Random Music Talk CXXVII: Crickets

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I saw Destroyer tonight and it was one of the best gigs I've seen in a while. Dan isn't exactly a chatterbox but he's got his band playing at a very high level and the sound was loud but pristine.

Have We Met is a great record and I knew I would enjoy those songs, but the louder drums and beefier arrangements really brought out the best in the Poison Season (which gets better every time I hear it) and Ken tracks. The five (!) Kaputt songs were all wonderful, of course.

The guy standing in front of me was Cobbler's doppelganger, a tall and lanky dude who danced like an idiot to every song and kept feeling up his girlfriend. When he walked away to get a drink, she turned and asked me with a pitying expression if I could see at all. Honestly, I prefer obnoxious fans to the kinds of people who stand perfectly still and scowl at you if you sing along.

Setlist:

Crimson Tide < I hope this one never leaves the set
Kinda Dark
The Raven
In the Morning
Kaputt < favorite track of the night
Bangkok < SO much better live
Times Square
It Just Doesn’t Happen
Cue Synthesizer
The River
Tinseltown Swimming in Blood
Chinatown
European Oils
foolssong < also enormously improved live, already a very underrated song
Suicide Demo for Kara Walker

Encore:

Canadian Lover / Falcon's Escape
Savage Night at the Opera
Poor in Love

Kinda wish Dream Lover and Bay of Pigs had found their way in there but whatever.
 
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I'm so fucking jealous man, I did get to see him a while back but it was just solo on guitar and wasn't much longer than an hour. They closed with Bay of Pigs the night before your show, hate to tell you. It's a terrific setlist. If they're gonna do anything from Ken I'd want Sky's Grey, which is one of his best songs.

And yeah, Have We Met is exquisite. I keep replaying it. Definitely the best since Kaputt, I'm comfortable saying now.
 
Yeah I was a little broken up about Bay of Pigs, but without doing too much investigation, I think the 18 songs we got tonight might be the most ever played in a Destroyer performance, which is cool. He's played 17 a few times before, but we got a great 3 song encore that just kept going. Dan didn't seem to want to leave the stage.

I hope you get to see them full band at some point. It's difficult to overestimate how good and how essential this current band is to the quality of the show. There's just the right amount of grit, sleaze, class and professionalism in that 7 piece band to get these songs going. The Poison Season songs are so much better and less affected live.
 
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I saw Destroyer during the Ken tour and I'm debating whether to catch them in Brooklyn next week. LM's review is selling me on this tour.
 
I’ve mentioned them before a few times, but damn, Author’s Is It Far Or Is It Close? is maybe my favorite album from when it came out (January 2018) through now. To me it’s about as perfect a record as you can get.

They deserve to be bigger than they are.
 
cobl04 said:
What instruments do they each play?
Click to expand...
Dan on vocals and tambourine (hilarious), a trumpet player who doubles as an electronics guy, two electric guitarists, a bassist, a keyboard player and a very enthusiastic drummer who really puts it over the top. Instantly made Bangkok a highlight compared to the more diffuse studio version.
 
So jel. I love Bangkok, but the studio version could be a solid two minutes shorter.

I love a lot of songs on Poison Season, Dream Lover, The River, Times Square, Girl in a Sling, the superlative Archer on the Beach, and parts of several other songs, but it’s just really not that enjoyable an album to listen front to back.

Have We Met is definitely the best since Kaputt. I’m really enjoying it. The songs are super catchy but have a lot of substance to them that keeps you coming back, unlike Ken, which I played maybe twice or thrice.
 
Bangkok is a really emotional track for me, but it's missing something. When I'm listening to the album version, I'm waiting for it to build to something and it never does. Live, it absolutely does.

This is the only video I could find from my show but the song is a classic so fuck it:

https://youtu.be/RqHoVswhYis

I love Have We Met and it really seems to be a return to form for Dan in a number of areas, especially lyrically. It's one of his most pessimistic but there's vulnerability in a number of spots, most notably foolssong, which is maybe the most tender Destroyer song to date.
 
What is it about Bangkok that's so emotional for you? :) for me, though I'd only rate it an 8 out of 10, I think of it often, it's catchy and simple. For me, the part about halfway through where it comes out of its mire, the piano gets a little jauntier, and he starts singing the refrain, is so gorgeous, one of the prettiest moments in his catalogue the next couple of minutes there.

Wow, that clip captures so well the vibe that makes Chinatown so special. If anything it's Dan that takes you out of the experience a bit with his nonchalance :lol:

And yeah agreed on the lyrics. So many great Bejarisms...

