Category: music

100 for 2000 – #17. Semisonic – All About Chemistry

To end another wonderful decade of great music, I’m going to write about ten albums from each of the last ten years, that are either great, or hold some sort of personal significance. A musical kiss off to 00s.

2001 – #7. Semisonic – All About Chemistry
(MCA)

Very interesting, looking back, how much affirmative music I loved in 2001. I must have been quite happy. And it in the pantheon of Love Gone Right albums, this is a great one. A few of us still speak of this album in hush tones (hello Liam, hello Tim)…this band was pretty good, and this album really captured something. It didn’t capture the public and All About Chemistry remains the last album by Semisonic.

Semisonic had a big hit in the US and Australia with Closing Time (in the UK, it was Secret Smile). I bought that last album, Feeling Strangely Fine, and it sat along side another dozen records that year as decent pop rock fare from America.

With All About Chemistry – there was a change. The songs became less personal, more anthemic. Songwriter Dan Wilson expressed this is an interview at the time – he wanted to write to a room. He had a big international audience for the first time.

Chemistry was the first single, and a brilliant one at that. Using science and chemistry to discuss dating – the ups and downs, and how the great experiment continues.

So for awhile we conducted experiments 
In an apartment by the River Road 
And we found out that the two things we put together had a 
Bad tendency to explode

In fitting with a talented band that a label didn’t know what to do with, the album is heavy with collaborators. First and foremost is Carole King, who co-wrote and performs on One True Love. Another big song about how people love (rather than a love song), it should have been a hit. Elsewhere, Gary Louris of the Jayhawks provides some fantastic guitar to I Wish, another highlight.

I’m surprised this record didn’t do a lot better. It’s a perfect college rock record, although I guess that alternative pop was out of vogue at the time. It was also clever enough to hit the pop geeks, but perhaps their previous hit maker status turned them away. Probably the bigger death knell is the overall mood – it’s very mature.

(With the exception of the song Get A Grip, a cheesy ode to masturbation, not one of the better songs, but desperately released as a last single).

My two favourite songs are: Follow – just a great pop love song. A classic, should have been single, should be sung by buskers the world over. The other is El Matador – written by the drummer Jacob Slichter – a woozy goodbye with shades and allusions to Joni Mitchell, a trick I would blatantly steal later.

I still listen to this record. At it’s core, it’s what I like. Semisonic, however, broke up shortly after. It took lead guy Dan Wilson 6 years to make a follow up, having taken up a role as songwriter for hire. You can probably find this album in a bargain bin near you…

100 for 2000 – #16. The Flashing Lights – Sweet Release

To end another wonderful decade of great music, I’m going to write about ten albums from each of the last ten years, that are either great, or hold some sort of personal significance. A musical kiss off to 00s.

2001 – #6. The Flashing Lights – Sweet Release
(Outside)

I was a huge fan of the Canadian band Sloan, and the bands in their circle – anything on Murderrecords, or from the Halifax pop scene. One of those bands were the The Super Friendz, who broke up in 1997, and lead Friend Matt Murphy had moved onto the Flashing Lights. Sweet Release is their second and last album.

You know, this album did not alter the course of popular music. It wasn’t even that popular in Canada. No wikipedia page, no myspace…barely any record that this band ever existed is in question. I’m not being obscurist – someone had to hear it for it to be obscure. Being obscure is having those albums that are actually valuable on Ebay. This is one of the couple of hundred albums I bought that year, and it’s just really good.

At it’s heart, it’s just really fun. Murphy’s guitar playing and energy was all over their debut album (Where the Change Is), but this was more laid back. It was definitely retro – a early 70s guitar record vibe. Somewhere between T. Rex and Todd Rundgren. Even the album cover – it’s colour, the font… I always wanted this on vinyl.

The record opens with Been Waiting, a slowly chugging groove with an ironic lyric about being the kings of the Canadian scene (“I’m late for my limousine ride”). Through the couple of singles – Same Things Twice – a super fun rocker, and Friends You Love To Hate – a more studied song but just as fun. There’s not a bad song of course, but special notice for Same Old Life, the only really acoustic/ballady song of their short career.

