. You gotta trust me on this one. It's one of the 1000 records you need to hear before you die.

Grade: A+
A-Side: Dog Eat Dog, Antmusic, Kings of the Wild Frontier, Killer in the Home
BlindSide: Ant Invasion, Feed Me to the Lions, Don't Be Square (Be There), The Human Beings

Reflecting Pool: Adam Ant - Dirk Wears White Sox

Reprinted from www.allenlulu.com

Have you ever had trouble with your automobile? Have you ever had to push push push push?” - Cartrouble




Adam and the Ants – Dirk Wears White Sox – 1979

I have a soft spot in my heart for this album. I've heard it so many times over the years that I'm not even sure if its bad, minimalist, post punk or great anymore.
I was already an Adam fan in 1981. Before I ever heard Kings of the Wild Frontier I had already about him in the back of fanzines and mags like Trouser Press. I loved the name. I loved how if you put it together it was Adamant. Something no one ever brings up.
And I clearly recall my father's chagrin when I told him I wanted to buy a $13!!!! import of Dirk at a Greenwich Village record store. By this time Adam mania was just beginning in earnest and I was one of those fans who looked down on the latecomers. I was there first, dummies.
I couldn't wait to put Dirk on the record player in the room I shared with my 11 year old brother. (Who would get that Adam 45 of Goody Two Shoes with Juanito the Bandito on it, curses!)
It was NOTHING like I expected.
Where was the dual attack “burundi beat” drums? What is this angular, disjointed herky six minute opener “Cartrouble Parts 1 & 2”? Why don't you need antyhing after an ice cream? What is the Catholic Day? Was the failed “Nine Plan” an homage to Plan 9 from Outer Space”?
I wasn't disappointed, though. It was Adam, and I loved his elastic voice and the way he was bending sounds to his will. Like on the brilliant “Digital Tenderness”.
The over exposed pantaloon wearing goth on the cover was just as confusing. Adam would never not appear, full face, on his records again, recognizing the importance of branding early. Dirk, I would learn later, was a reference to Dirk Bogarde. Okay. I don't know much about Bogarde. He has a cool name. There's no song on the album named that. But, fine. Another mistake Adam would never make again.
This is the only album with the original bassist, drummer and guitarist (Ashman, Gorman & Barbe) before they were stolen by Malcolm McLaren and Adam was jettisoned from his own band.
We all know what happened. The band became Bow Wow Wow and are relegated to the novelty bin while Adam became in international phenomenon.
There's more paranoia on this record and probably more deep introspection on some of Dirk than would turn up later. (Nine Plan Failed, Never Trust a Man with Egg on His Face) And elliptical poetry (Cartrouble, an obvious ode to masturbation). And some in your face takes on religion (Day I Met God). All of them destined to be classics and yet almost unheard by most people. Not a lot of bands are going to cover Adam Ant's “Family of Noise”. But that's okay. This is for fans only. It's not really good. And I would almost never be caught singing along to it. (I'm not sure I could if I tried) It owes more to the post-punk aesthetic of Lene Lovich and Siouxie Sioux than it does to it's radio friendly descendents.
“Animals and Men” is a song that could only have been written by an art student. With it's reference to artists and shout outs to the “Futurist Manifesto”. It's quite the dada-ist work. Duchamp would have liked Adam at this point in his career. But Tristan Tzara would have tried to take credit for it.
Dirk isn't that great. It fails in many many places. Much of adds up to really nothing more than a soundtrack for some kind of performance art and had McLaren not stepped in to force Adam to re-examine his path, doubtless no one would remember it.
But fuck it. I like it.

Grade C+
A-Side: Cartrouble 1 & 2, Digital Tenderness,
BlindSide: Nine Plan Failed, Animals and Men
DownSide: Tabletalk, Cleopatra, The Idea

Reflecting Pool: REM - Accelerate

R.E.M. - Accelerate - 2008

Well, this is different. Did someone have a sitdown with Mikey and shake him and tell the boys, "Hey! Dummies! No One is buying your records. We pay you to sell records. Not to masturbate in the studio. Get us something we can sell!"

