Rock for Relevance

Soundscan reports that in its first week the Smashing Pumpkins reunion (that's Billy Corgan and Jimmy Chamberlin) album Zeitgeist sold 149,000 copies. It's number 2 on the US chart after TI. The Pumpkins are number 1 in Canada, because many Canadians are strangely confused by urban pop music, and the logging industry inspires people to want to rock.

This is a band that's a decade past its heyday, and goes in and out of fashion with record critics with regularity. Album sales are half of what they were 10 years ago, except for country music (presumably because its listeners are less prone to use computers, but I'm not going there.) Number 2 seems pretty good. But MTV news is calling the sales a disappointment. And the reviews have been harsh. I think Zeitgeist is fairly solid, and unselfconscious about how a new Smashing Pumpkins is supposed to sound.

I have a theory about SP albums that I haven't heard from anyone else. It's that they're each about a different age.

Gish doesn't count, since it's just the band releasing its first material. Siamese Dream is an album about
childhood. Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness is about adolescence. More specifically, it's about high school. And frankly, I can barely say how important that CD was to me in grades 11 and 12. Everybody had it too. Adore is set during a person's mid to late 20s, after the hardest most soul-defining break up of their life. Machina I and II are next about man's relationship to God.

Zeitgeist is about the person trying to remain true to himself when ideals like country, government and God have all come to mean something that he opposes. If anything, it's about reclaiming those terms. The adult is brought back to a state of adolescent idealism and rebellion. That's why the line in "Doomsday Clock" that goes "These lonely days, will they ever stop?" has pertinence. It's an adult character frustrated that he's still plagued by teenage feelings.

The same goes for "7 Shades of Black." There's a 90s feel to these first 2 songs, and I think that's in the way their sentiment reaches out to listeners. It's angsty, but more poetically phrased than Linkin Park. This track would be killer if the guitars were louder. It's not quite "Bodies."

The really good songs on Zeitgeist are "Doomsday Clock," "That's the Way (My Love Is)," "Tarantula," "Starz," "Neverlost" and "For God and Country." I first thought the album hit a slump after midpoint "United States." But then I was listening to "Neverlost" in my car the other night and really liked it. Maybe because it was the first time I understood it. It's the kind of song you need to hear when you're driving alone at night. The only really weak track is "Bring the Light."

Does Zeitgeist come close to being the new Mellon Collie? Of course not. It's not that good. What albums are?

So yeah, I think it's a solid CD. It had the potential to be great, but for some reason 3 key tracks were left as B-sides, each separately available on special editions of the album. The solution is to purchase the album, download the songs "Death From Above," "Stellar" and "Zeitgeist" and then make an expanded version (based on where each appear on their special editions the songs should be placed respectively as tracks 9, 12 and 15.) Without them, Zeitgeist has thematic coherence, but plays like so many albums this year as a collection of potential singles. In the iPod generation, record labels assume nobody listens to CDs from start to end anymore. These songs give Zeitgeist its shape and texture. It becomes epic and pretentious, like great Pumpkins albums should be. "Stellar" even contains some of the most heartfelt lyrics of the album. Corgan asks, "Is it wrong to say / There's God and then there's faith? / Is it wrong to say so?" -- a plea for freedom of expression in a world with strict tabs on what constitutes acceptable thoughts.

The summer of 07 has found a surplus of 90s rock stars vying for a share of the new marketplace. Many of them seem out of place in the American Idol, High School Musical and faceless indie rock climate. Sales and reviews have reflected this.

It probably shouldn't be too surprising that Chris Cornell's second solo CD Carry On hasn't fared too well commercially. But that doesn't excuse the way music critics misread Cornell's efforts and intentions against past totems. Let's be honest with ourselves, and all agree that Soundgarden's Superunknown is the best rock album of the 90s. Great. Now let's also admit that we'd be laughing at Cornell if he was trying to make his present work sound like Soundgarden.

Carry On's song structures are often too simple, and its tone sometimes misjudged. It should also be noted that the final song, Casino Royale theme "You Know My Name," does not fit here. But what's right about it outweighs what's wrong. I sometimes think Cornell is the most misunderstood major rock vocalist. I'd probably place him as one of the top 5 writers who have influenced my own writing. He's made a record about the strains of aging with regret. Its the pop sensibilities critics harp on. But it's Cornell's faith in pop that makes it matter.