Lyrically it’s quite simple. The riffs, the arrangements – they’re clever but not groundbreaking. It’s not what this album was about. It’s the fun you know all about. It’s the old friend you get along with straight away. There’s something to be said about those kinds of records.

The Flashing Lights no longer exist. I doubt Murphy ever performs these songs anymore. But I have the record. And I have the memory of a drive in the outer suburbs of Perth, looking for a copy of the Only Ones on vinyl, where we listened to this album, windows down, on a hot day. I’m pretty happy with that.

100 for 2000 – #15. Lazy Susan – Long Lost

To end another wonderful decade of great music, I’m going to write about ten albums from each of the last ten years, that are either great, or hold some sort of personal significance. A musical kiss off to 00s.

2001 – #5. Lazy Susan – Long Lost
(-)

It’s really quite impossible for me to discuss this album, as it’s mainly my friends involved. Lazy Susan were a band from Sydney, who I would later join. But even before that, I was a huge fan. Long Lost was their first album, and there were two big radio songs – Canada and Bobby Fischer.

I lived and loved these songs, and later got to play many of them live all the time. It was witty, pop, sad, fun and everything I loved about music.

More than that, this record was rooted in living in Newtown, and a couple of girls I knew from around that time. Singer Paul once said something I loved about his songs – that they were every day songs. They are the reliable trousers you can wear every day – not the flashy leather jacket when you’re trying to be a poser.

That’s all I can really say about this record at this time in my life. Maybe in another ten years…

100 for 2000 – #14. Gillian Welch – Time (the Revelator)

To end another wonderful decade of great music, I’m going to write about ten albums from each of the last ten years, that are either great, or hold some sort of personal significance. A musical kiss off to 00s.

2001 – #4. Gillian Welch – Time (the Revelator)
Acony

I’ve seen this album on many best-of the decade lists, and how can it be denied? Gillian Welch jumped into a new stratosphere. The limits to what could be done with old-timey, traditional American music would be forever challenged. Time (the Revelator) was all this and more.

Gillian Welch (and her partner David Rawlings) had made two albums of honest, down home bluegrass with T-Bone Burnett. Steeped in the past, the albums were black and white vignettes. They sounded like classics that have existed for all time – and songs were covered immediately by people like Emmylou Harris. Collaborations with people like Ryan Adams had brought their profile up, but there was one more important step they had to take before Time (the Revelator) was released.

O Brother, Where Art Thou? was the new Coen Brothers film. Always sticking to their quirky, one of a kind vision, they comissioned a soundtrack of old timey music of many sorts – bluegrass, mountain ballads, gospel and blues. It had been years since anything of such a sub genre had ever been a hit, even a minor one. To absolutely everyone’s surprise, the album sold 8 times platinum (could well be 9 by now), and became an actual hit record!

Welch served as one of the musical directors on the album. One of the performances on Time (the Revelator) is taken from the live showcase of the OBWAT soundtrack at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville. It was captured on the film Down From the Mountain. Suddenly, there was an large audience for banjos, finger picking and close harmonies.

If they had made another album like the two before, it would have captured the moment, made some money, and Welch would have followed the genre back into obscurity. By luck or design, they had an album that was far more than the albums they gave us before.

Tim (the Revelator) opened with Revelator. Had there ever been a 6 minute plus mountain ballad about betrayal that ever came close to sounding like this. The story continued with My First Lover. Sounding like the past, it quickly gives itself away as a contemporary story with references to Steve Miller Band.

It’s that hint of modernity that is so disarming. It’s like using an old dead language to describe todays events. I Want To Sing That Rock N Roll, Elvis Presley Blues… songs that sound like this should not be singing about stuff like that.

Rawlings was a revelation in himself. Taking production duties himself, his guitar work is original and phenomenal. Not relying on anything remotely like a classic country lick, it added to the spookiness of the proceedings.

Everything Is Free is a bluegrass song about new technologies (perhaps even downloading). It ends with the stunning, deadpan line “If there’s something that you want to hear/Go and sing it yourself.

And like Highway 61 Revisted before it, it ended with it’s longest track. An almost 15 minute road trip called I Dream A Highway, rolling the album back into the darkness from where it first appeared.

I am still very much in love with the work of this duo. And it was around here I fell for old timey things. On the street where I lived, King Street in Newtown, Sydney, there were a couple of awesome antique shops. Old coffee tables, lamps, record players, couches… I love it all. This fit right in with me. Traditiona and modern at the same time.