Because "Living Well is the Best Revenge" is the biggest cut throat rocker since "These Days". More reminiscent of Lifes Rich Pageant than any somnambulist crap from the past decade. Rock on, guys.
The band hasn't sounded like a band since, well, since Berry left. Here they give us everything we've been begging for since Automatic for the People. Remember how the next album would be "the one that would rock"? But it never was? This is tight. This is REM at it's boldest and strongest. And they haven't compromised, they don't sound like another band. They sound like REM. "Supernatural Superserious" sounds like REM circa Green but with considerably more punch.
There's definitely some experimentation on songs like "Houston" but it's shrouded with power and energy and purpose, so instead of being awful, it's great.
Guys, where was this record 8 years ago??? There's no bloat, no filler. It's 36 minutes and lean and powerful.
I imagine the guys knew they were in danger of losing all their fans. Diminishing returns for 10 years proved that. Ray Davies said, Give the People What they Want.
What we wanted was something we can dance to, a sequel to "It's the End of the World". "I'm gonna DJ (at the end of the world) is just that. I didn't think they knew how to do it, to be honest.

I'm pretty sure that even if I didn't just slog through 3 hours of some of the most banal crap I would have loved Accelerate. If you love REM, rather, if you LOVED REM but feel like the direction they went chased you away as they chased Radiohead, give Accelerate a spin. It's worth it.

Grade: A
ASide: Living Well is the Best Revenge, Man Sized Wreath, Supernatural Superserious, Accelerate
BlindSide: Hollow Man, Houston, Until the Day is Done, Mr. Richards, Horse to Water
DownSide: Sing for the Submarine

(To the best of my knowledge this is the 370th album review since I started the Listening Post, Reflecting Pool, DoublShot and One Off series)

Reflecting Pool: REM - Around the Sun

R.E.M. - Around the Sun - 2004

Peter Buck said that for him Around the Sun "... just wasn't really listenable, because it sounds like what it is, a bunch of people that are so bored with the material that they can't stand it anymore."

Well, that just about says it, don't it?

I'm nothing if not a completist so here I go:

1. Leaving New York - Pleasant mid-tempo piece, Stipe is all misty and nostalgic. There's nothing oblique or abstract here. Stipe is as earnest as he's ever been. More so. Not a great opener, but I've given up waiting for "Radio Free Europe" or "Begin the Begin".
2. Electron Blue - REM is lousy with songs wherein Michael Stipe tells someone that they are great, can be great, will be great, buck up, cheer up, etc. He's taken the role of top of the pyramid mother to the nth degree. Here's another one. Rest assured it won't be the last. Yawn. The electro-pop production does nothing for me. Or the song.
3. The Outsiders - Why, why, why???? Did you learn NOTHING from "Radio Song"? Q-Tip? Really??!? Oh, man, talk about a band out of touch....
4. Make it All Okay - From PopSongs: “Make It All OK” seems to exist as though to prove [Chuck Klosterman's] point [about manufactured, fake love]. Its sound is pure “fake love” — if there was a video for it, it would have to look exactly like an episode of Dawson’s Creek or Grey’s Anatomy. (Only worse. - me)
5. Final Straw - The instrumentation on this song, particularly Buck's country acoustic seems at odds with Stipe's lyrics. I don't know that they even need each other anymore. Certainly this song would benefit from a different set of lyrics and a different singer. A shame, really.
6. I Wanted to Be Wrong - A half baked anti-Bush America song. I imagine it's hard to be in REM at this point in time. They started with a fire and fury in Reagan's American. They carried the banner through 11 years of that shit, with stuff to write about and sing about and then there was triumph. The Clinton years were a validation of much of what REM was about. Sure, it didn't create Utopia but it was a better America than the one that preceded it. Then the Bush years happened and the telecommunications act of 96 and vertical integration and boy bands and Fox News and, well, it's like the 90s never happened. Their response? Pap like this. They don't have the fire anymore. They are just tired. And don't know how to play this game. They're not relevant anymore. They're old....
7. Wanderlust - An almost honky-tonk track that can't fully commit. They're just gonna put the tip in....
8. Boy in the Well - It's haunting to be sure. There's no real there there. They've done this better. Truth is the music is REM by the numbers, the lyrics are just terrible, though.