The single "No Such Thing" recalls the danger of youthful nihilism, with experience. The lesson "there's no such thing as nothing" communicates that the wish for invisibility is impossible. "Laughed at love / It was a big mistake / In the absence of / I filled it with hate."

If Carry On disappoints, it's in the same way the summer's other rock star returns do. Those of us who were in their adolescence when they were at their height want them to return to that place where they can take over the world. Part of it is the musicians, and the listeners, getting older. While the music can still have pertinence, it will be a different pertinence. We can never look at rock stars the same way we did at 17. If we do, we're in trouble. Cornell's on the right track by not trying to recapture past glory.

Mike Patton has never stopped keeping at it. His new project with outfit Tomahawk, titled Anonymous, is an album of electric renditions of Native American tribal chants from the late 1800s. The music succeeds as atmospheric pop, although Patton's ritual chanting can be silly. I like most albums the guy puts out, but I'm still waiting for one to occupy my mind and time since the last Mr. Bungle release. Mike Patton has become the master of new ideas that end up sort of like all his other ideas. How often do you listen to, for instance, the third Fantomas album? He's a genius whose music, now more than ever, needs to find its soul. For a challenging artist, that will be the real challenge for his fanbase.

I don't know what I wanted from the new Marilyn Manson. His first CD in 4 years Eat Me, Drink Me uses imagery of Lewis Carroll and Armin Melwes (the German cannibal who met his willing victim through a website), but evolved from Manson's breakup with burlesque dancer Dita von Treese. This has been the hardest Manson album for me to form an opinion on. It's his catchiest and most personal. But it's also the first that isn't larger than life. It's been interesting that 2007 saw Trent Reznor making Year Zero, a world weary Marilyn Manson album, while Manson makes Eat Me, Drink Me, an inward-reflective Nine Inch Nails album. This one also shares a lot with the new Pumpkins. It feels like a collection of potential theme-based singles which should be about 3 songs longer (though I told you how to make Zeitgeist more complete). I like every song on it but one (in this case that's "The Red Carpet Grave"). There are only 2 musicians who play on it. And Manson once said that Billy Corgan should wear a yellow shirt with a black zigzag and he'd look just like Charlie Brown.

Music critics have not been kind to Manson, or Cornell, or the Pumpkins this year. They'll take Patton, I suspect because they're afraid of his listeners. Music criticism is even more fashion-centric than movie criticism. Basically, it works like this: If your band is in vogue, you're cool. If you're last week's news, sorry. If, however, you're last week's news but can now be seen as ironic or heavily nostalgic (worthy of some renaissance), you're in luck. The monopoly of opinion from music reviews infiltrates to serious music buyers. Pitchfork (www.pitchforkmedia.com) is the worst for this. Beyond the site's predictability, elitism, and extreme whiteness, it became a giant force in indie music as soon as it got rid of its Reader Mail page--a very calculated move. Now there's no way for readers to respond, except in blogs and unrelated sites. Pitchfork is accepted as the unchallenged voice of authority.

Fashionability informs critics too much (it happens with movie critics as well, but in a different way), because the new CDs by Queens of the Stone Age, The White Stripes and Bad Brains aren't really that interesting.

I don't have much to say about Queens' Era Vulgaris. I've heard it. I'm fine with it. So I'll start with the Stripes album Icky Thump. It's good. But it's exactly as good as you expect it to be before you hear it. It's 13 new songs by The White Stripes. Because this is an extremely likeable rock band, the title track, "Rag and Bone," "Catch Hell Blues" and "I'm Slowly Turning Into You" know how to kick it without watering down their gut crunching heavy joy. But it's less interesting a collection than 2005's minimalist Get Behind Me Satan, and the CD mastering is awful.

The White Stripes are becoming a reliable confort band like The Ramones. The world turns thousands of times, and they're still the same White Stripes. I hope they don't die like The Ramones, though--they broke their fan contract when that happened. Jack and Meg White have real stage presence too. I like how when Meg plays drums she wears an expression like she's drifting to a far off place while thinking about Tori Amos lyrics.