100 for 2000 – #13. Old 97’s – Satellite Rides

To end another wonderful decade of great music, I’m going to write about ten albums from each of the last ten years, that are either great, or hold some sort of personal significance. A musical kiss off to 00s.

2001 – #3. Old 97’s – Satellite Rides
(Elektra)

I was buying far more music than I could listen to at this time. I think when my diet was cigarettes and coffee, and my other expenses were cigarettes, it all went to CDs really. I had picked up a couple of Old 97’s albums as they were a well respected alt-country band. But I wasn’t ready for Satellite Rides, and it’s power pop charms.

Talking about new records is one thing, but it’s a narrow view. I was also deeply into Bob Dylan, Robert Wyatt, Leonard Cohen and other tune-lite serious stuff. I was into a lot of indie sad stuff. I was into a lot of old time dark country stuff.

Hearing this record, even at the time, it felt like a I was discovering music for the first time. First hearing the Beatles, the Monkees or the Kinks. Teenaged love songs that unwrapped my confused teenage heart. This record made me feel young, at a time when I was trying to be too old for my age.

The Old 97’s were, by all accounts, one of the best alt-country bands around, especially in a live setting. They made one of the best, flawless country rock records with Too Far Too Care. But signs of change creeped in with their 1999 album, Fight Songs. A pop influence widened their sound. Hints of Ray Davies’ structured songwriting and Belle And Sebastian’s whimsy were added to the arsenal.

By the time of Satellite Rides, there’s barely a handful of songs that sound the freight train country punk that was the Old 97’s trademark. Instead it’s full of meaty, riff heavy power pop gems. The album opens with three such songs – King Of All the World, Rollerskate Skinny and Buick City Complex. All three rock, all three have big fun choruses, all three are about how girls are lovely. It’s really all about girls.

The love song obsession culminates with Question – possibly their most famous song. Used in many TV shows, it’s got a lyrical simplicity and a busker’s guitar quality making it universal. It is, in an album full of songs for the girls, this one really is for the girls.

So many great songs follow on. Weightless is one of singer Rhett Miller’s most touching vocal performances. Designs On You, the second single from the album, is just as rocking, and sexually active, as any of the songs here. Am I Too Late, Can’t Get A Line…I’m just making lists really. It’s all great.

The album was critically divided, mainly because old fans still wanted the country stuff – which they still did well. Rhett started a solo career, where he could let his pop stuff take flight, while still playing with the Old 97’s. Even better music was to come….

100 for 2000 – #12. You Am I – Dress Me Slowly

To end another wonderful decade of great music, I’m going to write about ten albums from each of the last ten years, that are either great, or hold some sort of personal significance. A musical kiss off to 00s.

2001 – #2. You Am I – Dress Me Slowly
(BMG/RCA)

I can’t be objective about this record. I’m not even going to try. My favourite band in the world is You Am I. By 2001 I was loosely in orbit around their world. I got a unique view of how this album came together. Then how it fell apart and then how it came back together. Here is the abridged version. The long, painful making of Dress Me Slowly.

Sometime in 1999, You Am I signed to RCA Records in the US. Having been dropped by Warner Bros after a restructuring, it seemed like the band was just about to break in the US. It was the first time that I heard some funny lines close up. One was ‘I don’t hear a single’.

Rewind a bit.

You Am I were doing pretty well in Australia, but there was a feeling that they might have gone as far as they could in Australia. Their last album, aptly named #4 Record, had done pretty well but not as well as some people (mainly labels, managers, etc) thought it could. They had spent a lot of money recording it in LA, and so the band released a live album as they reassessed.

Even before that live album, singer and songwriter Tim Rogers had a new albums worth of strong songs. I was lucky enough to get a tape of the demos. I thought this would have made a fantastic album. In the end, only three songs from that twelve would make the finished album.

So – a lot was riding on this album. The big US company wanted a single. It’s hard to imagine what they were looking for. Maybe a ‘Closing Time’? Or a ‘Learn To Fly’? A ‘Sex And Candy’? A ‘Flagpole Sitta’? Some sort of US radio fodder. They just weren’t hearing it on the demos so far. Rogers was asked to go and wrote some more songs.