[I really miss Bill Berry.....]

9. Aftermath - Pleasant, mid-tempo rocker. There's no hook, nothing to catch on to, not sure why there's no chorus as the song seems to be begging for one. It's harmless, toothless and uninteresting.
10. High Speed Train - Starts off as the ugliest song in the group's entire catalog then becomes one of the most boring, then just goes away. Finally.
11. The Worst Joke Ever - Oh, dear. Aimless and dependent on murky, oceanic production. Maybe they were listening to U2's All That You Can't Leave Behind a bit too much. It really doesn't work. At all.
12. The Ascent of Man - Reaching for croon, Stipe almost sounds alive on this one. There's movement, some sex appeal, some sway and swagger. It's a little too little too late. But it does feel like its trying.
13. Around The Sun - The first song for which an REM album is named. I think they were just too bored to come up with a title. This is Across the Universe if it was poorly written by bored millionaires with a contractual obligation.

Around the Sun is awful.

Grade: D-
ASide: Leaving New York
BlindSide: I Just Wanted to Be Wrong
Downside: The Outsiders, Make it All Okay, Boy in the Well, High Speed Train, The Worst Joke Ever

Reflecting Pool: REM - Reveal

How do you answer the world when your first album as a trio is roundly, soundly and decidedly shunned by everyone? You "go back to your roots". Or you say you're gonna do that and then you do whatever the hell you want and call it music.

R.E.M. - Reveal - 2001

"The Lifting" starts off the proceedings and it's a definite improvement in openers from the last two records. It's not the soporific "Airportman" nor is it the plodding "How the West....". But, even though it's energetic, it's nearly fogettable as soon as it's over. And before you know it, we're back in slumbertown's "I've Been High". It's a mood piece and sets the plate for "All the Way to Reno", which is not bad but not the best the band has ever had to offer. What band? By this point it's really the Michael Stipe show, isn't it?
I recall when Beck's Sea Change came out I was really angry. Some of the songs on that album were gorgeous, just lovely but Beck insisted on gleeps and blips and effects and tricks that distracted from the songs. As if the songs themselves weren't enough. They should be. I hear the same shit happening here. It's as though the guys are just bored and trying to find ways of making the music interesting to them. In the end, all we're left with is hollow sounds strung together as though they are songs. But anyone can construct a song. Trust me, I've done it. It's not hard. And with enough studio time you can do it too. There's more to it than that. But not on Reveal.

PopSongs said this about "She Just Wants to Be" There’s something a bit uncomfortable about the way “She Just Wants To Be” feels simultaneously strident and languorous, and Michael Stripe’s atrocious grammar ruins the lyrics for me. (In fairness, one shouldn’t come to rock music expecting excellent grammar, but “it’s not that the transparency of her earlier incarnations now looked back on weren’t rich and loaded with beautiful vulnerability” is a truly horrendous construction, especially if English is your first language.) It’s about a minute and a half too long, and in concert, Peter Buck extends it further with a guitar solo that is neither impressive or exciting. It’s not entirely unpleasant, but man, it’s hard to imagine someone actively wanting to listen to this song, much less perform it live.

That's how I feel about the whole record. It's insipid. Worse than that, it seems to want to evoke treacly, faux hippy, groovy tones and lava lamps. Even "Imitation of Life" which was the lead single and called to mind the best years of the band, stuffed in the middle of this record just retains the stink of the everything else and no longer sounds like a song crafted on its own, but instead a piece of one, dull whole.
Reveal does sort of end with "I'll Take the Rain", which is about as abysmal a song as they've ever recorded, but they come back for that encore with "Beachball" (I know I'm reading into this shit, but at this point I need something keep me going.) However, as an encore I would gladly ask the band to not come back out.