"A vulture predisposed to eating off floors"
"My condition, in general, despite what they say, improves... so I could care less on a night like this I'm on the lookout for anything that moves!"
"Chickenshit singers paying their dues / a circus mongrel sniffing for clues"
"Calling all cars! The palace has a moss problem"
"The music makes a musical sound / measured in echoes / by famous novelist brothers Shithead #1 and Shithead #2"


And my absolute favourites...
"When lightning strikes twice, the funeral goes completely insane / the funeral's insane..."
"I find the silence unbearable / what does that say about the silence?"
"Well I hope you've enjoyed your stay / here in the city of the dying embers"
"The idiot's dissonant roar / that exquisite gong struck dumb" (and in fact pretty much all of Cue Synthesiser, one of his most brilliant, cutting lyrics)
University Hill is quite a warped, funny take on Losing My Edge-style drifts into obsolescence paired with the record's most saccharine instrumentation (I actually really didn't like it at first but I think the lyrics and the way he delivers them make the song).
The Man in Black's Blues is just fucking gorgeous, very dreamy music, his delivery again is fantastic.
And then foolssong, which starts with that fucking children's poem!
"Shall I cancel the play? What, three showings a day? It was shitty, we couldn't stay longer"

Another thing I love about this album is the guitar. It was really missing from ken. The solo on Kinda Dark is fucking fantastic, the last minute of that song is fucking amazing, some definite Embryonic vibes to it. and the guitar line that kicks in on foolssong is one of his warmest in many years, maybe even back to Trouble in Dreams.

The title track is also fantastic, has major back-half-of-Low-and-"Heroes"-vibes to it imo, and leads so well into Man in Black's Blues.

And one of my favourite lyrics in years, just for hyper specific personal reasons:
"And oh how it feels so good, to be drunk on the field again... to be drunk on the field again..."

Ahhh, how I miss talking about music like this. :sigh: Nothing will replace this forum for me. I just don't get the opportunity anywhere else to talk like this and have it not feel like I'm talking to a brick wall.
 
cobl04 said:
Ahhh, how I miss talking about music like this. :sigh: Nothing will replace this forum for me. I just don't get the opportunity anywhere else to talk like this and have it not feel like I'm talking to a brick wall.
Click to expand...

i don't chime in on this thread much these days except to post random rap and verve youtube videos when i come home tipsy from the bar, but i honestly can't fathom how much music i would have missed out on over the years without the recommendations of the folks that post(ed) in this thread. :heart:
 
cobl04 said:
What is it about Bangkok that's so emotional for you? :) for me, though I'd only rate it an 8 out of 10, I think of it often, it's catchy and simple. For me, the part about halfway through where it comes out of its mire, the piano gets a little jauntier, and he starts singing the refrain, is so gorgeous, one of the prettiest moments in his catalogue the next couple of minutes there.

Wow, that clip captures so well the vibe that makes Chinatown so special. If anything it's Dan that takes you out of the experience a bit with his nonchalance [emoji38]

And yeah agreed on the lyrics. So many great Bejarisms...

"A vulture predisposed to eating off floors"
"My condition, in general, despite what they say, improves... so I could care less on a night like this I'm on the lookout for anything that moves!"
"Chickenshit singers paying their dues / a circus mongrel sniffing for clues"
"Calling all cars! The palace has a moss problem"
"The music makes a musical sound / measured in echoes / by famous novelist brothers Shithead #1 and Shithead #2"


And my absolute favourites...
"When lightning strikes twice, the funeral goes completely insane / the funeral's insane..."
"I find the silence unbearable / what does that say about the silence?"
"Well I hope you've enjoyed your stay / here in the city of the dying embers"
"The idiot's dissonant roar / that exquisite gong struck dumb" (and in fact pretty much all of Cue Synthesiser, one of his most brilliant, cutting lyrics)
University Hill is quite a warped, funny take on Losing My Edge-style drifts into obsolescence paired with the record's most saccharine instrumentation (I actually really didn't like it at first but I think the lyrics and the way he delivers them make the song).
The Man in Black's Blues is just fucking gorgeous, very dreamy music, his delivery again is fantastic.
And then foolssong, which starts with that fucking children's poem!
"Shall I cancel the play? What, three showings a day? It was shitty, we couldn't stay longer"

Another thing I love about this album is the guitar. It was really missing from ken. The solo on Kinda Dark is fucking fantastic, the last minute of that song is fucking amazing, some definite Embryonic vibes to it. and the guitar line that kicks in on foolssong is one of his warmest in many years, maybe even back to Trouble in Dreams.

The title track is also fantastic, has major back-half-of-Low-and-"Heroes"-vibes to it imo, and leads so well into Man in Black's Blues.

And one of my favourite lyrics in years, just for hyper specific personal reasons:
"And oh how it feels so good, to be drunk on the field again... to be drunk on the field again..."