I still listen to those demos, by the way. Songs like Tourism and Concentration are fantastic. Early versions of Midget In a Nightclub and Get Drunk, Ring Yer Friends are better than the ones eventually released.

In the meantime, the band continued to tour and play. New songs would sneak into the set. But with RCA unable to explain what they were looking for, Rogers was unable to make them happy. All this time, there was more and more pressure. RCA even suggested hooking Rogers up with Ray Davies for a songwriting collaboration. That marketing hook might be enough to get a song on radio. Rogers gracefully declined.

(They also suggested Rogers took out every second word of one song)

By this time, a bunch of new songs had been willed into existence. Gone, Gone, Gone joined Sugar and Judge Roy (although with almost completely different lyrics) joined Bring Some Sun Back, Satisfied Mind and Weeds from those early demos.

Another new song was a ballad called Damage. There was a ballad on the last You Am I album, Heavy Heart. At least two people I know that were in the band’s inner circle disagreed with how Heavy Heart should have sounded. They thought a big string laden ballad would have made it a hit. With Damage, the band finally conceded to this. Finally with a single in the bag, producer Ed Buller was brought in to help finally make this album.

Buller was a disaster. Overblown and over-produced, it caught onto the Australian trend at the time of bright modern pop rock records – Alex Lloyd and Superjesus come to mind. The band cancelled the sessions, and started again. Those recordings would be forever shelved.

With money bleeding, Rogers wrote yet another batch of songs. One, Get Up, the best song on the album, summed up the frustration at the time. The Australian team thought Get Up was the song they were waiting for, and wanted to proceed, with or without the US label support.

Recording began with producer Clif Norrell. The album sessions, which I was lucky enough to sit in on, went painlessly, really. After the album had been recorded, Rogers had three songs that he still had kicking around. It was decided to go back into the studio, damn the cost, and put these three awesome songs to tape.

These last three songs were amongst Rogers best. Kick A Hole In the Sky was the last single from this album when it finally came out. Watcha Doin’ To Me is a passionate song for Rogers new wife. Also about his wife is Beautiful Girl. I thought that should have been a single.

There were still some fights to come – the retro image of the band and the album cover had to stamped out, in favour of something flavourless. They did make a vinyl version, and for some reason, someone listened to me when I said it should include the liner notes written by my friend Michael Lock. Oh yeah, my name appears on the album on a page all it’s own. Ask me about the packaging one day. Of and the promo stickers. So many stories.

It’s a bastard of a record, this one. It lacks the cohesive vibe of You Am I’s best stuff, and that’s because of the long, protracted writing. It took away so much of the band’s momentum. But it has so many of my favourite songs too. It’s like Monty Python’s The Meaning Of Life. Not a great film, until you start naming sketches.

It also taught me a lot about record companies too. I helped out at BMG a bit after this, then moved onto Warners. It was the beginning of another story – and looking back, the end of my story with You Am I.

100 for 2000 – #11. Travis – The Invisible Band

To end another wonderful decade of great music, I’m going to write about ten albums from each of the last ten years, that are either great, or hold some sort of personal significance. A musical kiss off to 00s.

2001 – #1. Travis – The Invisible Band
(Independiente)

Back in 2001, I was writing a weekly column called ‘Strum’ for a Sydney magazine called Revolver. Because of this, I know I did an end of year bets of list, and the album that was number one was the Invisible Band by Travis.

Something draws me to the Scottish. All that staying inside, I guess it produces very insular, thoughtful bands. For Travis, after the success of The Man Who, they made their best, most confident and thoughtful album. They abandoned the Oasis type posing of their first album, the Radiohead lite flourishes of the second, and made a Travis album.

It’s an album of love. Of love gone right. Years of struggling had paid off, and singer/songwriter Fran Healy found himself in love. It is those love songs that make up the heart of the album. The massive hit, Sing, was a bit of joyous nonsense. But it’s Flowers In the Window that revels in the end of lonely nights, and pitter patter of tiny feet in the distance. The last track, The Humpty Dumpty Love Song, is one of the best things they have ever done. Haunting and longing…it offers a way out of the darkness presented on the Man Who.