I absolutely hate this record.

Grade: D-
ASide: All The Way to Reno, Imitation of Life
BlindSide:
DownSide: The rest of it.

Reflecting Pool: REM - Up

R.E.M. - Up - 1998

For years I've always felt that Michael Stipe wanted REM to be the American Radiohead. Employing the latter's engineer for Up cemented that idea.
I've owned this CD since 98 when it came out. I've never, ever, ever listened to it. Wish me luck.
By the late 90s rock music was changed. The aggressive, post-punk, angst ridden grunge had been swept aside by the hive mind of raves. The Prodigy, The Orb, Moby, Madonna's Bedtime Stories, this was the place where rock bands were going. Edged out of the spotlight by rap, even Bowie was biting on the MDMA-laden scene (Earthling, anyone?)
Radiohead really took the mantle of disaffected alienation with OK Computer, U2 had foraged in this idiom as well. Guitars were over. ababcab songs were dead.
It was only a matter of time before REM joined the party.
With the departure of Bill Berry to his farm, the cohesive, driving center of REM was gone. The quartet who had once declared that should one member leave they would break up completely, didn't. Although rumor has it they almost did during the making of this record.

Up starts off with "Airportman" a song that predates but echoes Kid A in almost every way. It's all ambience and soundtrack, which was wonderful on Bowie's Low, but not so great here. With the next track, "Lotus" it should be obvious to even the most casual REM listener that this is not the band they grew up with. There's no chance for the goofy humor of "Bandwagon" here. There's not the heart of Automatic for the People. It's all post-modern soundscapes and mood. I once wrote, in my review of No Line on the Horizon (here): Imagine you are in a spacious apartment. It's a high rise above a metropolitan city. The carpet is grey, the furniture modern and black. The appointments are metallic and the windows are floor to ceiling.
Guests arrive but barely make small talk. The men are all dressed in fine linen and silk suits, the women are all in flowing haute couture.
The host snaps his fingers. Clothing is removed and the apartment is transformed into a hedonistic orgy.
Music comes on over the speakers.
It is U2's No Line on the Horizon.
When it is over everyone is finished copulating. They dress, barely acknowledging each other and everyone goes on their several ways.
That is about the emotional depth of this album and all it's good for.

The mood is almost the same for Up save for the orgy. The people who would populate a party thrown by hosts who soundtrack it to this album would not think about sex. They've just forgotten about it. They would rather take a nap.
Up is all about naps. Dreams and naps.
The song "Hope" is credited to Leonard Cohen as well as the trio. This is because they had basically stolen the melody and chord progression from Cohen's Suzanne and had to give him credit. or chose to give him credit. Whatever. It's a blatant steal. And all it does is remind me that I really like that other song and this is obnoxious. And I'm not really sure what to make of "At My Most Beautiful" with it's homage to The Beach Boys. I barely need an homage to that group and when I get it I want it to be fun like Super Furry Animals or interesting like Animal Collective.
I do enjoy the hynotic qualities on "Airportman" and "The Apologist" and would happily put them on in a playlist of some of Bowie and Eno's most ambient. The unfocused meanderings of "You're in the Air" should get you to turn this record off, if you haven't already.
I wonder what sessions the lovely and evocative "Daysleeper" was left off of. It has a distinctly Automatic for the People feel to it. And it works in the palette of that record, I think. it's not really about death but anyone who's had to work at night and sleep through the day knows what being a zombie really is. It's lonely and sad and feels like death. It would work there. It really saves this album from the junk pile.

I shant do the playlisting myself, but if you want a primer on how to make Up listenable, go here: http://www.stylusmagazine.com/articles/weekly_article/playing-god-with-rems-up.htm

If you like your music served up by robots with programmed drum machines (by people less talented than the ones who programmed The Cars' records over a decade earlier) then Up is for you.
I was just as well off having never heard it.

