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Double
Your Pleasure
The
Figgs
Palais (Sodapop)
We’re inundated with ever more information via computers,
scrolled messages at the bottom of television screens, and
fast talkers (well, they’ve been around for a while). However,
we can still only take in so much before we either get angry,
tired, stupid or a headache. There are time frames and signifiers
we respond to. Breakfast doesn’t take as long as dinner, and
family dinners may not last as long as romantic dinners. September
still feels like the start of school, even if you graduated
30 or 40 years prior.
And now onto the subject of CDs. Since they can hold nearly
twice as much music as a 12-inch vinyl LP, many artists have
felt compelled to use the extra capacity. However, if the
work in question is not a compilation of some sort, that sort
of duration is outside the bounds of the length that we’ve
come to expect. Longer than a sitcom but shorter than a drama
is a good rule of thumb for an album.
That said, there was a wonderful invention several decades
ago called the double album. This became a true test of how
fully a given artist understood the temporal dynamics of not
two, but four separate 15- to 20-minute statements. The format
became standard for live offerings, but a few acts did soar
creating actual studio works (while many more succumbed under
the creative weight of the task). Add to the list of success
stories the Figgs. Granted, Palais is a two-CD set,
but with each disc clocking in under 40 minutes and disc one
listed as sides one and two, disc two as three and four, their
reference points are clear.
After fearlessly expanding their musical palette in the most
authentic ways possible, the Figgs set themselves a formidable
challenge. From the opening invitation (“Start Credits”) to
its closing counterpart (“End Credits”), the 25 songs flow
with the confident glee of a trio who know and love the album
experience. Highlights include the melancholy punch of Pete
Donnelly’s “Nothing But Fear,” the Kinks-taut autobiography
of Mike Gent’s “Simon Simone,” and Pete Hayes’ turn at the
mic on his “Je T’Adore.” Lesser bands would’ve put the whole
shebang on one disc. Well, tell those utilitarians to go home,
because life should be suffused with worthy aesthetic decisions
at every turn. The Figgs are now in charge of double albums—anyone
else wanting to do one, check with them first. Got it?
—David
Greenberger
Godsmack
The Other Side
(Universal)
I’m not sure which Lortab- popping executive rubber-stamped
this acoustic booby trap, but how sweet that it finally casts
a wide channel of crappy institutional light on Godsmack’s
songwriting vulnerabilities. See, you take away the Daddy
Warbucks production and drummer Shannon Larkin’s legacy of
brutality, and what do you get? A platter of extremely average,
forgettable songs. In fact, the only thing that is truly great
about this band in the first place is the aforementioned 90-pound
skinsman, who practically starved to death without much thanks
in absolutely crushing metal outfits like Wrathchild and Amen,
so I can’t begrudge the man his due. But his role is minimal
at best here, and this stuff isn’t even suitable campfire
music. The rehashing of old Neil Young progressions fused
with oh-so-Hetfield vocals and highly over-employed jingle-jangle
jam band tomfoolery paints sounds ridiculous with singer Sully
Erna’s noxious tenor. It paints just awful visions of corporate
sponsorship and state employees drinking Coors Light in meatshop
bars. And holy geez, what lyrics: “I thought if I showed you
I could fly/Wouldn’t need anyone by my side/Now I’m running
backward/With broken wings I know I’ll die.” Yawn.
You’ve heard it all before. Erna croons about pain and darkness
and relationships, written in such a vague, white-label way
that anyone could, ostensibly, relate. That must be the goal.
It’s as if the purpose is to heat-shrink the spectrum of human
emotion and experience into a flimsy piece of recyclable plastic.
Where is the value in taking such a flame-retardant position
on living? What the devil? What the chain? What the hell?
We even get predictably reworked versions of “Re-align” and
“Keep Away.” As if you haven’t heard the latter on 103.9 one
kabillion times. The only tune that kept my head from hitting
the keypad was the Middle Eastern textures of “Spiral,” which,
if used in place of the original on the band’s Awake
CD, might have been a refreshing hiatus from their tendency
to find a key and a hook and just drive them home in the same
fashion, song after song after song. But that brief convalescence
is shattered tenfold by patchy violators like “Touche,” which
brings—you guessed it—the congas. Please, not that. Anything
but the congas.
The final nail in the coffin is that The Other Side
is useless on your computer. The disc is protected, folksies,
as has been the practice at Universal for some time. If you
like to burn music (and not the way I will burn this one,
later, when no one’s around), you’re shit out of luck. The
only good that, hopefully, will come out of this marshmallow
effort is that perhaps the world will finally realize how
breathtakingly vanilla Godsmack really are. But I doubt it.
—Bill
Ketzer
Various
Artists
You’ve Got Your Orders, Volume Two
(Chrome Peeler)
Jason Ziemniak has never been one to embrace the commonplace,
the yawn of the green lawn, so to speak. The first and only
book he ever loaned me was The Painted Bird by obsessive
sadomasochist Jerzy Kosinsky, a pathological liar whose brutal
tale of Jewish survival in wartime Poland described, in explicit
detail, various acts of torture, rape and human depravity
from a matter-of-fact standpoint. It kind of made me wonder
where the guy was headed in life, but now we know—on the heels
of his successful first compilation (dutifully named You’ve
Got Your Orders, Volume One) comes another helping of
eclectic porridge for our media-addled gourds. For those who
aren’t familiar with Ziemniak’s modus operandi, he took a
bunch of his own song titles and wrote his favorite artists
as goof to see who would be down, as he puts it, “for making
music for music’s sake.”
This collection sees less of the rock that was delivered in
the last release. Rather, the CD delves much further into
sagacious weirdness, many tracks being ambient stuff from
the likes of Phil Puleo from Cop Shoot Cop (“Albino Rainbow”)
and sometime Stooges saxophonist Steve Mackay, who gives a
smacked-out Bitches Brew-era tribute to Miles Davis during
“You Could Smell the Nightmares on the Pillow.” Likewise for
offerings from avant-garde composer- guitarist Elliot Sharp
(“Barbed Wire Hotel”) and trailblazing ’70s space rocker Simeon
Coxe of Silver Apples (“Empire of Ashes”). For me, this is
powerful stuff to absorb, especially in the throes of raw
stress or anger. If you play this really, really loud, with
watering eyes pinched to the point of hallucination, you can
almost taste the other side with a clarity that would have
made Nietzsche black with envy. OK, that’s probably an exaggeration,
but give it a try anyway.
There are some shin-kickers as well, however. The Testors’
Sonny Vincent rips out a scorching “Totally Fucked,” and the
Scheme (featuring David Thompson of Boston neatnicks the Pills)
gleefully deliver the sardonic “Teenage Millionaire.” Other
honorable mentions include Fu Manchu/Kyuss drummer Brant Bjork’s
aviator-sunglass-Palm Desert-funky “Cop Moustache” and Los
Staightjackets hatchet man Eddie Angel’s caustic surfer twang
in “Space Monkey Vertigo.” Angel is an Albany native—indeed,
Ziemniak always makes sure he represents the 518, yo. But
all one can do here, really, is give the potential listener
a flavor for the melting piss-and-vinegar pot that awaits
them on this adventure. You really have to just dwell into
these missives. I’m just the messenger. Don’t shoot me.
—Bill
Ketzer
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