Small Plane...

So Bill Callahan's album 'Dream River' is a real treat and I'm enjoying it immensely. It's a very quiet, thoughtful, intimate, and beautiful record and I love it more with each listen. Below is a video from one of my favorite tracks thus far, Small Plane. Enjoy!

Let's Make This Precious: A Week with 'Too-Rye-Ay'

Some songs, no matter where I am or what I'm doing, always make me happy. Dexys Midnight Runners' 1982 smash-hit, Come On Eileen is one of those songs. Never ever fails to make me smile. Every time I come across it on the radio, the dial stops and I listen and I am happy. Aside from being a jubilant pop-song, I am also 99% sure that Eileen is the most enjoyable song in the world to sing along to as well. With its playful backing vocals and harmonies as well as complex (for a pop single) song structure, it never gets old. Heck, I even named my first car (just recently deceased) Eileen in the song's honor (also so I could say, "Come on, Eileen," when she was having trouble accelerating over hills). For whatever reason I never ventured beyond this single to explore the rest of what Dexys Midnight Runners had to offer. Maybe because they are labeled as a one-hit wonder here in the States and I assumed that Come On Eileen was the best they had to offer. But as I thought about what my next album should be, it seemed only natural that I should give Dexys and 1982's 'Too-Rye-Ay' a fair shake and discover what I had, hopefully, been missing out on.

Formed in 1978, Dexys Midnight Runners is the brainchild of singer and chief-songwriter, Kevin Rowland. A quick glance at the band lineup over the years, featuring some 40-odd members, further illustrates that this is Rowland's band and his vision. From their visual look, public persona, and musical output, Rowland was at the helm of Dexys. 'Too-Rye-Ay' is the band's second album after their 1980 debut, 'Searching for the Young Soul Rebels', which gave them their first U.K. hit, Geno, but their sophomore release represented a shift in style for the band. Along with changing the visual look (including those iconic denim overalls), 'Too-Rye-Ay' sees them incorporating more celtic music and instrumentation into their blue-eyed soul style, as well as dropping some of the more punk and new-wave elements present on their debut. This new 'Celtic-Soul' style served them very well and gave them another huge hit in the U.K. as well as a No.1 here in the United States.

First and foremost, 'Too-Rye-Ay' is a lot of fun and a great album experience. With high-peak fast paced tracks and low valley slow soul ballads, Rowland & Company really take the listener on a journey through the world of Dexys. I'm a sucker for celtic music so the instrumentation on many of the album's tracks was just a pleasure for me to listen to and adds to its replay-ability. The first side of the record is pretty much flawless, both in songwriting and pacing. The first-half of LP puts on full display the musicianship of the band as well as Kevin Rowland's singing ability. While perhaps not the greatest voice in a classical sense, Rowland has the ability to morph his vocals to best suit the mood of each song and convey emotion like few other singers I've heard. You really feel each and every one of these songs. (Aside: The way he sings also makes it difficult to understand what he's singing half the time, which I suppose could be frustrating, but I found it endearing. And I think it is part of what makes songs like Come On Eileen so much fun to sing along to... because we have no idea what the words are.)  Side 1 almost operates as its own self-contained record with its last track, Old, fading out on a reprise of an earlier (also excellent) song, Let's Make This Precious. It only took me one listen-through of this first side to realize that Dexys had a lot to offer me beyond the joys of Eileen. 

Aside from Come On Eileen which comes at the very end of the record, 'Too-Rye-Ay' has blessed me with quite a few other Dexys' tracks which I've fallen in love with and can sing at the top of my lungs along with. The album opener, The Celtic Soul Brothers starts off the record with a bang and contains a lot of the same, great qualities that make Eileen such a great tune. The band's cover of Van Morrison's song, Jackie Wilson Said, is another highlight for me with it's perfectly saccharine lyrics ("I'm in heaven when you smile") and bouncy brass instrumentation. Old illustrates that the band is also perfectly capable of slowing things down and offering up soulful ballads that are breathtakingly beautiful and full of emotion. Lyrically, Old is a heartbreaking song about becoming older and our perceptions of elderly people and the ways we quickly tend to write them off. It's sad. It's beautiful. It became one of my fast favorites to listen to on the record this week.

