Music Reviews That Upset Your Stomach

Jagger has poured his heart into this album. The strongest songs - "Don't Call Me Up," "Brand New Set of Rules," "Hide Away" and "Everybody Getting High" - are also the most candidly personal. In the past, he has slipped into personae - the Street Fighting Man, Jumpin' Jack Flash, the Man of Wealth and Taste - but he lets his guard down to an unprecedented degree on Goddess; the beautiful ballads draw on feelings of loneliness, vulnerability, spiritual yearning and, as always, life with the ladies.

These gains in maturity have taken no toll on Jagger's inner rock & roller. The Street Fighting Man can still swagger at the top of his - or anybody else's - game. Goddess in the Doorway resembles the Stones' best albums in that it's a varied yet cohesive collection of ballads, hard rockers and one country song. But on his own, he is free to cast off the blues-rock anchor that both defines and (at times) confines the Stones. Jagger heads into edgy, danceable modern-rock territory with the throbbing electronic groove of "Gun" and the snarling, whip-crack assault of "Everybody Getting High."

Making the most of this opportunity to stretch himself, Jagger has recruited some outstanding guests, many of them younger artists whom he directly influenced. Rob Thomas of Matchbox Twenty collaborates on the pop-y, melodic opening track, "Visions of Paradise," which boasts a soaring chorus. Lenny Kravitz produces and co-writes "God Gave Me Everything," a driving, riff-propelled rocker that evokes the punkish stomp of the early Stones.

On "Hide Away," one of my favorite tracks, Wyclef Jean helps burnish a subtle reggae- and hip-hop-inflected groove. Employing some of his most moving and nuanced vocal phrasing, he confides, "I'm gonna fly away/And no one's gonna find me." The lyrics portray a guy who's got it all - fame, fortune and the means to indulge any materialistic and hedonistic impulse he might divine - but is wise enough in his late middle age to know there's something more out there.

"Joy," a rocking, gospel-tinged collaboration with Bono of U2 - and featuring an indelible guitar hook from Pete Townshend - offers a revealing glimpse of what Jagger is seeking: "I looked up to the heavens/And a light is on my face/I never never never/Thought I'd find a state of grace." The mark of U2 is overt on "Joy," but the band's influence subtly courses through the rest of the album; like Bono and company in the last decade, Jagger (along with producers Marti Frederiksen and Matt Clifford) has adapted modern rhythms and contemporary production techniques to his own naturalistic rock & roll ends.

"Everybody Getting High," featuring Aerosmith's Joe Perry, and "Lucky Day" are fierce, biting rockers. No one struts or wags a tongue as sharply as Jagger, and "Everybody Getting High," in particular, stands out as a blistering, arena-ready, hard-rock singalong. The absurdist lyrics find Jagger poking fun at scenes from his celebrity life: "My dress designers, they wanna doll me up in blue/Mmm-hmm pretty/Next fall collection, they're gonna show it in the zoo." The tight blues shuffle "Lucky Day" is highlighted by some brief but fiery harmonica playing from Jagger. Like a good blues workout, it leaves you hungry for more, and this masterful use of tension and restraint is part of what makes Goddess in the Doorway so beguiling.

It may seem a truism, but it's worth noting that he is - along with John Lennon, Van Morrison, Bob Dylan and Bono - one of the great male rock voices of this age. And he is in exceptional form on Goddess in the Doorway. If anything, Jagger's voice is rounder and warmer than ever, and he brings a new richness of phrasing to the heartbroken, confessional "Don't Call Me Up" and the extraordinary closing tracks, "Too Far Gone" and "Brand New Set of Rules."

After all of the excursions undertaken on Goddess in the Doorway, Jagger brings it all back home with these last two numbers, which are musically rich and lyrically reflective ballads in the grand tradition of such Stones pillars as "Wild Horses" and "Moonlight Mile." Jagger offers unabashedly human, vulnerable sentiments on "Brand New Set of Rules" (which features daughters Elizabeth and Georgia May on background vocals): "I will be kind, won't be so cruel/I will be sweet, I will be true/. . . I got a brand-new set of rules I got to learn."

