|
 What
a Brute
By
David King
Art
Brut
Bang
Bang Rock & Roll (Downtown)
‘If
I went around punching every-one who didn’t like my band,
I’d be a very tired man,” said Art Brut singer Eddie Argos.
In actuality, the result of everyone who doesn’t like Art
Brut punching Argos would likely be a bit more drastic: He’d
probably be dead.
You see, Argos’ dry wit and sarcastic saunter don’t win him
a lot of friends. People seem to have a hard time relating
to love ballads about a shade of blue on a work of modern
art. “I just can’t help myself! Modern art makes me want to
rock out!”
Argos’ Johnny Rotten-meets-Jarvis Cocker spoken-word singing
leaves a lot of listeners questioning not only his sincerity,
but also his talent. It probably irks them more that Argos
takes time to address it in his band’s new album, Bang
Bang Rock & Roll. “And, yes, this is my singing voice.
It’s not irony, it’s not rock & roll. We’re just talking
to the kids,” Argos sarcastically states fairly early on in
the album opener, “Formed a Band.”
It doesn’t help that Argos’ band swing between semi-serious
art-rock noise to straightforward, repetitive, poppy punk
hooks delivered in a lazy, if not uninterested, fashion. That
is not to say Bang Bang Rock & Roll is a
bad album. In fact, it is one of the most exciting, entertaining
pieces of pure pop rock I’ve heard in years.
The album’s strength comes largely because of its greatest
failure: Argos’ struggle to define his band while swimming
in a sea of irony and sarcasm, filtered through the drain
of pop music.
Argos’s manic, tandem self-love and self-doubt collide on
“Formed a Band”: “Honey Pie, stop buying records at the supermarket!
They only sell records that have charted, and Art Brut, well,
we’ve only just started!” followed by “We are gonna be the
band that writes the song that makes Israel and Palestine
get along!”
Argos’ conflict with definition might actually be the theme
of Bang Bang Rock & Roll. He rejects all he shouldn’t
like, while simultaneously rejecting all that he should. On
the title track, Argos announces in a punk sneer, “I can’t
stand the sound of the Velvet Underground. I can’t stand that
sound the second time around!” while his bandmates chant “White
Light! White Heat!” Later in the song, he laments, “I don’t
want any more songs about sex, drugs and rock & roll.
They are boooring.” And in “Bad Weekend” (not to be mistaken
for “Really Bad Weekend”), Argos lays his torment bare for
world to see: “I haven’t read the NME in so long don’t
know what genre we belong! Popular culture no longer applies
to me.”
The
Charlatans UK
Simpatico.
(Creole/Sanctuary)
The Charlatans UK are still around? It’s been, like, 15 years
since they got any airplay in the United States. Their new
(and ninth!) studio album isn’t too far removed from the danceable
drone that made them semi-superstars in the Madchester heyday.
And for the first 4:19—the length of album opener “Blackened
Blue Eyes”—Simpatico. has bite, promise even. A rolling,
two-note piano riff intersects with a choppy, reverb-drenched
guitar lick, and singer Tim Burgess sounds like a less-clenched
Liam Gallagher as he sings “There won’t be a dry eye in the
house tonight.”
They’re not crying tears of joy.
“Blackened”
benefits from having a decent hook (they knew enough to place
it first); most others do not. Burgess has reportedly been
up to his hips in a reggae fixation in recent years, and his
band attempt a middling Rockers rhythm on several songs. “For
Your Entertainment” and “City of the Dead” are weak, but passable;
“Road to Paradise” starts strong, goes nowhere. “Glory Glory”
is a stiff country plunker that bites (by the band’s own admission)
Gram Parsons’ “$1000 Wedding.”
A few songs rise above the muck. “Muddy Ground” has one of
those aforementioned hooks, albeit a tried one; “When the
Lights Go Out in London” sounds like a Hard-Fi B-side. The
album’s best track, the reggae-infused “The Architect,” features
the clever line “Last night . . . an architect saved my life”
against moody backing chorus and theremin. It plays like the
closing credits from Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet:
Remember how that Radiohead song almost made it seem like
the preceding film wasn’t a total waste? But it was, and the
Charlatans’ decision to include fundamentally shaky songs
like “NYC” and “Dead Man’s Eye” on Simpatico. suggests
a band near the end of their days—although they were basically
a singles act to begin with, and they’ve at least got one
of those here.
—John
Brodeur
Calexico
Garden
Ruin (Quarter Stick)
On Garden Ruin (Calexico’s seventh album), mainstays
Joey Burns and John Convertino drop the soundtrack-to-a- Southwestern-noir-film
style that previously has been their reason for being, and
go full-out L.A. singer-songwriter, circa 1976. The band negate
a possible lapse into soft-rock pap by coming up with some
of the strongest songs of their storied career. Tunes like
“Bisbee Blue” and “Lucky Dime” find middle ground between
crunchy granola and the Beatles, mandolins and banjos rubbing
up against cheery cello and horn parts. “Yours and Mine” is
the album’s best ballad, similar in feel to the stripped-down
but lush romanticism of M. Ward (the two acts have toured
together), while “Panic Open String” seems directly inspired
by Calexico’s recent collaboration with Iron and Wine. The
sultry “Roka” is a welcome return to the band’s Latin roots,
with Spanish chanteuse Amparo Sanchez and mariachi horns giving
the song an added stamp of authenticity.
Lyrically, there is a world-weariness and sense of disappointment
that makes the album feel bracingly contemporary—on opening
song “Cruel,” “Birds refuse to fly/No longer trust the sky”
while the closing (and best song) “All Systems Red” tells
of fortitude in the face of those who would rather just abandon
what they see as a hopeless situation. As the song builds
to a swaying ship of guitar feedback over Convertino’s martial
beat, Burns finally lets the passion rip through his voice:
“When the dread is flowing down my veins/I want to tear it
all down and build it up again.” With smart musicianship and
winning melodies, on Garden Ruin Calexico have come
up with a fine salve for healing the wounded.
—Mike
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