Until I Believe in My Soul represents the only real track that never really gelled with me. Like Come On Eileen and Plan B, it presents complex song structures with multiple melody and time signature changes, but for whatever reason these disparate parts never come together into a glorious whole. With a 7 minute runtime, the track doesn't have enough musical ideas to sustain that length before it feels like it has been carrying on for a bit too long. I don't hate it, but if it were half as long I would like it a lot more. Rowland's vocal stylings are usually spot on but at the beginning of the track his falsetto is so over the top that the only thing I can think of when I listen to it is Justin Hawkins from 'The Darkness' (of I Believe in a Thing Called Love fame), which to be fair is my own bias and not Rowland's fault. Luckily, Eileen comes quickly on its heels and finishes off the record in a grand, rollicking fashion and puts the faults of Until I Believe... out of my mind.

'Too-Rye-Ay' is a real treat. The album is stuffed with little musical goodies just waiting to be unpacked by people like me who never ventured beyond their one big hit. While not a perfect album or 'THE GREATEST ALBUM OF ALL TIME', Dexys sophomore outing is jam-packed full of great tunes, interesting instrumentation, and soulful singing that kept me coming back from more throughout the week. Things don't always have to be THE GREATEST. Sometimes they can just be good and fun and full of little pleasures. Sometimes that is enough.

The Breakdown:
Stand-Outs: Come On Eileen, The Celtic Soul Brothers, Jackie Wilson Said, Old
Let-Downs: Until I Believe in My Soul
Rating: 8/10

Jackie Wilson Said (I'm in Heaven When You Smile)...

Dexys Midnight Runners are treating me pretty well this week; definitely a punchy change of pace from two weeks with Bach. Today I thought I would share one of the my favorites tracks from the record thus far, Jackie Wilson Said (I'm in Heaven When You Smile), which also happens to be a Van Morrison cover. The video is from a 1982 appearance on Top of the Pops, though obviously mimed like most TotP performances (I hear lots of horns, but I only see fiddles and guitars) it's still a lot of fun. Gotta love those outfits! Enjoy!

Das Gute Musik: Two Weeks with Bach's Brandenburg concertos

I have Looney Tunes to thank for a good many things in my life. From an young age, they instilled a deep love of slapstick, goofy voices, and animation; also Bugs Bunny taught me that dressing up as a woman and kissing people full on the mouth can get you out of a lot of scrapes. But (perhaps) most importantly Looney Tunes also introduced me to A LOT of classical music as they used it to score many cartoons ('What's Opera, Doc?' immediately comes to mind) and it got me interested in music from that young age.  For as long as I can remember, I've always enjoyed listening to it to classical music. For eight years, through middle school and high school, I played French Horn in our school band (which I thoroughly enjoyed) and that furthered my appreciation of the vast musical catch-all that is "classical music." But as far as a working understanding of the withertos and whyfors of classical music, its history, progression, highs, and lows; I am lacking. I've owned numerous 'Best Classical Music of All-Time!' discs over the years which seem to always contain the same twelve pieces of music, but up to this point I've never really deepened my knowledge in any real way. So yet again, this blog has provided (thanks to another reader recommendation) a perfect opportunity to broaden my classical music horizons by spending almost two weeks the Johann Sebastian Bach's Brandenburg concertos.

To further flesh out my couple weeks of listening to Bach, I did a bit of background reading on classical music history, as well as the history of the Brandenburg concertos themselves. Composed in 1721, if not before, these 6 concertos were essentially Bach's application of artistic employment to Christian Ludwig, who was the commander of Brandenburg, Germany at the time. Commander Ludwig was a big lover of the arts and Bach was hoping to gain a benefactor and patron through the composition and gifting of these 6 concertos. Unfortunately for Bach, his application was denied, perhaps due to Ludwig's lack of money; but fortunately for us we got these amazing compositions out of the deal. The Brandenburg concertos came pretty early on in Bach's composing career but are still considered by many who know what they are talking about to be a high-water mark in Baroque period music. They were a great leap forward in compositional complexity and they set the standard for decades to come. The Baroque period of Western classical music sits on the earlier end of the timeline from about 1600-1730, while the Classic period which featured heavy-hitters like Beethoven, Mozart, and Haydn ran from about 1730-1820. Bach's body of work, Brandenburg concertos included, broke musical boundaries and built many a foundation that these later composers would come to build upon just as Bach built upon the music of the Renaissance period (1400-1600) that came before him. But that's enough of that.