Ahhh, how I miss talking about music like this. :sigh: Nothing will replace this forum for me. I just don't get the opportunity anywhere else to talk like this and have it not feel like I'm talking to a brick wall.
Click to expand...
Bangkok is a mashup of so many sounds and styles that I love and I think it evokes a number of great memories by association. It goes for the gut immediately with those cinematic strings, but then it changes gear with those jaunty yet melancholic piano chords and my buttons get pushed hard. That section evokes one of my favorite artists of all time, the soulful and immensely talented Laura Nyro:

https://youtu.be/H4oKzPwfQV4

Then you get the wonderful trumpet solo, which falls somewhere between Dr. John and the first few Chicago albums. It's a swaying, emotive passage that sounds like strutting home in the early morning hours, stomach full of wine, heart full of love.

Apparently they switched it up for the live performances almost immediately because this sounds a lot like what I heard:

https://youtu.be/LQU7-V192EQ
 
The other night I heard a John Mellencamp song on the radio, the first time I've heard a song of his in fucking years. It was "Check It Out". I hadn't even thought about him in years. And I was reminded that I grew up listening to his music through mum and dad, and I was reminded that I genuinely love a lot of his songs. Check it Out is a fucking banger.

I don't know where this opinion stands. I have a feeling that it's very lame and uncool to like his music, but I might be wrong and maybe he's loved like Springsteen is? They're cut from a similar cloth.
 
Yeah, he was always viewed as a bargain-basement Springsteen, which was a bit reductive. Even if his band wasn't anywhere near Bruce's (despite having a brilliant drummer in Kenny Aronof), it's not like they were fucking Bon Jovi. But I think it's fair to say writing catchy hooks came easier to him than Bruce. He never put out a truly great album, arguably, but he has a considerable number of bona fide hits that hold up.

His music became more "authentic" and organic after the early pop hits like Jack & Diane, and I think he legitimately captured a certain heartland feel that was missing from mainstream rock, talking about subject matter that farmers and midwestern working class people could relate to. Scarecrow, The Lonesome Jubilee, and Big Daddy are all worth hearing.

In the early 90s he expanded his sound once again to become more modern, and maintained platinum status through the middle of the decade. I imagine much of it sounds dated now, but there is some great stuff throughout that period. Whenever We Wanted from 1991 may actually be my favorite LP of his:




And then this later one actually has more of a dance beat to it, but I think it's a great pop confection. Then again, I seem to be one of the few who loves Bruce's Let's Be Friends:




Also did a great cover of Van Morrison's Wild Night with Me'shell Ndegeocello during this period:




And worth noting that Mellencamp actually became quite an accomplished painter, as well as directing and starring in a feature film in 1992, Falling From Grace, which I saw back then and was very impressed by. Written by Larry McMurtry of Brokeback Mountain/Lonesome Dove/Last Picture Show fame so it wasn't just some vanity project; to my memory he doesn't play or sing in the film.
 
I spent 4 years in the midwest, so I grew to appreciate Mellencamp. Very specific memories tied to his music.

Scarecrow and The Lonesome Jubilee are good albums, but you would probably get the most mileage out of a compilation.
 
I was just talking about the song "Rain on the Scarecrow" earlier today with my mom. That's probably one of my favorites of his.

And hearing his version of "Wild Night" and "Key West Intermezzo" just takes me right back to being a kid and listening to the radio in the car. I remember the latter in particular getting a LOT of airplay back in the day.
 
Ha, when I wrote that post, I was like "Laz is gonna come in here and make some massive smartarse comment", I did not expect you to write a longer, thoughtful post with recommendations! Glad to see I'm not alone.

Sounds like I'll best assuage my Mellencamp cravings with a best of :)
 
LemonMelon said:
Scarecrow and The Lonesome Jubilee are good albums, but you would probably get the most mileage out of a compilation.
Click to expand...

Looks like you and Xgau are on the same page:

John Cougar Mellencamp: Scarecrow [Riva, 1985]
Having long wondered what gave this longtime Bowie stablemate the right to speak for the average guy, I've decided it's his talent, which is pretty damn average. That's okay, because the success ratio here, a nice average fifty-fifty or so, just goes to show you what sincerity, hard work, and modest ambitions can do. Mellencamp has half outgrown the fatalism that always underlined the predictability of his Stonesish bandmates, who've gotten tougher with age, an encouraging sign in rich musicians. I wish I knew (I wish he knew) exactly what "Justice and Independence '85" is trying to say. But I'll take "You've Got to Stand for Something" at face value. B+

John Cougar Mellencamp: The Lonesome Jubilee [Mercury, 1987]
In which Mellencamp's confused conscience and self-serving defeatism become so single-minded they take on the force of truth. His protagonists don't expect all that much and get less, but they're not beautiful losers--they're too ordinary, too miserable. Riding a spare, tough groove I don't hear Scarecrow matching, they convince you (but not themselves) that they're the heroes America deserves. A-
 
Where do honeydews send their kids in summer?

John Cougar Mellencamp.

This has always been my favorite tune of his:



Saw him live once, good performer with a strange no encore philosophy.
 
Anyone heard the new Against All Logic? Maybe LM or Cobbler? Nicolas Jaar is batting a really high percentage right now.
 
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