It's saying something though that The White Stripes best song, "We're Going to Be Friends" off White Blood Cells is one of their least typical. The simplicity of that song belies its genius. It's a song about school and friendship without a trace of cynicism, told from the perspective of a kid. Not a teenager, 12, or 10 year-old, but a 5 year-old! Think about how fucking ambitious that is in a song intended for adult listeners. It's at once the band's happiest and saddest song, because it puts our own jaded views in perspective. Without being sappy, it's purely emotional--a connective feeling to a part of life we've all lived, that's inherently a part of us, but few of us ever think about in any detail. That's the eye-opening feeling I'd like to get from The White Stripes again before rushing to call each of their records their best in years.

People are obviously so excited there's a new Bad Brains out that they're happy to call it the best since 1986's I Against I. Hardly. I wouldn't even necessarily proclaim the new Build a Nation better than God of Love.

Too many of the lyrics consist of a song title repeated ad-infinitum, though the album is quite addictive once you've pressed play. Between listens, I tend to forget how great these guys sound musically here. There's a weak shift in the band's focus on more recent releases that can't be ignored. What makes Bad Brains songs of yore important is that, like Fishbone, they acknowledge the world at its most unjust and then refuse to let it stand in their way. It's an attitude of optimism as a state of defiance. Bad Brains penetrated that with innovative hardcore. The songs on Build a Nation will never affect anyone like "Banned in DC," "Sailin' On," "Pay to Cum," or the rebellious cry of "Never give in" in "At the Movies." Now that vocalist H.R. is only about Jah, so are the songs. Bad Brains must realize, though, that it's a tiny fraction of their audience that seriously gives a shit about Rastafarianism in any major capacity. They speak what they believe, but they don't translate it like they used to.

Music is in some ways more personal than movies. You walk around with a song in your head more intimately than how you walk around with a movie in your head. It's purely emotional, in a way where I sometimes find discussing music about as futile as trying to find an intellectual reason for falling in love. But when music I like becomes relevant to others, that's special. It's the connective potential of pop, which is the reason why it's worth caring when bands are "relevant." But they lose that relevance. Something they pick it up again. It's not only the rock stars actions that decide it. It's them, or it's us, or it's the music media telling us what to think.

The New Sadism postscript

Following my writeup on The New Sadism last month, I thought it would be worth posting my review of Captivity. This has been the most notorious of the recent torture-focused horror movies, even before anyone had seen it. Now that about 3 people went to it on its first weekend, it's still the most hated. But I see a clear difference in what's going on in this film than in Saw. Just don't ask me to watch it again.

The Review (as written for The Coast):

Let's assume Captivity is smarter than anybody but its makers recognize. This isn't too outlandish a supposition. Captivity has been the target of scorn for months. Its controversial LA billboards led to numerous op-ed pieces about the state of horror films. The trailer just leaves one puzzling over who'd want to see such a thing. Even with all this hatred lowering expectations, the reality of Captivity is that it's so unpleasant, the few people prone to look for virtues in it either won't go see it or will be too appalled to make the effort.

Captivity is a stupid movie made by smart people, meaning it's not as dumb as it looks. Roland Joffe and screenwriter Larry Cohen stage their critique of celebrity-obsession. "You know something is real when you can touch it," is the movie's repeated mantra. Because celebrities are untouchable, that makes them not real, and henceforth "victimless" targets of society's impotent rage. Celebrated New York fashion scenester Jennifer Tree (Elisha Cuthbert) wakes up to find herself trapped in a cellar where she's toyed with through video images, torture devices, and merchandise of herself.

It's almost a one-woman show, punctuated by a repeated pattern where Jennifer freaks out, and then Joffe breaks the scene with a fade-out. It's agonizing, but appropriately so. The film serves as the third in writer Cohen's Phone Trilogy, following Phone Booth and Cellular. Captivity has Jennifer text messaging her high society friends at the start, only to go crazy in a space without any communicative means.

The irony is that Captivity is ABOUT the things it's hated for - a culture that views women as objects, fascination with death and mutilation, turning to the misery of others for our entertainment. When it develops a sly sense of humour in the final half there are even a couple great B-movie shocks. The end plays more honestly as a feminist horror film than Hostel Part II.

If Captivity can't be endorsed, it's because it's cheapened by its most gratuitous gore. When producers caught wind of the controversy the movie was generating, they shot more violence to meet the hype. Scenes of force fed cannibalism and the consumption of battery acid are nasty in any context. Especially when they have none.