Sounding positive and happy without sounding corny is one of the hardest things in the world. But coming out of all that ‘millennial tension’, The Invisible Band was a perfect antidote. Listening to this album, you’d believe the band has never heard Radiohead and would never care too (although they share a producer).

I listened to this album a lot. It made me feel better and it still does. It’s a Sunday morning album. The repeating chorus of Safe comes to mind. I feel safe around this record, like the world is going to be alright. And I’m going to be alright. I guess it’s not cool to sing about that kind of stuff.

Musical delights are abound if you give it a try. The chiming guitar intro the Follow the Light – I’m surprised more people haven’t ripped that off. Dear Diary, as one review at the time called it, the best White Album song of the year.

But for my money, my favourite song is the Cage. A song about a boy seeing how he’s not the right guy for a girl, and breaking up with her. I had been giving a life to a girl who I felt never really liked it. When that all ended, I had this song…not to wallow in, but to help me make sense of what happened. That’s the wonderful thing about a good song.

I still buy Travis albums. The Boy With No Name is just as good as anything they’ve ever done. I know their star has passed, but it’s something about the Scottish. They’ve got me hooked.

(Quick aside – I pad through the nose for this record on vinyl. I had decided that, at the very least, I would get my top ten albums of every year on vinyl, if there was a print. They only made the Invisible Band in the UK – the import and exchange rate were ridiculous. Now I see this for less that £5 on vinyl everywhere.)

100 for 2000 – #10. Ryan Adams – Heartbreaker

To end another wonderful decade of great music, I’m going to write about ten albums from each of the last ten years, that are either great, or hold some sort of personal significance. A musical kiss off to 00s.

2000 – #10. Ryan Adams – Heartbreaker
(Bloodshot)

Just writing about the past can change it. Everyone’s view differs. But I can’t pretend that when this album came out, it wasn’t big in my world. But I can’t listen to a single note of it anymore. Ryan Adams is probably the musician I loathe the most in the world. He’s so far gone for me that it has ruined every good thing he’s ever done in my eyes (and ears). The wanker ruined a great album in Heartbreaker.

I realise I am in the minority in this. I cannot listen to an album by someone I despise. No matter how many times you tell me to just ‘listen to the music’, the music is still the expression of someone I find offensive and abhorrent.

The opposite, equally unpopular, result is that I would rather listen to mediocre albums by great musicians. I would listen to the worse Neil Young albums before this one, because at least Neil Young is an artist. Who has a perfect strike rate anyway?

So – like I said, it’s not a popular opinion, but a valid one. For example, I have complained loudly about Chris Brown in recent weeks. The man is a criminal. A wife beating criminal. If he lived on my street, we would go around and beat the shit out of him. He is a fucking criminal.

Yet, when I bring up – “how can anyone buy a Chris Brown album”, they bring up that Youtube wedding video, how he has been doing the publicity circuit… no one mentions the man is a villain.

Adams is not a criminal, but he is a moron, and a villain. Starting with two of the worse live shows I’ve ever seen, he continues to be an indulgent musician and wanker up there with Pete Doherty.

I have nothing to say about the music on this album. But the last time I even pretending to give a shit about this person (and, by default, his music), I read an interview where he bemoaned being a musician, how he has to do publicity, how his life is not his own.

Even in the article, the reporter points out that the person who is changing the sheets in your hotel room – their life is not their own either. You little pampered shit.

Ryan Adams represents, in retrospect, everything that was wrong with the ‘authentic’ vibe of alt-country. Which is this bullshit of having to prove you want to kill yourself more than the next guy. Sometimes I wish he really would prove it.

Goodbye 2000, goodbye alt-country, goodbye Ryan Adams. Fuck off.

100 for 2000 – #9. Picture A Hum, Can’t Hear A Sound

To end another wonderful decade of great music, I’m going to write about ten albums from each of the last ten years, that are either great, or hold some sort of personal significance. A musical kiss off to 00s.

2000 – #9. 78 Saab – Picture A Hum, Can’t Hear A Sound
(Ivy League)

The coolest label in Australia at this time was Ivy League Records. This was before the Vines broke and the company changed. They had a stable of young guitar bands, who loved melody and experimentation, mostly hailing from Canberra. 78 Saab was by far the biggest band on the label in those early days. Picture A Hum, Can’t Hear A Sound was their first album.