Grade: D-
ASide: Lotus, Daysleeper
BlindSide: Airportman, The Apologist, Parakeet
DownSide: Hope, Suspicion, At My Most Beautiful, You're in the Air

Reflecting Pool: REM - New Adventures in Hi-Fi

R.E.M. - New Adventures in Hi Fi - 1996

When New Adventures came out my brother asked me what I thought about it and my answer was "I wish REM would stop recording their sound checks." That was my initial response. Turns out I was right about that, too. Unbeknownst to me at the time.

There have always been 3 or 4 tracks from it that I adore but I don't think I've given the album anything more than a cursory listen. I know that I did hear the whole thing once, cause I brought it with me to the gym and played it while on the treadmill. But I think Jerry Springer was on at the same time and I was more than likely distracted by that....

The plodding drums, rhythmic piano, low toned vocals all building to a lush chorus usher in this album. Is it just me or does "How the West Was Won and Where it Got Us" remind of Big Audio Dynamite and Tom Tom Club? Regardless, it's a splendid mood piece. And that's a lot of Hi Fi. Moody, stark, moving and odd. To start the record off with this is bold and strange as the song isn't most inviting piece. On the contrary, it's haunting and off-putting.
Then the album opens up. I have to wonder if I would like Monster better if the two tracks "Wake Up Bomb" and "Undertow" had been included instead of held off and put here. And, given that this album clocks in at an hour, perhaps they were included to break up the monotony and give the record a couple of places for fans to hold on to something beyond mid to low-tempo mood pieces. The former being a fine piece of work and the latter being...well, not so.
The 3/4 time anti-talk show, anti-religious hypocrisy screed, "New Test Leper" is perhaps one of the best singles the band has ever recorded. From PopSongs: The song isn’t really about this specific debate, but rather how commercialized forums tend to reduce serious discourse to reductive “us vs. them” binary conflicts fought out with quick, harsh sound bites between advertisements for car dealerships and laundry detergent.
"E-Bow the Letter" is pretty much the saddest thing in REM's catalog. Based on a letter Stipe had written to his friend, River Phoenix, but couldn't send because of the latter's death, it's wrenching. And brilliant. Wow. Tears are actually welling while listening to this song...
In many ways Hi Fi is the natural follow up to Automatic. Both are stark and dense and etched in sadness, loss and moving on. Perhaps we needed a Monster in between but Hi Fi effectively wipes away the sour taste of that album. The real shame is that it comes on the heels of an album fraught with expectations so high that since it wasn't the answer fans were looking for, it gets the short shrift. You only need listen to "Leave" to realize just how incredible the heights reached on New Adventures are.
The single, "Bittersweet Me" is as pedestrian REM as you're ever gonna get. REM by the numbers. Driver 8 kind of stuff. easy to write, easy to do, easy to sell.
For me, the real trouble with NAiHF comes around "Binky the Doormat". (Oh, that title...cringe) By this point I've already put in the length of Murmur plus. The obsession with filling CDs with as much music as possible was a real problem in the 90s. The labels were charging more and more for plastic discs but who would want to pay $18 for 30 minutes of music? So we got a LOT of filler. By the middle of Hi Fi, I'm just ready for the entire proceeding to be over. Actually, Zither is supposed to be a transition song, but I could do without it. On the other hand, the "encore" "Electrolite" is lovely and a paean to their past, even if it sounds just like "Nightswimming". It's the last song in the "real" REM's catalog and when Stipe sings, "I'm not scared, I'm outta here" a fitting goodbye it is.

All in all, New Adventures in Hi Fi is one of REM's better albums. It would be one of their best if it was 15 minutes shorter. It's also notable that this is the last record that would include the original line-up. Bill Berry would quit to be a farmer after this album.

Grade: B+
ASide: How the West Was Won and Where it Got Us, New Test Leper, E-Bow the Letter, Bittersweet Me, Electrolite
BlindSide: The Wake Up Bomb, Leave
DownSide: Binky the Doormat