It is a clear-eyed and inspired Mick Jagger who crafted Goddess in the Doorway, an insuperably strong record that in time may well reveal itself to be a classic. World, meet Mick Jagger, solo artist.

I'm all for creative writing, but "inadvertant porno posing"....come on!

And yes, this is a review from The LA Weekly.

Needs more hyphens!

....which is fair enough, I suppose, but it still churned the insides a bit....

I don't believe Fred Astaire ever shimmied in his life.

"Brummagem Joe, a cove ["fellow" or "dude," if you will] as could patter or pitch the fork with anyone."

At last, the secret motivation of my schtick and the etymology behind our name can be revealed. These reviews have been less critique than loquacious concept reviews by an entertaining tramp. So you'd think an 80-minute opus by Tool would be right up our alley. You'd be wrong.

Undertow, Tool's 1993 debut LP, took studio skill and over-trained chops to metal with aplomb. It was Rush Sabbath. As emotional, melodic metal goes (the cultural impact of which will be left to the reader), it opened doors for bands like the Deftones, and to some degree, Limp Bizkit. However, Tool have always possessed a latent understanding of absurdity and comedy; their videos look like Tim Burton stop-motion, goth Primus.

But with popularity and praise, Tool's shadowy tongue-in-cheek turned into the simple biting of tongues. Ænema spiced their sound with electronics and industry, as was the trend at the time. Now, with the early new century demanding "opuses," Tool follows suit. The problem is, Tool defines "opus" as taking their "defining element" (wanking sludge) and stretching it out to the maximum digital capacity of a compact disc.

Dictionary of the Underworld also offers several definitions for "tool," including: "a small boy used to creep through windows," "to steal from women's pockets," and "to loaf, to idle, to do nothing in particular." All of which oddly strike the nail on the head in relation to Lateralus.

And now, the obligatory pitching of the fork.

* * *

My Summer Vacation, by Crispin Fubert, Ms. Higgins' Eng. Comp. 901

I believe that music comes and goes in cycles, and some of us are lucky enough to ride the crests. The men in my family are perfect examples of this. Initially, I thought that perfect music appeared every 16 years, which is also the number of years between Fubert generations. My dad was born in 1971. In that year, landmark albums were released. They were Nursery Crime by Genesis (the first with Phil Collins), Yes Album by Yes, Aqualung by Jethro Tull, and In the Land of Grey and Pink by Caravan.

My grandfather skipped out on Vietnam-- because Jimi Hendrix himself told him to-- and he moved to Canterbury, which is in the United England. There, he got married to my grandmother, who used to sell baked goods to people at concerts, and they had my dad. After the war, they moved back with a box of awesome records like the ones I mentioned. I think it was cosmic or fate or something that my dad was born the same exact day Chrysalis released Aqualung, in March of 1971.

Jump ahead 16 years later and my dad got this girl pregnant, who turned out to be my mom. It was 1987 and a whole bunch of lame dance music was ruling the world, like Hitler or Jesus or something. But all of the sudden, albums like Metallica's ...And Justice for All, Celtic Frost's Into the Pandemonium, Queensryche's Operation: Mindcrime, and Slayer's South of Heaven came out. That's when I was born.

All those records were sitting around the house we all live in, and I grew up listening to them in the basement. So I couldn't wait until I was 16, because fate says that would be when 1) more kickass records would come out, and 2) I'd get sex. Both were due, because girls are dumb and listen to stuff like N'S(t)ync and BBSuk. But after this summer of 2001, I've had to rethink my entire cycle theory, like maybe the cycles of music are speeding as time goes forward, since two amazing things happened: Tool put out Lateralus and I saw Tool in concert.

