|
 The
Major Lift
By
Erik Hage
While
listening to the new Morrissey album, Years of Refusal,
I remembered what it was like confronting his music for the
first time. Morrissey has become such a distinctive and iconic
figure over the years, that it’s easy to forget his introduction
to our culture. For me, it was as a high-schooler in 1986,
when I bought the Smiths album The Queen Is Dead. As
a kid growing up in a small rural town, where black concert
T-shirts (Van Halen, Pink Floyd) and jean jackets with Sharpie-stenciled
pot leaves were the predominant mode, Morrissey’s persona
and music were completely exotic. His lyrics luxuriated in
self-loathing and awkwardness and seemed shockingly literate,
while the music seemed to have no clear ancestor. In interviews
he even flaunted the fact that he was a celibate. Somehow
all of this led to passionate devotion among fans, making
him one of the most unlikely icons ever.
But as he grew more familiar, that exotic aura slipped away,
and all we were left with was the music. He has produced some
remarkable solo work along the way. The wondrous “Everyday
Is Like Sunday” (1988) seemed to distill Nelson Riddle-era
Sinatra, Ingmar Bergman films, and a depressive poetic tradition
that coursed through Sylvia Plath and Emily Dickinson. Your
Arsenal (1992) toughened up his music with foamy glam-rock
guitars. But his albums became spotty throughout the ’90s.
Then he released one of his best efforts ever in 2004 with
You Are the Quarry, which proved that Morrissey’s prime
strength lay in his ability to offer a sense of mounting drama
within the confines of a three-minute, hook-ridden song.
 Something
misses the mark on Years of Refusal, however. I can
sense all of the dimensions of a great Morrissey effort—the
biting wit, the guitar brawl of Your Arsenal—but, frankly,
a lot of it sounds like Morrissey trying to sound like Morrissey.
“I’m OK by Myself” is boilerplate Moz, while “Something Is
Squeezing My Skull” seems to be pulsing toward that hook it
needs, but never quite gets there. The cresting and euphoric
“I’m Throwing My Arms Around Paris” is the strongest track,
but a lot of the album simply comes off as an assembly of
familiar gestures.
One shouldn’t expect anything so predictable from another
iconoclast, Prince, who has chosen to unleash a triple
album, LOtUSLOW3R, on the world. (It’s really three
albums bundled as one and sold exclusively through Target,
for only $11.98, or at his Web site, lotusflow3r.com.) Here’s
the kicker: one album is actually a Bria Valente LP. Who is
Bria Valente? Yet another of Prince’s protégées. (Remember
Vanity?) The Valente album, Elixer, lands somewhere
between smooth jazz and Quiet Storm (more toward the former),
and it’s a bland effort, while MPLSound is vintage
Prince: funky and synthesized. Most compelling however is
LOtUSLOW3R, a jazzy guitar odyssey that reminds us
of the guitar-god side of Prince. But while MPLSound and
LOtUSLOW3R are head and shoulders above Elixer,
nothing in this package really jumps out. There are lots of
great grooves, and this is an interesting album, but its prime
accomplishment is to yet again show the world that Prince
makes his own rules, often with little regard to commercial
consideration.
 One
of the best recent releases is Mastodon’s Crack
the Skye. This is a monster of an album—dreamy, thunderous,
riveting, and melodic. I’m not so much into heavy metal, but
this is not just for that niche of fans, as a recent leap
to No. 11 on the Billboard album chart attests.
The execution and songwriting are remarkably complex, and
each song is a multifarious voyage with compelling shifts
of feel—and not for the faint of heart. (This album apparently
is about czarist Russia; I didn’t get there yet—I’m still
wrestling with the music. Also, keep in mind that this is
the band that did an album about Moby Dick.) “Ghost
of Karelia” even seems to go to a place that is beyond heavy
metal—a sort of genreless and powerful music that can’t be
contained under a label. On the title track, I even feel like
I can hear occasional traces of the Byrds in the cascading,
prog-infused layers. Now that Metallica are installed in the
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, it’s time for another quintessential
metal band. I’d like to nominate Mastodon, who, on their fourth
album, enter regions that are inaccessible to Metallica.
And then there’s Kelly Clarkson. It was kind of interesting
when the prototypical American Idol went against the grain
of record-company desires in 2007, releasing what for her
was a “dark” album with no recognizable smash hits. There’s
none of that on All I Ever Wanted, though: This is
an album that shoots for the kind of world acceptance “Since
U Been Gone” enjoyed. Paradoxically, though, the first single,
“My Life Would Suck Without You,” evokes a far different sentiment
than that caustic firecracker of a hit, but the formula is
all over it: teaser opening and then a crack wide open into
a soaring, sing-along chorus on a fulsome production bed (that
must have cost a mortgage to put in place). I have to admit
that she’s gone way beyond the expiration date I placed on
her, but there is not an engaging moment for me on this entire
album.
 Much
more engaging is British popster Lily Allen’s It’s
Not Me, It’s You. My interest in her doesn’t go much beyond
the fact that her father is Keith Allen, a popular U.K. comedian
who hit my radar when he collaborated with New Order on the
1990 World Cup anthem “World in Motion.” (He was also in the
band Fat Les with Alex James of Blur and artist Damien Hirst,
and I’m pretty sure I once saw him dance on stage with the
Happy Mondays.) But daughter Lily’s second outing is an eclectic,
quirky album full of great songs and sterling production flourishes.
I’d start with the wonderful “Everyone’s At It,” which pretty
much typifies the appeal of this artist. She puts most young
American pop stars to shame
 .
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