Now that we have that bit of history out of the way, we can get onto my thoughts about the concertos. As with my John Coltrane review a few weeks ago, I feel extremely unqualified in pronouncing judgment on these compositions that have been generally acknowledged to be great and awesome for the past 290 years. My thoughts are simply my thoughts and my opinions simply my opinions; nothing more, nothing less. Aside from being extremely historically important in the development of Western classical music, the concertos themselves are just downright beautiful pieces of music from a true musical genius that kept me engaged over the course of my two weeks of listening. Extremely stately and grand, each of these concertos sees Bach interweaving melodies and instruments with expert flair. Featuring relatively small ensemble of 9-13 musicians on strings, harpsichord, cornet, oboe, and flute, the Brandenburg concertos impressed me as the height of elegance and beauty; simultaneously complex and inviting. Layers and layers exist within each of these pieces and I feel that I could have spent another two weeks unpacking them piece by piece; a lot of stuff is jam packed in this two hours of music. Each concerto follows a similar progression, most open with a bang (more technically, an Allegro section) that sets forth the melody and grabs the listener's attention followed by a slower more somber movement (Adagio) and concludes with another quick section (usually Allegro or Presto). In this way each concerto is its own musical journey to go on, and I have throughly enjoyed my journeys with them this week.

Among the concertos, I did develop favorites; the first being Concerto 1 which is the longest of the concertos with 5 movements instead of the 3 that all the others posses. This first concerto captures the full grandeur of Bach's compositional prowess with rousing fanfares, pensive oboe lead interludes and stately marches; Bach puts it all on display in this first concerto. The soaring trumpet of Concerto 2 and its interplay with the flutes and strings throughout also make it another high-point that I looked forward to with each listen. Bach has a wonderful way of seamlessly passing the melody from one instrument to the next  - sometimes with each player holding it for only measures at a time. This constant interplay of instruments really keeps each piece melodically interesting. My final stand-out would be the 4th Concerto which this time gives the flute and recorder center stage with a wonderfully playful and floating melody. Again Bach crafts an expertly paced and moving piece that never slags or loses my attention in its 16 minutes.

Concerto 5 presents the only time in my listening that my mind would tend to drift and maybe, just maybe get a tad bored. The piece starts out strongly enough with its rousing opening strings and flute melody and the harpsichord is given its moment in the sun but towards the end of the concerto, the player has an extended harpsichord solo that goes on just a tad too long for my tastes. The harpsichord player gets an opportunity to show off their musical chops and they are very impressive but, for me, it drags on without the support of the rest of the ensemble. The ensemble and their interplay is perhaps the greatest part of these concertos and during this harpsichord solo on this piece I miss that.

The Brandenburg concertos have been a huge education for me over the past two weeks, both in my listening and in the research and reading that I did. It also made me realize that there is so much more untapped music I have yet to discover in the classical arena and Bach and his concertos have made me extremely excited to seek them out. If you have an interest at all in classical music, I wholeheartedly recommend spending some time with the beautiful and majestic music that Bach has crafted in his Brandenburg concertos. It turns out that there is a vast amount more to this music than merely a fitting backdrop for Looney Tunes.

The Breakdown:

Stand-Outs: Concerto 1, Concerto 2, Concerto 4

Let-Downs: Concerto 5

Score: 9.5/10

Up Next: We are flashing forward 261 years to 1982 to spend sometime with a band that has been unfortunately written off as a one-hit wonder here in the US. I am going to be spending the week with Dexys Midnight Runners and their '82 album 'Too-Rye-Ay' to see if goodies await beyond the known splendor of Come On Eileen.

Off the Record: Paul McCartney's 'New'

...Aaaaand we're back. 

After my unfortunate spill of coffee onto our computer, we have upgraded and I'm ready and equipped to get back to blogging. When I haven't been grappling with Bach and his Brandenburg concertos, Paul McCartney and his new (and somewhat shockingly quite good) album, 'New' have been distracting me quite a bit. I feel kinda bad being surprised that Paul's record is actually pretty awesome, but it really is engaging and more sonically and lyrical daring then you would expect from your average 71 year old rock and roll legend. In 'New', McCartney doesn't rest on his musical laurels and the results are often quite fun. The video below for the second single, Queenie Eye, is a good introduction to the album and also features quite a number of very famous people. See if you can spot them all!