I feel like this record was made just for me by super-smart aliens or something, because it's just like a cross of 1971 and 1987. Imagine, like, Peter Gabriel with batwings or a flower on his head singing while Lars Ulrich and Rick Wakeman just hammer it down. It's the best Tool record because it's the longest. All summer I worked at Gadzooks, folding novelty t-shirts, and on each break, I would listen to Lateralus because the store just plays hip-hop and dance. My manager would always get on me for taking my breaks 20 minutes too long, but that's how long the album is and it just sucks you in. It's like this big desert world with mountains of riffs, and drum thunderstorms just roll across the sky. The packaging is also cool, since it has this clear book with a skinless guy, and as you turn the pages, it rips off his muscles and stuff. Tool's music does the same thing. It can just rip the muscles and skin off you. I think that's what they meant. So my manager would be like, "Hey, there's a new box of 'Blunt Simpson' shirts I need you to put out and the 'Original Jackass' shelf is getting low." He's a vegan and I would buy him Orange Julius because he didn't know there's egg powder in there.

The first song is called "The Grudge," and it's about astrology and how people control stuff. Maynard sings like a robot or clone at the opening, spitting, "Wear the crutch like a crown/ Calculate what we will/ Will not tolerate/ Desperate to control/ All and everything." Tool know about space and math, and it's pretty complex. "Saturn ascends/ Not one but ten," he sings. No Doubt and R.E.M. sang out that, too, but those songs were wimpy and short. Maynard shows his intelligence with raw stats. I think there's meaning behind those numbers, like calculus. He also mentions "prison cell" and "tear it down" and "controlling" and "sinking deeper," which all symbolize how he feels. Seven minutes into the song, he does this awesome scream for 24 seconds straight, which is like the longest scream I've ever heard. Then at the end there's this part where Danny Carey hits every drum he has. This wall of drums just pounds you. Then the next song starts and it's quiet and trippy. Tool are the best metal band, since they can get trippy (almost pretty, but in a dark way) then just really loud. Most bands just do loud, so Tool is more prog.

Danny Carey is the best drummer in rock, dispute that and I know you are a dunce. I made a list of all of his gear (from the June issue of Modern Drummer):

Drums, Sonor Designer Series (bubinga wood): 8x14 snare (bronze), 8x8 tom, 10x10 tom, 16x14 tom, 18x16 floor tom, two 18x24 bass drums.

Cymbals, Paiste: 14" Sound Edge Dry Crisp hi-hats, 6" signature bell over 8" signature bell, 10" signature splash, 24" 2002 China, 18" signature full crash, #3 cup chime over #1 cup chime, 18" signature power crash, 12" signature Micro-Hat, 22" signature Dry Heavy ride, 22" signature Thin China, 20" signature Power crash.

Electronics: Simmons SDX pads, Korg Wave Drum, Roland MC-505, Oberheim TVS.

Hardware: Sonor stands, Sonor, Axis or Pro-Mark hi-hat stand, Axis or Pearl bass drum petals with Sonor or Pearl beaters (loose string tension, but with long throw).

Heads: Evans Power Center on snare batter (medium high tuning, no muffling), G2s on tom batters with G1s underneath (medium tuning with bottom head higher than batter), EQ3 bass drum batter with EQ3 resonant on front (medium tuning, with EQ pad touching front and back heads).

Sticks: Trueline Danny Carey model (wood tip).

He has his own sticks, even. In "Schism," the double basses just go nuts at the end. They also do in "Eon Blue Apocalypse." And in "The Grudge." And in "Ticks & Leeches." And nobody uses more toms in metal. You can really hear the 8x8 and 10x10 toms in the opening for "Ticks & Leeches." Over the summer, I counted the number of tom hits in that song, and it's 1,023!! Amazing. That's my favorite song, since it's the one that starts with Maynard screaming, "Suck it!" Then he says, "Little parasite." Later he shouts, "This is what you wanted... I hope you choke on it!" Every time I watched my boss suck down those Orange Juliuses I had that stuck in my head.