I’m not sure how the guys met, or how the band got started, but I thought they were pretty great. They had this great EP out, Hello Believers, and a couple of songs on radio. By the end of ‘99, they had a pretty big hit (in alternative circles) with a song called ‘Sunshine’. It was dreamy, psych pop – a bit of a departure for them. It was the soundtrack to that millennium summer. I still think of that summer when I hear that song.

I would never miss a 78 Saab gig. Partly though, I was going out to see bands almost very night of week, and catching all the support bands as well. I even got to know the guys, I’m sure we must have done a show with them at some point. But that would be years later. At this time, I was a follower.

And it’s important to remember because so many have forgotten. I can barely find an image for the album online. No-one listens to this album according to Last.fm. But I have friends who would spend every weekend in Newtown catching an Ivy League band. And that time was important to us.

Debut albums are so exciting – the promise of a new band. 78 Saab had that. Sure, they had catchy pop with songs such as Like It Was Before. Then, at some gig, they’d debut Sunshine. Then, a later gig, the great, great Smile (best track on the album). Karma Package Deal was their best rock song so far. Two even greater, country influenced ballads – Jack Frost and Don’t Know Much – promised more.

That’s the thing. You’d listen to each song and think – wow, there is more of this to come.

There was more, but it didn’t come quickly. For whatever reason, the next album was delayed, as was the album after that. They stayed well respected amongst musicians, but they never broke through. By then, the Vines and Jet had changed the game anyway.

100 for 2000 – #8. Steve Earle – Transcendental Blues

To end another wonderful decade of great music, I’m going to write about ten albums from each of the last ten years, that are either great, or hold some sort of personal significance. A musical kiss off to 00s.

2000 – #8. Steve Earle – Transcendental Blues

For as long as I can remember, I have always had some genre I was obsessed about and exploring. Punk and hardcore at 15, power pop and garage rock at 17, and in my late teens early 20s it was all about alt-country. By 2000, that obsession was dying down. With that, this is the last of a string of Steve Earle records that I loved. In the man’s own words, Transcendental Blues was a big record – a record so big he could take a break from making records for a while after this.

Earle, for my money, was flawless from when he made his big return from drugs and darkness with Train A Comin’ until this record. In those five records he brought a reckless rock ‘n’ roll spirit to the country adage of ‘four chords and the truth’. I was aware had a more commercial career before all this, but those records were tough to find – and I didn’t really try that hard.

Transcendental Blues feels like a best of those records. In the same way the U2 album of that year (All That You Can’t Leave Behind) was the boiled down classic elements of U2, this record was Steve Earle at his simplest. Only lightly bluegrass in places, it rocks and bit not too tough. The ballads are sad but you don’t slash your wrist. It makes the record sound watered down, but it’s actually it’s strength. It’s solid as a house.

The title track is one of Earle’s best. A hymn for rednecks. Steve’s Last Ramble and Another Town are two of his best, escapist rockers. That escape theme, or as Earle puts it in his liner notes – the feeling of going through something (like a divorce or a windscreen). I returned to this album in the middle of the last decade when I was planning my own escape.

They really got the sound down by this time. A long standing producer relationship with Ray Kennedy (as a duo they were known as ‘Twangtrust’) was really red hot now. One of the reasons we asked Michael Carpenter to produce our albums was because he was a big fan of the production on these records. Also Twangtrust was too far away.

This is also the album that has Galway Girl, which has became a standard in Ireland and I know see it in Irish beer ads.

At the time there was a huge controversy about Over Yonder (Jonathan’s Song). Its a song about a person Earle knew and knew well who was on death row. He made a film clip for the song with the mug shots of every person sentenced to death under GW Bush’s time as Governor. Ballsy stuff, and I couldn’t wait to see it, the left wing pinko that I am. But once you see it, you realise…it’s mostly black men. They left that off the press release.

I moved on from alt-country after this (and yes I still call it that, why not, it’s like people who say Television were not punk). And I never really felt the same way about another Steve Earle record. Or Son Volt. Or Slobberbone. Or a lot of those bands. The grass roots honesty and values of country bands went away.

But if you were going to start with Steve Earle, I would without a doubt say this is where to start.