There is simply no way you could just dismiss the music (which is excellent). The bass playing is just really creepy and slow and sometimes it has this watery effect. Tool even follow in the footsteps of Caravan with Middle Eastern or Asian or something sounds. "Disposition" features bongos, and then on the next song, "Reflection," Carey's toms sound like bongos or tablas or whatever is in those Fruitopia commercials. Close your eyes and imagine if Asia had a space program. This is like the music they'd play. The song is called "Reflection" since it's quieter and slower and sounds like it's from India, where people go to reflect. Maynard's voice sounds like that little bleached midget girl flying around inside the walls in Polterghost. It's messed up.

In conclusion, there is more emotion on that album than would be on 30 Weezer albums. At the very least, there's 2.5 times as much. Like I said, it's messed up, like the world, which makes it very real. I don't think I'm going to have a kid this year, but that's also a good thing. Just imagine the Tool record that will come out in three years, according to my theory. It will be the future, and albums can be like longer with better compression and technology. Even as amazing as Lateralus is, I feel like there's a monster coming in three years. Music comes in cycles, and works on math, and my life and Tool are proof of that for sure.

-Brent DiCrescenzo

The reason this makes me sick is not so much that he pokes fun at Tool and their obsessive fans, but that the review itself is the journalistic/reviewer equivalent of the wankery that the writer accuses Tool of exemplifying.

I'm no Pitchfork basher, but that's the kind of review that creates Pitchfork bashers.

best of both worlds.

I'd like to take out a court order to prevent her writing from coming within 100 ft. of me.

i said this before on the other thread, but jeez, just get the 30-second clip from amazon and figure out for yourself whether you might like the record. music writers write about music and sometimes they know damn well that whether they like something has no bearing on whether you the reader/listener will like it because very likely the music writer doesn't know you and has no idea what kind of taste in music you have (even with specialty magazines the genres are pretty broad) and very possibly they approach music in a completely different way than you do, so the best they can do in lieu of all that is try to make some sense of what the music is and really that tells me a hell of a lot more about whether I personally would like the album than whether the reviewer "likes it" or "doesn't."

THE WALKMEN: Everyone Who Pretended to Like Me Is Gone (Startime International) Just what we always wanted--Jonathan Fire*Eater grows up. Put some DreamWorks money into a studio, that was mature. Realized Radiohead was the greatest band in the world, brainy. Stopped playing so fast, hoo boy. And most important, switched vocalists from Nick Cave imitator to Rufus Wainwright imitator. Wainwright makes up better melodies with a dick in his mouth, and not only that, Cave has more literary ability. New York scene or (hint hint) no New York scene, DreamWorks isn't buying. C PLUS

surely the writer does realize that there were bands that sounded like that before radiohead came along?

BTW that Tool review is awful, but it has nothing to do with what is purporting to review and is more just an excuse for Brent to engage in his terrible creative writing student muse (no I wouldn't read a short story by this guy either.)

too many hyphenates

i threw in xgau for a damn good reason. the damn good reason being that xgau for no good reason felt the need to joke rather graphically (and unfunnily) about rufus wainwright's sexual habits in a review of the walkmen. it's a bizarre line and it completely upset my stomach when i read it. i'm sure xgau isn't a homophobe. what i'm not sure about is what on earth he was thinking when he wrote that line.

Yeah, that's what annoyed me, he was criticising Tool's ponderousness and wankery and was pulling off a pretty fair-size chunk of indulgence himself.

"At last, the secret motivation of my schtick and the etymology behind our name can be revealed. These reviews have been less critique than loquacious concept reviews by an entertaining tramp. So you'd think an 80-minute opus by Tool would be right up our alley. You'd be wrong."

(does acknowledgement of a flaw ameliorate its defective character? no -- but it ironizes it!)

All progressive ragga souljahs step to this –Brooklyn’s Redbud takes a gritty tech-dub ting (think Stereotyp or The Bug) from Lithuania’s Overtone down to Nostrand Ave. In the process, Germany’s DITD (Inverse Cinematics) hijacks the convoy and breaks the beat into a dancefloor killer that should have ‘em juxin’ n’ jamming at London’s Co-Op club.